Busy Baby!

As I have mentioned before Kalvin is sooo busy CONSTANTLY. Here is a good example of what my day is like, I get to play with quite possibly the cutest kid ever. Here he is dancing for me!

Eat your heart out ladies!

Being a mom is soo much fun, especially when he’ll briefly stop exploring to cuddle me or eat, or he just turns from what he’s doing to wrinkle his little noise at me and smile with those big blue eyes.  This IS my dream job!

A few weeks ago I found these awesome wood blocks at our Goodwill and had to get them, and so glad I did!

He LOVES them.  They are one of the first things he wants to play with every morning now.  At first he just had fun knocking over the towers I would make, or trying to eat the blocks.  However now he’s been trying to stack them as well.

Kalvin also depotted one of my plants and pour the dirt out on the hearth,….then he proceeded to EAT the dirt.  So of course I grab the camera.

It was actually pretty easy to clean up considering the plan was dead and the dirt was bone dry so it vaccumed right up!  I don’t know if you can tell, but as I was taking this picture I noticed it had the word dirt on his shirt.  So I read it closer….

How IRONIC is that?!?  I found it pretty amusing….and he was having a good old time too.

Right before our trip to Aspen last month we bought a doggy door.  A good friend of ours was house sitting and dog sitting for us, sooo we thought it the perfect time to FINALLY (and I say finally because we’ve talked about it FOREVER) get a doggy door.  This way, while our friend was at work the dogs wouldn’t be pinned up in the house all day. Well Kalvin has become quite obsessed with the doggy door and will stand there with his head poking out for half an hour sometimes.  Not to mention he has crawled out of it a few times , and started making his way to the yard.

Kalvin has been throwing tantrums lately.  Not like him, but I think it’s connected to another new development.  He has gotten to where he doesn’t really like ME feeding him.  He like feeding himself.  However he doesn’t have the motor skills to spoon feed himself sooooo we’ve had a lot of finger foods lately.

my little man is growing up WAY too fast!

 

I find cool things on Pinterest ALL the time, sooo the other day I had seen a rainbow cake on there, and decided to give it a try!  I used a lemon cake mix, and strawberry icing.  Jeff thought it tasted like Fruity Pebbles.  Whatever it tasted like, it tasted good, and looked cool!

Jeff and I were just sitting on the couch talking when we heard a weird noise in the kitchen.  We looked over the halfwall to see Kalvin had gotten into the cabinet, had pulled out the dog treats had managed to get the lid off and was stuffing his face with doggy treats.  He had two in his mouth when we first went over and both fist were full of the “bacon” treats.  He didn’t mind me taking them from his hands but when I took them out of his mouth he cried.  They must be good.  Our little “Hudini” never ceases to amaze me.

LOVELY HUH? This is the pretty bruise I got from our ski trip last month.  It’s funny that’s all it was, was a bruise.  It was my other knee that I actually twisted and could barely walk on for a few days. Hoping we can join Jeff’s sister and brother-inlaw in Park City next month for another ski trip. Well until next time!

A Glimpse Of 10 Months w/Kal …..

MONTH 1:We fell in love with Kalvin the moment we saw him, but having him home was a whole new world for me.  I could go and look at him anytime I wanted.  I would just study the curves of his face, as if I were going to wake up from this wonderful dream and I didn’t want to forget him.

Just a couple days after we brought him home I watched him roll from his stomach to his back.  Many people didn’t believe me, and said it was a fluke, but he continued to roll over time and time again.  He was such a strong little guy!  He slept in a bassinet on his pack’n’play in our room for the first little while.  He would wake up every every 3 hours to feed. I had been soo scared that I would sleep through him waking up and he would starve so I set my alarm for every three hours the first couple of nights, but then I noticed he was waking up right before the alarm would go off, and I didn’t want him getting used to that. I wanted his body to sleep as long as he wanted to, and just had to tell myself he WILL wake up when he is hungry and I WILL wake up too. One night I was really tired and fed him laying down in bed, he finished up and I put him back in his bassinet.  I woke up 30 minutes later throwing the covers up freaking out thinking I had let him slide down under the covers and he was suffocating.  I had been soo tired that I forgot that I put him back in bed.  Needless to say I didn’t do that anymore. I made sure to feed him sitting up and completely aware so I didn’t have those kind of scares.

 

This was Kalvin’s first sunday to church-EASTER Sunday! By 3 weeks Kalvin was sleeping 4 1/2 hours between night feedings. So I was only waking up once!

MONTH 2:Kalvin was the happiest baby.  We hadn’t heard him cry since the day he was born.  No big surprised he was the GASIEST baby at church.  He was constantly tooting.  He’d get really angry (grunting and turning bright red) then there would be a long chain of farts, then Happy Baby!  Kalvin was peeing out of his diapers constantly this month.  So I finally said …’okay I don’t care how many pampers diapers we have left I’m getting him Huggies’  (these had proved to be the best in my daycare years)  and we haven’t had these problems since I switched.  I had gotten a lot of free pampers at the hospital and wanted to use them up first but I just couldn’t take it anymore. Kalvin got to meet his great aunt and his great grandma on his dad’s side this month.  And I got to celebrate my first MOTHER’S DAY. Jeff’s mom sent me a bouqet of beautiful tulips and it made my first mother’s day really special.

MONTH 3: Pretty early on this month Kalvin found his smile. And we couldn’t have been more thrilled. Okay….’I’ couldn’t have been more thrilled.  I would completely exhaust myself doing things silly things just to see that smile if even only for a second .  Jeff’s sister Mindy came into town and we did all kinds of outdoor things.  Hiking, Rock Climbing, Clay Pigeon Shooting, and we even went to the Zoo.   And Kalvin proved to be such a trooper.  He really is such a happy baby, no complaints ever. Soooo grateful I didn’t have a collicy(sp?) baby. This month Kalvin started sleeping 6 hours straight at night, and man did I feel like new woman!  Also he was rolling over from his back to his belly all the time  and would just kind of wiggle his way around the floor.

    

Kalvin LOVED hanging out with daddy.  Already such a Daddy’s boy!

Sleeping in the stroller at the Zoo. 

Month 4: This was a busy month for us.  Kalvin had his blessing.  Grandma Harris, Grandma & Grandpa Mundy, Uncle Tyler, and Uncle Dylan were all able to come into town for it.  He is soo loved.  We’re so grateful to have such a supportive family who want to be actively involved in our childrens lives.

Kalvin looked sooo handsome in his tux for his blessing! Thanks Grandma Harris for that!

After the blessing….

Uncle Dylan

Uncle Tyler

Grandma & Grandpa Mundy

Jeff’s brother David also came to visit this month, and stayed for a few days and we went clay pigeon shooting again. Developementally Kalvin has been above and beyond the projected milestones.  And this month was noo acception. He seemed happiest when he was standing on our laps, jumping up and down.  He is was sooo strong. Could he just slow down already, always in such a hurry to grow up!

Month 5: Kalvin had started giggling in month 4 but now he was a regular giggle box.  And everything momma did was HILARIOUS!  Kalvin was rolling across the room.  Infact he was starting to crawl…..but he would stick his bum in the air and push with his feet, and he would just drag his face in the carpet (which exerted A LOT of energy, probably didn’t feel so great, and wasn’t very efficient) so mostly he stuck with rolling to where he needed to go.  Kalvin could sit up by himself at this point with the occasional tumble.  He was beginning to have so much personality I couldn’t stand it!  He loves the dogs, but he was just starting to really interact with them, playing with their ears and such.

 

If Kalvin was sitting or laying anywhere Ginger was pretty close by.  She loves cuddling with him!

MONTH 6: Kalvin had a lot of firsts this month.  Kalvin started eating solids, which he LOVES! Veggies and Fruit the possibilites were endless. Another first was he said Momma!  He had just really started babbling and one night he was making “buh buh buh’s” and “mmmmm’s” so I kept saying it over and over as he watched my lips then imitated me.  It was sooo awesome, and the best part was Jeff was there so it wasn’t one of things where I tell him about it and try to get Kalvin to do it again and he makes me look like total liar.

Also Kalvin was definitely crawling by now….well it’s more of an army crawl.  It was almost as though he was rowing a boat, but hey it gets him from A-B, and he loves standing and holding on to me (Which he’s actually done for a few months now), but now he was holding on to other things furniture & such, although I had to watch him pretty closely because he wasn’t super steady yet.

I get lost in his big blue eyes!  Ginger had puppies this month and Kalvin LOVED them.  We would put them on his lap and he would pet them, and I would take the puppy away and he would start crying- the cutest thing!  The puppies loved Kalvin too, they would crawl to him, over him, and lay on his lap.

MONTH 7: Well it was almost a whole month since I had heard Kalvin say momma, and then he finally did it again, and again, and again.  It became all he would say, although I don’t think he knew what he was saying it was just a sound he had figured out how to make. Either way it would melt my heart everytime! We had halloween this month.  I wanted our family to have a costume theme, and Jeff came up with the cute idea of he and I being gypsies, and then Kalvin could be a monkey with cymbals.  I seriously screamed after I got his costume on, he looked that cute. What you don’t agree?!?

Also with Kalvin CONSTANTLY  being on the move….he was burning a lot of energy.  I would walk into the living room to see him completely passed out in mid crawl.  This kid plays hard!  He won’t stop till he drops LITERALLY….

  

                      

MONTH 8: This is the month we started to worry about Kalvin having identity issues, if he wasn’t chewing a rawhide he was eating dog food.

 

Kalvin was here one second, there the next this kid had the army crawl down , occasionally he would give crawling on his knees a try-but it just wasn’t the same. We had Thanksgiving, and invited Jeff’s mom to join us.  She had soo much fun with Kalvin this trip.  He loved playing and wrestling with her on the floor.  She tried to get him to finally say daddy the whole trip and then the day after she left I believe he finally did it, and then the excitement of a new word took over and this became the only one in his vocab for the next month.

Reading with Grandma Harris

Our Thanksgiving Décor…

This little booger would climb in and out of his swing and into anything he could get his hands on.  Our little ‘HUDINI’

We had family pictures taken before Suzy went back to Georgia….

 

 

MONTH 9: This month was another eventful one.  We started off December with my birthday and went to Olive Garden, where Kalvin stuffed his face with breadsticks for like 60 secs. (long enough for us to order) then he began screaming bloody murder.  So we had to take our food to go. Couldn’t ever figure out what was wrong with him….

We then had our anniversary on the 13th….we didn’t do much for this- went to chili’s maybe, which Kalvin loves and he always eats my fries. We then went to Utah to visit my family for christmas, which was a lot of fun.  Kalvin loved playing with the wrapping paper and the tissue paper was his favorite.   I had been using baby sign language with Kalvin.  Mostly for “milk” “more” and occasionally “please”.  however the only sign he had ever reciprocated was “milk” and he would use it when he was done with his solids and just wanted milk however…..I’m not sure when but sometime between month 7-9 the sign for milk became the sign for “hungry” “more” “faster” “FEED ME!!”  and then of course “milk”.  So basically before and while Kalvin eats until he is full and satified he’s pump his fists and say “MMMMMMM” very enthusiastically.  The family all got a really big kick out of this.  It is kind pretty cute I guess..

 

Kalvin went on a trampoline for the first time and then of course was showered with all kinds of attention from everyone.  We got to skype with Dylan (my brother who is serving a 2 year mission for our church).  And that was awesome!

Later in December we had Jeff’s birthday which was pretty low key.

The puppies loved all the additional people they had to beg for attention from.

Earlier in December my cousin Audrey had a baby boy, so we were able to stop by while we were in utah and I got a couple good squeezes out of him.  I think Remy and Kalvin will be good little buds.

Shortly after we got back from Utah Kalvin became obsessed with flushing the toilet and unraveling the toilet paper…..yay! more messes for mommy to clean up. I really don’t  mind though.  He’s learning something new everyday.

 

MONTH 10: We went to get together on NEW YEARS we’re friends with this awesome Samoan family and they had a fun bash.  With food, music, games.  It was soo fun to watch everyone dance.  Kalvin was shaking his little toosh. He loves music and he LOVES to dance, although he’s picky.  The beat has to be just right! Jeff had a lot of fiberglass speaker boxes he was shipping out and Kalvin of course always feels the need to help Jeff with whatever he is doing…

Kalvin can now climb up the stairs, he walks along all the furniture and loves to walk around with his walker.  He often times walks around the kitchen pushing our dining room stools infront of him.  He has mastered the art of sliding down backwards off of things such as the couch, stairs, and our bed.  He is a crazy kid.  He loves to explore everything!  He loves playing with Jeff’s bike he will spin the pedals, and pull the chain off the track.  He is one smart little guy.  Ginger had her heat cycle the first few weeks of Jan. so she was sporting a diaper….luckily her and Kalvin wear the same size!

The first few days I would bust up laughing every time I looked at her.  If you have been around our dogs you know not only do their tails wag but their entire back end, and it was just even more hilarious with a diaper in the mix.

We went to Aspen for a week skiing trip with Jeff’s sister Davina brother in law Brian, and also Jeff’s dad.  While there Kalvin took the back off of the remote control, pushed the trashcan around the condo, and just ran amuck.

 

There is never a dull moment with this little stinker!  I try and cherish every moment I spend with him.  How did I get soo blessed? Stay tuned for the moments we can’t help but want to share with all of you!

Remember How I Was Pregnant?……. Yeah I Had That Baby……

Last I posted I was pregnant, and we had just learned we were having a boy! Well shortly after we started house hunting fell in love with a few, they fell through or we felt uneasy about it soooo we put buying a house on hold but that still left us with a problem.  We were ALREADY crammed in our condo with Jeff, Me, and our dogs Ginger and Rusty. Where would we put a baby…..Well God answered our worries and prayers- A couple in our ward were going to be relocating for the husbands work and were not fond of the idea of selling in this market.  Soooo we were to move into their house the first weekend in April.  I was getting nervous considering it would be one short month before Kalvin would join us (I was due May 14th) and I wanted everything to be ready.  Our friends moved out of their house April 7th. During the day of the 7th I loaded the Durango up so that I could move a few things in during the day while Jeff was working. 

WARNING: BELOW I DESCRIBE ALL ABOUT MY LABOR, SO IF YOU’RE A PANSY YOU MAY WANT TO SKIP DOWN TO THE BOTTOM TO THE ADORABLE PICTURES OF KALVIN AND IGNORE MY RAMBLINGS, VENTINGS, AND DESCRIPTIONS OF SOME GRAPHIC SCENARIOS.

Well that night  I couldn’t sleep-my heartburn was the worst it had ever been!  I was eating ice, played on facebook anything I could do to keep myself entertained and as far from miserable as possible.  Jeff had to get up at 3 for work and I didn’t want to wake him.  So I was just stooping in the living room.   Finally around 2:30 am I thought maybe I was just tired enough to fall asleep no matter how bad the heartburn was. I finally fell asleep shortly before 3.  Then around 3:45 as Jeff was getting ready for work I woke up I had just been having a crazy dream that Kalvin was trying to claw his way through my stomach perhaps squeeze out of my belly button-everything makes sense when you’re dreaming.  After I started realizing I had just been dreaming and was now awake I realized that I had liquid coming out of me.  Not a lot, just a suttle oozing -like a broken water fountain….(sorry if this is too graphic)  So I call for Jeff and I’m a little embarrassed he assures me that Kalvin probably put pressure on my bladder and that I probably just wet myself.  So I get out of bed and decide to sit on the toilet where I continue to do what feels like peeing except I had no control over the flow, and just sat there until it finally trailed off.  Now I was really started to wonder…..did my water just break?  I called the on-call physician,(told her I didn’t know if I had just peed or if my water had broken- she wasn’t convince but said that if I went into the hospital they could test me and then we would know for sure if my water had broken. Then she asked if I was contracting….I had been soo caught up in whether my water had or hadn’t broken that I hadn’t even realized that I was feeling A LOT of pressure, sooo I said “wow, yeah….I think I am contracting.   Sooo Jeff didn’t want to miss work if it wasn’t the real thing so he rode his bike to work and I drove myself to the hospital.  Of course as I’m driving I was timing my contractions. When I first started driving they were 4 minutes apart but after a couple contractions they were less than 3 min. apart.  Luckily I had all green lights on the way to the hospital, and got there in just under 20 min.  Walking from the parking lot into the hospital I had to stop once because the contraction was soo bad. Now less than 2 min. apart……They put me in a wheelchair and took me up to the maternity ward.  Asked me a ton of questions and had me filling out paperwork-I was SOOO FRUSTRATED!!!  I was thinking really- we can’t do this later- I could possibly have a baby right here!  They took me to my room and I stood up out of the wheelchair and soaked the floor-at this point I was pretty sure my water had broken.  They still wanted to swab me and test it to make sure though. WOW?!  So as soon as they confirmed I called Jeff he had just gotten to work, so he had to make the 35 min. bike ride back home, grab a few things for me and then drive the durango to the hospital.  I was freaking out.  I couldn’t tell the difference between contractions. I had no idea if Jeff was gonna make it.  I was trying to hold off to get my epideral till he got there, because they had to take me to the labor room for that and I didn’t want there to be some mix up and them not let him back there and who knows what could happen he finally arrived.  They took me to the labor room and then we waited around for the epidural man.  It was a miracle I was able to hold still long enough for him to do it.  The nurse checked me immediately after and I was at a 6.  I realized I was super thirsty and asked Jeff to grab me some water as the nurse was walking out she said not to drink to much because as I got close to labor I would get nauseous She barely finished her sentence when I was cupping my hand over my mouth and jeff grabbed a trashcan.  She walked right back in to see me puking.  She immediately checked me again.  I was fully dialated.  Wow 6-10 in like under a min.  That’s got be some kind of record?! She yelled down the hall for people to come in immediately.  At this point I was freaking out a little….This was a day over 5 weeks before my due date, and labor was going a lot faster then anyone I had ever heard stories from.  A bunch of people rushed in and the nurse began turning me on my side and then on the other side trying to slow down my labor, but that didn’t help.  So they told me to start pushing.  My OB still wasn’t there and I was told she was still 20 min. out.  I pushed a few times (or atleast I was trying I couldn’t really feel what I was doing) they told me to push like I was pooping so I tried, and didn’t feel like I was doing much.  Jeff then commented on how he had lots of dark hair, I thought he was joking.  I had only pushed like twice there is no way you can see him already! But the doctor backed him up.  Then my OB arrived, I gave a couple more pushes and he was out!  It was soo crazy…. I had just given birth to a baby boy, and he was perfect!

Kalvin had some lungs on him too, he came out wailing.  However he had swallowed a nice gulp of amniotic fluid so they took him to NICU and continued checking him out there.  He was able to breathe on his own although he was having to work extra hard since his lung was wet.  So they put him on CPAP to give him a break so he could get some rest.

  I wasn’t able to try breast feeding for the first 12 hours since he was on CPAP. And they just had him hooked up to an IV so he didn’t get dehydrated.  Well then some idiot put in a feeding tube and that is where we got screwed.

(Grandma/Grandpa Mundy and uncle dylan came the day after Kalvin was born they were sooo helpful.  Helping us move stuff in, helped organize and my mom was so great driving me to the hospital!  There were some awesome men from the elder’s quorum at church who helped pack and unpack the moving truck the night of the 8th! Women from the piney creek relief society also helped cleaned the house as we were unpacking. Thank you all you lovely people!)

Nobody wanted to admit that he wasn’t actually 5 weeks early.  He was breathing on his own, maintaining his body temp,  and the second day when I held him he was lifting his head AND chest off of mine, and he latched on and breast fed fine.  This is not preemie behavior, I saw the other babies in there.  And I’ve seen plenty of babies born that early or even less early and guess what they can’t do ANY of those things.  Infact some of the babies who were discharge the same day as me,  (Kalvin was discharged over a week LATER!) weren’t even able to regulate their body temps.   UGHH this was such a nightmare.  Since some idiot decided to put him on a feeding tube he then could not go home until atleast a portion of each feeding was through breast or bottle he could not have a feeding that was completely gavage feeding (given through the tube)  I was driving to the hospital multiple times a day and doing 6-7 of his 10 feedings via breastfeeding.  However for the couple feedings at night we had nurses being lazy not waking him up to feed him so the entire feeding would be through the tube.  He was gaining weight like crazy he was breast feeding fine, and then I get there the next day “oh he was soooo tired, so we just gavage fed him” .  the emotional and physical exhaustion from these 9 days having to leave him there, and not being able to take him , especially when he was perfectly fine-was harder than giving birth!  I cried sooo much that week.

(awww)

But finally I had an amazing nurse! My angel really.  She agreed that Kalvin was perfectly capable of going home and that he needed to be home.  So she told me that she would remove the feeding tube (because once it was out they wouldn’t put I back in) this way the nurses couldn’t be lazy…..and what do you know he was waking up for his feedings and took full feedings through the bottle that night.  This momma was sOOOO happy, and I was able to take my little boy home. I am so grateful that Kalvin is a happy healthy boy.  I am sooo grateful to my Heavenly Father for entrusting this sweet little spirit to Jeff and I.  I pray that I can be a good mother, and raise him with high standards and teach him correct principles.  I pray that he will feel and know how loved he is. I pray that I can be a good example to him and provide him with all that he needs to be successful and happy in life.  I love being a wife, and a mom, and I am so excited for all the things I will be learning from here on out.