Sam's birthday

It's crazy to think that a year ago we brought home this little thing -

And now we have this big thing -

Yup, March 4th was Samuel's first birthday. It's kind of funny having a birthday for someone who doesn't really understand what a birthday is, but we had fun all the same. Sam and I were home alone the night before since Eric had Omniture Summit up in Salt Lake that day, so it wasn't too special during the day. I made him french fries for lunch because he loves them, and I would read to him whenever he wanted, and I sang Happy Birthday to him in place of his usual lullabies. Not exactly major concessions, but I wanted him to have a good day. We decided to only have a very small celebration for Sam since he's still a little wary of most people. So we had Grannie & Grandpa Hansen and Taylor and Ryan Lockwood (my sister and brother-in-law) come over for dinner. We made Chicken Fettucinne Alfredo for dinner because Sam thinks it's really funny to play with noodles. Also, have I mentioned that it's an AWESOME recipe? Oh yeah, like every other post since we discovered it. Well, we still love it and I don't feel bad about posting about it because it's not my culinary expertise (read: I don't have any culinary expertise) that makes it great, it's just a delicious recipe.

Taylor came over a little bit early to help me get the meal ready which was especially helpful since she was able to go pick up some ingredients for me as Eric still had the car in Salt Lake. Eric tried to get out of Salt Lake as soon as he could but ended up having to stay until the end of the closing ceremonies for Summit. Unfortunately that meant that he had to drive home while it was snowing AND rush hour. Not a fun way to have to make that commute. But he still made it home in pretty good time, all things considered. AND he beat his parents here, so he could still be a good host (it probably helped that they were also coming from Salt Lake and had to deal with the same conditions :P ).

Dinner turned out well and we enjoyed the people that we had here. After dinner was cleaned up Sam opened up his presents. Grannie and Grandpa had brought Sam Green Eggs and Ham (because it has Sam-I-am in it!) and a touch and feel farm book. Sam LOVES to read books, he spends most of the day trying to hand me books and get me to read them. He even likes to turn the pages on his own which I think is super cute. So the books were perfect. He loves to touch all the different textures in the Farm book too which makes it an even better sensory experience for him.

Eric and I got Sam a little toy bus to push around. Just before Christmas I'd decided that Sam was too young to play cars and decided against getting him any for Christmas. The day after I finished my Christmas shopping we were at a bridal shower and Sam started playing cars with another little boy there. Guess I was proved wrong! So, I'd been planning for awhile to get him a car for his birthday. What I didn't realize was that in addition to having little people inside this bus the people bounce as you push the bus, and you can push the driver to have it sing songs and light up! Score! The bus has been a big hit with him too.

Then of course came the most fun part of a first birthday party - the cake. Eric informed me before we got married that there is a tradition in the Hansen family of giving kids their own cake on their first birthday and letting them go to town with it. This seemed like an awesome tradition so we definitely wanted to keep with it for our family. Here are the results -

He started off eating with a spoon...

Then decided to ditch the spoon and eat with his hands. You can tell he's pleased by this decision because he's clapping.

Then his Aunt Taylor shoved his face into the cake (hence the large amount on his forehead. Surprisingly he thought this was the best part yet and kept insisting that she do it again

He really got into the whole cake eating thing at this point. Just dug right in face first

Our very happy birthday boy!

Thanks to everyone who helped make Sam's first birthday a wonderful day! We love you Sam! Thanks for being a part of our family :)

Our Little Performer

It's so much fun watching a baby as he grows and develops. I may be biased, but my boy is particularly cute and entertaining.

For those of you who don't know yet, Samuel is walking! Enjoy the video below or click here to see it on YouTube.

The Ferberish Method Followup

So for those of you who endured my novel length post on our sleep training methods with Sam you may be interested to know what became of that. I'm here to give you our current progress.

After Day 2 I noticed a trend for Sam. If I put him down within a couple minutes of when he fell asleep he would put up little or no fight and then sleep happily in his playpen for the duration of his nap. If I put him down before he fell asleep then he has something to say about it. If I waited too long after he fell asleep he would wake up and think that the 10 minutes he was asleep counted for his nap and be up for the next couple hours, albeit a little cranky. So I went with that and it's worked like a charm.

After going with this method I listened to this episode on No Cry Sleep Solutions from the podcast New Moms, New Babies (it's made by the same people who make my favorite pregnancy podcast - Pregtastic) and learned something interesting. Apparently the first 10-15 minutes of a baby's sleep cycle take off the edge of tiredness that the baby feels. So if the baby wakes up after that first little bit of sleep they feel like they've gotten rest, but their body hasn't really received all the benefits that they need. So, they won't feel like they need to go back to sleep but they'll still be cranky. (sorry, I know I've made that more confusing, I'd recommend listening to that podcast if that didn't make sense)

It was interesting to me because it totally explained what I was seeing with Samuel. After figuring this out I've been able to get Sam to take all of his naps in his playpen and at least start out every night in there as well (I'm still too lazy to make him sleep in there all night, it's way too easy to just let him sleep with me.

I'm much happier now knowing that our safety concerns with Sam are alleviated during naps. Our next step is working on sleeping through the night. Sam still sleeps nothing like unto through the night, but I don't know how much of that is a result of our wacky schedule and how much of it is poor training on our part. We make it work, but it'd be nice if we could clear that milestone too. I'm sure I'll let you know if/when that happens :)

"Is he starting to sit yet?" "Uhm, starting?!"

Sorry for yet another back dated post. I need to do better at either deciding to omit videos and pictures from my posts completely or assigning the multimedia part of the posts immediately to Eric. Editor's note: Eric ended up putting the video together. Scroll down to see it.

This week we went in for Sam's 6 month check up. Unfortunately Sam had gotten pretty sick the day before and had been running a fever and had a very runny nose, so we weren't able to show off our baby as well as we would have liked. However, you wouldn't have known that he was sick by the way he was acting. He was flirting with the nurse and the doctor, and trying to pull himself up to standing when he was supposed to be laying on the scale. It was pretty fun to watch him. The one kinda good side about him being sick is that we didn't have him get his shots while we were there, so he left happy. Of course, it also means that we'll have to go back sometime this next week just for shots, ick.

Anyways, here are the current Sam stats -

Weight: 17lbs 9oz - 65 percentile
Height: 27 inches - 55 percentile
Head circumference: 45 cm - 90 percentile

It looks like his parents genes are finally starting to catch up to him and he's slowly falling down the growth charts. But it's not at all something to be worried about, he's still very healthy, just evening out to a size that would be more like we would expect for him.

The funniest part of the visit was definitely when the doctor asked us if Sam was starting to sit up on his own. Sam can sit right now for as long as he wants all by himself, and has been able to do that for a couple weeks now. He's crawling like a maniac and pulling himself up to standing. We thought we'd throw in a little bit of pictures and videos of him getting into everything.

The HD version of the video is available on youtube if you click here and then click the HD box in youtube's video player.

As far as everything else goes, we're just still doing the same sorts of things. Eric, unfortunately, will switch back to his ridiculous late night schedule (6pm - 2am) again this week until they can find someone to replace him. Anyone speak Chinese and know HTML/Javascript that's looking for a job? We're pretty bummed about the switch, but it doesn't negate his recent promotion or anything. Hopefully it won't last too long and they'll find someone to replace him soon.

In other news, things seem to be moving forward on the China opportunity. We've been helping figure out the logistics to get us over there, so it might not be too much longer. We'll keep you posted when we know more :)

Sam's Preoccupation with Dying Monkeys

This is a video of our baby Sam, who apparently finds the death of monkeys to be absolutely hilarious.

Hanging out and Haircuts

Well, it is about time that I wrote a post and actually contributed to the blog. If you enjoy Brittny's style of writing more, I am sorry. You will just have to make do with me :)

So while a lot has happened (Taylor's wedding and other fun stuff), from what I can see, Brittny is planning on posting about that. One of the joys of having me write a post is that my concise nature generally means I can get the whole thing out in one sitting. Since those other topics are already reserved, I figured I would write about our recent vacations.

It just so happened that our family reunions coincided around the same beginning weeks in July. That made it really nice for me to get a good break from work. Omniture offered an incentive where you take 4 days off in a row and get a 5th day for free! I know, it sounds weird, but who am I to question more vacation time?!

So off we went to Bear Lake, UT for three days of fun in the sun and in a gianormous three story cabin. Imagine a house that can fit 48 people. Yeah, it was big and awesome. Big 65" TV screens so we could hook up the Wii and play games, a theater room for movies, a playroom with astro-turf and an indoor basketball court, a pool table, a ping-pong table, and even an air hockey table. It was every little (and big) boy's dream. We had a blast hanging out with the family at the beach.

Our nieces are so cute!

We also rented a wave-runner, which Brittny had never been on one before, surprisingly enough. The family warned her that I was a dare-devil with this things, but I promise I was nice. Besides, the ancient machines couldn't even go fast enough to have any real fun!

Oh so cool!

So after three fun-packed day, we headed out to Wyoming for the wife's side of the family. While on the drive up, we encountered the amazing country-side: a rainbow, full moon, and the sunset on the mountains beside it.

Beautiful!

We went to Jackson Hole and Star Valley, WY. After a crazy stormy night on the fourth of July, we spent a lot of time with the Anderson family. We played water-slide kickball, ate popsicles, and went geo-caching.

Sliding into home plate!

Sam's sticky sweet-tooth

Geo-caching and mis-spelled road signs

All in all, it was an excellent week and a half of family fun and bonding! After we got back, though, we realized that Sam was overdue for his first haircut!

All Business up front

Party in back! MULLET!

Here's the after-shot:

Much better

My Son the Audiophile

As we have been learning how to deal with baby Sam's gas and discomfort from time to time, we have learned a few tricks along the way. One of my favorite tactics to employ is the rocket-ship launch, where basically I help Samuel "jump" way high into the air. Don't ask me how or why this came about, but it works!

Well, recently, we discovered that music can also help to fascinate and calm the little tike. This picture depicts the expression usually on his face as he listens to the music.

We know this is connected to the music because when we hold him to where he can move his head and look around, he would always face the direction of the speakers and source of the music. I think it's a sign! Okay, maybe not, but just what I thought would be an interesting tidbit to share with you all.

Samuel's Birth Story

I wanted to document Samuel's birth story. As a warning, this post probably contains far too many details for most of you. It's wicked long (7 pages when I pasted it into Microsoft Word) and extremely detailed but I know there are some people who will be interested and I wanted the details for my own journaling purposes. Just know that if you are easily disgusted, easily offended or quickly bored... this post likely isn't for you. If you don't want to read any further I won't even cry about it :)

Tuesday afternoon (March 3, 2009) I had a doctor's appointment just to see how things were going. I was almost a week past my due date and had been dilated to 3cm for a couple of weeks so we were definitely anxiously awaiting Samuel's arrival, but as I posted previously we had no intention to induce labor without medical reason. This was just a routine checkup to make sure everything was ok. My mom came to the appointment with me because Eric was still in class, and it's really boring sitting in those waiting rooms all by yourself. Before the doctor saw me I went in and had my vitals checked, as I have at every appointment for the last 9 months. Urine sample, blood pressure, weight check. No big deal. However, after checking my blood pressure the nurse commented that it was pretty high - which hadn't been a problem for me before that point. But she sent me back to the waiting room until the doctor was ready for me.

We waited for an hour or so until it was our turn and when we went in to the office my doctor confirmed what I was afraid of - she was worried that I had some signs of preeclampsia and since I was already 5 days past my due date she wanted to induce labor. It was really good in some ways, my mom had been in town for almost two weeks (she came to move my brother up to Utah) and was going to head back to California that day but had decided to stick around just in case they did decide to induce labor. Plus, I hadn't made any more progress, the apartment was ready, I'd finished my projects for work... it was just time. However, the idea of being induced went against my goal of having a needle-free childbirth. Luckily, my doctor said we could start by breaking my water and seeing if that would start labor before starting any drugs. I had wanted that before drugs because that was what would always initiate my mom going into full labor. Also, Pitocin makes contractions more intense than they would be otherwise, which was something I wanted to avoid. So, we agreed that my mom and I would go pick up Eric and meet back at the hospital.

It was really funny picking Eric up and being like, "Hi honey, how was class? So, the doctor said it's time to have the baby, you ready? Ok, let's head over to the hospital... now." Unfortunately the night before Eric had gotten hardly any sleep and we knew that we were in for a long night ahead. Of course, we had sorta figured that his lack of sleep was a sign that it was the right day, Murphy's law would definitely state that the day that the husband had gotten the least amount of sleep is the day for the baby to be born :P . We headed home to pick up a few things (read: my iPod and headphones). While we were there Eric gave me a blessing which definitely helped calm my nerves and really gave me the strength that I needed to get through the rest of that night. The power of the priesthood is so awesome and I am so grateful every day to have a worthy priesthood holder for my husband. Once we had all of the things we needed we headed to the hospital.

It took a little while to get me admitted. We weren't too bothered though, it wasn't like we were going anywhere or like I was in any sort of pain since my labor hadn't actually started yet. One thing I really appreciated at Utah Valley Regional Medical Center (the hospital I went to) was that they encouraged me over and over again to ask questions about the treatments I was receiving. I always like to ask questions so that I know what's going on and can make sure that I'm making the best decisions for my health, but I'm generally a little bit sheepish about it because I don't want to make anyone upset with me. It was really good to feel like I could ask questions without worrying that the doctors and nurses would feel like I was trying to undermine their authority or question their judgment.

So, we got all checked in and they had me change into my lovely hospital gown. The nurse then had a bunch of questions to go through with me before doing my blood work. Oh goody, the most dreaded part of this entire experience for me - the blood work. Yes, I do realize how dumb it is that the blood work was a bigger deal for me than the labor was, but that's the way the cookie crumbles. Luckily I had Eric and my mom there, and both of them understand the extent of my phobia and how best to handle me. So, Eric was able to stay with me while I tried to relax. In the meantime my mom went out and instructed the nurse on how best to work with me. See, one of the weird things with me is that talking me through it just makes things worse. While most nurses think they're being helpful by walking me through it ("ok, now this isn't a big deal, we're just going to clean this off. Alright, now this will be just a little pinch...") it forces me to focus on what is happening which makes things worse. So it's much better if I can pretend that it's not happening and they can just do their thing. With all that support, the self-hypnosis I've been working on, Eric's blessing and the fact that I was laying down - I didn't pass out! Which of course isn't to say that I didn't freak out and come close (the nurse later commented that she could tell that I had a legitimate phobia because she could feel how cold my hands got all of a sudden as I was struggling to maintain myself). I'm very grateful now that my mom convinced me to just allow the nurse to set up an IV while she did the blood draw (all through the same stick). Once it was in it wasn't as big of a deal as I had thought it would be (seeing IVs in other people has always freaked me out so I didn't have high expectations). It helped that the nurse had covered the IV with some gauze but I still had to pretend that my left arm didn't exist for the next couple hours until I got used to the idea of there being a tube stuck in my arm, but overall it was ok.

Once the IV was set my doctor came in and broke my water. Having my water broken surprisingly wasn't that big of a deal. Just a little pressure and then a lot of gushing. The doctor commented that the amniotic fluid was a little bit green. Uh oh, green amniotic fluid means that there is meconium (the baby's first stool) in the amniotic fluid which can signal fetal distress. It's not that uncommon in babies who are overdue (which Samuel was) and isn't an emergency situation, it just means that the doctors will want to keep a closer eye on how the baby is doing with labor and how he does immediately after birth. It did show that it was a very good thing that we were inducing labor at that point because Samuel was obviously ready to come out!

Once my water was broken the doctors and nurses just left us to do whatever. They could monitor my progress remotely and there's not a whole lot that needs to be done at that point. This was around 5pm. I didn't want to move from the bed because I was leaking amniotic fluid and didn't want to get that everywhere. But otherwise things were pretty good. The first couple of hours I felt lame because the contractions weren't intense yet, but I was stuck to a bed. It seemed like there was something I ought to be doing to get labor to progress, but of course my body was already doing that without my cognitive efforts. It just seemed weird for all of us to be waiting around for me to do something... and I wasn't able to control me doing it or not doing it.

Around 7pm my mom and Eric convinced Jayson to go get some pizza for them. On the other hand I was consigned to eating the hospital's bread and fruit punch. Actually I didn't mind it that much, it was good bread and as the contractions were starting to intensify slightly I didn't really want pizza anyways. But I did make sure that I loaded up on as much bread and fruit punch as they would give me since I knew it was the last food I'd be allowed to eat for awhile.

After my family's delivery room pizza party Jayson left and my mom went back to our apartment to get some things and take a quick nap. I suggested that Eric take a nap in the reclining chair. He protested a little that he could stay awake to support me. While I really appreciated the sentiment, my contractions weren't that bad yet so there wasn't much he could do. Plus I knew he needed sleep and I would really need him later that evening, so he gave in and took a little bit of a nap. Of course, it was during his nap that the contractions started to get more intense. Not really bad but it was better when I focused on relaxing myself and breathed through them. I had a lot of fun watching the monitors and trying to predict when the next contraction would come.

Don't ask me why it was so fun for me to watch that, but I really enjoyed it. I don't think Eric got much of a nap in because he could hear me start breathing through my contractions and came to sit by me. I felt really bad for Eric because he could tell I was in pain, but couldn't really do anything about it. Although, just having him there helped more than I think he understands. He would have been happier if I would have just gotten the epidural so that he didn't have to watch me be in pain. But I really appreciated him supporting me through everything and not trying to push me to do anything I didn't want to do. He is the best!

Over the next couple of hours the contractions slowly increased in quantity and intensity. Eric had found an internet connection (of course :) ) and we tried to watch some TV shows on Hulu, but the connection wasn't good enough. So we resorted to listening to music, which was probably better anyways because it gave me something to focus on without needing to focus too deeply. We played the music with Winamp and I focused on their visualizations during the contractions (although some of them made me a little dizzy :P ) My mom came back while we were listening to the music and thought it was funny that my music of choice was Angels and Airwaves, Relient K, John Mayer etc. She and Eric had both figured that I would have wanted something more calming like Jon Schmidt or Enya (frankly, before labor, so did I). However, having the more upbeat music gave me a little more to focus on to take my attention away from the contractions.

I think it was around 9pm that the music stopped holding my attention enough and I had to go deep into relaxation mode. I wasn't very talkative from this point until Samuel was born, but Eric got to be really good at reading my body language. He would watch the monitors and see when a contraction was coming on and help me to brace myself and relax. Having my mom there was especially helpful because she was able to sorta coach me through the contractions and help Eric figure out how he could best help as well. It was awesome having someone there who both knew me really well and had been through this before.

About this time my nurses switched over as well, and as my first nurse, Amy, was leaving my mom asked her about what pain management options were available, even though I hadn't asked for anything. She said they had a fast acting drug called Fentanyl that just took the edge off of the contractions but it only lasted for a short amount of time. She did warn me that they wouldn't give it to me too late in the labor as it could have adverse side effects on the baby. I was really glad that my mom asked because it was a question that I had but hadn't had the chance to ask. Before going in I'd figured that if I had an IV that I'd just go for the epidural, since I couldn't avoid needles at that point anyways. However, even though I'd come to terms with my IV I still couldn't bring myself to consider another needle, especially since my back is pretty sensitive. I was also feeling empowered seeing what my body could do and wasn't ready to give that up.

Around 9:45 things started really picking up. Whereas I'd had a good break between each of my contractions before to recover, they started coming in sets. I think they were getting to where I'd have about 3 contractions each lasting about 1 minute with about a 10 second break between each one and then about a minute break between the sets. I had stolen a mantra from a girl on the Pregtastic podcast (I listened to every single episode during my pregnancy, it was one of the most helpful things to help me get through all 9 months). She was a long distance runner before her pregnancy and she said her mantra to get through labor was "I can do anything for a minute". Since I used to run cross country I could relate to that kind of endurance strategy and it was working really well for me until I stopped having the breaks between contractions. About 10pm I asked for a dose of Fentanyl. It was one of the best things I did that whole night. They only gave me a small dose and it didn't take away everything, but it definitely decreased the intensity of the contractions to a huge degree and gave me about 45 minutes of relaxation which helped me get through the rest of the night.

At this point I think I was at about 8cm. I'd come in at 3.5cm and then progressed pretty steadily once my water was broken. After the first dose of Fentanyl I was getting too close to the end of labor to have another dose. While I wouldn't have said no to another dose I was way more interested in Samuel's well being than a little bit of pain so it wasn't a big deal. Around 11pm the contractions really started getting intense and I started having the urge to push. The nurse checked me and I was at 8cm. She said to call her back in when I was feeling a lot of rectal pressure. I think I called her back in to check me again about every 15 minutes after that. It seemed like I was at 8cm for eternity. That was definitely the most difficult part of the whole labor was that hour that I felt like I wanted to push to get the pressure off, but not being far enough along to actually push. I think the consequences of starting to push too soon are mostly the risk of the baby's head or the cervix getting swollen from the pressure and actually regressing (the baby isn't going to be able to come out at that point anyways because the cervix isn't open enough yet) and just having to push forever and wearing myself out.

Fortunately, my mom and Eric were there helping me through this. I'm not exactly sure when they started doing this but I think it was before 11pm. My mom started rubbing my legs, which for whatever reason felt really really good. Eric put pressure on my hips when a contraction would come. It sounds kinda strange but it helped SO much, I couldn't have gotten through those contractions without him. I had read that would help somewhere and heard about it on another episode of Pregtastic and it really was amazing how much it helped. I felt really bad for Eric though because he was leaning over the bed and then pushing my hips as hard as he could during each contraction. I wanted to tell him that he could stop and take a break because it was definitely putting a lot of strain on his back, but the difference it made for me was so monumental that I couldn't let him leave. His back hurt a lot afterwards. My mom would switch off with him from time to time, but she wasn't able to get as good of pressure as Eric did so I was always glad when they would switch back. I'm really grateful for my mom and all of her help, but I have to say that Eric was my hero, my knight in shining armor, the one thing that I couldn't have made it through this labor without. He was absolutely incredible and I can't say enough how thankful I am for all that he went through to support me through this. (as a sidenote, I found out later that when he and my mom would switch spots, Eric would update his Twitter status to note the progress. I love that guy!)

Just before midnight the nurse said I was to 9.5cm. That was such a relief after being stuck at 8cm for so long. The few contractions between there and 10cm were incredibly intense and it was almost unbearable to not be able to push, but it definitely helped to know that I was almost there. It wasn't too long after that she told me I'd made it to 10cm and it was time to push. HOORAY! It's hard to explain to someone who has never gone through it before but as hard as pushing is, it feels so much better pushing with those contractions than trying to hold back. Pushing feels productive and it's helping to get the pressure off. I had so much amazing support there in the delivery room. Obviously my mom and Eric were still there, also my doctor - Dr. Julie Grover - who I have loved as my doctor, and my nurse Elizabeth and her assistant Lelani. They were all so positive and encouraging. Apparently very few women take a natural approach to childbirth at UVRMC so they were very excited about how well I was doing and getting through everything without an epidural. They did a great job of coaching me through when to push and how to push. I feel so blessed to have had such a caring and supportive team of people there with me.

After about an hour of pushing everyone started getting really excited because Samuel started crowning. Someone (I think it was Elizabeth but I can't be sure at this point) went and got a mirror so that I could see the top of Samuel's head starting to come out. I want to say that it was really cool, but in all honesty, it was really weird to see that. His head didn't really look like a head, just matted hair on a gray thing. It was very helpful though because I could see that I really was almost there. It gave me a little bit more encouragement to get through the pushes that got me from there to getting him out. It was interesting to listen to everyone in the delivery room through those pushes. While I was pushing I would close my eyes really tight which meant I couldn't see what was happening, but I could tell from the comments and pitch of everyone's voices that Samuel was coming sorta partially out and you could hear their excitement sorta rise and then the almost disappointment when that particular push wasn't the one that brought him into the world. That helped me even more because I knew how close I must be, and I hated disappointing everyone. Finally one contraction came and I just sorta felt like I absolutely had to get his head out on that contraction. Whether it was something biological or from the excitement in the room I just sorta decided that one was it. I had to work harder for those pushes than the other ones and I had to stick it out and push all the way through that contraction instead of giving up at the last part of the contraction, but then Samuel's head came out! I'd love to say that I looked in the mirror and thought that he was beautiful and the most amazing thing ever, but in all honesty, he looked all slimy and gross and it didn't really look like a baby. On the next contraction I had one big push for one shoulder and another big push for his other shoulder and out he came! They had Eric go cut the cord and then took him to clean him off.

It was cute to watch Eric because he was definitely a little bit dazed by what was going on and my mom had to remind him to take his camera to go get pictures, even though Eric is a fairly avid picture taker and we'd gotten that camera specifically for this event... well and all the events that will follow from it. My mom says it was also pretty cool to watch Eric's face as Samuel was actually pushed out of me and just how excited and fascinated he looked. I'm really sad that I missed that (I was a little preoccupied :P) because I love those looks on Eric's face. He is definitely the son of a doctor ;)

It was pretty easy sailing for me from there. The doctor sorta pulled gently on the umbilical cord and I pushed a little and the placenta came out (that was probably the weirdest feeling to have that all come out). I'd torn pretty badly so my doctor spent quite a while stitching me up. And yes, even after everything I'd been through I had a hard time not passing out when she was putting the shots in that had the anesthetic. Samuel's 1 minute Apgar was a 7 and his 5 minute Apgar was a 9 (which are excellent scores in case you aren't up on delivery lingo, a perfect score is a 10).

While they were cleaning him up they told me that he was 8lbs 11oz. It took a little while for that to process, my thoughts were something like "oh, ok cool. ... wait... WHAT?!" I'd been pretty small throughout my whole pregnancy so I definitely wasn't expecting to have such a big baby! They wanted him in the NICU for a little while because there was the chance that he had breathed in some of the meconium which can cause problems. So they cleaned him up and let me hold him for a minute before taking him to the NICU.

Eric was able to go with him so he left with Samuel and I stayed with my mom (for those of you who don't know, Eric's dad was a NICU doctor, so it wasn't that strange of an environment for Eric to be in). My doctor finished stitching me up and then I was just left there with my mom. It was nice to just be able to rest, although I still felt like I ought to be having another contraction soon, that I was just resting between them. I did start to shiver which is pretty common after delivery. They got some blankets on me which definitely helped and I just rested.

I stayed in the delivery room for an hour after they finished stitching me up. The nurses came in every 15 minutes to push on my stomach to make sure that my uterus was contracting back to where it was supposed to be. The weird part was that every time they would push on my stomach I could feel huge gushes of blood squirt out of me. My mom encouraged me to sleep during that hour but I was pretty amped up after the whole experience... there was no way I was going to actually sleep just yet. But I did rest and I just felt so elated about what I had accomplished and that Samuel was actually born, I can't quite describe that feeling but it was wonderful. It was kind of like a runner's high compounded with the love for this new baby and appreciation for all of the help and support and a million other things all rolled into one. It was an awesome feeling and it was nice to just be able to lay there and drink it all in for a little while.

After that hour they helped me get out of bed and get cleaned up. Then they put me in a wheelchair to go visit Samuel in NICU before taking me down to the recovery room.

The nurses thought it was funny seeing Samuel in the NICU because they're so used to having little premie babies... and in comes Samuel this 8lb 11oz behemoth baby! He was doing really well but they wanted to monitor him for a little bit longer. He has incredible muscle tone for his age and all the nurses kept commenting on it. Eric also told me that while the nurses were putting the EKGs on his chest he would pull them off! Not typical for a newborn baby to have that sort of coordination, but having seen this kid for a week now, I totally believe it. He has really strong hands and he seems to just love doing things with them. After visiting Samuel they took us down to the recovery room, checked my vitals again and it was time to sleep. It was around 4am when we were finally left alone to go to sleep.

One of the most interesting things to me was how rare it apparently is for patients to come in and not get an epidural. My nurses were so impressed that I was "going natural". I don't really consider myself to have really had a natural childbirth because I did take the Fentanyl. I'm not ashamed of that in any way, but I don't feel like I can say I was all natural. I just didn't take the epidural. But I think it's sad that it's so rare for women to actually have a natural laboring experience. I don't mean that in a judgmental way, I don't think there's anything wrong with deciding to go with an epidural. However, it was an AWESOME experience to really be able to really feel the capacity of my body and mind in this way. It was really an exhilarating experience. Yes, it was hard, but not so awful as the horror stories I've always been told. I just feel like I've really accomplished something cool. I wish I could describe what I mean better but it's really difficult to put into words what that experience was like and the feelings I have about it. I just wish more women could have that experience. It was truly empowering and I feel like I better understand the strength and capacity women have better than ever before. I've been asked if I would do it again, and I think I would, as much as I'm sure that upsets Eric. Granted, every labor is different and it's totally possible that next time presents me with entirely different challenges and I change my mind. Like I said, I'm not hardcore, but it was an awesome experience and I don't think I'd want to rob myself of that.

So, that's the story of how Samuel was brought into this world. Sorry it's so long, but I wanted all of the details for myself so that I could remember them later.

Doot... doot... DUE!

Well, my due date has come... and gone... and still no Samuel. We're not really too concerned yet since he's only 5 days late so far, but we definitely got a lot of surprised looks from people when we were at church on Sunday and not in the hospital! I've been amazed at the number of questions I've gotten about whether he's here yet or not. Don't anyone worry, as soon as we have news to report it will be up on Facebook, and the blog, and Twitter, and emailed :) Which isn't to say I've been bugged by all of the questions. I feel very loved that there are so many people who care about this special event in our lives. I've been getting text messages from my little brother Cody about every 4 hours for the past two weeks asking if the baby is here yet and I still just giggle every time I see it, so don't anyone out there worry that they're being bothersome by asking.

Right now we don't have an "action plan" for Samuel's immediate eviction from the womb. I'd like to hold off on an induction if at all possible because I believe that the best thing for the baby is to allow nature to take its course. But we will go in to the doctor's today and see what she has to say. Last week when we went in I was 3.5cm dilated, 80% effaced and Samuel was at 0 station. What was funny was that I'd been having contractions about 5-20 minutes apart consistently from about Sunday night until Tuesday afternoon. While we were at the doctor's office she stripped my membranes, which generally is supposed to encourage labor... No such luck. Instead the contractions stopped. Samuel has strong willed parents, I guess we couldn't expect him to be otherwise :P

That's pretty much what we've been doing for the past week, just waiting for Samuel to make his debut. My mom has been up here helping my brother Jayson move up to Utah. It's been really great having her here, she's helped with a ton of cooking and cleaning and getting everything ready for us. She's helped assemble our new dresser and glider, re-arrange our bedroom and replace a bunch of lightbulbs. I can't even begin to say how grateful I am for all the help she's given us. Thanks mom! I love you!! Unfortunately she's going to be leaving today barring the immediate arrival of her first grandson, since there are still 3 kids at home, plus an exchange student and my sister's fiancé. But we're so well prepared now that I think we'll be able to handle having a baby come home with us a lot more easily than we were before. I just wish she could get to reap the rewards and actually get to hold this baby before she leaves. Come on Samuel - SWIM DOWN!!

In conjunction with all of the projects that my mom has helped with, Eric came up with a great solution to a problem we've been having. See, our light fixture in our kitchen rattles a ridiculous amount whenever our upstairs neighbors are home. It hasn't bothered us too much, but it was a little disconcerting since it made it sound like the whole thing was going to fall off the ceiling. We realized however that it was just the metal rings around the bottom that were causing the rattling because they weren't secured to the glass tops. So, Eric came up with the idea of using rubber bands to reduce the amount of rattling. After a few different attempts he came up with this...


Rubber bands taped to the inside of the metal rings

The best part is, since he put those rubber bands in place last night... we haven't had a single rattle. You're the best honey!

I'm 24 years young...

Well, my birthday has come and gone, and I wanted to say thank you to everyone that wished me well and helped make my day a good one. This post is going to have to be a short one with all the craziness that has been going on in our household, so sorry if you were looking for something more substantial.

Of course, most of the celebration this year was spread out with no major plans, especially considering the fact that we were anxiously awaiting the birth of a baby boy. Well, it seems that this little boy has a mind of his own. You'd think his parents are pretty strong-willed or something ;)

But since he hasn't decided to come early, and he hasn't decided to come on time, the real question to ask is when do you think Samuel will be born?

Brittny really treated me special today--that's not to say that she isn't wonderful on any other day--and once again I can't be thankful enough for the wonderful blessings of family. She took me out to Tucanos and Zupas, two excellent restaurants, and I also enjoyed strawberry rhubarb pie for dessert! YUM!

Snakes and snails and puppy dog tails...

Wow, a lot has happened since we last updated. I'd say that I'll try to keep this short, but that would be a lie so I won't even try to make such promises. I'll just warn you right off the bat that this is likely to be a long post :)

I guess I'll start with the pregnancy update since that's been the most consuming part of my life recently (surprise!). Everything is still going really well for me. My biggest complaint is heartburn but I can still keep it at bay most of the time with just taking Tums. I'm definitely getting to be more whale-ish so I'm finding it harder to reach things on the floor or get out of bed. But overall, I'm feeling fantastic for having less than 2 weeks left! In fact, one of my favorite activities of late has been looking at the other pregnant women in my ward. I keep looking at the women who look seriously uncomfortable and thinking, man they must be ready to go any day now! Then, I'll look up their due dates and find out... they're a month less pregnant than I am. I'm feeling very blessed that this has been the case.


The obligatory baby bump shot. I know a patterny dress isn't the best choice to really show it, but I felt like I looked cute and didn't want to change first :P

When I was at the doctor's on Monday she told us that I was 2cm dilated and 60% effaced. Not too bad! She'd asked if I'd been feeling any contractions, and I'd said no, but apparently I was wrong. You can't make progress without contractions. On Friday I finally figured out what the contractions feel like... and I've been having them for weeks. I'd just thought it was the baby pushing out on part of my stomach that was making it all hard :P . They aren't the kind that hurt yet, but I really should start timing them since I've been having them come a few an hour for a day at a time off and on. They're just kinda hard to time because since they don't hurt... I don't always notice them. I've been joking all week that I'd decided that Saturday would be a good day for Samuel to come and that I was going to talk him into it :P My family decided that if that was the case they would all pack into the car and head up since they have a 3 day weekend anyways. My little brother Kyle started praying that I'd go into labor as soon as they made that decision. He told my mom that they should just come because, "I prayed for it, and when have my prayers not been answered. Ok, maybe a couple of times." We thought it was really cute, but also very true. Kyle has awesome child-like faith and we've seen more than one miracle that came from his praying for it. The weekend isn't over yet so I guess I better be ready!

Also, in preparation for Samuel's arrival my friends Amber and Crystal threw a baby shower for me last week! We played a few games and had some awesome food and opened presents. We are SO set now for Samuel to come! Amber took some pictures that you can see here if you're interested. And here's the invitation (no, it didn't get smudged, I just figured Amber might not like her home address and phone number to be displayed for the world to see on our blog):


Which leads me to a question, how many people out there have heard that nursery rhyme saying before - "Snakes and snails and puppy dog tails, that's what little boys are made of" ? I'd heard it before so I thought it was super cute that Amber used that on the invitation, but most people that we've asked had never heard of it before. It's part of a long poem that goes through what different kinds of people are made of. Most people I guess only know the "Sugar and spice and everything nice, that's what little girls are made of" part of the rhyme. Apparently other people thought it was a little weird, which I guess I can understand if you've never heard the rhyme before :P But I thought it was cute, and now you all know :) (You can see the Wikipedia entry for the rhyme here.) Thanks so much Amber and Crystal for putting that together, and to everyone who came or couldn't come but has dropped by since then. We so appreciate all of the things we've been given that will make it so much easier to bring our baby home!

One of the really fun things we've been able to do in the past few weeks is to go to a lot of cool concerts. Eric is taking Music 200 and one of the requirements for the class is to go to six different genres of concerts. It's been a really good excuse for us to go on some fun dates! We went first to a combined choir concert at the Provo Tabernacle that featured BYU's Men's Chorus, Women's Chorus, Concert Choir and BYU Singers. It was a really cool concert, and they even had the audience do one of the numbers. They handed out sheet music to everyone as we came in and then at the end of the performance they had us basically sight read the music and sing with the choir. Definitely not something you could do with just any audience :P

Last week we went to the Young Ambassadors show, probably more at my request than for Eric's requirement (for those of you who don't know I spent 4 years on the YA's tech crew and it is still one of the most incredible and defining experiences of my life). Their new show is still really weird to me because it is so different from the shows that I worked on. They have cut some of the performers (singers/dancers) in favor of a larger band, and the band is now on stage with the group instead of in a pit or off to the side somewhere. Actually this change I LOVE. The band has always been one of the coolest parts of the group (no offense to any performers that might read our blog) and I think it's awesome to have them up on the stage and really part of the show. As a result of them expanding the band they no longer have a backup tape that has the instruments we lacked with a 4 piece band. This allows the band to have a lot more control over the musicality of the show rather than being tied to a click track. I can't express enough what a great change I think this is.



The other major change that I've noticed is that the show has a lot less Broadway and a lot more pop-type numbers. The years I was in the group the show was entirely composed of Broadway numbers. Their current show is called "The New Music Makers" and it's supposed to more tie together the people who have influenced music in different eras. Honestly, I don't like this change, but I'm sure that it's a case of what I'm used to more than anything. I just really liked the Broadway numbers and all of the acting that went along with the singing and dancing. I like watching numbers that really tell a story more than just a song. I know every song *is* a story, but it's just different. Which isn't to say that I didn't enjoy the show, or think that they did a fantastic job, because I really enjoyed the show. I just liked the older style of show better.

Anyways, last night we went to a concert for Synthesis (an elite Jazz band at BYU). They were AWESOME. I'd seen them play at Homecoming Spectacular once and was very impressed, but it was even more fun to see them playing a whole concert. They are an incredibly talented group and it was totally worth the money that we paid to go see their show. The funniest part of the whole night though was their guest artist - Anthony Wilson. Don't get me wrong, he was very good and extremely talented. What was funny was that Synthesis was playing some of his songs with him, and rather than allowing the conductor of Synthesis to conduct the whole thing Anthony Wilson kept trying to conduct the group, as well as the conductor, while playing the guitar. I'm sure it's very difficult not to do that when it's a piece that you wrote and you have a specific idea of how it should sound. It was a classic example though of what John Shurtleff (YA technical director) would call "too many chiefs and not enough Indians".

Another result of all of these extra dates has been that we've found a new restaurant that we LOVE - Zupas. So far we've been there 3 times and had different things each time and haven't been dissapointed once. That's saying something! We like to get their combo meals where you get to choose a combination of 2 of either a bowl of soup, a panini or a salad (i.e. you can get a panini and soup, or a panini and salad or soup and salad). We fell in love with paninis while on our honeymoon in Paris so we've both opted for paninis every time. So far we've tried 4 different soups, 2 salads and 6 paninis and they've all been excellent. If you live in Utah and you haven't yet been to Zupas... we highly recommend that you remedy that soon :)

We've had a few other fun things that have happened in the past few weeks. We threw a little birthday party for Eric's best friend Levi a couple weekends ago. Eric and Levi have been friends since Eric was 5 so they go WAY back. However, they haven't really seen each other in over 4 years as their age difference made it so that Levi was leaving on his mission about the same time Eric got home from his. I've really enjoyed watching the two of them just pick up where they left off, having fun playing video games, and going skiing and just having fun together. I'm especially glad that he has a friend to go skiing with him since I'm not exactly a world class skiier (I'd much rather be at home and be warm than in the snow). I've also enjoyed that there is now someone around who is really good competition for Eric in his video games, someone's gotta teach him some humility ;)

We also had Eric's friend Jason come from Taiwan and visit us for 5 days. Eric taught Jason the gospel while on his mission and Jason was finally able to get baptized within the past year while living in Russia. Jason also came over from Taiwan for our wedding and stayed with my family for a few days at that time. It was really fun to have him here, although I felt bad that we were really busy and couldn't do too many things with him, but I think the things that we did do while he was here were pretty fun. He was here when we had Levi's birthday party, which was cool because they don't really make that big of a deal of birthdays in Taiwan so it was a new experience for him to go to a birthday party (even if the one we had was pretty low key). Eric also took him to Temple Square one of the afternoons and we went and had Family Home Evening with Mom & Dad Hansen in Salt Lake that night. It was especially good that Jason was here for that since Eric was speaking to their FHE group about his experiences in Taiwan that night! They hadn't planned that at all, it just worked out that way, but it was fun that Eric had someone actually from Taiwan to help with that presentation.

Along with the presentation Eric's parents had asked him to bring his violin and play something for the group. Can I just say how much I love watching Eric play the violin? He is an excellent violinist, but it's not necessarily listening to him play that I love as much as watching him play. Eric is a very passionate person and you can see how much he loves playing the violin whenever he gets a chance to play - which hasn't been often lately. I really hope that as he finishes school in a couple of months he will have more time to spend practicing. He can make beautiful music with that instrument, but more than anything I love seeing how happy it makes him to be able to make that music. (Yaknow, the day he proposed to me was after I'd seen him play violin for the first time... do you think it's a coincidence that I accepted? ;P) If you've never had a chance to see or hear Eric play the violin there are some links to some mp3s and videos on his website.

So overall it's been a busy but fun few weeks! Sorry we've been so lax in getting posts out regularly. Hopefully we'll do better in the future (no guarantees though :P)

Baby update post

So, since I've made you all wait for a whole month for a new baby bump shot I figure I better get that out of the way first.
It's hard to gauge how big I'm getting since I see myself every day... and my size doesn't change drastically from one day to the next. In fact, I took this picture and thought that it probably looked about the same as the last one we'd taken. Boy was I wrong! (you can see that picture in this post) I knew I was gaining weight, I guess it just hadn't set in how much I'd really put on! Although the Wii Fit has given me no false notions of where I stand weight wise...
Don't worry, I didn't really gain a ton of weight all of a sudden at the end of December. When my family got a Wii Fit for Christmas we realized that the solution to using the Wii Fit on carpet... was the carpet extenders that came with our Wii Fit in the first place! Somehow we'd missed them when we were setting our's up. Unfortunately it means that we both suddenly gained about 10 lbs according to the Wii Fit (not a great way to boost your self-esteem), but on the plus side my Wii weight is now much more similar to what they've been telling me I weigh at the doctor's office. Oh, and don't think I'm super shy about my actual weight. I post the BMI graph because it shows the whole scale for the past three months... it gets cut off on the bottom when I look at the actual weight graph.

So it's kind of hard to believe but we're now in the home stretch of this pregnancy. About a month and a half from now we should have our little Samuel here! We're very excited about it. I will stop commuting and work exclusively from home starting at the end of this week which will be an interesting change. I've been slowly trying to make that transition. Unfortunately, since our company moved buildings this summer I've really grown a lot closer to my co-workers. There were a few changes on our team just before the move and somehow making that move and having the new environment sort of bonded us all together as a team more so than before. Anyways, while I'm not sad in the least to be giving up the commute, I will be sad to not get to interact with my colleagues in the same way.

I think we're getting a lot closer to actually being ready for Samuel to come. As we mentioned in a previous post we got a crib from Rhett and Julie, which we set up just after New Year's. It's been hard to give up having an office since we'd gotten used to it over the past few months. But almost all of the random stuff that had accumulated in there has been moved out to our storage closet and it now houses a lot of baby stuff. We were really blessed and got a TON of stuff from my Uncle Paul and Aunt Stacy since they were getting rid of a lot of the things they had for their son that was born during the spring of last year. We have two huge Rubbermaid containers and a box full of clothes, a bag of bottles, a vibrating chair, a carseat and a bunch of other stuff from them! Thank you soo much Paul and Stacy!! Now we basically just need some diapers and wipes and we should be good to go. Ok, so there are several other things that we would like to get before then as well, but it's definitely reassuring to know that we've got most of the things in order already.

As far as I go, I'm still feeling really good. Still dealing with heartburn, and getting a little bit more tired. Other than that, my biggest complaint is that it's getting harder and harder to get up off of our comfortable memory foam mattress :) Eric now has to shove me out of bed, not because I don't want to get out... but because I get stuck! I'm feeling really blessed to have such limited symptoms. Last Sunday I was looking around our ward at some of the other pregnant women. There was one woman in particular who I looked at and thought, "Man, she's huge and looks really uncomfortable. She must be ready to pop!" I looked at the Relief Society binder and looked up her due date... it's exactly one month AFTER mine. So, I'm definitely feeling grateful for how easy I've had it. But I am growing right on track so far. I have another appointment tomorrow and I'm anticipating my doctor to tell me that everything's looking good like she has for the past few appointments.

Hopefully you're not offended by seeing my bare tummy... it's really funny to watch it move on its own!

Getting away from baby news, Eric just finished his last first week of classes! Wahoo! Between the 14 credit hours he's taking, going full time at Omniture and having a baby this semester he's definitely got his plate full! We're hoping that he'll be able to pass the Physical Science 100 exemption exam this week so he can eliminate 3 of those credits, but he'll still be really busy all semester. And yes, you did read that right, Eric is now officially a full time employee at Omniture. He made the transition from being part-time at 30 hours to being full-time at 32 hours at the beginning of the year. It's not a huge change scheduling-wise, he still works basically the same shift as before. However, now he is a full-time employee with benefits, woot!

Active Andersons: Part 3 - The fun of giving and receiving

We had some fun gifts that we gave and received. We bought a few movies for Taylor and Ryan to enjoy together (my family rotates so that each sibling buys for just one other sibling - Eric and I had Taylor and Ryan this year), and a webcam for my parents (of course, my dad also bought one for my mom, which at least confirmed that it was a good idea...). We also got a calendar for my dad that has funny grandparent stories (I'm not sure how it started but I've bought a day-to-day desk calendar for my dad every year for the past several years. I like it because he keeps it at work and will tear off a page every day and think of me, and it's something he uses), and a book called Funny, You Don't Look Like a Grandmother for my mom. Since Samuel will be their first grandchild it was fun to get them some grandparent gifts.

We got a lot of baby stuff — my mom even put together a stocking for Samuel!

We also got a stroller from my parents for Christmas.

There's a really cool demonstration of all of the cool features of this stroller on the manufacturer's website but unfortunately the makers of the site did the whole thing in flash (shudder) and so I can't post a direct link to the demo here, but if you are interested you can go to the website and click on products, the on strollers and then select the Helio (it's the second thumbnail from the right on the top) and then click on demonstration. I really like how lightweight it is and how nice and small it folds up while still being a very functional full sized stroller. Thanks Mom & Dad!

As Eric wrote about previously, we got the video camcorder from Mom & Dad Hansen in conjunction with Samuel's imminent arrival :) We also received several cute outfits, baby towels and baby blankets from Eric's brother Mike's family and our sister-in-law Kristen's family for Christmas. I'm really excited to start organizing everything and even more excited for Samuel to come now!

Eric totally surprised me this year, which is quite the feat us! We both get too excited about our surprises for each other and usually end up sharing them beforehand. However, Eric managed to save some surprises for me. See, I lost my little bag that I keep my jewelry in when we moved from our apartment in Wymount to our friends' apartment this summer. It had all of the jewelry in it that I wear regularly (which isn't a lot, but they were the few pieces that I really liked). On Christmas Eve Eric went to the mall and bought me some new jewelry so that I have some nice things to dress up with! I never thought I'd be the kind of girl who was excited by little jewelry boxes under the Christmas tree but I was apparently wrong. He had picked out a couple of things that were simple and beautiful (just my style) and I was really touched by his sweet gifts.



Thank you so much honey! He'd also bought me a pair of new headphones that are a lot nicer than the ones I'd normally buy for myself. They're really good at blocking out sound and really comfortable too. I had to promise though not to put them in my purse since we think the magnetic buttons in my purse are what previously caused the demise of Eric's headphones.

Sadly, I didn't have any really cool surprises for Eric like he had for me. He had made me promise not to get him anything really big since we'd spent a fair amount of money on some new suits for him a few months back. However I really enjoy putting his stocking together so I'd gotten him a few things that I thought he would enjoy, including some of his favorite books from when he was a kid (Goodnight Moon, Go, Dog, Go, Amelia Bedelia and the Baby, and Teach Us Amelia Bedelia). I also had some onsies made that obviously will be worn by Samuel, although they were really for Eric. They have this design on them that I created myself:



I think those could have been a cool surpise, however I needed Eric's help designing them since I don't know how to write Chinese, and I would have hated for him to open up his presents on Christmas morning and have onesies that say something like "I love dog food" instead of "I love my daddy". I made two for him, in different sizes so that he'll be able to have Samuel wear them for more than a couple of months. I was surprised that I was able to do it for a pretty reasonable price at MakeAOnsie.com.

Of Epsom Salts and Roses

Wow, November totally got away from us! Sorry for the lack of posts last month. I'd promise that we'll do better, but I know that the holidays are now in full swing and it's only going to get more difficult to post regularly for the next month or so. Instead I'll just apologize in advance and get on with this post.

I guess we never posted about what we did for Thanksgiving. We've been switching which family we spend which holidays with so that neither Eric's family or my family feels neglected (well, Kyle feels neglected whenever we spend a holiday with Eric's side instead of with him... but he can't feel justifiably neglected :) ) Last year we did Thanksgiving with my family and Christmas with Eric's, so this year we were scheduled to do Thanksgiving with Eric's family. Luckily for us, Eric's parents were recently called on a mission to serve at the Church Humanitarian Center in Salt Lake City helping with the medical programs coming from Church Headquarters. So, we didn't have to go very far! It's so much more difficult to really get away in the middle of a semester so it was a blessing to not have to try to travel during this time. Instead we went to Eric's brother Mike's house in Herriman and spent the holiday with his family, Eric's parents and sister Diane's family. It was pretty low key but super fun to get to go hang out with everyone. Plus, Mike's wife Marianela is an AMAZING cook, so the food was delicious. Eric did have to work that evening unfortunately, but he was able to just set up his computer in Mike's office and take calls from there. He only had one call come in the entire night which was definitely a blessing so that he could spend more time with the family instead of on the phone. It was a wonderful day and we enjoyed having a chance to reflect on our blessings - especially the blessings of our wonderful families :)

So, what's been going on with us more recently? Well, earlier this week Eric asked me out on a date. That might seem like a silly thing but if we don't make plans specifically our Friday nights generally end up with us getting take out food and watching a movie on our couch. Which is always nice at the end of a long week, but every so often Eric will ask me out on a date (as if I had someone else in mind that I might spend my Friday night with :P ) and we'll have a real night out. I'm always really excited when he does so because it's just a fun break from our normal routine. So we planned that after work on Friday we'd come home, shower and get all dressed up to go out and then do whatever Eric had planned. While I was getting ready (I had curlers in my hair at the time), Eric surprised me with these...

Pretty pink roses!

There wasn't any special occasion involved or anything, just Eric being sweet. I was really touched. I may not be the most girly girl or anything like that, but I can definitely appreciate flowers. They're beautiful and definitely made me feel special just that he'd think of me and get me some pretty flowers! So, it was a really great way to start off the evening. We went to Macaroni Grill, which is one of our favorite restaurants, and Eric had a gift certificate from helping a guy in his class with some computer stuff. We have a tendency to fill up too much on their bread (it's sooo good!) at the beginning of the meal, so neither of us made it very far through our actual meals. But that was ok since we just brought them home to reheat and enjoy later. From there we went to the new theater at the University Mall to see Twilight. I'd already seen it once, but I loved the books and wasn't sad to see it again (even though there's one scene that's not great for those who pass out when presented with lots of blood, i.e. me, I enjoyed the rest of the movie so much it outweighed that scene. Plus, since I knew where that scene was I was able to prepare myself in advance). Eric has read the books (just for kicks) as well, so he was able to enjoy himself well enough. Overall, we thought they did a pretty good job, but there's definitely room for improvement the upcoming sequels--I won't bore anyone with more of our analysis than that. It was really fun just to have a dedicated date night and enjoy being together. I want to do better about planning similar occasions for Eric because I know how special it makes me feel when he does that for me, and I want him to feel that special too.

In other news, I've had lots of demands for updated baby bump pictures so we'll get that out of the way now:

Originally I was wearing a black shirt, but there was a slight shadow around me that was hard to separate from me so we decided to re-take in a different colored shirt.

I'm starting to get pretty big! I've been tracking my weight gain with our Wii Fit. It's kind of funny because with the Wii Fit you can set a weight goal for yourself and then track it... and right now my goal is to be overweight. I don't think the Wii Fit is very impressed with my goal, but I wanted to be able to track my weight gain and make sure that I don't gain too much or too little. It doesn't seem like I gain that much from week to week but it was really cool to be able to look at the graph and see my weight gain over the past 2 1/2 months:

I'm getting so close to being overweight!!

I guess I've gained a lot more than I realized! It makes sense since my stomach is getting bigger and bigger, but somehow the weight gain hadn't seemed as significant since I was weighing myself pretty much every day as I play with the Wii Fit.

Samuel is starting to move a TON. I have never been so amused by my own stomach in my entire life! I can sit down in the evenings and watch as he kicks and punches me hard enough that you can see my whole stomach move. It's the most bizarre feeling but so cool to think of the little person inside of me that we're going to get to meet in not too long! What's really fun is that Samuel responds to Eric touching my stomach but not anyone else. Whenever Eric will be cuddled with me or just touch my stomach he tends to get kicked. Hopefully that means that Samuel really likes him, and not that he's trying to kick his dad in the face! I can't believe we have less than 12 weeks until my due date. I'm still feeling really well and I'm just counting that as a blessing. I do have some pretty good heartburn which is weird for me since I've never really had heartburn pre-pregnancy. However, it's nothing that I can't handle with some Tums, and I figure the extra calcium is good for me anyways (oh, and Otter Pops really help too - thanks Amber for that tip!!). That's really about the only symptom I have right now, which is pretty good for being in my third trimester.

We got a crib yesterday which we're super excited about! Eric's sister Julie was cleaning out some closets and found their crib that they don't need anymore. It's perfect for us since we'd been debating whether or not to buy a crib right now anyways. We didn't want to spend a bunch of money on a crib and then find out that we were moving to Taiwan in May (still no word on whether that's going to happen or not--Eric says it's normal for Omniture to take this long) and have to either move it or buy a new one when we get there anyways. I figure Samuel will probably mostly sleep in a bassinet for those couple of months anyways so it seemed like it was potentially a huge waste of money. But now we have a crib whether we move or not! Thanks soo much Julie and Rhett!!

Let's see, other important things that happened this week. Oh, Eric got his toe cut off by the podiatrist. Okay, so not really, but that's what I like to say happened. Eric's had an ingrown toenail that had slowly gotten worse and worse for the past few months and we decided it was finally time for him to just go to a podiatrist and have them take care of it. Really all they had to do was cut off a large chunk of his toenail and use some acid to kill the root of the part that was becoming overgrown. We forgot to take pictures of it before, but here's some pictures of it now:

Here it is pre-soak with his Epsom salts and antibiotic ointment.

He's supposed to soak it in water with epsom salts every day until it's healed and then put the antibiotic ointment on it and keep a bandaid on it.

It has healed so fast! I think if we'd realized how easy the whole thing was going to be and how much better his toe would be we'd have done it a lot sooner. But we're glad he's done it now! And we're definitely glad for insurance so that the procedure hardly cost us anything.

I guess those are our highlights from the past couple of weeks. Eric is getting ready for finals now which has kept us up later in the evenings and he's been super busy. He had a paper or a project due every day this last week and was up really late completing them. Hopefully this next week will be a lot easier for him! I think he's looking forward to having two weeks off for Christmas and getting a chance to just relax. I know I'm excited, and I don't even get the two weeks off! That's pretty much all from us for now. Hope everyone has a great week!