This Year's Recap!

     I know I've been sorely neglecting the family blog. Shame on me. But let me give you a little taste at what's been going on in the Sorensen family since the start of the new year. It's been more than a little busy at times and we're all still trying to adjust to being a family of 4. You'd think we'd have it down by now but nope! Things are always changing with these little guys. :)

January...
     January was not my favorite month. Actually, it was my least favorite month, followed closely by February. And then maybe April... Early in January we returned home from our 2 week, family filled vacation to find that our much needed second car had been stolen from our parking lot. After lots of prayers, lots of praying, and sacrifices offered from family members who don't  have much more than we do to help us find a way to afford another car, the police called at 4 AM a few weeks later to let us know our car had been found. We were excited, but still a little nervous because they wouldn't tell us what condition our car was in. Spencer waited at the tow yard for hours and hours to get it back (that's a whole other story...) we finally had our car turned over to us in perfect condition. They stole about $2 worth of change out of the change drawer and our driver side window sticks now, but otherwise it was perfect. Spencer was excited that all of his fishing gear was still in the trunk. :) It was a huge blessing after weeks of worry and stress, and wondering how in the world we could ever afford to buy another car while Spencer was still in school.
     Shortly after that fiasco was cleared up, Ashley came down with another episode of asthma pretty bad. Isaac had been quite ornery too so we took both of them to the doctors office. As it turned out, Isaac had asthma pretty bad too. Worse than Ashely even. And he was only 4 months old! It took us WEEKS to get them healthy again.

February...
     And February was my second least favorite month because the asthma issues spilled over into February. The end of January was only the start of the asthma issues. By February Isaac was so bad he couldn't eat or sleep (which meant I didn't either...). In one week we had both kids into the doctor 5 times. Yep. Every day that week. By the end of that week Isaac was receiving steroid injections, oxygen at his appointments, and oral steroids while still needing to be treated with albuterol through a nebulizer every 4 hours, even through the night. Nebulizer treatments take about 15 minutes so with both kids needing them every 4 hours, I spent 30 minutes every 4 hours treating children, then another 20 minutes every 2-3 hours feeding Isaac. We didn't go anywhere for a looong time. If Isaac didn't get better over that weekend he was going to have to be hospitalized. Fortunately, again through much prayer and fasting, Isaac improved over the weekend and though we still had to treat him every 4 hours or so, in a few weeks he was back to his normal happy self. He was still having trouble feeding though and I ended up going to a lactation specialist because he had lost so much weight through the illness and we needed him to gain weight. We were told that he was feeding fine and that he would start to catch up, which he did. For a while. More on that later...

March...
     March was pretty uneventful which is saying a lot for us! The kids got sick again, but knowing that Isaac had asthma as well helped us to catch everything when it started so that we could treat the two of them right away and stop the problem before it got to bad.

Sibling love! Saying good night before bedtime. :) So sweet!

April...
     In April we had visitors! Ashley's Grandma Sorensen and her aunt and cousins were able to come play for a weekend! Ashley just couldn't believe that they would come play at her house with her toys! This was a first for her. Usually we go do the visiting so it was a real treat to be the ones that were visited! I was busing sewing another sister-in-law's crib bedding for her baby girl due in May (though the baby came just yesterday!). The sewing took up tons of time took about 3 or 4 weeks of straight sewing to finish and I think my kids were SO glad when I was finally finished. :) We had another somewhat unexpected problem in our house after that. We get cockroaches every year when the weather gets warmer so we spray and usually that's the end of it. But no. They just kept coming. It was like a horror movie. Our kitchen was full of baby cockroaches and lots of bigger ones too. It was so bad we would see them on the counter during the day! They were in our pantry, in our dish cupboards, in our dishwasher (how they got in there, I just don't know) behind the fridge, in the drawers... I was horrified and disgusted! In one night we killed about 25 cockroaches in our kitchen. Those were just the stupid ones who didn't have enough sense to scatter when we turned the light on. I spent an entire Sunday (aside from stopping to feed Isaac and to go to church) emptying every cupboard, throwing away open food, and rewashing every single dish we own. I scrubbed down the entire kitchen and hunted down every filthy cockroach and egg sack I could find. (I'll spare you the details of where the egg sacks were found...) I won that battle, and we've won many battles since, but we're still fighting the war (and the stupidity of the management company who says they'll come spray but never do). I can't wait to get out of here! Between the cockroaches and the SWAT team that has visited our once safe complex 2 or 3 times in the last 6 months (once they were at the apartment directly behind ours, the one we share a wall with, the one we suspect was the source of the cockroach infestation that has now leaked over to our apartment) December and move-out time can't come quickly enough! Though I have to say I'm going to bawl my eyes out leaving our ward.

The finished quilt. I'm dump and didn't take a picture of the rest of it.

May...
     My brother graduated from SUU with a bachelors and a masters so we traveled up to go to his graduation! It was fun and we're super proud of him. He's moving up to Idaho now and we'll be sad we won't see him for a while but we're happy he gets to start what we like to call "real life." We still don't know what that's like haha. Ashley had her 3rd birthday and a fun party! She was so cute and had such a great time getting all the attention. :) Also unexpected in May was a random trip to Salt Lake to see the Sorensen family! Spencer came home the Friday of Memorial Day weekend around noon and said, "Honey, I know this is going to stress you out, but I really want to see my family. Can we go to Salt Lake this weekend?" Being the spouse who use to never see her family, of course I was supportive. "When do you want to leave?" I asked, thinking he'd like to leave first thing in the morning. "Well, I want to leave today. In a couple of hours. Sorry." Haha, stinker! After hours of scrubbing our house and doing laundry we finally left and had a great weekend with the family.

The birthday girl after eating a cupcake at her party!

June...
     So far June has been okay, though I suffered a little emotionally when we decided it's time to wean Isaac. Both kids had to go back to the doctor with asthma again. Exposed to too many cold germs in Utah haha. Ashley had a double ear infection and I took Isaac in to hopefully prevent another episode that I thought was about to happen. As it turned out Isaac has not grown in the last 2 months. He was down to 25% for weight and 5% for height. At birth he was in the 80s across the board! I thought he was looking a little small, but he was happy, fat, and well hydrated and it seemed like I had just been to the lactation specialist who assured me everything was fine. I pumped all the next day to see what Isaac was getting. A grand total of 18ish oz plus 2 jars of food. He should be getting 32 oz! We've now done a full week of supplementing with formula and he's already grown. Poor baby! I was starving him! The doctor and I talked about it and we agreed that Isaac is just too impatient now to sit through a feeding since he can move and always has Ashley wanting to play with him. Because of his distractability (which has always been a problem, but more so now) he never gets all of it and just wants to get down to play. He got enough to stay fat and happy and hydrated, but not enough to grow. He's down to breastfeeding only 3 times a day (my supply is much better now going only 3 times instead of 5) with 2 bottles and 2 jars of food. I'm sad that he's being weaned, but happy he can start to grow again.

Ashley followed Isaac under the table. He likes to hang out there. I think it's because he likes to see if we dropped any food. He's kind of like having a puppy.

     So that's our year in just a few minutes! Sorry it was long... but I figured I'd gotten so behind I should just do one big long post about the whole year and call it good! Hopefully I can stay caught up so you don't have to read ridiculously long posts every 6 months. ;)

Quick Update!

I'd like to say I've had a kabillion requests for an update, but really, I've only had one so Jess, this is for you!!! :)

Some quick stats on the kiddos...

Ashley turns 3 in a month and I just can't believe it! How could the sweet baby who made me a mama be so old already? She's super crazy and super sweet and even though she's driving me crazy, I love her to death! We've been working on potty training for about a month now and I'm SO over the "training" part. Can't kids just be magically trained in one day? That would be so nice... Overall I think she's doing well, mostly I think she has accidents still just to spite me. And yes, almost-3-year-olds do harbor spite. At least mine does. :) But again, she's so sweet and she loves Isaac so much. She's such a good big sister and she's willing to help me if it has to do with Isaac haha. She loves playing outside and she wants to go to the park or go swimming almost every day. She begs to go to church so she can go to nursery to be with her friends. :) It's so sweet.

Isaac recently had his 6 month check-up and he's a fat healthy baby! He's over 18 pounds now and he's built solid like his mama and dad. :) He doesn't look as chunky as Ashley did at 6 months, but he's a heck of a lot heavier! He started rolling over at about 5 ish months (WAY sooner than Ashely did!) and now he rolls all over the house and has been scooting for a while now. Crawling is close! I'm so not ready for it though! With another kid came more stuff and I've got lots of things stored within his reach. With no place else to put it, I don't know what I'm going to do! If an extra bedroom or even a storage closet could be magically added to my house (with no extra rent, ha!) I'd be good to go. :) He puts everything in his mouth and has 2 teeth. I don't think Ashley got her first tooth until at least 9 months! He's got a nasty habit lately of biting while nursing so I may have to end that soon, as much as I don't want to. He's super smiley and generally very happy. We finally moved him out of our room a week ago (I was so worried that he'd wake Ashley up at night that I've put this move off for way too long) and I'm so happy to have my room back! He still wakes up once in the night, but so far Ashley has slept through everything and hopefully he'll be sleeping all the way through the night soon!

After eating a red crayon... I swear I'm not a bad mom! From far away this looked like blood and about gave Spencer and I a heart attack! Silly boy...

Spencer and I are doing well. Just chugging along, waiting for school to finally be over. We've wasted lots and lots of time looking at houses we'd like to own in the next year and a half and I think the dreaming has made the wait seem even longer! It's so close, yet so far. :) We're excited for when we get to move onto the next phase of life (though we're not anxious for the kids to grow up too fast!). Enjoy some shots of the kids and I'll try not to go so long without blogging next time! ;)

Isaac's Baby Blessing

     Okay so you've all figured out by now that I'm WAY behind on posting. And it's all these big events at the end of the year that I've failed to post. These are by far the most daunting posts, which is why it has taken me so long to get to them. I decided I can't keep putting it off forever so I'm starting now and hoping I can catch up quickly!

The Sorensen Clan

     Isaac's baby blessing was November 6th and we were lucky enough to have the majority of our families down for the event. All of Spencer's family was able to attend with the exception of his oldest brother and his family who live in Texas. Everyone else came down for the weekend so we had a great time playing with cousins (and we had an especially good time not traveling haha), and showing everyone where we live. For many of Spencer's siblings this was the first time they had seen where we live and the first time Ashley had a chance to show her cousins her fun room and all of her stuff.

The Grimm/Miller Clan

     Most of my family was able to come as well. My youngest brother is on his mission and my second youngest brother was in his first semester at BYU back from his mission and really needed the weekend to study (he felt so bad about it, and I felt bad that he was having such a rough time, but we understood his need to stay so he could do well in school) but my oldest brother and his wife were able to come, along with my parents, grandparents, and my Aunt Kristin's family. We're so blessed to have them just a few short hours away and so they only came down for the blessing and festivities on Sunday. It was great to have both sides of the family together. We were super cramped with over 20 people in our teeny livingroom, but it was still so much fun!





     It was a busy, yet fun weekend and I'm so happy that we have the supportive family that we do. They are all such wonderful people and we're so grateful to all of them for coming to see us and to hear sweet Isaac receive such a special blessing from Spencer.

Ashley was happy to get Isaac back to herself after all the family left. ;)

Isaac's Birth Story - Finally!

                The day before Isaac was born I was really complaining (rather loudly, I think) that this boy was never going to come and that I was doomed to have severe back pain for the rest of my life and never move again. Did I mention that every day he was getting closer and closer to kicking my rib out? I was in so much more pain during pregnancy with him than I was with Ashley. At my 37 week appointment I was measuring 40 weeks and the doctor felt around and guessed that the little guy was already almost 8 pounds but that I could do an ultrasound to check. I stupidly said no, that I wasn’t concerned how big he was. Concerned or not, I should have said yes! Then I would get to see the baby again!

            At my 38 week appointment my doctor was out of town (classic, right?) and so I saw the other doctor in his office. She checked me for dilation and I was dilated to 2 cm. I thought for sure he was a long way off. I was dilated to 3 cm for 2 weeks before Ashley was born. I made it to that Sunday (my official 39 week mark and the day he would have come, had he been as early as Ashley) and by Sunday night I was convinced he’d make me wait until the bitter end. I had so much back pain that I hadn’t slept through the night for several months already and pretty much the only thing I could do was lay on the couch all day. Monday passed and still, no baby, no signs of baby.

Tuesday morning I woke up about 2:30 to go pee, which I did every morning. It was always quite the production for me. When I would first get out of bed I’m sure I looked like a 110-year-old woman, grabbing at my back and holding the wall for support, waddling my way to the bathroom. There were many times Spencer woke up by the sound of my pained gasps and instead of pitying me, he would laugh because apparently there was something very funny about his poor wife desperately trying to make it to the bathroom as if her life depended on it. I went back to bed without incident.

At about 6 o’clock I woke up to pee, again. But this time I had some contractions on the way to the bathroom. That was nothing new. I’d had contractions before while getting up to go to the bathroom. The only thing was I had cramps along with them. And they were every 5 minutes apart. I laid in bed for about a half an hour timing contractions before I decided I should wake Spencer up and tell him what was going on. He laughed at me and thought I was joking. But nope. I sure wasn’t! I was finally in labor!

My bag was already packed so Spencer added a few things to it for him and we got Ashley up and made the appropriate phone calls to make sure we could drop her off at a friend’s house while we went to the hospital. I called my mom. She was trying to convince my dad to come with her but he was worried I wasn’t really in labor yet and that they would drive all the way down here (2 hours) and I would be sent home from the hospital. I hurried and took a shower before dropping Ashley off at our friends and I had planned to put make up on so I could have better labor and delivery pictures than last time but to be honest, I was worried I had waited a little too long because things were getting pretty intense. I think if I had stopped to put make up on Spencer might have dragged me out of the house!

By 9 o’clock we had Ashley dropped off, my parents on standby, and we hit traffic on the way to the hospital. Fortunately it didn’t last too long and we made it to the hospital about 9:30. I don’t know what it is about me in labor, but something about it makes people not believe me. When I went to the hospital with Ashley I told the nurse I was in labor and she kind of laughed at me like I was a silly little first time mom. I told her I hadn’t come in yet to try to get admitted and she told me she’d probably be sending me home. She was shocked when she discovered I was dilated to 5 cm. Almost the same thing happened this time. I calmly told them that today was the day and that I was having a baby. It took them forever to send me to the triage room to wait to be checked and then forever after that before a nurse came in to check me. Oh well, right? At least I was at the hospital so if the baby came while they took their sweet time at least the mess would be on their floor and not mine.

When the nurse checked me she kind of gasped. “You’re at a 6! You look like this is a walk in the park!” Ha. Yeah. A walk in the park. That’s exactly how I would describe having a baby.

She hurried me into a labor and delivery room and got me all set up. We called my parents to tell them I was being admitted (I told you so!) and they were on their way! I was very happy with the way my nurses handled my request to go natural. With Ashley it seemed like every 5 minutes someone was asking me if I was sure I didn’t want an epidural. Some of them even tried to convince me to have one. My two nurses with Isaac just wrote it up on the board in my room that I did not want an epidural and no one asked me again! It was so nice!

Spencer and I watched Megamind while I was in labor. And a few hours later my parents got there. My dad came in for a while until at about noon my doctor came in to break my water. At that point he decided it was time to go and I very much agreed. When my doctor walked in he jokingly said that I didn’t look like I was in near enough pain but that he would take care of that once he broke my water. I kept trying to watch the movie but breaking my water had caused my contractions to be much more intense. I wasn’t handling the pain near as well as I was before. When he left the room he looked at my face again and said, “That’s better.” As painful as it all was, I still found it funny and laughed a little.

I was now in so much pain that I would have done just about anything to get that kid out. Spencer kept positive and told me that Isaac would come at 1 o’clock and that I only had an hour left. I told him I couldn’t make it until then because I was so tired and hungry but he kept telling me, “45 more minutes…” “only half an hour left…” “15 more minutes and he’ll be here…” By the time he got to 15 minutes I was starting to feel the urge to push. The only problem was I was only dilated to 8 cm and the nurse said he was still pretty far up there. She could feel his head spinning on her finger. I told her I didn’t care and that I had to start pushing like, yesterday. She called down for a doctor and told me to hold on until the doctor came. I had no idea that resisting that urge to push would be so difficult. It was like asking me to move a mountain. I couldn’t do it! I found myself having to push just a little bit.

10 minutes had gone by and still no doctor came. As it turned out, my doctor was stuck in the OR doing a c-section and they were trying to get the other doctor to come up. My nurse had called down several times telling the doctor to please hurry but it was taking so long for her to come! At one point Spencer said quite loudly, “Does she need help finding the elevator?” I still found it in me to chuckle a little bit but I was a little upset that the doctor had not thought she needed to come quickly. I think my nurse was starting to get nervous that she was going to have to deliver the baby. I was also kind of scared at that point because I think the baby was pressing on a nerve and I couldn’t move my legs at all. Something weird was going on in my arms as well because my arms and hands had seized up. I couldn’t even squeeze my mom and Spencer’s hands anymore. I was worried about what was going on to cause that and I needed to push but the doctor wasn’t there… it was a miserable 15 minutes. At long last the doctor came and set up the bed for delivery. I was so relieved to be pushing that in two very strong pushes the baby came out! My two pushes only took about 2 minutes but that baby came out so fast! Spencer looked at the clock and what do you know, it was 12:59. He was right! By 1 o’clock our baby was here!

They laid my sweet boy on my chest and I got to look down at his poor swollen face. Taking that sweet baby into my arms after so much hard work is something I’ll never forget. Too soon, it seemed, the doctor was taking him from me and said, “Um, we’re just going to take him over here and see if we can get him to cry.” I sensed that they were worried but I was so calm and so relieved that I just knew everything was fine. I didn’t realize how blue he was when he came out but the doctor thought he wasn’t breathing. As it turned out, his poor little head suffered some trauma coming out so quickly (I was only dilated to 8 cm when I started pushing and he hadn’t even come down all the way yet) and caused him to bruise severely. I knew your baby could be pretty banged up by getting stuck, but I had no idea that coming out too quickly could do some damage as well. In the end, the doctor was satisfied that he was fine and that it was just bruising. They called him the little blueberry.

During our stay at the hospital the nurses were on alert that my baby had a blue head and that if they saw him not to panic, he wasn’t choking or anything, he was in fact breathing, he was just very beat up. Apparently one of the charge nurses was not informed and when another nurse was walking him by after taking him to get his shots, she panicked and told her to stop, the baby was choking. My nurse even stopped checking to make sure the numbers on our wristbands matched. “You’re the only one in the hospital with a blue baby,” she joked.

And so there was my little blueberry, weighing in at 9 pounds, 1 ounce, 21 inches, born at 12:59 PM on September 20^th, 2011. It wasn’t until a few hours later when my parents left to get Ashley to bring her to the hospital that we decided to name him Isaac Spencer after his daddy.

My Blueberry just after birth.

He's not a blueberry anymore!

The Adventures of the Amazing Sorensen Family Presents: Halloween

     Okay so I've been feeling bad that I don't ever post anything too adventrue-y and I worry that my poor readers may be wondering why we like to boast that we have amazing adventures. Well, this, my friends, will prove to you that we do have an exciting life and that our adventures are truly amazing. :)

     It started off like any other Halloween, the pre-trick-or-treating excitement (okay, mostly my pre-trick-or-treating excitement, closely followed by Ashley's excitement). We were invited to share some dinner with two super fun families in our ward and then to trick-or-treat in their neighborhood after. Ashley was way excited to go with other kids (and so was I!). She doesn't get to be around kids near enough. She looked so dang cute in her Rapunzel dress and Isaac was snoozing peacefully in some pumpkin pajamas (though he was dressed up for the ward trunk-or-treat in his awesome Thor costume).

Thor! The God of Thunder!

     Incidentally, this neighborhood we were trick-or-treating in was Gladys Knight's neighborhood. More on that later.

     Ashely would march right up to those doors with all the other kids and in her cute little 2 1/2-year-old voice say "Trick-Or-Treat!" and her eyes would open wide at all the candy that was pored into her bucket. She would then tell them thank you (don't I have such a polite and well-mannered child? ha ha ha...) and follow the kids on to the next house. I'm not going to lie, I LOVED taking Ashley trick-or-treating! She was the cutest thing I've ever seen in my whole life and I can't wait to take her again next year! It was so much fun to watch her!

Some of Ashley's trick-or-treating pals.

One of the many houses she trick-or-treated at.

     Okay, so here comes the most amazing part about this amazing adventure. We had to trick-or-treat Gladys Knight's house. How could we not? She was in our ward anyway, and her house was right there. No way we could pass it up! On her front lawn on a big projector, movies were playing and on two big folding tables were mountains of full size candy bars! Holy. Moly. It was awesome. :) Off to the side were three brand new bikes with three contests to win them. The first two required leaving your picture and then they would decide the next day "Cutest Costume" and "Coolest Costume". We didn't enter those. Mostly out of laziness haha. Then there was a giant bowl of jelly beans and you would leave your guess as to how many were in there. The closest guess would win the third bike.

     Again, out of laziness, we weren't going to guess. But then our friends talked us into making a guess for each of us and then one for Ashley. Spencer didn't even look at the jelly bean bowl. He just guessed a random number and we went on our merry way. At about 9 o'clock we got a phone call from one of the men working the contest for Gladys. Spencer had won the bike! His random guess was only about 30 or 40 jelly beans off and we won the bike! Amazing, right!?! So now we have this totally awesome green mountain bike sitting in our living room because we're too afraid to leave in on our patio for fear it will get stolen, or parts of it will get stolen. (Here's a hint, Gladys is not hurting for money, and this is a nice bike.)

     And so we have much to thank Gladys for next time we see her at church and I guess we should maybe bring a plate of cookies to our friends who encouraged us to leave a guess when we almost didn't. :)

     It was a fun night. And an amazing adventure. And I can't wait to take Ashley trick-or-treating again next year, not because I want to try to win another bike (though let's be honest, how cool would that be?) but because I love my little cuties and I want to watch them have so much fun too!

Happy Halloween!