sunny picnic on the grass

The first couple of years we lived in San Diego we were apartment dwellers. The apartment was nice but it was awful to not have any outdoor "natural" space. We lived across the street from a fantastic mall so if I wanted to take a walk without driving, it had to be there. Other than that, we had a small patio where William liked to spend a lot of time, but there's only so much you can do in a 14'x14' space in the shade. So when we started looking for a house to rent I was super excited about the prospect of having a yard. Then when I saw our yard with two orange trees, a lemon tree, a peach tree, a rose bush, a huge covered patio and lots of grassy space I was in love. This Saturday reminded me of why I fell in love in the first place.

It was a beautiful day so we decided to have a picnic in our backyard. I made a huge sandwich on a loaf of French bread with salami (I'm obsessed lately), turkey, provolone, lettuce, tomato, pickle, avocado, two kinds of mustard and lots of black pepper. It was delicious and ridiculously thick but pulling out some of the bread innards helped. Then we also devoured our first watermelon of the year. It tasted like a summer's day. I also made delicious snickerdoodles (recipe coming!) and we watched William do funny things on the grass. As I observed my son running circles on our beautifully green just-cut grass, I noticed his face getting redder and redder until he was a delightful, little tomato. So I declared it naptime and took him inside, washed his face with a cool cloth, gave him some ice water in a sippy cup, turned on his ceiling fan and, after the appropriate amount of crying, he fell fast asleep. Doesn't that sound amazing? Maybe it's because I'm sleep deprived but spending the day outside in the hot sun and then laying on some cool sheets in a dark bedroom to take a nap sounds like my version of I-have-a-newborn-baby-heaven.

Life's good but I still need a nap.

insert vampire joke here

I apologize for the grotesque nature of this post but I realized something the other day - jelly is disgusting. I really love peanut butter and jam or honey sandwiches but I was out of both and had a jar of blackberry jelly in my fridge so I thought I'd give it a shot. As I spread it jelly on the bread I realized the mistake . . . the nasty, congealed mistake. Holding my PB&J on a paper towel, I took a bite and the texture of the blackberry jelly made me a little sick but I powered through. Then I looked down onto the paper towel and saw that a plop of the jelly had landed on the white backdrop of my sandwich vessel. It looked like a blood clot and now I can never eat jelly again. And it's likely that now you won't be able to either. Sorry . . . or, you're welcome.

the fortress

While my mom was here she showed me this movie that my nephews made during Sunday dinner at my parents' house a few weeks ago. Maybe it's super funny because they're my nephews but I could not stop laughing. They love to write scripts and make these movies and they're pretty clever! If you don't want to watch the whole thing, at least treat yourself up to 1:07 when my nephew, Jonah, falls dead on the grass. I want to relive that moment over and over again.

newborn baby and newborn mama (again)

I always think that getting out of the house is going to be so good for my sanity, and a lot of times it is, but sometimes (usually near the end of an outing) it becomes apparent that leaving my nest was a really, really bad idea. Adjusting to life with more than one child has been difficult. William has been handling this "plus one" adjustment really well but even with his good behavior, he's still two and I still have a newborn who really loves to nurse and I really hate to cover up while I do that so we often stay at home where I don't have to put on a shirt all day and William watches a lot of movies while I drain my iPhone battery by lunchtime.

However, on Saturday, when David is home from work it seems a shame not to do something fun. So we ventured out to the zoo for a couple of hours right before closing time. It was surprisingly chilly and misty so we really bundled Frederick up and I think William was thrilled to be out of the house. We even got an up-close, backstage glimpse of an armadillo . . . but he screamed when it uncurled his body and the zookeeper let it walk around on the floor at our feet. I thought it was cute. Then we went to my favorite pizza place in San Diego, Pizzeria Luigi. Unfortunately they were out of my favorite slice (the Frenchie - honey ham, pear, bleu cheese, caramelized onions) but everything else we tried was delicious, including the best BBQ chicken pizza I've ever had. Yum!

By the time we got home that night and started to get William ready for bed, we realized he was feverish and shivering. The poor kid had a 102 temp and was breaking out in sweats. Staying up all night between feeding the baby and keeping cool cloths on William, made for a very tired family (William took a five hour nap today!) but I can't help but sigh with contentment every time I sit down to nurse Fritz and he wraps his tiny fingers around mine or when I lay down with Will and sing him "Golden Slumbers" and he strokes my neck while we snuggle. The love I have for my boys makes up for every exhausted, frustrating, makes-me-want-to-sob moment in my day. This feeling can't be described until you have a child, but oh, it's the best kind!

grandmary

My mom was here last week and it was lovely. I miss her. She cleaned my house, let me sleep in every morning while she took the baby, made batch after batch of scrambled eggs for Will (he's obsessed lately), gave me lots of good advice and was her super positive and complimentary self. My mom can boost anyone's self-esteem!

We also took pictures of her and Fritz and I'm so glad to have them. It makes me sad that my boys don't know their GrandMary as well as most of their cousins do but I guess that's the price you pay for living in paradise!

In other news: I'm in love with my baby boyfriend. He's so cute that sometimes I think I will blow up like Aunt Marge and float away because I love him so much.

now I need a nap

Still in that precious newborn/so-tired-my-eyes-are-going-permanently-crossed stage. But just look at this baby! I'm obsessed.

easter 2012

Our Easter was pretty low key . . . and so this post will be.

Will colored eggs in his diaper (on Saturday with David's family).

And applauded his colorful efforts.

We hid them. He found them (with an awesome slicked hairstyle).

He checked to see if there was candy inside the plastic ones. Yep.

Then, in between nursing and snuggling on Fritz, I made a lemon bundt cake with vanilla whipped cream and strawberries for Easter dinner and it was delicious.

Not pictured: We went to church and I felt so grateful for my faith in Jesus Christ and His resurrection. Also not pictured, I squeezed myself into Spanx and almost died.

on having a new baby

I was super worried about coming home to William with a new baby. I think that's a common "mother concern" when you have more than one child. I also worried I wouldn't love this baby like I love William, which I'm told is another common concern. I have some very wise people in my life who said a few things that helped me so I thought I'd share them in case any of you are about to bring home another baby.

It's hard to imagine loving someone as much as you love your first child. My friend put it best when she said that you kind of "fall in love" with your baby. It does feel like that and so it's hard to imagine feeling that way again. My mom has eleven children and when I asked her how she could love so many of us the same, she said, "It's amazing how your love doesn't divide - it multiplies." One of my friend's husband said that being a parent is God's way of giving us the opportunity to understand His infinite love for all His children. Everyone said that I would love this baby as much as I love William and I believed them but I didn't really get how it would feel to love like a mother - similarly to how I felt when I was pregnant for the first time. Once the surrealness passed of having another child, and when I was able to bring Fritz home from the hospital, I felt that mother love wash over me. This is my baby too! I am completely over the moon, head over heels, obsessed in love with him. And seeing my two boys together sealed the deal in my heart.

My other concern was how William would react to Fritz. Luckily, we've been able to ease him into the idea by splitting attention between him and the baby since David has been home for a week and my mom will be here next week. So far he loves the baby. He kisses him, wants to hold him, wants to look at him, wants to sit by him and is generally excited by him. I am nervous about when I'm home on my own with the boys and William wants me to do something for him while I am nursing. One of my friends gave me some good advice the other day. She said that a toddler notices and understands when you choose the baby over them. The baby doesn't. So even though my natural instinct is to drop everything and handle the crying infant, if it's not urgent, then the baby can wait a minute. It'll be hard to do but I think it's an excellent point and it breaks my heart to think of William feeling like I'm choosing someone over him.

The best part of having another baby (other than the delicious smell, the newborn squeaks, the lip quivers, the snuggles, the warmth - should I go on?) is that I feel like a more complete family . . . for now. :)

sweet fritz

Childbirth is entirely exhausting and while I'm super ready for bed at this moment I want to document my sweet boy's birth before I forget the details. On Saturday night, my girlfriends and I went to the hospital to visit our friend whose water had broken at 32 weeks and was on bedrest there. I had been having contractions all day and by the time I got to the hospital, I was in really bad pain. After a few minutes of talking, my friends basically forced me to go to Triage to get checked.

The nurse checked me and declared that I was still 4 cm (what I had left the hospital at a few days before) but my contractions were very regular at about 2 - 3 minute incremements. They monitored me for a while and encouraged me to go upstairs, walk around and come back when/if they started getting stronger.

My friends are awesome and rubbed my feet and back in "labor inducing pressure points" to get things going while we chatted. After a couple of hours my contractions had slowed down a lot but I had been told to go back to Triage before leaving the hospital. I got back to Triage and as soon as I laid on the bed they started again. The nurse monitored my contractions and they were still every 3 minutes or so but I hadn't progressed so they sent me home to wait it out after giving me an Ambien so I could sleep through the night.

The next morning I woke up with pretty strong contractions but not entirely convinced they were anything. All day long, while watching General Conference, I labored with painful contractions about every 3 - 5 minutes. I refused to believe that I was in labor since there had been so many days of "false" labor. I hadn't eaten all day and was feeling pretty nauseous. At around noon I finally decided to go lie down on our bed. After laying there for about 30 minutes, my contractions had slowed to about 5 - 7 minutes apart, convincing me further that this was more prolonged false labor. I decided to get up and maybe go on a walk and as I stood up, my water broke all over the floor.

I yelled to David just as I felt an extremely strong contraction. Within a minute I was hit with another extremely painful contraction. I told him we had to go NOW. David got all our things together really quickly and put William in the car while I yelled for him to hurry. My contractions were coming every minute or two. I told him we didn't have time to drop off Will at our friend's house. I had to go to the hospital because I felt like I had to push. He got there rather quickly where I was greeted with a wheelchair and sped off to drop off Will and come back. They took me straight to labor and delivery where I insisted I needed to push. After checking me they concluded I was only at 7 cm so I asked for an epidural. The best part was that my sassy nurse, Yolanda, got in my face at this point and told me I needed to "chill out" or else I wouldn't get the epidural - I was freaking out at the pain and how fast this was all happening.

It took about 30 minutes but once I got the epidural I was feeling good. 20 minutes later I started to have pressure and pain. I told the nurse and she thought that I just needed more "juice" but after another dose wasn't helping she checked me and I was at 9 cm. She decided to call the doctor and I really felt like I had to push. I started to push and within 10 minutes he was out! The doctor barely made it! She was rushing to pull on her gloves and telling me, "Stop pushing or he's going to fall on the floor!" Can you imagine?

so exhausted.

Anyway, he's adorable. A great eater and super sleepy. We named him Frederick Russell Bryant and will probably call him Fritz for short. I love, love, love him.

on our way home - can't wait for my belly to not look like I'm pregnant anymore.

april brings the baby sweet

It's no April Fool's joke. My sweet "nameless" fellow was born yesterday and we are in deep smitt. He came in a hurry and is a whopper at 9 pounds 4 ounces. More details later!