New Arrival

I can't believe it's been over a year since I've updated our blog. Its a bit of an understatement to say I've been busy. School, work, Dextin, and being pregnant have definitely kept me running. I'm happy to say that I have just begun my last semester. Only three more months until I graduate! And as long as I can pass the NCLEX I can say that all the stress and child neglect has been worth it. I wish I would have finished school before having kids, but at least they are young enough to not remember. I imagine this blog won't be updated again until after I finish. So I figured I should write while I have a few weeks off of work. I will start with the most important so that it for sure gets done.

We were very excited to welcome little Aeven Kristopher Barrett to our family on Saturday April 27. He was 6 lbs 13 oz and 18.5 inches long. He came out with dark curly hair, which I'm hoping doesn't all fall out. So far he has been a really good baby, though I think he spends more time eating than he does sleeping. By his two week appointment he was already up to 7 lbs 5 oz (he came home at 6 lbs 8 oz). Aeven's due date was May 4, but Dextin was born a week and a half early so I was hopeful that he would be similar. My only concern was that I had finals on April 24, which was about a week and a half before the due date. Luckily I made it through finals and I began having contractions that night. I was up half the night, but they never became regular. The next day they started up again so we went for a walk trying to get the contractions to become more consistent. I thought for sure by the end of the night they would pick up, but the night was similar to the one before. Friday morning was disappointingly slow, so I did everything I could think of (and find on google) to try and get things going again. We went on an extremely long walk and even ended the day with Chinese food (I'm still not sure how that was supposed to help). That night they started up again and this time were much stronger. They still weren't very consistent, but we live about 35 minutes from the hospital so at around 1 am I decided we should head down. We met my mom at the hospital and she took Dextin to her house. We checked in and they set us up in triage to see how things were going. I was dilated to a 4 and 90% effaced. Since my contractions still weren't regular they decided to wait an hour and see what happened. An hour later the nurse came back and she said nothing much had changed except that my bag of waters was bulging a little more. She decided to wait another hour, which was pretty miserable. I was in a lot of pain and all Justin had was a chair to sit in, which wouldn't have been so bad if it wasn't the middle of the night. When she came back again the only change was I was completely effaced, but still only about a 4. She decided to call the midwife who said I should stay another hour. By this time it was about 3:30 and the nurse said she would give me until 5. That was probably the longest hour and a half of my life. My contractions were definitely stronger, but the monitors weren't reading them very well so the nurse waited until 5 to come in. By that time I was dilated to about a 6. The nurse was very excited to finally admit me and I was excited to finally get an epidural. Justin was happy to finally have a bed. The anesthesiologist was quick to get to me, which was so nice. The midwife soon arrived and decided to break my water to try and speed things up. After a while she decided to start me on Pitocin because things still weren't moving that fast. They had to keep adjusting me because the baby's heart rate kept dropping (I have a feeling it was due to the Pitocin since the same thing happened with Dextin when they started me on it). My contractions finally picked up some more and at 9:24 am I began pushing. Aeven was born at 9:30. My labor was quite a bit longer this time, but I pushed for ten minutes less than I did with Dextin. Everything went really well and we were able to go home Sunday afternoon. It was so nice going home a day early instead of staying an extra day like we did with Dextin. It is definitely an adjustment having two and much harder for me to run errands alone, but it has been fun. Dextin just adores him and kisses him every chance he gets. He has yet to try and carry him around, which is something I feared, though sometimes he does love him a little too hard. I cant wait until Aeven gets bigger and is actually able to play with Dextin, I think they will be good friends.

Moving on up

Maybe one day I will get the hang of this blogging thing and it wont take me months to update it. Probably the most exciting thing that has happened since I last posted is that we bought a house! It was a long process, though it was faster than we expected, but we are extremely happy with everything. We ended up having to do a lot of work on it because the last owners did not take very good care of it. It was mostly just interior cosmetic stuff though since it is only 9 years old. We have been in for a month now and are pretty much used to the long drive. We are a good 20 minutes from the freeway and it now takes me close to an hour to get to school, but we do love the area. It’s a nice place to raise kids (if we stay that long). I think we will be here for a couple of years at least. Its 2000 square feet including the unfinished basement (that hopefully one day we can afford to finish) and also has a good sized completely fenced backyard. So far its been perfect for our little family. I will put up some before and after pictures to show the work we did.

Our little baby is now almost 19 months old! I cant believe how much he is growing and changing. He is definitely more of a toddler and less of a baby. Its fun, but sad at the same time. He is talking so much lately, not that we can understand all of it, but it is so exciting every time he learns a new word. He loves music and dancing and especially loves dancing to Justin playing the drums, it really is the cutest thing ever. He still loves shoes and dressing up in nice clothes. Dextin loves Juno (our chow chow). He always gives her hugs and kisses. He absolutely loves taking baths. He also loves going places. He will run get his jacket and shoes as soon as I tell him we are leaving, he doesn’t even care where we are going. He is a much better sleeper now and will just lay down and go to sleep in his crib. We are still struggling with naps though, which im sure is because his daily schedule is so inconsistent. He is recently obsessed with having his hands down his pants. If I don’t have a onesie on him his hand is glued down there. We even had to borrow a onesie from his cousin Kambri today because it was just so bad. I guess it’s a boy thing? At home I don’t care as much, but it is a bit embarrassing in public. Hopefully he outgrows that before he gets too much older. Dextin’s biggest obsession though is cars. Any and every. He loves them. He stares out the window just waiting for them to pass by. He is constantly saying “cars?” and has yet to be able to distinguish between cars and anything else with wheels (trucks, buses, trains, four wheelers, etc). To him they are all cars, except bikes which he figured out a few days ago. It is so fun to see him grow and learn. Here are the words he can say and how he says them:

• Hi
• Bye Bye
• Mama
• Dada
• Mmmm (not really a word, but so cute)
• Uh oh
• Cars
• Shoe
• Pee pee
• Poo poo
• Ples (please)
• Da (dog)
• Bir (bird)
• Pa (paddle)
• We (remote)
• Mow (more)
• Ha (hot)
• Ga (gone)
• Stas (stairs)
• Pa (grandpa)
• Ja (jacket)
• Ba (ball)
• Boo (book)
• Bas (bath)
• Ha (hat)
• Nie Nie (night night)
• Fis (fish)
• Pho (phone)
• So (sock)
• Brrr (means cold)
• He says Juno, but its more of a sound from the back of his throat…weird, I will have to post a video

Im sure there is more, those are just the ones I can think of. He seems to struggle with more than one syllable and some of his words sound the same, but he is usually pointing at the object at the same time so we usually get it. Here are a few pictures of my big boy.

Back to the Real World

Summer is over, as is our amazing life in Hawaii. Its nice to be home, but we find ourselves wishing we could go back far too often. What a great experience it was. We were very blessed for the opportunity to live there all summer. Things are finally back to normal and we are enjoying having all of our things back. Its also nice to be back with our families and friends. Because of the high living cost in Hawaii we weren't able to bring home much extra money, but it was definitely worth it.

Me and Dextin came home three weeks before Justin so that we could be at Stefani’s wedding on August 11. It turned out to be so much fun and beautiful. I am so happy for Stefani and Andrew.

Before Justin came home I decided to surprise him with a few projects for our house. We had a bedroom that was full of junk mostly that I cleared out. It also had a big sectional couch that our landlords are storing. I decided to recover the couch so that we could use the extra room as an actual bedroom. There was finally space for Dextin to have his own room which I had fun decorating. The room that I cleared out had a brick wall with a fireplace that was a terrible orange color. I was able to get it painted before Justin got home, though I could have never done it without the help of all his younger siblings. It was a big project and they helped out a ton. Jodi also helped with a lot of the decorating and my mom and my aunt Lyn helped with the couch.

Couch Before:

Couch After:

(I also made a bunch of pillows for it)

Here is the wall in the middle of being painted. You can see the original color on the bottom.

Here are a few of the decorations I did.

I modge podged the pictures onto pieces of wood. I did the ones from Hawaii for our little den area and a bunch for Dextin’s room. I also made him some curtains and some book shelves from rain gutters. Justin loved it and was definitely surprised at how much I was able to get done in three weeks.

On September 10 we got to celebrate Dextin’s first birthday. It was so much fun. For his birthday he got a ball pit, a frog chair, and a fun push around toy. We had a big jungle party later that night. It turned out so fun. I spent most of the day on his cake and we spent way too much money on decorations. It was a blast though and he got a lot of great gifts. We just love our little guy!

Here are a few of Dextin’s one year photos taken by my mom.

On September 21 we said goodbye to my one and only brother Kylan. He is currently a missionary in the San Bernardino California mission. He is doing great so far and I know he will be one fantastic missionary. We miss you Kylan!

Halloween weekend we last minute decided to throw a Halloween party for Justin’s side of the family. It wasn’t as planned out as we normally like, but it turned out fun. Justin spent quite a bit of time on a game he created called pin the organ on the zombie, which everyone seemed to enjoy. I spent my time making yummy Halloween treats. This year me and Justin dressed as bananas and Dextin was a monkey. We went to my moms Halloween night for a small party. While we were there we did a little bit of trick-or-treating. Dextin enjoyed carrying the candy around in his bag, but he enjoyed eating the candy even more.

After five years of off and on schooling I have finally been accepted into the Nursing program. I will start in January and graduate in August of 2013. I am very excited to get my RN and finally be done. I have definitely taken my time getting here, but because of that I will only have to take the Nursing courses as I go because I have everything else already finished. Hopefully that will lighten my load as I continue to work and be a mom and wife. It sure is nice to finally have the end in sight.

Justin got a new job after returning from Hawaii. He is now working for Hearts for Hospice as a driver. He seems to like it alright, but I doubt it will be long term. He also is doing a few installs for Point here and there. He works hard and is staying busy.

That is pretty much what we’ve been up to the past three months. Things are mostly back to normal after our long summer vacation, though we would go back in a heart beat if we could. We are staying busy, but also trying to throw in some fun here and there. Mostly we spend our days chasing around our busy little guy, which is how we like it.