Big Morning . . .

This morning was a big morning--first we got the rest of our couch in!! At 8:15 RC Willey dropped off the other 2 pieces so we no longer have a hole in our couch. Then at 8:20 the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Heller stating that the D.C. gun ban was unconstitutional based on the 2nd ammendment. It was enough to keep me home from work until 8:45 this morning. Two VERY different things to blog about together but they both happened within 5 minutes of each other--actually I think the ruling was released while RC Willey was here. So really at the same time. I'm happy about how the ruling came out although it's still to be determined how much this will affect gun laws outside of DC or anything short of a full ban on guns. Read about the ruling here:

Here's our couch all put together:
It's just a touch too big for the room--you can see that it hangs over the carpet onto the tile just a few inches which we didn't want to have happen-- but I think we'll keep it. So a month after our couch was supposed to be ready for us RC Willey finally brought the rest of the couch. They did give us a $300 gift card for the problems that we had so we'll go back at least once and give them a second chance.

Shattered

O.A.R. has a new single out called Shattered--it's the first single off of their new album "All Sides" coming out July 15th. Check out the music video for Shattered here:



'Shattered' by O.A.R.

To listen to a couple songs off of the new album check out O.A.R.'s Myspace page.

Naptime

Naptime is sacred.

For those of you moms out there or anyone whose dealt with this or has any advice - I'm trying to decide if I should help Robby change from 2 naps to 1. He's been waking up earlier and earlier it seems - although this morning he woke up at 7 which is not bad - but I feel like I'm trying to keep him up later so he'll wake up later and it doesn't really work and it means he's going to bed closer to 9 and we don't get all that great hang out alone together time anymore. He used to go to bed at 7:30 pm and wake up at 7:30 am. And take 2 long naps. :)

Ok so if you cut out a nap do you just go cold turkey on the morning nap and try and make him wait as long as he can to go to sleep.... hmm.... Baby Whisperer says to push the morning nap back 15 min a day and try to slowly move that nap back to like 1 pm... but she doesn't really mention if that means you still have them take an afternoon nap and if so up until what point.... anyway my mom would probably laugh so hard at me right now - trying to find the perfect nap formula and expecting someone to be able to tell me just how to do it! Hey, a girl can dream, huh?

And then there's the problem that if he does take one nap a day I'd imagine it'd be something like from 1-3 and that's exactly when we get together with our friends to swim or have lunch. Our baby social life will be over. Or postponed till probably 4 pm or something.... anyways this probably sounds ridiculous but it's just on my mind as he's taking a later than normal and longer than normal morning nap and I'm toying with the idea of forgoing the afternoon one and wondering just how cranky he'll be before bed time, which hopefully will be earlier but not result in a too early wake up.

Did anyone follow that?

And now he's awake.

James Whitford

More pictures of Taba's new little baby boy! While he did not come out with a sticky note on his forehead of what his name should be like they'd hoped, they decided before leaving the hospital on James Whitford, after both of his grandpas!

When the girls came to meet him Gwen said, "This is the happiest day of my life!" Isn't that so sweet?

Once home from the hospital Robby got to hold James for a little bit. He looked at him like he was a strange little animal - a little cautious and excited... Robby looks like a GIANT next to James. Can he really be so big already? They grow so fast!

Look at his sweet little face! He looks so much like Anna did when she was born! It was such a treat to be there for his birth, like I was there the day Anna was born!

For those interested here's my long, detailed version of Tab's birth story...

Taba called me at 7:30 pm saying they were at the hospital and she’d call me in an hour with an update when they checked her again to see if I should come up or not. They got to the hospital about 7 and the nurse said she was at a 3 1/2 .

She walked around for an hour and they checked her again about 8:30 – she was at a 4 ½. She called me and told me to get on my way! I was at Liv’s son’s birthday party so we left and went home so I could put Robby down, change, and get to the hospital.

I talked to Ben at 9:30 on my drive up and he said they had just broken her water. She had been at a six and I guess she was ready to try to speed things up. At that point she considered getting an epidural since she had 4 cm to go and she was already feeling pretty miserable but her nurse encouraged her not to, reminding her that after the water breaks it usually goes a lot faster so it might go quickly.

I got to the hospital at 10:00 and she seemed really happy and looked great. Her nurse, Andria, was really awesome. By 10:30 her contractions had gotten a lot more intense. Ben and I took turns pushing on her knees to relieve some of the pain and that seemed to help. She got up to go to the bathroom and after that she tried a few contractions on her knees with her arms over the top of the bed. After only 2 contractions she was having a really hard time and she could feel the baby's head coming. It seemed like the change in position got him going pretty well. The nurse checked her and she was at a 9 so she called for the doctor to come down.

At 11 she was on her back again and having really intense contractions. The doctor came in a few minutes later. Taba didn't have the urge to push quite yet so they just let her continue laboring. At 11:18 she started pushing. It was super painful at this point and the pushing didn't really help, probably due to his being face up which nobody mentioned till after - either they didn't know till he was coming out or they didn't want to discourage her. Either way they all said it was a super tough delivery and to do it w/o the epidural was really tough. He came out all at once at 11:33 pm.

I was really impressed with her doctor. She didn’t do the push counting way instead she just calmly encouraged Taba to listen to her body and she took time to stretch her out and just guided her with her voice.

Taba held him for about 20 minutes but then the stitching up process (she had a 2nd degree tear) was really painful so she let them take him to be weighed and stuff but said, "But bring him right back!" So Ben got to hold him for a while and then me till Taba was ready. She held him and nursed him in the delivery room. About half hour after the birth she started getting really really shaky and cold. They got two of the hot blankets to put on her and then we piled on a few more but she just wouldn't stop shaking. That's when Ben got creative and put the towel on her head. :) (see the picture) Eventually her body relaxed and she was feeling ok.

Her first words after he was born were, "That feels so much better!" Shortly after that it was, "He's so cute!" Later when we were discussing how it went she said, "I felt like I was going to die. Never again." If she knew how much pain it would end up being she probably would've gotten the epidural but she's glad she had the experience and that she got through it.

***If you're in the birth story mood here's a link to mine.***

Poll Results June 20

Do you like doing the polls?

Yes: 14
No: 0
Every once in a while would be better: 2
I really don't care: 5

Well I've been MIA for a while now. With the move and with work I haven't been on much lately. Things are starting to settle down ad we're getting into more of a routine but it's been pretty busy the last couple of months. Hope everyone is doing well.

New Furniture

We’re making progress on our house! This week we finally got some couch to sit on! If you remember from my couch saga in the last post we were supposedly only missing one piece and when they came to deliver it on Tuesday lo and behold we were actually missing two! Our dang sales rep had said one piece, no two pieces, no for sure one piece… oh brother… whatever! Here’s what we’ve got so far:

And in contrast to our RC Willey experience…. Saturday we ordered a kitchen table from a store on State street in Provo called All the Great Rooms. First of all we show up and tell them what we’re looking for and they hand us two pieces of furniture to take HOME with us to you know, just see how it looks with our kitchen… just bring it back later, no rush. Okay. Very smart business move on their part. It means you have to go back and you feel more committed to buying something from them but still the customer service was awesome. They told us the table we ordered would take probably two weeks and we paid $25 for delivery service which includes them setting the table up for us – worth way more than that in my opinon! Anyway! They called yesterday and said the table was already in, so, less than a week, and they could deliver it that evening! I didn’t tell Rob and so it was all set up as a surprise when he came home. He couldn’t believe it had already come!

Here’s our cute little nook table:

Talk about two contrasting experiences!

Our internet and cable’s supposed to be set up by “the end of the week.” We’ll see.

And some other really exciting news!!! I got to be at the birth of my sweet little nephew last night! Thanks Taba for letting me come. It was so neat. He still doesn’t have a name but look at this cute face:

I'll post more details about the birth later!

Still moving in....

Since our internet STILL isn’t working and we’re only periodically able to hop onto a neighbor’s wireless I’m going to type my post then try posting it! Ha! Reminds me of being in Russia and having to pay for the internet… we’d always type up our emails then only get online to send them! I guess I think I’m pretty smart, huh?

I am so behind on reading everyone’s blogs! I can’t wait to get caught up. I “miss” you all. :)

Update on our couch: **Warning – long and lots of Esther talk…**What the heck…when we bought the couch on Memorial Day we were told it’d be in to their warehouse on May 29th and then delivered June 3rd. Great. We even did not get the color we originally wanted because that one would have to be special ordered, we went with the color they had “in stock” supposedly. This week I’ve talked to our sales girl from RC Willey like six times. Mind you I’ve had to call her each time and twice she’s said, “did you get my message?” when the first time there was no voicemail on any of the three phones we have and the second time she called the house phone that’s not connected even when I’d SPECIFICALLY given her my CELL PHONE number the day before and asked her to call that. Geesh! So funny – on Tuesday, the day it was supposed to be delivered, she told me, “ok, it looks like everything is here except one piece, the wedge… it should be here tomorrow… any day... you’ll be the first to know… blah blah blah.” Two days later. I call her after not hearing anything – she tells me, “ok, great, mmm hmm, ok, yeah, it looks like we’re just missing two pieces…” I cut her off, “Oh really? Two, huh? Cause two days ago it was one piece, remember, the wedge?” Grr. I just feel like she’s making crap up and can’t keep her stories straight. ANYWAYS! Sorry for the long vent/story! Maybe you wish I hadn’t thought of this whole type it out then post it thing cause now I can go on forever! ah ha! I talked to her tonight and she said, in a very calm normal voice that the wedge piece will be in on either the 27th, 28th, or 29th. I almost screamed. “Of JUNE?!?!” I basically told her that was completely unacceptable and ridiculous since when we bought the couch we got that color because it was supposed in stock and blah blah and after arguing with her for 10 minutes I said, “well, just bring the rest of the couch now!!” Duh. Niether one of us had thought of that. So it should be coming on Tuesday. And then we can wait for the final piece till the end of the month. I can deal with that. I just need some place to sit my little bum down.

We need furniture! We just haven’t had a lot of time to look and Rob has decided to have an opinion about everything so I can’t pick it out myself but he’s so busy with work… ahhh! We’ve been sitting on the kitchen floor to eat and there’s no other furniture at all… no cable, no internet, no dumpster, no mailbox, no COUCH!

I think this next week will be a good one. Hopefully most of these things will resolve themselves and we’ll have a normal house. But I do love our place. It’s beautiful and new and big and great. I’ll take more pictures! Here's some random ones!

Robby showing some love to Hannah, one of Kristin's girls. Kissing - it's my favorite "trick" of his.

Robby being so proud of himself for finishing a whole tootsie pop! He was so excited that he was given his very own.

I have tried hard to keep Robby away from my bad soda habit but the other day I gave him a little sip and then he frantically did all his usual signs for "give me" (more, please, thank you...) and when those didn't work he turns to me to give me a kiss complete with the cute little "mmmwaa" noise we do when we kiss.... so cute! How could I resist?

Here's Robby on the balcony outside our master bedroom - it's been nice that I can be unpacking or working in there and let him play on the balcony. He mostly just yells/talks to the construction people and the birds but he enjoys it. You can see the pool behind the clubhouse there from our balcony which is nice! We're on the second floor....


And behold all our boxes! And of course there are tons more in the bedrooms! We've made a ton of progress but still have a long way to go before feeling totally "set up." Can't wait!

We're here!

We moved! Thanks for all of you wonderful people who helped us in tons of different ways! We are still unpacking and surrounded by boxes but everything's moving along well. Our couch should be delivered any day! Hurray! Our stupid internet isn't set up (maybe not for another week, yuck!) so I'm on some random person's wireless network and it keeps cutting in and out so I better hurry! Just wanted to say we're here and doing well!

I'll post more w/pictures soon as I can!