Gone, Baby, Gone...

The mullet's gone. Yes, my child had a mullet. It wasn't intentional, just the way her hair was growing. And it was so long in the back I just couldn't bring myself to cut it! Until today.

And yes, she was cute before, but now she looks even better.

On another note, I meant to post this a week ago, but time just gets away from me. On General Conference Sunday, my family gathered at the Aunts' house to watch conference and do some humanitarian projects. We made games for the Humanitarian Center and blankets for Primary Children's Hospital. While we were there, Lottie finally let go. She's been walking with assistance for so long, but wouldn't really go more than a step or two on her own. Then that all changed...

Kelsey McKinley

I guess a week and a half is too long, and I should have put up some pictures of Kelsey long ago, but I just spend too much time cuddling her to get on the computer.

Kelsey was born last Wednesday (missed Aunt Della's birthday by 17 minutes... so sad for Aunt Della) at 12:16 a.m. She weighed 7 lbs 13 oz and was 21 inches long. For being 1 1/2 pounds more than Lottie, her delivery sure was a lot easier.

They induced me on Tuesday at about 4:30, I got an epidural when the contractions got uncomfortable, and at 9:30 I was still only at 4.5 cm. Yeah, I'd been almost that far along for three weeks on my own! But from there it went pretty quickly, I was ready to start pushing at midnight. My doctor got there at 12:10 a.m. and told me to start pushing. I was expecting this to be a long process, since I pushed with Lottie for about two hours. So, he said "Give me a big push" and tried, but started coughing. Gave him another good push, then he said "Okay, now another big push for the shoulders" and I was in shock! It couldn't be that easy, right? Instead of pushing I ended up coughing again. One more push and it was over, so I pretty much coughed Kelsey right out.

Now, my sister-in-law Kate is pretty much awesome. She's our family photographer, and we're lucky to have her. Visit her blog here - Kate Johnson Photography - remember that if you ever need great pictures taken. I was going to have her take pictures next week, but then I found out on Friday that she was going to be out of town for two weeks. So, Saturday morning I sent her a text and by that afternoon we were taking Kelsey's pictures! I love the way they turned out! Here are just a few...


With the teddy bear Grandma Glo and Grandpa gave her



Here's a cute one of Lottie that Katie snapped while I took a break with Kelsey. I can never get Lottie to smile in pictures for me, but Katie has a way of catching her at just the right moments to really catch her personality.


And finally here's me with my two girls. Brad was at Priesthood Conference while we did this, so he didn't get any pictures with her, but we'll catch that later.


Kelsey is so sweet. She doesn't look at all like Lottie, yet. I have a feeling they'll look more alike as time goes on. Kelsey does have my darker hair, and doesn't have Brad's eyes and eyebrows like Lottie does. I may be biased, but I think they're both adorable.

Non-stress?

Why is it called a non-stress test when they only do it when you're stressed?

I've been pretty sick for the past week and a half. My family shares everything - even the stomach flu. And that's miserable enough, but worse when you're 9 months pregnant! Yesterday, for the fifth day out of the last eight, I couldn't keep anything down. After being at work for a while, I noticed that the baby wasn't moving like she usually does. Little Laverne & Shirley is really quite active. So I focused for an hour and only felt her move once.

My doctor sent me to the hospital for a non-stress test. Luckily, I work with my brothers, and Barry drove me to the hospital. Brad dropped Lottie off at his mom's and met us there. They strapped the monitors on me and I waited. We heard the strong heartbeat immediately, and it continued throughout the test.

So, they sent me home with a lovely prescription for the nausea. And when they say that it may cause drowsiness, they are right. I slept almost through the whole night last night, for the first time in a long time.

Now I just have to focus on getting better so I can actually deliver a baby. I was almost hoping they would just induce me yesterday while I was there, but they won't do that while you're sick as long as the baby's okay. Now it's back to waiting. I'm scheduled to be induced on Wednesday if I don't have the baby before then.

By popular demand...

So, here are a couple new pictures of Lottie. I didn't take many pictures during August or yet in September, so they aren't the most recent.

We went swimming on the 24th of July with Debbie and Ainsleigh. Lottie has a lot of hair, but normally it just lays flat doing nothing. However, put a little sunscreen in it and you get...

Whenever we do Lottie's laundry, she likes to help. Mostly she helps by crawling into her empty basket. But if you put the clothes from the washer onto the door of the dryer, she

will push them in for you.

And to prove she's growing up so fast, we were waiting for Uncle Patrick and Aunt Katie to get home one night and she just had to sit in my seat and learn to drive. A minute later when she grabbed my phone and held it up to her ear with one hand still on the wheel, I knew we were in trouble.

I'm trying to upload a video, but it seems to be having issues. I'll work on that and get it posted too.

Maybe pregnancy insomnia is sort of a good thing. If I could actually sleep at night, I don't think I'd ever post. 4 a.m. seems to be a good time for me to blog. Two more weeks, then I get "baby's not sleeping" insomnia. Don't think that will be as conducive for blogging though.

Seriously, so proud

Last year, just before Lottie was born, Brad walked in the graduation ceremony at BYU. He wasn't officially a graduate, because he still had his 200 hour internship to complete, but he walked, planning on completing his internship over the summer and having his diploma mailed.

Well, ask anyone who's done it, but an internship while working full-time to support a family is no easy task.

It's already taken him longer to complete his classes than usual because he had to work full-time. He's put so much effort into taking care of me and Lottie that his own personal interests have been put second. There are so many things that he wants to accomplish, but there just seems to be no time.

His work schedule isn't the easiest. And when he's home, he seems to spend all of his time on his own "honey-do" list. I've never had to make one for him, he just gets things done. Of course, top on the list is spending all the time he can with Lottie. I swear, if it wasn't for him that girl wouldn't be as smart as she is. She loves to play and walk and go up and down the stairs, and he is the one who never fails to have the energy to do it with her - even after a full day of work standing for eight hours straight.

Add to all of that the internship. This summer (only a year after planned...) he finally finished his internship with Select Health. Part of that was to complete a journal of activities. So many people (myself included) would probably have just done the hours, whipped something together to get just a passing grade, and submitted it. But Brad put a lot of time into actually turning in a journal he could be proud of. Enough to get an "A."

And yesterday, his diploma was mailed. He is officially a college graduate. Sure, he may have picked the wrong University to attend (Go Utes!) but he did it. He didn't let anything stop him, and that makes me so proud of him.

I was talking to my mom one day, and she shared with me what she worries about with her children. Each of us has different struggles. One thing she said was that she didn't worry about my family financially because she was sure that Brad would do whatever it took to make sure that we were cared for. I don't doubt that either.

I'm so glad that he has the drive to finish what he starts. He truly can teach our children by example. I don't ever have to worry that they'll do something they see their daddy do, because I would be proud to have my children do exactly what their daddy does.

And so fitting that he finished classes and walked right before his first child was born, and actually has the diploma now just before child #2. So really, we could just pretend these pictures were taken now... since we both still look the same!

*Disclaimer - I just couldn't resist one stab at BYU... But while we all know that the U of U is a much better school, I am still quite excited that BYU beat Oklahoma. I even cheered for them and explained to my sister why it was so exciting that they won that game.

Quick Learner

Monday night we were all sitting around at the Johnson house when Gramma Glo called out for us to make sure the girls were contained so she could open the oven and check on dinner. It's dangerous to cook around little Ainsleigh and Lottie. They both love to "help" when we open the dishwasher, I'm sure they'd love to climb right in the oven and "help" there too.

Uncle Patrick asked, "Do they know what hot is?" Well, Monday night we could say, "Not yet."

Lottie must have taken that as a personal challenge to learn as quickly as possible what hot is, because this was her hand on Tuesday.

The other hand doesn't look much better.

She was playing outside at Aunt Colleen's house with Ainsleigh, getting ready to go swimming, and crawled over a hot piece of metal on the ramp up to the front door. The poor girl screamed for two hours straight. Gramma Glo was beside herself with concern that she didn't watch her close enough. I said "meh..." Really, it could have happened when we were there all day on the 4th of July and they were crawling around the same spot. Although it was fun to text the picture to Aunt Stephanie with the caption "Grandma taught me what hot is."

The nurse said that she would be in a lot of pain for 2-3 days. You would never know that with how happy and playful she was that night. The only time she screams at us is when we change the bandages. I'm sure it is not fun to have your hands all bandaged up so you can't bend your fingers all the way when they're barely big enough to grab your favorite toys as it is!

Realization

I realize that most dreams make no sense. I have a recurring nightmare about escalators and being torn to shreds by Sylvester the Cat. It makes no sense. What makes even less sense about this is the scary thing in that nightmare is Sylvester, not the escalator. And yet, I am afraid of escalators, and not Sylvester the Cat.

Still, other than that, I have never had dreams as strange or convoluted as during pregnancy. Yesterday, I woke up from a dream several times as I hit snooze on my alarm. I kept hoping that by going back to sleep I could somehow will myself out of this bad dream and force a happy resolution. Finally I just got out of bed since instead of getting better, my situation in the dream kept getting worse. But even more disturbing than the dream itself are the two conclusions I drew from the dream...

1. I should stop listening to NPR news.

2. Once A Flock of Seagulls gets in your head, it's impossible to get them out.

I'm still singing "I Ran (so far away)". Not a good thing. And any dream that combines those two realizations into one is definately not a good thing.