1 Month Already?

Jocelyn is already a month old!  I can't believe it.  John and I love being parents of two little girls.  It's actually not as hard as I thought it would be.  Olivia is a really good help around the house and with Jocelyn. We haven't gone out of the house yet to do anything because the doc says we need to stay in for at least 2 months.  Here's what we've been doing around the house!

Olivia loves Elmo.  She loves to take care of him, make sure he's safe in the carseat, and keeps him hydrated.

She loves doing the dishes but gets super wet.

These pictures are way out of order.  Doesn't matter right?

Jocelyn!

Olivia always loves to hold Jocelyn.

Olivia always tells Jocelyn long stories and then laughs at the end every time.  I only understand half of what she's saying, but Jocelyn seems to enjoy them.

Olivia always helps around the house even when I don't ask her.  For example, here she is breaking the spaghetti for me into one-inch-long sticks.

Olivia loves wearing our shoes and here's her first toenail paint job. 

Probably only grandparents care about long kid videos.  I don't like to watch videos of kids that aren't related to me.  Enjoy if you wish.  I think these videos are pretty adorable.

Olivia loves to sing so here she is teaching Jocelyn "Wheels on the Bus".

Whenever something smells or shes getting a diaper changed she says, "nose, nose" instead of stinky.  Here she is with her body parts.

Next month will come the really fun stuff!

Jocelyn Ruth

Jocelyn Ruth McAdam was born a little earlier than expected.  I didn't want her born in December for ridiculously insane reasons, but she came December 27th!  She wasn't growing like she should have in the womb, so I was induced.  She came out 5 lbs 4 oz, 18 inches.  She's really healthy and doing wonderfully!

Olivia loves her baby sister and always kisses her and asks to hold her.  Here they are when Jocelyn first came home:

Jocelyn is so tiny!  Olivia looks like a giant compared to her.

But Olivia is having a lot of fun with GrandMama.  She is being fed way too much chocolate.

Pictures Pictures Pre-baby

I finally bought a card reader at the store yesterday and transferred all the pictures from my camera to the computer.  I'm pretty sure it's been months since I last posted any pictures.  Here's just a little catch up.

At the end of July, John, Olivia and I met Chris and Ryan in Provo for a mini day trip to Southern Utah.

Olivia summited her first 10,000+ foot mountain: Brian Head peak.  Elevation 11,306.  I guess this is the wrong picture, but it was all in the same trip.  The boys climbed to the top on a trail that they made up while Olivia and I drove.

Then we went to Cedar Breaks National Monument.

 John and his brother Ryan have to go off the trail.

Kolob: part of Zion National Park

In October, Mackenzie and her family came up to Idaho to visit Grandpa.  We all went to the pumpkin patch!  The kids loved it!

Olivia loved hanging out with Keelie!

Olivia and her future husband Callum:

When we got home, we carved our pumpkin.  Olivia had so much fun!  She helped Daddy the whole time!

Final product:

Olivia was a little giraffe for Halloween.  She even has a little tail.

In November, John had a business meeting in Boise.  On the way home, we stopped at Hagerman National Monument!

Olivia loves babies.  Whenever we babysit baby Stu, Olivia has to hold him.

Christmas for us was pretty laid back.  I was a little too pregnant to do anything wild, so we made a snowman in the backyard.  Snowmen are pretty hard to make. It was a pretty pathetic snowman.

We just walked around our backyard!

Olivia loves helping!  She loves helping her daddy brush snow off the cars.

Right before I started taking this video, I asked Olivia what she was doing.  This is what she said:

We came in from the cold and baked sugar cookies.  Olivia loved helping me punch out the shapes.

And here's a bonus picture of Olivia helping her daddy peel her poms.

The End.

Updates, but No Pictures

A lot has happened since our last blog post.  For one thing, I think Olivia threw away the camera connector cable to our laptop, so we can't get any pictures off our camera.  I know I should just buy a new one, but I still hope that it will magically appear.

Olivia is still wild and crazy.  I finally bought her a tiny potty because she always wanted to poop in the toilet but then got scared at the last minute.  She pooped in there when she was like 16 months and the water back splashed on her little booty, so she hasn't wanted to go on the big toilet ever since.  I'm not going to lie, but I do NOT want to potty train her until after the baby comes.  She always tells me when she is going to poo, but I just tell her to go in her diaper because going to the bathroom for her means she gets completely naked, puts on her shoes, then sits on the potty for 10 minutes before running around the house naked.  I'm too pregnant to chase her around, so we're putting the potty training off.

Olivia also got a new bed!  She is actually using my bunk bed from when I was a small child.  She uses the top bunk so that she has the bar so she won't come out.  Up until yesterday, she never got out after we put her in.  Then she would just come out in the morning, play with her Elmo book, then wake me up when she was done.  Two days ago she learned how to jump out of her bed instead of climb, so it took her a while to get to bed.

Other than that, she's just talking up a storm and always kissing my belly.  She loves little babies and always insists on holding a little baby named Stu that we always babysit.  She's going to be a great big sister.

A lot of changes have been going on with John too.  He just got called as Young Men's president in our ward and is loving it so far.  They are doing a Christmas tree pickup fundraiser for scout camp that he is really excited about.  We're excited to see how much money they can raise.  He also finished applying to grad schools!  Not only that but we're moving to Texas next year!  He will be attending the MBA program at Texas A&M.  We will be 2 hours away from my sister and her family so it will be fun for Olivia to play with her cousins.  In the near future, John in mostly excited for this new baby so that he can take 3 weeks off work.

As for me, I'm just doing the same old thing: playing with Olivia and watching Elmo.  The baby is due in 2 weeks!  We'll see how that goes.  About a month ago, I went into the hospital because I was having contractions 2 minutes apart.  It was a nice hospital stay.  It was like a really expensive hotel with room service with less than comfortable beds.  This pregnancy has been a little harder than the other.  I haven't gained any weight in the past 4 months and the baby is really small, so I go into the doctor often so that they can closely monitor the baby.  I do 2 non-stress tests a week and an ultrasound every week.  I think I will be seeing a specialist next week.  Nothing to worry about.  I'm just glad that everything is being monitored.

That's it.  Looking back, I think I should have bought the camera cable before typing all that out.  It looks so boring without pictures.  Better get one today.  This baby could come anytime and I better have a camera to take lots of pictures!

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving!  Here's Olivia helping with the green beans!

Tough Mudder and California

In September we went to California for the Tough Mudder race around Lake Tahoe.  This race was crazy!  It is an 11 mile obstacle course with a lot of mud.  I thought that that the obstacle course was full of  tires that one runs through and swinging ropes.  I was wrong.  Check out the website.  They had to climb 12-foot walls, craw though long muddy tunnels, run though electrical shocks, and tons of other wild things.  Here's our preparations:

Olivia loves sitting in the cooler.  I'm pretty sure that she played in here for at least an hour.

This obstacle was towards the end.  They had to climb up like a 15-foot quarter pipe.  That's John standing on the left in the blue.  He was the first one up and had to pull up his brothers and dad.  John's dad broke a rib and his gold crown (tooth) came out, but the first aid guy refused to put in back in his mouth, so John had to stuff that thing back on.  He did such a great job, that the dentist didn't even need to fix it later!

John said that he could have gone for another 5 miles, but I think Jacob was ready for the end.

After the Tough Mudder race, I stayed in California with my family and took a one-way flight for only 32 bucks, home.  Meanwhile, John had Wednesday off work, so he went on a 15-mile hike adventure alone in Craters of the Moon, a National Monument a little more than an hour away from where we live.  He took a lot of landscape pictures that are neat, but it's better in person.  Here is just a tree mold.

Other than that, life is wonderful.  John is applying to several grad schools to do an MBA program while Olivia and I have been playing around the house all day!  Olivia loves playing with all her friends and play fighting.  She's a buff little girl that isn't afraid of anything.  Over Conference Weekend, we went down to Utah and went to John's mission reunion.  Olivia said hi to everyone, ran around, and would run off the stage and jump into my arms.  She's a brave girl and not afraid of anything!

Zoo, Leatherman, Tetons, Table Mountain and Olivia!

We went to the zoo in August. You will see in a previous post last summer Olivia's first Idaho Falls Zoo visit.  Olivia was awake for the experience this time.

This is John's failed attempt of Leatherman Peak in the Lost River Mountain Range last month. It's the second highest mountain in Idaho. John says he knows the mountain far better now and will succeed the second time.

We went to the Teton National Park again. This was just a quick half-day trip. First picture is the traditional Jackson Hole, WY antler arch photo.

Biggest dog ever.

Can you see Melinda's favorite tree?

On Labor Day John hiked Table (Rock) Mountain just outside of Driggs with a friend. They found a moose!

This is Table Rock almost at the end.

Victory shot. From left to right: Mt Owen, Grand Teton, and Middle Teton.

Olivia keeps growing.

This is Olivia playing with some other kids in our ward.

Olivia and John with Jocelyn's first picture! We're pretty sure on the name Jocelyn.