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Wednesday, July 15, 2015

Four months of Grace

Grace hit her 4-month mark on Friday and I can't believe how much she has changed and is changing at this age!

Don't be deceived-she usually is not this pleasant during tummy time.

She's so wiggly she's got some blurred limbs, but how can I not post this smile?

Four-month-old Grace:

Weighs in at 13.5 lbs, 30th percentile
Is 24 inches long, also 30th percentile
Has a head circumference of 16.22 inches, 70th percentile
Smiles so much more than she used to, especially when she wakes up and especially at men
Is laughing a little and trying to laugh more
Almost always prefers standing (not on her own of course) to any other position
Gets closest to laughing/really excited when we stand her up after we change her diaper
Constantly sucks on her hands and prefers both at the same time
Carefully observes and envies all the food she sees people eating
Is so playful and social and always wants to be entertained
LOVES being outside
Still does her hilarious fake sneezes
Has jabbering conversations with people she really likes (often that's James)
Eats so much more quickly
Screams and squeals and squirms when we try to burp her
Hardly ever cries herself to sleep. She just lays there wide awake smiling and then falls asleep on her own.
Sleeps 10 solid hours every night
Has outgrown her bassinet for sleeping
Is more alert and difficult at church
Grunts for no apparent reason ALL the time
Can often hold her bottle
Sucks on blankets and spit rags constantly
Pushes her binkies out with her tongue
Sucks on her tongue and bottom lip
Has started drooling some
Is a merciless hair-puller
Likes to sit up in her little frog chair and watch me in the kitchen....basically a bumbo chair
Enjoys being kissed all over her face...evidenced by the tongue hanging out, the panting, and the stillness

She is so sweet and the love of our lives. We are having so much fun watching our little bug grow up.

Thursday, June 11, 2015

So it happened. We had a baby and she became our world. Now it's all about her, and rightly so. But we're going to pretend like you're all interested in some updates about Grace's parents. We're both smiling and jabbering and growing out of our clothes just like Grace, but we're also doing other things too.

Aleisha

I, for one, am obviously not doing that 10-day health challenge anymore that I wrote about...52 days ago. The summary with that goes thusly:

I got tired of taking pictures of food I mostly didn't like.

It was, however, a great kickstart back into working out as I could just do different workouts (T25, P90X, 21 Day Fix, Insanity, etc) here in the apartment (because our neighbor below us moved out. Otherwise....I still probably would have done it haha). I was reminded of and introduced to some excellent and more healthy snack substitutes to finger-fulls of frosting. Such substitutes include:

apples and almond butter
bell peppers and hummus
cottage cheese and nothing
peanut butter and honey rolled up on a tortilla

That last one is just my favorite snack that I've eaten all my life and will never give up. In recent years it has been a 100% whole wheat tortilla, so calm down.

Speaking of getting back into working out...I'm really not working out. I actually went in to see a doctor this past Monday and was told (2nd time in the past 2 years) that I have IT Band Syndrome and need physical therapy. Don't know what exactly caused it or why it caused it when it did. It didn't really hinder me during pregnancy because I didn't try to run much, but now that I'm wanting to get back into running (I was never a "runner" per se, but I ran a little, yo), it's very apparent that my first bout of PT did not do the trick. So I'm a little discouraged and a little muffin-toppy, but no matter....no matter.

I am in my summer semester of clincials with SLCC's Diagnostic Medical Sonography program, or shall we call it "ultrasound school?" In August I will be halfway done! And oh yeah, back in March the week before Grace was born I passed the physics portion of my ultrasound board exams!! I am learning SO much and loving it SO much. It brings out my inner nerd when I talk about anatomy all day and get so jazzed to see patients with such photographic liver vessels. I am doing two online classes in addition to clinicals, so no physical class time, and I only have to do 16 hours of clinicals per week to stay on track of my hours. It's flexible though, and my lovely mother-in-law watches Gracie baby while I am away checking for goiters on people's thyroids.

Other than that I started a book club this year that is A) massive (we hit a record of 7 people last month!) and B) further evidence of my inner nerdiness. It has gotten me really excited to have friends over once a month for treats and book discussions. Goodreads is becoming my new Facebook and I frequent the library....frequently. (Anyone reading this can join via Facebook or physical presence at an upcoming book club meeting.)

I am busy practicing the piano for the choir, gawking at everything on Food Network, LOVING the summer weather and walks with hubby and baby, and tripping over furniture.

James

James is a busy bee with a longer lifespan than an actual bee. He started up a tutoring program in our ward this past semester and it really helped some kids out. He was called as the ward executive secretary at the beginning of the year and so he spends Tues evenings hanging with the Bishop Rick (more commonly known as bishopric) and meeting people in the ward. He's always busy scheduling appointments and also serves as the ward choir pianist's babysitter, so instead of coming to choir with me, he spends some quality time with his girl Grace.

James is the awesomest of all the awesomes. Let me tell you a little something about J Frank. He is spectacular about setting goals and following through with them. Anyone who knows him knows this. And that is why he has accomplished so much in his life. Here are two of his current goals (in my words, of course):

Run. He just wants to run more, run harder, faster, be in better shape, spend some more time enjoying the summer weather, etc, and he's totally making it happen. He has his week of workouts planned out and he gets up early each morning and runs. Sometimes 3 miles, sometimes 10. Always sweaty. I told him the other day I wish this increase his physical fitness would automatically increase my physical fitness the way an increase in his income affects us both equally. Alas.
Rock MBA applications. (These are definitely not his words). He is also on a schedule dedicated to applying for business school this fall. He's revamping his resume, brainstorming and writing essays, and doing all sorts of research on the schools he's interested in. It will be many months until applications are over and even more months until we know where we'll be moving next fall, but that's okay. We'll just continue to love Draper while we wait.

The dos of us

We have done lots of fun things together since I last wrote about US, but I will only tell you about them if I have a picture of the event, because I'm tired of using so many words.

Oh dang, all I have are pictures of Grace.

The tres of us

Wednesday, June 10, 2015

Three months of Grace

I feel like Grace has been three months ever since she hit two months, because she's been wearing almost exclusively 3-month clothes. But it is official; today she is three months old!

Some things you should know about 3-month-old Grace:

While she is not the most smiley baby, she is giving a LOT more smiles these days, especially in the morning, and especially to men.
She sucks on her hands and fingers constantly
She licks her right arm during tummy time when she needs to give her noggin a rest
She jabbers like crazy, especially during tummy time
She wants so badly to talk and is very interactive and observant when people are talking to her
She gets excited and is trying to laugh, although for now it mostly sounds like breathlessness accompanied by arms and legs wildly akimbo
She is calmed down by being in a sitting or standing position
She's a great sleeper. To celebrate her 3-mo-mark she slept 10 hours!
She can hold her head up really well
She's increasingly more social and wants to be where the people are
She seems to like music and when people dance with her
She is very attentive to the TV (not sure how much I like that)
She is grabbing, holding, and taste-testing the different fabrics of her blankets and spit rags
She still likes us to hold the binky in her mouth and will hold our hands and fingers as we do
She always wants her carseat cover open so she can observe everything
She is is so expressive
She is still a major spitter and it looks like she probably has eczema
Her fake sneezes have gotten increasingly more hilarious, almost like she's doing it for her own entertainment
Although it seemed impossible, she just keeps getting cuter.

We love our tiny Grace face!

Tuesday, May 12, 2015

Two months of Grace

On Mother's Day Grace hit two months!

This little pink hoody is one of our favorite things she wears. We're so sad she's growing out of it!

Here are the tidbits:

She weighs 10 lbs, 13 oz placing her in around the 40th percentile for weight
She is 22.8 in long, placing her in the 50th percentile for length
She is in the 70th percentile for head circumference
She is in the 100th percentile for cuteness (James wanted me to make sure I mentioned that)
Her chunky thighs and Buddha belly have kicked her out of newborn clothes and into many 3-month clothes
She is smiling-mostly when she's on the changing table-but sometimes when we tell her nice things
She is starting to coo and babble
She loves to lay out and stretch and yell at the ceiling fan
Her neck and legs are very strong (according to the doc, her progress is about where most 4-month-old babies are at)
She enjoys sitting up in our laps
She is definitely social and is often calmed by just being with me in the kitchen or bathroom as I clean and get ready
She consistently sleeps about a 6-hr stretch at night
She often wants her hands up around her bottle and can sometimes hold it in place for a few seconds
She has started grabbing my hair VERY tightly
She sticks her tongue out all the time and loves to watch James stick his out
She is still captivated by lights and windows everywhere
She is quickly learning to "self soothe" (aka cry herself to sleep)
She has officially been to three hours of church and was an angel (who am I kidding...a Mother's Day miracle)
She often holds her binky in place when she's super sleepy in the mornings
The McKeans think she looks like a Lyons baby and the Lyons think she looks like a McKean haha
She's still a snuggly, cuddly bug

We (understandably) are increasingly more in love and more attached to her. Mother's Day was so special for me this year because of my beautiful little friend who I REALLY am not looking forward to missing 24 hrs/wk for clinicals this summer starting next week. I'll have to make all the hours I'm with her really count.

Tuesday, April 21, 2015

Mukumame and Rice Vinegar

Today marks six weeks since I birthed the most adorable human I've ever met. And I've been rewarding myself ever since so it's time to go to work on the extra "lbs." I am confessing this on my blog so I can hold myself to sticking to my goal....at least for 10 days. Haha ;)

I'll have you know that I don't believe in dieting. In fact, the last paper I wrote in college was a persuasive research paper against dieting....about how only 4-5% of diets are maintained and successful long term. (Don't ask me to site a source on that; I shan't do the research again.) Anyway, diets are unsuccessful usually because they're too extreme.

So you'll forgive me if I tell you I started a diet yesterday.

But hear me out. I just need to kick start my transition away from sedentary-hood back to exercising-ness. Plus I totally need to eat better than I have been. You've heard Brian Regan's stand-up about "well I walked on the moon" as the ultimate one-upper in a conversation? Well, in a similar way I considered having a baby as a close second, so whenever in the past six weeks I tried to talk myself out of my third dessert of the day, I promptly reminded myself that I delivered a baby and continued dunking my Oreos.

A friend of mine is a BeachBody Instructor and invited me to do a free 10-day challenge with free access to work outs accompanied by set meal plans. I was going to just do the exercise part because remember-I'm anti-diet,but my wise husband helped me see that doing this could expose me to new delicious healthy snacks/foods/recipes that we could incorporate into our permanent lifestyle.

Lifestyle. Not diet....because no way am I going to pretend that I plan to keep up this rigid meal plan devoid of popcorn and ice cream.

So with that attitude in mind I will welcome the set workouts and take advantage of these healthy recipes...but I won't take it all too seriously. I'll introduce myself to new ingredients, meals and snacks, make appropriate substitutions or alterations to fit my personal palate and budget, cheat a little when necessary, and in 10 days I'll hopefully have a few recipes to add to my repertoire and a few pounds less to lug around. We'll see about the second one....I'm easing my way back into the healthy life.

Yesterday morning I did T-25-a short cardio workout-and it felt great to officially be working out again, but I DEFINITELY felt it this morning. This morning I did pilates and had to modify the MODIFIED MOVES for half the workout. But that's okay....slowly but surely.

This blog needs some pictures, so I took pics of my food. Don't judge them; this is not a cooking blog so I left out the checkered table cloth and decorative garnish.

I bought a few firsts: flaxseed, lentils, rice vinegar, etc. I know, all this talk of food is making you salivate.

Breakfast on day one: mostly egg whites, tomatoes, and fresh basil. I think I'd make it again even though this picture makes it look like mostly barf.

The fact that this snack is all green should indicate to you that it is a nasty snack. Shelled edamame (called mukumame) and fresh cilantro are delish on their own, but mix those with rice vinegar and sesame seeds and that equals a snack I will never make again. Plus, it is definitely not a practical snack to throw in my purse on my way out the door.

Lunch was delicious: chicken, green apples, red grapes, cashews, and raspberry vinaigrette. The recipe calls for walnuts, but walnuts are for old people. So I dug some cashews out of my trail mix I already had at home. I'm so resourceful.

Worst meal of my life. I'm sorry...trying to be open minded but I gagged this down. Not only that, but the presentation came out as a total flop That pile of quinoa, bell peppers, and flaxseed is supposed to be in a patty laid nicely across the wilted spinach. Gross, I don't want to talk about this meal anymore. Texture ew. Flavor ew. Lesson learned.

Haha, you were all hoping for cute pictures of baby Grace and I posted crummy pictures of health food.

Saturday, April 11, 2015

One month of Grace

Grace is one month old!

Here are a few tidbits about baby girl:

She gets cuter every day
She loves to look at the lights and ceiling fans
She is discovering her thumb and tongue
She hates having her arms swaddled and always has them up by her face
She can occasionally roll/tip herself over during tummy time
She loves snuggling with mom every morning
She loves water/baths/showers
She has adorable fake sneezes, and her sneezing record is 9
She loves to pee on the changing table
She is a spitter
She has a very determined cry
She loves the car, her swing, and the baby carrier
She has a very strong neck and legs
She makes some pretty intense and impressive eye contact

Although it has been an exhausting first month, it has been wonderful and amazing. We are obsessed with Grace's perfect tininess and beauty and grateful to be her parents!

Wednesday, March 25, 2015

Bringing home our G.E.M.

The beautiful Grace Elizabeth McKean graced (see how I did that?) us with her presence two weeks ago and our lives were instantly and forever changed. It has been a whirlwind of a fortnight and I still cannot believe that I. BIRTHED. A. HUMAN. That was so crazy. Here are a few details of the miraculous event:

Grace was due March 15, but because my blood pressure had been slightly elevated the last little while my doctor wanted to induce me a week early just to be on the safe side. There was something comforting about knowing exactly when we'd go in to have a baby. I also figured that if Grace came early she might not be a huge baby, and I was right. She came out at a perfectly even 7lbs, 0oz.

I was induced Monday night, March 9. My mom was in town and even though my doctor told me maybe just to rest during the day (because I most certainly wouldn't have a restful night coming up) we spent the day running errands all over the place and then when James got home from work we went on a 3-mile walk. So yeah, totally restful.

James and I got to the hospital at 9 pm and they started me on Cytotec to ripen my cervix. I was only dilated to a 1+ at that point. A few hours later I was dilated to a 2.5. I felt great other than some wicked bad heartburn. I know, I'm such a wimp. We watched The Secret Life of Walter Mitty and James drifted in and out of sleep while I tried to get comfortable with a blood pressure cuff going off every few minutes, two belts strapped to my stomach monitoring baby's heartbeat/movement and my contractions, nurses coming in to check on things every 5 min, and the thought that soon I would birth our first child. This equals not much sleeping.

I was freshly showered, full of of pb&j, and feeling good at this point.

At 4 am just as I was was finally dozing off to sleep my water broke. And then the contractions came on. I endured them for about two and a half hours before the blessed anesthesiologist came in to paralyze my pain..and my legs. James and I laughed at how the anesthesiologist happily wheeled in his cart of magical needles like he was the "candy man" bringing sugar and cheer. And that's basically...exactly what he did. Yay epidural! The epidural immediately made my legs feel warm and tingly like it was supposed to, but it didn't ease or numb my contractions. So I endured a little longer until he returned to give me a stronger dose. I was dilated to a 3.5 at this point and soon after this I FINALLY fell asleep.

An hour later we were awakened by my OB cheerily greeting us saying she was going to check to see how far I was dilated. ALL THE WAY. I went from a 3.5 to a 10 in less than two hours! I had only been on Pitocin for 35 min. I hadn't even switched sides with the epidural. The nurses hadn't even put a catheter in. I hadn't even met my delivery nurse yet. And my OB said I'd probably have the baby out in 5 pushes! James and I were a little groggy, but being told you're going to have a baby RIGHT NOW kind of wakes you up rul fast.

Well Grace didn't come in 5 pushes, but she came after only 25 min of pushing which wasn't bad. It was 8:50 am on March 10. I got to watch it all in the mirror and it was the most amazing thing I've ever seen and fortunately the most amazing thing I've never felt. James cut the cord and soon after a purple, screaming, adorable baby girl was on my chest and I thought she looked exactly like a Grace. And Grace she is. Her middle name Elizabeth is in honor of her aunt Elizabeth, my mother and father-in-laws' firstborn who only lived a few months. She is every bit as beautiful as her name.

Grace aspirated a lot of fluid during delivery and so the respiratory team took her away and she had an oxygen monitor attached to her for the first day. Other than that I have to admit that the rest of the day was actually pretty great. Seeing as I had Grace an hour after my epidural kicked in, I didn't feel anything the rest of the day. No stitches, no post partum contractions or cramping, no pain. Just laid in bed with dead legs and ate Banberry Cross doughnuts and had family come visit and marveled that James and I have a daughter and obsessed over her cuteness.

When we left the hospital Grace was jaundice and her bilirubin levels were high enough that she had her heels pricked several times over the first few days of life and she spent a night on the Bilibed. The phototherapy worked wonders on her bilirubin levels and thankfully she was off the bed the next day. No more jaundice baby. :)

Parenthood thus far has been exhausting and wonderful and James and I are so grateful to be mommy and daddy to baby Grace. Recovery has been the pits but I am feeling much better and was so happy to finally paint my toenails and eat sushi! And my mom, James and friends have been so incredibly helpful with everything. And Grace gets more adorable every day. See for yourself.