September Week 3

So I'm still loving keeping up with my weekly project life pages. It's fun to reflect back on the week and remember what we've done and I love figuring out how I want to design and display the photos. 

The thing that this project does for me is give structure and definition to getting our life documented regularly. It's so exciting to me that I have this whole year in photos and words documented. I've scrapbooked for years, yet have not much to show for it. I've even had a blog for years and at times have kept up regularly with it, but mostly have been sporadic.

 This project has helped me be successful for the first time ever in doing something regularly and have it in a format that my kids have access to look at it - ie. in a book that is on the shelf.

Details from this week:

• We went to to the South Hills and roasted hot dogs and smores
• I love taking pictures of sweet baby Henry. He still sleeps most of the time. He is the sleepiest baby.
• Last week I did really good eating lots of fruits and vegetables and lost 5 pounds (this week I have not done well and have not lost a pound).
• Cousin Carter was in town for a job his company is doing. He lives in St George so we don't get to see him much. Jeremy picked him up from the hotel he's staying at and he had dinner with us. It was particularly great to get to spend time with him because he leaves for his mission in a few weeks and we won't get to see him before he leaves.
• Becca had her first spelling test and got 100%
• I love the photo of Matthew in the clown wig, the girls dressed him up

September Week 2

Jeremy had the week off and was able to help out with the kids and around the house as I continued to rest and recover from having a baby and from taking care of a new baby.

Jeremy took the boys camping to the South Hills and they had a great time bike riding and 4 wheeling in the hills (wish we could say mountains, but hills are the best that we have around here).

Henry had to be on a bili rubin blanket for a few days to get his jaundice to go away. Because of the cover on the light pad it made him glow green.

First Week of School

Here in Idaho school doesn't start until after Labor Day. Lydia has afternoon kindergarten and Jeremy was able to take Lydia for her first day of school. They line up outside the building by the door that goes into their classroom. She only wanted us to wait with her the first few days of school and now she is fine to go by herself.


I've been loving the "clean design" look lately and kept it minimalist with mostly white, words and pictures. It doesn't take any less time for me to do this style, it seems like it should be less time consuming, but somehow it still takes just as long as when I use different papers and embellishments.

No Time for Computer

I've had no time for the computer lately - I'm too busy holding my sweet new baby. He's already 2 weeks old and growing so big - he's gained a pound and half since birth and is almost 9 pounds now.
He's not sleeping so well at night - he's sleeps great all day long, just not at night, so therefore I'm not sleeping much either.

Here is the page from when Henry was born.

And from the rest of that week. Two days before Henry was born was Lyida's 5th birthday. Lydia and Henry are the only ones in our family to share a birthday month. The other 6 of us (parents included) each have our own birth month. If Henry would have held out for a few more days his due date was in September, but he was too eager to get here and came early. 

Sweet Baby

Nothing is more precious than holding a sleeping newborn. 

Henry- baby number 6 birth story

It's 7 am on Wednesday August 28, 2013. I am at st Luke's hospital with iv in and monitors on. Getting the iv in and blood drawn are one of the worst parts of delivery for me. I get very lightheaded and hot and feel miserable for a few minutes. 

We came in bright and early at 5 am. They got the iv in and started antibiotics a bit after 6 am. Now I'm just sitting around waiting for it to be 8 am when we will get things going with pitocin and epidural. I'm already 4 cm dilated and having minor contractions. 

 

Jeremy came with me and a few minutes ago he got called down to do a case. He should be back by 8, I guess we will see. 

I slept very badly last night. Because I also slept badly the night before I was hoping to go to bed early last night and sleep well until 4:30 when I had to get up. No such luck. Until the past two nights I have slept really well. Last night I was exhausted, but after 3 hours in bed I still hadn't fallen asleep. Finally I fell asleep for 3 hours, then woke up and couldn't fall back to sleep. I got up at 3:30 and ate a bowl of cereal because I was hungry and hoped I could then fall to sleep for an hour. No such luck. So I opened a book on my iPhone and read for 30 min until it was time to get up and go. 

Jeremy's parents got in late last night so they are there with the kids this morning. I am very thankful for that. Definitely one advantage to being induced is knowing when everything is going to take place, rather than spur of the moment trying to figure out what to do with the kids and trying to get to the hospital on time. 

I am very much looking forward to an epidural. Out of 5 previous deliveries I've only had an epidural one other time. I wanted natural births with no medical interventions but the last two were so intense and painful that I really didn't want to go through that again.

Epidural in at 8 am, Jeremy was still in the case. Mike did the epidural and was awesome. I got light headed and didnt love it, but overall it went well. He warned me i might get itchy, but was surprised at how extremely itchy i became, all over my torso and face. Its been an hour and its almost subsided. 

Doc came in at 8:30, I was at a 4. He broke my water, but not much fluid came out. By 9 it started leaking and then really gushing.

Started pitocin at a 1 sometime after 9:30 and 2nd round of antibiotics at 10 am.

Somewhere around 11 pitocin was upped to a 2. Just before 1 pm I was dilated to 9 and shortly after a 10. I wasn't ready to push yet, I was nervous to do the whole pushing bit because I don't like that part. The doctor came back after about 10 minutes and said it was time to push. 7 minutes later, at 1:23 pm Henry William was born. 

For being two weeks early he was bigger than I thought he would be-- 8 lbs 4 oz and 22 inches long. 

I am so happy that everything with labor and delivery went so well. I am so thankful I had an epidural and didn't haven to feel the contractions. Jeremy was loving it too- no wife in pain, no screaming. It was a quiet peaceful 4 hours of labor. 

I didn't love that my legs were so numb, couldn't even lift my left leg or sit up without help. Also didn't like how drowsy I felt, but absolutely loved not feeling the contractions and the pushing part was not bad at all. 

As soon as Henry was born they laid
him on my chest, all purple and white. Jeremy cut the cord and the placenta was delivered easily. No tearing, so healing should go really well. 

After we got him a little wiped off I put him to nursing and he latched right on and nursed for an hour and a half. After an hour they took him for a few minutes to weigh and measure him, but then he came right back to nurse more. 

An hour and a half after delivery I was still so numb I couldn't walk, so they wheelchaired me to our room. Henry still wants to nurse, so he is happily sucking away while I'm updating this. He is so stinking cute, and little and floppy. 

Now that it is all over I can't believe how nervous and worried I've been about the delivery. I think because Matthews delivery was so traumatic I was having a hard time getting my mind past that. I am so happy it worked out for me to be induced. They started the epidural before they even broke my water.

It's now 7 pm. The epidural has finally worn off all the way. My left leg took a long time. Henry is eating like a champ. Around 6 pm they took him and bathed up. After delivery they just wiped him off a little, So this was his first real cleanup. 

So far, even with the epidural worn off I have no after pains, which is awesome, because with Matthew and Lydia in particular I had horrible after pains. Also bleeding has been very minimal. Here's to hoping that both those things stay that way. 

I have been super hungry and thankfully they have been feeding me well and often. I ate a Philly sandwich around 2, meatloaf and fruit around 5, eggs and hash browns at 6:30 and have a turkey sandwich set aside to eat. I have also been drinking a lot of fluids and its a good thing my legs are back to working so I can get myself to the bathroom. 

Welcome baby Henry, so glad you are here. 

New baby

Henry William Taysom was born today, August 28, 2013, Wednesday, at 1:23 pm, 4 hours after induced labor. Labor and delivery went really well and Henry is healthy and an awesome eater already. 

The kids came for a short visit and are looking forward to spending time with their new baby brother. 

August week 2

I didn't realize I never posted last weeks layouts. I think partly I overlooked it because it took me until Tuesday to finish, usually I'm done by Sunday or sooner. It's funny that some weeks I've hardly taken a photo at all and think that I'll do just one page for the week, but by the weekend I have so many photos that I'm cramming them in.

Over all it really was a slow week and we didn't do anything until Saturday when I took the kids shopping for school clothes. Other than that it was just around the house, goofing off type of photos and memories, which are the easy kind to overlook and forget about. That is what I love about doing this project is remembering to pay attention to the small stuff.

Going back

Well, since I've been so efficient in getting this year all caught up and printed a photo book for last year I now have to go back further in time to find things to scrapbook about. Because my 2012 photo book through My Publisher turned out so well I am going to make more photo books for previous years, but I still love making scrapbook pages so I'm just going to pick random stuff here and there, not do a whole years worth.

Today I went to the 2009 photo bin to find some pictures to do and picked photos from the day we went to Marco Island. It was a great outing with tons of pictures, but I just picked a few highlights.

I miss going for family bike rides. Right now I am way too pregnant to even think about getting on a bike. But also there aren't great places here to bike ride. I wish they had a trail system like St. George has. There are some in Sun Valley, but that is almost 2 hours away.

Also, we are really missing the beach. Jeremy still thinks that someday he would like to move back by a  beach.

I love how this layout turned out. It started completely different than this with a different color scheme and I just wasn't loving it. So I picked out different papers and started over. So glad I did that. I love when I get done and am just in love with how the finished page looks. This is why I do scrapbooking - I love to see what I come up with and how the finished project looks. It really fills my creative cup. This is the only day this week I've sat at my computer and I've really missed it.

August first 10 days

I'm still in love with this new way of memory keeping.  

I printed and already received back the 12x12 pages I made for the first half of this year. I printed them with Persnickety Prints and am so pleased with how well they printed and with the cost and speed of that company. Their 12x12 prints are $2, Costco and most other places are $3 and more. I had 30 pages to print out so I was looking for the best deal. I uploaded them last Friday and by 2 hours later received and email saying they were done and ready to ship. I received them Monday in the mail. They are now in the photo book and the kids are enjoying looking at it.

As well as the family 12x12 scrapbook every once in awhile I make 8x10 that are for the kids' books.

Home Remodel

I finished our home remodel photo book and am waiting for it to come from the printer. In an earlier post a shared a few pages from it, but now that the book is all done I thought I would share all the pages.