The Dress and the Flower

So I have a few pictures of Lulu that I thought were cute and people would want to see. The first is of her in one of her new church dresses. I'm pretty sure this is probably the only time she will wear this particular one. You can't tell in the picture but it's a little short on her, her butt peaks out of it when she's standing...not that that's a problem for babies with cute diaper covers on but....also, it has wicked cute puffed sleeves but the cuff on them are a little tight. Not so tight that they cut of her circulation off but, tight enough that they make getting her in and out of this dress interesting, especially because she really isn't the most patient child.

The other two pics are my first attempt at making a headband for her and a little clippy flower. The head band I've had to hone my technique a little but I think I've figured it out, and the flower well...I don't know, do you guys think I chose a flower that was a little too big? :)

Anywhoodle, that's my goings on for the weekend, hope all is well with yours!

love,
Jen

Wow....another post :)

I can't believe I've posted 3 times in one week! Man.... it's like feast or famine around here! This post will be brief but I wanted to state that I now have a new favorite store and it's totally a second hand shop!!! I know...I'm more flabbergasted than anyone! Not that I don't like second hand but...I've always had a really tough time finding anything nice second hand and most of the stores I've gone too have been pretty...well they're pretty sad. But a girl from church recommended this children's consignment shop to me in Mystic CT, called Twice is Nice ( Yes, home of the movie Mystic Pizza with Julia Roberts, and the town right next door to Groton) and I went today just to check it out, not expecting a thing, and came home having only spent 30$ on six different pieces of clothing that bought new would have probably cost me over 100 $!!!! I was very excited...hence the post :) So here are the pictures of the dresses I bought L...I was excited about them because its SOSOSOSO hard to find church dresses with sleeves, and this store had an abundance, so much that I wish I'd had more money to spend cause I would have bought the whole store! And then a few pictures of L we took yesterday because she looked so cute!

Love 'till next time!
Jen

I may have done something stupid...but he his just plain dumb! ( This post is rated PG for brief Language)

Alright so...I finally cleaned up my walk-way and took some pictures of my garden today...my sister-in-laws having been working so hard on all of their projects and posting them on here that I didn't want to be left out. I've been a busy little bee myself, however there are very few of the things I have been working on that I can actually post right at this moment, BUT, my garden does happen to be one of them!

First though...I want to tell you a funny little story. My husband is on over nights right now, and he didn't get home this morning until close to 11. L was still sleeping and I was out front trying to clean my my sidewalk. Well...you'll notice the big dirty wet spot on my side walk, thats the lingering remnant of a pile of rocks and dirt I had to clean out of my flower bed and toss onto my side walk before I could do any planting. Anyway...of course they were the last thing to get cleaned up. So I brought one of our trash cans over and just started piling up the rocks in the trash can. I get all the rocks shoveled up and I go to move the can and...well it's too heavy to move. Smooth move Jen...should have figured in the weight of all those rocks. Well I call my husband out to help me move it.....

And he proceeds to be the BIGGEST PANSEY ON THE FACE OF THE PLANET!!!!!!!!! Not only does he curse at me ( the DAMN trash can!), but he makes me feel like an idiot for not thinking about what the weight of all the rocks in the trash can, and then grunts and "stubs his toe" on the weight of the can, not even moving it an inch, so he goes into the garrage all in a grumble and tell me I need to put at least 1/3 of the rocks into the other can so that we can move it.

Well I tell him to go inside, that I don't need his help, and I go about trying to fix the problem my self.

I spend the whole time while I take a few shovel fulls of rocks from one can to the other, and then procees to push and drag the can across the driveway myself, thinking about how in the world I ended up marrying a man that was such a....well a wimp!!!! I grew up with some strong, manly men surrounding me, and some of the best problem solvers too! I think of my younger brother Matt and he would have tried to help me find a way to man handle those rocks over to where I needed to be without having to unload the whole can!!

And, as I was in a very ungrateful and unforgiving mood at that point, I thought to myself...what in the world is my husband good for? The only thing he does REALLY good is go to work and bring home a paycheck!!! He stuggles with Lorelai, he struggels with helping with house work, he can't even do any manual labor around the house!!! Just this week I've had to install air conditioners( which are not light, mind you) with the help of a church friend, and move a ton of rocks out of my drive way by myself!! Who is the real man in this relationship? As it turns out...it's ME!!!

Well...I knew this blog would be cathartic, and as I've had a chance to cool down other points have hit me....first of all Erick and I are almost to our 2 year point of marriage, still pretty new to it, but pretty well past the honey moon stage. Life, well, has now begun, and we're realizing stuff about one another that, we may have notice before we got married, but it was a whole heck of alot easier to ignor with the glasses of blissful love still on. That and, there are pleanty of things that Erick does, that I would miss if he wasn't around ( and will miss when he gets deployed here in the near future) He makes me laugh like almost no one else can, he makes me be less impulsive, he's an amazing Preisthood holder who always puts 100 percent into his church duties and brings the spirit into our home, he loves L and even though bungles alot with her, its not for lack of trying and she adores him for it...the list goes on.

I've read some books lately about motherhood and being grateful and working on finding contentment in motherhood, and one of the points that was made was about learning to "make peace with the invisabilty of my efforts". So...it turns out I'm actually going to be the handy man around my own house...I'm sure that there are alot more women out there than I realize that are the handy men of their household too. At least the work will get done right? And then I can look forward to standing infront of the bar at judgement and saying " Yes Lord, I learned how to install an air conditioner and haul a ton of rocks out of my yard by myself " and count that as one of the many things I've learned along the way to progressing towards my eternal salavation.

Anyway...thats my rant for the day...here are the pictures! We've had a bit of rain lately, I think the plants in my bed have been a bit over watered so that why they look a little sad right now.....but hopefully the'll make it through!!

Love,
Jen


Before :)

After :)

Aba-ba-ba!

Alright so...Lorelai had a few little note worthy things come to pass this weekend...I tried to get them on video for all to enjoy. :) She's figured out how to move from a sitting position to onto her belly without just flopping onto her back and then rolling over. As far as I'm concerned that's one more step in the direction of actual crawling, AND, she's officially made it up onto all fours by herself (while actually being awake!), though she didn't go any where just kinda sat there for a minute and flopped back onto her belly again! Also...she's actually figured out how to babble! She's made conscious noises since she was 4 month, mostly just screaming at the top of her lungs for the fun of it, but yesterday she just started started moving her mouth and saying " aba ba ba ba ba" at a normal volume! :) I swear I heard her say "ma ma" also but...lol that may have just been wishful thinking. :) I wasn't sure if maybe it was just a fluke thing she picked up yesterday, but I woke up to her talking to herself like that in her crib this morning, and I tried to catch a little of it on video, but as soon as I busted out the camera she suddenly found other things more fascinating! But I think I got a little of it so... hope you like it! :) The first clip is wicked short, but the second one is kinda long, I wanted her to get used to the camera so that she would act normal around it. Hope you like 'em!

Love always,
Jen

Finally...a little time to update?

Well hello again! It's been weeks I know, but I have a valid reason that I'm sure you all can guess. :) Yes, that's right, we have a new baby in the house! Asher James Fletcher was born on April 22 at 11:32pm. He weighed 7lbs 7oz, and was 20.5 inches long.

Life with a newborn is as hectic as I remember it being, but AJ is a bit more chill then L was as as baby and I am SO grateful for that. I'm pretty sure Heavenly Father knew that I wasn't up to having another high maintenance baby, particularly at the point we are at in my husbands Navy career, with him having to be gone as much as he is ( more on that in a moment).

Labor went like this: I had my 39 week appointment on Tuesday the 20th, and the Dr. expressed a concern about my blood pressure, which over the course of the last month had risen from a normal 120/80 to 139/90. So they had me do some labs, and a 24 hour urine catch ( yes I had to pee in a jug for a whole day, boy wasn't that fun!) to make sure I didn't have pre-eclampsia. Went back for a follow up appointment on Thursday, and my labs came back fine but my BP was at 148/102, so they decided that rather then risk me having a serious complication, they would schedule me for an induction the following Friday morning. So the Dr. stripped my membrane while I was at the office and then sent me to the maternity wing to take a non-stress test and make sure the baby was alright. While I was doing the test, the nurse asked me how I felt and I told her that I had had a bit of a head ache all day, and she told my Dr., who then decided to just admit me and induce me that afternoon! ( I guess headaches mixed with hypertension is a bad thing. :))

So they admitted me at 230 that afternoon ( my Dr. appointment had been at 130) and I had actually started to labor on my own, because apparently my body is one of the lucky few that stripping actually works for! ( I had been stripped with L also and went into labor on my own w/in 12 hours) So when they admitted me I had dilated from a 1 in the office to a 3 w/in an hour. Erick was a work, so they stalled giving me pitocin until he could get to the hospital, and in the meantime I just progressed on my own. At 430 the Dr. came in a checked me again and I was at a 5, so they broke my water and called for the Anesthesiologist to give me an epidural, cause there was NO WAY in a million years I was gonna do it again without one! Erick showed up just before the epidural was given ( he had to step out of the room because needles freak him out :)) and they waited to give me pitocin because I was progressing well on my own. But then the epidural stalled my labor a bit, so they ended up putting me on it around 6 or 7ish, and I stayed dilated at a 5 until about 11ish, even after multiple ups of the pitocin dosage, and a revamp of my epidural because it was starting to wear off. At 11ish though, they made me turn on my side for some reason and that popped me wide open and I had him after about 4 sets of pushes at 1132pm.

I have to say...SO glad I got the epidural, I didn't feel any of the contractions and that was awesome. I did however feel all of the pushing and him coming out, which I didn't feel with L because I was so distracted by the pain of the contractions.

So he's been here for 2 weeks as of yesterday, and he's doing great! He sleeps really well, didn't really have much problems being confused with day or night after the first few days, his awake time is becoming more consistent and he sleeps for between 4 and 6 hours straight at night! Lorelai doesn't seemed bothered by him, she likes to give him his binki and give him and hug, and help bounce him in his bouncy seat, and she whines a little when he cries, I think out of sympathy and it's cute :)

I'm doing well post postpartum wise. Hardly sore at all anymore, and not nearly as depressed as I got after L, except for when it comes to my husbands job. I swear, it feels like whoever makes decisions about the boats schedule follows me around in the shadows, and schedules the boat in ways that specifically make me unhappy. :) Erick did get paternity leave ( 10 days) which was heaven on earth, and then he has been back to work this week. My family is coming out for a visit at the end of the month, and they were supposed to get here just as Erick was taking off for a longish underway, but of course they switched the schedule all up so that he is gone before they get here and after they leave but is in port for their visit! So us trying to strategically make it so my family was here and I didn't have to do the 2 kids alone thing pretty much got flushed down the toilet! I guess Heavenly Father wants me to be able to do this by myself. :) That and the Navy hates me. :)

I think we're also both feeling the weight of deployment looming in front of us now that AJ is here. This will be our first deployment, and so far the longest underway we've dealt with is 29 days. So 6 or 7 months seems pretty impossible. But we can't get away from it...so it's like the elephant in the room that we're both desperately trying to ignore and keep life as normal as possible for the little time we have left, but it's so enormous that it's crowding out everything else no matter how much we try to pretend its not there.

Oh goodness...it's taken me 4 days to write this entry! The above portion was written on Friday and I am now just finding the time to get back to finish! So If I'm a little disjointed here, that's why!

In any case...I'm sure most of you are waiting for more pictures of AJ. :) I'm going to try and upload as many as I can...though I'm sure a few will be disappointed with the lack of variety and number of them. So I apologize ahead of time. But here's what we've got so far:


Alright....these are all from his first week...and I took some of him on his 2 week birthday, but they are SUPER DARK so I'm not gonna put them on here. I'll try to take some of him today or tomorrow and hopefully post again...if I can get my act together!

Until next time
Jen