9 weeks and counting

The little guy is now 9 weeks and a few days old. He is just getting cuter by the day. He's smiling and laughing more and more. When we do tummy time he is trying so hard to scoot himself forward. (I'm thinking he'll be mobile before we know it.) He's got a little bit of a firery personality, but I wouldn't expect any less with him coming from our 2 families.

He had a busy weekend. We went to visit Aunt Trudi, my mom's sister, in the hospital. He did pretty well being passed around and what's even better is that Aunt Trudi was released yesterday to go home. We had quite the scare on Thursday night (Llyr's 27th Birthday) when Aunt Trudi went into the ER and was told that she had an aneurysm. My mom called Llyr, me, and my sister Melissa (the only family that is in the Salt Lake area because my Uncle Mike is now working back east). This was on Thursday night around 11pm. Melissa was on her way up and she went with Llyr to go and give Aunt Trudi a blessing. The CT scans that night showed that the bleeding had slowed down and so they did an angiogram on Friday. The results of the Angio showed that the bleeding was on the outside of the brain and that it would heal itself. What a blessing. She was told that she would have a pretty big headache for a couple months, but that she would get better. Little Llyr went to visit her and I think he brought her and my Uncle Ray's spirits up.

We then went to pick up some food for Llyr's aunt and our car battery died. This was right at eating time and so LJ was less than patient. We got a jump, dropped the food off, Llyr dropped us off at home so we could feed the baby and he went straight to Big O.

Then we finished off our Saturday by going to the BYU basketball game in Provo. LJ did really well. It got a little noisy, but he would just open his eyes and then close them again everytime the crowd cheered. Unfortunately, BYU lost, but we still had fun. It was snowing and so the roads were pretty sketchy on the way home. We were driving very cautiously, but not everyone was. There was a car in front of us that spun on the freeway and stopped in our lane, sideways. We had to come to a complete stop on the freeway. Luckily there weren't any cars directly behind us and so we made it home safely.

Yesterday was church and he is doing pretty well, but we did spend sacrament meeting in the foyer. To say the least, it was a great weekend and we had fun spending it together.

Update on Baby Llyr

Little Llyr, Baby Llyr, Junior, or LJ- however we decide to call him- is growing so quickly. He will be 2 months old on Friday. He's been such a fun baby to have even when he's keeping us up at night. I love being his mama and big Llyr loves being his daddy. He's starting to smile and coo a lot more. He tries to scoot when he is doing his tummy time. He wants to be more mobile than he is, so we will see how quickly that starts.

He had his 2 month immunizations last Thursday. It was quite heart breaking to see him cry so much, but he took it like a champ and didn't act like his legs were even sore the next day, but he has had a little low-grade fever since then, but he doesn't have any other symptoms of being sick so the doctors just say to watch him. (He's tougher than me because I remember my kindergarten shots made me sore for weeks. I think I walked around holding my arm for quite some time after those shots.)

Big Llyr is doing well and working. He's ready to start school again, which is a good thing, because I was worried he would struggle getting back into it. Here in a couple weeks, I am starting work again. I am not thrilled about it, but I know that LJ will do great. We have Aunt Missy, me and Llyr each watching him a day and then a friend from our ward is helping out 2 days a week. Hopefully, he'll transition okay and hopefully I'll transition okay and not cry each day at work.

Well, his eyes are turning bluer each day and he's growing. 11 lbs 8.5 oz and 23 inches long at his appointment last week. I'll try to be better at keeping up to date, but below are some pics of the little one.

 I'm not sure he has much of a choice of who he will be cheering for.

Little LJ is starting to smile for us a lot more these days. It's more than enough to make our hearts melt.

Taking a nap with Daddy. (The video of this has big Llyr snoring a little bit. He says that it's 'heavy breathing'.)

More Smiles!!!!

Great Grandma Williams holding Baby Llyr at his blessing. We decided to bless him while we were in Boise over the holidays and it was just wonderful.

4 generations of Christensen boys. They are all looking pretty good there. Little Llyr loved it when Great Grandpa Christensen would sing to him.

Baby's first real bath December 26th

LITTLE LLYR

Llyr Scott Christensen Jr.

Little Llyr came to us Saturday 12/8/12 at 12:20pm. He started his journey the night before. I'll tell you a little of the birth story, so if you don't like it when people do this, just skip it and look at the picture. Isn't he so cute!!!

I had been having braxton hicks contractions since Tuesday 12/4/12, but they definitely weren't painful and weren't super consistent. Friday evening, Big Llyr and I decided to go do a little Christmas shopping and my non-painful contractions started coming about every 10 minutes and then every 5-6 minutes. So we kept a timer on them and about midnight they tapered off. We had called the nurse and she said that they needed to be consistent for about 2 hours, so we decided to try to go to bed. I had some bleeding at that point so we called the nurse again and she said because it wasn't a gush not to worry about it. We got in bed about 12:30am and I woke up about 1am to painful contractions. They definitely got worse around 1:30am. Big Llyr started to time them and they were about 4 minutes apart. At 2am we called the nurse again and she said that she wanted the contractions to be about 3 minutes apart for 2 hours because this was my first baby. So Llyr and I hunkered down and timed the contractions. I got in the bath for a little bit because 'they' say it helps. It didn't do much. The contractions continued and so at about 4am we called the nurse and said we're coming in. The contractions got more intense and stayed about the same frequency. We grabbed our things, got in the car and headed up to the University hospital. Llyr treated the stop lights as stop signs and so we got there in about 10 minutes. I started to walk in, Llyr grabbed a wheelchair and took me in.

At the U hospital they have an OB emergency area and so we went there first and the nurse we had been talking to came to check me. Well, I was dilated to a 4 and so I was wheeled off to Labor and Delivery. From the hours of 5-7am was a little bit more intense. I asked for an epidural and also because I am Group B positive I needed to have an IV so I could get my doses of Anti-Biotic before the baby came. (They like to have 4 hours to give the medicine) Well my veins kept blowing and so 5 sticks and 3 nurses later I finally had my IV going. Then a few minutes the anesthesiologist came in and started to explain the epidural to me along with risks and benefits. So, with me contracting through it all we got everything explained. My contractions were definitely more intense and so it is not surprise that by the time the epidural was in I was already at a 6. I'm glad I got the epidural because I had to wait at least 4 hours before I was allowed to deliver the baby because of the Anti-Biotic. I would have been quite beat by that time without some help. They were going to break my water, but decided not to right away so I wouldn't go too quickly. They checked me before my first dose of penicillin was done and I was already at an 8, so they had to start the drip much quicker. The penicillin finally was done around 11am. They then broke my water. It had a little muconium in it so they got the pediatricians on board to be there for the birth so Little Llyr wouldn't aspirate any of it. I started pushing just after 11:30am and had a baby at 12:20pm.

What a miracle!

BYU VS. UTAH

So Saturday was the BYU Cougs vs the Utah Utes. I'm not going to lie, it was an exciting game despite the outcome being less than favorable for my alma mater. Llyr and I were at the game in BYU gear supporting the Cougs amidst the sea of red. Luckily I sat next to a college football ref and so he was very objective in all of his remarks during the game even though there was plenty around us that were not so fair in what they said. So my biggest frustration of the game was the fact that the fans did not wait until the game was over before rushing the field, twice, and I was really tired. Don't you think they'd learn from the first time? I guess not, because they did it again and got a 15 yard penalty for their beloved team. Unfortunately BYU did not capitalize on their 2 extra tries at the end of the game and so in the end Utah won. I do work for Utah and the rivalry is not as big of a deal to Llyr and I, because Blue and Orange run through our blood, so we did sleep on Saturday night even though we were a little sad. This week BSU plays BYU and we will be sporting the Blue and Orange for that game even though we are so very grateful for our amazing educations that we received at BYU. GO BRONCOS!!!!

28 WEEKS

So, today I reach the 28 week mark in the pregnancy. (For all who don't want to do the math, that puts me about 6.5 months along). I am getting bigger and bigger. People touch my belly. Everyone asks about it or makes the comment that I'm getting big and many ask if I'm ready. So as I was thinking about this today I realized that I haven't journaled much about the pregnancy and need to do a better job so I can tell this little guy what it was like to be pregnant with him. Other than throwing up about 5 times a week up until week 18 and being tired and having to buy new clothes, this has been amazing. He is kicking me more and more. I love it even when it wakes me up, because that is when I am the most still and can truly appreciate the fact that there is a little one growing inside of me. Llyr has mentioned on numerous occasions that he just wants the baby to come. I do too, but I do want to wait until his little body is ready and I need some time to actually make some purchases for the baby. We have not purchased one thing of furniture for this baby. Who does that? I sure hope that I can overcome this procrastination and become a good mommy. I don't have any pictures of my belly, but will have Llyr take some soon.

All by myself :(

So this week my sweet husband is off partying with his Dad and Brother watching a lot of baseball. They started out the trip on Saturday by flying to Minneapolis and watching the Twins play Tampa Bay. Then Sunday, they were off to Orlando where Dad Christensen had a conference and so Llyr and Robert were off to Universal Studios one day and a visit of Tropicana Field (Tampa Bay Rays stadium) the next. Llyr was also able to somehow talk Robert into taking a dip in the ocean, a big fear of Robert's. Today they flew to NYC and will watch the Yankees play Texas Rangers tomorrow and then the Yankees and Red Sox game the next night. They will finish off their trip in Denver watching the Rockies play Miami Marlins.

To say the least, this is a dream trip for the baseball fans, and they are loving every minute of it. In the meantime, I am working, like normal and am by myself in the evenings. This leaves me a little bit of time to update the blog, which I am so poor at updating.

This past weekend I was able to go to a small Mission Reunion because my mission president came in from Brasil. I went with my first companion since neither of our husbands were able to come. We had a blast!

This is me, Sister Oppe, Presidente Oppe, and Sister Hall- I have found that my Portuguese needs a lot of work. I will work on it, maybe I just need to make plans to take my husband with me to Brasil and that will give me good motivation to practice. ;).

As for me, I keep growing big. The quote of the day comes from a co-worker who has been out of town for a few weeks and the first thing she said to me today was, "Wow, you're getting big!". All I could say is, "um, Thank you." As far as I know, Baby Boy Christensen is doing well.

And, that is all.