It is hard to believe that two years have gone by so fast.  I am so grateful for my sweet son.  He is the sunshine in my life (especially now that we won’t have any sun all winter).

Here’s an update on JZ.  JZ can now build extensive train tracks and could play all day pushing his trains on it and rearranging the track.  He loves to get a super long train with all the cars he can find, usually 12 or 13.  Lately he has taken to playing with dinosaurs.  He holds one in each hand and then roars like each dinosaur is roaring.  He also just loves roaring.  In the car, at church, you name it!  If you roar back, he will crack up laughing and you will be stuck in a roaring competition.  Don’t even try it, though; he always wins.  My voice gets hoarse way before he will stop.  JZ’s favorite food is still cheese, unless you count chocolate milk as a food.  When he is hungry he goes into the kitchen and pulls on the fridge door.  Thankfully, he still can’t open by himself or else I would constantly be out of cheese.

JZ loves Nursery class at church.  He plays nicely with the other kids and listens well during the lesson.  He is learning lots of songs including “I Am A Child of God” and “I love to see the temple”.  At the grocery store, JZ is a good helper.  He has figured out the process of shopping.  You look at the shelves, pull an item off the shelf and put it in the cart.  Now that he can reach the cart, he pulls all sorts of stuff off the shelves and rolls it over the edge and into the cart.  One day, he found a glass bottle of beer and was trying to get it into the cart.  It was kind of heavy for him and he was struggling to push it over the edge.  I was not paying attention but luckily, a lady saw him and said something and I grabbed the bottle before it could crash onto his head and send glass shards and alcohol all over the floor.

He is such a good big brother.  He loves to help Emily by giving her toys, hugging her, or patting her on the back when she is crying.  Sometimes in the mornings, I hear the kids awake and go into their room.  JZ likes to lay in bed until I come in.  I say good morning and take Emmy out of the crib.  JZ holds his arms in the air until I put Emily into his arms.  They lay on his bed and he cuddles her and strokes her hair. 

I love my little man so much and I am proud of all that he has accomplished so far.

Birth:                                               4 months:

6 months:                                    9 months:

1 year:                                       18 months:

2 years:

JZ has gotten really good with Lego's.  He built this tower all by himself.  I think he is going to turn out to be a great architect.

JZ, Emily and I went to California to visit Grandma and Grandpa.  Our cousins have been here for the last week and their mom (my sister) will come tomorrow.  JZ was such a great helper at the airport and wanted to pull the luggage!  The flight went really well.  Emily slept the whole trip and JZ played with toys.  Today we took Emily swimming for the first time.  She seemed to really like it and didn’t even mind her big cousins splashing her a little.  JZ fell into the hot tub face first.  He was just sitting on the edge and Grandpa was taking pictures.  JZ was looking the pool and then, plop!  He was underwater.  I grabbed him out fast and he coughed a little, but didn’t even cry.  He was awfully surprised, though!  Check out our pics so far and stay updated – later in the week I will put up more.

Today we went to South 47 Farm in Redmond for Farm Tots.  We’ve never gone before, but it is a pretty neat activity.  JZ tromped all over the place while Emily slept peacefully in my front pack.  We rode on a wagon ride behind a tractor which JZ thought was awesome.  They had baby pools filled with dirt that we dug for worms in.  JZ liked to hold the worm on his hand while it wriggled around.  We pet a baby chicken and a goat.  We also saw alpacas, but those were a little too scary for JZ.  At the end, we went into the fields and picked a head of lettuce to take home.  Mmmmm… we are going to have yummy salad tonight!

You would not believe how many times a day I hear some variation on this phrase!  Emily does have quite the do and sure gets a lot of attention for it.  I try to wet it down and comb it so it won’t look so crazy, but it always sticks right back up!

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I love to go to garage sales!  Last Saturday, I found the jackpot of all garage sales.  I got all these clothes, shoes, jackets, a snow suit, swimsuit and a Snugli for $10.  At the store, I could have gotten one t-shirt for that price.  Altogether, I got 91 items!  That is roughly 10 cents per item!  What a deal.  And it is all in really good condition.  The lady had sooooo many clothes, so I am sure she couldn’t have put each outfit on more than a couple of times before her kids grew out of them.  Yay for me!

Emily is already figuring out the benefits of an opposable thumb.  She tries so hard to get her thumb in her mouth, but the hand-eye coordination is not quite there yet.  She scraped her eye with her index finger and started crying.

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Emily has had a hard time getting the hang of nursing.  When we went for our postpartum visit at the hospital on Tuesday, she was down to 6 lbs, 15 oz.  That is more than a 10% drop from her birth weight of 7 lbs, 14 oz, so we had to supplement her every feeding with a bottle of breast milk.  Today my mom and I brought Emily back to the clinic to weigh her and she is up to 7 lbs, 7 oz!  Yay!!!  We were so happy and already celebrating when my mom lifted Emily off the scale.  She started peeing all over the scale, the floor and my mom!  As she set her back down Emily spit up a ton on my mom’s hands.  Too bad we were on the way to the airport for my mom’s flight home with baby pee on her shirt!  It has been so great to have her here.  I am not sure I am going to be able to do this without her.

More photos of Emily and her crazy brother:

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We thought it would be cute to get a picture of Emily and JZ’s feet together.  Yesterday, we got the two all ready to go, but JZ was not in the mood to lie still for even a millisecond.  We got a couple of pictures and then thought we should put my feet in as well.  You can see how well that worked out!

We were discharged from the hospital this afternoon at 1:00 pm.  We picked up JZ from the Self’s house (who have been just amazing!) and then headed home.  It is so good to be back in our home!  I took an awesome nap in my own bed – so much better than the hospital bed!  One of my visiting teachers brought over a great dinner and now we are relaxing and playing games.  JZ was a bit jealous when he saw Emily in his old car seat.  After I took her upstairs to nap, Dan said JZ climbed into the car seat.  He is getting used to the idea now and even helped rock Emily in her seat.  It is all finally starting to sink in.  It is hard to believe that we are now a family of four!

Jess was driving me to work this morning and at around 9:01am she had a contraction. We had no reason to think anything of it, except she had a second one at 9:04. Contractions continued and by the time we got to work, we decided to turn back. Before we got home, we already knew that we just had to collect our belongings and head directly to our friend’s to watch JZ and then over to the hospital. We called the hospital before we got home and by the time we finally got there, they had been expecting us. They quickly moved us to get Jess checked out and at 10:49am, we were officially admitted! And 5 cm dilated (Jess was 3 cm a week ago).

Once they got us in our room, we had two nurses in high gear getting everything ready, baby table, IVs, forms, charts, etc. When we asked about why they were setting up the baby table already, they told us it was because “we know your type”. The nurses were Mary and Lynn, the unit manager.

She quickly dilated to 7cm and then 8cm. It was painful for Jess, but they needed to get everything else done before they could give Jess the epidural. The epidural finally came from Dr. Smith. I almost passed out, but not from the needle, but because it was 85 degrees in the room from a broken thermostat and I was dying of heat and lack of food. (Yea, yea, yea. Poor me. Spare me your lecture of how bad Jess has it. I’m just saying it all.) Thankfully, Lonny, the engineer, came and lowered it down to 65 for us. And I found the fridge and got a sandwich in me.

It’s 12:31pm, and they just broke her water. She’s now at 9 cm and having contractions every 3-5 minutes. The doctor is on his way from Issaquah (20 minutes away). Let’s see who gets here first.

Keep refreshing this page. I post more info as I get it.

12:53: Doctor Paley showed up. He won. But not by much apparently. It’s time to push!

1:23: Emily Elizabeth was born at 1:09pm. She has brown hair and a lot of it. No measurements yet. Mommy and baby are doing great.

1:28:  Emily is 20.5” and 7lbs. 14 oz.

2:23: Pictures added. Click album below.

4:24 JZ met his new little sister.  He mostly ran around the curtain that hangs by the door, but he was intrigued by Emily.  He touched her forehead and pulled off her hat.  I think he is going to be a great big brother!

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We had a great trip for Easter.  When we arrived on Saturday afternoon, my parents picked us up and we all drove down to Arizona where my sister lives.  We caught the last show of the Easter pageant at the Mesa temple.  We had a beautiful Easter with Jenny and her family.  We floated down the river, took a mini train ride, and celebrated my 25th birthday.

On Wednesday, we drove back to California.  My parents took us to Universal Studios for my birthday on Thursday.  JZ got to meet Curious George.  We had a great time at the beach on Friday and Saturday and played at the pool.  Unfortunately, our colds got pretty bad and on Friday I went to Urgent Care because my ear hurt so much.  We had the doctor check Dan out while we were there.  We both have ear infections and Dan’s throat is also infected.  So now we are on antibiotics and starting to feel a little better.

Early Saturday morning, my mom and I went to some garage sales.  One house was selling off a whole bunch of scrapbooking stuff.  Check out the picture I took of all the great stuff I got for only $29! 

Check out our pictures from our trip.  Hope you all had a wonderful Easter and thank you for all the birthday wishes!

After helping me sort laundry JZ decided to explore the laundry basket.  Who knew it could be so much fun!

We visited the Bellevue Botanical Gardens to see their annual light display.  Every year just gets better and better.  They make such great replicas of the flowers I couldn’t help taking a million pictures.  Here is a picture I took when we visited the gardens in September and one of the lights.  It is one of my favorite flowers and I immediately recognized it in lights.  See our other pictures in the photo album on the right.

We hope you all had a wonderful Christmas! We had a quiet Christmas at home but really enjoyed our time together.

Santa brought us a new Xbox 360 game called You’re in the Movies. You play a bunch of mini-games in front of the Xbox Live camera and then it automatically extracts your bodies and puts them in a movie or trailer. Optionally, you can upload your videos to the internet, so you can download them to your computer. Here’s one we did on Christmas.

Here’s our Christmas photo album.

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