Suprise :)

So we got quite the shock yesterday when we went in for our first ultrasound yesterday.  We were just hoping for a normal, healthy baby (girl would have been nice too) but was told that we've got TWO normal, healthy babies growing right now.  Identical.  Oh... and boys.

INSANE.

I'm still not sure if the whole thing is real, but seeing the two of them squirming around inside yesterday is a hard thing to forget.  It's amazing how much this surprise has changed how we're having to think about things.  I'm still not entirely sure how it will all work out (or if I will ever have sleep again), but as long as both of them get here healthy and everything continues to go smooth, I won't complain.  Or well.. I'll keep my complaining to a minimum.  Ok, so probably not, but I won't go complaining publicly.  That's the best I can do.

It's really funny; on our trip this past week with Tucker's family, he and I talked about how many kids we actually wanted to end up having.  I honestly wasn't sure how well I was going to handle two munchkins running around, cause while Nettie is a sweetheart, she still doesn't listen very well and can be a handful.  So we decided we probably would be done with this "set" of kids for 3-4 years and then see if we wanted to do another couple later on.  Welp... that's certainly changed now, haha!

But I'm not going into this twins thing completely inexperienced.  For a couple months earlier this year (just before I found out I was pregnant actually) I was babysitting twin boys whose parents are both in Tucker's lab working on their degrees.  Guess Heavenly Father knew Nettie and I needed a little time to prepare for our additions to our family.

I still stop every few minutes and think about the fact that there's two babies inside me rather than just one, and I can't help but shake my head, just completely stunned.

Guess we better actually start getting together a list of names of the boys, all we had come up with was the name we wanted for our next girl cause we (or at least I) was so set on having a little sister for Nettie, haha!  This is what I get for trying to will that situation into existence.

Been Awhile...

I think I've established by now that I'm a horrible blogger, but this is somewhat blog worthy (since I don't want to put it on facebook yet).  Baby Dos (that's baby two for those of you that don't count in spanish) is on it's way! :)  Only about 8ish weeks((EDIT: In reality I'm actually only 6 weeks at this point)).  I've actually had a bit of nausea this time around, so I'm hoping that doesn't mean it's a boy.  Cause let's be real here... girls are just better.  And I just want girls.  Which means this baby is obviously going to be a boy.

But yeah.. for those few of you that might happen to stumble across this, lucky you!  You get to know before everyone on Facebook.

And who knows, maybe I'll do an update post or two for our little family soon.  Don't hold your breath though.

Home

It's kind of crazy that I've been gone for six years now, but Phoenix is still 'home'.  I'm not sure if it will always be like that for me.  Kind of makes sense because I've lived kind of nomadically since I left home, never staying in one apartment for very long.  Raleigh, I think, I could definitely call home someday... if we stayed.  But more than likely we won't be, which is sad, because I'm really liking the city, love our ward, and love being close to family.  Although, we do have the potential to stay in Raleigh for 3ish more years; Tucker just needs to decide if he wants to get his PhD.  I'd be fine if he decided that.  I'll be fine if he decides he's done with school, as well.

Anyways.

I'm home in Phoenix till Wednesday.  Been here since this past Tuesday.  I haven't really done much, just mostly hung out at home with my parents and Nettie.  That was kind of the main point in coming anyways, so that they could see her again while she's still smallish.  Jenna was able to come home for the weekend, which was awesome.  It's crazy how much we like each other now, considering all the fighting and disliking we did when we were younger.  I was sad to see her leave tonight; had to concentrate really hard on not crying in the airport (but she failed, both when she got here and when she left).  We must figure out a way to live close to each other someday.

We had a nice day yesterday filled with family.  Got to see my oldest brother and his family (and his kids are so big now it's crazy!), and my Uncle Ron and Aunt Pam.  The day was super fun, and apparently exhausting because I fell asleep at like 7:30.

The home ward was great (as usual), though there are so many people that I don't recognize in it now.  It's kind of strange being a "grown-up" in the ward.  I remember being a kid, watching all the teenagers leave for college, then get married and start coming back to visit with their kids.  Now I'm doing that..... weird.

Nettie has been pretty good on this trip.  Not gonna lie, I was like super stressed to fly with her.  She's normally not a big fan of sitting (while being held) for long periods of time, and that's basically all I can do on the flights.  But we survived.  The first flight people were super helpful.  I was in the last group to board the plane and had a diaper bag and backpack with me plus Nettie, so when I got to my row to sit down, I looked at my seat and then at my bags and must have looked frazzled or something cause a bunch of people sitting near me asked to help me out.  I'm so glad there are decent and nice people in the world.  Couldn't have made this trip without strangers offering assistance along the way.  Also glad that the older lady I sat next to on the flight didn't care when spit up rolled off of me and onto her.  And glad that she and the guy sitting on my other side didn't complain when Nettie pooped with an hour left in the flight (this poop ended up as a blow-out too.... yeah....).  Second flight Nettie just slept the whole time, so it went much more smoothly, all in all, than I pictured it going.  Now we just have to make it home to Raleigh, and I'm sure I'll stress over that trip until it's over.

And tonight I was able to get together with a few of my high school friends (as well as some of their new friends).  It's awesome that no matter how long I'm gone for I can just come back and basically pick up where I left off with them.  Pretty sure I'll be able to call them my friends for my whole life, which is great, cause they're all awesome people.  I wish that I could come home more often to visit, but I'm glad that I can always see them on the few times that I do come home.

But yes.  My trip has been good thus far.  I've been really bad at taking pictures so far, but I always am.  I'll just steal pictures from my mom and Jenna eventually.

General Updates (because I can't think of a more clever title)

I realized I haven't actually done a post for about a month now, so I figured I'd take advantage of Nettie's vaccine induced exhaustion and write a quick little update for those of you that read this.

I'll start with Nettie since she's the cutest and most interesting of our little Smith clan.  She's 9 weeks old now, which is kind of insane when I stop to think about it.  At the risk of sounding cliche, it feels like we've already had her.  But what a little blessing she is!  She's started "talking" to me sometimes when I talk to her, and she's also smiling on a more consistent basis; though, if she doesn't feel like it, she won't, no matter how long I make ridiculous faces at her.  She also can hold her head up pretty good... well, pretty good in comparison to not at all.  There's still a fair amount of bobble-headedness going on, but she likes to be held up right so she can look around at stuff.

The stats from her appointment yesterday are:
Height: 22"
Weight: Right under 12lbs
Head Circumference: Hmm... I don't actually remember.  We think her head looks huge, but apparently it's right in the same percentile as her height and weight.

And speaking of percentiles, she's basically between the 50th and 75th percentile on everything.  A fairly average baby I guess.  She got three shots and one oral vaccine at the appointment.  Needless to say, she did not like getting jabbed in her thighs, and I don't blame her.  The cute little tears were streaming down her face even before I had a chance to pick her up.  And when Tucker and I took off the bandaids at home later, the painful scream and tears started again, which made me cry (something that I've never done in relation to her).  I just felt so bad that I couldn't make her feel better.  But for the most part, she slept all day yesterday and is now asleep (with a small fever) again this morning.  Poor baby :(  I just kept telling her it was for her own good; hopefully she understands.

I've been cleared to start exercising, which I am itching to start doing.  Why haven't I started already?  Last week was crazy busy, and so far this week, I've felt too bad leaving Nettie alone cause she's feeling pretty crummy from her shots.  Hopefully tomorrow she'll be doing well enough that I can head down to the gym and sign up, cause let's face it, I look pretty gross.  Haven't exactly been the most disciplined person when it comes to eating or exercising since we got married, and it definitely shows.  I want to try to get back to what I weighed in high school... or at least my first year of college.

Also, I started taking birth control pills about a month ago (because that's when I was told to start taking them back while we were still in the hospital), and since that first week, my milk production has gone down.  So far down that we have had to feed Nettie a bottle of formula a couple times a day because I simply don't have anything to give her.  While I'm not opposed to formula, it's kind of frustrating that I'm not able to satisfy my baby's hunger.  I asked her pediatrician about it yesterday, and she said that my pills probably have the wrong mix of hormones in them for a nursing mother.  More than likely I'm going to stop taking them and opt for a more... uh... direct form of birth control and see if that helps with milk production.

Tucker has pretty much finished up his lit review (which is basically 30ish pages of him summarizing stuff that other people have written about similar stuff that he did his research on) and should be starting his thesis soon.  He also needs to get his resume updated so he can start sending it out to companies.  Kind of crazy to think that we're less than five months (potentially) away from having a real job.  Dr. Drake keeps telling Tucker that he should take a job with Glambia, a company in Twin Falls, Idaho........................................................................................ yeah.  Not exactly thrilled with the location, but apparently she thinks they would be a great company to work for and thinks that Tucker would fit into the lab there really well.  Also, the guy that runs the lab is a Bishop, and I'm sure many of the other workers there are Mormon as well, so maybe she just thinks that we need to be surrounded by Mormons, haha, I don't know.  We're not ruling it out as a possibility, but we'd really like to stay on the east coast (could always go work for Campbell's soup in Camden(?), New Jersey: worst city in America 2008!)

I can't think of anything else off the top of my head that I'd need to include in this.  It's probably already way longer than most of you will want to read.  My bad.  Oh!  At the beginning of next month I'm going to be flying out to Phoenix for a week long visit which I'm pretty excited about.  Flying with Nettie will be a bit interesting I'm sure, but we'll survive.  Lots of people do it.

And to Lindsey: One way or another I'll be in Phoenix for Christmas this year.  You can count on it.

2 Monday Pictures

August 1, 2011

Nettie got to borrow this new awesome swing from Aunt Katie.  It's pretty much our favorite thing now.

August 8, 2011

The aftermath of the two-month check up.  Shots are hard :(

Monday Picture

Ok, so this week's picture isn't technically from yesterday (even though I did take some last night), it's from this morning.  I couldn't help but pick this picture, though.  She's so dang cute in it!

July 25, 2011

Monday Picture(s)

I didn't post a picture last week, but I did take one.  I just never really think about getting onto my blog to do that kind of thing.  But I did think about it this morning, so voila! 

July 11, 2011

Tucker was at a conference the first half of this week so Mommy decided she would sleep in the bed (I've slept on the couch in the front room with Nettie since she was born), and so when I fed Nettie and got up, she stayed asleep and it was super cute.

July 18, 2011

First trip to Walmart = Success!  Also, first ride in our jogging stroller.  She did pretty good.  I think she's a bit on the small side for it still (it's not recommended for use until they're 6 months old... yeeeeaah.), but it was fun to push her around and have everybody smile at her.  And not gonna lie, like 6 people either talked to me and Tucker or made a comment in passing to me about her as we were walking through the store.  Even the general public thinks Nettie is adorable!  Who can blame them though?