Jackson Tyler Lloyd

I know I am a little late but here finally is a post to welcome our wonderful little guy to our family and to tell his birth story.

Jackson Tyler Lloyd was born November 5, 2011 at 11:53 pm. He was born here in Gilbert, AZ and weighed 6 lbs 8 oz. and measured 20 inches long.

Jackson came to us much easier than his older sister (thank goodness! :). I had already decided before hand that I wanted to try to do a VBAC and if possible to do it naturally since the epidural seemed to slow me down last time and I had a time limit on how long I got to be in labor before I needed to have a C-section. So before the time came, Tyler and I watched a natural birth class on DVD and got as prepared as we could since we were too late to actually take a class once I started looking into it.

Well as before my due date came and went and I hadn't yet really felt anything to make me believe that this baby was coming anytime soon. I had pretty much accepted that my time was going to run out and that I would end up in a C-Section. (After having a C-Section I wasn't allowed to be induced into labor) So the day after my due date, a Saturday, Tyler and I decided to get in one more trip to the temple. While we were sitting in a session, around 1 pm, I realized that I was starting to feel what seemed like some regular contractions. They weren't really very painful or super close together yet so while I mentioned it to Tyler I tried not to get my hopes up.

After the Temple we went to Tyler's Dad's house to pick up Katelyn and stayed to watch some of an ASU football game. I still seemed to be having somewhat regular contractions so I'll admit it, I got my hopes up. :) Next, around 7 pm, we went to Tyler's Mom's house and I decided it was time to start timing them. They were definitely regular and were coming at about 6 minutes apart. (wahoo!) Tyler's Mom said she would be happy to have Katelyn sleep at her house while we went to the hospital but we hadn't brought any of her or our stuff with us so we went home first and then brought Katelyn back.

At this point my contractions were about 4-5 minutes apart and starting to get painful. I felt like I could probably wait still a little but Tyler's Mom thought we ought to call Tyler's Uncle who is my OB. (I think I probably owe her one for this) So Tyler gave him a call and he said we ought to head in right away. When we got there we sat in registration for about 20 minutes and then headed in to triage to decided whether we got to stay or not.

So as we're waiting, Tyler and I are using all our coping methods and such that we had practiced. That lasted all of about 2 contractions and then my water broke. When I very first came in to triage I  was dilated to a 5 or 6. About 15 minutes later after my water broke I was easily at a 7. The nurses started getting me ready and moving me as fast as they could to get me to a labor and delivery room. As for me, as soon as my water broke the contractions got 10 times as painful and started coming one right on top of another. I was not prepared for how much it was going to hurt. I was also not prepared for the fact that i was going to feel like I needed to push as soon as I got to seven and not be able to stop myself no matter how many times the nurses told me it wasn't time yet. I started asking Tyler for an epidural, which I had previously told not to let me have even if I asked. Poor guy tried to help me through it and tell me I could do it but I was having a really hard time, especially trying to keep from pushing too soon.

Well when we got into the labor and delivery room they tried to put an epidural in but my contractions were coming too close together and I couldn't hold still enough. Then during one short break when I was already at a nine they did get it in but at that point it was too late for it to really do anything. At one point they weren't even sure my OB was going to make it and the nurse told me she was going to deliver my baby. But just as it was time to actually push for real he got there. I started pushing (which was actually a bit of a relief since I had been trying to fight it for so long) and pushed for about 20 minutes when they realized the cord was wrapped around Jackson's neck not once but twice and his heart was getting very distressed. My doctor decided that I would need a little help to get him out faster and get the cord off him so he gave me an episiotomy and used the vacuum to pull him out quickly. He came out fast after that and was just fine once they got the cord off of him.

I can't tell you how wonderful it was to actually get to hold him afterwords. And even though I had a little healing to do from the episiotomy it was a million times easier than after the C-Section. I feel very blessed that everything went so well (and so fast!). Jackson is such a beautiful and wonderful little baby and we are so grateful to have him in our family. And now without further ado here are more pictures of our little guy.

Daddy and his little man.

Grandma Rapier 

Katelyn meeting her brother for the first time.

Getting to hold baby brother.

Katelyn loves her little brother, sometimes a little too much. :)

Grammy Lovinger

Loving his first bath. :)

Going home!

We think this one looks like a pretty cool action shot. :)

We love you Jackson!

Halloween, Some House Pictures and Our New Addition (No Not the Baby Yet)

Happy Halloween Everyone! I have been the biggest blogging slacker lately but I'm going to go ahead and pull the "pregnant and buying/moving into a new house" card as my excuse. :) Anyway, here are some of the most recent events and I hope to get one or two more in before our little guy comes (that's not actually true though since I hope he comes as soon as possible :).

Katelyn was the cutest duck around for Halloween, and though she can't quite say "Trick or Treat" yet, she's had "Quack Quack!" down for ages.

Showing off her duck wings

Tyler and I didn't dress up this year, though someone on our street did ask me if my pregnant belly was a costume. :)

Alrighty, the disclaimer before I go through the pictures of our house is that these are just a few random ones I took while we were still in the process of buying it. I promise sometime soon I will take pictures of us actually moved in. As for the house, we love it and are so excited to have a home of our own. We feel so blessed to be able to be so close to family and for Tyler to have a job that he enjoys. 

Our House!! :)

My kitchen. (No point in pretending it's anything else right? :) The house was a flip so we were lucky that they had done a lot of work and fixed up a lot of things that we wouldn't have been able to afford to do.

The family room, this is taken standing in the kitchen.

The backyard.

The pool. Have to admit, growing up in Spokane I never really imagined having a pool.

The master bedroom.

Master Bathroom.

Cupboards at the top of the stairs. (They were one of my favorite features when we were first looking at it.)

Upstairs bathroom (kids bathroom)

What is now Katelyn's room, Baby Boy Lloyd's room is pretty much identical.

This is the point at which I realized I had no more room on my memory card so there is more to come. :)

Now for the last update in this post I wanted to introduce our newest addition. Tyler and I have both wanted a pet for sometime but with all our moving and living in apartments it was just never really the right time. Mostly, we have talked about getting a dog but once we got into our house we were so close to baby coming that I really wasn't ready for the idea of a puppy and baby at the same time. But the perfect answer came when Tyler's sister, Tiffany, told us that a friend of hers had some Sulcata Tortoises for sale. (Thanks again Tiff! :) I won't recount the whole sad history but Tyler had a Sulcata when he was growing up that sadly burrowed his way out of their yard and they never saw him again. Needless to say Tyler was pretty excited about getting a new one. So without further ado, here is Ace the tortoise!

To explain really quick where the name came from, when we went to pick out a tortoise they had so many and they all look pretty much the same at this age that the owners had written numbers on all of the shells to be able to keep track of them. Our little guy had the number 1 on his shell and was the first one they had found, and thus the name Ace. :) 

Even though Ace will eventually be pretty darn big (probably 100 lbs. or more) He is just a tiny little guy right now and will live inside for a couple of years till he gets bigger. Tyler didn't like the idea of him being cooped up in a terrarium for all that time so he built Ace his own turtle habitat with his dad.

Here it is with all the rocks, pellets and uv lights. The dark space under the rocks is a place where he can burrow down to sleep. I don't know if you can see but Ace is actually on the rocks in this picture so you can get an idea of how small he is.

Welcome to the family Ace! :)

Beautiful Spokane

First off, we need to give a big shout hurray! that Tyler has finished taking the bar. He put a lot of work into getting ready and actually taking the test so we were glad to get to go spend some relaxing time in Spokane when it was all over. Most of our first week there we spent time with family and helped to get ready for Sean and Melissa's wedding. We did take one day off however to go enjoy the beautiful weather at Silverwood.

Katelyn and Grant all ready to go!

As we might have expected Katelyn really enjoyed going on all the rides that she was big enough for and even seemed to be bored by some of them, apparently a roller coaster is still nothing compared to the air tricks she does with Tyler. :) Here she is on a ride all by herself. She is in the red plane. Unfortunately, she wasn't strong/big enough to pull the lever that makes you go up and down but she was still happy the whole time.

Riding the kid roller coaster with Daddy. I think Tyler even got her to put her arms in the air.

Whee! The "Dumbo" ride with Grammy.

On the 13th the wedding finally came. Everything was beautiful. My Mom, Dad and Scott (assisted by others :) put a lot of work into their back yard and it was absolutely perfect. Unfortunately I did not keep my camera close enough to get a picture of the happy couple and I also missed a couple of cute ones of Grant and Katelyn together but here a few of just her.

Showing off her dress.

We've been trying to teach Katelyn to smile with her mouth and not just her shoulders by prompting her to show us her teeth. This is the result. :)

One of my most favorite pictures.

Jumping on the tramp with Grant and Uncle Cameron. Hair is looking good . . .

After the wedding was over and just before we left for home we went downtown with my Mom, Dad and Scott to feed the ducks and ride the carousel. Here is Scotty trying to get a Canada goose to eat out of his hand.

Tyler had a to keep a tight hold of Katelyn to make sure she didn't just jump right in.

We also showed Katelyn the classic tradition of feeding the goat. I think she was pretty startled at first but thought it was pretty fun after that.

And of course we rode the carousel. Katelyn had lots of fun shouting "neigh" (or "naa" as she pronounces it) when she saw the horses. She also had fun riding with Daddy and then with Papa.

We had such an awesome time in Spokane and always wish we could stay longer. We were so glad to get to see so much family and so many friends and can't wait until next time! :)

Welcome Home to Arizona!

Now that our time in Boston is over we are officially Arizonans. It is so fun to be around so much family and Katelyn especially is loving getting to be around her fun cousins so much and getting to swim all the time.

Katelyn and her cousin Quinn are just about 6 months apart and they have been having a great time playing around together. Here Tyler put them in a wheelbarrow together and took them for a ride. :)

Katelyn also loves having a backyard and getting to go outside everyday to play (except when it is crazy, crazy hot). She really loves jumping on the trampoline with Tyler or just running around like crazy in the grass.

Looking pretty awesome after jumping on the tramp.

Katelyn also got her first haircut shortly after we got to Arizona. Goodbye mullet! She went with me and Grandma Rapier to Le Studio where Grandma gets her hair cut and got a cute little bob. :)

I don't know if you can see it but she is holding the Ipod in her lap and watching Toy Story. Watching a show is the best way for me to get her to hold still when I want to do her hair so I figured it should work about the same for a haircut. :)

Sporting the new do.

The End of our Time in Beantown

 I think it is safe to say that I am late enough finally posting all of these that this is really just to make sure that my favorite pictures are saved one more location. :) But I also wanted to make sure to record all the fun things we did at the end of our time in Boston. I cannot believe that it is already over, looking over these pictures has made me realize how much I really do miss it and all our good friends.

Trip to New  York

Around Spring Break, Katelyn and I took a fun day trip down to NYC with my good friend Annie and her sister-in-law. It was fun to see the city one more time though I realized at that point that it's not super toddler friendly. Here are Annie, Katelyn and I at Rockefeller Center. We miss you lots Annie!

We also got to see Falycia finally for the first time in forever! It was so great! She had never even had a chance to meet Katelyn yet. I'm sad that our time in the Northeast didn't end up overlapping a bit more but I so glad we at least got to see her and little and now we just have a good reason for going back. :)

Easter

We had a wonderful Easter this year. Katelyn got to try Easter Egg hunting and found that she didn't see the point in looking for lots of more eggs when she already had some perfectly good ones in her basket. :) We also had a wonderful dinner with friends which unfortunately I didn't get any pictures of but we are so grateful for the amazing friends we made in Boston and hope we will get to see them again before too long.

 Katelyn was particularly excited about finding the chocolate bunny. At first when we got it she thought it was just a bunny toy and so when I tried to show her you could eat I was afraid she would be sad about breaking her new bunny. But it turns out she must be my daughter because as soon as she realized it was chocolate she had no problem biting right into it. :)

Having a great time with Daddy.

At her second Easter Egg hunt of the season.

Katelyn with her good friend Josh watching the fountain after looking for eggs got old. We miss you Josh!

All ready for church Easter morning.

A Visit from Sean

Later in April, after his semester at BYU was done we were lucky to get to have Sean come and visit us. He was the only one from my family who hadn't had a chance to come see us in Boston yet so we were super happy that he got to come before we had to leave.

Ready to go on a Duck Tour, Quack Quack!

Playing on the crazy toy at the park.

Walking through the Public Gardens. This is definitely one of the places I will miss the most.

Katelyn got a ride on the "Make Way for Ducklings" ducks. It seemed especially appropriate since they are her favorite animal.

One of the other places I will miss the most, Walden Pond.

We mad sure to take Sean to get awesome Italian food and Gelato in the North End and then even went back the next day to get Italian Pastries at Mikes. :)

Sitting on the cannon of the USS Constitution.

Standing outside the Old North Church. Thanks so much for coming to see us Sean we loved having you!

So unfortunately, I didn't get many good pictures from it but we had a super fun camping trip in the White Mountains in New Hampshire with the Zellers. We were a little early in the season which meant we didn't have any crowds and had a great spot right by a beautiful creek. It turns out this is only camping we are going to get to do this summer so we are so glad not only that we got a chance to get outdoors but also spend so much fun time with our good friends.

Graduation!

We are so proud of Tyler for all his hard work while he was going to Harvard Law School. It was a wonderful day to finally see him get that diploma that he had definitely earned. You're amazing Tyler!

Thank you so much too, to Dad and Linda, and Mom and Dave. It was so good to have you come and see us and I know Tyler was glad to have you share this special event with him.

With Dad and Linda. 

With Mom and Dave.

With the Zellars. We miss you guys already so much! I hope New Orleans is treating you well and that we get to come and see you soon!

Katelyn got to walk with Tyler, she looked very cute up there in her little white dress next to all the graduates. She even ended up in a picture on the Harvard Law School website afterwords with Tyler and Dad.

Receiving his diploma!

Here are just a couple of random cute pictures of Katelyn to end the post. Cuz ya know, why not? But I also just want to say what wonderful time our time in Boston was. It had its ups and downs as most places do but there are a lot of things I love about and especially a lot of amazing friends we made there. I'm so grateful for the chance to have such an awesome experience.