Gracie to the Goo

Grace only has 4 more weeks as an only child! Talk about craziness.

For a long time I was really nervous about introducing her to a new baby. Over the past couple weeks she's eased those worries for me a little bit. She's been excelling at all things independent and has been a lot less clingy.

I think she'll still have a hard time in some ways, but she's been so happy about everything Baby Brother lately that I think she'll also do really well.

Today we had a pretty long conversation about what we'll do with Baby Brother when he comes home. I explained that he's going to come out of my tummy and then we'll bring him home from the doctor (she doesn't understand what 'hospital' means). Her eyes got all wide and then for the rest of the afternoon she kept saying things like "Baby Brudda come home doctor, Mommy! Doctor Baby Brudda, Mommy!"

We set up Baby's corner in Mom and Dad's room last weekend, which pretty much is just the pack-n-play with the tiny bassinet and changing table connected to it. Then we also have all of his tiny clothes, nursing things, baby toys, and other miscellaneous baby things set up on our bigger changing table next to that. That's the extent of a "nursery" for him for the time being! When we buy a house I plan on setting up a cute themed nursery for him. For now a corner with his couple pieces of furniture will suffice, ha ha.

We also put the baby bouncer out in the living room.

Grace has been SOOO excited since we set up all of these things. She'll go through his toys, play with his binkies, she'll threaten to undo all of the nicely folded tiny baby clothes (but I quickly stop her....pregnant lady problems.....too tired to refold clothes....jk I NEVER like refolding clothes! Ha ha)

She's been hitting a growth spurt I think, because she is nearly out of shoes that fit her. She particularly needs new church shoes. We went out the other day to find some cute white church shoes and we ended up at Burlington. I always have to go through the baby things no matter what store I go to, and this time we ended up getting Baby a little toy.

While we were looking through the toys I gave Grace the option to pick one of two things to get him.

Lately whenever I give Grace the option between two things she'll say to me: "One, two, Mommy! I want two, MOMMY!" (So many sentences ending in "MOMMY!!") She wants both....never just one, ha ha ha. This pretty much goes for any option, even sometimes options that she doesn't necessarily like.

Speaking of "one, two" she's getting pretty good at counting. She can at least count to four no problem. I haven't really tested her on it too much. She'll get shy sometimes and doesn't like to perform, so I try not to pressure her into doing it. Today while I was counting out loud she yelled "six!" right as I said six, so I'm guessing she knows up to ten pretty well?

Back to the toy story....

We finally picked ONE to take home and she was very happy about it. She loves new toys. Later as we were showing Daddy what we bought that day when he got home from work she asked me to open the toy. I opened it and told her she could play with it as long as she put it away in Baby Brother's bed when she was done.

She gets a very concentrated look on her face when she's getting instructions and is actually listening, so I figured she'd at least try to remember to follow through on what I was saying.

I went about the rest of the night forgetting I had said that. We put her to bed and later on a couple hours after she was asleep I went into my room to find the new toy and a couple binkies sitting in Baby Brother's bed! I went and asked Jeff if he did it and he said "no, Grace remembered you asked her to, so she did!"

My mommy pride swelled at that moment.

She's such a good girl.

I know that'd be a easy thing for a mom to expect of a little bit older child....but a two year old? She amazes me all the time.

Something else cute that I wanted to document about her, is that she's been labeling emotions a lot lately.

The other day we were laying on my bed and I was letting her play with some old jewelry of mine that I had found. One of the pieces was a ring that has two birds touching beaks. I told her: "They're kissing like mommy and daddy!" She then said: "Yeah, mommy and daddy birds! Happy!" I thought it was so cute how she said they were happy. And that she came to that conclusion all on her own.

We were drawing with chalk outside today and she told me she was going to draw Daddy and that "Daddy happy, Mom." Ha ha ha ha.

I love that girl.

She pays so much attention to details.

Also while drawing chalk outside she wanted to draw a dog from the Puppy Movie (The Secret Life of Pets). I talked her through it....I'd say "Okay, draw the head." And she actually drew an oval/circle! Then I said "now do the eyes" and she did a bunch of scribbles. Same for the ears. When I said to draw the mouth, she did a straight line across the head. And the tail she also did a straight line just under the "head". I thought it was pretty good for her age and skill level! She's definitely watched me draw things a couple times.

Ta da! Totally looks like a puppy, right? Ha ha ha. She was very intentional about it, I'm sure you'd see puppy if you were actually there to witness the step by step process. :)

I'll finish this post with a couple random pictures of our life lately. I'm always in awe of what a great life we have. We have so much to be grateful for. I'm glad I can have this sweet little family and learn from them everyday.

At the cabin a couple weeks ago. Just hanging out with Baby Brother and her favorite blankie!

Playing with cousins at a reunion!

Standing on Mommy is a favorite pass time

Swimming with Daddy! Jeff's eye is looking great, huh? Ha ha. Poor guy. :(

Too Many Doctors, Too Little Time

What a crazy week and a half we've had!

Last week Jeff's brother's family were here from Virginia and Jeff took the whole week off so we could go to the cabin and just spend time together as a family.

He literally hadn't taken a single day off since he started his job in January. So all through the busy season and long hours he's been working like crazy for months, and finally took a week off now that things have slowed down in the summer.

We went up to the cabin Tuesday night and then Jeff, his brother, and our brother-in-law went golfing Wednesday morning.

That morning Grace and I woke up and went upstairs to everyone else to find out that Jeff been hit in the eye with a golfball! I immediately went and called him, but they were just getting back and Jeff came and found me. I couldn't help myself, I immediately started crying when I saw him. I didn't know what else to do.

Poor guy. :( It looked so bad! His face was SO swollen and bruising really fast.

He was in a lot of pain, which made sense later when we found out that he had 4 broken (actually shattered) bones in his face. Oh my goodness, I felt so bad.

We went to the emergency room in Heber City and it was kinda funny, cause I walked in first and they started to say "how can I help you?" when Jeff came in right behind me and they panicked saying "Oh! Okay, right this way!" Ha ha.

He went and got a CT scan and it came back to say that he had the four badly broken bones in his face. They were going to transfer him to a different hospital that day to do surgery, but the plastic surgeon at the U thought that it'd be better to wait 4-5 days for the swelling to go down before doing anything like cutting his face open, so we ended up just going to an eye doctor to make sure his vision was okay.

We are SO lucky the ball didn't hit even a centimeter different, because he very easily could have gone blind.

So for those wondering how this actually happened, like I said Jeff was golfing. He was in the golf cart about 15 feet in front of his brother, but also about 25 feet off to the side. He thought he'd be okay that far away, especially if he ducked down in the golf cart a little bit, which is what he did. His brother ended up hitting the ball exactly sideways instead of forward and it literally went right between the metal pole of the golf cart and the golf clubs sitting in the cart RIGHT where Jeff's ducked down face was!

Like seriously, it was just a huge accident that never could ever be duplicated.

Right after it happened

In the ER

Gross redness! Ha ha. The pictures don't really do it justice for how swollen it got.

Even for being in an extreme amount of pain (can you imagine having that many broken bones in such a sensitive place like your face?) Jeff's kept such a positive attitude. He's joked with his family about it and been way more positive than I think most anyone would be.

He'll always just say "well, I can't do anything to change it, so why react any other way?"

He's handled the pain and everything really well.

So we stayed the week up at the cabin and Jeff pretty much just rested with ice on his face the whole time. I told him we could go home, but he's the nicest dad and wanted Grace to be able to stay and play with cousins at the cabin, so that's what we did. He kept saying that resting at home vs. at the cabin was the same to him, so he'd rather Grace have fun.

He's such a good daddy.

On Monday we went to the U to meet with the plastic surgeon and he for sure wanted to do surgery. He even was like "This happened on Wednesday? Why didn't we do this sooner?!" ..........uh....cause you said to let the swelling go down? Ha ha ha

Jeff then had surgery on Tuesday and the doctor popped his bones back into place. He made a small incision in his hair and tubed an instrument down inside his face to pop the bones back where they needed to be.

Doesn't that just make you feel all weird inside?

Just imagining an instrument swimming behind your face.

Ew.

Ha ha ha ha ha...

Let's get that visual out of our heads.

So the rest of this week he's just been home recovering. He was hoping to go back to work yesterday, but he's still in too much pain and just overall doesn't feel good. I don't blame him one bit! He's said that the pain post surgery actually hurts more than the couple of days last week right after the bones broke.

Ugh. I feel so bad for him.

We just have the worst luck with medical things it seems like.

We can't stay away from emergency rooms for some reason!

I've never really thought of us as weird sickly people who are always running to the ER...but for some strange reason we end up there more often than a lot of people we know!

I think we've been to the ER a total of 5 times now in our marriage.

And we've only been married 5 1/2 years! Ha ha ha....

Oh man.

I guess it just makes us that much more grateful for our health when it's good.

And honestly, most of the time it's very good. We definitely take care of ourselves, especially with having a chronic illness like I do....my whole life IS taking care of myself!

Speaking of that chronic illness.....

Sometimes I seriously take for granted how much Jeff knows, understands, and takes care of my diabetes.

I'm a part of several Type 1 groups on Facebook (have I said that before? Oh yeah, like a million times, ha ha) and I see SO many differing lives of how people are living with this disease. I've seen posts before about women needing advice because their significant other could care less about their diabetes. I've seen people who are looking for help because they are recently separated from their spouse and they are afraid of what might happen if their blood sugar goes too low in the middle of the night and no one is there to help them.

I've seen lots of posts pertaining to how spouses/significant others are either very much a part of the diabetes side of people's lives....or how they aren't.

I am SO fortunate to say that Jeff is my biggest advocate.

He's my biggest supporter.

He knows almost as much about my diabetes as I do, and that's saying something!

He understands what numbers are good, which ones are bad. If I eat a certain thing what my sugar will look like in a couple hours.

Some times I call him the blood police, because he's more on top of what I need to be doing than I am, ha ha ha.

The highs and lows of my blood sugar can be just as frustrating for him as they are for me, and really that says everything about how much he cares about me. If he didn't care he would never ask me about it or check in on me.

He knows the ins and outs of Type 1 Diabetes and how demanding it is.

I'm really lucky that he cares to know so much about it. It has really helped me to stay as healthy as I am.

I've been worried that the baby will come too early, purely because that's a thing with diabetes and pregnancy and Jeff's constantly the one who is saying he doesn't think that's the case. Or he doesn't think the baby will be big because of my diabetes. He's always so calm and reassuring about it.

Lastly, I just wanted to say how much Grace loves Jeff. Whenever he's home she's always concerned about what he's doing. She has to know exactly what Daddy is up to.

This morning I had a couple doctors appointments (yes, a couple...cause going to just one would be normal, ha ha) and Jeff stayed home with Grace. When I told her he was staying home with her she got SO excited and started chanting "HIDE N SEEK DADDY! HIDE N SEEK DADDY! HIDE N SEEK DADDY!!!!"

Right before I left I found them playing in her castle tent in her room. They were laying with some pillows and Grace was blabbering some story to him as I told them goodbye.

She loves that daddy of hers. She'll hug and kiss him way more often than she will anyone else. She loves cuddling up with him to watch movies.

Whenever we see anything that remotely has to do with sports she'll happily say "Daddy play that? Daddy soccer ball? Daddy soft ball?"

I'm excited to see Jeff with our little boy! It'll be fun watching him learn everything there is to know from his daddy.

We are lucky to have a husband, father, and best friend like Jeff. I love him so much!

All Over the Place Update

I haven't done an update on us lately, and I felt like I should!

I'll first talk about Grace, cause she's just hilarious and needs to be documented.

She's talking SOOO much.

She just blabbers and rattles on about who knows what ALL the time! She's constantly talking! The other night at dinner she was telling a story that we couldn't understand and Jeff just said... "I have a feeling when those sentences become intelligible we'll never be able to get her to stop!" Ha ha ha ha ha ha. I'm thinking he's right.

She's a little parrot. She repeats everything we say! I love it, cause I know it's her way of learning.

Being with her all day, she ends most of her sentences with "Mommy?"

"I go this way, Mommy?"

"I play my room, Mommy?"

"Clean up, Mommy?"

"Daddy come home, Mommy?"

"We go Grandma's house, Mommy?"

"I go water, Mommy? I play water, MOMMY!!!"

Earlier today she completely out of the blue said: "Fireworks, Mommy?"

I said: "Yeah, did we watch fireworks the other day?"

A lot of times when she brings something up, she's referring to a memory of it. She likes talking about things that have already happened, so many times I know instead of taking it as 'oh, she wants to go see fireworks/she's asking for fireworks', I know she's actually just referring to a memory.

She then responded with: "Yeah, Grandma's house.....Grandma. And Liza. ........Liza....eyes."

It took me a minute, but I realized she was talking about how Liza was scared of the fireworks and laid on Grandma with her eyes closed! Ha ha.

I thought it was so cute how she remembered all of that.

She's a sweet girl.

She says "thank you/thanks" and "please" all the time without being prompted to now.

She'll say "thanks, Mom." to the simplest and cutest things.

The other day I was chasing her (she LOVES being chased or to play hide and seek) and if I got close to her I'd kind of tickle or poke her. One of the times I accidentally poked her a little harder than normal and she said "ow, my back!". I apologized to her and then gave her a hug and kiss. She smiled and said "thanks, Mom."

It was so cute to me that she said thanks for me apologizing, ha ha.

She's a smart girl. Just being around her for a little bit people can tell that she knows a lot!

Sometimes she's almost too smart. She's quickly turning into a manipulator, which is very common for her age....but still....it's hard!

I'm a huge believer in follow through, so a lot times Grace and I will butt heads, cause I won't give in.

I could probably write a whole long blog about follow through...........

How important it is...

How parents now-a-days don't do it near enough!

But ya know....if you read this blog regularly you already get enough of my soap box....so we'll just move on. :) Ha ha ha

Other news for our family...

We got a new car this week!!

It's soooooo nice!

Like....sometimes I feel unworthy driving it kind of nice.

We've always just had small older cars that always seem to have problems, especially mine. My old car should have died a fiery death years ago. Somehow I managed to keep it going for 7 years though! Kind of a miracle.

So to have a really nice car now is such a treat for us!

It's a 2012 Hyundai Santa Fe.

So it's not BRAND new....but seriously....4 years old......totally like new.

It's in perfect shape and is just shiny and beautiful, ha ha.

I love it.

Grace loves it too!

"I go white car, Mommy! I go new white car.....MOMMY!...I go!"

Basically she wants to go way more than ever before....and before was already enough going, ha ha.

Other life things....

We've pretty much decided to wait till after the baby is born to really seriously consider buying a house.

A couple weeks ago (maybe even a month ago? ....this summer is flying by) we put in offers on two houses. I think that makes our offer total up to 4 now? 5?

Who knows...

And neither of those worked out.

At this point if we did get an offer accepted we'd be moving in right when I'll be having the baby....and that sounds like no fun!

Especially since I'm sort of, not really, but kind of a control freak and I don't think I could handle just letting a big thing like a move be thrown into other people's hands.

Ha ha ha....

Maybe I'm dumb....but I like things the way I like them.

Speaking of having a baby....

That's going to be a thing pretty soon!

Oh my goodness......

I'm so much more stressed about all of it than I ever was with Grace.

Maybe I was just naive and uneducated with Grace and just trusted that everything would go how it was supposed to?

OR maybe I have Type 1 Diabetes now and my whole life is that much more risky?

Probably both of those things.

I'm a part of a couple type 1 and pregnancy groups on Facebook and they are WONDERFUL, huge amounts of help/reassurance/assistance, a place where I feel safe to go ask questions.....

BUT....they also cause me some grief.

I'm constantly seeing women on there who are suffering from diabetes complications during pregnancy....are delivering way sooner than anyone ever wants to....tons of little babies going to NICU's for whatever reasons....

The reality of it all is a lot to handle sometimes.

Looking at all of these women's stories and how many of them delivered their babies around 34...35 weeks. That's only a couple weeks away for me!

I think the advantages of those groups definitely out weigh the stress though. They are groups of women who actually really understand what I go through every single day. They 100% get it. There's absolutely no judgement by any of them and they are all very supportive, because they deal with the same things.

It helps me a lot to know I'm not alone in that aspect, especially when I'm having a hard diabetes day.

Like today!

Some days just weigh you down. I woke up from a horrible night of blood sugars and have had a hard time recovering from it today.

I'm usually so positive! Like 99% of the time I'm very positive and upbeat about living with this disease.

People ask me about it and I just can't bring myself to be a huge downer about it, although I have every right to be, truthfully.

It's my whole life. And it's an exhausting life!

I sincerely have the hardest time telling people about my struggles. Maybe I don't want them to feel uncomfortable or feel bad for me. Maybe I know I'm not articulate enough to really explain it all. Whatever it is....I'm the queen of telling people I'm doing good and like I said 99% of the time my positive attitude keeps me there.

So maybe I deserve to have a day every now and then to wallow in self pity? Ha ha ha.....

Especially when my blood is sooooooooooooooo dumb.

My insulin needs have been going up and up and up, which is totally normal for pregnant diabetics.

It's probably normal for pregnant anyones....but all of you normal functioning people just have bodies that tell yourselves to give you more insulin naturally.

Having to up and up and up my insulin all the time is draining. Nobody wants to feel like they have to keep giving them self more and more and more medicine just to function.

We've been cleaning out our apartment and getting everything set up for Baby Brother, as we call him. I've been washing all of his clothes today! We got all of our baby stuff out of storage last night. The past couple weeks we've been rearranging things so our changing table and pack n play can be set up next to our bed.

I think Grace is slowly understanding the whole Baby Brother thing. We talk about him all the time. She knows where he's located - Mommy's tummy. She loves going through all the baby things that will be his. She likes carrying around articles of clothing that will be his. We pray for him every night and when Grace says prayers we have her pray for him too.

"Heavly Fader, peese bess Baby Brudder"

She has the cutest voice when she prays.

Something we've been trying to do lately is family home evening.

My family never really did family home evening growing up, but I've always thought it's a really important thing to do! I finally feel like Grace is at an age where she'd actually listen to a lesson a little bit....so we started doing one once a week about a month ago.

Grace gets SO into it, it's really cute! She very intently listens when we're giving the lesson, you can tell she's trying to understand it all.

This week I did a lesson on things that make us happy and sad. I talked about how Heavenly Father wants us all to be happy and that's why we are here on this earth to learn and have joy!

We made a list of things that make us happy and sad. Grace didn't really want to offer a lot of input....she was being pretty shy about it...but at one point  Jeff said: "I know what makes Grace happy...Grandma and Grandpa!" (it's true, she does love all 6 of her grandma/grandpas) Grace immediately smiled and said: "Ajojos!?!?!?" So we put Josie on her list of what makes her happy, ha ha.

On the sad list Jeff put that Grace crying makes him sad, so now whenever anyone says the word "sad" Grace will say: "Daddy....sad Grace cry!" I think for some reason that made her happy to know that her crying makes Daddy sad, ha ha.

She's a diva, but in the cutest way. Ha ha

To end I'll post some recent pictures of us!

7 more weeks till Baby Brother's deadline! Until then I'll be at the hospital 3 or so times a week to make sure he's looking happy and healthy!

 Selfie time!

Camping with Ajojos. She really does make Grace very happy! 

 Love this guy!

Grace's birthday party was Winnie the Pooh themed per her request! I made these pom poms. They were really fun to make! 

 She was SOOOO happy about all of her presents! Our family really knows her,  cause she got toys from every show she loves! Haha :)

 I had big plans for this cake.  It ended up like this! Hahahaha. I guess that's what happens when you run out of time.  It's still cute though! And it turned everyone's mouths green and blue.....so I guess that was cool and unexpected too!

 Blowing out her candles like a pro! I can't believe she's 2!

More of my decorations,  including Piglet Punch and Tigger Tails! Almost every day since that day she's asked if she can have another Pooh Party. (This was 2 weeks ago,  haha) "I go Pooh Party, Mommy? Cake?"

 Grace got this pool from me and Jeff for her birthday and LOVES it. "I play new water toy, Mommy! New water...TOY!"

My sister is moved all the way to Washington DC now! This was the week before she left we went down to City Creek for the day. We're going to miss that girl, or as Grace would say "MY Chelsea!"