saturday in the country

Steve split and stacked wood.
All day.

So me and the boys did some other things to occupy ourselves.
We walked to the hardware store from the bridge. 
Actually Olaf, Serenity, and Micah rode their little run bikes while Christie, Donna, myself and my mom walked behind them, carrying the little babies.  And on the way back Olaf had to be carried too because apparently his endurance isn't that of his cousins :)  But we all had a good time out in the rain, even Forest and Kyler who both (blessedly) slept the whole time.

After lunch somehow both the boys ended up sleeping at the same time - yeah!  So I made applesauce, as shown below.

Does anyone else ever use these apple peeler/corer/slicer doodads?  They are AMAZING.  I want one, badly.  This one is my mothers.  I borrow it sometimes in the fall because it makes anything with large quantities of apples so much easier.  I swear we'd eat more apple pies if I had one.  (Hint hint mom, Sue.... Christmas... just sayin')

Nevermind the particle board countertop... we'll get our concrete one installed one of these days...

Since Wenatchee calls themselves the "Apple Capital of the World", we always have lots of places to get apples in the fall during harvest time.  They used to export more apples than any other place in the world, and do hold the world record for largest apple pie ever baked, but I think Japan is beating them in apple exports now.  That's okay with me.  There are still PLENTY of apples to go around.  Not to mention pears and cherries.

My applesauce recipe is this:  Put all cut up apples in a pot with some water to keep it from burning.  Bring to boil.  Turn down to simmer for like 1/2 hour, stirring every 5 minutes or so.  Put in the blender and pulse a few times until smoother.  Voila!  I don't add any sugar.  These apples were Fujis from Mom and Dad's tree, so they were already pretty sweet.

I just love making things to eat to put in the freezer.  This is my third batch made!  Although batch 2 didn't count because I sort of forgot I was making it, and burned it to the pan so badly it took steel wool, hours of scrubbing, and my sister in law's mom Donna to get it all off the pan.  Needless to say that batch didn't quite work out.  I am just thankful our precious All-Clad cookware survived.  I can't afford it again without a wedding registry.

Fire in the fireplace was nice too.

All in all a good day.

2 months old

2 months.  Wow.  My (most likely) last baby is growing up WAY TOO QUICKLY for me!

Forest.  Already there has been so much change in your tiny little body.  Small chunk rolls are starting to form on your upper arms and thighs.  You can hold your head up for pretty good extended periods and then BAM it goes all wobbly again :)  Then you pick it up again to view the world.  I swear you seem to know exactly what's going on.

I love when you SSTTTRRREEEEEEETTTCCCHHH both your arms above your head and scrunch up your face so that only your huge Saugen lips are showing clearly.

Everyone has an opinion about who you look like - most say Daddy for sure.  Some say Mommy.  And I myself don't really see anyone but Forest in you.  I can't pick out either side of the family dominant in you.  However you do have your daddy's giant lips, and every now and then at a certain angle, I see Auntie Kirsten's baby pictures replicated in your face.

 I LOVE this view of your peaceful self while we are walking... so content

Unless you are in a really good sleep, you make constant noises just in your breathing!  Luckily daddy and I are usually so tired that we are able to fall asleep to the sound of it.  You are still sleeping in our room in the cradle that PopPop Moritz made for me and my sisters when we were little girls.

You LOVE people.  Looking at them, interacting a bit, SMILING (since 6 weeks), being held.  You track me with your eyes and head as I move about and if I stop right in front of you and smile, you will usually smile right back :)  Lucky me!  It's an adorable smile.

When you are sad, all I have to do is pick you up and you stop crying almost immediately.  You do not like to be left alone unless you are very tired or asleep.  If I set you in a room to look around, then leave the room with Olaf for another room you let us know you don't like it!  (Olaf usually says "Mommy - Forest is CRYING!  He wants you to pick him up!")  All I have to do is go back for you, pick you up and move you to the new room to sit, and you are content to watch the happenings.

You seem to adore your big brother.  He loves to come to wherever you are, put his (huge) head against yours and say "Hey little buddy, you're okay!"  I often think he might be squashing you but when he pulls his head back up you just look up at him with admiring eyes.  Oly also loves to sing his ABC's to you when you are sad, however he refuses to sing them unless you are crying.  Apparently the ABC's are only for when you are not already happy.

You definitely have a new cry too - the frustration cry.  It usually comes when we are nursing but are taking a burp break.  You sound SO annoyed with this cry, like I should put you back on the boob immediately.  Like snap to it, Mommy!

You first started smiling at us between 5 & 6 weeks old.  It is so precious!  None of those crazy Saugen dimples, but some uber-cute laugh lines around your mouth.  You features (aside from the ever expanding double chin) are still very delicate, just like when you were born. 

You are finally out of your newborn sized clothes, and are wearing 0-3 months.  We should get a few more months out of them - YAY!  At your checkup yesterday you were riding those 50% lines right up the charts.  Totally average sized, which is great!  After having one chunky baby, I am excited to have one smaller one.  You now weigh 11 lbs 6 oz., are 23 inches tall, and have a 15-inch head. 



Forest, I just love you so much, I could go on for pages.  As you keep growing, I find new things every day that you do which fascinate me and make me so happy.  But I will just save it for a new post.  Keep smiling buddy - it brings so much joy to people around you. 

Love, Mommy

the boys

If I had known how easy it would be to potty train Olaf, I would have done this months ago!  It pretty much took a week for him to figure it out.  (Mostly he just figured out that he doesn't like wet pants - we went straight from diapers to superhero underpants, pullups didn't seem to work all the previous times I tried it)  Of course I am sure there will be accidents for quite a while, but seriously, one diaper a day for overnight is awesome.  No more $40-$50 a month on diapers!!!!  Yay!!!  (I am just switching from buying size 5's to size 1's.)  And there isn't much of anything cuter than a little boy is his superman underpants, and that's the truth.

I pretty much thought I was mom of the year last week because while Olaf was rock-star-ing his potty time, Forest was sleeping through the night.  Yeah, that's right.  WELL HE WAS JUST PLAYING A MEAN TRICK ON ME because he only did it for 3 nights.  Granted, they were a glorious 3 nights, but he definitely hasn't figured out how to sleep through the night.  Because that was over a week ago.  What he has figured out is that I am sucker and hate to hear him cry... especially since he sleeps in our room...  and I will always respond at 2:30 with milk...  so if he doesn't figure it out on his own daddy is going to have to help me in the self restraint category and let him cry it out one of these nights.  But I can wait on that.  At least another 3 weeks till I go back to work anyway.  Then I'm going to want me some sleep!

mr. photogenic

I think this kid is ridiculously cute.

I can't help it.

Do you see those monsterous dimples?

If he's anything like his father he will have quite a following of ladies when he's older.

I don't know how I feel about that...

I like being the leading lady in his life.

mishaps

Yesterday at lunch Olaf had some raisins for dessert.  I turned around at one point and saw Olaf putting raisin near his nose and I said "No raisins in the nose Olaf, do you understand?"  He put his hand and the raisin down and said "There's not a raisin in my nose!"  Hmmmm.  He just kept saying "There's not a raisin in my nose!"  Considering whenever he has a poopy diaper he says "I don't have a poopoo!"  it clued me into the fact that there may in fact already be a raisin in there.

After a closer look I saw there WAS a raisin up there.  Holy heck.  I ran upstairs for some tweezers.  When I got back down the raisin had moved a little farther back up there (basically I could just barely see the tip of the raisin.  I still tried with the tweezers but I didn't even touch it due to the squirmy crying toddler.  So we plugged the other nostril and I told Olaf to blow his nose.

Out shot the snotty raisin, across the kitchen. 
Really hoping he didn't think it was funny enough to try again!

on getting your toddler to eat his vegetables

For nine glorious weeks this summer, our family was able to split a fresh delicious box of vegetables from a local CSA, Tierra Garden Organics.  The boxes were full of kale, spinach, lettuce, collard greens, kohlrabi, squash, potatoes, leeks, garlic and more... wow, just tons of good stuff.  I was forced to experiment cooking with quite a few things that I had only heard of, and some I hadn't even heard of (like kohlrabi).  Most of the experiments came out great (creamed collard greens, anyone?). 

I don't know about the rest of y'all parents, but it is a FIGHT to get Olaf to try things at dinner, especially weird looking veggies.  Sometimes we can coax one bite into him, which sometimes will make him gag and spit it back out, or cry.  It is not so awesome.  Even if he says he likes it, he usually maxes out at 2-3 bites. 

So here's my confession.  At least once a week, sometimes twice, he gets those boring, non-organic, kind of gross (to me) mixed veggies from the freezer.  Carrots, peas, corn and green beans.  Microwave with water in a small bowl, drain water, and squeeze a little ketchup on top.  And he will gobble an entire bowl of them!  I figured it is better that he is getting vegetables at all, rather than try to force tiny bites of those premium organic vegetables into every meal.  Right?  Right. 

from the peanut gallery

Thoughts from Forest at age 7 weeks:

I am just so cute!  Sometimes I am very happy to sit and let mommy take a bunch of pictures of me.  She thinks I have funny frog legs, and a big round tummy, and no booty.   Apparently all these things make me endearing to her.  I like to smile at her when I am really happy.  Not just when I have a full diaper either, but when I am warm and full and content to be looking at her face.

(Mommy's note -- I think he usually looks like a Saugen, but he TOTALLY looks like a Helseth in this picture above.  Just like my older sister's baby pictures.  No seriously.)

I took a bath with my big brother the other day.  It was pretty fun.  He didn't throw any water on me, although he did try to smear bubbles all up in my face.  Mommy put a stop to that pretty quickly.  We didn't fit too great in the tub with my huge baby bath in there too, but it worked for the 5 or so minutes were were in together.  I liked hanging out with Olaf!

 

Sometimes I am tired of pictures.  What can I say? -  I am always getting photographed and sometimes enough is enough!

tiny blessings

Meet my newest nephew

Kyler John Saugen

Born Thursday October 7th

8lbs 1oz, 21" long

Our family is really so blessed.

Forest was very excited to meet his little cousin.
Lucky they are next door neighbors.

Small Victories

Victory #1 -- I buttoned my first pair of pants since last December today.  Good gracious it felt GOOOOOD!  The rest (of the two pairs that my thighs fit into) are still being buttoned with the ol' hair tie trick.  Of course I can button them, but then I have a muffin top sticking out, so I prefer to continue to use the hair tie.   Anyway.

My other small victory is that I jogged today.  Only about a mile and a half.  And I got a side-ache and had to walk parts of it.  But still - it was jogging!  I left both boys with Steven... Forest was screaming when I left.  Not easy for a mom to walk out on...  But I knew he was fine and Steven is a great papa, so I left.  And when I came back he was asleep! 

Now I am sore.  Even though I stretched.  I guess that's what I get for not really exercising except walking for the last 10 months :)

Forest's Birthday

Well I want to write this down somewhere while I can still remember it, and remember the feelings that went along with it.  I never wrote down Olaf's birth story and I wish I had, because 2 years later it's just a bit fuzzy for me.  And I remember it being just TERRIBLE in comparison to Forest's birth, even though it was probably not all that bad :)  Although I think I will try to remember it and write another post while I have it on the brain.

Forest came 13 days past his due date.  I know that the due date was correct, because I'd been doing the "family planning" with basal body temp, and I knew which day I had ovulated (TMI?  Sorry if so).   Going that far past your due date is not that hard physically, but it was a mental killer.

I think I have realized why it was so annoying to go past my due date with Forest (and Olaf).  I guess I just felt like was very alone at that place in my pregnancy.  Just think - out of ALL the pregnant women you know, how many do you know that allowed her pregnancy go very far overdue?  I can think of just a few.

Now it wasn't uncommon for our moms to go 1, 2 or even 3 weeks overdue before inducing labor or looking at other options.  But I have noticed a growing trend in pregnancy that if you don't have your baby before your due date, on your due date, or within 3-4 days after your due date, most women are encouraged to induce labor with pitocin, or in some situations schedule a C-section.  Their doctors even encourage it.  Now I am not against either of those, I think they are definitely a personal choice made by the momma and their doctors.  (I myself chose to be induced with pitocin at 11 days post due with Olaf so I'm really not against it.)  However it means there are VERY few people who can relate to being very far post due with their kiddos.  I mean seriously.  And then the women who went 3 days overdue tell me - "I KNOW, it's just so annoying isn't it, to be overdue?"  and I think "talk to me again in another week honey.  You probably hadn't even reached your real due date yet".  Anyway.  I could write a whole post on how annoying that is but I will just leave these ramblings here.

So in the week leading to my due date, and the two weeks after, I had progressively stronger Braxton Hicks contractions.  However they were never consistent, just annoying!  I kept trying to tell myself that they were prepping my body for the baby's arrival, and helping me to make some progress.  Luckily, they actually were!  At 40 weeks I was dilated to a 1cm, and at 41 weeks I was dilated to 1.5cm.  So you see, good progress for me.

I had an ultrasound at 41 weeks (Monday), as well as a non stress test for the baby.  The following Wednesday, we went in for another appointment with my doctor so he could go over the ultrasound with us.  He told us that it looked good, baby seemed to be very healthy, and he would see me either in the hospital, or the following Monday (at 42 weeks) to talk induction (bleh).  He also said he'd be out of town at a trail-run race on Sat-Sun this coming weekend, so if I didn't have it by Friday, his associate would deliver over the weekend.

Thursday came along and still no baby.  I decided SCREW THIS I am having this child.  So Steve and I whipped up a nice castor oil smoothie and I drank it down that night at 10pm, thinking maybe labor would start sometime in the wee hours of Friday morning.  Well contractions started at about 5am, pretty consistently.  I spent that morning rocking in the chair and relaxing through each one, while Steve watched Olaf.  Then at 10am I fell asleep, and woke up at 11am..... with no more contractions. They had stopped completely.  However, a nice delayed reaction from the castor oil meant that I got a serious bowel movement cleansing...  Lets just say it was not a pleasant feeling! I was pretty demoralized after that experience on Friday, so I decided that I would have to just wait for the baby :)

Saturday Steven and I did a ton of yardwork.  I mowed the lawn, planted about 10 plants in my beds, composted, etc... I was having good strength contractions every 15 to 20 minutes all day, but again they weren't real consistent.  That evening we went over to my folks house for a BBQ, because my Aunt Sandy was visiting, and we wanted to see her.  Dinner was delicious, but slightly uncomfortable because I kept having those dang contractions.  I sat down in the recliner after supper while everyone else just visited, and finally decided that we needed to go home so I could listen to my hypno-birthing tracks on my iPod to relax through the contractions.  (about 7pm).  Once we were home I settled into the recliner with my iPod and relaxed, and even managed to enjoy a few of the contractions - which I was thinking of as "pressure waves".  It was a nice experience.  They were getting "longer/stronger/closer together" as my doctor would have said.

After Steve got Olaf to bed, and watched some TV, and played on the computer, he came up and started timing the contractions at about 1:30 am.  Basically we were both so exhausted that we would fall asleep between them, and they would wake me up, and I'd grunt loudly at Steve, at which point he would wake up, write down the time, and then fall back asleep.  (see photo evidence of timing below)  Finally around 3am I guess he decided they were getting pretty close so he called the hospital and told them we were coming, called my mom to come stay with Olaf, and got the car running.  We left at about 3:30am for Wenatchee.

Steve's timing paper...  I don't know what those stars were for!

I actually really enjoyed the car ride...  crazy I know.  But the vibrations of the car were really nice compared to just rocking in my chair, and the Hypnobirthing tracks were still working to almost completely relax my body.

We got to the hospital at 4:30am and checked in, which took forever (it felt like).   My concentration on the hypno-birthing tracks was failing as I got asked questions and sat in an uncomfortable chair under bright lights -- as lots of you moms have experienced. Hospitals are distracting places.  Got to our birthing room at about 5:00am and went through the usual fetal heartbeat monitoring, blood pressure, hep-lock etc.  According to the nurse, I had dilated to a 6/7cm and was 100% effaced.  Woohoo, I didn't come in too early!  I had decided already that I wanted to get an epidural, so the nurse notified the anesthesiologist and sent my bloodwork to the lab to make sure I could have one.  By this time it was about 5:45am.  We were TIRED. I essentially hadn't slept at all since the night before (Friday night), so I was really looking forward to getting the epi and then taking a nice nap before I needed to start pushing.

The nice Dr. came at 6:30am with my drugs.  It took about 20 minutes to get everything in, and then I was in that peaceful state known as NO PAIN :)  Loved it.  I was looking forward to my nap.  The nurse had called the backup doc (since mine was out of town) and he was there, and came in to check me.  He told me I was already at an 8, and he wanted to break my water.  After he broke the bag of water, I shot to 9cm right away.  So then he suggested I start pushing and see if I could make it a 10.  I just remember thinking WHAT THE HECK HAPPENED TO MY NAP!!?  I was SOOOO tired :)   But I started pushing with Steve and the nurse by my side at 7:30 am.  And I was apparently much more effective than I was with Olaf (who took 3 hours + a vacume).  At 8:25 or so the doc came back in and this time he stayed.  I got to wait through a few contractions while he gloved up and then it was time to get the little bugger out!  Steve had told the nurse earlier that he wished he could 'catch' the baby, so at that time she and the doc told him to take off his watch and get ready to guide the baby out.  Which he did at 8:35am.  Forest was screaming and cherry tomato red when he came out!  They laid the beautiful little guy up on my chest immediately.  Ahhh, love.  True love.

I had an amazing experience this time.  The hypno-birthing that I had been practicing for months on end helped me to have a really wonderful and relaxing birth.   Literally, I felt very little pain for the first 6-7 hours of labor.   I felt like I was in control the whole time, and really did enjoy the whole thing.  I only really felt intense pain when at the hospital, and trust me, it was intense. But I was actually able to breath through all of it and only yelled like a banshee for two really good ones.  Compared with Olaf's birth, I was SO relaxed.  (also I screamed like a banshee a LOT more with Olaf)...  Pushing was easier, I felt more encouraged, and was just much happier.  It made me realize that birthing is supposed to be an amazing experience, not scary or frustrating.  And I was very blessed to have a healthy baby at the end of it.

So anyway... long story I know but like I said, I wanted to write it down so I could remember it!

Forest Tucker Saugen - I love you.

Gigi

Gigi = Great Grandma.   (Steve's Grandma)

She is one of the main reasons that I blog.  Hi Grandma Riley!  I think she is our most faithful reader :)  So of course we had to take little Forest to meet her for the first time!  We headed over to Oak Harbor early Monday morning, spent the day/evening there, then headed home on Tuesday.  We had such a great time!

We even got to take the Ferry from Mukilteo to Clinton, which was a treat for Olaf (and us).  Steve has a particular way of riding the ferry (since they rode them so often as kids), which he's been doing for years and years, and is now happily teaching Olaf.  Basically the minute your car is parked, you leave it (and your wife) in the dust and race to the back of the boat, to make sure that you see it motor away from the dock.  Then once you are a few hundred feet out, you mosey up to the front of the boat to watch the scenery.  Once you get close to to dock on the far shore, you go to the very front of the boat to watch it dock, then you RACE back to your car which your kind wife has unlocked and ready for you to load up into so that other ferry drivers don't get mad at you for being late and holding up the unloading.  I didn't mind being the car locker and un-locker, and Olaf got to see all the churning water from the motor.  So it was a good way to enjoy our ferry ride!

P.S.  Isn't my husband SO GOOD LOOKING?  Seriously.  What a hunk.