Parkes and Recreation: 2023

Abby is currently 3, going on 4. She is very excited for her birthday, even though it is very far away. She's also excited for Callie to be 12 months, because then it will be her birthday. Just wait til she finds out Mason's is just a few weeks away. She'll be over the moon!

Abby loves to learn and has a knack for memorizing facts about anything and everything. She's also great and remembering songs.

She's started getting herself dressed the last few months, and I love seeing what she puts together. She likes to wear her shirts backwards, and I gotta say she pulls it off great.

She loves going to baby story time with Calliope. All the moms sit in a semi-circle with their babies on their laps, and Abby usually sits next to me for the first minute and then runs around behind us and dances and sings her heart out to all the songs. It is very entertaining.

She's pretty shy around other kids. I think it comes from hanging out frequently with one kid who can be not so nice to her. But we've had lots of talks and read lots of books about being brave, and ignoring mean kids. I think it may be starting to sink in. I'm excited to see her grow in her confidence, but I love her where she is right now too.

She is the snuggliest girl in the world, and loves to sit on and be wrapped in blankets, wear soft hats, mittens, fuzzy socks, and wrapped up in big hugs.

She loves movie night because it means she gets a special drink (lemonade or chocolate milk). She loves dancing during the credits. She keeps saying she wants to watch Tarzan but we always have to turn it off during the leopard scene at the beginning. Currently her favorite movie is Tangled and her favorite shows are Bluey, Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, and Bear in the Big Blue House.

Her favorite color changes very frequently. When she was little, she liked purple and yellow the best. Now in the last few weeks she's told me her favorite colors are green, yellow, white, and now I think they are red and blue.

She LOVES riding her bike, and we ride it to and from the library at least once a week. It's 0.6 miles each way! She just learned to ride off the curb and she takes it very slowly and cautiously.

She loves music and dancing. Her favorite song is Trust Fall by Pink, but she loves all music. She's memorized a million primary songs that they sing in nursery and hums to herself whenever she gets in the zone.

She likes me to fix her hair in low ponytails, so that she can wear her helmet. When I would put it in two buns, she used to call it "Nellie Ears" (after Gramps and Grammie's dog).

We've done a lot of hiking this summer, and she's grown in her confidence on the trails. She now LOVES to get completely soaked in her clothes, but she makes sure I have dry ones with me for her to change into before she gets totally wet.

She doesn't really like coloring, but she likes to practice letters and do her preschool workbook.

She is left-handed and has recently learned how to hold her pencil like a big girl (pincer grasp).

I think her favorite activity in the world is reading. She's always asking to go to the library.

She likes to swim, and we got her some sweet goggles. She always talks about being very excited about putting her face in the water but I think she's only done it twice.

She likes talking to grown ups, and is hesitant to engage with other kids on the playground.

She loves fruit, ice cream, and pigs in a blanket. She lives for eating fruit snacks during sacrament meeting. She does not really like rice, spaghetti/lasagna, or macaroni and cheese. Also I'm pretty sure she's never actually eaten a hamburger in her whole life.

She got pretty good at one section of the rock wall at the playground, and it was awesome to see her feeling so strong and empowered. She went up and down the same section 10+ times in a row one day.

She thinks it is so funny to take off ALL of her clothes and just be naked. She likes to run around without a shirt on whenever I'll allow it.

She's very excited to be pregnant one day. She says when she's a grown up, I'll be her grandma.

She tried soccer in the spring. None of use were fans. Now she's in tumbling and is THRIVING. She learned to do a somersault all by herself. She can now be found watching TV doing a headstand leaning on the couch and trying to figure out backward somersaults.

She did two seperate theater camps over the summer with Melanie Brown, who is in our ward and also in charge of Auburn Community Theater. She was the youngest in her classes and thoroughly exhausted on the last day of each, but I am SO proud of her for completing them! She learned all about puppets, learned several different songs with choreography, and survived to tell the tale. They were each a week long for 3-4 hours every afternoon. It was a lot but she did it!

She loves jumping off high things on to lower things. Like jumping off the bed onto the floor, or off the top of her slide to the ground. She likes to see how far she can go.

She likes taking pictures on our phones, and has figured out how to open the camera app. So we have LOTS of pictures taken by her.

She comes to choir practice with me every Sunday. She plays while we sing.

She has grown leaps and bounds in her role as a big sister. She used to cry whenever Calliope cried, just because it was so loud. Now she's learned some coping mechanisms, like leaving the room or covering her ears, but mostly she can just ride it out without getting too agitated. They are sharing a room now and she usually sleeps through Callie's noises, which is a big improvement. When Callie was a newborn, Abby woke us up more in the night crying than Callie would!

She LOVES making Callie laugh, and I think Callie likes her more than almost anyone in the world. Abby uses a funny voice and makes Callie "say" different things, and it is usually hilarious. I am very much looking forward to the day Callie can really speak to her. I think Abby is too. She also loves feeding Callie and is very vigilant about not letting her have chokies.

All in all, she's simply the greatest 3 year old that ever was. I love her more than I can express, and I'm so grateful and honored that she's my girl.

Feeding her baby

I was ready for Calliope to be born when I hit 38 weeks of pregnancy. And by ready, I mean I was ridiculously optimistic she would come early. So much so that I actually planned on it. Instead of telling myself my due date was November 29, I had myself convinced it was really November 19. And that she would be born on that day, and no other.

Well, November 19 came and went. I was honestly surprised when she didn't make her grand entrance. As Thanksgiving Break wore on, and I still had no baby, I became very... what's the word I'm looking for... hysterical? depressed? weepy? hormonal? insane? exhausted? impatient? ...impatient. Plus all those other things. I called Mom every day and cried about how I wanted to not be pregnant anymore. I got very mad at Mason when he kept telling me to just hold her in a little longer so he could get some more school done before she was born. HOW DARE HE? Didn't he know I was carrying the world's biggest baby around and it was uncomfortable and I just wanted her out so I could get a decent night's sleep and not have back pain anymore? How could he not see that the sooner she was born, the better?

HOW COULD HE NOT SEE THAT???!?!!!??

Well, turns out Calliope and Heavenly Father didn't think my plan was the best, so they chose to wait it out a little longer. Until I was four days overdue. This pregnancy definitely helped me understand the concept of eternity a little better as I waited, and waited, and waited for this baby girl to be born.I was extremely weepy pretty much constantly as I thought of how I desperately wanted to have my baby OUT. The Sunday before she was born I went to church and a friend asked me how I was doing. I cried the rest of sacrament meeting and left at the beginning of the second hour. It was bad.

Saturday, December 3 I took Abby on a walk around the cemetery around 11am and started having contractions. A man I'd never met before asked me how I was doing. I told him I was hanging in there. He said, "You look miserable." Mason was playing DnD, but I would text him every time I thought I was having a contraction and he was keeping track of how close together they were. I had them pretty regularly but they were several minutes apart and we knew it wasn't time to go yet. I kept telling myself it was definitely false labor; I had that happen a few times previously and it got my hopes way way up each time.

Contractions kept coming for a few hours, and my friend Emma offered to take Abby horseback riding around 2 pm. I was very grateful because I was really tired by that point, but I hugged Abby soooo tight before she left. I had a feeling this might be the last time I hugged her as an only child. The next time I saw her everything would be different! I had been mourning that for weeks and cried like a baby when she left. I love her to the moon.

I went on a very short walk with Mason after Abigail left, but I was pretty tired so we turned around after like .2 miles. We got home and I decided to lay on the couch for a minute. I fully expected the "false labor" contractions to stop when I laid down. But after just a few minutes the biggest contraction yet hit me like a ton of bricks- WHAM! I kind of started panicking but was able to calm down after that contraction ended. I decided to jump in the shower to calm myself down. The water was very calming and I had a great time in there relaxing and working through contractions until the hot water ran out. I think one way I coped so well with the contractions was because Mom had told me beforehand to keep my eyes open and just pick a spot to stare at. I did, and I think my eyes being open helped me a ton.

At some point we had begun tracking my contractions through an app made just for that purpose. It told us we should probably head to the hospital. I called Mom and she said the same thing. We already had our bag packed, so we grabbed it and headed out the door. We jammed in the car to Christmas music turned way up, and some other music by Megan Thee Stallion, I think, that was on the radio.

About 15 minutes later we got to the hospital I got out of the car and worked through a couple contractions while Mason went and parked the car in the depths of the parking garage. They were definitely getting pretty intense but I feel like I coped pretty well by keeping my eyes open, trying to relax my whole body, rocking back and forth and exhaling audibly and slowly. I think we got to the hospital around 6pm.

We started on the 100 mile hike to get to Labor and Delivery, which brought back some memories of when I was in labor with Abigail. As we were in the crosswalk to get into the hospital, I had a contraction that stopped me in my tracks. A car had to wait for us because I was blocking the way out. Hopefully he wasn't in too much of a hurry.

This whole time I was in labor I was trying not to get my hopes up too much. I told myself through most of the contractions that it was probably false labor. When the nurse (Trisha-who I LOVED) went to check my cervix I told myself she was going to say I was 1 1/2 cm dilated. But she said I was 4! I was so happy! The nurses told me I needed to decide ASAP if I wanted an epidural, because sometimes it could take a while for the anesthesiologist to get there. I was indecisive for a minute but then told them I would like an epidural. They kept trying to make me sit in the wheelchair so they could wheel me over to the delivery room but I kept having contractions that were a lot stronger and I wouldn't sit down during them. I would stand up and Mason would press on my hips and rock me back and forth. Trisha, the nicest nurse ever, told me as soon as we were done with this next contraction I needed to sit down and she would wheel me super quick to the delivery room. The contraction ended and I sat down and she literally ran me over to the room. The breeze felt LOVELY.

We got to the labor and delivery room and the contractions were very strong. Trisha checked me again and I had dilated to 7 cm. She asked me again if I wanted an epidural and I said no, I could do it without one. I figured it wouldn't take too long to get her out. I got on my hands and knees on the bed and rocked back and forth through a few contractions, and Trisha did something where she pressed just above my tailbone and below my bellybutton that helped me manage the pain. Sure enough, after just a few contractions I felt the urge to push. I told her and she started running around like crazy doing a bunch of stuff and she called the doctor in to break my water.

The doctor, Dr. Marino came in and told me to roll on my back. I really hadn't wanted to push on my back but I kind of forgot in the moment and just did it. I didn't even realize when he broke my water, but he did and then told me whenever I felt like I needed to push I could do it. I had a few moments of calm where I didn't have any contractions and I could just relax. (Well, relax as much as you can when your legs are wide open and there's like 5 people right in front of you.) Then the contractions and the urge to push came on strong, and I screamed my head off and started writhing around on the bed. Everyone told me a million times to calm down and to hold my breath. "Your breath is your power. Hold it in and use it." I did my best but I just couldn't help but yell every time a contraction came. I felt the baby moving down further and further, and finally I felt her head start to come out. Then the contractions kind of stopped again for a while, and I felt the ring of fire. I was very worked up at that point, because WOW, but I said out loud, "I'm ok." After I said that I felt some calmness spreading through my body. I repeated over and over out loud, "Im ok. I'm ok. I'm ok." I felt my body relax and decided I could do this.

The contractions started up again and I quickly began to feel like I was trying to push out a full grown adult. But after just a few more minutes, she was here! After a few seconds I heard her cry and I couldn't hold in my laughter. She was FINALLY HERE!!! HOORAY!

They put her on my chest and I was so happy. I smiled and cried and laughed for a long time. She was perfect. After a while she decided to nurse, and latched right on and did great. The nurses gave us a long time to just be alone in the room.