Centering Group Wonderfulness

Our Centering Group is amazing. No, really, great people all around. If you don't know what centering is all about, check out this link: Centering Pregnancy It's an amazing model, and the 16 adults in our group make up a wildly diverse and wonderful mix of people who just happened to be pregnant at the same time and decided to go for group appointments with our midwives. We will all admit that it didn't seem very likely that we were going to become friends while we were pregnant; we just didn't talk very much and we didn't hang out after appointments. But man, after those babies came, we were clinging to each other like we were on a sinking ship! Cause, you know, being a new parent is rough.

Anyway, we started to get together every month and we have continued to do so, and our kids are now 2! We're all going camping next month and we're going to celebrate our kiddos birthdays as a group at the same time and it's going to be crazy awesome!

One of our last get-togethers was at The Discovery:

We're so grateful for our group and all of the support we've gotten from them!

Carson City House Update

We are moving in two weeks!! Ahhh! Everything is going extremely well paperwork, money, and inspection-wise, so yay! This experience has been mostly painless for us, thank goodness because it seemed so daunting from the start. But really, the hardest part is going to be moving into and renovating a house with a two year old;) My goal is to get a lot done during our five day rent back of the Reno house when she's at daycare, but we'll see how that actually works out.

Life at the moment is a bit crazy, understandably, but honestly, it could be nuttier. I've been packing for a while, so I don't feel crazy pressure there, I'm really only worried about transporting Chris' torn apart El Camino and parts...it'll happen and there's so use in worrying about it, I know this! 

But in the midst of packing and cleaning, we've been able to enjoy the lovely weather as a family by having picnics in the yard, playing with water, and just hanging out without any plans, which is a lovely thing and something I hope we are able to enjoy more often with our impending move to a smaller place. In that vein, I've now got a plethora of photos to share!

Evey wearing a backwards pirate hat and saying "Arrrr"!

Fixing a pipe with Dad

Playing with her new water table. This thing has gotten so much use from her and all the neighbor kidlets

Eating a giant chocolate chip cookie and shopping for books is always a fun time

We hosted a small birthday gathering for our buddy Chris the week after Evey's party

Evey "writing" her thank you notes

We donated some old towels to the Humane Society, so Evey and I visited the cats and dogs. We was quite excited, and she was constantly saying "kitty"! She's also rather bossy when it comes to animals (and her parents, actually) and she told the kitties who were lounging on shelves to get down and told the noisy dogs "no! shhh!"

Minnie needed a diaper change

This photo is awesome for multiple reasons: She stuck the stickers to both of their heads and then puts her hands on Achilles and says "cheese!", so obviously, I had to take a photo

She loves her playdough, and we love how the play dough occupies her time

Mother's Day 2016

This Mother's Day was a mostly relaxing day...we were still cleaning up after Evey's party from the day before, but nothing too crazy. Chris made a card for me from Evey that had a picture of she and I that we can color together. Daycare made a cute hand print "flower" picture, which is now hanging up at work. We went to breakfast at Squeeze In and I had an awesome mimosa, because mom's day, and the restaurant staff gave all of the moms a corsage, so sweet!







After breakfast we hung around and played with some of Evey's new birthday toys. For dinner, we went to Starbucks and then met Jen at Firkin and Fox in Carson, where I enjoyed some lovely bangers and mash!

It was a very nice and relaxing mom's day!

We're Moving!

So we're moving to Carson City, you know, a whole half an hour away from where we currently live. We'd been looking at houses in Reno for almost a year and a lot of things were overpriced and if we did find something we liked that was decently priced, it had a million offers on it and we had no chance of getting the house. It was discouraging, and we decided to put a stop to our search.

But we really wanted to simplify life and ditch our 2070 square foot house which sucked away our time and money. We needed something smaller that would be easier to clean so that we would have more time for important things, like spending time with each other, other family, friends, and travel. And we really focused on the family part and decided we wanted to be closer in proximity to the McLaughlins. So we started looking in south Carson and found something very quickly!

Our new home is 1089 square feet and has large front and back yards. It's got an open layout, which is what we wanted, and, I believe, necessary in a smaller house so that it doesn't feel as small. We're going to change out the cabinets in the kitchen as well as get all new flooring; these projects will be a pain, but we can handle it!

We just received an offer on our current house yesterday and the close of escrow is at the end of June, so we've got mounds of paperwork in our future and more packing. I hope that the offer doesn't fall through, I'm so ready to start this new adventure.

Evey's Second Birthday!

It's funny how we started making decorations for Evey's first birthday four months before the party, and, although I did start early, I didn't start that early for the second birthday. Now don't get me wrong, the second party was a big to do, but it required less of my time, which was lovely.

Evey's birthday fell on a Thursday this year, and she went to daycare in a cute dress and brought frosting-less cupcakes (which the teachers thanked us for) to share with her daycare compatriots. Chris and I picker her up early and presented her with a Minnie balloon, and this girl loves her some Minnie. She has a stuffed Minnie that she actually calls Mickey, or really, Icky, in Evey speak, because the mice are identical, it's just their clothing choices that set them apart, really. Anyway, she was uber excited about balloon and showed everyone at school as she haughtily walked out before the other kids got to go.

She took the balloon into Red Robin with her, where she snagged another balloon, of course. We whiled away the time until our food came by coloring and singing songs. The Red Robin crew sang Happy Birthday to her and brought her a sundae, which she fed to us because she's a cake girl and not an ice cream girl.

Her birthday party was held two days later at our house and we did it up Wizard of Oz style! Jen and Pepper made decor and the amazing cake, and my buddy Drew and Jen's mom Gerri helped with putting everything together. Evey wore a cute dress I got from Etsy and ruby slippers and bow from my mom.

We had a lot of people and definitely more kids in the house than we've ever had before! We were, and, always grateful to our amazing family and friends who love, support, and celebrate with us! It's bittersweet that this is our last party in this house (I need to do a blog post about our move...), but I'm glad we went out with a bang!

Thoughts on life with our two year old: It's absolutely amazing the difference a year can make! Last year we had a non-mover, and now our kid is running everywhere and climbing everything! And her personality is really shining through; she's showing us that she's funny, caring, adventurous, and sensitive. Life isn't perfect, of course, but it's so much fun getting to know her and sharing new and exciting experiences with her!

March Happenings

So March brought two holidays this year, what the hell, calendar?? There wasn't much time in between our St. Patrick's Day decor and our Easter decor, but that's ok; with all of the decluttering and downsizing we've been doing, we don't have as much to put up, and consequently, to take down. 

St. Pat's was really uneventful for us; Evey and I wore green and Chris wore brown, because he thought it was green...yay for colorblindness! And actually, I spaced putting Evey in green for daycare! I seriously called Chris while he was enroute to daycare and he turned around to grab Evey a green shirt! I know, ridiculousness, but it made me feel better, and he wasn't that far away! For dinner that night I made Irish nachos, which is a recipe from The Firkin and Fox, and I doubt it's actually Irish, but they're just waffle fries with sour cream, cheese, and chives, yum! I don't even have any pictures, I guess Evey's first holidays are more important to document than the subsequent ones...

For Easter, we dyed eggs, and by we I mean my friend Meghan and I. Our kiddos kind of helped, but they were way too grabby and not as gentle as they should have been, geeze toddlers! But it was nice to spend some time together.

I had to throw this non-Eastery picture in because it's really funny and she made it herself!

Chris took Evey to see the Easter Bunny, and you can see the wonderful that ensued below:

On Easter Day Evey opened her basket and we hung out at out neighbor's. Pretty low key, but awesome. I think next year we'll attempt the Easter egg hunt, it was way too cold this year!

So like I said, it was cold, and it snowed soon after Easter. We got six inches!

 

Tonsils and Adenoids

So, I wrote this the other night at some ungodly hour while waiting for Evey to fall back asleep after we had to wake her up to give her some medicine:

Evey had her tonsils and adenoids taken out this morning and tonight she and I are guests at the fabulous Renown children's wing! Yah, I wasn't planning on ever having to spend the night with my daughter at Renown, after she was born of course, but shit happens, and by that I mean I passed on my humongous tonsil and adenoid gene and so it's really all my fault that we're here...or something less dramatic;)

Oh yah, like mother like daughter. But it really hasn't been too bad, and I actually would have said that the whole thing has been a breeze, as far as surgical breezes go, except for Evey's psychotic reaction to waking up from the anasthesia! Holy hell, that memory will never leave me, EVER! 

Poor thing wasn't even mentally all with it, yet found this freakish inner strength that caused her to flail around in our arms and eventually rip out her IV. Ugh, blood on the floor, on her diaper, and all over Chris, because he was the one dealing with the flailing at the moment, heh.

No seriously, this moment sucked, I was crying because my highly sensitive personality (look it up, it's a thing) just can't always deal. I wanted to be there for her, but I let Chris handle the situation as he and three nurses wrapped her in a blanket and held her down while the doctors gave her more meds to calm her down and redid her IV. I sat at the nurses' station and went back to her bed when they were done sticking a needle into my little girl.

She passed out and we decided to keep her in recovery until she woke up, just in case she needed to freak out some more. I was helpful while she slept: I held an oxygen mask close to her face until she woke up 45 minutes later, sans the Exorcist impression, and we went to her room.

*And now back to today! We're two days out from her surgery and we left the hospital yesterday morning. She's doing so amazing, you'd never guess she even had surgery! The nurses and her doctor all commented on how well she was doing. She nursed, drank water, ate cottage cheese, yogurt, apple sauce, and pancakes. 

We went to the play area on the pediatric ward and she enjoyed the kitchen and coloring.

And now she's home and acting as if nothing happened! Her voice sounds different - it's not all nasally. She slept well last night and was amenable to taking her medicine at 12:30 and 4:30 am. She was running amok in the house, and outside!

Today and tomorrow she's home with Chris and I'm back at work because I don't get any paid leave. We plan on taking her back to daycare on Monday, so all in all, this has been a relatively painless experience (I'm still working on blocking out the horrible anesthesia moment;)

Big thanks to Jen for coming out in the morning, it was very nice to have her there. And thanks to our family and friends who gave us tons of encouragement and well wishes!!