Newborn

Our friend and photographer Kylie Pond was kind enough to take some shots of Emma and us as a baby gift and we wanted to share a few of our favorites. Included are a few pictures that my friend Sophia took who likes to play around with photography. We were so excited to get some good pictures of her to share! Enjoy!

 

The Highlights

I'll admit, its been longer than I wanted before making this post. But I've been waiting till we had some great shots of this girl to really introduce her on here, because every picture I took was just ridiculous to be honest. I wanted to give some of the highlights of the whole labor/delivery experience without taking up 10 pages that no one wants to read anyways. So here it is..

We went to a Dr. apt on a Tuesday morning where they took an ultrasound and told us she was going to be up to 9 1/2 lbs. I was at that moment the definition of shaking in your boots. But we decided to wait three more days till her actual due date before being induced, no matter how scary that number was, so that Kallam could be there the whole time with me and stuff. On the way out the door, I realized I hadn't felt her move that morning so they hooked me up to all the machines, which showed signs of distress with each contraction that I wasn't aware I was having. So off to the hospital we went where they made me have stronger contractions to see how she handled it. She did super and nothing was even slightly distressful, until we had pretty much decided to go home. I guess God had something else in mind, because every time we almost went home, her heart beat would slow alarmingly. So I got induced. And from the moment that stuff hit my veins I had contractions every two mins for 18 hours when I decided I had had enough and got the epidural. I still am happy with that decision because I'm not one of those people that need a pat on the back from everyone for being so tough and I feel like I was then able to let my body do what it needed to. Five hours later with 25 mins of pushing she was ALMOST out, but her stats starting plummeting, scariest moment of my life. They took her out with a vacuum and the cord that was wrapped around her neck twice had gotten tighter with every inch she came out(hence the dropping heart rate). Luckily our baby girl is perfectly healthy and we are so grateful that nothing happened other than me needing a million stitches from tearing as much as you can. :) A few of the funnier highlights are as follows...

*As I waddled down the hallway trying to speed things up, in my lovely gown with no bra looking like I was about to drop this thing right on the floor, we ran into my 8th grade "boyfriend"(15 mins or something) that I hadn't seen for about 8 years. Seriously the most awkward/funny moment of my life. The conversation went like this.
"Tyson?"
"Hey, what are you doing here?"
(awkward pause)
"Oh ya know.."(trying to talk through a contraction)
(another awkward pause)
"Well, good luck with that"
"Thanks"

* Those who know me very very well know that I'm SUPER afraid of not being able to run out of a room if I need to. So afraid in fact that I've had a couple surgeries awake that I really shouldn't have been. So when I got the epidural I made Kallam promise that he would carry me out if the building were to catch on fire or something. After my epidural I could still feel most of my left side of my body, but we decided to try to get some sleep. Kallam quickly fell asleep(like I said, it was 18 hours of holding my hand and breathing with me). Soon after... the fire alarm went off. I was talking to Kallam to get up and check and make sure that I wasn't going to die, he never woke up. So I sat there for an hours, half worried to death, trying to work out a strategy in my mind of how I would crawl using only my arms out of this building that was burning down to save me and my unborn child. Luckily they caught the guy who was smoking inside our floor, bless his heart, and soon after that it was time to push anyways.

*My in-laws won the un-spoken contest by being the first to ask me when we were going to start trying for our next child. At least they waited a whole 32 hours....:) You can imagine the look on my face.

*Emma's first poop(the one that looks like tar) was so massive that all the nurses were laughing. I wasn't there for it and Kallam wasn't prepared for it to be black, or for it to go through a diaper, an outfit, and 2 heavy blankets. They almost had to get her a new incubator.

Nursery Dresser

I was going to wait till we had the whole nursery complete to do a grand reveal....lets just be honest that the nursery will very likely never get finished. And if this little girl ever does happen to ask if she had a beautiful nursery, I will tell her it was perfect and finished...and expensive, just for her. None of which are true. :) But I did want to post pictures of the dresser that Kallam and I have been sanding for the past 6 months. Why did it take 6 months you should ask? Because we were sanding it 10 mins at a time, because that's all our arms could manage doing it by hand. It probably would've taken an hour if we had just sucked it up and bought an electric sander. Someone said it was going in their trash but I could see so much potential that I managed to talk Kallam into a joint project. He's been cursing my name ever since. But now that its stained and beautiful I think he's actually sort of glad that we did it.

Before...

   During....

After!!!

Meet baby Kruse!

I know its been a while since we've written on here. That's mostly because we've been waiting and WAITING for our last ultra sound so we'd have something worth posting. Our first ultra sound at 20 weeks was pretty much awful and we didn't get to see anything fun. No profile, no face, just a butt and a heart. And I secretly laugh at people who post pictures of their unborn's privates, cause its a little awkward :) So finally for your viewing pleasure is our baby girl. Just a couple shots. A profile of her sucking on her fist, a shot of her looking right at the camera, and one of both feet. There are two feet. :) That's always good right?? :)

I'm currently 32 weeks and counting. Its getting unreal that this person is coming out one way or another in 7 weeks. We'll probably post any interesting shots with our next ultrasound in a couple of weeks. Hopefully things will look good. 

Pumpkin Carving

As many of you may know we're expecting our first baby the first week of March. We thought we'd let you know what we're having. Happy Halloween!

Werewolf's Bar Mitzfa

I LOVE Halloween  its part of being a member of my family. How many of you can say that an entire 6 foot wide closet in the hallway was 100% dedicated to Halloween costumes while you were growing up? That's what I thought. :) I love decorating for Halloween almost as much as Christmas, so we thought we'd share a few of our favorite decorations around our new house. 

This can also be heard in our house as we decorate because its just hilarious. You may listen while you look through our photos to get into the mood. 

 This is my ultimate favorite that I inherited from my Mom, the Halloween Queen herself. 

 Every home needs a sparkly skull somewhere.

 Haunted Tree, dont mind our temple pic 

in the back. 

This one used to freak my roommates out so bad at college that I still to this day send them a pic of it in Oct every year just to remember how awesome it is. :)

BOO!!!

Green thunb

Green thumb: noun: an extraordinary ability to make plants grow well.

 I have lots of really great "growers" in my life. My dad is a tomato grower extraordinaire. As well as potatoes, peppers, squash and a list of other things in his garden. He's just more well known for the tomatoes. And why not bask in the fame, they're stinkin hard to grow. Some of you even know that my brother Nathan got his Ph.D in plant genetics. He's written a book people! Fact is, I am just not one of them. I have here for you today proof of that. 

Kallam will attest to the fact that every year I get super pumped up about growing stuff. "This will be the year" I always say. This was the year that there would be no excuse of "well the 110+ temp cooked my plants" or the excuse of "it would've kept growing, but its in a cup, and I don't have a yard to plant it in". This was the year that I was going to earn my green thumb!  We slaved all summer pulling weeds, tilling dirt, planting and watering. I even spoke to them, giving them pep talks when no one was watching. Around September I gave up. Nothing worked. Nothing happened. Things had sprouted and grown, with no fruit to be had. Then today my old planters caught my eye. I have neglected these things for more than a whole month. There, on a shriveled plant was a tomato. I ran to the back yard, and the whole back yard was filled with raspberries! Can you believe it. All this time, my plants just wanted me to get out of their way. Here's a look at what my plants did when I stopped trying. Does this work with kids too? Just asking for future reference. 

Its green I know, but its freezing every night so if it wanted a fighting chance it shoulda showed up sooner!