Life as we know it: 2015

Saturday, October 3, 2015

Alice is 1!!!

Last Friday our little miracle baby turned 1! Say WHAT?! Already?!
Its crazy to me how fast and slow time can move all together. For example its really hard for me to think back on my life when we didn't have Alice because I feel like she has been apart of it the whole time. And yet i can't believe it has already been a year because it feels like just a few short months ago my water broke and I was in the hospital waiting to meet her. Time is a funny thing.

I spend all day thinking back and remembering everything i could about September 25, 2014 and looking back at pictures. And then enjoying my little ball of energy and seeing how much she has grown in that year.

It was so special for her and for me, because my little sister was getting married the next day so all 8 of us siblings were together again for the first time in 3 1/2 years! Alice got to spend her birthday with lots of cousins and aunts and uncles. Not that she isn't every day but she was very loved oh her day! :)

We had pizza and cake at the Scera park with family and watched Alice have her first taste of cake and she loved it (and all the attention too).
We sang the traditional de Hoyos birthday song and I lost it half way through the first verse. I don't know what happened or what came over me but i couldn't keep from crying. Here we were singing happy birthday to mine and Travis' daughter. Our daughter!!! We have a child..... and a beautiful, funny, smart, and goofy/spunky one at that!! I have these moments every so often where I just stop and stare or think and sometimes yes i cry because i still just can't believe it, that i have a child. I am so beyond blessed and grateful for this amazing opportunity to be a mother. I love it so much and i wouldn't change it for anything! Travis and Alice are my whole world and I love them with everything in me.
The day was great and so much fun.

The next day was go go go!!
My sister was married at 10am in the Payson LDS Temple. It was beautiful. After that we had some family pictures taken and then we rushed home to get Alice down for a nap. That girl loves her sleep and when she is denied it she gets a little unhappy ;) 1pm we had a family luncheon and then went home to get ready for the wedding reception that was to happen at 6pm.
More family pictures were taken, food, dancing, cake eating, bouquet tossing/garter tossing, wedding videos to watch. The night was beautiful. I am so happy for my little sis and her now husband to start the best chapter of their lives, TOGETHER! Its the greatest experience in the world, I would say.

Now I have been procrastinating updating my blog because my memory was full with all the pictures I have on here and so I haven't been able to add anymore on here until I bought a hard drive to put all those pictures on. Well I got the hard drive and have just been lazy at transferring all the pictures and videos over to it, so i still haven't been able to add my most resent photos.

Thats why i never posted about our summer trips to Bear Lake and Yellowstone. Because without the pictures its sort of boring. haha So I do at least have a video for you to watch today. Its a video i created of Alice's life through this past year. I love it and it makes me cry every time i watch it. So here it is for your viewing pleasures.

If the video doesn't work on here or didn't load right here is the link to watch it on Youtube. :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BmZ6KSUiG8

Monday, July 13, 2015

Alice at 9 Months

It is so unreal to me at how fast time flies by once your baby gets here! I feel like it was just last month that I was in the hospital waiting for her to come into our lives. And now... she is almost 9 1/2 months old! Her first birthday will be upon us in no time!!!! I'm not ready for that yet!!!

Alice is an angel baby as I probably say all the time. But its the truth. She is such a GOOD baby! Everyone who meets her loves her and always tells her how beautiful she is... even if they don't know who we are, and that makes us feel so special!

Our little girl LOVES people, but especially kids and babies. She also loves to laugh.... even if its a fake, forced laugh (which is so funny).

Sometimes I like to look back at old photos or think back into our past, at how hard it was and how sad we were. We just wanted so badly to bring a child into our family. Now our dreams have come true, I'm not a sad story anymore and I love that.

Yes we had a very hard very dark 4 year struggle. We lost 2 babies two separate times, we did IUI's and 2 IVF's. All of which didn't give us our dream of becoming parents. But now that chapter of our lives is over and I love being able to post Alice updates and how she is doing and how she is growing and how her cute little quirky personality is forming and shining through for everyone to see!

Now I'm not going to lie and pretend that life is all rainbows and fairy dust, because that isn't real life. Yes there are hard days, everyone has them, the happiest people on the planet has hard days. But i never like to write or share those hard days with people (other than maybe my husband or my mom and sisters) because in a way i feel that it would be ungrateful of me to do that. Plus i don't like to focus on the negative things in life, I try to keep negativity out of our lives and in our homes because it is a poison.

Life is so wonderful and i love getting to see people share on social media that they are expecting or pictures of their new babies! It makes my heart so happy. Before like i said i was in a dark place and was pretty cynical so anytime someone posted those kinds of happy news i always kind of hated them for being so happy and getting what i wanted so badly(which is totally stupid of me i know that now, but it was uncontrollable at that time. I'm sorry to everyone)

As Alice is turning 10 months at the end of this July we have started thinking about trying for another baby. Alice is such a good and easy baby adding another shouldn't rock our boat :)

Now just because we are now deciding to try doesn't mean we weren't "trying" before. We haven't been using any preventatives but we also haven't been counting and watching and all that stuff.

Also on another note, we aren't sure if, after my C-section and the Dr. cleaning up as much scar tissue as he could without making it worse, if my body will even be able to conceive on its own again. Alice was indeed a miracle, our Dr. confirmed it for us. So it might not happen right away or even soon. We won't know. But we can try and hope for the best.

So in case you didn't know or forgot the reason for my infertility, it is from scar tissue covering my ovaries, not allowing any eggs to be released from them. This was caused my a very bad infection i had from my appendix "burping" out some poison and growing within the length of a month because my Dr. couldn't figure out what was wrong with me. And by the time i went into the hospital and they finally figured out what was wrong the damage had been done. Lots and lots of scar tissue and losing a fallopian tube later.

So on that note I hope the next 4 years won't be of us trying for baby #2 but if it is at least we have our little Alice to love and care for! I am so blessed to be able to have a child i can't even express my love of being a mom.

I honestly sit down at least once a day and think to myself," Holy crap.... I'm a mom.... I have a baby.... no, like i really have a baby, she is mine.... she grew inside of me and i gave birth to her... it was real it wasn't a dream."

Its amazing that's the only way I can even try to describe it.

anyways here are some Alice 9 month stats for you :)

Alice Jade Taylor, 9 months:

Weight: 18lbs 10.5oz 56%

Length: 29.75inches 98%

Head: 45.5cm 87%

The did a test to check her blood sugar and she was perfect! Nothing wrong with our little girl.

and the best part of this check up was that she didn't have to get any shots!!! It was such good news!

She is allowed to eat anything except, honey, cows milk, and nuts. But because she still doesn't have any teeth i just feed her soft foods in very small bite sizes because she likes to choke a lot on foods. Which is the hardest part on feeding babies solid, "adult" foods. I have mini heart attacks when she chokes.

Alice is also getting really close to crawling.... or so we keep saying. She gets up on her hands and knees and rocks front to back and digs her toes in but always just face plants into the carpet. She has become and expert on pivoting on her belly, rolling like a steamroller, and scooting backwards. Her recent FAVORITE thing is to be in her walker she cruises in that thing and before you can run away from her she is hitting your heals! Its the best. I'm sure you are sick of hearing me love and gloat about my baby so I'll get to the pictures now :)

little miss thang

touching her toes

playing at Lowes Xtreme air sports

Texas Roadhouse with daddy, first time in a booster seat

we ran to the Scera park to see the Candy Bomber, it was SO HOT!

Happy 4th of July

She isn't a fan of being squeezed tight or contained at all for that matter, but she did pretty good for this picture!

Celebrating the start of shark week, Alice has a mermaid shirt on since I didn't have a shark one for her.

Well that's about all for now. We have a trip to Yellowstone coming up soon and you can be sure i will post about it after we are back! I'm so excited for it, as a family we used to go all the time when i was little but Travis has never been so this will be his and Alice's first trip to Yellowstone. :)

Tuesday, May 26, 2015

And here we are at 8

Hey at least its not years in-between posts, I think that's improvement! haha

Alice turned 8 months yesterday.
Did i say that right..... 8 months. Wow I know I, (along with every other mom) say this all the time but time REALLY does fly by!
My little munchy is growing just great! We don't have a Dr's. visit till 9 months so i don't have stats for you just yet.
My little has chunkified pretty good. She has the cutest little cheeks and chubby little thighs i LOVE them!

Alice isn't crawling just yet but she is getting more adventurous. She reaches for things way out of reach and will fall over onto her belly. Sometimes she will stay there for a little and look around maybe wiggle, but most times she rolls right onto her back as fast as she can. Some days i fear she will never crawl, and other days I'm glad she isn't mobile yet haha I still have time to keep her small.
But I'm sure it is just around the corner. Time will tell.

Little Miss Alice Jade Taylor loves:
*bath time (still)
*the fruit squeeze packets (tot sauce) she absolutely LOVES them!
*her banana apple rice cereal
*anything to do with being outside
*scrunching her nose and snorting at you! (it kills me!)
*clapping her hands

Some things that she does these days are:
*sing, she sings in the car and it is the best noise my ears have ever heard.
*clap... its very new so its kinda a big deal ;)
*she likes to try and copy the faces you make at her
*she pushes away from you while you are holding her as if she wants you to put her down and let her run! And yet, she can't go anywhere because she can't even crawl yet. (this is not my favorite thing she does.)
*mom is working on some signs with her like; "more" "milk" "please" and "thank you" we will see if this works. haha
*she recognizes mom and dad and their voices very well.
*she now finally says "MAMA" yay hahah

and I think that's the most of it.
Now here is an update on our lives outside of our daughter Alice.

Travis after working as the big boss of a maintenance company decided that he wanted to branch out on his own. So he started his own property management (handyman) service company.
It was scary for me, for us to not have a guaranteed paycheck every other week and our taxes already being paid out of that before we even got it so we didn't have to worry about that.
But Travis has had his own business before, he is very smart and he is the hardest working person I know. So i knew we would be in good hands.
This has been fairly new, about 2 weeks or so. But he has been SO busy!!! He has such great customers and his work speaks for itself so his customers recommend him to their friends and so on. He has been busy just from word of mouth and not needed to do any kind of advertising. We have been very lucky and are so thankful for that!
So that was a big change.
Also about 3 weeks ago I had some odd changes going on with my body. (story of my life i feel like)
I was super tired all the time, I was getting really moody and I was late with my period....
I thought wow could it really happen this fast for us? 4 long years and hard work and then just 7 months later? So I took a pregnancy test, negative. So i waited another week and took another pregnancy test, negative. (no matter how many children you have had after having issues with infertility that stupid negative pee stick still stabs you in the heart every time.)
I was getting a little worried especially because my stupid body had had issues in the past so I decided to go the the Dr. and get a physical and a blood pregnancy test JUST to be sure. Plus i wanted to make sure that everything else was alright.
After talking with my Dr. and telling her everything I got my results back 3 days later and it turns out that I am NOT pregnant but that i have low Thyroid levels along with really low Vitamin D levels. So I get to take a pill once a week for 6 weeks for my Vitamin D and then 1 pill a day for the rest of my life for my stupid Thyroid.
I always loved when i would go to the Dr or anywhere really and they would ask," are you on any medication?" and i could simply answer, "nope!"
Not anymore, Dang it!
But other than that I am perfectly healthy! So I'm good with that.
I am working on a healthier lifestyle and trying to put physical health back into my lifestyle. Its not easy but its something i really want, and I'm hoping that the vitamin D will help me to feel less tired and more motivated and the thyroid pills will help me to shed the weight a little easier. So we shall see.
The struggles of life. I don't hate my body but i know it could be way better if i put effort into it.
I'm not lucky enough to be one of those women who have a baby and then 2 weeks later go right back to the way they were before with no effort. And so i will work very hard for it and feel very good about myself when i reach my goals right?! RIGHT!!!!

And that is that.... oh... I almost for got, Travis and I celebrated our 6 year anniversary May 2nd! I can't believe we are already at 6 its so awesome! I love my husband and I'm so happy i have him to live my whole life with!
I also got to celebrate my very first Mothers day! It was great!

We had family (from my side) over yesterday for Memorial Day and we had a blast! Great food, games and company made the day so much fun! Here are some pictures from the last 2 months and of yesterdays get together.