Thoughts on Motherhood

First off, let me preface that this post is for me mire than anything. I have not journaled since Dean was born and I want to remember the good and the hard times. John and I are so thankful for our sweet little boy. Just because we know deep down inside that Dean is sweet doesn't mean that he always is.

Since he was born, I think we have maybe had 2-3 weeks where we haven't spent most of the day and night wrestling him. He was a great sleeper who only woke up once around 4am for about 2 weeks. He was so cute during the day and actually let me put him down and slept in his crib for naps for the same 2 weeks.

For the past 3-4 weeks, I feel like we have digressed back to newborn Dean. I literally spend almost every waking moment holding him or he will just cry. And even when I do hold him, often he will just cry and refuse to sleep even though he is exhausted.

Last night, as I was up with Dean 3 times within about 5 hours, I started to wonder why we have such a difficult baby. I don't know the answer, but I pray we are "serving our time," and IF we have any more kids, they will be perfect angels. We both spend a lot of our time thinking of ways to keep Dean happy and comfortable, but I am starting to realize that we all have agency, even little baby Dean. Maybe this earth is just such a shock from where he came from that he can't help but cry when he realizes he's not there any more.

I know things will get better, but please don't tell me how happy my baby seems when you see him on a particularly happy moment because nobody really understands what John and I go through daily with this one. I just want to hear "i am so sorry", not a list of things that have worked for you and your baby. We are grateful for everyone's love and support, but sometimes we just need to hear that we are loved, not ways to solve our problems. As I said initially, this is not me wanting a pity party, just me hoping to express how this phase if life is so that I can remember how to help others in the future.

First family picture

New Trick

Dean has recently and finally figured out how to suck on his hands. It's lead to some pretty awesome moments like the following. Yes, those are wiener dogs on his outfit, and yes, I do think wiener dogs are adorable. Please don't take that as a hint to get me one. I cannot handle a dog and a baby.

Holidays

I am trying to make a better effort at blogging. I'm glad/sad that the only people noticing are John's sisters who live within 10 minutes of our house, but I guess it should be more of a record for us anyway. Our thanksgiving was great. We are so blessed to live close to family. We had a lovely week visiting with John's sister Christine and her family who visited from Seattle. We spent a lot of time with John's parents, sister Marja and her family, as well as my sister Laura. Our pies were fantastic. Somehow we only ended up with parts of 2 pies and no thanksgiving leftovers, but the pies were indeed delicious.

As has become tradition for John and I, we went shopping on black Friday. Before you forget that I love sleeping more than anything but my two boys, we did not go out at midnight. You see, there are still great sales happening at 10, 11, or even noon. This is our tradition. I didn't think we would go this year (due to our sweet, but very demanding Dean), but John's sisters wanted to hit a few stores. We were geared up to battle Dean and his hatred of the car seat, but our brother-in-law graciously volunteered to watch Dean. We had such a good time at the Bosch store that we bought a new blender that comes with a 5 year warranty. We burn through them about every 6 months.

Unfortunately, Dean got so thrown off his routine last week and got sick that this week has been very hard on me. But on a positive note, he is growing so fast and learning so much. I love watching him learn. He is now proficient in getting his hands in his mouth and smiling at us when we walk into the room or talk to him. He is very close to laughing and we can't wait to hear it. I don't care what any other mothers say, my little boy is the cutest baby ever. See...

Turkey Day ... or should I Say Pie Day?

Thanksgiving is a big, huge, wonderful, delicious deal for John's family. I love my family and our holiday traditions, but Thanksgiving was one holiday that blew my mind once I became a Van Orman. Here's the reason why: PIE!! They love pie, and we're not just talking the traditional pumpkin and pecan, although those have their time and place and I do love them. We usually have pumpkin, pecan, hershey's chocolate pie, lemon chiffon, cherry (or some berry), apple, sometimes key lime, sometimes banana cream, etc. And we're not just talking one pie of each kind, we're talking several. We all get together the day before Thanksgiving and have our pie "orders" with us along with the ingredients to make whichever pies we want. We figure out how many pies of each kind we need to make and then go through them by type until we've made them all. Luckily John's sister has 2 ovens to facilitate the deliciousness. I do believe last year John and I had 7 pies... in our defense, we did go up to my Aunt & Uncle's house for Thanksgiving day, and then had Thanksgiving with the VOs on Friday. Who knows how many we'll make this year, but considering I would like to lose my excess pregnancy weight, hopefully we don't go nutso this year with our pies.

Until Thursday, I'll be dreaming of pies and deviled eggs. What holiday would be complete without deviled eggs? or pie......

Before the End of the Year

On October 30th I was sitting in church, minding my own business. The lessons and talks were very well-prepared and I was thrilled to be in Sunday School and Relief Society, as I had spent a year and a half in Primary prior to Dean being born. I love primary and the simple Gospel truths taught there, but I have thoroughly enjoyed being in SS and RS for the past few weeks. One of the speakers related a story that hit me very hard. She talked about how she started to slack off in regards to her testimony after her children were born and spent most of her time happily watching Regis & Kathie Lee or other things rather than spending time pondering and studying the Gospel. At this point in time, I had watched all of Numbers, Bones, Lost, among other things because Dean refused to sleep anywhere than in our arms. He has since grown out of this (at least at night time and we are working on day time naps), but I spent a whole lot of my time watching TV shows because there was nothing else to do when holding a screaming baby 24 hours a day. Thankfully, John took a picture of him screaming just so we can remember what it was like. See:



Dean has made a huge turn around and has turned into such a sweet, gentle, cute, loving boy who rarely cries. I started to realize that I needed to find something else to do besides turn my brain to mush. I read The Help in 2.5 days and decided that I wanted to read more. I think it was the very next Sunday that I had the following experience based on the story related in the talk. I felt very strongly that I needed to re-read the Book of Mormon from start to finish before the end of the year. I figured that I haven't read it quickly since I was on my mission, which ended 5.5 years ago. I committed to this without having any clue of how many pages I needed to read in order to achieve this goal. I got home, figured out that I would need to read somewhere between 11-12 pages per day in order to achieve that goal. I just started reading in Jacob today and I cannot describe the difference this has made in my day-to-day life. I have found so many answers to problems and worries with Dean just by calming myself down through reading the Book of Mormon and allowing the Spirit to speak to me. I am excited to see how the rest of this experience turns out, but so far I am loving reading it so quickly. I feel much like Dean who used to scream without the ability to be consoled, but now he is a happy, smiling little guy.

2 month stats and a new job

I took Dean in on Monday for his 2 mo check up. He weighs 10 lbs 14 ozs (30%), is 22.5 in tall (33% and she measured him way shorter than he is) and his head is 40.5 cm (65%). He got some lovely shots and behaved like a champ. We love this little guy so much. I tried to get a picture of Dean smiling, but he wouldn't cooperate. Oh well.

In other news, John has started a new design job at Unicity, a company that makes health and wellness products, similar to NuSkin and others.

We found out about a week before Dean was born that Logoworks was going to be shut down by HP and John would need to find a new job as of the middle of October. You might imagine that was stressful news for us to take in, but we both felt peaceful that we would be led to something great.

John was contacted by a previous coworker whose wife is the creative director at Unicity. It led to John being hired. We are so grateful for this great opportunity. John keeps very busy at work, but is having great design opportunities and gaining great experience.

We are looking forward to this holiday season and feel especially grateful for the Gospel and our Savior this year as we have learned so much about trust as we have had instances when we could do nothing but trust in His plan for us and our growing family.