Wow, was that February that just zoomed past? I think so. I feels like just yesterday that I was writing the post about my jitter bug turning 3 months, but that was 3 weeks ago.  That means I'm going to have to write a 4 month post coming soon.  Time is seriously flying.  What do I say to that?  Slow down Bessie!  I want to get in a few more cuddles before my little peanut turns 18.

Anyway, I'm really excited about getting to be a stay at home mom.  It's been going really well.  There was a couple days a week ago that I was drop dead exhausted a little burnt out, but God had an amazing friend there to encourage me.

Here are a couple of tips I've learned:
1. Do a load of laundry every day.  It's amazing how quickly that can pile up when you have a baby around.
2. Put your chores on rotation.  I do one chore a day in addition to basic maintenance.  So I dust Mondays, Wipe stuff down Tuesdays, Vacuum Wednesdays, so on and so forth... (I've always wanted to say that.)
3. Pick up as you go.
4. Whistle while you work.

Okay, that last one is optional, but it really does help to have a good attitude and enjoy your work.  Plus, my little dwarf cracks up when I whistle. :)

I've also realized that I'm not as organized as I thought I was.  Yes, we don't have a lot of stuff and we frequently purge what we do have, but some how that little bit of stuff seems to explode quite easily.  So, I'm trying to figure out how to organize my life/home.  Any tips?

And the obligatory baby update:
Weight: He's kind of leveling off at 23 pounds, whew.
Size: He's officially in 12 month clothing.
Sleep: He usually does from about 10:30 or 11:00 to about 6:00. We don't complain. :)
Sitting: He can sit up on his own, but is a little wobbly.
Standing: He can stand when propped on our ottoman.  He's thinks he's pretty tough stuff.
Rolling:  Not really, but he does this great beached whale impersonation. :)
Social: He's really starting to smile a ton, it's so sweet.
Talking: He's pretty verbal.  He'll "sing" himself to sleep, it's hilarious.  He loves trying to talk to us.  He's tried to say "hi" a couple of times and has a few sounds down.  As far as consonants go, he's up to: "Guh", "Buh", "Huh", "Wuh", and just today I heard "Duh."  Those tricky consonants are hard but it seems like he learns a new one at every turn.
Other randoms: He's started sucking on his bottom lip when he's hungry, it's pretty cute.

Annnnd, it's almost impossible to take a still shot of this kid unless he's sleeping. :)
I'll have to post more pictures next time I have a ton on my phone, but that's plugged in next to a sleeping baby.  And only things with the word "fire" in them are worthy of waking up a sleeping baby.

Until next time!

Kendall

3 months!!!

I can NOT believe my little buddy is 3 months as of yesterday.  It seems like it took forever for him to turn 2 months, and then it seems  like it was just yesterday that he turned 2 months.  Crazy!  He's growing like a weed. We love him so much! Look how little he used to be! Awww!

Now he's so big! We weighed him, guess how much this child weighs!  Okay, unless you are Joshua's brother, Paul, who guessed it perfectly (crazy cat), you won't get it!  Ready?  Brace yourself...

20 pounds!!!!
(Correction as dictated by my editor/husband so that you can FULLY grasp the amazing-ness of Paul's guess: it was 19.6 to be exact. I rounded, but that was over a week ago, so it's kosher)
(are you happy Mr. Blog Nazi love of my life? :) a girl can't get away with anything these days...)

Oh My-lanta, that's big!  We grow them big here folks... :)  

 Grabbing those toys, "I just want to have a little nibble..." 

 Pure joy!

 Mommy's new reading buddy! :)

Judah,

You are such a sweet boy.  You live up to your name so well, it means praise.  I know you will use the patience and joy that I see in you to praise the Lord.  We are so blessed to have you, you are such an easy going baby.  My heart just melts when I know you are super hungry and should be grumpy, but you're just playing away with that silly zipper on your car seat.  I love that you have a stubborn side to you too.  You know you will literally holler (not cry) until you get mommy or daddy's attention, it's totally adorable.  You are so strong, always trying to stand and push yourself up.  I can't believe how much you learn and how fast you're growing.  I'm SO thankful that you aren't growing too fast and that your favorite thing is to cuddle with your mama.  God knows mommy really well in giving her a cuddly baby, I LOVE to cuddle with you.  I love your eyes, your nose, your bull dog cheeks.  I know I'm biased, but you are such a beautiful baby.  We praise God for you everyday.  You are such a gift and we are delighted to be used by God to see you grow into the boy he has called you be.

Love,

Mommy

Ice Skating and One Hand

We went ice skating on a pond near our house yesterday.  It was SO much fun. 

It was Judah's first time, but he skated like a champ.  (Or slept like a champ...)

I survived. Thank you Lord!

The Von Skate family.

Hopefully Judah gets his daddy's mad skating skills and not his mama's wobbly skating skills. 

And now a picture book on life as the one-handed mom:

 This sweet little boy is going through a phase.  It's the if you don't hold me, I'll do this phase:

Which means it is the "his mama doesn't get much done unless he does this" phase:

 So aforementioned mama comes up with creative ways so he can eat:

 So there you go, we are learning all sorts of ways to do things one handed in this family... 

But he's also in the "I'm the cutest kid in the world" phase, so it's all worth it: 

:)  The end.

I think he is at the time where he really wants to grab his toys and eat them, but he's not quite there yet to do it all the time so he gets frustrated.  Poor guy.  I keep trying to put him in his seat to play with toys and do tummy time, it just doesn't last terribly long without him getting upset.  Oh well. He's totally happy to be held and talk with us, so we're just enjoying that. :)  

The end. (again) :)

Kendall

The New Stew

Hello Friends!

Long time no see.  The holidays were craaazy.  We were here, there and everywhere.  We really enjoyed getting to spend time with family and friends.  Christmas day we flew up to Seattle, took a train to Bellingham and got picked up by Joshua's family and driven to Abbotsford.  It was a pretty long day, but Judah traveled like a champ.  The guy in our row on the long flight to Seattle looked at us at the end of the flight and said, "Oh man, I forgot you guys had a baby."  Good thing it was you and not us then, hey?  :)

We were there for 18 days!  Judah got to meet the rest of the family up there, so he enjoyed that.  I have pictures of all the fun, but they're on Joshua's computer.  Apparently my blog is not important enough for him to stop working.  Something about needing to eat and all that... :) I might upload them later, but he's on the phone with a client and I'm taking advantage of the little guy's nap.

I do have pictures of the FABULOUS date Joshua took me on at the end of our trip, he took me to the Space Needle for lunch.  It was so fun, Judah was great the whole time and slept for us too! :)

The view was great!

The best sandwich ever: hazelnut chicken, yummy! :)

Joshua's dessert, the Lunar Orbiter, was super fun with dry ice!

We got back to a total mess. Someone ransacked our house, it was awful.  Okay, it was us in the quickly open Christmas presents, pack, and don't forget the baby rush.  I H-A-T-E coming back to a messy house.  And this was like the worse our house has been. ever.  So, I decided something (after I had tamed the beast of a house and had time to think).  Never again.  With a baby, you just do not have time to get behind.  It took me forever to get everything in order again.  So, in the spirit of the new baby and the new year, I've decided that there was to be a New Stew.  (That's me. And yes, I giggle every time I say that...)

A couple factors played into this decision.  First and foremost was the fact that I am (after a ton of talking and prayer) taking a break from my Master's program. Joshua would have had to not work or we would have had to put the little man in daycare.  Neither of those were options for us at this time.  Plus, in the end, we want me to be home with him.  So, now I am a full time home-maker.  Wow.  This is my job now, and I want to do it with excellence just like Joshua does his job with excellence.  The second factor is the fact that we a little tight on money right now.  Joshua's business is in transition right now were he is forming a job that doesn't make as much as we're accustomed to so he can eventually hire someone else and step in to more of a CEO/product developer role.  So right now we're making a lot less than we're used to, plus we are self employed so we owe a lot in taxes, plus we have college debt that we need to pay off.    So, we're okay and God is providing, but I'm wanting to help out by becoming (notice I'm not already) more thrifty and wise with money.  That way any extra penny can go to debt. Death to debt! Having school (or any) debt is such a burden, so we're wanting to get out from under that yolk.  I want to start off my "new job"  (totally, madly, completely love spending time with my little man and serving my husband) really well, relying on God.

This last week has gone pretty well, I found the site Money Saving Mom, and found it really helpful.  I'm going to try to follow some of the principles there and other places to help me really do this well.  I am not a naturally organized person.  Ask my parents.  Okay don't ask my parents, that's just not necessary.  Just trust me, this is not natural for me.  But everyone started somewhere.  I want to have time (and money) to really enjoy my family and I want to bless them with an orderly house and life.  So, I've already started doing some things to help me stay up on things, it's pretty hard to get things done with little mister around, so we're getting pretty creative.  God has and is giving me a ton of grace, and I'm really excited about this new phase.  So, I'll let you know how it goes.

Annnndd now for why you REALLY read this blog:  baby update. :) Little man is SO great.  He has really taken off talking this last month, it's hilarious.  I'm pretty sure he's said "hi" and "wow,"  but I know it's too early.  He can play the "guh" game where you go back and forth saying "guh."  It's pretty cute.  When I just put him down for his nap he just laid there singing/talking to himself, so funny!  He loves to read, it's amazing.  He touches the pages and even accidentally turned it once for me.  I can't believe how much we love him.  He is so sweet and smart.  It's crazy how much he learns everyday.  He's such a joy to be with.  He even giggles in his sleep.  He's not really interested in rolling over or anything like that yet.  He can push himself up off of me from a weird sitting position to standing.  I think I'm going to have the only child who walks before he rolls over.  I guess we should get in some more tummy time.  I just love talking with him so much...   Here's some pictures, he's growing SO fast.  He's growing out of 6-9months and into 9 month clothes.

 Reading time!

Sleepy Time!

 And our favorite: talky time! :)

Hope you have a great weekend, thanks for reading!

Kendall

Birth Story :: Part Three

Welcome to part three of the birth story, this should hopefully be the last installment.  My little tamale is sleeping, so I should have some time to finish. Although, his head is buried in my armpit (crazy boy), so I'm not sure how long he'll want to be there.  And once again, I don't have pictures of this, and you probably wouldn't want to see them anyway, so I'm adding other cute pictures along the way...

 Us at his first doctors appointment.

We left off that I was finally given permission to push.  Now, I had decided that when it came to pushing, I just wanted Joshua in the room.  Joshua's mom had been on skype with us basically the whole time and my mom had been in the room.  Both had been so great through the whole thing, I really couldn't imagine kicking them out.  I know it's not for everyone to have family in the room, but it just felt right. When my mom very sweetly asked if I wanted her to wait outside (we all know it killed her to ask, I'm sure she was hoping I'd forget to kick her out :), I said "no."  It was great to have their support and encouragement through the whole thing.

Our little man, we're in love! :)

Anyway, Dr. O (the whole reason we had my water broken) had to leave to pick up her child, so we ended up having Dr. Probasco for the pushing part.  We had seen her for one visit before, and weren't huge fans.  She was nice, but we didn't really click.  Honestly, at that point Dr. Doolittle could have subbed in and I wouldn't have cared, I just wanted to push him out and meet him.  Dr. P was terrific despite our initial impression, she was quite the pushing Nazi coach!  My contractions came one on top of each other, and I think everyone just wanted Judah to finally make his appearance, so they didn't really let me rest.  At first I thought I wasn't making any progress because only Cindy and Dr. P were in the room.  We had meconium staining, so I was expecting an army of scrub-clad people to rush in. Everyone was encouraging and told me that I was a pushing champ.  In all the tactfulness that being in labor gave me I told them they were lying.  If I was really making progress there would be a ton of people in the room and Dr. P would change into her surgical gear stuff.  Now, this was only like 10 minutes in to pushing, so I may have been a little bit impatient.  I just couldn't imagine all the crazy work I was doing was not effective, they could at least get one more nurse in there to make me feel better for back up. Well, the next time I pushed Dr. P said that if I pushed like that one more time, she'd change and call in the calvary.  Yes, apparently they resort to bribery even if you're in labor.  It worked.  I pushed crazy hard, she finally changed clothes while I kept pushing and the perinatologist came in. 

Just got home from the hospital!

Now, at this point there was crowning (I don't know if you say I was crowning or he was crowning, all I know that there was crowning.) How did I know there was crowning?  Well, my mom looked down and in all her grace said, "ew, what is that?!?!"  Umm... What is what?  What is going on? Dr. P replied that it was just the head.  Now, as a new mom that can't see what is going on, that was not very reassuring, especially when my mom added, "Is that normal?"  Is what normal?  IS WHAT NORMAL?  Apparently the head doesn't quite look like a head when it's emerging.  Dr. P assured me that he looked fine and the head was normal.  I will add that this was the only blunder my mother made, one I'm sure many have made before her.  For those of you that may one day be in this situation though, I will just say, it would probably just be best to wait to ask questions until the end... :)  I did another couple of hard pushes and out he slid.  My first clue that he was bigger than they were expecting was seeing the doctor fumble my son.  Fortunately she didn't drop him, but there was definitely a little fumble in there.  What do you say to that? "Please don't drop him, I just worked so hard to get him here, thank you very much?"  At 7:00pm on the dot (a very timely fellow if I do say so myself), Judah came out screaming and healthy.  So, in total: I pushed about 3 times per contraction for about 8 contractions for about 15 minutes.  Not too shabby for a 12 pound hunk.

All of us with our hospital brands still on.

They put him right on my chest, I couldn't believe he was finally here.  He was absolutely perfect.  He was so sweet and had the cutest chubby cheeks you ever did see.  We were smitten from the start.  Joshua stood by me, it was a perfect moment.  I felt really shaky, so I gave him to his daddy. Dr. P then told me I had lost a ton of blood and had torn quite a bit.  Bummer.  She said that she needed to get me to the OR to sew me up. Double Bummer.  I told her that I wanted to stay in the room with Judah, so she said that I could, she just couldn't numb me up like she needed to.  Triple bummer.  But, I was able to stay with the Joshua and Judah, and even got to hold him for a while.  It was hard because I was so weak and shaky, and getting stitched up was pretty painful.  My blood pressure dropped a lot and my hemoglobin tanked, so they told me that I need a transfusion.

They had to take Judah to the nursery, he was breathing too fast.  Joshua went with him while our friends, Andy and Melissa stayed with me.  They brought me Jimmy John's, which was really great after a long time of not eating.  I was so out of it, it took about 5 minutes for Melissa to realize the mumbling coming out of my mouth was a request for my sandwich.  I started to feel a little better after eating and taking a nap.  After 30 minutes Joshua brought Judah back up, Judah was totally fine.  I finally got the blood around midnight and really felt better after that.  They kept me overnight in the labor and delivery room for observation.  We spent our first night as a family of 3.  We just kept looking at him, we couldn't believe he was ours.  What a wonderful gift!  

Little feet

While this was definitely the most painful experiences of my life, it was perfect.  I am so blessed to have Joshua, who fought for what was best for me and Judah the whole day.  He was so encouraging, supportive, and helpful.  I couldn't have done it without him. I'm thankful we took the birthing class that we did.  Without the epidural, I was really able to feel to push and was able to push him out really quickly which greatly lowered our chances of him getting stuck in shoulder dystocia. We also were really blessed with our health care providers who never even talked about a C-section the entire day.  I am so grateful that I was able to have him naturally and safely. Thank you Lord.  Most of all, we're so thankful to have a healthy beautiful baby boy.  He is the sweetest gift we could have asked for.  

Well, thanks for reading, I really enjoyed recounting most of what happened. :)  We're all set up for Christmas at our house.  I can't wait to start baking Christmas goodies.  Hy-Vee has coupons for $.99 baking goods like flour, powdered sugar, chocolate chips, and brown sugar. We picked up stuff, so now all I have to do is wait to have time to bake.  I have a lot of school stuff wrapping up here, so I'll do that first then hit the kitchen!

Hope you have a great rest of the weekend!

Birth Story :: Part Two

I'm just going to jump right into the rest of the story here, read the last blog for the first part of the story.  I'm basically just writing this until the little munchkin sleeping on me wakes up, so we'll see where we get to...

So, we decided to head to the hospital, the whirlpool was calling my name. We got to the hospital around 9:15am and did the whole check-in thing which was fun.  I think the receptionists play the game, "Pretend that lady isn't in labor."  Like really, you want me to sign something during a contraction?  Okay...  We finally got to our room and met our nurse, who I won't name.  Now, I should preface this by saying that we'd be told time and time again that your nurse makes all the difference.  So, we'd been praying for a wonderful nurse.  Imagine our horror and disappointment when our nurse walks in, takes one look at me and says, "wow, that's a big baby in there, you'll probably be a c-section."  Umm... nice to meet you also?  My very sweet husband tried to smooth things over and make me not panic by diplomatically saying, "Well, we are really wanting to do this naturally and avoid a c-section."  Instead of backing down this "gem" of a nurse said, "Well, you're not going to get everything you want today."  I handled this really well, and started crying.  Joshua reassured me that it was going to be okay.  We'd give her a little while to warm up, and if not, we could change nurses.  I bet you can't tell which one of us is the level-headed one in the relationship, hey?  So, I decided to be positive and not worry about the nurse, who was actually very nice, just not on the same page as we were.  I just wanted to get into the tub.  The nurse insisted that she had to place the IV before I got into the tub.  Fine, I agreed since she said she wouldn't do an IV, just a saline block in case they needed to give me something later.  Unfortunately she couldn't get the IV in, apparently there was a valve or something in the vein she was trying.  I was really uncomfortable, so we asked if she could try again after the bath.  She used her token phrase, "absolutely not."  Really?  You're not even giving me anything this is a "just in case" thing and I'm not going to start pushing in the tub... At this point Joshua pushed a little harder so that I could just get in the tub.  This was not going the way I'd always pictured.  This was awful.  We met resistance at every turn and we weren't even throwing out our truly hippy requests yet...  Well, the nurse threated to call our doctor, Dr. Oleson.  We thought that was a splendid idea, so off she went to tattle on the laboring lady that wanted to get in the bath tub.  Our doctor said that it was totally fine to get the IV after the tub, praise the Lord!  I think our nurse told the doctor that I was refusing the IV, because she came in while I was in the tub to very kindly explain that she actually really did need me to IV just in case.  We told her that we were totally fine with that, we just wanted to get in the tub first.  Dr. Oleson really was so nice and such a help.  Joshua told her that we felt we were on the nurses bad side (understatement of the month).  Dr. Oleson said she'd take care of it.  5 minutes later Cindy walks in.  Cindy was the nicest, sweetest, most supportive nurse in the whole world.  No more nurse ratchet, what a blessing!  After that the day seemed much happier.  

I guess I should say that when I got to the hospital I was at a 4-5, which was exciting.  But, at the hospital things kind of came to a screeching halt.  The contractions got harder, but spaced out more.  Instead of 3 minutes apart they jumped back up to about 5 minutes apart, bummer.  We stayed there for quite some time. Dr. O offered to break my water, but we were really wanting to hold off on that as long as possible in case I stalled later.  So, I just kept changing positions and chugging along for quite sometime.  I was having back labor pretty badly, so Cindy told me to get on my hands and knees to try to turn the little mister.  But, the little mister was very content sunny side up, such a rebel...  At around 2pm I think I started transitioning.  The contractions got a lot closer together and because extremely painful.  But, we weren't wanting an epidural because it would be safer for our big guy if I could feel to push, so I just kept trying to relax through contractions.  Joshua was really great and supportive this whole time.  

I think around 3pm they checked me and I was finally a 7-8 and they asked if I wanted my water broken.  We said no at first, but then agreed since Dr. O was leaving at 5pm and we wanted her to deliver our baby.  Well, after my water broke the pain was out of control. The contractions were on top of one another and really painful.  At 5:15pm I was still dilated to an 8 and didn't know how much longer I could take the pain.  Cindy said it could still be hours before pushing.  Umexcusemecomeagain?  So, I politely and calmly requested fentanyl. (Okay, I maybe not so calmly.)  Joshua asked if I could do just one more contraction.  Nope.  So, Cindy went to get me the drugs, which takes longer that I would have thought, so I actually had to last through quite a few more contractions.  After I got the fentanyl, the contractions still really hurt, but I was doppier between them so time past quicker.  Fentanyl only lasts an hour, but I was actually happy when it wore off because I didn't like the doppy feeling and it made me throw up.  Around 6:30pm I REALLY felt the urge to push.  Like my body was pushing for me.  They checked me and I was 9.5 and just had a tiny lip of cervix left.  I was told to not push, ha.  That didn't work, but I did try to not push.  Finally around 6:45 I was given the go ahead to push.

Okay, I should probably feed my son now.  Although, maybe if I didn't feed him so much he'd stop growing so quick.  I can't believe how big he is now.  It really does go fast.  He's a month old today!  

Oh, one last thing.  If you were wondering why none of the pictures went with the text, it's because I just threw cute pictures in to keep you interested.  Taking pictures wasn't really a priority for me during labor, so I didn't have anything to spruce up this blog....

He likes to help mommy carry her grocery items.  What a gentleman!  :)

Birth Story Part Uno (That means one)...

Well, I'm guessing you could tell from the 4 week blogging hiatus that we had our baby.  Judah Gordon Stewardson was born at 7:00pm November 2, 2010.  Despite all the friends that tried to encourage me that they always over estimate weight in the ultra-sounds, he actually exceeded our expectations at a whopping 12lbs 1oz.  Yes, he is an over-achiever. I'm just now finally getting on to the computer, babies keep you busy apparently.  And we love it.  We're really enjoying him, he's such a sweet baby.  It's amazing how fast the little squirt is growing though... Anyway, I will share the birth story with you, but I'm going to do it in parts because we have three activities in our house right now: Sleeping, Feeding, and Entertaining a cute baby.  If I blog, I have to cut into one of these activities.  Who needs sleep right?

Monday (November 1) night we went out on a date to Bravo's in West Des Moines.  We had eggplant pasta, because that's supposed to induce labor then went for a walk.  *Disclaimer:  I have no idea if the eggplant induced labor, I just thought it was an interesting coincidence... Please don't hold me responsible for mass eggplant gluttony.* I was having kind of mild contractions, but nothing to write home about.  We went to bed as usual, not knowing this would be our last night as a family of 2.5.  I just ruined the plot, sorry...  Just pretend you don't know what happens.  Around 3:00 in the morning I woke up with cramps in my back and a little bit in my stomach.  I was a little too uncomfortable to sleep, so I woke Joshua up and we decided to watch movies.  We started timing and the cramping was about 7 minutes apart.  They started getting a little more intense, so we got a little more excited.  Maybe this was it...

Around 6:00am I got to the point of not being able to watch anything because I need to focus during contractions.  They weren't excruciatingly painful, but they were uncomfortable enough I couldn't laugh through them.  They were about 4 minutes apart at this time. I was getting excited thinking this would go quick (oh naivety...) since they were coming so close together quickly.  We called both of our parents because we were pretty sure this was labor.  They were just a tiny bit excited for us.  By 9:00am the contractions were about 2.5 minutes apart, so we decided to head to the hospital, but not before we had a quick photo op:

Wow, looking back I guess I was HUGE a little big...

 Right before going to the hospital.

And as a teaser here's the end product: :) 

Isn't he adorable?  I could look at him forever...

By the way, to answer questions.  Yes, we're using cloth diapers.  I will write another post in detail, but it's going well.  You definitely have to change them more often than disposable diapers, but they actually are a lot better on Judah's bottom.  Oh, and they make him look like he has a huge bottom, it makes me laugh. :)