Going on 4 Months

Its hard to find any extra time these days to do things like update our blog. Any free time i have i tend to spend cleaning our house, which some how always seems to get messy. We have been pretty busy since our little bundle of joy arrived. I had a hard time going back to work after my six weeks of leave, but we didnt have many other options. I did shorten my schedule so now i only work monday, wednesday, and fridays, along with every other weekend. That gives me at least two full days a week to spend with my sweet baby. We also moved the week before i went back to work. We are still in an apartment, but this one is a basement. Our landlords are really good to us. It is a little older than our old apartment, but is cheaper and close to twice the size of our other place. They also have a fenced backyard that our dog Juno can go play in whenever we want. She loves being able to run around and play with their dog. I think we will be here for a while.




Little Dextin is getting so big already. He will be four months in two weeks. He is at least twice the size that he was when he was born, and last we checked he was about four inches taller. He has lost most of his hair though. I loved its cute natural curl so i hope it comes back soon. He is talking a ton and smiles all the time. We are working on the laugh. He is so close, but we have yet to count any of the loud coos as a laugh. He loves food. He only gets licks here and there, but loves every one. I think he is about ready to try some rice cereal. He just began grabbing his toys and he loves putting everything in his mouth. The poor thing has already started teething. Its off and on but we have yet to actually see any teeth. I can always tell when it starts up again because he will get really ornery and drool a ton. It is usually accompanied by a slight fever also. Overall he is a great baby, he doesnt cry a whole lot but he does whine quite often. We are really blessed to have him in our lives.

Dextin Alan Barrett

I am a little slow posting this, but I finally found some time. After a long nine months Dextin Alan Barrett finally arrived on the morning of Friday, September 10. I was lucky enough to have him come nine days before his due date, which meant nine less days of having to work. I wasn't able to take any time off before he came so I trudged along all the way until the day before he was born. I did my fair share of complaining though...just ask Justin. I believe all that lifting and squatting is what made Dextin decide to come a little early, he figured I needed a break :) My pregnancy was overall fairly good, which is why I was able to continue working, thankfully. I will give a quick version of the birth. Justin and I were watching tv Thursday evening when my water broke. I assumed that is what it was since I had had no previous bladder leaks or anything. I was completely taken off guard though because I had had tons of braxton hicks contractions throughout most of the pregnancy and then even had false labor about two weeks before. The false labor lasted an entire night, but of course ended as soon as I decided to go to the hospital to get checked out. I was expecting a whole days or nights worth of real contractions, but at least I knew I could go to the hospital and they wouldn't send me home. So we gathered all of our things and drove the five minutes to the hospital. My water broke around eight or so and we got to our labor and delivery room around nine. I still wasn't having any contractions so they started me on petosin. My OB was the doctor that was there for the night, so that was nice. He told us that it would probably be Friday afternoon before I gave birth, since this was my first baby and they tend to take quite a while. So Justin pulled out the sofa bed and we settled for the night. The contractions finally kicked in and my doctor said I could get an epidural whenever I was ready. They weren't too bad so I decided to wait a while. Of course as soon as I decided I wanted it the anesthesiologist was in surgery. When he was about to get to us a lady came into the hospital that was on her fourth child and they figured she would need one right away, so we waited a little longer. Finally I was able to get one at about 1:30 am and boy was that nice. They told me to try and get some sleep, but I really wasn't able to because the babys heartrate kept dropping with every contraction, so the nurse would come in and move me around to try and get it back up. This of course made me nervous, which contributed to my lack of sleep. Around 5 am I began to feel the pressure. My nurse was very optimistic and kept saying she wanted to see this baby before her shift was over at 6:30. About 5:45 Justin had to run downstairs to give my mom our house keys so that she could let our poor puppy outside. The nurse came in soon after he left to check me and to everyones surprise I was fully dilated. She quickly got me all ready to start pushing. By 6 am I was ready, but Justin wasn't back yet. I began to worry, but then he walked in and found me all ready to go. He was really surprised. I began pushing. I definitely did not enjoy that part. The doctor came in to see how we were doing, but as soon as he took a look at me he immediately got ready to catch the baby. At 6:16 am Dextin was born. Only 16 minutes of pushing. I had stunned everyone...I am just that good I guess. Hopefully they all end up being that easy, because as not fun as it was I definitely feel I got it pretty easy. From the time my water broke until the time he was born was about 10 hours. Dextin weighed 6 pounds 10 ounces and was 19 inches long. The nurses pretty much left us alone most of Friday, though that probably wasn't the best thing because we found out the next day that his blood sugar was extremely low. It wasn't his fault though, he was trying to eat, I just wasn't making enough for him, which being a first time mom I really had no idea. The poor thing was pretty much starving and got to a point that he would hardly wake up. They had to put him on an IV which brought him back up, but as soon as they took him off (which took a whole day to ween him off of it) the numbers went right back down in the 30's. They wouldn't let us go home unless it was at least 50. They were going to put him back on the IV, which I really didn't want since we had to already stay one extra day. One of the nurses then suggested to supplement with formula until my actual milk came in. I liked that idea better because then we could at least go home. After a few feedings with the formula they found that his blood sugar stayed high enough to let us go home. We only had to use the formula for another day or so and he is doing great now. We did have a few days that we had to go back into the hospital because he had jaundice, but those numbers eventually started going down. At 2 1/2 weeks little Dextin is doing great. He was 6 pounds 4 ounces when we first got home and at his 2 week appointment yesterday he is now 7 pounds 12 ounces. I cant believe how much he has grown already. Though the newborn sized clothes still are a little big on him, but he doesnt fall out of them anymore. He is a great baby and usually only cries when he is hungry. He does love to be held though, so so far I haven't gotten too many things done. He is just the sweetest baby and me and Justin just adore him.

The End is in Sight

Summer is almost gone, but we did get to enjoy a few small vacations this year. For the fourth of July we went camping with my mom at Deer Creek Reservoir and spent the day riding around on her "new" boat. Its actually a very old boat that her and Andy bought so that they could fix it up. We did have some major issues with it the first time we tried to take it to the lake, but this time we did get it going. It was a lot of fun, though i didn't get to do any water-skiing this year...that was quite depressing. I did get a few pictures of Justin trying to wake-board and water-ski, but neither of them fit him well enough for him to be up very long; the water was also pretty choppy that day.







The next week was our anniversary so we both took some time off work and headed up to Bryce Canyon. It was beautiful up there. We decided to make this camping trip extra fun and stayed in a cabin the first night and a tipi the second. They were both located at Ruby's inn campground, which Justin's family recommended to us. The first day we spent on a hike called Calf Creek. It was a fairly easy hike and ended at a beautiful waterfall/waterhole that people could swim in. By the time we got there it started to rain so we watched a group of scouts swim for a while and then turned back. After about twenty or thirty minutes of hiking back we realized we had lost the trail somehow. It wasn't the easiest trail to follow since it was mostly rock with small trail markers here and there. We tried to find our way back to the trail but never could find it. We decided to head back to the waterfall because we knew it was at the bottom of the mountain. We soon could hear the scouts and easily found our way. By that time the sun was back out so we decided to spend some time in the water. We made sure we found every trail marker on our way back up the second time and made it without any problems. Later we spent some time at Sunset Point. The view was incredible and we made sure to get some good pictures. The next day we only had a few hours so we did a small hike to Mossy Cave. It wasn't exactly what we expected, but it was easy and still nice. We ended up at the Anniversary Inn that night in Salt Lake. It was so much fun. We had the Swiss Family Robinson room with a huge jetted tub that had a waterfall shower and our bed was up in a tree. They provided us with apple cider and cheese cake and we were able to order in dinner and it ended with a complimentary breakfast. We took home several souvenirs and are already looking at rooms for next year. It definitely wasn't the cheapest hotel, but it really was worth it and i would recommend it to anyone. The only downside is that we weren't able to get very good pictures because of the romantic lighting.































That has been the extent of our summer, that and of course getting ready for the baby. We are at 34 weeks now so hopefully it isn't too much longer. I am definitely tired of being tired...though im sure a baby isn't going to solve that problem. We are getting pretty excited though.

Enjoying the Sunshine and Free Time!

Ever since the semester ended we have really been enjoying the sunshine and all of the extra free time. We have already received several sunburns this year from spending so much time out at our apartment pool...i did eventually buy some sunscreen. We have really been looking forward to the summer so that we could use the pool. The hot-tub is open all year, but i have not been able to use it since December, which has been a bit of a bummer. We also have had enough time to catch up on some of our scrapbooking. We were getting pretty behind since school was a little higher on our priority list. I love scrapbooking, but i am still not as good at it as Justin is. He just has so much artistic talent...i am getting better, though i still have to have his opinion before doing anything. Here are a few pictures of some of the pages we have done. There are some from our wedding and honeymoon and a few more recent ones like from our vacation to Vegas in March.




Justin has been begging me to take a ride up the canyon on his bike, so finally last week i packed up some food and we spent the afternoon eating and just relaxing up Provo canyon. It was beautiful. The bike still scares me a little bit, but this ride was definitely worth it. As long as i have my huge jacket and helmet i usually do ok. Justin is a great driver, so that does help. I still dont ride on it as much as he would like, but he loves it anyway.