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Friday, May 30, 2014

PETER IS HERE!!!

Sweet, little Peter is here.

Tianna delivered a beautiful, healthy baby boy at 6:57 p.m. He is perfect.

The delivery went smoothly, and the room was full of people who love this growing Homer family!

More details from the proud couple to come. Stay tuned.

Starting to PUSH!

The midwives are crowded around the tub. Tianna is starting to push.

Despite the pain, Tianna's still got her sense of humor:)

She's in the water!

Contractions are getting much closer together.

She's officially in the tub, doing breathing exercises.

BJ is doing his best at keeping her calm and relaxed.

It's getting closer.






We're getting closer...

Tianna has been looking happy and calm. BJ was playing soothing music on the piano while Tianna paced the floor. She admitted to being a little bored (we know, right?), to the point she considered playing the Wii for a time. However, she's now experiencing some contractions. She has had three in the last five minutes.

Only time will tell...

WATER BROKEN!

The midwife broke her water about 4:40.  She's up walking around and rubbing her belly.

Tianna's having a baby!

Tianna's just about to be induced, so baby's coming soon! BJ and Tianna will be busy, so blog updates will come from Teresa (BJ's sister) and Chelsea (future sister-in-law).

We're ready!

Sunday, May 18, 2014

2 weeks in one again!

Jessa ~

What with talking to you and all last week, getting home later than normal, and being super tired, I didn't blog last week. So I'll try to cram two weeks into one blog without totally boring everyone.

Kessa had her Mother's Day program at preschool. It was adorable. But there was a part of the song where they sang (yelled?) "That's my mother!" And they all pointed, theoretically towards their mother. Kessa did not. Case in point:

But I loved it anyway. She also gave me a plant, a poem about mom (where she got to fill in the blanks) and a fingerprint painting. She also tried to hold hands with the boy next to her in this picture for awhile. He was like, "Dude, what are you doing?" and wouldn't let her. Also, the three girls pictured are the only three girls in the class.  The rest are boys. Like, 10 boys. And the boy in the green striped shirt is the one that invited her to his bday party.



Thanksgiving Point opened up a new children's museum! It's called the Museum of Natural Curiosity.  Because we're now members, we got to go to a members-only preview before it opened to the public. It was So Much Fun. We were there for two hours, played our hearts out, and still didn't get to everything. I'm excited to have a pass to it, but I'm a little nervous about taking the girls by myself. It's so big and there are so many people, I'm afraid I'd lose one or both kids! So it looks like that's one thing we'll do often...with Daddy. :) Or one kid at a time. I won't go into details, simply because it could easily take up a whole blog by itself. In fact, I'll combine all the pictures into one for brevity's sake! We'll just have to take you when you get home.



Saturday, Kessa's friend, Audrey, had a birthday party. She's now 4 and Kessa is fascinated that for a little bit, they're the same age. She was also convinced that Audrey would have a massive growth spurt and they'd be the same height for a month because they'd be the same age. Haha. That's not how it works, kiddo.  The party was during Abby's nap time, so I left BJ with Abby and I took Kessa to the party. I stayed to help out, largely because I like the adults and we pretty much just made it a casual play date where the moms all talked while the kids played. Then we ate cake and ice cream. It just doesn't get much better.



Then I got home and found that while I had been gone, BJ had moved 98% of our storage from the family room out to the garage!  Hooray!!!! It was his surprise Mothers' Day present for me. I'll take service over flowers any Mothers' Day! That had been one of my big stresses pre-baby, was being able to get the house clean, when all our storage took up so much of the main living area. Even when it was clean, it still looked chaotic. Moving it out to the garage was ideal, because it opened up the family room, left the storage accessible, and when we do move it, we now have the door from the garage to the storage room, so we won't have to carry it down any stairs. Just move it on through!

As he finished moving out the last of it, I cleaned up the family room. We then did some minor rearranging and BJ hung the pictures we got from Travis for Christmas—my favorites from his religious collection, many of which I helped take in the Holy Land. So not only was my family room spotless for Mothers' Day, but we got all those pictures hung!



The next morning Kessa gave me the collection (like, manilla envelope full) of notes and cards she'd been writing/coloring for me all week long. And she'd made Abby a necklace and wrapped it and gave that to her, too. It was adorable. She was so focused on giving and never once asked for a present for herself. I was very proud of her. And BJ gave me an egg maker/toaster like we got for our wedding, but it broke. Do you remember that thing? It was amazing. Well, he gave me a picture of one, anyway. :D

After church we went up to your parents' where we ate and got to talk to you! Despite their minimal appearances, the girls were super excited to talk to you, and liked to watch you from off-screen. A little before you called Kessa told me, "Mommy, I don't remember Jessa. I mean, I know her, but I don't remember her." I think she was trying to say that she knew who you were, she loves you, she talks about you all the time, but she doesn't have many actual memories of you anymore. She's definitely excited to make more memories with you when you come home. I just thought it was cute how she was trying to put such big ideas into such a small vocabulary. And wanted to make sure that I knew when she said she didn't remember you, she still knew you and remembered you, but just doesn't... remember. See? It's a big idea for big girls, too.




As of this past Monday, I start going to the midwife weekly. Thank goodness for BJ working from home. That would be a nightmare with two kids. Things are going well, still. Not much to report, except now I'm 37 weeks, so if I go into labor anytime, I can legally still give birth at home. So we're in the homeward stretch! Any blog now could feature pictures of a new baby! Maybe by then we'll have a name decided for sure. lol. Currently we're considering Peter Russell Homer. Thoughts?



Kessa got sick around this time. She threw up Sunday night, had tummy problems most of Monday, and was just mostly miserable. I was supposed to teach Joy School on Tuesday, but where 3 of the 5 families have newborns and the other two of us are pregnant, I really didn't want to spread it. So we canceled Tuesday's and just tried to cram it all into Thursday. It made Kessa really sad to cancel, so she wrote notes for all her Joy School friends that said, "Thak You. I love you." (That first word is Thank, if you didn't catch it. :D) It was adorable.

Wednesday Kessa woke up and decided it was her toy kitty's 2nd birthday. So all morning she worked on wrapping presents (such as beads, glue sticks, and the tape) and decorating the house with ribbons, pretending to be streamers, hanging from light switches, curtain rods, etc. I was grocery shopping while Kessa was at preschool and BJ requested donuts, so I got one with sprinkles for Kessa, but didn't give it to her before Abby woke up, and I hadn't gotten Abby one, so I wasn't sure what to do. Until I remembered Kitty's birthday. So after dinner we put candles in it and Kessa helped kitty blow them out. "I'll blow them out, though, Mommy, because Kitty isn't real and can't really do it." Then we split it into thirds for Kessa, Abby and Damian (who had just come into town). And then I made strawberry milkshakes, because I have an awesome blender and strawberries that needed to be eaten. It just made sense.



My doula came Wednesday night to talk about comfort measures and to teach us some things to help with my comfort in labor. I think we scared Damian. He ran to the basement, but could still hear everything. He's already told me that if I go into labor while he's here, he's running away to Travis' house, even though Trav is out of the country. I think he's come a long way from the farm if being in my basement while I'm in labor upstairs makes him squeamish. Lol. It'll be interesting to see how it all turns out.

He worked on sheetrock this week. He started with ceilings, because those are hardest. Sadly I didn't get a picture of him trying to walk around on stilts. That was funny. But the family room is now all (mostly?) done, including walls. Including windows for the playhouse under the stairs! And he's been working on the game room and office. I haven't been down since he left, though, so I don't remember exactly what he's finished, but he made great progress and will be coming down this week to do more.



Thursday was Joy School. We're starting the Joy of Family, Security, and Pride section. We read lots of stories and did lots of crafts. It was fun. But I'm certainly glad to be done teaching for the year! I'm getting too tired for that. (This is why I wouldn't actually make a good homeschool mom.) I'm just hoping I'll be able to make her Joy School graduation and not be having a baby or something.

Thursday afternoon we took the Harris' up to the zoo. They opened the first part of the African Savannah, so there are now lions! It was a little anti-climactic, though. They just laid around and we only saw the two females, and not the males. But we still had a ton of fun. Hopefully sometime in the next month or two we'll make it up with the baby and see the rest of the Savannah open. They're putting in a water hole for all the herbivore animals to be together. The little you can see now looks awesome. And they'll reopen the train so we can ride it around the zoo! Hooray! Overall it was really fun, though. And we had to rush through the end of it, because the zoo was closing. And the girls were sad to be leaving. As annoying as it is, it's usually a good sign when the girls cry because they have to leave. At least we know they enjoyed it.



Saturday was supposed to be Ellie Henderson's baptism. I'm sure your mom will tell you more (as she knows more. I've only heard from her so far.) but Bonnie got in a car wreck that morning and broke her foot. And where she's pregnant, they kept her in the hospital for monitoring for 24 hours. So the baptism will have to be postponed. How sad! Like their family needs any more physical trials. Goodness.  God has a high opinion of Bonnie's physical strength, y'know?

We ended up going up to South Jordan and having a BBQ with some friends that night instead. Which was a last-minute and convenient way to soothe Kessa's sad feelings when we had to tell her we couldn't go to the baptism. She was pretty sad about it. But a backyard with two play sets and a trampoline and friends was able to distract her easily enough. But in bad news, it made me jealous of there larger yard and lack-of-stairs to reach their deck. [sigh] Be happy with what you have, Tianna.

We got home and put the girls to bed and BJ surprised me by announcing that he was tired and ready for bed... at 9:30. So we went to bed super early. I tossed and turned for about an hour because it was So Stinking Hot, so I finally got up and turned the A/C down about 5 degrees so I could finally go to sleep. I'll be glad when I stop being an incubator. Today BJ wasn't feeling fantastic, so he left church early and came home to nap. He slept from about 1:30ish until 4 when I woke him up so we could go to Bountiful. So unlike him!

But we went to Aunt Barbara's for Nana's 94th bday party.  We didn't make a candle like Nick did for Grandpa Goddard's, though. Shame. :) But I think Nana would have had a much different reaction. It's probably for the best. Kessa got along great with Laura's kids and they had the time of their lives together. Abby just had fun running around to whoever would pay attention to her.

And that pretty much sums up our last 2 weeks!  Whew!

Random Facebook:
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Kessa turned on Frozen for herself and Abby. Instead of stopping her because she hadn't earned screen time yet, I took a nap. It was lovely.
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For the first time in probably a month or more, all of my recycling is out of my house and garage and waiting to be picked up at the curb. I guess that's the price you pay for finishing your basement and only having bi-weekly recycling pickup. (Thanks, Jenna, for letting me use your recycling can twice in a row. And your garbage can last time.)

Of course that means Damian is coming back tonight to keep working on the basement, so I'm probably just about to get behind again... But for tonight I'm going to rejoice at the lack of milk jugs on my counter!

#itsthelittlethings

Note: The recycling can, for the second time, only got half emptied because of one stupid box that keeps getting stuck. Wish me luck for NEXT Tuesday to finally get everything emptied. [sigh]
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Sometimes life is hard. Like when you have to get off a giant bean bag chair at 8+ months pregnant.
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How to properly end Mothers' Day in the most appropriately motherly way possible: cleaning up throw up.

Good night everyone! Pray I don't need to wake up again until morning!
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Today has been pretty amazing. I slept in until about 8:30, then BJ took care of the girls' breakfast so I got to read about 8 chapters of scripture by myself. Then I emptied the dishwasher with Abby's help. The girls have not had any screen time, nor have asked for any treats. I made a green smoothie that Kessa said tasted "just like dessert!" and Abby had two servings of. Our snack consisted of that and peanuts. The girls have played together beautifully with only a couple of minor arguments and I have not lost my temper nor yelled at either all morning. Preschool and naptime are just around the corner. Abby has not asked for her binkie all day. The only mention of it was while she was jumping on the couch and happily yelled, "binkie, all gone!"

So everyone just pray that Abby will actually take a real nap today instead of playing for two hours, then crying because she's tired and finally falling asleep for maybe a half hour. Because a real nap would really just make this day perfect.
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We put Abby to bed 2 hours ago. I'm currently watching her, through our drop cam, pulling out wipes, wiping her stuffed doggies bum, putting the wipes back in the diaper box, pulling out a diaper, and trying to put it on. Repeat over and over again. I'm pretty sure I'm going to sleep before her.

Also, she only took a 30 minute nap today, at most. We're binkie-weaning over here and apparently she has no clue how to go to sleep without it. In good news, she's generally happy when she's supposed to be sleeping. Just ... not sleeping.
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Oh, all those posts just reminded me, Abby is officially weaned from the binkie! She hasn't asked for it in at least a week. And if she ever mentions it, it's basically something like this, "Binkie? Binkie all gone. Binkie tomorrow." [nod and move on with life]

Kiddisms:

  • Kessa just knocked on the table. Abby asked, “Elsa?” (From Frozen)
  • Kessa: Just one person. Mommy and daddy.
    Me: That's two people. Mommy and daddy are two people.
    Kessa: No, I mean one group. One group of really old people.
  • Me: Do we need to have Gunny Bag come today? I'm afraid that might be the only way to get you to do your chore.
    Kessa: If Gunny Bag picks up all the toys, then can I play with friends? Because all the toys are picked up!
  • Kessa: “We're higher than anything. We're higher than the ground!”
  • Kessa got a wand in a party favor bag from a birthday party. Whenever Abby finds it, she carries it around yelling, “I've got magic!”

Love you!
~ Tianna and Co.

Sunday, May 4, 2014

Just... random.

Dear Jessa ~

Pregnancy update:
I'm 35 weeks along (due date is at 40 weeks). Head is down. Bad posture hurts my back and side often.  :S There's a particular spot on my ribs on my left side that I'm surprised isn't bruised. It feels like a giant bruise. But other than that and being tired often, I don't have much to complain about. I'm doing my best to just be happy to live in the moment and not count down days. I know I'll just be trading the uncomfortable part of pregnancy with the uncomfortable part of newborn baby. So I'll enjoy the good parts of pregnancy now, while I can. It seems the best idea to keep sanity. :D

Baby got hiccups today. It was kind of funny. I didn't really notice it, but BJ happened to have his hand on my belly, feeling him move, and noticed that in a certain spot, the movements were very rhythmic. It was totally hiccups! Hilarious, though poor baby. :( haha.

A new name option cropped up this week. Peter. Kind of funny how it crept up. I was fretting about names and how I wanted him to have a good strong name, specifically a family name, but it's hard to name your kid after grandpas James and John. Might as well just throw a Peter in there! And BJ was like, "Well, why not name him Peter after the tradition of his grandfathers?" After a good laugh, I realized he was actually serious about it. Well, I like the name Peter. Just the reasoning behind it makes me giggle every time I think of it. But we're considering it. Just need to figure out a good middle name. :/ That's posing tricky.

Friday the girls and I went back to the Tulip festival with friends (the Harris'). It was fun and far more lax than our previous trip. Kessa and Audrey would run off to roll down a hill or sit on a bench, so Melanie and I would just stop where we could see them and chat for awhile. At the far back part of the garden we stopped for lunch and to let the toddlers out of the strollers to play. And after a bit of that, it was time for us to leave so we could get Kessa to preschool on time. Little did I realize that almost-8 month pregnant, pushing a double stroller, as fast as I could through the entire park, with an uphill slope at the end, took almost 20 minutes! I was sweating like crazy. Hah! So we got to the car when we were supposed to be at school.  Oops! So she was 15 minutes late.



Melanie had given them chocolate chip cookies, which Kessa had eaten, but Abby just held in her hand the entire time. Then fell asleep in the carseat and dropped the cookie on her lap. [rolls eyes] Melted chocolate all over her. Silly girl! She did that the other day with a Twix bar, too. Just held it all the way home from the store in the hot sun, then freaked out when we got home and I took it away and there was melted chocolate all over her hand. "Messy! Wash hands!" That girl has a talent for making messes. And another talent for freaking out about wanting to be clean immediately thereafter. Then usually coming back and making the exact same mess. Like today the girls went out and drew with sidewalk chalk. Then rubbed their hands in it. She'd come up with chalk all over her hand say, "Pretty hands!" then "Wash hands!" Then she'd run into the bathroom, wash her hands, then immediately go back outside and repeat the process.  Silly girl.  :)

The evening after the tulip festival, I randomly decided to mow the lawn. After both excursions that day, I was tired. (I also ended up ripping back my toenail while trying to move the climbing gym. Ugh.)

Lately Kessa has been loving flying kites. Might as well take advantage of Lehi wind, right? So BJ has been taking the kite Resa gave him years ago and flying it on the side of our house or in the cul de sac. One day she even ran in and made her own kite out of a piece of paper and yarn. Completely her own design. It was cute.

Travis went on another international trip this week, so we had him over for dinner first. He even brought us our pictures he gifted us 2 Christmas' ago. :) Now we just have to figure out how to hang them up... I also borrowed his VitaMix, so I can decide if I can justify buying my own. So far we've made strawberry banana smoothies, strawberry banana popsicles, raspberry ice cream (who knew you could make ice cream in a blender?), and a balsamic citrus dressing/marinade. All were delicious. (Except the ice cream made too much and was too rich. But we can play with that some more.)


Kessa had a birthday party for a neighbor this week. 21 girls came. And the mom made long, felt mermaid tails for all of them! Talk about a go getter mom! Hah! While she and her friend, Audrey, were there, the rest of our families got together for lunch (with that balsamic citrus dressing that turned out to be delicious). It was really fun. I like them lots.

Tonight we had dinner with a friend of mine from high school, Kami. I haven't seen her since our wedding reception. It's been a looooong time. So that was fun to catch up with her. She was in my ward and we were good friends growing up. It's fun to renew friendships!

And the rest of my week seems to have been boring and you're writing anyway, so I should probably tack on pictures and post this. :)


Facebook:
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Somehow putting a Princess Tiana bandaids on my owies makes them feel better than any other princess could.

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95% of the time feeling a baby move inside of you is magical. But you know that feeling when a child climbs all over you and digs their elbow or knee into your stomach?

Yeah, it's not comfortable when attacked from the inside, either.

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It just occurred to me that next week I'll be 8 months pregnant. Am I the only pregnant person ever that *doesn't* count down the days till birth? In fact, I get a little panicked when I think about it.

Unfortunately that's Kessa's bday, so she's counting down. And it's just after WWDC (nerdy Apple conference) so BJ's got a countdown. I think it's just unavoidable.

I'm excited to welcome him into our home. I just have no desire to rush it…

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The girls are supposed to be sleeping. Instead they're singing at the top of their lungs, "It's potty time, shoo-bop, shoo-bop!" It's hilarious hearing my 2-year old singing that. And my 4-year old getting mad because Abby is getting the lyrics wrong. "You stop singing." "No, you stop singing." "I'm tired!" "No, I'm still awake and I'm tired."

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Finally finished spring planting in my garden! With extra garden prep this year and being 7.5 months pregnant, I wasn't sure it was going to happen. But BJ is a rock star and made it a family affair twice this week to go out and do it. And we did! Even with the girls in tow!

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Proof that I was a foolish child: I didn't like sour cream. Or mushrooms. Fool. Fool that I was!

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Kiddisms:

  • Kessa: I'm making one for Abby, too, because she's just so cute! And she's adorable, too.
  • Apparently Kessa is mad because BJ didn't tie her door shut.
    BJ: Fine, I'll go find the jump rope and tie it shut.
    Kessa: Fine. I'll go to bed then!
  • Me: What does it mean to get married?
    Kessa: It means you get a house together and be together forever!

Random pictures:

Abby likes to sleep in weird ways. Like on the floor. And with wipes pulled out and around her face.

BJ and Abby, just for fun.


<3 Tianna and Co.