ten on thursday

Posted on February 7, 2013 by Emily Kate

1. One night last week I said to Addie, on a whim, that if she slept in her bed all night she could have a Jamba Juice the next day. Well she ran in my room at 8 AM squealing, “Jamba!” So it turns out she totally CAN sleep through the night in her room. We picked out a toy that day and started a sticker chart again. For the next 5 nights she did pretty awesome with it. One night she woke up with an owie and another night she woke up but then let me tuck her back in her own bed. But overall, pretty good. But the last 3 nights she’s been waking up again. I got her back in her own bed the first two nights by reminding her of the toy she picked out (a hideous Cinderella tiara) but last night she did not care a lick and refused to get back in her own bed. Sigh. Hoping we can get her back on track because I’ve felt so much better during the day when I get a night of uninterrupted sleep! And she’s happier too. It’s especially important for her to sleep well now that she doesn’t nap.

2. This is the second day in a row that I’ve felt 95% normal. Not heavily averse to all food, not so exhausted I can’t move from the couch. It is SO refreshing. I forgot what it is to not feel terrible some/most/all of the day.

3. My vision has suddenly changed in my right eye. I have an astigmatism which means that my contact has to be in the right spot in order to be in focus. So either the astigmatism has changed and the contact no longer fits correctly or my vision itself has drastically changed. Now even with a contact in, everything is blurry out of my right eye. The first few days it happened I had a terrible headache everyday but now I guess I’m adjusting. I’m just trying to figure out when I can get to the eye doctor with Jacob’s crazy unpredictable schedule. I so don’t want to take Addie if I don’t have to.

4. I’ve got a doctor’s appointment tomorrow. Excited to hear the heartbeat again and get the info to schedule my gender ultrasound. I haven’t been too anxious to find out until this week, now I’m dying to know. Especially because there’s all these great kids clothes sales going on right now! I can feel the baby moving now which is really nice.

5. I woke up thinking about cupcakes on Saturday which was especially odd because I haven’t had much of a sweet tooth at all since getting pregnant. So we went to a place with good reviews on Yelp! for their Churro cupcake. Of course, they didn’t have it that day but they had a snickerdoodle one that was pretty tasty. Addie was over the moon about her pink cake pop.

She had fallen asleep in the car on the way over, hence the crazy hair!

6. I caught up on Project Life for 2012, huzzah! And the 2nd half of the year was so small compared to the first that I managed to squish it all into one album. Now just need to get started on 2013 since I’m 5 weeks behind already! Starting the new year is always hard because my perfectionist tendencies make me want to make certain design choices and stick to them all year but then I feel like I can’t commit to them yet. Last year I eventually overcame that and realized that it didn’t matter in the long run, as long as it was done!

7. The only thing I wanted for Christmas was a pregnancy pillow, which Jacob found for me at Babies R Us. The one he got is called the “Snoogle.” I like it, but it’s seriously huge. I can’t use it if Addie’s in our bed (grr) and even if she’s not it’s either taking up a ton of space or falling out of the bed. I just discovered Boppy made one that is customizable so you can use just part of it at a time and I’m dying that we didn’t get that one instead. Right now I don’t really need the whole big thing, just the part for my achy legs.

8. For Activity Days last night we heart attacked the Bishop’s office door. It was funny because he totally knew we were doing it (we came in three shifts because we have so many girls) but the girls thought they were being SO sneaky. It went really well. Next time we’re doing service by cleaning the toys in the nursery and I have a feeling the girls are going to be far less enthusiastic about that activity.

9. Yesterday Addie saw Reba McEntire on a show I had on and yelled, “Yook! It’s Gamma!” I had to laugh because I’ve always thought my mom’s sister Annette looks like Reba. Addie talks a lot about Grandma and Grandpa and going to “Gamma’s House.” Wish it wasn’t so far away!

10. I just pre-ordered the book Pivot Point. A gal in my ward wrote it and I’m really excited to read it. Our Relief Society activity next week is going to her book signing!

Hey, there’s a cool giveaway on our Second Story Window blog for $30 to the awesome Caravan Shoppe. Go enter!

Posted in Lists | 5 Comments

we’re alive!

Posted on January 28, 2013 by Emily Kate

And we’re having a baby!

That’s one of the main reasons it’s been so quiet around here lately. I have been feeling terrible since November. But I’m almost 16 weeks now and starting to feel better most days. Baby is due mid-July and we’re really excited. We hope to find out the gender in a couple of weeks. Baby didn’t cooperate at our last ultrasound.

Some other, less exciting, random things lately:

- I just caught up editing all the 2012 photos. Can’t wait to do a quick catch up in Project Life and get started on 2013! It helps that I haven’t been taking many pictures, especially since I got pregnant.

- I got called to be in Activity Days. We have a big group of very loud girls but overall it’s a pretty good calling and I’m enjoying it.

- For our first activity this year we did journal jars (with this printable from Paper Coterie.) I felt like I learned a ton about the girls personalities just based on how they cut out the strips and decorated their jars (I brought a big basket of washi tape.) One girl spent the entire hour cutting out the strips so carefully that they looked like they’d been cut with a paper cutter. A few other girls cut them so sloppily that some of the questions were cut in half. One girl folded each question up into a tiny triangle and secured it with a piece of washi tape, making sure to use all the different washi tape patterns. One of our youngest girls was reading through the questions and came across the question asking who she would have lunch with if she could choose anyone in the world. She proudly told me, “I already know the answer to that question. I’d choose Stan Lee from Marvel Comics.” (Thank you Big Bang Theory or I would have had no idea what she was talking about.)

- Jacob’s been so busy lately, we’ve hardly seen him since we got back from Christmas!

- Addie has been sleeping in our bed for awhile now. I can’t even remember when it started. It was just sometimes that she would wake up at night and be really upset so I would put her in our bed to calm down. Then I would take her back to bed, like I’ve always done, but she started freaking out. She’d either refuse to go or she’d wake up again 30 minutes later and I’d spend the whole night trying to get her back to bed. By the time I was pregnant and so exhausted, I started letting her stay because if I let her get settled in bed right away she’d go back to sleep and usually sleep the rest of the night until about 8 AM. And in Utah I couldn’t fight it because she was spooked about sleeping in the other room. The problem is some nights she’s super wiggly. And the nights Jacob is home from work it’s too crowded in the bed. I have read some tips but the problem is most of the stuff I’ve read so far is about kids who get back up a lot at bedtime, which she doesn’t do anymore. I haven’t had any great tips for doing it in the middle of the night when she refuses to get back in her bed and I am sooo tired. If you’ve had experience with this, please share! I definitely don’t want her still in our bed when I’ve got a newborn. Luckily I still have many months to sort it out.

- I should have been in Utah last weekend for Alt Summit. Heidi and I bought tickets last summer and I was so excited about going. But then when I got hit with morning sickness around Thanksgiving I lost all motivation to go. I knew I would never have the energy to get everything done that we needed to before the conference. So we sold our tickets last month. I’m still not feeling 100% so I know it was the right decision. But boy have I been wishing I was there this week when I see all the fun updates on twitter on instragram. Not to mention the fact that I’m desperate for some grown-up time, especially with my sister. If I’d been in Utah, little missy would have been at Grandma’s house! (She would have loved that. She was asking about Gamma’s house this morning.)

I hate a post without a picture but this has been sitting in my draft folder for days waiting for a picture so I’m going to give up and post it.

Posted in Family, Lists | 14 Comments

ten on wednesday (because I forgot to post this yesterday)

Posted on October 3, 2012 by Emily Kate

1. I am so behind on blogging. I always feel like my Addie-free time needs to be spent on business related things because there is always so much to be done. I feel guilty if I’m using nap time to blog or do Project Life when people are waiting a begging for the new products we’re working on. I’m trying to figure out a routine to make sure blogging still happens. It makes me sad that my blog is so neglected when I used to be so good about it.

2. Jacobs on a really busy work schedule this month. He gets every other weekend off for 6 weeks (6 days total off in 6 weeks) so he works 12 days straight at a time. The shortest days are 12 hrs. Monday he worked 17. Needless to say, he is exhausted and we miss him a lot.

3. Last weekend was one he had off. We spent most of Saturday looking at new living room furniture. Our Ikea stuff is absolutely hammered after 4 years. We’d probably buy more Ikea stuff just to be cheap but the closest one is 3 hrs away. We found a few we really liked but didn’t make a decision yet. It feels like such a huge commitment.

4. Addie has suddenly decided she doesn’t like to go to the gym daycare. It’s been a huge battle lately. One day it took 20 minutes to get her to hand over her cheese snack so she could go in (this was one of those parenting moments when I thought, “Someday you’re going to hear all about this, kiddo!”) Another day she clung to me for 15 minutes before I could leave. But when she finally lets me leave she does fine. Hoping she gets over this phase quickly because it makes it difficult to go to the gym.

5. Luckily she still loves the church nursery. My only issue with nursery is the leaders give the kids suckers every week at the end of class. So when I pick her up she’s a big sticky mess all over her church clothes. And it lasts forever so getting her to hand it over to take her nap when we get home is an ordeal every week. I feel bad criticizing any nursery leader because its the worst church calling but it really drives me nuts.

6. Last week I was invited to a little luncheon at someone’s house. The table was done up for fall and it was so nice. I met some new ladies in the ward. Addie loved running all over their big yard.

7. We got iPhones. If you know me you know I’ve wanted one since they came out but our budget was just too tight for a smart phone data plan. And our old plan was super cheap (they don’t even offer it anymore.) But now that we both have income and jobs (yes my business is now real job) that necessitate and justify them we took the plunge. Not gonna lie, we are in love. I pre-ordered mine and it came the day it was released (and it took over 3 hours on the phone with Sprint and Apple to get it activated because of something stupid but nevermind that.) Jacob wanted to wait and play with mine first but he wanted it too. We had trouble finding a way to get it without him having to wait a month for it to be delivered but then someone at Apple said to just log on the site every night at ten and see if your store got more in stock and the very first night he tried that he got one at our store here in Fresno. So now we are finally in the same century as everybody else with smart phones (sorry about all those times you sent us picture mail and we said, “uhhh we don’t have smart phones.”)

8. It is still so stinking hot here. 100 degrees some days. I always get homesick for Utah in the fall and its especially bad on these super hot days. I’ve been researching some places to go in California for fall foliage. Hopefully we can make a trip one of the weekends Jacob has off this month.

9. So excited for general conference this weekend. Jacob has to work all weekend so ill be trying to entertain Addie at the same time but I can’t wait.

10. Jacob planted a garden as soon as we moved in and it’s surprisingly done really well. We’ve had some tomatoes and spaghetti squash and lots of zucchini. So far I’ve used up zucchini in hidden veggie taco meat, zucchini “noodles” with pesto, chicken and zucchini stacked enchiladas, and a few batches of this zucchini bread, which actually Jacob has been the one to make. We make half as bread and half as muffins (with pecans) because Addie and I prefer the muffins (and I like pecans and Jacob doesn’t.) And when he made it on Sunday I made this cinnamon cream cheese frosting for the muffins (which then became cupcakes) and holy moly it was delicious. (Side note: I’ve been teaching Addie to say “holy moly!” and it’s my favorite thing ever.)

And because I want to be more current about sharing our news and photos, here a some spur of the moment shots I snapped last night when Jacob got home from work and Addie ran out to meet him. (He got home while Addie was still awake AND the sun was still up!) These are not all completely in focus, maybe not something I would normally go out of my way to share on the blog because it’s not particularly my best work, but the memory and the moment is what really matters and that’s what I should be taking more time to record.


Posted in Family | 11 Comments

paper coterie

Posted on July 27, 2012 by Emily Kate

Me and Paper Coterie are best buds. They offer promo codes ALL THE TIME and so I’ve been able to snag a lot of free product from them. And it’s really high quality stuff. Love their coil bound photo books. Those are the ones Addie loves to look at. A friend of mine did Christmas Cards from them last year and I thought they turned out so gorgeous.

So I wanted to tell you that they’re having a killer gift card sale this weekend. You can get a $100 gift card for $30! You can use it on anything but I’m definitely thinking I’ll use mine on Christmas Cards. Just wanted to share! ETA: Just heard from Paper Coterie that this CAN be used in conjunction with promo codes (they really do have them all the time) and can be used toward shipping costs. AMAZING!

P.S. I’m a Paper Coterie affiliate so if you order from them using my link, I make a little bit of $. So thanks!

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments

1 month update

Posted on July 21, 2012 by Emily Kate

I wrote this post a week and a half ago but didn’t post it because I wanted to at least include a picture. So here’s some pictures of Addie and Grandpa from Utah in May.

We’ve been in Fresno for a month now. Here’s what we’ve been up to.

Jacob

He’s in his 4th week of residency now (plus a full week of orientation before that.) This month he’s doing “wards” and it’s fairly long hours. He’s only got 4 days off a month (it’s every other weekend.) He has to be there by 7:00 but I know he gets there well before that. Every once in awhile he’s been able to come home around 4:00 or 5:00 but it’s usually closer to 7:00. And twice a week he has the call shift where he has to be there until 8:00 but he usually isn’t able to leave until after 9:00 those nights (like on July 4th!) He’s pretty tired, as you can imagine. I think he enjoys the work for the most part.

Adelaide

She’s talking up a storm lately. Recently she discovered and fell in love with Super Why and asks for “Supe! Why!” all the time. She also fell madly in love with macaroni & cheese and always requests “mac! cheese!” (but that doesn’t mean she gets it, much to her dismay.) She loves having a backyard but doesn’t like to be out there too much unless we’re out there too. She doesn’t like to run through the sprinklers but loves to water the plants or pour water at her water table. She loves to play with the sidewalk chalk too. Two weeks ago she got sick and we couldn’t quite figure out what she had. She had a fever but no sniffles or coughs. The main thing was she wouldn’t eat or drink or even suck on her binky. She barely slept for two days and screamed all the time. We finally took her in to Urgent Care (because Jacob didn’t feel like he had enough peds experience to diagnose her.) The NP did a quick look over at her and said when they can’t tell what’s wrong with a child the fall back is bladder infection so he gave us an antibiotic for that. I kept coming back to the sore mouth but he kind of blew me off. We started the antibiotic even though I was pretty sure that wasn’t what the problem was. The next day I scoured google and finally decided she had hand, foot, and mouth (coxsackie.) But there isn’t anything to really do for that so we just had to wait it out. Finally after several days she was back to her old self, except she wasn’t sleeping very well still. After a full week of not using the binky, she found one in her carseat in Jacob’s car and he let her have it. That night she slept amazing. I had planned to confiscate it again the next day but after she was sleeping again, I didn’t care anymore! Last Sunday in nursery I found out that there had been a hand, foot, mouth outbreak and all the kids had been sick! Too bad I didn’t hear about it BEFORE we went to Urgent Care and put her on an unnecessary antibiotic.

Oh and speaking of nursery, she LOVES it now. She’s sometimes a huge pill in Sacrament Meeting because she wants to go to nursery. No tears anymore. What a relief! She’s singing lots lately, especially the ABCs. She’s trying to count things too, not always successfully. She tells me at bedtime she wants “fee” (3) binkies. Ya know, one for her mouth and one for each hand.

Me

I have been extra busy since we moved here. On top of having to take care of all the kid/house/relocating/bill stuff because Jacob was too busy to help with any of it, our business is in a really busy season. I’ve had a lot of opportunities come up through our blog that have taken me a lot of time. And we decided to make a 1st grade morning work book because the 2nd grade one is selling like crazy and people keep requesting one for 1st (and 3rd, but one thing at a time.) But putting it together is a HUGE project. It’s taking pretty much all of my time right now. I’m also taking an Illustrator class (an opportunity that came up through our blog) so I’ve got lessons and homework to do for that, but it’s been fun. I started Mommy School again with Addie but now that I’m so busy it’s on the back burner again. I still do some of it when we can but we’ll probably be up and running with it more in the fall. Oh and Project Life? Still very behind, but I put in time with it whenever I can (which is not much since starting on the morning work book.) I hired a “mommy helper” from church to come help out a few mornings a week. She basically just entertains Addie.

About California

We’re not crazy about our neighborhood but it’s not as bad as it seemed when we first got here. We like having so much space in our house, even if it is an older house with the most hideous carpet ever. It’s been HOT, only slightly cooler than Henderson. But it feels easier to handle because it gets in the 70s at night and the mornings and evening are bearable, unlike Henderson where it’s stifling even at midnight. Even still we find ourselves missing Henderson a lot. You don’t always realize how good you had it until move somewhere else! We felt like we got settled here pretty quickly and we get around town easily. Unlike in Henderson, we do a lot of around town driving and not much freeway driving. Overall, it’s a pretty nice place to live.

Here’s Addie playing with her sensory bin (in case you don’t read our Second Story Window blog. Which you should, by the way.)


Posted in California, Residency | 9 Comments