Rayna Sage

Born 28 May, 2008, 4:53am (nope, no sleeping for mom! --or dad)
healthy, happy, beautiful!
any questions?

this picture was this morning (2 days old), if you can't tell, her eyes are bluish, but they look like they're already starting to turn brown. her hair is pretty dark, but it looks a lot like afton's did, so i imagine it'll lighten up a bit too. she's got just a hint of jaundice, but not enough to worry us. we did have to stay in the hospital an extra day because she was born so fast that they didn't have time to give me an antibiotic before she came (i tested GBS positive), so they had to monitor her for signs of infection. Fortunately, all seems to be going well now, we're home, afton loves to play with the baby, she calls her ray-ray. She also loves to poke gently on rayna's nose and say "beep-beep" evidentally this game could last for as long as mom and dad can handle it! anyways, i'm off to bed, but i'll post a few more pictures in a couple days.

bye-bye birdie

yesterday we passed buddy, our pet cockateil on to paul's brother matthew. we can't take him with us to texas when we move (we're not even allowed to have a pet fish or insect in our new place, not that i'm complaining, it's just the way it is!), so we figured we'd better find him a good home here, and who better than family?! i know they'll be good to him too, i still feel guilty because we put him outside every day, he hasn't gotten much attention from us ever since we left tucson. he's not even very friendly anymore, but paul's mom and brother are more likely to shower him with attention and get him to come out of his cage more. he used to never be in his cage, in tucson he was tame enough to come sit on paul's shoulder. i just wish i had a better picture of him :)

nesting

so they say a sure sign of impending labor is the "nesting" instinct... where the mother suddenly goes on some sort of monsterous cleaning spree. i must admit, today i vacuumed, de-cluttered my house, started laundry, and even dusted a bit. i only wish it was cause i wanted to. there's nothing like a long weekend to mess up the house, and even though paul and i were more careful this weekend about keeping it clean (for prospective buyers to see), it still got pretty bad. (the only thing i'd have voluntary done today was the laundry, and only then cause i'm out of clothes that fit).
afton's gone today, visiting nana thelda for a "practice run." thelda's the one that will watch her whenever the baby comes. afton's not being here means i can clean everything in less than half the usual time. so i think i'm just being practical, and not necessarily nesting. though i still hope to have the baby this week. i guess i don't really remember feeling any great urge to nest when afton was born either.
on the plus side, i still have another hour and a half before afton's due home, and since i did do those looming chores, i can now lay around and be lazy with a book like i would have planned in the first place, if we weren't trying to sell the house.

rain in may

hi all, for those of you not from arizona, this may not seem like a big deal, but i honestly can't remember ever hearing of rain in arizona in may before... it's really the dry season. i'm sure it does exist, but i just don't know of it. anyways, yesterday it was really cold and rainy, to the point that when i went to get paul from work at 5pm the temperature was about 45F. today the high is below 60 too... afton still loves the rain though, and desperately wanted to play outside yesterday. paul took her out for a few minutes after work and let her splash in the puddles. needless to say, by the time they came in, it was time for a hot bath. fun, fun, fun. i'm sure it'll be warm again soon, but the aberration was nice too!

bathtubs, baby names, and snickerdoodles

it's definately getting hotter lately, which seems to mean not quite as much playing outside... which in turn necessitates more creative play inside. afton's gotten really good at playing "night-night" where she needs her binky and blankey and she puts herself to bed (usually on the couch). she also likes to answer the telephone, but she still doesn't like to talk into it very often, just push buttons. yesterday paul's dad called and i went running from the kitchen to the living room to answer, afton went running also, to the bedroom to get the extension there. fortunately i was able to pass off the phone pretty quickly to paul and then catch afton before she pushed too many buttons. but her favorite is playing bathtime. fortunately she can't open up the bathroom door yet, though she is really quick about finding the door not quite latched or coming in with mom (after all, mom's pregnant and she has to go to the bathroom all the time), she climbs into the bathtub as quick as she can, pulls a few toys in (her rubber ducky is on the side of teh tub), plugs up the drain (with the rubber stopper), and inside just a few seconds she's got the water on and she's ready to get started! (needless to say, we try not to let her play this game without supervision... and that comes in handy too, cause she can't take her clothes off by herself... yet). such a little grown up!

this past week paul and i have deficed that we don't really like any of the names we were thinking about for the baby. we don't hate them, but there's nothing we really love or want to stick to our little girl... so we're on another quest for names. we got a couple baby-name books from the library (and we learned that they are one of the most commonly stolen kind of books, the other being dream interpretation books--evidentally a lot of people don't realize that a library will let you borrow a book for free). anyways, we've been looking through these baby-name books, and we're still not really inspired, so if anyone has some favorite girl names they'd like to suggest, we might use your suggestion! we're looking for something a little different (sorry to all the sarah's out there), so she doesnt' have to have three others with the same name in any of her school classes, and something that's easy to spell (i'm not a big fan of "alternate" spellings, i like the simple/basic/traditional there. generally we're looking for something 1-2 syllables, though we're not as picky there.

many thanks to val for her snickerdoodle recipe (the one from the cookbook mom compiled all those years ago). evidentally it's the best snickerdoodle any of paul's sunday school class has ever tasted! i made a batch last week for them, and there was a special request for them again this week--for priesthood class. paul's the young men's president as well as a sunday school teacher, and he's been trying to get teh young men to participate more in giving the lessons. this week it was the turn of one of his most difficult 14 yr olds to give the lesson. he (the teen) claimed he couldn't possibly give more than 5 minutes of the lesson, but then he jokingly added "unless i get a half dozen of those snickerdoodles." naturally paul took him at his word, and he asked me to make more this week. evidenatlly it worked really well. i'm still not sure if i think it is sad or cool that bribery works so well in this world :).

house pics

per katharine's request, here's some pictures of my house, before the sale... i apologize if they're funny angles, i was just trying to get it all in the frame. we still have a little work to do to finish up the front retaining wall, it definately needs some more paint (i don't really like the grey, but heck, we're selling the house so i don't really have to like it anymore). by the way, that's afton asleep in mama's bed--but at least she's asleep! i'm guessing the rest of the pictures are pretty self-explainatory, i tried to get a couple different angles of the living room, and i figure there's enough to pull it all together. the really cluttered-lookign room is the "office" meaning the storage room--but it's not nearly as cluttered as it used to be :). so now, if you know anyone looking for a home in this area, let me know!

house for sale

our house is officially for sale now!

bellies!

afton also got a picture of my belly, so i got one of her's too... see how we compare :)

afton's discovered the camera

afton borrowed my camera today and started going crazy! within just a few minutes she'd taken over 30 pictures... i'm so glad for digital cameras, no harm done! anyways, here are a few of her masterpieces:

coming together

so it appears that things are finally starting to come together... hopefully. we've got a town home reserved (bar something weird) in garland, not far from a park and a bus route (for paul to get to school). it's actually a little bigger than our house here, so that's nice too.
speaking of our house here, it's just about ready to put on the market, our goal is still monday, though it may take a little longer to finish some of our projects (ie, paul's repairing our retaining wall out front, and if he finished the stucco on saturday, we'll still have to paint it sometime, but that's okay). i think it'll be okay though. we've already talked to the realtor, and he seems to think it'll sell, and he seems to be realistic what with the market the way it's been lately. we may not really make a profit, but hopefully we'll at least break even.
we're just about ready for baby to come too. the cradle is set up, and there's some clothes out for her, not that we're rushing, but it seemed prudent to get everything out before people start wanting to see our home (especially since afton loves to help with the baby things... it makes for a long, cluttered job, but it's cute). we've still officially got 3 1/2 weeks before she's due, so i figure that means we've got 4 weeks--i'm planning on the 30th, anyone else care to guess?
paul's been working a lot lately, i sure appreciate him! afton's been playing hard, and doing her best to follow daddy at all costs... preferably attached to his leg (he loves it too), she sure misses him while he's at work.
anyhow, that's our little update. i'll try to get more pictures up soon.