Happy Halloween!!!

So, yesterday was the Geology Department Halloween Bash. We got a chance to try out our costumes! Turns out Erin didn't really like hers. The fabric was kind of stiff and scratchy (so tonight at the ward party she's wearing a shirt under it) and it has a hat. Matt managed to get a pic of her in the hat before she pulled it off. And in the last pic, I'm meowing at her, and she was laughing, not crying. lol.

Name help please!!

I would love some suggestions for what to name this guy. Please...only serious suggestions.

Here's the rules


~It can't start with an E, or a C. I don't really want to repeat letters. I don't want to repeat mine or Matt's either but it's more of a guideline than a rule on those two.

~Nothing that sounds like Cora or Erin, or like our last name.

~It shouldn't be more than 2 syllables. We have a 3 syllable last name, so a shorter first name would be better.

~I don't want it to have 4 letters. Both Cora and Erin have 4 letters and I don't want to be "trapped" into a theme. But if the perfect name DOES have 4 letters...well....I'll deal.

~I really don't want it to be in the top 50 most popular names.

~I'm really liking Alexander as a middle name, and I *think* I have Matt agreeing with that (of course, I could be completely mistaken about that). So a name that sounds okay with Alexander would be good.

All things Erin

I love my little girl. She's been a little sick lately, but we've still been having some fun.


We've been working on counting to 3. I have to admit, it started when my friend Aubrey told me that Myla has started counting to 3 (Oooo-uh, dooo, weeee!) because they watch Sesame Street every morning. So, I decided I wanted to teach Erin to. She's been grouping similar things together, and she's got 3 bathtub frogs, and 3 bathtub duckies. She's got 2 figured out! I'll pick one up and say "One," and she'll put the second up and say "dooo!" It was so cute.

She also can now specify between a regular bear and a panda bear. In her book, when I ask her where the panda bear is, she'll point to the right picture. She'll also say it: "pa-bayoh"

She's become an artist. She found a crayon and decided to add a few fish to our aquarium.


She's never actually scribbled with a crayon before, she just pounds them down on the paper. But she spent an hour in nursery on Sunday, and they drew on paper, and she learned to scribble. lol. I will eventually clean it off, but I just haven't gotten around to it yet. lol


And last, but not least, tooth #5 came in a couple days ago. Yay! She's now got both her top front teeth.

Rejected!!!

So, yeah, Matt didn't get the job in Denver.


*sigh*

Wii Music

We rented Wii Music today, and after Matt and I had fun playing around with it, we decided to see what Erin would make of it. She had fun!

Denver!

So, as I had previously posted, Matt had an interview in Denver with a company there on Oct. 17th. It was a great trip.

I'll answer a couple of questions before I get to pictures.

~The manager Matt would be working directly under had to take a last-minute trip to Turkey to fix something (apparently trips to exotic places happen a lot in this industry), so Matt wasn't actually able to interview with him. They can't make a final decision, until Matt has interviewed with him in person, so they will be flying him out again. No we don't know when (I hope soon). So we don't have job offer at this point, but it seems promising (he was told he should probably look at housing prices in the area...but not to think he definitely had the job yet.)

~No, I probably won't be going out there with him again next time.

~Yes, I love Denver.

Okay, pictures!

Erin didn't like the plane ride out. We were on the second-to-last row and we hit turbulence coming over the rockies on our way in. It was very bad for all three of us. This picture, though, was taken before we took off. She wasn't very happy from the start.

This was our room. It was definitely the nicest hotel we've ever stayed at. They provided the crib for Erin, and as you can tell, she wasn't very happy at the prospect of going to bed (that whole rest of the day was off because we were recovering from the plane ride)

Downtown Denver, from our window


And the water that they had in our room "for our convenience" Yes, you're reading it right. It says $4.50
We spent Friday and Saturday nights with some friends instead of at the hotel. On Saturday we went with them to the Denver Museum of Natural History. It was really fun. They had several exhibits, but one of them was dinosaurs, and we had a fun at that one. They had a "dig up the dinosaurs" part for the kids, and they loved it.


The hard part was to keep them from eating it...lol

They had a fun part called the Children's Discovery Room. They had so much fun stuff in there. The parents had just as much fun as the kids! They had this big next of stuffed animal puppets that Erin loved (she's holding a large cat that she pulled off my hand)

And some weird animal puppets too, like the hermit crab Danica (our friend) is holding. They also had a mosquito...that just creeped me out big time.

They also had a "dance" area with a basket full of maracas for kids to play with. Erin actually really had tons of fun with them. We're contemplating getting her some of her own.

As we were leaving, we found a sale model of the Mars rovers Spirit and Odyssey. It was much bigger than I was expecting it to be actually. (Matt had me stand next to it for scale. lol)

Outside they had some sculptures of a pack of wolves that the kids had tons of fun climbing on. If it's any clue to the type of museum it is, not only did they not care that the kids were all climbing on them, they had signs posted to be careful because the metal might be hot.

The flight home was much better than the one out. We were much further up on the plane, and it was smoother going over the mountains. Erin slept the whole time. And we could see the Tetons as we entered Idaho.


It's amazing how beautiful they are from any perspective.

4th of the 4th

Okay, I stole this one from my friend Aubri's blog. Basically, you go into your photo folder, pick the 4th folder in there, and the 4th photo from that folder. Since Matt has an entire drive dedicated to photos, I had one more layer (photo drive, 4th folder, 4th folder, 4th pic. Depending on the folder, I might have had even one more layer than that. o.O Can you tell we like pictures?)

So this is my picture. It was taken 3 years, 3 months, 4 weeks and 1 day ago (I love having tickers!) Tomorrow it will be 3 years and 4 months. I couldn't have imagined on that day just how different my life would be now. I can happily say I'm a much better person for having married Matt. I couldn't have imagined then how much more I love him today than I did then.

And didn't he look great?? Okay you can't really tell how great he looked in THAT picture. But trust me, he did.

Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day

Yes, October seems to be "awareness" month, and there's even one for me. For the stillbirth and pregnancy loss support forums I am a member of, I made a video of all our angels. Since most of you don't know any of the babies on their but our family (and I did put other babies on there from our family), I'll post the individual slides I made for them. And the video at the end, in case anybody wants to spend 8 minutes watching it.

20 weeks!

I'm officially halfway through my pregnancy today. Okay, where did it go? I guess the combination of NOT throwing up constantly and chasing after a toddler works to speed things up, huh?

I'm amazed.

2 years ago today...

My life changed. I got a positive pregnancy test at the Dr's office that resulted in my sweet Erin.


To be honest, I was completely terrified. I mean, I was happy too, but I was so scared. Once I became pregnant, I couldn't control my circumstances anymore. When I wasn't pregnant, I was guaranteed not to have another loss. Once I became pregnant again, it was a very real possibility, and there wasn't one thing I could do to prevent it from happening again. So I did what any woman in my situation would do: took the best possible care of myself that I could, prayed harder than ever before, and hoped for the best.

I couldn't be more thrilled with the outcome.

It's a BOY!!!

So, first off, thanks to all of you wonderful people who sent me calm thoughts and prayers. I sort of freaked out this morning, but then he started kickboxing my bladder and it's amazing how comforting that can be in spite of the uncomfortableness of it.


So he's officially a boy! We're pretty excited, although still clueless on the name part.



And I'll have Matt scan the pics so I can post them. He had his hands up by his face the whole time, and it was just too cute.


Oh, and the best part? He's perfect. He has all his parts where they should be and they look healthy. YAY! So I can just sit and enjoy my pregnancy....for the next couple of months anyway. I promise to add pictures, and maybe part of the video, as soon as I can!

Okay, here they are! This first one is him looking at the camera. At this point, they still look pretty skeletal.



Here he is, profile, with both hands up by his face. The palms are together and the fingers spread apart.


And here is his profile. He still has his hand up by his face.

Pre-ultrasound anxiety

Ultrasounds are supposed to be exciting things right? You get to see your baby, what could be better than that?


Unfortunately I don't fit in that club anymore. I was terrified with each of the 5 ultrasounds I had with Erin. I was very scared with my first ultrasound with Reeses, and I am definitely scared for tomorrow.

He's been moving pretty good today, but...that's not a guarantee. What if he has spina bifida? What if he doesn't have any kidneys? What if he has a hole in his diaphragm that is allowing his bowels into his chest cavity and preventing lung development? What if he's got a large hole in his heart, or enlarged ventricles in his brain? What if.....? ((I have known women [one personally, the other online friends] who have had these happen...and many many more))


I keep going in circles. I keep reminding myself that each of those problems has a very SMALL chance of happening. But...so did Cora's cord accident.

Ugh. I think I need to stop thinking.

((in case you had forgotten the ultrasound is scheduled for 1:30pm mountain time tomorrow))

Frankenberry cereal

One of the things I look forward most to in October is the return of Frankenberry cereal. Don't get me wrong, I like Count Chocula (which I like mixing with Frankenberry) and Booberry too, but Frank's my fav. I really never have understood why they don't offer it year round. *sigh* Probably to make you more excited for it around Halloween.

And yes, I am eating a bowl right now. lol


Anyway, Jared, I was going to get a video of me trying to get Erin to say "Uncle Jared" for your birthday...but...my friend went into labor and that meant that I had not only my 16-month-old but also her 15-month-old all day. Which is exhausting needless to say. So after I dropped Myla back off with her parents, and visited baby Savannah, I was going to go home and do the video. I was fairly excited about it.

But I left my camera at the hospital.

SO, when I get my camera back I'll try it. She'll probably just look at me crosseyed or laugh, but it'll be fun anyway.

I hope you had a happy birthday.

How did I get so lucky?

So I was sitting on the couch today, working on one of my various projects, holding a sleeping Erin. I looked down at her sweet face, and was suddenly overwhelmed by gratitude for the tremendous blessing that she is.

How did I get so lucky to get her? She's so sweet and so loving, and so dang cute. (I know it's not just the mom in me saying that!) What did I do to deserve such a special little spirit to come to me?

Just before she was born I had so much anxiety. Part of it was worry that I wouldn't get to take her home, either, but most of it was an overwhelming feeling that I was completely incapable of being a good mother. I didn't really realize how much the desire to do anything for her would heighten my ability to actually do what's best for her. I'm not the perfect mother...at all. There are many things that I think back to later and think "maybe it would have been better if I'd done it this way..." But every time I start feeling hard on myself for not being that "perfect" mother I want to be, the spirit whispers to me "You don't have to be perfect. Just do your best, and I'll take care of the rest."

I'm so grateful to my Heavenly Father for trusting me enough to give me my sweet children (all 3 of them). I'm so grateful that He is patient enough with me to help me through my imperfection, to help me figure out what to do when Erin is screaming her face off and I can't get her to stop, and to help me have patience through the time when she's just crying to cry.


Being a mother is the best thing that has ever happened to me.


How did I get so lucky?

Kitties and bears, oh my!

In an effort to find entertaining videos, we've come across some doozies. And of course, they're kitties and bears. Erin wouldn't have it any other way.

This is a cat, with a serious lack of skillz.


And this one is really funny, in a creepy sort of way...


And a dancing bear

Happy October!!

So, as traumatizing as it is to me that yet another year is coming to a close (I just recently came to grips that 2007 is actually over. In January I was still reeling that 2006 was over), I'm excited for the next couple of months. I guess I'm just happy when I have something to celebrate, and Oct-Dec gives me a bunch!

Isn't my background cute? I find myself staring at my blog because that pumpkin is just so adorable.


So, in celebration of October today, I decided to take some pictures of autumn in Rexburg. Not as spectacular as, say, Maine, but still pretty!

And one more exciting bit. Matt bought me the digitally remastered DVD version of The Nightmare Before Christmas at the beginning of September when we got our financial aid money, but said I couldn't open it until October. Well, it's October!!! So guess what we're watching this evening?? Yay!


I have to edit and add, I just discovered that Erin's 4th tooth has broken through! Yay! So it's the two bottom front ones, and the top left front, and the one to the left of that. So she's lopsided. LOL I can't wait until they get bigger so you can actually see them!