He grows!

Aaron is growing into a strong little boy. He is an alert, active baby, and is starting to smile and babble more and more. Unfortunately, we can never quite capture his smiles on camera, so these will have to do.

She grows!

Our house is growing bigger and bigger everyday. This is the front wall of the house where that garage is.

From another angle.

Looking pretty good…

Rough Plumbing

For Spucket’s information, we go to the lot about as often as Rachael will let me. And I plan to flood our blog with pictures of the progress. Today’s feature, PVC tubing. Can you guess where our kitchen sink will be?

And this is what our garage looks like. Notice the rocks.

Construction Progress

Things are moving quickly. After the groundbreaking, they poured the footings, (first 4 pictures) then the foundation walls (last 3 pictures). We might even be framing next week. Pow!

A love affair my wife approves of

I don’t hide my love of Apple products. I am what bloggers call a “fanboy,” meaning that I don’t ever criticize Apple for any thing and I just love everything that they do. And I must admit that I am somewhat unwilling to recognize when they do something dumb, I think it is a remarkable company.

I love my computer. I love using it even to do the simplest things. Sometimes when I am bored I just open it up and walk around the desktop just to enjoy it. Maybe more than my computer, I love my iPhone. I really love it. Sometimes I feel like Gollum because of the way I care about it. I see it right before I go to bed and when I wake up and keep it with me all day long.

I also take every chance I can to use apps for whatever I am doing. To explain what I mean, let me tell you about our baby experience.

I used a shopping list app to make sure we had everything we needed for when the baby arrived. When Rachael was getting close to delivering, I downloaded an application to time her contractions. So when we went to the hospital, the midwife would ask “how are your contractions” and I would respond with an exact set of averages and a graph of the last ten contractions. We wanted to keep everyone (that cared) informed about what was happening during Rachael’s delivery, so I invited them to follow us on twitter. I used vlingo, a voice recognition app, to update everyone using Twitter and my voice. I used another Twitter app that allowed me to automaticaly upload pictures from the delivery straight to Twitter and our followers. We would have used the iphone to listen to music as well, but instead we used our ipod dock. When the baby was born, we captured the initial moments in photos and sound recordings using iPhone. I also posted updates to facebook for the broader audience. Since he’s been born, Rachael got a baby app that helps her keep track of her feedings (but she never uses it:)), and we have a white noise app that helps him sleep.

I have not even mentioned the number of times that I use it throughout the day for email, iPod, web browsing, IM-ing, playing Mr. T quotes, recording meetings, using my to do list, calendaring my life (and getting much needed reminders),entertaining children, using GPS and maps for driving, blogging (like this post), getting a pitch for singing the opening hymn, and of course, playing games. All and all, I just love love love my iPhone. Thanks to my wife and parents for getting it for me. You guys are the best.

Ground Breaking

After six months of designing and re-designing home plans, making offers on a half dozen lots and loan shopping with every bank in existence, our home is finally and officially under construction. Woo! We are building in Springville, in a lovely neighborhood next to Hobble Creek called Devon Glen.

We looked at lots all over Utah County, and this neighborhood won our hearts because it’s well established, and the homes/lots are large and beautiful and not all exactly the same. Sadly, our house will be one of the smallest houses in the area, but it’ll be great for our property value! We just have to remind ourselves that this is our starter home and not get too greedy when we see all the neighboring gorgeous huge homes.

Anyway, our design is two stories with 5 bedrooms, 2.5 baths, 2 car garage, etc. and it should be done by August. We had a ground breaking ceremony today, a black tie affair with speeches and light refreshments. I’m sure the excavation team thought we were idiots, but we wooed them with our sparkling cider.

It’s kind of a strange feeling to have a 30 year mortgage for a house we’ve never seen. Pretty nerve wracking – if we don’t like the finished product, too bad, we’re stuck with it. So, wish us luck!

Can a human exist inside a balloon?

Apparently I’m not the only one to ask this question. HA! Thanks for the sweet vid, Jamie.

Multiply & Replenish

Adam keeps saying that I should write about my journey into motherhood. So here it is. Long, rambling, read at your own risk.

I have always been afraid of having babies. Not so much the giving birth part, but the world changing, never ending my-life-is-no-longer-my-own and I am responsible for the well-being of a very small person part. I love kids. But I wished there was a way around the first few years of babyhood when they just eat, poop, cry, and depend on you 24 hours a day.  I was terrified of taking on that kind of responsibility, and very comfortable and happy in my selfish uncomplicated life with just Adam and me.

Anyway, when we started to get to the two year mark in our marriage the guilt started to mount. My excuses for not starting a family weren’t working anymore – Adam was about to graduate, we were financially secure, I was in good health…blah blah blah. At church and stake conference I tried to ignore all the talks about starting a family, the joys of parenthood, our covenants to multiply and replenish…etc. etc. Then one night Adam came home from a priesthood interview and said that he had been told by his priesthood leader that we needed to start a family. And that just ticked me right off. The nerve! Then came general conference…and more talks and more promptings I tried to ignore. And then Adam and I started talking, really talking, about starting a family. And it became obvious that that’s what we were supposed to do, and we (mostly I) had better get over myself and get on with it.

I wasn’t sad when I found out I was pregnant, but I wasn’t exactly excited either. I was scared and I knew my life would never be the same. The first time I heard the heartbeat I expected to feel something. Some sense of love or attachment or SOMETHING. But I just found it bizarre and disconcerting to ponder the fact that there was another human growing inside me. The first ultrasound I tried to feel affection for the little person that would be my child. Again, just a sci-fi sort of bewilderment. Months went by and the baby grew and kicked and I still felt detached. And then it was time to start buying baby clothes and diapers and a car seat and the thousands of dollars of crap required for baby rearing…and still nothing. So I figured I better start praying.

I prayed for a change of heart. I prayed to love our child and to want to be a mother. I prayed to be ready for the sacrifices I would have to make to be a parent.  I prayed to be good at it. I prayed for weeks. And then my water broke. And 29 hours later a baby was placed on my chest. And it was my baby. And I didn’t feel like a mom. And I didn’t feel love.  All I could think about was how weird looking he was, that he had a huge overbite, and I hoped he didn’t grow up to be ugly and get made fun of. 20 seconds later and he was whisked away to the nursery while I spent the next four hours hemorrhaging in a semi-conscious state of shock.

By the time I saw Aaron again I was delirious with exhaustion and it was the middle of the night. Adam was snoring across the dark room, and it was just me and this baby. I stared at him and touched his little face and hands and feet and sometime during that night, I came to love that little boy. Somehow our spirits connected, and I knew he was mine, and I realized it had happened. My heart had been changed. And I cried. I wept that day for joy, out of love for my son, and gratitude for prayers answered, and humility as I recognized the blessings I had received for reluctantly, begrudgingly doing what the Lord had been telling me to for years.

It was a hard decision for me to have a baby. I didn’t want to give up my job, or my freedom, or my health, or my financial surplus. And it’s hard to actually have a baby. Sometimes I don’t know what to do and I feel overwhelmed and unqualified and completely unable to give anymore. I am exhausted, my body is a wreck, my life is out of control and ruled by the demands of a 10 lb dictator, the thought of going to work or cleaning my house is panic-inducing, and achieving some sort of normalcy or equilibrium or predictability in my life again seems an impossible goal. But at the same time, I feel joy and purpose and wholeness, and I look at Aaron and wonder how it’s possible to love a helpless, squalling little creature so much. And I wonder if I will always think about him this much, and worry about him constantly, strain to hear his movements in the other room, and try to figure out the thoughts behind his big wise eyes. And I know I will, because he’s my son.

I look at Adam holding our son and singing booming sailor songs to calm his cries and changing the 3rd poopy diaper in three minutes and I see a glimpse of him as a daddy years down the road. I see his tenderness as he greets me and Aaron at the end of the day and realize that we have both been waiting all day to be together as a family again. I hear his concern as he prays for me and Aaron and I love him more deeply than I did before. I think about what it means to have a family, and I remember that my family will be together always, and I am grateful to know that a loving God has given me a way to be with those I love most forever.

Being a mother is really hard so far. After less than a month of it, I am still fumbling around trying to figure out how to take care of a baby and still manage to brush my teeth every few days. But the rewards are well worth it. Being part of the beginning of a family, the most fundamental and long-lasting bond in existence, has changed my priorities so drastically. I can’t really explain it, but I feel like I have gotten a taste of the most important things in life.  And I’m looking forward to a lifetime spent pursuing those things.

Now I will stop, and post some pictures to make up for all this boring text.

More of Aaron

Some random shots of Aaron, and some pictures of our building lot. Our builder says that he likes our lot because “its really flat.” …?

Our angel child

Our awesome kid is awesome. He has been sleeping almost all the time that he is not eating. Last night he slept from about midnight until 4:45 am! Rachael thinks he could have gone longer, but she wanted to make sure that he was getting enough to eat. After a nice long feed, Rach gave him to me and he slept on my chest until about 8:30 am.

He is being such a good boy and is so fun to hang out with.

Now you may be saying to yourself “Man his head looks almost as big as his daddy’s.” There are two reasons for this

1) the small camera on Rachael iPhone distorts the shot a little

2) he has a giant head.

He was born at 20.5 inches long and was 9 pounds 8 ounces. For our metric friends, that’s 52 cm and 4.3 kilos. His head was 13.6 inches (34.6 cm) and has not gotten much smaller. When we took him to the doctor on Friday, he has lost 13 oz, (0.36 Kg) meaning that he still weighed 8 lbs, 10 oz. Tell me, mothers of cyberspace, were your baby’s 8 lbs 10 oz. when they were born? Because even on a diet, our boy is hugongus. Now that he is eating several times a day, we anticipate that he will be back up to his birth weight with in a week or two.