Life as We Now Know It

Our life has sure been full of changes in the last year and a half. We were enjoying life in Orem as new homeowners and parents of a fun toddler, when things began to change. Brad had someone encourage him to apply with the Davis County Sheriff's Office to be a deputy paramedic.  He put together his application and we drove up to Farmington to turn it in, not expecting to hear anything for a long time. I was focused on my last semester at BYU and we were settling into our newly purchased home in Orem. All of the sudden, the application process took off and before we knew it, he was hired.  He started with the sheriff's office in November and began the police academy in January.  We decided to put our house in Orem up for sale in February because the long commute from Orem to Farmington wasn't worth it. Luckily after only 11 months of owning that house, we were able to sell and find another house to buy in Davis County. We were able to move in in the middle of April, on Brad's birthday which happened to be the day he graduated from the police academy. It was a stressful day, but it was filled with wonderful things! 

A week after Brad graduated from the academy, I attended my graduation from BYU.  We were starting to get settled in our house while Brad was getting used to his new career. We were lucky to have a lot of help with cleaning and painting our house while Brad was busy at work the first few weeks. We loved this house, but boy did it need some TLC! The paint colors were quite interesting and previous owners hadn't deep cleaned anything in a very long time. It's been exciting to see the progress we have made since April. We have painted all of the bedrooms grey and the rest of the house is a lighter shade of the same grey. It was nice to get rid of the sea foam green (2 shades in the family room separated by unfinished decorative chair rail that wasn't installed correctly), maroon, purple, yellow, and brown. I'm very lucky to have such great in laws that have spent SO many hours painting over all of the ugly walls! I'm also lucky Brad is such a handyman because he has done so many projects around the house including fixing the swamp cooler (hopefully to become air conditioning before next summer), installing fans in the family room, master bedroom, and Sarah's bedroom, and fixing drywall issues. It has been wonderful moving from a small house with only one living area to a home with a family room, living room, and a basement. 

After only two weeks of living in Layton, we found out that I was pregnant. Once I knew I was expecting, my help in painting and moving furniture was drastically reduced. I was really sick and felt pretty useless! It's been a hard adjustment to move far away from our family and friends, with a husband who is busy at a new job and a energetic toddler as well as being pregnant and sick. We've been learning to rely on neighbors more and Sarah and I have been lucky to be able to spend time in Orem when I need extra help for a few days while Brad works.  I'm now almost 34 weeks pregnant and we are so excited for December to come so we can meet this new little girl! 

Sarah has been so fun and we love the joy she brings into our home.  She is so excited to meet her baby sister. She has the biggest imagination and is always making us laugh with the funny things she comes up with.  Sarah comes up with new names for her little sister every day.  The most normal names that she has gone back and forth between over the last few months are Jane and Madison.  When shes in a silly mood she thinks its hilarious to name her Pumpkiny or Sheepy.  We began potty training her at the end of July and she has been pretty good with it.  She was night trained from the beginning, which I didn't expect at all. Occasionally she has a few days where she just can't seem to stay dry, but has always gotten better with some encouragement.  She absolutely loves her nursery class and loves to tell me everything she did when we get home from church each week.  We read the illustrated scripture stories at night and she always requests the Noah's ark story or the Nephi building the ship story. It's so cute to see her learn stories and songs and it's been amazing to me to see how good her memory is. She's such an amazing girl and we are so glad she's part of our family!

It's been a crazy year of changes and we have grown a lot from the trials and challenges we have gone through. The changes will never end, though. We are excited for the changes that are coming and can't wait to meet this little girl in December!

18 months old!

Sarah is 18 months old today!  Time has sure flown by.  She is now walking everywhere and is learning to run.  She sure knows how to talk, too!  Sarah loves to watch Baby Signing Time and knows many different words in sign language.  She now says most of her sign language words out loud, too, and surprises me each and every day with new vocabulary.  My absolute favorite thing she says right now is "oh no!"  It's the cutest little phrase.  Mickey and Minnie Mouse are Sarah's favorite characters and she is always asking to watch Mickey on TV or my phone, wear her Minnie shirt or Minnie pajamas and carries her Minnie doll around the house.  She is in a phase where she is really hard to shop with.  Riding in the cart is no longer fun, and if I let her walk I don't get any shopping done.  I often encourage her to stay with my by asking her to find Minnie somewhere in the store.  It's a good thing Minnie is everywhere!  

Sarah is the happiest child I've ever met.  She is a really easy kid.  Don't get me wrong, she throws a pretty mean tantrum, but they are usually very short and we figure things out quickly.  Weaning her from her bottle was way easier than I anticipated, and she now loves to drink milk and juice (very diluted) from her sippy cups.  She loves to eat scrambled eggs with cheese for dinner and at breakfast she likes to eat oatmeal.  If it was up to her, however, she would be eating Apple Jacks and cookies all day long.  She used to love chicken nuggets, but every time we give them to her now she just eats the breading off of them.  Sometimes she likes to eat the squeeze fruit/vegetable pouches while we're out and about, but sometimes she just squeezes them hard and doesn't like that the consequence of being covered in goo.  She is down to only one nap a day, but she rarely cries when it's time to go to sleep.  Most nights she sleeps from 8 pm to after 9 am.  When she wakes up she usually will play in her bed for a little while until I come to get her up.  Sometimes Sarah disappears when we are in our house.  I will walk down the hall and she is sitting in her chair in her bedroom reading a book.  I love that she loves to read!  When we bought our house and moved from Lehi to Orem, I was afraid that she would have a hard time adjusting, but it's just the opposite!  She loves that our home is all on one level and she can just play wherever she wants instead of being stuck either upstairs or downstairs.  Just recently we have been working on the alphabet with her.  She now goes around the house saying "Aaaaa, Beeeee," but can't quite figure out how to say C yet.  We'll get there!  It's amazing how much she learns everyday.  She is getting such a cute personality and I never know what she will say or do next!  She likes to wear things as bracelets, such as rubber bands, headbands, and the painters tape that was left out from our recent bathroom renovation.  She will wear them around and say "pretty!"  

Brad and Sarah get along so well.  I love to watch them play together on his days off.  When he is working, she often looks at my phone and says "daddy?"  She loves when we call him and he talks to her.  Sometimes she won't talk, but every time without fail after we hang up she says "bye bye dada."  Hopefully someday she will realize that she should say it before the call ends!  Sarah loves to be outside and loves playing with her puppy, Lyla.  I was nervous at first about having a dog around such a small child, but Sarah and Lyla get along really well (I wish I could say that the dog and I get along well!).  Every morning and throughout the day I find Sarah at the window saying "Nyna" (Lyla) and playing peekaboo with her.  She such loves that dog.  Brad's work had a party at the outdoor pool the other day and Sarah had a lot of fun.  Brad took her down the big water slide and Sarah loved it.  She kept asking to go again, and again.  She loves to be with her daddy and to have fun with him.  I'm so lucky that I have such an amazing family!

Sarah has grown up so quickly.  I cannot believe that time has flown by so fast.  These 18 months have been so amazing and I can't wait to see what the future has in store for us!  

(Sarah at the beach for the first time in July.  She loved the ocean, but hated touching the sand!)

End of the Year Activities

The past few months have been super busy at our house! Between school, work, church and spending time with family the days have been flying by. 

Sarah has been growing up quickly and she is getting so big.  She is now 11 months old and her birthday is quickly coming up.  She crawls very quickly and I have learned that I can't look away for even a second or else she's into something she shouldn't be.  We finally decided it was important to put a baby gate up at the bottom of our stairs because she would spend her whole day climbing them if we let her.  When she wears shoes, she can stand on her own for a minute or two and when she is barefoot she stands for a little less time.  She likes to walk with her little zebra walker that her Grandma and Grandpa Larsen bought her for Christmas down our hall. Each day she is getting closer to walking and I won't be surprised if she starts walking really close to her birthday. 

Speaking of Christmas, we had a lot going on in the month of December.  My Grandma Robinson passed away early in the month and once I finished my finals we headed down to Arizona for her funeral.  It was such a great trip to be able to relax and spend time with family members that we don't often see. We stayed with my Aunt Janine and her family.  We love being able to stay with family down there and are certainly lucky that we didn't have to stay in a hotel!  It was fun to be able to go to all of my favorite childhood places like Bahama Bucks, the Mesa Temple lights, Rallys, and the closest restaurant to Gecko Grill, Morenos in Queen Creek. Sarah is such a good traveler and had a blast playing with the Butcher's puppy as well as her cousins.  When we got back from our trip to Arizona, we were able to spend 2 weeks with Brad's sister, Amanda, and her cute family from New Jersey.  We had a lot of fun going to the Salt Lake Temple lights, Old Spaghetti Factory, shopping, and just hanging out together at Brad's parents' house.   We spent time with both of our families on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.  On Christmas Eve, we spent the night at my parents' house because the weather wasn't great and we were going to be in Orem early in the morning anyway.  It was so much fun to see Sarah play with her presents in the morning, even if we had to wake her up to do so this year.  After opening our presents at my parents' house we went over to the Larsen's house to open presents with the Sherwoods as well as have Christmas breakfast.  Sarah loved playing with all of her new toys and had a blast on Christmas Day.  We were sad that the Sherwoods had to go back to New Jersey, but we were very glad that they were able to stay for as long as they did!

Well, January came and with it came freezing weather and another semester at school.  As soon as Brad finishes one Independent Study class he will graduate from UVU with his bachelors degree. He is now attending BYU again while he finishes his prerequisites for medical school.  I'm also at BYU and should graduate in August with a degree in Family Studies.  We also recently attended the retirement party for Brad's dad, Mike, who retired from the Director of Public Safety position at the Orem Police Department.  We are excited for Mike and Lynnette and look forward to what their future holds!

We are now planning Sarah's first birthday party and cannot believe how fast this year has flown.  Sarah is growing quickly and we love to see all of the new milestones she is hitting each day. She is now starting to say a few words and can even sign words, too.  She is so smart and we are very grateful for all of the blessings she has brought into our lives this year!

A Cranky but Adorable Baby

Sarah has been a grouch lately, but she is so cute that it makes up for it! I have been able to tell that her top teeth have been coming in for a few weeks now and have been checking them every day to see if I could feel them. On Friday I was feeding Sarah and noticed something on her bottom gum. I got her out of her high chair and laid her down to check, and sure enough there was another tooth in there!  I had been so focused on her top teeth coming in because that is the order they generally come in, that I totally missed that this one was through! It was just a reminder to me that each baby has their own order to things and their own timeline, that I can't expect everything to be on cue for how other babies develop!  One of her top front teeth is 99% through as of today, too.  I can't believe she's getting so many teeth! They are so cute, though, and I'm glad that there is a reason behind her grouchiness.

Lately she has been figuring out how to be mobile.  She has been 'crawling' since right around six months, but it was more scooting very quickly than anything. Last week she learned that if Brad was laying on the floor she could use him to get up on her feet. Since then, she has gone wild! She is climbing over pillows and pulling herself to her knees on anything she can hold on to.  Today she moved from pulling herself only to her knees to pulling herself all of the way up. She still is pretty tipsy when she gets up unless I'm there to make sure she doesn't tip over. Her absolutely favorite thing to do is to climb on the pillow I put in front of the Xbox until it collapses just enough that she can get her finger on the power button. She will turn it on and off as fast as she can until I pull her away. She thinks it's such a fun game and will go back again and again until I get frustrated and put her in her highchair, her exersaucer, or we go upstairs and play in her room.  When we get to her room it's a whole other game.  She absolutely LOVES playing with the doorstop. She loves pulling it back so that it springs and makes a loud noise. I have some of the cutest videos of her laughing so hard at it. She is so easily entertained and I absolutely love it!

She also has started figuring out that she can pick things up and drop them in a different spot. She likes to through her snacks off of her highchair and her pacifiers behind her crib. We have started to put multiple pacifiers with her during her naps and at night, and I still will go in there when she wakes up and they are nowhere to be seen. She really cracks me up.

Here she is on her way to the Xbox

Trying to get to the stuff on the couch:

Standing in her crib:

Watching Cinderella with a front row view

I love being Sarah's mom. She is really so amazing and I love to watch her change every single day. I'm lucky that she's so incredible and that her dad is such a great man, too.  It is so fun to see Brad play with Sarah when he is home because they love each other so much. I'm so blessed to have such a great little family! 

8 Months Have Gone By

Well it's officially been 8 months and two days since Sarah was born. I can't believe it! She is growing up so fast and I love it, but at the same time I wish it could slow down. She is such a fast crawler now and I have learned I can't turn my back for even a second. The other day I turned around to put something in the dresser drawer and when I turned back around she was under my bed! She thought it was really funny, too.  She can now get up on her knees and pull herself up onto furniture. Her new favorite trick is to turn the xbox on and off.  She is such a good eater, too. She absolutely loves anything with sweet potatoes in it. She inhales turkey and chicken and this morning she had cinnamon pears with oatmeal. She could eat her puffs all day long if I let her, and four at a time, too. I love the things that Sarah does every day!

Halloween is almost here and it's one of our favorite holidays. I think we've been to every Halloween store from Salt Lake to Provo in the last two weeks. we found a great deal on Sarah's Halloween costume at a store in Draper. She is (hopefully) going to be Cinderella.  We tried on her dress the day after we bought it and it turns out that she absolutely hates the material it is made out of. Because it is her first Halloween and her costume was SO inexpensive, I think we will just try to have her wear it that night and even if she only lasts for some pictures, it will still be fun!  We bought a bunch of pumpkins at Maceys for 10 cents a pound, which I thought was an incredible deal! On Brad's next days off, we are going to carve them and stick Sarah in one for some pictures. We'll see how that goes!

Now it's time to stop procrastinating and start studying for my next midterm. Going to school and being a mom and a wife is hard work! It's going to pay off someday though and I can't wait until graduation!!

Seven Months Later

I'm hoping to update this more, but honestly I don't know if I will! Life is so incredibly busy lately for our family.  Brad is currently working at Gold Cross Ambulance at their station in Midvale. It's been really nice to have him home a bit more, even if his shifts are 24 hours instead of 12 now. He is also finishing up his degree at UVU and will be graduating in December! He's also spending some time at the Pleasant Grove Fire Department.  He's a busy man! As for me, I'm back to school at BYU and am planning on graduating in August at the latest. Between taking care of Sarah and getting my schoolwork done, I'm really busy, too. Life is going really well for us, though, and we are glad to be coming to the end of this phase of school.  I'm extremely grateful for my mom because she watches Sarah while Brad is at work and I'm at school. Luckily, I'm only in school on Tuesdays and Thursdays!

Sarah has sure changed since my last post.  She is growing up way too quickly! Her first tooth came through during the opening ceremonies of the London Olympics. Her second tooth came through a couple days later. I can't believe how big teeth get right away! She turns 7 months on Saturday. It's gone by so fast. She is getting around really well, too. I can't really explain the way she crawls, but it's pretty hilarious! She sits up for a really long time and loves to play with all of her toys. She eats everything in sight, too. She is a really good eater and especially loves bananas and sweet potatoes. It's amazing to me that she is old enough to eat puffs now and boy does she love eating them. Sometimes she eats a lot in one sitting and sometimes I find most of them in her highchair. Sleeping through the night is still a major issue, but we are down to waking up 2-3 times a night, which is amazing for me! I'm hoping that she will start sleeping through the night any day now! We are finally figuring out a schedule and she has become the happiest baby, which I absolutely love. I could honestly go on all day about how cute, fun and simply amazing Sarah is.  Sarah and Brad are so cute together, too. I absolutely adore my little family.

Our Baby Story

Well, after 38 1/2 weeks of pregnancy, I was definitely ready to meet my beautiful daughter! Brad was at work on Valentine's Day, so I crashed at my parents house for the day. I had been having contractions off and on for a couple weeks, but that night around 6 pm they got worse...much worse. I tried really hard to convince myself they were just Braxton Hicks because Brad wasn't there and I was determined that she wasn't going to come even a minute before my due date. I decided to just sit in pain with Todd, Catrina, and my parents until Brad got off work and picked me up. Once Brad got to their house, I was convinced that even though my contractions had been 5 minutes apart, lasting over a minute each for 3 hours straight that I wasn't in labor. We went home and while Brad fell asleep, I laid in bed until the morning still having contractions. At about 8 am, I called my doctors office to see if they thought I should go to the hospital. Because I had been dilated 3 cm and 80% effaced since 36 weeks, they didn't hesitate to send me to the hospital. I decided to shower and make sure everything was packed before we left for the hospital. At about 10 am we checked into Labor and Delivery to start the baby monitoring. I couldn't believe it!

They hooked me up to a couple different monitors to measure my blood pressure, the baby's heartbeat and my contractions. It was cool to see my contractions on the monitor because I could prove that I wasn't making it all up! At about 11 am the nurse decided that I should walk around the floor for an hour because I wasn't progressing very quickly. After the hour was up she would check everything again and see if I was getting closer to delivery or if I was simply experiencing Braxton Hicks. Brad and I did so many laps around the labor and delivery floor. I thought the hour would never end! My feet hurt so bad just doing normal daily activity that after an hour of walking they killed! The nurse hooked me back up to everything and monitored everything for about 30 minutes. She came back in and told me that she thought that I should just get a morphine shot to take the pain away and go home to sleep for the day because it could just have been Braxton Hicks. She left to go get the shot and I was so frustrated. I knew I was in pain and that it felt worse than ever before! Fifteen minutes later she came in and told me that she had been watching my monitor and that she didn't actually feel comfortable sending me home because my contractions were so consistent. This was it...I really was in labor!!!

Then began the fun part. More waiting. By this time I was dilated to 5 cm and 100% effaced. Only 5 more to go! They decided that Dr. Glenn should come in and break my water to get things moving a lot faster. Before he got there, the nurses started an IV on me. I could not believe how painful this part was! My nurse tried on my left hand and blew the vein. She then missed the vein completely on my right side and decided to go get a better nurse to try again. That nurse had to fish around on my left hand for what seemed like forever, but she finally got the IV in. I was not very happy with the nurses because it hurt so badly! After they got the IV in, the anesthesiologist came in to give me my epidural. I felt when he gave me the numbing shot, but when he said he was done with the epidural, I thought he was joking. I didn't feel it at all! That was the part I was most worried about, and I had no idea he had done it at all. What a blessing! The epidural worked really quickly and was the best decision for me! Soon after I got my epidural, Dr. Glenn showed up to break my water. That was quick and painless as well, thanks to the epidural!

After all of that fun stuff, we just kept waiting. The nurse came in about every hour to see how much I had progressed. To pass the time, Brad had brought a season of the TV show Scrubs, so we watched a few episodes of that and some TV. By about 6 pm my contractions started to hurt very badly. The nurse contacted Dr. Glenn and they decided that because I was officially fully dilated that I would start pushing at 7:30 pm, after about an hour of rest. I was excited when the nurse told me that the average pushing time was 2 hours because that meant that I was so close to being able to hold my baby girl! Brad was so helpful in this process - even when I got mad at him because he was counting to 10 too slow! I kept looking at the clock to calculate how much longer I had until the 2 hour mark. The nurse kept telling me that the baby was getting closer and closer and that I was doing so well, but I still didn't have my daughter in my arms after 2 hours of pushing. What luck! Dr. Glenn showed up about 9:30 pm to check on my progress. The end of my labor was finally in sight! Thank goodness, because by now I hadn't slept in a couple days and I was practically asleep in the delivery room!

At 10:11 pm, my beautiful daughter was born. At that moment, I was so grateful that Brad was there and that our family had grown more complete. After Brad cut her umbilical cord and the nurses cleaned her up a little bit, I got to hold her for the first time. Even though I was completely exhausted, that was such an incredible moment that I will never forget. I could not believe that she was finally in my arms and that she was absolutely perfect. The nurses then took her to the warming table to clean her up even more, give her the vitamin K shot and the eye drops, and take her first measurements. She weighed 7 pounds 1 ounce and was 20 inches long.

I got to hold her again and still couldn't believe that she was mine. It was so surreal that the 38 weeks of waiting, preparing, and planning was over! After seeing her and holding her, we decided to name her Sarah Naomi Larsen. Sarah is a family name on both sides of the family, and Naomi is my Grandma Brewer's middle name. I absolutely love her name and it is so perfect for her. Our parents had been in the waiting room for hours and it was getting really late, so we let them come in the room to see our baby. It was such a happy experience but I'm pretty sure I only remember half of it because I was SO tired and SO hungry. I remember how glad I was that they were all there, though!

After our parents left, the nurses took Sarah to the nursery to wash her, check her vitals, and get her dressed. While they did this, I ate some snacks and then they took me to my room on the Mother/Baby floor. After a few minutes, Brad and Sarah came into our room. We settled in for the night at about 12:30 am. I didn't sleep well that night even though I was extremely tired because I couldn't stop thinking about how much my life had changed in such a short time. I was happy that she had arrived safely and that she was so perfect!

I'm so glad that everything went well with her birth and I'm even more glad that the first month of her life has been such a wonderful experience. It's been really hard and really tiring, but it's been so worth it. Brad has been such a great help with Sarah and he is such an amazing father. I really appreciate all he does when he is at home. Our families have also been a great help to us, especially when Brad is at work. I'm so grateful that our families are so close and that they are always willing to help with anything that we need. I have learned to much from my mom over the last month and could not imagine how much harder this all would have been without her so close!

Sarah is growing more and more each day. She is such a healthy baby. Most of the time she is a pretty good sleeper, but some nights are still so hard because she wants to stay awake all night! Her newborn clothes are starting to get a little tight and I am dreading the day when she can't wear them anymore. They are so cute! She has lots of cute clothes that are bigger, though, so it will be okay. Sarah is so unbelievably strong. She has liked tummy time since week 1 and is always looking around and lifting her head up. Her facial expressions are constantly making us laugh and she tends to smile right before she spits up. We love the fun things that she does every day and we even love when she explodes out of her diaper or spits up everywhere. I can't think of anything that we don't just absolutely love about her! She is such an incredible blessing that has been placed in our lives and I am forever grateful for the great blessing she is within our family. She is just the best!!