Four weeks old!!

Can you believe our tiny little sweet Lizzie is now 4 weeks old???  Yesiree.  I am writing this post as she nuzzles in a little baby sling on me.  I love it.  Things are going a lot better.  Since I am pretty anal I have been working on figuring out a schedule with her and I think it's slowly coming together.  I also think she knows night and day now.  I still am going on 3 hours but somehow it's gelling.  She is starting to coo and make the cutest sounds and I swear I saw her smile at me yesterday!!

I waffle back and forth between putting her to bed awake and just holding her and rocking her and loving on  her.  They say you can't spoil a newborn enough and I tend to agree.  Especially one as cute as Lizzie cakes.  Here she is sleeping in her sling. 

 Here she is wearing an outfit I wore when I was a mere babe.  It was super tight on her though!!  Maybe for our next babe.

 In our spare time Paul and I made Pretzels.  They were sooo yummy!  I must say Paco is a great chef and he is always willing to experiment which I am sometimes scared of so it's a good balance between us in the kitchen. 

 I love this pic of her! 

 Paul and I were laughing to hard when we took this pic cause Paul said "she looks awful here" and darn it she kind of does but she was so cute in my lap. 

 I feel all contemplative-y here I guess. Lol.

 Happy mama. 

 Paul just woke up and she had tummy time on his chest.  Love it!

  
Well not much else to say but I am just astounded and how quickly the days do pass.  Soon she'll be 4. : )  : (  Frownsmile. 

Daddy's Little Beefcake

So we took sweet Lizzie to the doc on Wednesday, April 13 and she now weights 10.11 ounces!!!  Can you believe it???  At 21 days old, she is in the 97th percentile for her age group!!  Amazing, huh?  Here she is in all her glory, or cuteness.  What a cute little cupcake huh?  Lacey made this cupcake hat for her for my baby shower.  Cute!!

 I love this one above.  She makes the cutest little fists and movements.  Look at those rolls!  I swear she has more today.  I'm so glad she's a big baby.  She also 21 inches long which is in the 80th percentile for her age range.  Amazing!! 

So last night, we left her for the first time alone with Grandma McAllister.  Oh man, I was worried to leave our little 3-week old there but of course she did great.  We went to the West Ridge Academy gala and I wrote an article about it for the Deseret News.   It was a great gala.  Alex Boye performed and we got to sit next to Bishop Burton who is an amazing person and very kind.  He was a lot more soft spoken than I imagined for some reason and had a real light about him. 

It was great to go on a date with Paul but I have to admit Lizzie was on my mind most of the time and I missed her.  Also, I was incredibly sleepy.  I told Paul these 6 weeks are turning into one loooong day because I never really sleep more than 3 hour at a time.  Twilight Zone a bit.  Haha.  I'm sure I'll look back at it and laugh but for now we are one sleepy couple.  Paul is wonderful to help me out and I have been reading this book The Baby Whisperer which says to put your baby to sleep awake.  Sounds great, in theory.  Hahaha.  Well, no time to waste.  Must get back to sleeping while Lizzie sleeps.  Buh bye!

Baby Lizzie

Some pics I'd like to remember

 Taken after her first bath at the hospital.

 Her going home outfit.

 Grandpa Maschmeyer holding our baby.  I'll treasure this one forever. 

 Mami Vicki feeding sweet Lizzie

 She has the cutest little poses!!

 Her first outing - to the doctor's.

 Her little lipsa re the cutest.

 I love this pic!!

 She loves going for rides in the carseat!

 With grandma McAllister.

 She looks so tiny on her daddy!!

Labor Day

So I woke up on Wednesday, March 23 at 7:45 and distinctly knew my water had broken.  Egads!!  So I told Paul and we had a 9:30 a.m. doc's appointment anyway so first my parents came over and Paul and my dad gave me a blessing and then we headed over to the doc and sure enough.  My water broke.  I was so nervous that morning and excited that I only ate a couple of strawberries.  Little did I know I wouldn't be eating anything else that day. 

Dr. Nielsen was pretty surprised that my water broke on the day off but sent me off to labor and delivery to get things started.  I was so nervous!  Here I am checking into labor and delivery with my parents and Paul.

I made sure to look okay for the big event. : )

At noon they gave me pitocin and my contractions started coming.  I tried to brave them out at first because I hear labor can totally stop for a while once the epidural is in.  By 5 p.m. though I was sooo ready for the epidural.  The unsmilingest anesthesiologist ever came in and asked me if I was sure I wanted it and I said oh yes!  Then he had me curve into a ball and dear Paul held my hand.  I honestly could not have done it without him.  He was so calm the whole time and treated things like a science experiment that it made me not be afraid.  The epidural was great.  Here are some pics during the day.

 Suffering through a contraction before I chose the right - epidural!! 

 Dear hubby holding my hand through the whole thing. 

 Paul and my dear mother really helped through the whole process. 

Well, no need to go into any more details here but after about an hour of pushing our sweet baby Elisabeth Nelda McAllister was born at 9:45 p.m. at St Mark's Hospital at 9.1 pounds and 20 inches at an apgar score of 8 and 9.  Go Lizzie! : )  I was somewhat aware that the doctor was fixing me up but there was no pain because I was just in tears watching our new baby girl.  I still can't believe what a miracle it was! 

 I was very anxious for her to eat up her nutritious colostrum - which she did, yay!

 Proud poppa!!

 Right when she was born.  She has her daddy's hands.  She looks like a cute little elf in that hat, huh?

After this, they wheeled me up to my room and then Paul and the nurse went to give her a bath.  She came back looking like this.

 Adorable!  Huh?  So then we had her sleep in our room that night until she started crying and we were both so puzzled.  I'm sure Paul and I will continue to laugh about it for a long time but we asked the nurse in great puzzlement "Why is she crying and how do we make her stop?"  Bless the nurse for not laughing.  She told us to pat her on the back and just gently rock her.  It worked but then she cried again and we decided to have her sleep in the nursery that night after such a long day.  I will always advice my friends to do this.  I don't think it makes you a bad mom cause you can get really stressed out it you put too much on yourself and then you may not produce enough milk or be a happy mommy for your baby.  Speaking of baby, I am now leaving cyberspace to hang out with sweet Lizzie instead of spending too much time here.  Time with Lizzie is never ever wasted and I just listened to such a great talk by Elder Scott talking about playing with your kids and family always over any other stuff.  I completely agree.  Next blog will be more about the baby with new pics.

Lizzie is here!!!

Wow!  Where do I start.  Lizzie is taking a nap and I feel a need to write this before I forget all the details.  I may just do a series of pictures.  She is now a week and two days old!!  What a blur it's been.  First time on my computer since then because our sweet one is napping.  What Paul and I like about her is that she is a very reasonable little baby.  She cries when she is hungry or needs to burp or has a dirty diaper and that's about it.  And she's slept for 5 hours two nights in a row!!  Yow!! : )

My mom left today but she was truly so helpful and wonderful to help.  She made me many healthy meals which Lizzie in turn ate since I am nursing.  At first, nursing was hard for me but now it's working and we're both figuring it out.


Paul and I love our little Elisabeth so very much.  We worry about her whenever we think anything might go wrong and just kiss her squishy cheeks all day long.

Of course I didn't get to finish this post in one sitting but that's ok.  It's a few days later now that I'm writing this but I just spent an hour holding our sweet baby in my arms and that's an hour well spent.  Everyone says she'll only be a newborn for so long and I totally believe it!  She's already past her two week mark.  I think I'll do another post with the labor story.  But just so ya know, her weigh in yesterday was 10 pounds 3 oz and she was born at 9 pounds 1 ounce.  Go baby!  We love you soooo much!

What Paul is up to

So this post is dedicated to this wonderful guy:

Here he is in his lab (which is in our home.  He built it all too, btw). Here is where he spends most of his day/life.  What is he doing?  Studying for THE CISCO EXAM.  It's the biggest goal of his life so far and he has about 2 months to finish it up.  Check out all those nifty phones.  He spends a lot of time working on it.  It's his CISCO phone certification.  Scary looking huh?  Well, Paul is brillant and makes those phones work all over the country in call centers owned by Healthways.  But once he gets this certification he'll be able to work them in even more places and will have tons of employers wanting him to help them with their CISCO phones.  So my prayer every night and morning and all day is that he passes this goal.

You see, Paul is such a wonderful guy and so self-motivated and really has the best motives for trying to achieve this goal.  You should see the test questions - confusing!  I cannot relate in any shape or form.  It's all programm-y stuff so sadly I can't even really help him study.  Anyway, what I was saying about Paul is that I am so continually impressed with him.  He has wanted to get this certification for quite a while and his company is paying for him to take the tests so we feel very blessed that he has this opportunity and I feel very blessed to be married to him.  He is the opposite of a slacker and I love it!  He says he was a slacker in his 20s but we were all trying to figure ourselves out in our 20s so we often tell each other we are glad we met when we did. 

Well, just wanted to commemorate in time what a great man Paul is and what he is working on before baby Lizzie comes (only a week left!!! eee!!).  I love Paul McAllister with all my heart and soul.

Baby's nursery

Here's our nursery all completed.

Paul and I had fun putting this together.  Actually, Paul had no fun putting this wall shelf up.  It was a labor of love, focus on labor.  But then he helped me put it together all pretty-like.  Those cute little yellow booties were knitted by my friend Kristen Baird and the two booties up top were sown by my friend M'kenzie Tillotsen.  How cute are they?  I wanna learn to knit like that.  Then, that cute little bear was my first stuffed animal.  My dad gave it to me.  Anyway, we love our little nursery and it's exactly 2 weeks until baby Lizzie comes and we're so excited.  Will she come early??? I do hope so. 

Here's the proud poppa too.  I love him so much. 

Good news!  I haven't had to blog early in the morning lately cause I've been sleeping through the night again.  I think it's cause I take a couple of naps a day lately.  Hehe.