Baby Update

I've been getting a lot of phone calls lately and I'm kind of just waiting around anyways so I thought I'd post a short little update for anyone interested.
Well, still no baby. I had false labor on Monday and got all psyched up to welcome Gwen into the world only to have the labor stop after about 10-12 hours. It wasn't horrible labor, just a bit painful so I guess I should expect a bit worse for the real thing. It's hard to have a clear concept of what it will really be like since Lincoln was induced and the induction didn't work for a while so when I went into labor, I was already in the hospital, pumped full of pitocin (that didn't work) and given cervidil (awful!).
I went to the Dr. today and she stripped my membranes a little more. She also told me I was still dilated to a 2 and about 70% effaced still.
I think the false labor was started by the castor oil I took. It worked for several of my siblings, but apparently not for me. Anybody else have any luck with castor oil? I was really reluctant to take it, but eventually did. It didn't do much for me. It didn't even do what it was intended to do. It was as if I hadn't even taken it. That is until about 2am when I started feeling those contractions.
So, to end this post, pretty much nothing is new, still no baby, but I know she'll have to come soon- the Dr. told me she wouldn't let me go past 41 weeks. Plus, I'm not really feeling miserable. On the bright side, I'm still getting excellent sleep because I don't have a newborn waking me up all night. And, I can still go the store easily because I only have one child to fit into the cart.
By the way, I'm not annoyed with the phone calls, if you're someone who has called me. It's actually fun to talk to everyone, I'm just sorry to disappoint you all with no baby news.

Christmas 2008

First of all, no baby yet, but I wasn't really expecting her to come just yet- my babies seem to really like being inside of me and thus are more prone to be late than anything else.
Second of all, we had a wonderful Christmas and I wanted to post about it before Gwen comes.

Christmas Eve was a very busy day for us. We went to my Dr. appointment to find that I'm still only dilated to about a 1 and am somewhat effaced (she didn't give me any percentage), but other than that everything looks great so that's always good.
Then we went to a Dr. appointment for Lincoln(his 18-month well-check) and waited in the office forever for him to finally get a shot. After that we had several more errands to run before we headed over to my parents house for the festivities there.
We had a great dinner, Christmas Nativity re-enactment, and gift-exchange game. Some highlights of the game are of dad almost ending up with box of 10 glow-in-the-dark puzzles, Zach's gift of a hot-dog roller, hatchet, and machete (you'll have to ask him to explain the hot-dog roller) and my 11-year old nephew wanting to take away my extremely feminine headband, gloves and scarf purely because they came with chocolates (I promised him some of the chocolates if he didn't take away my gift and I kept my word). We did everything really early so that we as parents wouldn't be so exhausted and would have the chance to get kids home to bed at a decent time. We actually got Lincoln into bed around 8:30pm I think- it was great!
Christmas morning we slept in, had breakfast, then took Lincoln in to see his gifts. He immediately spotted his trike, walked straight to it and climbed on with a somewhat awed look on his face. We opened our other gifts and cleaned up to head back out to my parents.


I know it's cut-off but it's the best picture we have of Lincoln trying to sit on his four-wheeler- what a funny kid!


Christmas night we had a great feast- similar to Thanksgiving dinner with Turkey and all the fixins and visited with family- I even got to talk to my brother Rick, his wife Janae and their son Wyatt for a little bit who are way out on the East Coast! (Can't wait to see you guys soon!)



the newest little Shamo- Baby Aiden- Darrin and Tiffany's little boy born on Sunday (he has Shamo eyes for sure!)

The best thing about Christmas is the chance to really slow down even if just for a day and spend it with family.

Lincoln- 18 months

I'm beginning to feel a little sorry for Lincoln, anticipating the arrival of Gwen and the forthcoming lessening of attention he'll be receiving from both Zach and I. Sometimes I look at him and think, how will I be able to let him know that I love him just as much when I'm not able to spend as much time one-on-one with him. I know things will work out and it'll be great- but right now, it's really hard to fathom how I'll be able to be a good mom to two babies.
For that reason, and because it's about time I did this, I'm posting just about Lincoln who turned 18 months on Sunday and is officially a nursery child. Besides, how many other times do we celebrate our half-birthdays?
One of the greatest things about Lincoln is that he is an incredibly loving little boy. He'll give Zach and I hugs and kisses almost everytime we ask him and will let me hold and cuddle him a ton. This makes him a little clingy, but that's okay-I'll take the sort-of-bad with the great.
kissing "the baby"

Lincoln has always seemed to be very interested with anything mechanical, electronic, or that has wheels. Every time he sees my dad, he immediately looks towards his belt because my dad carries his cell-phone in a carrier on his belt. Everytime he sees Zach's mom and dad, he immediately looks to their wrists because he's learned how to use the indiglo button on their watches. He has a small collection of old and toy cell phones that aren't quite as interesting as the real thing. His first real word, besides mommy and daddy, is bike, only it sounds like biyee. He says that everytime he sees a four-wheeler, or whenever we're at Target or Wal-mart near the bikes. He LOVES them! One time while sitting behind Lincoln on the four-wheeler I had just shut off, I sat a talked with someone in the garage. Suddenly, the bike roared to life and had we not been in neutral, we would have lurched into the four-wheeler in front of us. Apparently, Lincoln had learned how to turn the thing on- he's miles ahead of me there. Working on the computer when Lincoln's around is impossible because he'll go for the mouse, keyboard, power button, printer, you name it. I don't think I have to look far to figure out where his interests come from.
Lincoln is also an excellent sleeper. I hope I don't jinx myself with posting this. Lincoln goes to bed pretty happy at night on most nights around 8:30pm and doesn't wake up until around 8:00 or 8:30am for the most part. Every once in a while he'll wake up at 7:30-ish, but he'll usually just talk to himself for a while in bed until I go get him. He also takes good naps when he's at home and decent naps when he's not. All this sleeping makes for a happy child and I'm grateful he seems to enjoy his rest.
Lincoln doesn't like pain at all and I always know when he is teething. It seems to take him forever to get teeth. In fact he just barely got his 7th, 8th, and 9th tooth this past week.
He's a wonderful little boy and we wouldn't trade him for any other in the world ever!

Peyton's Birthday

Peyton, Lincoln's cousin, has some of the best birthday parties. This year it was held at Lied Discovery Children's Museum. It's basically a hands-on science museum for kids. I took my kids there on field trips when I was a teacher and they always had a great time. It was fun to see my family and Lincoln there. Lincoln didn't understand everything, but there was a toddler section he could enjoy. Zach, however, had a blast. I could hardly tear him away from a dam-building center. It's funny, he does that sort of thing for a living- you'd think he'd want a break! He also seemed to have fun with the hurricane wind tunnel and the turn table. Lincoln also really enjoyed the wheel chairs (they were supposed to be for playing wheel-chair basketball), of course Lincoln likes anything with wheels. It was a great afternoon thanks to Jamie and Brandon!

Snowed In?!?

It started out innocently enough with just a couple flakes and I thought, oh how fun- it never snows here! Then I went to piano lessons for an hour and came out to this...


I really got excited then, despite the fact that I HATE driving in the snow (I used to walk up to BYU campus in Provo at night on a snowing-freezing evening rather than drive- it just wasn't worth it to me).

When I got back to my parent's house I dressed Lincoln up and we went outside to enjoy what I thought was going to be a short-lived snow day. I just happened to have my camera that day(never happens) so I snapped a ton of pictures. Here are a few.


a view down the street- Teresa, I thought you could benefit from this one:)


my sister-in-law and her kids building a snowman



my parents front yard- reminds me of Narnia





We were enjoying the snow and as we watched it continuing to come down for hours, I began to think hmmmmm...I'm going to have to drive in that to get home. And then I discovered that one of the two ways to get home had been closed due to the weather and the only other way was slightly more dangerous. I therefore conclude that I'd have to stay the night at my parents. Meanwhile I tell Zach my dilemma and he thinks I'm overexaggerating the whole thing because where he works was only getting a little snow- nothing sticking. He thought that until he had to drive home and had a very close call in T-boning some guy spinning out of control in his truck as he drove at a snails speed on the slick roads close to our home. He ended up parking down the street from our home because we live on a hill and he didn't think he could get the truck up the driveway into our home. He then called to tell me it was probably smart that I wasn't driving home. I was just very grateful that I had a place to stay while stuck out there and that Zach and all of my family were able to be safe, wherever they were.
I should also say that I really enjoyed the snow- it was so beautiful and fun; I don't mean to suggest I didn't. Although, it would have been more fun if Zach could have been with Lincoln and I.
On a funny side note, my dad, a big kid himself, was stuck in Salt Lake because his airline had cancelled all of their flights in and out of Vegas. He was so bummed he kept calling people in my family and telling them how boring it was up there. I know he would have LOVED to have been here to see the snow in person, despite the fact that he was somewhere where there's snow all the time.

Here are more pictures as the night wore on.



going out again with Lincoln and his make-shift snow gear

All told, the news said that our part of town had received about 8-10" of snow. Unbelievable!

Gotta Love the Holidays...

I think I've decided that this may be one of the best times to be 9 months pregnant for several reasons.
1. Normally at this time of year I'm FREEZING. I really can't handle cold, that's why I live in Southern Nevada. However, when one is 9 months pregnant, the personal body temperature is considerably higher. Therefore, I've been able to get by outside with just a light jacket and most of the time we don't even have our heater on (Don't worry, Lincoln sleeps with an electric radiator in his room, we don't make him suffer).
2. I'm so busy with all the holiday stuff, I haven't had time to consider feeling miserable-I'm actually hoping this baby doesn't come until after Christmas (most of the time).
3. Believe it or not, having a baby at this time of year helps me focus a little more on the true story of Christmas, even though Christ wasn't really born at this time of year.


Here's a little of what we've been up to...

Christmas Tree Lighting at Lake Las Vegas

Visting Santa at the Ethel Chocolate Factory Cactus Garden with my Sis and her kids. Yes, Zach is wearing his letterman's jacket- I have little to no influence on what he wears, just for the record. Lincoln was a little afraid of Santa and had no desire to sit on his lap.

Winter piano recital for my students. Sorry, no pictures of that, I was kind-of stressed so I didn't grab my camera. We held it in our little house and the place was packed! If I have as many students or more next year, I think I'll have the recital somewhere else. I had 7 of my students play and I think it went well. I didn't ask the adults to play and 3 of my younger students weren't able to come. If they had, I don't know where we would have put them.



Satisfying the nesting urges. I've been really wanting to organize and to do that, we've needed some furniture to put things in. We've found some AMAZING and I mean AMAZING deals on these pieces of furniture. Our house is really coming together now. These are actually our Christmas gifts this year (thank you Craigslist and Costco!). We also got some shelves for our office to really organize it and my dear hubby is going to refinish our filing cabinet so it looks presentable for our office. Perhaps more pictures will be forthcoming for that. It feels so good to get organized and the new year hasn't even started yet!

Hope the Holidays is finding all well with all of you!

Thanksgiving 2008

This year Thanksgiving was spent up with all of Zach's family.
We had a lot to do and Lincoln loved being able to wander around inside and out with his cousins. I think he felt so free, he never wanted to take his naps. However, when we did put him down for his naps, he was out in less than a minute each time.
Wednesday Zach and I went for a short four-wheeler ride while Lincoln took his nap. We also had fun visiting with all the family much of the rest of the day while the kids ran free.
Thursday was spent preparing dinner and more visiting as well as movie watching and ping-pong games.

Friday we got some good deals shopping at the local Ace Hardware store. We also picked Mom Hills' beans and bottled them. Zach and Tim continued their ping pong games and Zach went shooting with Tim and Dad Hills. That evening we had homemade pumpkin pie ice cream made with the cream from Jodi's cow and made gingerbread houses, trains, and snowmen.






Saturday there were horseback rides and more four-wheeling. Then we headed back home.
We had such a great time!