No Progress

I hate going to the doctor and being told that I am 3 cm dilated and 80% effaced and going back a week later in the exact same state. I wonder how it is even possible to have as many contractions as I've had and not progress at all in 7 days. At my appointment today the doctor said that a watched pot never boils, but when you are part of the pot how can you NOT watch?? Especially since when you get this close, 95% of the conversation that people have with you revolves around labor, delivery, and babies.

At church a few weeks ago I was talking to a girl who was almost a week overdue. Another lady walked up to her and said, "You are still pregnant? I can't believe you haven't had your baby yet!!" FOR ALL THOSE WHO HAVE NOT HAD CHILDREN YET, THIS IS THE LAST THING AN EXPECTANT MOTHER WANTS TO HEAR. Trust me, no one is more anxiously aware of the fact that the baby isn't born besides the woman carrying that baby. I've been fortunate enough to not have had anyone say that to me yet.

Luckily my friend let me borrow the book Mockingjay, which will keep me occupied for another day or so. If the baby hasn't come after that I'm fresh out of things to occupy me. This baby can feel free to make her grand appearance anytime.

Green means Go, Red means Stop

We've been working on colors and letters with Hayden recently, and I've actually been surprised at how quickly he has picked them up. He can consistently get all of his letters right except E, G, N, U, and sometimes V. He is also getting pretty good with his colors. He knows orange, yellow, blue, purple, light blue, lime green (we have blocks that color). The colors I have been struggling to teach him are red and green. I can hold up a green block and a red block and he will say either green or red, randomly, depending on when I ask him. At stop lights we show him the light and ask him if it is green or red and he can't seem to get that down either. It wasn't until yesterday when we were building with his blocks and going over colors that I realized something. I held up a red and green block and went over the two with him for about 5 minutes, still with no progress. Then it hit me...I'm pretty sure my son has red/green color blindness. I'm about 85% sure on it, obviously time will definitely tell as to whether or not he does have it. I have been doing some research on it though, and from all the other colors he knows his particular type of color blindness is very mild, luckily. I'm now learning that if he really can't see a difference between red and green that there is no point in reiterating those colors over and over and no point in correcting him every time he calls green red or red green. My grandpa has red/green color blindness and it is a genetic and sex linked trait.

Dax and I were talking about how it is amazing how defensive you feel at your child's weaknesses, and how much harder it would be if your child had a major struggle in life. As a parent, you view your child as perfect the way they are, and you want the rest of the world to view them that way as well. I imagine that that is how Heavenly Father views us, and hopes that we will view each other in the same way that he sees us.

No Permission

So back when we didn't have the internet for a while and I was "out of it" with the blogging world I had many people on my blogging list go private, but because I didn't get on the check blogs until the blogs were private, I no longer have access to people's blogs that we would love to keep up with. I have been meaning to do this for a while, and am just finally getting around to it. Here is my list of people whose blogs I don't have permission to view.

Rory and Melissa
Josh and Jade
Cole and Michelle
Tyrell and Tina
Ben and Chelsea

If you wouldn't mind adding the email address jenniferwells4@gmail.com, we would love to keep up with your blogs! Thanks

Itching for Baby

I think I have probably been through the closet looking at and organizing the baby girl clothes we have for at least 20 minutes a day for the past couple of weeks. I have her hospital bag all packed, and everything that I can think of that we'll need for the first couple of weeks all ready. I am definitely excited for this little girl to come. Yes, I know that means that I will be up at night (but my actual sleep will be much improved then) and juggling the needs of two children will be a whole new world, but I'm as ready as I'll ever be for it, so it might as well happen sooner rather than later. I have 20 days left, and I probably shouldn't keep count because it will only make it take longer. I'm hoping for an August 31st baby. It would be fun to have a birthday in August, September, October, and November (baby, me, Hayden, and Dax, respectively). What I'm praying for is at least that she doesn't come late. We'll see what happens.

Sanity

We have pull handles on our doors, so basically Hayden has been able to open our doors from the time he could walk. Not a big problem, since we could lock the door and also the bolt lock right above it. He is now tall enough (and has figured out how the locks have to be turned) to open the locks. The first time he figured it out I was in the bathroom and he had been outside for 10 minutes before I found him. We live on the 4th floor, and the maze of stairs (he could have taken 6 routes) made him hard to find. Needless to say I was flipping out. He has been "escaping" from the apartment for over a month, and it was causing me a lot of stress. I couldn't let him out of my sight if I wasn't in the front room, because he would run to the door and be out of the house in 10 seconds. Finally we went to Home Depot and bought one of these babies to put at the top of the door:



It is amazing what a simple chain lock can do for your sanity...

1st Trip to the Dentist

Hayden had his first dentist appointment today and I was pretty nervous about it. I still have to pin him down and pry open his mouth to do a semi-decent job brushing his teeth. He completely surprised me and opened right up for the x-rays and for the dentist to look at his teeth, AND scrape off some tarter build-up. Good job Hayden! Hopefully we can keep that process going for regular teeth brushing. :) I'm sure it helped that he got to play with big trucks, see a big fish tank, get a CARS toothbrush, and a sword shaped balloon at the end.

Unfortunately the dentist said that Hayden's teeth are really crowded and so he will have extra build-up on his teeth now, and probably even worse when his permanent teeth come in. I think my brother Paul actually had a few teeth pulled when he was younger to make room for all of his teeth, so maybe that will have to be the case with Hayden. In the meantime, I get to tackle trying to get Hayden to floss regularly to help remove some of the stuff that a toothbrush already can't get out.

Only in America

...can you log on to a place like diapers.com and order 3 cases of diapers and 1 case of wipes and have them arrive at your doorstep (free of shipping charges) in LITERALLY 24 hours. Hayden has been sick and I wouldn't even have made it to the store in the next 24 hours to buy diapers. Wow. Now that my diapers have arrived, I think I have all of the essentials for this little one. 4 weeks to go...I'm hoping for about 3.

P.S. If you have never shopped there, you can enter the code DROP10 at checkout and get $15 off your total purchase. :)

Goodbye AGAIN

Our good friends Josh and Sam Thun were living in Utah for the last month, which we were so excited about. We haven't lived in the same state since we were at BYU-Idaho together 3 years ago. I saw Sam a little over a year ago, but Dax hadn't seen Josh in 3 years. We didn't get to see them as much as we would have liked, our schedules always seemed to be opposite, but we enjoyed having them during the time they were here and will definitely miss them. We went to IHOP with them the morning they left town, and we had so much fun. We decided it can't be that long before we see them next time!

By the way: If you go onto IHOP.com and sign up for their member's club they will send you a coupon that you can print for a free breakfast. You also get a free breakfast on your birthday and again on the anniversary of when you signed up. Every person who signs up can take it in, so both Dax and I got our breakfast for free...$19 worth!

Hayden and Liberty, she is 3 months his senior (our second children will be about 3 months apart as well)

Canoeing

The weekend of July 17th we went to a family reunion for my mom's side of the family. They have these Christensen reunion's annually, but Dax and I haven't been able to go for the last 3 years. We had lots of fun with family. One of the biggest highlights, for all 3 of us, was canoeing down the Bear River. Our canoe had Dax, me, Hayden, my brother Josh, and two of his children (Ozkar and Maia). We were fortunate enough to see lots of wildlife on our trip: 1 bull moose, 1 cow and 1 calf moose, lots of elk, 1 deer, and 1 pelican. We were about 15 yards from the bull moose as he was crossing the water, it was a little scary to think about, but way cool to see.

Hayden still talks about "boat with Josh, moose" nearly every day.

I didn't take the camera on the canoe, in case we happened to tip over, so the only picture I have is one we took after we were done.