Big Sis and Lil Bro

So there isn't much to say for this post just that I two pretty cute kids (I think :) and though they can't do too much together yet it is still fun to see them interact and think about all the good times they will have. So without any more comment here are the two kiddos hanging out together.

My Big Two Year Old

So I know this is way overdue but I wanted to make sure Katelyn's birthday didn't get forgotten. Also, this is the first of several overdue posts so be prepared. :)

On October 4th of last year our little Katelyn turned two. We had just recently moved into our new house so we got to have a little family party for her here. We love our little Katelyn and are so grateful to have her in our family. She is so much fun and always wanting to play with anyone (and everyone :) she meets. She is a great friend, and now big sister, and loves to give people hugs. She is learning to talk quickly and always has something fun to say. I hope we'll have Katelynisms in future posts. What a wonderful little girl we have!

This is just a cute picture of her from just before her birthday.

Here is her farm cake. Katelyn loves all things animals, particularly baby animals and at the time some of her main words were, "baa", "moo", and "neigh", so she was pretty excited about this cake even though the roof is fairly lopsided. :)

Cute Katelyn with her cake.

Happy Birthday to Katelyn!

  

 

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! :)