It's been a few weeks as things suddenly got nuts around here! So I am now working both jobs as one is very small, sorting, scanning and filing paperwork once or twice a week depending on my other work's schedule which has a lot more to it, more hours but is awesome because I can save on gas and walk there as it is only 1/2 a mile away. Last week I was working every day, luckily no more than 4 hours each day so I have been able to balance it with plenty of Lilly time. I don't think Lilly likes it particularly though and has been acting out a lot and clinging terribly. It makes me feel bad but it has to be done, we have bills to pay!
Landon is doing great at school, he got full marks for his speech in Public speaking! It is kind of his thing though, but I am so proud of him, and I think that seeing himself doing well is a fantastic self motivator.
Rylan came home from his Mission 2 weeks ago today, that was a busy week! Like any RM he was very shell shocked and still kind of is. His head is stuck in Peru... takes me back to returning to Aus after being an exchange student and that was only 6 months! A lot can change in 6 months and it did, so it took me a while to find my feet again and I also struggled with the fact I had left so much behind. I wonder what it will be like when we visit Aus next year? I think facebook has helped me this time to keep up with things, but it will still be tough as I will no longer be part of the regular social structure. Leaving and returning is disjointing, I think it's hard to completely understand unless you have done it yourself. Mmmm nice little rant there...
Anyway! Don't forget to read my stories: kjhstories.blogspot.com
It takes me a long time to type these out, and I love them, and it's fun to see how they reflect on certain periods of my life.

This week I had a job offer and promising interview. Both look to be great prospects and will be flexible enough for me to still be a mum first, but I am definitely leaning to one more than the other. I guess we will see what happens!
I was also back to the gym this week! Hurray!! After 3 weeks off from my car being broken, my weight loss stagnated, and after one week I went down 2 1/2lbs! nice... love how quickly my gym class makes a difference.
Landon was able to take me on a date on Friday night, for the first time in a while. He was so cute about it, he typed up an 'itinerary' which was hilarious. We went to Macaroni grill which is probably my favourite restaurant in AZ, and we were going to go clothing shopping but most of the stores were closed so we rain checked on that part.
Lilly is going through a horribly clingy stage and it's driving me nuts! I can't even go to the bathroom without her screaming the house down. As a result I have a permanent head ache.

Today we are over at my in-laws to help them get Rylan's room ready for when he gets back from his mission in just over 2 weeks. Landon, Ammon and John were in the room painting it, as it hasn't had a fresh coat since the three of them all shared it when they were boys. It looks really good now, it's amazing what a coat of paint does! I got to stay out and play with Lilly and Kaleb which was pretty fun. Kaleb can be very funny.
My car was also fixed today, horray!!! Thanks to Del, my brakes work again! So I can get back to the gym again for my last month of membership :-(
Landon started school on Monday. He is really enjoying it so far, especially his public speaking class. Anyone who knows Landon will know that is right up his alley. He is excited for one assesment because they have to pick a couple of objects and talk about why they are meaningful to them. So he is going to take Lilly's teddy that she was given when she was born that says 'it's a girl!' and talk about how wonderful his little girl is. Then he will pull out my engagement ring I wore in Australia and talk about me! He's so sappy, I love it.

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kjhstories.blogspot.com

This week has been pretty quiet. My Extera is still out of action, my brakes are dead. We had Del Parrott come and have a look and I don't understand all the specifics but basically there is a box that creates a vacuum so you can press the brakes easily, and its cracked and leaking so it needs to be replaced. *sigh* So my awesomeness of hitting the gym 4 days a week has dissipated... I was doing so well too.
Also, our A/C seems to be dieing again.
On a happier note, Lilly had her 9 months well baby check this week and the Doctor is very happy with how she is progressing. She has slowed down with physical growth, going for height and weight being in the 90th and 95th percentiles at her 6 month check to now both being in the 75th. She has 6 teeth cut now, that she will let us see which is a lot apparently. Also, she has the fine motor skills expected of a 12 month old, also she is saying "Dadda" (for both Daddy and the dog Addy) and "Mumuma" for me. She turns pages when we read to her, and the doctor believes she is on the verge of walking, and will definitely be walking into her next check at 12 months.
Today at church she was pretty cute, I convinced her to crawl all the way down the hall from the foyer to the mothers room, then she wanted to do it back again once we had nursed. She was a serious live wire today, way too much energy for a little thing like her.

This weekend was relatively quiet. On Saturday I went to Jen's baby shower, which was fun. She is so cute with that preggers belly! Not long now for her.
While i was at that Landon had Kenny over and he was supposed to do some things around the house for me, but being guys, they watched videos on youtube instead.
Sunday we visited Crsmon ward. Landon has been wanting to go for ages to show of Lilly but we just haven't got around to it. It was fun seeing old familiar faces and being back in the building I was going to as an exchange student.
Sunday was also our monthly family dinner at Grandma and Grandpa Teller's house where us ladies, shary, Lindsey Jen and I had a nice long chat about child bearing and all that it entails. It was a lot of fun, I really enjoyed that. For the first time in a long time I felt like I was able to contribute effectively to a conversation with someone and not feel like I was being looked down on, but instead being heard and my opinions and experience acknowledged.
Today Lilly had her 9 months check up. The doctor is very happy with her progress and is even doing half the things she expects a 12 month old to do! My kid is a very determined child! she is 75th percentile in height and weight (Her growth seems to have slowed down now) and her head is at the 50th percentile.

Watched "source code" tonight (had a free redbox code) I didn't enjoy it that much.
So, Lilly likes Tchaikovsky. I started singing the opening number to "the Nutcracker and she smiled and started bobbing to the beat. So I got my Nutcracker CD out and put it on in her room. She loved it! She bounced and jigged and tried to sing, it was so cute!
I probably didn't mention that she is crawling and climbing everything now. Nothing is safe anymore, the whole house has been barricaded, and I have to climb on the couch to get out of the living room. She and Addy get along really well too, when I put her in the pack-and-play she stands up and reaches over the top and Addy comes over and starts licking her hand and trying to play with her. She is all giggles when this happens. She also, if given the opportunity, will escape her room and speed down the hallway to climb on Addy. Addy is a great dog who just lets it happen and nudges her with her nose to gently play back.

Last night's mutual was at the Mall. It was an activity where the girls had to go find modest clothing for different occasions ie. church, school, prom etc. It was good to see they all understand pretty well the principle of modesty. Landon came to as the token priesthood holder, so we dropped Lilly off at Ammon and Lindsey's house, which resulted in screaming, then falling asleep from too much screaming. (will post a pic later)
My car is also playing up again. My brakes have something wrong with them so I am pretty much car-less (obviously) until we can afford to get them fixed. *sigh*
So my next step on my permanent residency is coming up soon. We have filled out the paper work and now we are in the process of getting photos, Lilly's birth cert., and testimonials from people to prove we are still married and a REAL couple, and also another wad of money: $590. Once the papers are submitted I have to go in for another round of 'biometrics' which means I get scanned and photoed AGAIN. Blah, gag me. More dumping the baby with grandparents time because they only let the person who is getting processed in because they are evil. Immigration sucks, I only tolerate it for Landon's sake.

I have begun my first ever scrapbook! So excited, but it does reek of amateur. Its for Lilly's first year, with some ultrasounds and pregnancy pics too. I'm just kind of going through a creative buzz stage, with that and writing my stories again. (go to http://kjhstories.blogspot.com/ to see me typing one out) I think with Lilly being a lot more settled and consistent with her daily patterns I am finding myself with some extra free time. Some days, like last Thursday I go cleaning crazy and scrub down every inch of the bathroom followed by all the hand washing of baby food stuff then 2 loads of dishwasher dishes then 3 loads of laundry. Those days are kind of fun, I feel productive and even somewhat appreciated when Landon comes home and seems very impressed, until by the end of the night the whole place has been trashed again.... men... seriously... so my creative faze is very fulfilling, he can't come home and completely reverse my efforts there! :-D

I went to a job fair today, got interviewed, we'll see how that goes I guess. Not sure how I feel about working again right now, I want to work and to be able to free up our income and build food storage, pay off debts quicker etc, but leaving Lilly is really hard.
Landon starts school next week. YAY!
Upcoming events:
Jen's baby shower on Saturday.
Rylan will be home mid Sept.
Lindsey will be delivering their second in mid Sept.
Jen will be having her baby mid-late Sept.
Nov is the 4 birthdays - me then my Dad then Landon's Dad then Lilly.
10th Nov my parents and sister will be here until just after thanksgiving.

So Hope died 2 weeks ago :-( she broke into the shed while we were out and got stuck. She had a heat stroke and was unconscious when we got home and found her, so we rushed her inside and tried to cool her down but we were too late and she had a heart attack on the dining room floor and passed away. It was so sad! Poor Addy is missing her so much now, it's quite heart breaking. We miss Hope, she was a great dog.

this is a post I neglected to publish on 7/6/11

Latest and greatest? Lilly is now crawling. Its so cute because she isn't very proficient yet and she looks like one of those lizards rocking back and forward and very stiff, but she is quick enough to make me constantly have to chase her or be surprised to find her trying to climb my leg. She also has two teeth on the bottom which she won't let any one see. If you pull her lip down her tongue comes out.

Catching up? Well early last month we went to North Carolina which was were Landon served his mission. His work paid for the trip because he was talking to the Cherokee's to see if he could maybe pick up a contract with them. So we were out on the Res most of the week which was beautiful. It's so green and lush. We got to see a historical play too about the Cherokee. It was fascinating. It also kindled Landon's native heart into interest in his own tribal history and culture.

Camp Countdown!

I know I'm not going to camp this year, but because the theme is about finding good in the world, and our ward's assignment is Australia I needed to go down to the stake countdown on Wednesday night and set up a display for all the girls to see. I also baked ANZAC biscuits (cookies) for people to try which seemed fitting considering ANZAC day is Monday. *Note to self: remember to hang flag* That kept me quite busy on Wednesday, as well as updating Lilly's information with DES (finally, I'm only 5 months late) and buying coconut for the biscuits.
Monday was even busier, WIC, then fry's for groceries, the bank, post office to mail some tax information to Australia, gym, taking away recycling, paying water bill, getting Lilly's reflux medicine refilled, getting gas and also teething hit. Plus for almost a week now I have been getting this pain behind my eyes on and off and feeling nauseous along with it.
I have begun to let Hope and Addy back inside now that it's getting warm again. I got the hint when Hope almost broke the door down the other day because she was so uncomfortable, then again when I heard her banging on the fence that she broke through last year and we had to go searching for them both on a Sunday morning before church.
Today I am putting together my lesson for Young Women's on Sunday. Its not from the manual so its all up to me. So I want to do something really creative for Easter. I have an idea of what I want to do, but I'll see how it goes I guess. It makes it harder when they have all just gone and seen the pageant at the temple.

Jess was her for 2 weeks during March it was so nice to have her here! Especially when Landon went to his conference, I was very glad not to be left alone. So we mostly did a lot of shopping, well, she shopped, I occasionally bought something. We also went to the Renaissance Festival. I had gone the year before so I tried to just let her take the lead. We went to the jousting and Lilly didn't like the noise so I ended up standing with the stroller at the entrance and trying to soothe her every time the crowd cheered. Jess seemed to enjoy it, jousting is pretty awesome. She also saw belly dancers which caught her attention, as well as the elephants. The cutest thing was when Lilly was so tired she just passed out in her carrier, she I rushed to sit down and put her in the stroller. She's never done that before, she usually whines to let me know she is tired. I guess she was so excited by all the sights she didn't realise she was tired.
Jess also helped with our Young Women's camp kick off as our ward has been assigned Australia as the country they are to study for camp. We set up a bunch of stuff and talked for a bit about Australia and then gave them pen pals from the Y/W in our ward in Aus. Most seemed excited, I really hope all the girls take advantage of the opportunity they have been given.
When Jess left we both ended up crying at the airport. Sad day... sometimes it really sucks living on the other side of the world to my family.

Now some photos. Jess bought a new camera while she was here and took some really good shots.

The outfit was bought entirely by Jess, Sunglasses and everything. The onsie says "My Aunt is the best"

Pretty in Pink

A Daddy daughter moment....

Sleeping on Mummy's lap is always the best.

Lilly is growing ever more determined to use her body. Every day I can see the concentration on her face as she tries to slowly reach out and grab something and even tries to stand up and walk. She even thinks when I have her in her chest carrier that when I'm walking and she wiggles her legs she is the one accomplishing something, and gets very upset if I stop moving because its no longer working even if she kicks harder.
Her reflux is getting better, even though yesterday she practically made a tsunami all over her crib and I had to change everything, the sheet, her clothes etc.
Her favourite thing to chew on is her hands, even when I give her other things she pushes them side and sticks her hand back in. She also is starting to think that she could try to get milk from anywhere on my body and has attached onto my arms and shoulders a few times then cried out because nothing happened. It tickles like crazy for me.
Last night Landon and I had a date and left her with Kenny, which he was quite nervous about... and the little punk (Lilly) cried most of the time.
Our date was nice, it feels good to be together without interruptions. We went to dinner and because it took 40mins to get our meal to us we got free food! Hurray! So lunch and a dessert is sitting in our fridge today.
Then we went and saw Rango which was hilarious. Johnny Depp is such a champ. The plot was a little predicable but it was so funny so that didn't matter.
This morning Landon went to a service project and left here at 5am. They were shovelling sand out of a canal on the church farm. With that and 5 hours sleep, and he got a nail in his tyre so he had to go to the dealer (it was under warranty so it was free!) to get it replaced, he just came home and crashed on the bed.

The first 3 months

As usual I have not been diligent with my blogging, but watching Julie and Julia has inspired me to try again!
Lilly is now 3 months old. It has been rough with her, she had colic, and when we finally thought we had sorted that out by changing my diet to dairy-free, she develops a cold followed by reflux.
But to start from the beginning.... it all began at 2:45ish Monday morning, (15th Nov) when suddenly I woke up to the feeling of my waters breaking. My yell of "oh my gosh oh my gosh!" made Landon and mum wake up so fast. Landon flipped and dragged me into the shower while running around getting everything into the car. We rushed down to the hospital, where they confirmed my waters had broken, but i wasn't having regular or strong contractions. So the decision was made that to avoid infection or complications I needed to be put on petocin. The petocin proved to be horrible. It caused me to have double contractions, but my dilating was still slow. I was put on staidol, (IV pain relief) which pretty much made me pass out. I remember them putting it in then everything going kind of hazy. Apparently I said some very odd things while under its influence, but the petocin made contractions were still too much for me so the fear of the giant needle in my back for the epidural was seriously out weighed by the pain.The staidol had relaxed me enough that I was able to not react to the needle in any way, and I am now in love with the epidural. The epidural was given to me at 9:30ish when I was 5cm dilated. It relaxed me so much that when the nurse came and checked me at 11am I was 9 1/2 cm, and soon was having the desire to push. They called my doctor and we began to push. She began to come out and crowned so quickly that the nurse made me stop pushing to wait for the doctor... to my irritation. Finally the doctor arrived and with one contraction and 3 pushes Lilly was out. She was screaming and perfect. Landon cut the cord and the doctor began work on me because it turned out Lilly's shoulder tore me from the inside out which meant I required 45 stitches. So the epidural proved to be a blessing because they could administer pain drugs right away and I couldn't feel the tear.

So I was treated like a C-section patient and kept in the hospital for 2 nights. The first day/night were very miserable for me. The drugs they had given me made my face fiercely itchy, and Lilly was struggling to latch because I had flat nipples. I was also bed ridden with a catheter, a giant tampon like thing shoved up inside me and someone coming in every few hours to clean up the blood down there. It was all very frustrating and I felt terrible and tired.

When we went home I thought it would be nice to be home, but I wanted nothing more than to go back to the hospital after the first night. I was still in pain and tired, and waking up every 2-3 hours to feed Lilly with latching problems. The first day was so devastating for me as she couldn't grab on and feed so would cry and cry and would finally have to give her formula that the hospital had given her. That first bottle brought me to tears because I wanted so much to breastfeed exclusively. Landon called the WIC lactation consultant and made an appointment for us to go see her the next day, and later that night Mum bought me a breastfeeding book. I cried again.

So the next day my milk came in and we went to WIC and got a loaned pump which was a huge relief, not only because of the pressure I was feeling, but I could pump and feed Lilly my milk from a bottle while the pump augmented my nipple shape so she could latch. Mum also took me to babies-r-us upon the suggestion of a family friend and bought me some nipple shields, which ended up to be life savers because Lilly latched instantly.
So the first few weeks were the worst, I was in so much pain most of the time, either from the healing, or from my cracked nipples or whatever else they decided to do. I wasn't getting much sleep because Lilly was waking regularly for feeds. Thank goodness mum and dad were there to help for the first while. I don't think I could have coped well with my recovery and caring for the baby by myself while Landon was at work.
When they did leave though I had a few break downs because the colic started. 2 hours every night, from 12 midnight until 2am, then she would wake to feed at 5am which would last from 1-1 1/2hours. I was also still having a great deal of pain. At our ward conference a few ladies from Crismon ward suggested that I should remove dairy from my diet. So I did under Landon's strict watchful eye and it did the trick. So I am on a soy diet now which has actually helped my milk supply.
So I used the shields for about 2 weeks, when we discovered she could latch on one side, then about a week later she could latch the other side. By a month I got my free pump from WIC which I LOVE. It gives me the freedom to go to mutual, the gym or anything else I need to and leave my milk for Lilly.

By week 8 my nipples had settled down and she is now exclusively breastfeeding and is probably 15lbs by now. She is getting cuter and cuter everyday, and I am loving all her new sounds and facial expressions she is learning every day. About a week ago she was given reflux medication which made her turn from a grumpy baby to a cheery baby.... for me anyway because she is a HUGE mummy's girl. She is not happy unless she knows I am nearby and returned to my arms on regular intervals.
Well that's all I can think of about Lilly and I, but Landon's news, he was promoted at work which meant a pay raise and with the tax return we were able to buy a new TV which he is in love with, it's his new man toy. The first weekend we had it he played with it endlessly, then at one point he started pacing the house and I asked him what was wrong and he told me he felt bad that he was playing with his TV all the time so I laughed and told him I didn't care so he got excited and started playing with it again.

So Landon, as usual, did a wonderful job at his valentines day activities. He bought us pizza and cream soda/root beer for dinner, and my gifts? The DisneyNature Oceans DVD and $50 day spa. I love him so much. I got him 2 $25 gifts cards for his two favourite things, Chillis and the movies. Our date was on Saturday and one of the young women from our ward babysat Lilly so we could go out for dinner at Macaroni grill and then we went to the stake Valentines dance.

Up coming events - Jess is coming over on the 14th March for 2 weeks. Since that overlaps with our anniversary she has told me that we must go out so she can babysit and spend time with her niece.

That's all for now ~ Katie