Lord help the mister...

because...

 Maisie is going to have a little sister!

We had our ultrasound appointment early Thursday and it was a blast watching Maisie take everything in. She started jumping up and down screaming "It's Ellie!! Maisie and Ellie! Maisie and Ellie! We are going to be the best sisters in the whole wide world!"when the ultrasound tech confirmed Maisie's suspicions of a little sister were correct. By the way, Austin and I have never once brought up the name "Ellie" Maisie has completely taken it upon herself to name her sister and refuses to even consider another name. I have been trying my very best to put my foot down, but Maisie's will is strong and the name is growing on everyone. Maisie has some pretty sound tactics too like always saying Maisie and Ellie together makes them sound like a pair already and who can say no to that? Gosh, this baby may be called Ellie by default all because of her big sister, but at least Maisie picked a cute name right?

 Baby girl (notice how I didn't say Ellie yet- where do you think Maisie gets her stubbornness from anyway?!) was being very shy, crossing her legs very lady like and hiding her sweet face behind both hands. She also wouldn't hold still for more than a second! The ultrasound tech would line up a good picture, but every single time she went to take a picture baby girl would bust into dance. We saw how perfect she was, just unfortunately didn't get a very good picture to take home... oh well.

In the words of my sister "Dude! What a bear cub! Holy claws!"

We are in love with this little girl already and can't wait to meet her in July! I am over the moon that I will have a pair of sisters running around the house or as Austin says "a little Sammie and a little Katie". Words cannot describe how thankful I am. Life is good!

p.s the title reference is from the song "Sisters" from the movie "White Christmas". And the mister in this scenario is most definitely Austin. He is so excited, but I can tell he feels eerily outnumbered which is understandable because he totally is haha! 

+1

So we have some news...

Maisie is going to be a big sister! We will be welcoming a new little babe into our family come July 20th! 

We should be finding out the gender in a couple weeks and we can't wait to finally know! Maisie has changed her mind about the gender, up until this week she was convinced it* was a boy who she wanted to call Jeffrey (haha thats my dad's name!) but for some reason this week she thinks it's a girl who she wants to call Ellie. Maisie talks about "our baby" every day and it makes my heart swell just imagining her as a big sister- she was made for the job.

Words cannot describe our happiness for this dancing little baby who makes mama crave gherkins (mini dill pickles), lime pop-sickles, blue Powerade and at least 10 consecutive hours of sleep. :)

*Sorry for referring to the baby as it... there really needs to be a better way to address the gender of a child of the unknown variety. When I was pregnant and before we confirmed that Maisie was a girl we would call her Pat because of it's gender neutral/ambiguous nature... Oh and because of the SNL sketch and then later turned movie "It's Pat" haha!

The Gem State

It's time to make an official statement...

Austin got accepted to BYU-Idaho and we start in September.

We also applied to Hawaii, but decided Idaho would be smartest route.

Austin will be a Biology major and will be applying to Dental school in 3 years or so.

So excited and relieved to see payoff from our risk of leaving our Californian lifestyle and career for something that we will benefit from for the rest of our life. 

We feel tremendously blessed.

This might also be the place to add that I am a little nervous. I have a feeling that upon getting to Rexburg that I will be in for a rude awakening on just how small the town will truly be because Salem is the smallest town I have ever lived in and Salem is not all that small. Here's some proof...

Salem, Oregon

  population: 156,244

area in square miles: 46.4

Rexburg, Idaho

population: 23,705

area in square miles: 5 (!?)

Oh yeah and it's much, much colder in the winter. 

 So, soon we will be trading cities for mountains so we better start buying some camping gear.

p.s Austin and I have never been camping. Haha that might make for some fun memories.

Success!

Maisie has been diaper free (excluding sleeping times- i.e naps and bedtime when we use pull ups) for the last four days and has only had two accidents, one of which she was trying to run to the bathroom so I don't really count it because she sure was trying. She is comfortable using the potty for both types of bodily waste and insists on doing it herself. Other than the occasional reminding from my part, she has been doing it by herself. She loves all the praise and our "you did it!" dances. She beams when I tell her how proud I am of her.

Weeks earlier, I was starting to become discouraged with the whole potty training bit because Maisie absolutely had no desire to use the potty. Since her second birthday we have tried a handful of times to get the ball rolling, but to no avail. We would try to help her along, but the more we insisted the more she pulled back and started to become terrified of the whole concept. So, I was frustrated because I know how smart she is and I was convinced that once she did it one time it would click and she would be ecstatic with her big girl status. So when it was obvious that she was going in her diaper I ripped her diaper off and ran her to the potty. She resisted, but I timed it right and there was no stopping the inevitable. Sure enough potty happened and I twirled her around and kept saying over and over "you did it Maisie! I am so proud of you!" I also gave her some semi-sweet chocolate chips (5 for #2 and 3 for #1) and the reward on top of the praise was an instant hit. She immediately wanted to go again (and again and again). It's been smooth sailing since. Remember the pacifier weaning? That was all her idea with a little reassuring from us, she did wonderfully. Potty training just needed to be "her idea" and with our support she had the confidence to finally do it.

Needless to say, I am so proud of her.

Is it normal to feel a twinge of sadness too? Where'd my baby go?

We moved!

It's official. We are now back in Oregon. Still adjusting, still in shock, but content knowing we are on our way to our goals. Oregon has welcomed us back warmly and it's fun watching the leaves begin to change colors and fall. Hopefully this Autumn (and call me a dreamer, Winter as well) won't be a rainy one. A girl could hope right?

This picture was taken from our Hotel in Redding. We stopped there because we were so exhausted from days of non stop cleaning, a late key turn in and sleeping on the floor the night before. Not to mention packing and actually moving all of our stuff into a moving truck.

So happy to be done moving for right now, but still missing California.

Sinus Surgery

Well, I finally got the surgery I have been needing since, well my whole life. This last year I have been plagued with 8+ sinus infections and with each one they became more difficult to treat and required more drastic medical intervention each time. So my doctor after realizing there wasn't any way for me to prevent frequent infections from occurring (even with daily sprays and antihistamines) she finally decided to see if I was a candidate for Endoscopic sinus surgery.

Upon viewing and discussing the results of my CT scan, my ENT felt I was the perfect candidate. All four of my left sinuses (frontal, maxillary, ethmoid and sphenoid) had significant blockages. My right sinuses weren't nearly as bad, but he said he would conservatively go in to help in any way he could. We discussed potential risks (blindness, facial nerve damage, brain damage yikes) but both Austin and I felt extremely comfortable in our Doctor's care and he had the track record to prove it (he doesn't even use packing!). So we booked the surgery and waited the month before I could go in, just praying I wouldn't get sick before hand.

I did end up getting a cold a week before my scheduled surgery, but miraculously it didn't turn into an infection and I was able to keep my date. We took Maisie to a friends house early the morning of the 22nd (August) and went straight to the hospital to start paperwork and pre-op prep. For some strange reason they made Austin wait in the lobby while the nurses started prepping me. I became really nervous and I asked them to bring him back, but they kept making stupid excuses about why he couldn't. Turns out they wanted to ask me some question about "abuse in the home" which is all fine and dandy, but why couldn't they have done that within the first 10 minutes rather than prepping me (I.V and all) then allowing me to see him. By the time he was there I was a wreck. I was on the verge of a melt down. Then one of the nurses asked about Maisie and that my friends, led to a big cry fest. I started thinking about the risks of the surgery and what that could mean for Maisie. I missed her and wanted to hug and kiss her one last time. Austin tried to change the topic like 10 times and lighten the mood, but nothing worked until they gave me some "relaxing medication" and boy, that worked. I kissed Austin goodbye and then was wheeled into the OR. 

I started coming to early and actually remember them taking out my breathing tube (uh, I'm pretty sure that was the worst experience of my life) but then quickly fell back to sleep (maybe I passed out from sheer awfulness? hah) Then there was Austin. I was asking a lot of questions and wanting some water. My throat was so dry all I could think about was water, but I was unaware that all of the nurses didn't want to give me any because of my history of extreme nauseousness. Austin said I wouldn't stop asking for the dang water so finally one of the nurses caved, which proved to be disastrous. Since fasting from food and water for 24 hours;  2 cups of quickly consumed water, mixed with anesthesia and a slew of pain medication proved no match to the two doses of intravenously administered anti-nausea medicine. I became extremely nauseous and if I weren't such a stubborn person I would have been sick. But I insisted on staying more still than a lion stalking it's prey in the Savannah. I closed my eyes and refused to talk until I finally fell asleep (Austin said this happened a lot). They tried to move me a couple of times and each attempt I became unbearably dizzy and nauseous  I wanted to go home and sleep in my own bed, but I didn't want to move to get there. Finally I had had enough, moved to a lounger and asked for a wheelchair. I was so nervous about getting dizzy again that my discharge nurse gave me one more round of anti-nausea medication and helped move to the wheelchair. I was heaving as I was being wheeled out to the car, which must have been quite the sight to the valet service outside the hospital.

Finally I was home. I laid in bed for the next 24 hours sleeping off the anesthesia. During the few conscience times, I would remark on how well I could breathe. It was seriously awesome. I had no idea I would be able to tell a difference right away so that was a pleasant surprise. That whole week, as my body was healing, I became very congested, tired and had some crazy blood clots (gross, I know). I never had to take anything more than an extra strength tylenol which even if I was in crazy amounts of pain I wouldn't have taken the narcotic they prescribed (remember what I said about nauseousness? Yeah that's not a good combo with narcotics).

My sister, Katie came up that week and helped out a lot while Austin had to work, but on his days off we explored San Fransisco, visited the Monterey Bay Aquarium and hiked Muir Woods. I was on strict orders to not elevate my heart rate (for swelling and bleeding reasons) so we took everything nice and slow. Other than being tired, a few tension headaches and a couple unpleasant post op appointments (cleanings and scopes... bleh) everything went great and I feel so blessed to finally have it done.

Moving forward...

We are moving back to Oregon later this month. Yes, Austin is quitting (he put his two weeks in today). We are going back to school (BYU Idaho) aiming for a start date of January if we can get our application in on time, but if not, we will for sure start in April. Yes, we are crazy nervous/excited/disappointed/relieved but we know without a shadow of a doubt that we are doing the right thing.

Late one night after Maisie was asleep and the house was quiet, Austin and I were sitting across from each other at the dining room table. I was drinking some tea as Austin started to talk about work. Things he was excited about, things that needed to change, just talking candidly about how work was going. I tried to stay quiet to just listen, but when he paused I felt compeled to ask "Even if you had your dream position within the company and money wasn't something we had to worry about anymore, is this something you would want to do for the long haul?" Austin thought about it for a few seconds before he answered "No." We looked at each other and asked
"so, what do we do now?"

So we talked about what our dreams are. Where we saw ourselves, where we wanted to be and instead of saying that it was unrealistic, difficult or even crazy, we, for the first time ever said, 

let's make it happen.

We always seemed to have some sort of an excuse to not follow our original plan because of that little surprise of getting pregnant two months after getting married. I am ashamed that we even used that as an excuse because really, now that we have a kid, its only more of a reason to follow our dreams. We are her examples and greatest influence, so how are we to ever hope that Maisie follow her dreams if we never followed ours?  Regardless of age, economical status, amount of children we can always start over and try again. Not that it won't be without struggle or difficulties because we obviously know the path we have chosen will be an uphill hike and if after reevaluating, we decide to step off that path and take another one, then so be it. We just know we will always be moving forward. No more getting "stuck" and wishing for a different outcome.

We don't regret moving to California whatsoever. This has been such a fun, challenging yet rewarding year for us and there's a big part of me thats terribly sad to leave (mainly because of friendships, sunshine and all the fun things to do here). But now that we have had our wake up call and are getting our priorities in line, we are ready to take a huge leap of faith and seek the achievements that will bring us long term happiness.

Heres to making life altering decisions and making them sooner than later. Cheers to a few more weeks in sunny California that we plan on filling with fun activities with our friends. Oh.. and a few more French cooking classes from our neighbor/friend/chef/personal trainer
(yes, he really does it all).

Hasta la vista, pluggie

Yes. That was a Terminator reference. I just went all Schwarzenegger on you.
(Austin and I watched it last night. We're nerds. We know.)

Two mornings ago, after Maisie woke up, Austin brought her into our room where I was still in bed. We read a few books together when she suddenly stopped, pulled out her pacifier (AKA "pluggie") and stared at it strangely. Which started this conversation between Austin and Maisie...

Austin: What is it Maisie? Is it broken?

Maisie: Yeah. Pluggie broken.

Austin: Do we need to throw it away?

Maisie: Yeah.

To our surprise Maisie ran full speed out of our room, into the kitchen and threw her precious plug into the trash. Austin and I were in shock. We honestly couldn't believe what had just happened. We praised Maisie with hugs and kisses and she was happy as a clam, dancing and singing around the whole house. Everything continued to be just dandy until we started making breakfast. I handed Maisie her milk (which we are now realizing is her trigger) when it dawned on her she didn't have her pluggie. She began to cry the saddest, most heartbreaking sobs. Tears streamed down her face as she repeated "pluggie. pluggie. pluggie please. pleeeeeeease." My heart ached. I wanted to fish the dang pacifier out of the trash, wash it off and hand it to her so badly, but I knew that now was the perfect time to wean her from it. She did it all on her own and opportunities like that are once in a lifetime. 

 The first day was pretty difficult, but not nearly as bad as I thought it would be. She asked for it almost every 15 minutes, and every time she did, we would ask her "Maisie do you remember what happened to your pluggie?" and she would repeat "Pluggie broken. Threw it away. Pluggie in trash." we confirmed her feelings of being sad and followed the whole thing up "you're such a big girl now!".  Even with asking for it constantly, she still took a nap (in the car, but that still counts) and fell asleep alone in her crib sans plug (without crying or even asking for it once!). The next day was exponentially easier, she only asked for it a handful of times and had no trouble falling asleep for her nap or bedtime. We haven't had a sleepless night yet and that was the number one thing I was dreading.

It has now been almost 72 hours since she had her pluggie last. Tonight we completed the third day of pluggie weaning and she only asked for it twice. This task which we have been dreading since, well forever, was much easier than we expected it to be. I think it's mainly due to her completely understanding what had happened/is happening. I think if we tried this a lot earlier like we originally planned, it would have been much more difficult. I am so happy and proud with how well she is doing with this huge change. I'm also proud of Austin and I because we tackled this as a team and Maisie couldn't have responded any better.

Yay for better pictures (without her pluggie), hearing her sweet little voice more and having one less task to tackle.
Bring on the potty training & big girl bed.

The last picture with "the plug".