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. 

4:40 a.m.

And I thought 5:30 in the morning was early!  Goodness, I need to write and report here more.  So much going on.  I'm now 36 weeks.  Never thought this day would come but I'm getting more and more excited.  Baby Lizzie is due March 23 and my last day at work before maternity leave will be March 18.  Just wanted to say I love my job!  Mark, my boss, has been so kind and incredibly flexible with me.  Love him.  I'm going to go back to work on May 9th part time.  About 10 hours from home and 10 hours at the office or so.

I see such a great future for me and dear Paco.  He's working so hard on his test.  He has another one coming up on Monday.  I'm saying a big prayer for him that it goes well.  Not sure if he'll pass or not but I know he's getting better.  Seems so these days.  He is such a great husband.  We were commenting yesterday on how we very rarely fight.  It's amazing and I know everyone says that that means one person is holding back but we are honestly not.  I mean we have little cranky outbursts here or there but that's all.  Makes me feel like we are solid and really prepared for our baby.  Baby Lizzie is not coming to "fix" us.  We are taking her in with open arms.

Paul's family threw me a baby shower last weekend.  So sweet huh?  I loved it.  All of Paul's husbands' wives came cause they are my friends now too and I really like them all.  We got so much great stuff including diapers.  I think we're really set.  I still need to get a few things here or there but really we are set.  If Baby Lizzie came today, we'd be ready.  Haha.  Well, ready in theory.  I hear you are never really ready for the changes baby brings into your lives.  I would still like a really fancy baby bjorn baby carrier.  I just have a feeling that'll come in pretty handy.  And I need a couple of bottles but that's it. 

I need to pop more pics in this blog.  Sometimes, I get overwhelmed with the idea of nursing the baby.  That's the only part that still stresses me out a tad.  Babywise is my new favorite book.  Paul says he's gonna read it too.  Well, there's just a certain excitement in the air for me right now.  Really happy.  And really grateful to Heavenly Father for the opportunity to still work a bit and take care of baby and to have a baby at all!

35 Weeks!

So much to report on.  My placenta moved up so it's no longer a placenta previa so I don't need a C-section.  Yay!!!  This happened on Valentine's Day.  Happy day.  We said a prayer of Thanksgiving.  Then, we went to The Roof for dinner and even had dessert.  We've been off of sugar since January as a New Year's Resolution but decided to play hooky on V-Day and on our birthdays.  Afterward, we had fun just snuggling on a couch at the Mezzanine of the Joseph Smith Memorial Building.  Sorry the pic is kinda fuzzy.

Today, I am 35 weeks pregnant so our Baby Lizzie is due on March 23.  Seems far away.  About 4 weeks though.  Kind of having a discouraging day today, unfortunately.  Trying to figure out what I want to do once our sweet baby is here.  I wonder if she'll come early??

Here's a pic of me on V-Day.  Paul gave me lovely diamond and sapphire earrings and that cute bow on my head.  He has great taste!  I love him soooo much. 

6:40 a.m.

It's getting better.  Not as early as last time's post.  : )  It's okay.  It's a work day.  I've been up since around 6 this time and have been absolutely famished.  I think the baby gets ticked at me when I don't eat enough the day before and so she wakes me up and says - I hungry.  Cute baby. 

Oh man, so yesterday I went to a breastfeeding class.  Wow.  Information overload.  I mean, some of the things I knew about but some were so confusing.  I'm most worried about right now that Paul is going to feel overwhelmed.  There is so much that goes into having a baby and he hasn't really thought about those details, I don't think.  I started to tear up after the meeting yesterday just thinking about how things are going to get worse before they get better.  Sorry.  I sound like a negative Nellie, huh?  I just have a lot of worries in my brain lately, about work and stuff.  Stressful. : (    I think I'm done writing my negative post for the day.  Going to go read my scriptures now....

Wait, one more thing.  On the way out of the hospital last night I stopped once more to look at the nursery and the CUTEST angel baby was there sleeping.  Sooooo darling. It made it all worth it.  I can't wait to meet you, angel baby.  I love you sooooo much!

6:25 a.m.

So yeah, it really is 6 a.m. on a Saturday morning and I've been awake for about an hour.  Ugggh.  Can't sleep.  A nurse I met says it's the way I get trained to stay up all night once our Baby Lizzie comes.  So, why the blog?  Well, ideas like this come to your head at 6:30 in the morning but also I've been wanting to officially come out into the blog world for quite a while and I think I finally have a good enough reason now.  I want to record our family's stories and what better way than here, as we hover over the brink of parenthood.  Plus, my cousin Jocelyn says you can later convert your blog into a book, which I would love!!!

Why the name Paul and Nelda?  Well, I have a very good reason for this.  First of all, those are our names but second of all I think it's important for us to keep our identity as a couple no matter how many kids we have (I would love to have 4, btw).  Anyway, I've been doing A TON of reading about raising kids and families and etc and I realize how important it is for us to have a solid foundation as a couple before the kids come.  We do have that and I'd like to continue to have that so no matter what happens, we are a couple, and an eternal couple at that. 

So we've been married about 1 1/2 years now and it's been wonderful!  I couldn't be happier.  I keep seeing how tough my life was just 5 years ago and I can assure you that my 26-year-old-self would have been absolutely astounded at the amount of happiness and joy God has blessed me with in this marriage.  It is like night and day and maybe that's why those things happen, because you appreciate the way things are even more now.  Expect many musings from me at 6:31 a.m.  : )

Fun story, Paul was on a business trip for 2 days and Baby Lizzie (Elisabeth) hadn't really moved around much in my belly for the past few days but last night I know she recognized him and she moved A LOT.  I was thrilled and Paul loved feeling her.  We are convinced that she will be a daddy's girl.  I love it!  We get so many laughs thinking about tall Paul holding our little baby in one hand or swinging her around like a monkey when she is older.  Hahaha. 

On a more serious note, I was telling Paul how my desires and prayers have changed these days.  I went to the temple last night and my main focus/prayer was asking the Lord to help me be everything I can be to our baby, most especially in the gospel.  My greatest desire is to provide a testimony strong enough for her to learn from and to grow her own.  Well, I won't say too much about this on the blog but it is what's in my heart and time certainly is ticking.  As of today Baby Lizzie could be due pretty much anytime in March or, according to all those stories you hear/read anytime at all since I am 33 weeks. 

Well, going to try to go back to bed where my sleepy Paco is dreaming and looking like the angel he is.  I love him so.  Toodles!