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!!