Friday, May 10, 2013

When it rains it pours....

LITERALLY.


So yesterday Loren and I were having a conversation. We have gotten two of the medical bills from Evelyn's birth and one of them we paid right away because it was so manageable and the other isn't scary either. Although it's the exact same bill (my epidural) that we got when Alysha was born, the amount didn't worry us like it did last time. With Alysha's arrival came the stress of money and collections and a huge learning experience for us about paying bills. I hated to check the mail because of the scary things I'd find in there. We struggled with keeping all the places straight that we owed money and it took almost 18 months for us to finally get it all sorted out and Alysha 2 years old by the time we got everybody paid out. So yesterday after receiving this bill in the mail we talked about how much more relaxed we were. How it didn't seem so high anymore and how much better prepared we are this time around. How we knew where to expect our money to go and how we had money to send there! Mistake #1.

As I left for Zumba last night, I noticed that the sprinklers were on in the front yard and I remember thinking to myself, "I'd better remember to check those when I get home and if they're still on, turn them off." I didn't. So Loren woke up this morning and was leaving for work when he saw that they had been left on all night. Oops. He turned them off and thought about how high our water bill will be and how green our grass will be :).

Tonight we went downstairs and were about to play our new Wii game when Loren thought the carpet seemed a little damp by the couch. He asked me why, and I couldn't think of anything that I'd spilled there this afternoon so I walked over to see if maybe it was just cold over there and he thought it was wet? It was wet. So we pulled the couch away from the wall and it was VERY wet. The carpet was soaked. Loren started pulling away the carpet and the baseboards and we discovered everything VERY wet for a space about 2x10 feet. We still can't be sure how it got in, just that it is. The wall isn't affected so it can't have come down from the window well, but who knows. Anyway, Loren called a clean-up company here in town and the guy on-call, out of the goodness of his heart, came over for a free consult. (Probably hoping for some business, little did he know that Loren's worked for a clean-up company and just wanted a second opinion) The guy said that he'd charge $150 to take care of it all. But that if we dried it out really well with fans and replaced that portion of the pad we'd be good to go. So now we had a plan.

While we're downstairs looking at it after the guy left, we hear flowing water. Dismissed it at first, because the washing machine was running, but quickly realized that we shouldn't hear the washing machine draining, turned on the light, and found water flowing from the ceiling in our laundry room. I had left Aly upstairs in the bathtub while I cleaned the living room up and she had been dumping cups of water out of the bathtub and it was draining through the wall behind the toilet.

Luckily the laundry room downstairs isn't finished so the water drained nicely into a drain and there was so messy sheet-rock on the ceiling. But still. The previous owners had failed to mention that they'd also had this problem because upon pulling away the insulation...well let's just say that the ceiling is quite a mess. But it's also not something that we can need to do anything about right away.

I'm ready for bed.

Loren went to the store to get a box fan and he said he fully expected a freak hail storm in the house while he was gone. I think he's ready to throw me away, even though he says he doesn't blame me for any of it.

Teaches us to talk about being comfortable...

Monday, May 6, 2013

Evelyn's Entrance

So with all the hip and back pain I'd had this pregnancy I think everyone's aware of how ready to be done with pregnancy I was. I think Loren's even questioning having any more kids because of how I was the last couple weeks of this one. Let's just say that my hormones were fairly out of wack and he worried for my mental state. But then the DR decided to play with me again and he set an induction date...and then changed it. I spent the last 5 days of my pregnancy very angry and ornery and spent most of my time crying and trying to tell the baby to vacate the premises. But nevertheless she stayed in and I ended up getting induced March 25th, 4 days before my due date.

After a late start (because it took so much longer to get us all up and ready to go than I thought) we finally dropped Aly off at my aunt and uncle's house for the day and got to the hospital about 5:45 AM. I got checked into my room and got all the monitors on me. And I was having contractions already! (I could have told them that everyday for the past week). But they weren't regular or strong so they started the PIT and we settled in for the day. The baby was just like Alysha was- it wouldn't leave the monitor alone, so we saw A LOT of the nurse as she had to frequently come hold the monitor on my belly so the computer would stop freaking out. Loren and I tried to get some sleep as we hadn't gone to bed til very late the night before trying to get last minute things done.

I kept getting checked and I wasn't progressing as quickly as I wanted to, especially about 10 when the contractions started coming much stronger. They were coming about on top of each other, without a break, but my water still hadn't broken and the nurse said I was only at a 3cm. So finally about 11 I convinced her to get the anesthesiologist for my epidural.

After getting my epidural I was magically at a 6cm and about 10 minutes later my water broke on it's own. So when the DR came to check me at 12:30 and he said it wouldn't be much longer I rejoiced!

About 2 o'clock the nurse checked me and sent someone to call the Dr as I was very ready to deliver. He got there and coached Loren a little bit and at 3:03 PM Loren delivered our little Evelyn Joy.  She had the cord wrapped around her neck, but she starting crying right away and was JUST FINE!

I made sure the nurse knew that I wanted to breastfeed right away so as soon as the Dr was out and she was cleaned up I fed her, hoping to establish that good habit early. I really wanted breastfeeding to work for me this time. So far so good! It's been 6 weeks and Evelyn is growing really well and hasn't had any formula.

Anyway, we visited with a little family that night and then settled down to just be with the baby. Luckily Loren's parents were willing to come up and watch Aly so he could spend that night with me in the hospital. Not that he wakes up at night ;) but it was nice to have him there. The next day we got the ok from both my and Evelyn's drs to go home, but they both wrote in their notes to discharge Wednesday, so when we tried to leave later Tuesday afternoon, we got met with a little resistance from the nurse. Finally they got ahold of both drs to make sure we were good to go and to get me a Rx for pain meds (:)) and we took our little family home!

The past few weeks have definitely taken some adjustments, but we've grown so much together learning about this new little girl that's come into our lives. She's definitely different from Alysha, but that's what makes it fun :). And we feel so much more relaxed this time around too.

Yesterday we had the opportunity to have our family over and blessed Evy at church. It was such a wonderful experience and we're so grateful for all the support that we received and for everyone that traveled to be with us. (Which was basically everybody :))

Friday, May 3, 2013

Back-Blogging

Moving weekend


We were so blessed by all the people that came to help us this weekend! We closed on our house early Friday morning, the 1st of March. It really didn't take that long and then we were just waiting for it to finish getting processed. We thought about going out to celebrate, but we really just wanted to be out of the apartment so we went back there to finish packing. In the afternoon we got the keys and starting taking loads over ourselfs in the back of our van. We got a good lot packed in there and made a couple trips. Then some friends from the ward (and Alysha's favorite baby-sitters) came over to help and we made a couple good trips in their suburban, while Alysha stayed at their house with their kids. Then I got left at the house while Loren went back to the apartment to help the Elder's Quorum load up. They put it all in a couple trucks and only made 2 trips! There were SOOO many of them, including most of the Young Men from the ward too. One Brother even stayed afterwards and set up a bed for us. Then we went and picked up Aly and CRASHED. We were exhausted.
The next morning we celebrated moving at IHOP and headed to the apartment for what we thought would be 3 hours of cleaning. Over 10 hours later we were glad for the relief society, angry with our landlord, thankful to be out of there, and just happy to be home-owners! 
Making the adjustment to the new ward has been slow-going. We encountered the same kind of mentality from some people that we had at our last ward- mainly that they thought we'd moved into the apartments across the street from our house and therefore weren't all that apt to getting to know us. But since we've pushed that rumor away, people are getting a little bit more friendly and we're slowly starting to make friends.