Baby Blessing & More

Our little man is officially 6 weeks today!  I can't believe the time has gone by this fast already.  Just this past week he has started cooing and smiling at us.  It's absolutely adorable.  Although I must say it's funny that we've been waiting for this forever and suddenly now that he's able to engage us...he ALWAYS wants to engage us if he's awake.  He a big time talker.

As for the baby blessing it was absolutely wonderful to have Jimmy's family come out.  It was so fun and made it such a special experience to share.  Jimmy did a great job with the blessing.  I am so proud of him.  He is such a great father.  Having his family here it seems crazy how three months really seems a lot longer when there's miles of distance apart.  Overall the weekend couldn't have gone better.  It was cram packed with going and feeding ducks, kayaking on the lake, and going to the ocean.  Wouldn't have changed a thing in the end.

Lately I've been super busy attempting to apply to jobs in between caring for Logan.  The job market up here is rough.  I made a few phone calls and the HR people have made the process sound a bit more challenging than Utah.  SO...I've been focusing my effort more on nursing homes.  We'll see...keeping my fingers crossed that a job that crosses our path will work well for our little family.

and pictures...

The family at the baby blessing

Our darling little family :)

Fun at the ocean burying Jeff Shaver

Burying Ms. Abby for the 20th time

Our little man at the beach for his first time

We're working on getting a picture of him smiling on our main camera...we have several on our phones, but find we need to have our good camera more at the ready.  Can hardly wait to share more of his cuteness as of late.  Love this little guy!

The 1st Couple Weeks

Following the last post everything, we all have gotten much more into a groove.  There's still the lack of sleep part of things, but I think both Jimmy and I have found times for naps etc. to work with it.  Generally I only seem to get Jimmy up when Logan is having a particularly hard time going back to sleep.  It seems pointless otherwise to get him up.  Just wish I had some magic way Jimmy could feed him, but until then this seems to work.

It's been SUPER hot up here.  We've been off and on in the 100's this past week.  It wouldn't seem a big deal, but the place we're sleeping in has no air conditioning.  Thankfully to Robert and others sleeping elsewhere we've been able to sleep in the house that is air conditioned.  Logan seems to be far more of a heater than any of us.  He's almost always just in a diaper and we're struggling to keep him swaddled as it only heats him up.  Ultimately he just gets incredibly flushed when swaddled.  At night that's the only way to keep him asleep in his crib otherwise he tends to need to be snuggled up with someone.

Jimmy has nicknamed him "my little tree frog".  He resumes this position with his feet and arms tucked in on Jimmy's chest every time he's cuddled up with him much like a frog.  It's terribly cute.  What's also terribly cute is the amount of sharing Logan has taken on with Jimmy.  It seems that past couple days every time I hand him to Jimmy to get changed there's some sort of excitement.  Either he has gone number 1 or number 2 mid diaper change all over Jimmy and the area.  Last time he was cuddled up with him he managed to sneak number 2 out of the diaper onto Jimmy's pants and of course spit up accompanied that.  Really Jimmy has been good and broken in with baby goodness :)

As for things around the house...Jared, Katie, Naomi, and Christina all leave for BYU this Wednesday.  It's going to be suddenly super quiet around the house.  Jimmy has the many upcoming and by the sounds of it more promising interviews.  It's all getting the two of us excited for the upcoming baby's blessing.  We're super excited to have part of Jimmy's family come up and celebrate with us.  It's been too long for us being away from them when we used to see them all so often.

Oh, and before I forget Mr. Logan did have his pediatrician appointment.  He officially has regained and surpassed his weight he was at birth.  He is now 8lbs 15oz.  Overall everything checked out normal, so that was somewhat a relief as I was feeling unsure about how our feedings were going.

Well, we made a special trip for the library to post pictures and hopefully a video...enjoy!

This was one of the first days we caught his eyes wide open :)

Caught Jimmy off guard just post the evening bath.

Some "play" time.

...

Trying out the kiddie pool on one of the hot days.

A face of a baby not knowing what's about to come :)

He Made It!

Logan Grayson Shaver finally arrived!!  He was born on August 3rd at 4:49am.  He weighed 8lbs 9oz and was/is 21 inches long.  It began really on August 1st I noticed I was having contractions with absolutely no pain.  They were coming ever 5 minutes.  I tried walking and doing everything I could to get it to turn into something.  They persisted to my OB appointment the next day.  My doctor discussed getting induced the following Wednesday/Thursday which had me somewhat excited that at least there was an end to this pregnancy.  The contractions continued the same all the way til the following day until 4pm.  I went to go and take a nap, just as I went to lay down the contractions really started kicking in gear and were coming every 2 minutes.  Jimmy and I went on a walk following dinner and around 8:00pm we decided it was time to head to the hospital. I still was not sure if we were going to get admitted, but certainly had my fingers crossed.  We spent more time walking and around 5cm dilated I got some IV pain meds followed by an epidural which was a dream.  We spent the rest of the night watching the Olympics and napping (well I napped, not Jimmy). If anyone has to deliver a baby at the end of a night, I couldn't have dreamt up a better time than with the Olympics happening.  Around 3am I was fully dilated and we went onto pushing (once the doctor arrived, hence the delay of delivery time).  Ultimately it was 4 contractions of pushing and he was out.  The whole experience happened so fast and still feels like a dream.  They put him right on me and I got to just hang out with him for the first hour.  I couldn't have asked for things to go any better...no complications, and a small tear.

The transition home has been a challenge to say the least.  I know God meant for me to have an easy baby because I certainly don't see how mother's make it with hard babies.  However, Logan has been simply adorable and just a wonderful blessing already in our lives.  He has caught onto feeding remarkably well and is is just smiles.  That all makes it sound like I'm lying about the need for an easy baby, but the challenges came with my personal recovery.  Apparently afterpains are worst than delivery pains, no one told me that was possible.  The emotional roller coaster has also been eventful which is a whole story in and of itself.  Jimmy has been the best help.  Once again it seems we're being watched over.  Jimmy not having a job has been the best blessing and he's really made this transition possible.  I have no idea how single mothers do it!  I hate knowing our little man is going to grow up so fast.  In some ways I would love to freeze time now, well except for maybe the sleepless nights.  Well, now that I have talked/written everyone's ear off and maybe shared more than some would ever want to know.  Onto the fun part....pictures!

Logan's 1st Picture

Our postpartum room

Logan's 1st bath

He loves being somewhat wet and cold

All wrapped up.

Logan loves his time with dad swaddled in the wrap.

My mom was serving cake for dessert and thought it would fun to celebrate his birthday.
There are 3 candles for the number of days old he is.  Jimmy took the liberty of helping him blow them out...fanning his body in front wouldn't work as hard as we tried... just kidding.  Delicious cake though.

Love the bunny slippers this is post bath one of the night's.

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We finally got a shot with his eyes open.  He typically loves just having the one eye open checking
 things out, so we were double lucky to get both open.

Waiting for Logan

Let's see what has been happening as of late. Well...as all our projects and "to do" list ran low, we started taking our boredom out on the dog's around the house.  Gotta love baby waiting time, as this was all prior to Logan being born.

Alice, the annoying house pet who deserved to be turned pink.    In reality we were hoping to turn Henry pink, but the agreement was we had to do a test run on Alice with the food coloring before Henry.

If anyone knows Jimmy, they know he LOVES donuts.  Portland's touristy attraction I have never checked out we finally got.  It was plenty delicious.  We went for the mild selection without the cereal as topping, etc.

The Voodoo doll donut is at the top left and other crazy one to note is the
 bacon maple bar on the right which was surprisingly VERY delicious.

4th of July Pregnancy in the Wings and Waves

Well it's time again you guessed it, blog time! Let's see so the wallet is lost for all eternity or something to the affect. I'm thinking some small animal or dog ran off with it but I have no evidence to prove this theory


Oh yeah just a little blurb on the 4th of July. We ended up going to Seaside with Whitney's siblings, grandparents and went to the beach. Seaside does the 4th of July the illegal way I'm proud to say, and illegality puts on way better show than ground bloomers.


If you haven't seen Whitney lately and are wondering what she's up to, the picture below is a story within itself.

Look what Jimmy did. (38 weeks)

Yep, the boy is still kicking and being oh so bothersome when Whitney tries to sleep. For some strange reason he likes her ribs. We have no idea when this little monkey is coming, no contractions, and we've had no desire for the doctor to check on the dilation! (Don't worry one day he'll come out, maybe when he's five.)

 So, we went to Wings and Waves in McMinville, it's a aerospace museum and water park in the same group of buildings. We went with Whitney's family it's was pretty swell to go down bunch of water slides that were attached to plane on the roof. My favorite was the green one, due to it seeming like you were in a twister or a toilet bowl. The whole place was an indoor water park, but for some reason all the water was salty.

What the plane on a building?!

Yep, it was recently my birthday and it sure was an awesome one this year! We had red velvet cream cheese cake, that cake was divine and not so fattening at least I hope! So We ended up eating too much of this cake, even those sometimes it comes back to me in my dreams! (I ate it my dreams too).

Thanks again for all those who gave me a birthday present, it was appreciated surely!

I'm blowing out candles, not doing anything else

Hagg Lake, Bike Rides, Lost Wallet, and NCLEX

Hagg Lake

Recently we went to Hagg Lake for a barbecue with Whitney's family.  The hamburger's were great and the lake was semi warm. Kayaking is a great experience and it's pretty easy to get across the lake. Whitney wanted some of the lake to come with me and decided to put a bunch of water on me.  Whitney's favorite part of the Hagg lake trip was studying for the NCLEX while the people next to us were drunk and had their music turned up. (Not really she was ready to throw him in the lake with his stinking car!)

Whitney, Opie, and Bill.

I've also been given the opportunity to go biking with Whitney's family, you are probably thinking what's so new about this biking I've know from childhood. Well let me tell ya, it's like super light bikes that go freaking fast so much to scare a grown up. They're pretty nice for going long distance in a short amount of time. They also have special pants for men, that have a pad, and also seat with a channel. It takes two or three rides for your bottom to not hurt!

Me all biked up and good to go

The highlight of the week is loosing my wallet and that was after having a library card for less than a day. It's the first time, but yeah I lost it pretty well, we think it's in the yard but it could still be a the library or the worksource center.

Taking the NCLEX

Whitney's last week has been stressful in preparing for it and has consumer her time a great deal. The test was at 7:30 am and there loads of nervous people waiting to take test. We were both tired because of the night before and not being able to sleep well. Whitney ended up getting a short 75 questions, but you never know what that means. Overall she passed which is a huge relief!

Mt. Hood & Wildwood

This past week was filled with adventures, but we're still learning how to take a camera with us to take pictures.  Jimmy and I are both as close as it comes to "Oregonians" we both passed our driver's license test.   Sounds lame to brag about, but it's a big deal.  It's a lot harder than the Utah test and closed book.  Pictures to come of the actual license's Jimmy's is a prized possession :)

Later, we went on a bike ride close to our home.  It was absolutely beautiful and Jimmy learned the joys of having a sore rump.  My parents aren't allowing me to bike ride until after pregnancy is over...something about being unbalanced currently, haha.  I try to walk straight, etc.

The pictures are from the past weekend.  We went to check out my parent's property and went on a hike at Wildwood park with a mini BBQ.  I wish I got a picture of Jimmy's first taste of Joe's Donuts.  It was a delight to enjoy what really great donuts taste like again.