LATE POSTING: She is here!!!

Who: Jessica Lynn Johnson
Day: Saturday June 20, 2009
Time: 2:47 pm
Weight: 8 lbs 3 oz
Length: 21 inches
Pictures:






Sorry it has taken me so long to get this posted, I don't really have an excuse other than I have someone that depends on me for absolutely everything... you know how it goes. Anyway, for those of you who have absolutely been dying to hear the gory details of the delivery here it goes...

Saturday morning I woke up about 4:00 to go to the bathroom, and on the way my water broke. Soaked my clothes half way to the knee. Lovely feeling, I know. I did not want to wake up Jacob right away because I knew it was going to be a long day for him, so I got a few things together, and then I woke him up. We got to the hospital around 4:30 a.m. and sat in the triage room until close to 6:15. I hate those small, uncomfortable beds in there so I was glad when we finally got a room in Labor and Delivery. I was dilated to 5 by 7:30 (at which time I got an epidural), and stayed that way until they gave me pitocin (around 10) to speed things up. By ......


So I never finished this post. So here is a rough (8 months later) finish.

They gave me another dose of the epidural around 11:00 or so because it was wearing off and I was feeling the contractions although I though I was just feeling the pressure. I was getting tired really fast and when I started crying over nothing they told me I was getting more medicine. 5 minutes later I was talking and laughing again like nothing happened. About 1:30 they decided I was dilated enough so they prepped the room for the delivery and had me start pushing about 1:45. An hour later Jessica was here. I needed a few stitches, but everything else went really well. It made me cry to see Jacob holding Jessica and the way he looked at her. He was smitten from the first moments.

I was so happy to have so much family there with me in the Delivery room. Jacob, Mom (both of you), Deanna. And all of you waiting in the lobby. That was such a special day and I am glad so many of you could share that with us.

By the way, I loved the epidural. My mom kept looking at the monitors, then looking at me and asking, "and you didn't feel that?" ... Mine was the first delivery she has witnessed with an epidural.

Jacob

Alright. On to updating on Jacob. He is still as handsome and as wonderful as ever in case you were all wondering...

Oh I love this man. He does so much for me and Jessica. He works so hard to bring home the dough... guess its up to me to cook it :) hehe.

Jacob finished classes in April of 2009, graduated in May, took his board exams the end of that month, waited for his results and certification to be able to put out official applications for work. So he put out applications, and applications and applications. In AZ, in UT (daring eh? We all know how he dislikes the cold, so that would almost be considered suicide right? hehe). .... June. Nothing. July. Nothing. August. Nothing... get the picture? We were getting worried. Finally October rolls around and he sees a job opening at the hospital he did his Clinical work at and applied for it. It was only part time, but got to start somewhere eh? He got the job, and started his 'training' the week before Thanksgiving (full time for the first three weeks. Fabulous), so he missed out on all of the festivities with my family, but got to have a nice dinner with most of his family.

He was able to work a few extra days here and there when his colleagues wanted a day off and needed to find someone to cover for him. Just before New Years on Sunday, he was talking to one of his co-workers who mentioned that she was working extra hours at another hospital in the same network, so she mentioned his name to her supervisor, who emailed Jacob, Jacob was interviewed and was working by Wednesday. He was able to work at the first hospital part time and fill in the rest of his hours at the second for about a month.

When one of his other co-workers told everyone that she would be having surgery, they asked Jacob if he would cover her shift while she recovered. At this point the second hospital did not need him as much because their person who was out came back, but he was able to keep up the full time with the switch. Then, a full time position opened up at the hospital, he applied for it as well as another co-worker. She got it. But, he got her shift. YEAH!!! Officially full time!!! Hooray lower health insurance premiums!!

He now works from 12:00 noon to 8:30 p.m. so I get to see him for several hours in the morning, make lunch and eat with him, make his dinner, and send him off to work. I am LOVING this schedule! (also too because Jessica goes to bed at 7:00 so I have 2 hours to do WHATEVER I want to do! And tonight that whatever led me to the conclusion that I want to start blogging again.)

Some reasons I love my Jacob:

*He loves to take me to my favorite stores (DI, Savers, etc.) and find awesome deals with me. In the past 3 weeks we have found a Kitchen aid for $80, a medela double breast pump for $25, a little people Manger scene for $15, Tons of toys for Jessica all for not more than $10.

*He loves to help me fix up things that we find at said stores. We are taking apart the kitchen aid, re-greasing it, replacing missing parts, etc.

*He is willing to try new things. While he was looking for work, his car needed work, so he searched this wonderful thing called the Internet and found tutorials on how to fix what needed to be fixed and got to work.

*He indulges me in my whims. In October I decided I wanted to getaway for the weekend, so I took him on an adventure to Sedona. He had no idea where we were going until we were leaving town. Jessica loved being on Jacob's back in the Snugli.

... Isn't Life Wonderful?

As a precursor, I want to let you all know how and why I came to the conclusion that I needed to begin my blog again.

#1 Relief Society Session of Conference, Dieter F. Utchdorf's talk on Creating (See video HERE). I WANT to create. This blog will allow me to create memories for myself and others.

#2 I see your blogs and realize how much you inspire me to do so many wonderful things, and I want to be able to inspire others the same way that all of you inspire me.

#3 Remember. I want to remember the happy times, the sad times, the hard times, the easy times. I don't really write in a journal that often, so how am I supposed to pass my life memories on to my children if I don't write them somewhere.

#4 Change. I am ready for a change in my life. I need something that makes me want to be a better person, makes me want to make changes for the better, to become the person that I have always wanted to be and I feel that I just might be able to make some of those small changes through this blog.



Now that I have told all of you why I feel a need to return to the blog, there are many things that I need to update everyone on.

So the first thing is Jessica.

Jessica Lynn was born Saturday June 25, 2009. 8 lbs 3 oz, 21 in. long, somewhere around 2:45 in the afternoon (I was focusing on getting the baby out, not the time, and even though I have seen it written down a dozen times I still cannot remember). Her first night was a rough one, she would hardly sleep at all, and I was getting so tired. Finally around midnight we called in a nurse because I could not get her settled down. The nurse brought a bottle of formula. Jessica drank an ounce, and went right to sleep. :) My good little eater! The rest of the hospital stay was not very eventful.

We were able to come home on Monday afternoon, and again the first night was rough. Jessica in a bassinet next to my bed. She would fall asleep, and wake up half an hour later. I made it through about 2:00 a.m. and then could not take it any more. I needed some sleep. Jacob took over for a few hours while I got some shut eye, and then I took over again at 5 a.m. After a little sleep I realized that she might be cold since our house is colder than the hospital, so I put a hat on her (should have thought of that before!) and she went right to sleep for a few hours.

The next few weeks we were getting used to having the baby at home, nursing and the like. At six weeks Jessica started sleeping through the night. At first it was from about 10:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m. and it gradually got longer and longer. Now she sleeps from 7:00 p.m to 6:oo a.m. She started smiling about a month old, laughing at 3 months, rolling from front to back at 4 months, back to front at 6 months, crawling at 8 months (2 weeks ago tomorrow!).

She babbles all the time, she can already say "all done" and I am pretty sure she knows what she means. Sometimes she will push the bottle away from her and say "dah dah" with the first 'dah' a high pitch, and lowering the pitch on the second 'dah'. It is the cutest thing. Jessica definitely plays hard to get. It is difficult to get her to laugh, she usually only laughs when she is tired, or when something random happens. For example, a couple weeks ago Cheryl (Jacob's mom) was having the Webelos in the ward work on their fitness badge, so we all walked down to the school and the boys were doing standing long jumps. Jessica started laughing a gut laugh when one of the boys jumped, so he kept doing it over and over to get her to laugh more.

Two of Jessica's FAVORITE toys are: my keys (probably typical of most little ones), and tissues. Yes, as in the ones that you blow your nose into. She loves to take them and tear them into a million little pieces. I will have to let her have at it sometime and take a picture of the end result. These can seriously keep her occupied for half an hour.

This is about all I can think of for the moment, but I will update you more as I REMEMBER things.


*** This has already been so therapeutic for me. I finally feel like I have something back that I have been missing for a long time. ***

Dear Readers,

I have decided to publish a retraction to my last posting. I have decided that I want to start blogging again. I have not been on for several months until the past few weeks and I realized how much I have actually missed reading everyone's blogs, and being able to read my own.

So here is to 2010, the year of REMEMBERING. Remembering the things that make me happy, remembering my friends, remembering my Savior, and sharing that with all of you.

I hope you can all forgive me for being such a slacker!

Ashley

Word of the Year

So it only took me seven months to finally decide what my word of the year is, but I finally did it. My word is SIMPLIFY. So with that, I am going to leave some things behind, things that I am not really committed to.

#1 is facebook (although I do like to reconnect with old friends, I don't know that it is worth my time to check it every day, or even once a week.)

#2 is probably this blog. I don't update it often enough for it to really let you all know what is going on in my life, so instead I think I will just start calling people and building a real relationship... not just an "I know what you have been up to" relationship. So if you want me to call you just leave a comment with your number if you don't know if I have it or not and if you know that I have your number, just tell me how good I look or something :).... don't worry the comments will not be public so I will be the only one that gets your number.

Hope to hear from all of you!

Nope, not yet.

For those of you that are anxiously awaiting the post that will announce to the world that I have gone in to labor, you will just have to wait a little longer. This little one seems very content hanging out where she is at, she must really like being curled up in a little ball with little/no stretching room.

So yesterday I was having contractions for several hours, only about a few minutes apart, but they did not seem like they were getting much stronger and I could still walk and talk through them. I really did not want to go to the hospital, sit there for a few hours (so uncomfortable) and have them send me home, so I hung out at the house, read a couple chapters from a book, took a nap and drank TONS of water (I can't believe how much I have been able to drink this past week!!). Eventually the contractions stopped, or at least I was distracted enough to not notice them anymore.

So anyway on to the rest of my week... Jacob got back from Virginia/D.C. on Monday (his b-day) and I took him (well, he drove of course) to Krispy Kreme for his FREE dozen doughnuts, which I gladly ate half of. I finally cleaned up the 'nursery', but when half of the things you own are in that one room, it doesn't stay clean for long... Then yesterday was my b-day, so Jacob and I took another trip to Krispy Kreme for my FREE dozen doughnuts and then last night we went to Coldstone for our FREE ice cream. Gotta love the birthday freebies!!

P.S. If you want the birthday freebies, all you have to do for the Krispy Kreme is show up on your birthday and show your ID and you get a free dozen... for Coldstone you have to sign up for the birthday club on their website, and you can print out the coupon (good for a week before/after your birthday)

Lovin' College Classes

You definitely have to love what you learn in College. My second semester at ASU I took a programming class, which came in handy today. I felt like changing up my blog a bit and putting in my own picture as a background, and I wanted to change the layout so with the help of Simply Chic Blog I was able to get the code to use my own picture. I uploaded my picture to the internet (after much hassle with getting it the right size) and then proceeded to change other coding to make my posts wider so I could get more on each line. Now I am not all that great with programming as it has been 3 years since I finished the class, but I am sure glad I know enough to get what I want done (or get me into trouble - whichever way you want to look at it).

Hopefully Jacob likes the new look, otherwise I will have to change the background pic to another picture that I took, or a picture I will create. No more of these backgrounds anyone else in the world can use. I want mine unique and I want it to fit my personality.