Settled In

Make a Smilebox greeting

Last weekend, Tim started his regular shift at work--graveyard: Wed-Sat, 10 p.m.-9 a.m., Sun-Tues off. It sounds like a crazy shift but it works surprisingly well! Aislin and I go to bed when he goes to work, and when we're awake, he's at home. Of course he sleeps throughout most of the day, but it's comforting to know he's at home.

Before, he was on the swing shift from 12 p.m.-11 p.m. and it was terrible :( I had to stay up late just to spend time with him and Aislin barely got to see him at all. I felt like I was the only one taking care of her during the week and it drove me nuts. I was worried that it would always be like that, since we don't have any family or close friends here--that I'd always be lonely and alone in taking care of our daughter. Plus he had to work Sundays.

So yeah, graveyard isn't too bad.

Aislin had a well-baby check-up at 7 1/2-weeks-old. She was alseep when she got the first immunization shot on her leg, but I was a little too optimistic in thinking she'd sleep through it. She did one of those long silent screams...which then escalated into several high-pitched squeals. I think she screamed louder than when she was born!

My family came to visit us last weekend :) They brought food to cook here and took a million pictures of Aislin. In the last picture, she had the most exasperated look on her face! We can't wait to do it again :)

Aislin with her Lolo

Quincy, WA

Where, you ask? Central Washington--past Ellensburg, near Moses Lake, about a half hour's drive from Wenatchee...

I never thought I'd live in a town so small that the only fastfood restaurants are McDonald's and Subway, the nearest Wal-Mart is in the next town and the nearest Costco is in another nearby town. But I like it! It kills gas but I love having an excuse to drive out to Ephrata just to shop at a Wal-Mart supercenter, and I love driving out to Wenatchee for Costco, Taco Bell, and just about anything else. I love how no one seems to be in much of a rush out here. I love that I'll probably never get lost on the road, especially since I've already mentally mapped out most of the town (and because there's only one main street). And I love that I got to see the Milky Way, clearly, for the first time.

Now for some funny stories!

The first time we came to Quincy, we stopped at McDonald's for lunch. After I ordered, Tim asked the girl behind the register where the nearest Washington Mutual was? She said, "What's that?"

The day we moved out here, the Relief Society president offered to buy us a pizza for dinner. When she asked what kind we like, I told her that we're big fans of "combination." She said, "A combination of what?"

I am officially the second Filipino in Quincy. How do I know? The first Filipino told me.

I took Aislin to her second well-baby checkup last week. Since she was almost 2-months-old and due for all her shots, we had to wait for a nurse to administer them. As soon as the nurse came in, the first thing she asked me was, "Do you need an interpreter?"

Nothin' wrong with any of these experiences... They make good stories and all in good fun :D

New Home, New Town

Moving sucks...and we've moved TWICE since coming to Quincy.

Here's the story:

When we first came out here for Tim's job interview, we checked out a house that the bishop in Quincy had told us about. $850/mo, he said...but when we talked to the Windermere realtors, they gave us a number that was just over our price range. So we checked out a new townhome--3 bd/3 ba for $770/mo--and decided to go with it. The next day, Windermere called and said the owner of the house would lower the rent to $850; however, the house would remain on the market and if anyone bought it, we'd have to vacate within 20 days. We figured, since the house had been on the market for a while, we'd be okay...and that the pics of the inside of the house would suffice since driving out there again would require gas $$. So we chose the house over the townhome.

We moved to Quincy on the 11th and went straight to the Windermere office to get our keys and sign some papers, but before we even sat down with a realtor, we were told that an offer had been made on the house. Huh. Well, we got our keys and drove to the house, totally excited to unlock the door and check it out for the first time but found...*shudder* I don't want to go into too much detail because that's how traumatic it was, but let's just say that the owner of the house only took care of the yard so the outside looked inviting...but he hadn't touched the inside in about six months. I'll leave the rest to your imagination. We stayed there for only eight days before moving into the townhome. Luckily we got a lot of help--both times--from members of our new ward and are finally settled in.

Aislin has finally calmed down and takes regular naps again, Tim finally has a set work schedule and we finally have internet :) :)

Here are some pictures of our new home:

The study is the first room downstairs and the bathroom is connected to it. It's great being able to walk from the study to the bathroom and then out to the hallway!


We decided to have a big living room and no dining room. We'll just squish a little table and chairs against the opposite wall.

A kitchen big enough for the three of us!

Upstairs bathroom with a washer and dryer in the closet. So nice to be able to shut a closet door and also a bathroom door, and hear nearly...nothing :)

Our bedroom. It's a really long room so I had to take two pics of it. It's very bare...

Tim's being goofy

Aislin's room is also long; and somehow, even though we have the master bedroom, she got the air conditioner, the balcony and the bigger closet. Huh...



Upstairs hallway

First Few Weeks with Aislin

What a big yawn!!!

Sleepy baby

My favorite picture in the whole wide world

Jaundice

DEFINITION — Jaundice is a yellow discoloration of the skin and/or whites of the eyes (sclerae) that is often seen in newborn infants. The discoloration is caused by a yellow substance called bilirubin. Infants with high blood levels of bilirubin (or hyperbilirubinemia) develop the yellow discoloration when bilirubin is deposited into the skin.--Uptodate.com

Aislin had it at 2- or 3-days-old. I just remember the three of us being back in the hospital only a few days after we left, and walking and walking around the hospital and through the parking lot... On the first day, we were at the hospital for her first check up; the following day, when my milk came in but she was having trouble latching on, we went back to see a lactation specialist who also noticed the yellowness in her skin and called her pediatrician. We went from the lactation specialist's office to the lab for tests, the cafeteria to wait for the results, and then home. The next day we went back for another test and to see a different pediatrician (I think the regular one had the day off, or something) who told us he'd send a nurse to our apartment to deliver a bilibed. Yay for awesome insurance, otherwise we would've all had to spend the night at the hospital...and we were told that the room used for phototherapy was really small and uncomfortable.

Over the next couple of days, Aislin slept in the bilibed and fed often. Her weight jumped like crazy, which was good because she had lost more weight in her first two days than she was supposed to, and her blood tests improved :) Jaundice all gone!

Aislin in the bilibed

Showtime!

Scary picture! They had me hooked up to all sorts of stuff...IV, antibiotics, pitocin, oh my! But in this picture I was feeling great. The epidural kicked in pretty quickly :) The only downside was not being able to eat anything but ice chips...that, and it was really hard to sleep on my side!

My water broke around 4 a.m. that Sunday morning. Poor Tim...bloodshot eyes, a little disoriented, couldn't decide what to do first...but we eventually got our bags and the car seat together and left for the hospital in just a few minutes. I think the only things we forgot were our phone chargers.

About half an hour later, I was being checked by a group of nurses before being taken to my room. They hooked up a couple of monitors to my belly--one for contractions, the other for the baby's heart rate. I was 6 cm dilated and, according to the monitor, having strong contractions...but I wouldn't have known. I didn't feel a thing until about an hour or so later when I had reached 7 cm, but it was like, "I think I felt something... Am I having a contraction? What does the monitor say?" The contractions felt so weak that the nurses and I thought maybe I'd get away with having a natural birth.

HA!

At 8 cm, I was freakin' out. My contractions were in my lower abdomen and lower back. Maybe if they were just in my lower abdomen I would've been able to tolerate them better, but I had been having lower back pains for weeks and I just couldn't take any more. I tried having Tim massage my back but that tactic only worked half the time. The other half of the time, I was too irritable to be touched. When the contractions reached over two minutes long and were two to three minutes apart, I had Tim run out into the hall to tell the nurse I was ready for an epidural. Lucky for me, the anesthesiologist was in the building when the nurse called him so he showed up within a few minutes.

Sure, getting the epidural wasn't too pleasant, especially when I had to curl into a fetal position while having contractions, but Tim held my hand and the nurse talked me through it. At least it wasn't as annoying as a 2+ minute contraction!

Finally, 11 hours later, at 2:57 p.m., came Aislin Tempest Sweet.

Mama and Baby

The proud papa

Our first visitors: the beaming grandparents...

...and Aislin's one-and-only uncle :P

Baby Shower

Ugh, I was huge in mid-July... 184 lbs! The nice thing is that I lost about 17 of them in just the first two postpartum weeks! :P



The baby shower was thrown by my visiting teachers--Tia and Onica--from the Scenic Hill Ward in Kent. Awesome ladies. They organized the whole thing, made the invitations and arranged to have it at Tia's lovely home.

The game we played was Memory (courtesy of a friend of ours, Carrien Self)...and as hard as I tried, I couldn't remember where anything was. Random guessing only worked in the beginning....

Those handmade burp cloths saved our lives. Aislin and I turned out to be very messy during feedings... Thank you, Candace Boelter!

The picture below, I think, is just perfect. It says so much....

Ready to Pop!

I think I was already 9 months pregnant in this picture. We were still at the Signature Pointe Apartments in Kent when Tim took this picture of me holding a cup of yogurt :P Seems like everyone else had a picture of me pregnant, so we thought we had better take one for ourselves. However, we were finally able to get some pics from my dad's camera and save them onto our computer.

So here's another one! It's me with my family and my widdle cousin, Lola. Could you tell which season we were in? Hats off to my mom for anticipating the heat in my last months of pregnancy and buying me that turquoise dress!

Tim was ready to be a daddy! Already sittin' on the rocker (or glider)...