Real Parenthood

I feel like Nathan and I have been inducted into real parenthood this week.  Because we have both been majorly pooped on within the past few days.  Once while Clementine and I were enjoying a relaxing night time bath together. And twice in a row while Nathan was changing her diaper before bed.  Two posh Pampers wasted.  :)

You know that you seriously love your baby when you are sitting in her poopy water and you still think that she is the cutest baby in the world.  Never thought that I would feel that way.  Ever.

In other Clementine news, she is on her third day of experimenting with rice cereal!  She had her 4 month birthday and well-baby check up on Monday.  She is still tall and thin like the Daddy- 66% for height and 17% for weight.  Although Dr. Witt isn't worried about her weight, he wants us to get going on the solid food to see if we can chunk her up a bit.  I was worried that she wouldn't be ready yet- everything that I have read (yes, I still read obsessively about baby needs) says that you should definitely wait until they are 6 months old before starting solids.  But the verdict is in- she loves it!  She smiles and opens her little mouth for each bite.  And it's darling, even with rice cereal dripping down her chin.  

Once Upon A Time...

… there was this nasty moment in Morris family life where the wife caught pink eye at the family Christmas party…

… she used some over-the-counter eye drops to help it feel better, and when it cleared up, she thought she threw away the bottle.  But she threw away the wrong stuff.  Then, a few weeks later, the husband had allergy eyes, and used the over-the-counter stuff that should have been in the trash can to help him feel better.  And then this happened...

And it was awful.  He tried his best to stay far away from the sweet baby, so that her cute little eyes would be spared, but he couldn't help himself.  After giving her sweet cuddles and kisses before bed one night, she woke up the next morning like this...

Poor thing, huh?  After 5 days of wrangling drops into her eyes every morning and night, I think the curse of the pink eye might finally be gone for good.  I sprayed Clorox disinfectant spray over every door knob and surface in the house.  I cleaned all the bedding in hot water and aired out the bedrooms.  

PINK EYE BE GONE!  … AND PLEASE NEVER RETURN! 

Happy 2014!

I feel like I better write my New Year post before January is over!

2013 was an awesome year! I spent almost all of it growing a human, and then figuring out how to keep that little human alive and happy.  I didn't get much done as far as school goes.  I didn't exercise much at all.  I even gained an awesome 36 pounds.  But I DID read a ton of books and articles about natural childbirth and parenthood.  I tried to overcome my selfish and whiney pregnant tendencies.  And I birthed a darling healthy baby without any compromising pain medications.  And that's one of the biggest accomplishments of my life.  

2014 feels completely different than 2013.  Clementine has completely changed everything.  Life isn't about me anymore- it is all about taking care of her and keeping her healthy and happy.  She is a big ol' life lesson in putting someone else's needs before my own.  I'm learning patience and creativity and how to SLOW DOWN my pace.  It's really good for me.  

This year, some exciting things are going to happen.  I am going to FINALLY finish my lecture recital and dissertation and finish my DMA degree at the U once and for all.  After 10 years of post-highschool education, it's going to be reeeeeally nice to be finished.  

Nathan is also going to graduate from Ameritech College in August and start a real life nursing job.  That's going to be awesome too.  One stepping stone closer to becoming a Woman's Health Nurse Practitioner. Yesssss.  

And we're going to pay off a huge chunk of our student loans.  One stepping stone closer to saving up a downpayment for a house.  Woot.  

This year, Clementine will learn to roll all the way over, crawl, walk, eat solid food, and probably even talk a little.  By the end of the year, she won't be a baby any more, she'll be a little toddler!  What??  This is a huge year for her!  

On New Year's Eve, we filled out these little resolution worksheets and we have them hanging on the fridge.  My word for 2014 is SELF-DISCIPLINE!  I need to be disciplined with my time, especially!  Time is an easy thing to waste, but I have too much to get done and too much of it is flying by too fast to twiddle my thumbs. 

 I'm excited for a great new year.  Bring it on, 2014!  

3 Years Married, Christmas 2013, and Clementine's Blessing

On December 18th, Nathan and I celebrated our third year of marriage.  And what an awesome year it was!  Not long after our 2nd anniversary, we found out that our little baby was on her way, and we spent the rest of the year getting ready and getting excited for her to come.  And then she DID come and she changed our little family forever.  Without a doubt, I fell more in love with Nathan this past year.  He loved me through some of my sickest, fattest, most emotional and hardest times.  I am such a lucky wife! 

To celebrate, we dropped Clementine off to hang out with the Walkers and their cats while we went out to dinner at Tucanos.  Then we spent some time walking around temple square, enjoying the lights.  It was nice being just the two of us, but I kept feeling like we were forgetting something.  Being a mom has turned me anxious! While we were on temple square, we snuck up to the Joseph Smith Memorial Building's Harmony room where we had our wedding dinner.  We quickly snapped this photo, and I think the caterer cleaning up the room thought we were crazy.  But it was a fun memory.  

We picked up Clementine and stayed the night at the beautiful Haxton Manor.  She slept like a little champ, and the inn keeper even commented on what a good baby she is.  

We woke up the next morning to a beautiful blanket of snow- just like on the first morning of our honeymoon.

Fast forward to Christmas.  I had so much fun this year getting ready for Christmas with Clementine.  I loved reading Christmas books to her every night, and singing Christmas songs to her throughout the day. Even though she's still really small, I think she could tell there was something special about what was going on.  

Our Christmas Eve elves, Jingle and Jangle (idea credit to Adam and Andrea) brought us each new Christmas jammies, a new bedtime story for Clementine, a movie and some popcorn.  But by the time we opened Jingle and Jangle's box, we were all toooo tired to stay awake through a movie.  We'll do better next year…

On Christmas morning, Clementine let us sleep later than usual- thanks baby!  We woke up and listened to the last episode of The Christmas Chronicles while Clementine ate breakfast.  And then we opened Samson's presents, our presents and Clementine's presents.  Here we are with our spoils.  

Clementine definitely came away with the biggest pile this year.  I couldn't even help myself.  

Fast forward to January 5th.  The day Clementine was blessed in church.  I'm mad at myself for not taking more pictures of the day.  I didn't even take a picture of her in her dress!  But this is a picture of her in the dress the day we bought it- about three weeks before her actual blessing day.  And on the real day, we changed out the black sash for a white one.  

This picture IS of her on her blessing day, but without the dress on.  I just love what her hair is doing these days.  It's so soft, but it sticks straight up all over the top of her head.  

These darling little girly shoes and socks were given to Clementine by Grandpa Blake and Grandma Laurie for Christmas to be used on her blessing day.  What a sweet sweet gift!  

Nathan did a great job on the blessing.  He called her "little Lady" and "Sweet Clementine" throughout the blessing, just like we call her at home.  She was blessed with many great gifts and blessings, but what keeps standing out to me is how much she is going to be like her Grandma Gae.  And that fills my heart with joy! 

After the blessing we had a little hot chocolate party to celebrate and visit with friends and family.  Thanks everyone for coming and sharing your delicious treats!  I was touched by all the love and support I felt from everyone who came.  We are lucky to be surrounded by so many loved ones.  They say it takes a village to raise a child.  I think Clementine's village is a pretty great one.  

Shots, Honey Face, and Birthday Sunsets

I know all moms feel this way, but I think our little girl is majorly beautiful.  I mean, look at these eye lashes! Goodness sakes! 

I love this little face.  She pulls it a lot at me lately.  What are you thinking when you look at me this way, Little Lady? 

Clementine had her two month check up with Doctor Witt last week.  I'm so proud of her, Dr. Witt basically said she's the best baby ever! She is in the 75% for height and 30% for weight.  Guess which parent she takes after when it comes to body shape.  I'll give you a hint.  It's definitely not me.  He said that she is very strong, and he was surprised to hear that she's already rolled from tummy to back 3 times.  He said  that she is healthy and wonderful.  The best kind of baby to be! 

She got her first round of immunizations at the same appointment.  She cried loud and hard and her face turned so red.  Once I calmed her down, she was tired and slept for most of the day.  Poor little thing.  She didn't get a fever, though.  And no diarrhea either.  Thanks, baby! I 

Just hanging out in the free sling that we got before she was born.  She only likes it for a little while at a time.  She would much rather be held.  Or on her playmate, kicking her butterfly. 

This part of the blog has no picture to go with it, but remember how my postpartum skin has been simply awful?  Well, I've been having a hard time finding anything that would help- aveeno, aquafor, vaseline, carmex, even melaleuca's awesome Renew lotion was doing nothing for the burning dry cracky skin around my nose.  In desperation, I google searched natural face masks for dry skin.  And that's how I found out about the honey face.  I guess honey is really good for your skin- topically.  Especially if you have particularly dry skin.  You can read more about it here.  So as weird as it sounds, I've been using honey as a face mask.  And things are finally getting better!  I am also trying red wine vinegar as a toner, and following it up with coconut oil as moisturizer.  So my skin care routine sounds more like the ingredients of a delicious salad dressing than anything else, but guess what?  The dry angry cracky skin is turning more the color and texture of normal skin.  And I'm starting to feel human again.  Put food on your face.  I recommend it.  :) 

I turned 28 yesterday.  It makes me feel kind of old.  (Did I mention that honey is supposed to be a really good age-fighting agent for skin?) It was a good day, which ended with the most beautiful sunset.  Camera phone pictures never do sunsets justice, but this one was purely radiant.  I felt like it was a personal birthday present to me from my mom.  I can just imagine her telling me that she had put in a special order to Heavenly Father to make the sunset extra awesome for me.  And it warmed my heart.  

After the sun went down, we met up with some of our favorite friends for birthday dinner at the Dodo- which is delicioiusssss, and then ate darling German (German's) Chocolate cupcakes via Ashley Archuletta, cake extrordinaire and Ghiradelli chocolate carmel hot cocoa.   We sang Jingle Bells instead of Happy Birthday, and it was perfect.  

Oh Tannenbaum… and nostalgic Christmas

We are real Christmas Tree people.

We both grew up in fake Christmas Tree homes.  But fake Christmas trees don't smell as Christmassy as the real deal.  And there is something magical about going to the Christmas tree lot each year to find the perfect one.  So we're real tree converts.

Since Samson is an unreliable babysitter, Clementine came with us to choose our tree.  She looked so cute all bundled up in the Bjorn! 

Our favorite lot isn't anything special.  It's just the one closest to our house, in the same parking lot as Jamba Juice and Dickies.  But it's tradition! 

We found the best little tree on the lot!  It's a shorty, but it's ok cause we're still young and poor.  Maybe someday we'll have a big ol' fancy Christmas tree.  But for now, I love our little humble tree. 

We took it home and were excited to set it up, but the trunk ended up being toooo thick to fit into our tree stand.  Luckily, and oddly, we own two tree stands, and it fit wonderfully in the other one.  We just had to bug Braxton to get it out of storage for us before we could use it.  Our poor tree spent it's first night propped up in the corner without a stand.  

Clementine is mesmerized by our tree!  One of her favorite things since it has been up is to look at the lights and all of the sparkly ornaments.  That could keep her happy all day! It melts my heart and makes me love Christmas time even more.  

 This year at Thanksgiving dinner, my Dad and siblings and I spent some time going through our family's old Christmas decorations.  Now that my Dad lives with Laurie, they don't need all of our old decorations any more, so we got to go through them and divvy them out amongst ourselves.  We didn't have very many of our own decorations yet, so we sort of cached in big time!  Now, living in my childhood home, decorated for Christmas with most of my childhood decorations, but without my Mom- with whom so many of the decorations are sentimentally attached, I'm having a nostalgic Christmas.

This wooden reindeer puzzle was the only decoration Nathan was adamant that we get.  I'm glad that he wanted it, because I love it too!  I spent so many hours as a child knocking the reindeer over and putting them back together in weird size and body part combinations.  I'm excited for Clementine to get to enjoy them too some day! 

When we were growing up, each kid got to pick out their own ornament for the tree every year.  My choices were always bears and angels.  I'm glad that my bears and angels still get to live on my tree.  

This is a goat with three goat legs and one pig leg.  Because my mom was resourceful and creative.  

This bear says 1985 on it.  28 Christmases ago.  The year I was born.  Aw.  

It was a little bit tender for us to break up our family stocking set and send us all home with our individual stockings.  The most tender part was… who takes mom's?  

I love my childhood stockings.  I love that I was obsessed with bears.  I love that there was always an orange in the toe of the stocking each christmas morning.  And when I started playing the cello, the "string elves" would always leave new cello strings in my stocking as well.  

This is my Grandma Beckstrom's Precious Moments nativity set.  It is one of my favorite things of hers that I have to remember her by.  It reminds me of Christmas Eve family parties of Funny Mother and Don't Eat Pete! 

Just like the reindeer puzzle, I spent so much childhood Christmas time playing with this chunky wooden nativity set.  As I was setting it out this year, I felt 7 years old again, putting everything in the exact order and place that I had for 20 years.  I already told Clementine all about it.  I hope she loves playing with it too someday.  

Having Miss Clementine this year is making Christmas so much fun.  I love reading Christmas books to her and singing all of my favorite Christmas songs to her.  She loves Oh Holy Night, and lights up when ever I sing it.  I love watching her look at the Christmas tree and seeing the reflection of the lights in her beautiful big eyes.  We bought her some cute little Christmas presents, and even though I'm sure she won't know whats really going on, I can't wait for her to get them.  

How is Christmas already in 2 weeks?  

Gooooo Utes!

Nathan's sister, Kara, was given some tickets to the last U of U football game of the season against Colorado State.  Unfortunately (or fortunately for us, I guess), she hates football, and didn't really want to go.  So I shamelessly asked her if we could take them off of her hands.  And that's how we got to take our cute little Ute fan to her first ever football game at Rice Eccles Stadium.  

Right after we found out that Clementine would be a girl, Nathan picked up this cute beanie and frilly U of U socks at the gift shop of the hospital where he works.  And the cute onesie was brought to Clementine from her sweet Grandma Terri in the hospital the day after she was born.  We were excited for her to finally be able to put her team gear to good use.

It was a COLD day for a football, but Clementine was so good throughout the entire game!  She stayed warm in many layers and zipped up in her daddy's hoodie.  She spent the first half of the game licking the top of her Baby Bjorn carrier, and the second half she slept- even through loud cheers and cannon shots with each score.  The nice people we sat by were impressed by what a cute sweet little baby she is.  

 

We took Trax to the game and back home again.  When we got to the Trax station, we smelled that Clementine definitely needed a diaper change.  So we started to change her right there in the open breeze.  And then, right in the middle of wiping yellow poop, our train arrived.  For a split second, we considered gathering all of our stuff and running her, bare bummed, onto the train before it left.  But then we realized how gross that would be, and we waited patiently for the next train.  I'm not super skilled in public breastfeeding yet, but we managed to get Clementine an entire meal en route to the game.  Thanks for the "hooter hider," Cassie! It worked perfectly, and matched all of our bright red U of U stuff.  :) 

 Our seats were clear up high on the 53 row, or something like that.  And we were all the way into the end zone, on the shady side of the stadium.  But it was still a blast!  We love football, especially Ute football!  Especially when they win!  And they did- 24-17!  

GO UTES! 

(Do we look tired?  We had been Black Friday shopping at the Park City Outlets all night the night before.  What an adventure!)