Broken Dryer

The motor on our dryer burnt out right before we left town for the Holidays. It can handle a couple onsies on fluff dry at the most, but even at that it smokes. I wanted to take a load of towels to my Parents to wash, but since they were wet Edward was afraid it would make his trunk smell mildewy. It's been rainy since we got back, but today the sun broke through so I washed them and took them outside to dry. At sunset they were still damp so I brought them in and hung them on the canopy post rails on our bed to dry some more. Several hours later they still weren't dry yet so... I remembered this Seinfield episode...

Kramer is a genius! I preset the ovens for 200 and then turned them off and stuck a towel in each one for 10min -then repeated the process till all the towels were done =) Can't wait till our dryer's fixed though.

Reese's Baby Blessing

On Sunday Dec 26th 2010 Reese Edward DeHoyos was blessed in Page, AZ 5th Ward. Edward performed the blessing, and though I know he was nervous, he did a really good job. (This is only the second blessing he's ever given, and he's never even seen a baby blessing before, so I'm really proud of him.) Thanks to all who participated and came to support us! It was a wonderful day =)

Uncle Brian & Edward =)

Reese with Bishop Skaggs =)

Derrick, Jennifer, & Felicity Hull =)

Sweet Brother and Sister Palmer =)

Also thanks to Harvey Schoppman -I didn't get a picture of him!

Merry Christmas!

Having a baby has given me a different perspective on Christ's birth. It is overwhelming to me to picture our Savior as a tiny babe, and has given me renewed appreciation for Mary, and her worthiness to accept her Calling as the Mother of Jesus. I am so grateful for the wonderful miracle of Christ's birth, for the exemplary life He led, for His willingness to do His Father's will and atone for our sins. For the humility of His crucifixion, and the glory of His resurrection. For the peace and hope He has given me. I love my Savior and Redeemer Jesus Christ.

We spent Christmas with my Family this year. My Mom worked the night shift so we all slept in and didn't open presents till 2pm. After exchanging gifts, we had a championship game of Scrabble which my Mom won, followed by a championship game of Risk which Brian won. It was great to be back in Page and have everyone together!

Raindrops on Roses and Whiskers on Kittens...

...These are a few of my favorite things:

*Finding little tiny socks in the laundry

*The way Reese curls his lips when he coo's

*The BIG smile he gives me when I feel him staring and I look his way

*The way he pets my neck when I'm feeding him, like he's saying "Good Mom"

*Seeing his little legs kicking in the air as he quietly does his morning exercises =)

*The magical tingling feeling I get every morning waking up knowing I am a Mother

Nutcracker

We had some cousins performing in the Nutcracker, so we went to cheer them on. They did AWESOME! Reese loved it sooo much, he was totally mesmerized. We don't let him watch TV (because our Pediatrician said not to) so we always face him towards us and he'll try and twist around to see what we're looking at (after all what could be more cute to look at than him ;). I think the Nutcracker made up for all those times because he was riveted.

(I'm stealing this pic from my Aunt's blog).

From Upper Left Corner: Chantille & Brian, me, Reese, & Edward,

and our three lovely cousins, Kaelyn, Emersyn, and Ellie =)

Twas Several Days before Christmas...

And all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse... well, except for a certain mischievous Siamese kitty...

She always waits till everyone else is sleeping to come out of hiding and perform her catlike rituals ; )

Favorite ornament on the tree!

Seriously though, even the cats love playing with this rattle. And I just used a piece of floss to tie it on with.

Gilbert Temple Groundbreaking!

The Gilbert Temple is being built just a couple blocks from our house and I am pretty excited about it! I took Reese to the Groundbreaking Ceremony on Saturday and it was interesting. The City Mayor was there, and Claudio Costa from the Presidency of the 70 spoke. It was an unusually hot day for November. I ended up stripping Reese down to his diaper and kept him shaded while he sucked drops of water from my finger. Brian made a fan out of the program and helped keep him cool and happy. President Costa talked about how people in his native land of Brazil would save for years to be able to afford the long trip to go to the nearest temple, and I think to make us feel better about the scorching sun on our backs, he reminded us that the Amazon in Brazil could get up to 120 degrees in the summer and the busses often had no air-conditioning. Now there are 7 temples in Brazil! The dedicatory prayer was beautiful. Afterwards they had some fancy shovels they turned the first soil over with and that was pretty much it.

I love going to the temple. It brings peace to a troubled heart. I know everyone has had days where they feel like they've reached their breaking point. Sometimes it's physical exhaustion and after a good nights sleep you feel better in the morning. But sometimes it's your spirit that's exhausted. It may be from stress at work, a bickering relationship, or as a friend recently explained, the stress of trying to do more than it seems one person ought to be capable of. (She is a single mother of six children). For me the temple refills my tank when I am on empty. It helps me put things in perspective. I feel that I leave with increased patience. Because I feel Christ's love for me I am better able to love others.

If there is a temple in your area I would invite you to go, walk around the grounds, sit on a bench or under a tree, and see if you can feel the same peace and comfort I do. =)

Happy Halloween!

Reese was a Russian Monkey for Halloween (hence the earflaps).

And I'm proud of my pumpkin carving. He definitely needed braces, so

with a couple thin strips of duck tape, crumpled aluminum foil pieces and

a hot glue gun and I fixed him right up. =)

Trip to San Antonio!

We drove to Texas so Reese could meet his grandma for the first time,

and of course it was love at first sight.

We took Reese on his first choo choo train ride down by the San Antonio zoo.

We were going through a tunnel here and I love the CrAzy eyes they both have.

Grandma DeHoyos babysat so we could go out on a date night.

We went to a basketball game and then had dinner at the Alamo Cafe -super yummy!

(It's actually our second night out since Reese was born, we went to Jerry Seinfield's comedy tour downtown Phoenix a couple weeks ago.)

The humidity took all the curl out of my hair

Don't be a hater. We were cheering for the Spurs all the way and they won!

Since it was the first game of the season everyone got free T-shirts. I know technically

I should be a Suns fan, but I didn't really get into professional basketball till I married Edward

and he's told me so much about every Spurs player and the franchise as a whole, that I feel like they are practically family.

If they have a good season this year I'm going to take a picture of Reese in a Spurs onesie and send it to all my uncles to taunt them a little =)

And here it is:

Reese was so good the whole trip. It's a 14hr drive each way so we weren't sure how he'd do. It helped that my Aunt Heidi and Uncle Dan let us break up the drive and stay the night with them in El Paso. I enjoyed sitting in the backseat interacting with Reese for such long periods of time. He's starting to giggle and coo a lot more which is so much fun. =)

Flowers!

Brian has a part-time job as a security guard at a reception hall. The other night they were chucking the flowers after the ceremony so he got to bring some home. He gets off at midnight, so he just left the huge bushel of them on the kitchen counter.

When I am super tired and Reese wakes up to be fed I'll walk around the house with him to keep myself awake. Anyway I ran smack into the bushel at 3am and it scared the crap out of me! In the dark it looked like some kind of mangy animal. In the morning I had fun dismantling the bush and arranging the flowers in vases around the house! So pretty! I just love fresh flowers!

Reese update!

At his 2 month check-up Reese came in: 75th percentile for weight (13 lbs)

90th percentile for head size (lots of smarts in there :)

& 97th percentile for length! (24 inches)

So my Dad's dreams of him being a tall basketball player some day may come true!

I don't know if you've seen this classic Warner Brother's Cartoon about the singing frog, but we joke that it's similar to Reese's personality. He'll be smiling and cooing, making all kinds of cute expressions, so I'll yell for Edward to come quick (or vise versa), but as soon as the other arrives Reese is quiet and still as a mouse, and just stares at us with his big somber brown eyes. He was like that when I was pregnant too. He'd be kicking up a storm, but as soon as I'd place Edward's hand on my tummy he'd stop and hold perfectly still. He's a bit of a tease ;)

Pizza for dummies!

This recipe is my Grandma's (with a few tricks/tweaks from my Aunt Becky ;)

Yield: 4 super delish personal pizzas =P (which by the way, really isn't helping me with my diet. I still have 13 lbs to lose and my scale is stuck, so I'm going to have to work harder and eat better to get it to budge again.)

You will need:

1 can tomato soup

1 can Hunts tomato sauce

1 tspn pepper

1 tspn garlic salt

1 tspn oregano

1 tspn minced onion

1 pkg "bake n' serve" Rhodes Texas rolls (in freezer section)

Shredded cheese (I used a mix of colby & moterey jack cuz that's what I had on hand)

The dough takes a while to thaw (3-5 hrs) so get it out ahead of time. (If you take it out before church then by the time you get back it's ready to go.) There is a speed method for thawing, but it's kinda complicated, and this is "pizza for dummies" so...

1. Coat a pan with cooking spray and place 8 frozen rolls inside. Cover with saran wrap after lightly coating one side of wrap with cooking spray so the rolls don't stick once they rise.

Several hours later...

2. When rolls have doubled in size, take two and smash them together, then quickly toss dough eight feet in the air twenty times at a half tilt spin... Gottcha! Just Kidding ;)

3. Smash two rolls together and then roll them flat (or you can just sort of stretch them out like I did into a semi-circular shape.) I was able to fit two pizzas per cooking sheet.

4. Next, mix the first six ingredients together to make the sauce.

Spoon sauce onto pizza dough.

5. Add whatever toppings you like. I cooked up some hamburger meat with some diced onions and crumbled that on top (my grandma always made it with hamburger, and it's really good that way). And because my husband is a meat lover, I also cooked a small section of a Hillshire sausage link and diced it up small to sprinkle on top. And then of course I added a liberal amount of jalepenos.

6. Sprinkle with cheese on top and cook at 350 for 20min. Tada!!! Your own personally made personal pizza!

My brother Brian

My youngest brother Brian is home from his mission (Spanish speaking to Atlanta Georgia), and is living with us while he attends ASU. He is such a wonderful help and is so good with Reese. He has been tending him half a day Fri & Sat while I work. I asked Brian what was one thing off the top of his head that he'd learned on his mission. He said, "You know that Living Scripture video about Christ fasting in the desert and being tempted? Well I always thought after the third time, Jesus turned to Satan and said...Get the hint Satan...as in, I've already told you no twice and I'm not going to give into sin. So I was surprised when I was studying Mathew 4:10 to realize He really said...Get thee hence, Satan." He says he learned a lot more valuable lessons, that was just the first thing that came to mind. I thought that was a pretty funny misinterpritation =)

Side note: Brian thinks the term "babysitting" sounds a little sissy-ish, so I noticed in his dayplanner on the days I work he's been writing "Quality time with Reese". ; ) I think Reese will always love spending quality time with his Uncle.

Ok, so Brian told me another thing he learned in his studies which I thought was pretty neat. In 1 Nephi chapter 3 Nephi just gets back from speaking with the Lord and the first thing his Father tells him is: "Behold I have dreamed a dream, in the which the Lord hath commanded me that thou and thy brethren shall return to Jerusalem." And of course Nephi says he will go, which is a mark of his humility. He could've said, "Oh really, I was just speaking with the Lord and he didn't mention it." or "Sure, that sounds great, but listen what just happened to me first...". But because he was always quick to obey and never to boast we have the famous but wonderful scripture: (7.) And it came to pass that I, Nephi, said unto my father: I will go and do the things which the Lord hath commanded, for I know that the Lord giveth no commandments unto the children of men, save he shall prepare a way for them that they may accomplish the thing which he commandeth them.

Every time he smiles...

...it melts my heart.

His smiles are still spontaneous though. Edward will spend forever interacting with Reese trying to get him to smile, and while it's cute for me to watch and I know Reese loves the sound of his Dad's voice, he mostly just smacks his lips and looks around for some milk. Sometimes Reese will laugh while he's dreaming, so every time I hear that cute chuckle I'll rush over to his basinet hoping to get a glimpse of that big grin I love. I imagine he is dreaming about Jesus. He has nightmares too though and will yelp out in his sleep and make some sad (but also way cute) faces.I imagine in those instances he must be dreaming about his birth experience, it can't have been a fun thing to go through. I'm glad we don't remember it when we get older! But mostly he just sleeps peacefully.

I know I should swaddle him, but I hate being tucked in tight (semi-claustrophobic). I like to have one foot sticking out of the covers just like my Dad and my Grandma Washburn (although she said her habit came from years of sticking one foot out of bed to rock each of her ten babies back to sleep in their bassinet). I think Reese has Washburn feet both in appearance and the desire for freedom because he'll kick and kick till they find their way out of his blanket. Plus after being squished in my belly for so long he must enjoy stretching out a little. Doesn't he look comfy?

Weight loss goals!

While I work on getting Reese nice and chunky with some cute baby rolls, I'm hoping to shed a few of mine. I gained 55 pounds during my pregnancy, eight pounds just during the last week. After Reese was born I lost 30 pounds in little over a week, which minus the baby weight was pretty much all water. (The last month of pregnancy I swelled up like a giant Nancy balloon, my feet went up two shoe sizes and Edward called them Princess Fiona feet or Flintstone feet.) I've lost another 5 pounds since then, but still need to loose 20 more to return to normal. I thought by posting my goals on here I would be held accountable, so wish me luck!

Chopped off my hair!

A few weeks before Reese was born I decided to get my hair cut short. I wanted to donate it to "locks of love" and their minimum length is 10 inches, so that's what I did! They braided it into several 10 inch sections and then snip snip went to town =) I don't have to worry about hair getting coiled around Reese's little grasping fingers, and it is so much faster to dry now so I'm happy!

So who does he look like?

Reese Edward DeHoyos

Born Aug 14th at 11:30pm

7lbs 11ounces & 21 inches

Me? . . . or Edward?

My first birthing experience!

LABOR & DELIVERY:

A lot of friends have blogged about their labor and delivery story's, and while they are often kinda gruesome I have enjoyed reading them. So I thought I'd share mine as well. First let me just say that I was very blessed with an easy pregnancy. I had hardly any morning sickness and was able to work right up to the very end without any difficulty, for which I am very grateful.

I was scheduled to be induced on Aug 18th (my Dad's birthday =) but on my last Doctors appt I was dilated and having mild contractions so he didn't think I'd make it till then. We recently moved to Gilbert but our Doctor delivers at the Banner Thunderbird Hospital which is a good hour away, so rather than try and guess when I was far enough along to come in without chancing being sent home, I was placed on a "standby" status where the hospital called me as soon as they had an available room. I was called in at 7:30am Sat morning Aug 14th. We arrived and registered by 9am. The hospital has converted to paperless charting and the super nice old lady nurse I had was really slow putting our information in the computer (She kept getting distracted and telling us stories about her kids and how things used to be ;) so by the time she was done it was 11:30am, and I think my Doctor was a little annoyed.

The epidural was pretty easy. They numbed me with a little Lidocaine first, which is the same stuff we use at the dentist office. I've never minded shots and let lots of friends practice injections on me in hygiene school so I wasn't really nervous, but Edward freaked a little when he saw the size of the needle ;) The worst part of the whole thing was the nice old lady nurse wrapped her arms around me in a comforting way instructing me to slump my shoulders, but by so doing her face was 2 inches from mine and her breath was really bad. I tried breathing in as little as possible till we were done.

Finally around 1pm we were ready for the Doctor to come in and break my water. I was placed on Petocin and dilated progressively from there. I reached 10cm at around 9pm. My epidural IV bag started beeping that it was empty, but my nurse had said she would bring me a new one as soon as she had finished discharging her other patient and I was so timid about pressing the nurse call button, so we just listened to it beep as I felt the numbness wear off. I started thinking about my friend Erin, whose epidural wore off just in time to feel the whole delivery. By the time my nurse came back I had started throwing up. It didn't take long for the new IV bag to start working though and I was good again.

When the Doctor came in and was ready for me to push, Reese came out in just two try's. His umbilical cord was wrapped around his neck once which made his heart rate drop a little, but the Doctor untangled him and had me reach down and pull him up onto my belly. My first thought was how I couldn't believe he was mine! My second thought was that he had a cone head, but the Doctor assured me the swelling would go down and his head would be normal by morning.

I had imagined Edward being a lot more attentive during the final stages, but he doesn't handle blood real well so he kinda hugged the walls. He sure was a proud Daddy though! Reese weighed in at 7lbs 8oz, and was 21 inches long. (Though the next morning after the swollen bump on his head had receded, he only measured 20 inches).

My gown was halfway falling off, so for the sake of decency I won't include any pics of me.

POST PARTUM:

I was laying there while they cleaned Reese up, thinking how easy this whole process had been and how I was ready to have 10 more kids when I started to realize how tired I was. The thing is they don't let you sleep! We were transferred to our Post Partum room and I started feeling really sick. The epidural had worn off and I could feel the contractions from the Petocin IV. I was freezing cold with tremors and my blood pressure shot up to 180/120, which is twice as high as it usually is. They kept coming in to check either me or Reese every 10 min all night long, so none of us got any sleep. My last IV bag of Petocin finished around 5am and I was so excited to have that done with! They told me the other IV of saline solution could come off as soon as I had filled my toilet bowl twice. (Sorry if that's TMI). I ate the breakfast they brought and started getting really excited to go home. That's when the new shift of nurses came on and the worst Sunday of my life began.

I was given two really young nurses, a Trainer and a Trainee. The Trainer chick was kind of a smug know it all, and the Trainee was really nervous. I told them I was ready for the second IV to come off so the Trainee started trying to peel the tape off my hand while forcefully holding the IV head in place. She ended up with a big clump of tape wrapped around the end that she was trying to yank off. I asked her if she could just get some scissors and cut around it but she said, "I don't have any". When the tape finally came off the IV head was back bleeding from being so manhandled and so she tried to flush it with some saline solution, but was unsuccessful and in the end just took it out. The girls came back a few minutes later to inform me that the on-call Doctor wanted to start me on a 24 hr Magnesium Sulfate IV because of my high BP the night before, and that it would make me feel like crap, and the soonest I'd get to go home was Tuesday. Since the other IV head had come out she needed to start a new one in my other hand. After poking me three times and unsuccessfully inserting the needle (she said my veins kept rolling), the trainee finally got it in a vein, but she punctured it so low the tubing went down into my wrist. She told me just not to flex my wrist or it would kink the IV (a hard thing not to do when that was my dominant hand and I'm using it to pick up and put down Reese to nurse, and fill out those tracker sheets, etc.) When they started the IV they did a 30 min bolus first and my whole hand turned red and felt like it was on fire. The nurses said it was normal for the magnesium to burn like that. By this time I was crying and I cried for a long time afterwards. I was just exhausted and in pain and felt like a prisoner, but my nurses were concerned and started having me fill out all kinds of questioners on Post Partum Depression which just annoyed me even more. The on-call Doctor came in and explained that I had developed Preeclampsia after the baby's birth, and that even though my BP had been normal all morning, my lab results showed something off with my liver enzymes. By Sunday night Edward and I were so tired. He hadn't slept at all in two days because in-between feedings he'd held Reese to let me nap a little, and he had to work the next morning (his Maternity leave didn't start till the 20th, which was my actual due date) so he went home to feed the dogs and cats and sleep a few hours before morn.

I had a new Nurse that night, but she frustrated me also. I felt like Reese was starving because he just cried and cried, but she didn't want me to supplement him with a bottle. (Evidently they had just had a big seminar for all the nurses on the importance of breast-feeding, the week prior.) Reese's weight had dropped 10 ounces, but she said that was normal while they were feeding on the colostrum. The poor guy sucked so hard trying to get something and I was super sore. Finally, at my insistence, she brought me a couple ounces of formula in a bottle, and after Reese finished it he gave me a the HUGEST smile! (I know one day old babies can't smile yet, but he did, and it was huge.)

On Monday morning the IV finished and Reese was discharged, so they left us alone a lot more because they no longer needed to check him, which was wonderful and we were finally able to get some rest. The nurse that night was nice and took the IV head out completely because my wrist was red and swollen and she was afraid it would get infected. My Mom came down and stayed the night in the hospital with us so Edward could go home and sleep again before work. Tuesday afternoon we were finally able to go home, and my milk came in, so it was a big relief! Today my Dad gave me a blessing before they headed home, and my stitches feel so much better now (class III tear), so everything is going pretty great! I can't believe how much I just absolutely love this little guy!