Ruby's Father's Blessing

4/22/18
Ruby was given a name and a blessing today by Ryan. Some of the things mentioned in the blessing were: She has a gift to bring comfort and peace to the people around her. She will be blessed to know the other gifts she has and be able to recognize when others need her help and know how to help them. She will be able to go to the temple and be married there. She will be blessed with health and strength.

I just love this little girl. She is such a sweetheart and I'm so grateful to have her in our family.

Here are some pictures. This is the blessing dress my Grammy crocheted for me when I was a baby.

March stuff and photo dump

Actual conversation Ryan and Kevin had:

Kevin: Why are all the erasers gone on all the pencils???!!!
Ryan: Because you guys ate them all!

(Seriously, Ann Marie bit off most of the erasers.)

Me (staring down at my shirt covered in spit-up): Kevin, do you think there will ever be a time when I don't smell like milk?
Kevin: Mmmmm, probably not.

Ann Marie has a lot of nicknames for Ruby: Rube, Rubes, Ruben, Rube the Rube, Rubes the Rubes, Ruby Doo/Ruby Dooby Doo, Ruby Q, Rubicon, Ruby Cutie

Ruby's milestones:

• At three weeks her umbilical cord finally fell off (the nurses warned me it might take longer since she had an IV through it), so she got her first real bath. (I had washed her hair over the sink a few times before that.)
• Around six weeks we got her first on-purpose smiles (before that she would smile a lot in her sleep) and she started saying "goo."
• At seven weeks she rolled from tummy to back.
• At three months she rolled from back to tummy once

We had a cleaning fairy come and visit. Kevin swears he doesn't know anything about it.

I started playing Bicycle Race by Queen and Heidi strongly disliked it.

We had a teacher workday, and I decided to take the kids to Reed Creek Nature Park for a while. It had been raining heavily and the water had flooded over the sidewalk in one place. Heidi slipped in the mud and got completely covered just a few minutes after we arrived. It was such a nice day and it was so nice to be outside doing something, so we drove home and got her cleaned up and then came right back. Here are the kids looking at tadpoles.

I loved these pictures of the kids:

I went to a Relief Society event that had several classes. One was about missionary work, and our stake president encouraged us to direct gospel conversations to Christ as soon as possible and to ask a lot of questions/be interested in the other person when we're sharing the gospel.

First Week Home

The last two months are a blur, but I'll try to remember what I can.

We were so grateful that Ryan's parents were able to come spend a week with us after Ruby was born. It would have been a crisis without them. I was still very sore and I couldn't do much more than take care of myself and Ruby. I was walking slowly and it was still hard to do things like sit up. Then I got a cough. There's no such thing as a little cough when you've just had a c-section. It hurt really bad. I told Ryan I thought I would die. Fortunately it went away pretty quick.

Ann didn't let me do any work while she was here. They took really good care of us. On Wednesday we all went to the pediatrician because I couldn't drive yet. Ruby was still doing fine and was almost back to her birth weight. On Friday I was well enough to drive to my doctor appointment myself.

Ruby isn't the easiest baby. She's not as hard as Kevin was, but it was hard to figure out what she liked. There was one night when she nursed three times on each side and was still crying. She likes being wrapped up in swaddling blankets, but she hates having her arms stuck. She hates pacifiers. She gags on them and swears at you if you try to give her one. I could probably count on one hand the number of times I've been able to get her to take one. We did figure out that she sleeps better in the baby seat, and she hasn't slept in the bassinet since.

The kids were all very excited to meet Ruby for the first time when we got home from the hospital. They had only seen her on Google Hangouts because she was in the NICU. Everyone got a turn to hold her. Ann Marie was surprised that she weighed so much. She actually started to cry because she thought she wouldn't be able to hold the baby. We eventually figured out that she could hold her better with the Boppy pillow. (And now she holds Ruby however she wants and thinks she can carry her around.)

On Worry

This was an interesting video and I've been thinking about it a lot this evening. One of the main ideas is that often when we worry about things it's because they've happened before and we're afraid they'll happen again. But we can respond by reminding ourselves that we don't have to repeat our past because we've grown since then and we can respond to difficulties with greater maturity.

I've learned a lot about worry from all the challenges and scary things that happened when Ruby was born. Before she was born I was worried that I would have to get induced and it would be a repeat of my induction with Kevin. I was worried that it would be worse and I'd end up with a c-section after labor failed to progress. I felt like that was more than I could handle with no parents close by and three kids at home.

In the end I did end up needing an emergency c-section. It saved Ruby's life. And you know what? It was even worse than I had imagined when I had worried. Even with an epidural it was a really intense and even painful experience, and recovering was a lot more difficult and painful than I expected.

But you know what else? I made it. I have to give a lot of credit to my in-laws and all the people in my ward who gave me so much help, but getting through the operation and recovering feels like a huge accomplishment. If I could go back in time, I would tell myself, "You're right. That's happened before, and it could happen again. In fact, it will be worse. But you can totally handle this."

I used to define myself as a worrier. I've decided I don't like that label. Now instead of saying I'm a worrier, I say, "I worry." See the difference? And when I worry, I give myself permission to process those feelings instead of resisting or avoiding them. It's normal to worry.

When we worry, we can cope by acknowledging that it's normal and recognize that often our worries come from events in our past. The good news is that with time comes progression and maturity, so if our past repeats itself we can handle our challenges with greater maturity. When we worry, we can tell ourselves, "You're worried. And that's valid. This has happened before, and it may or may not happen again. It might even be worse. But you can totally handle this."