Big Sister meets Little Brother

This is still Marty. Brynn did some cute things when she met her little bro the first time that I thought were cool. Right, by the way, he was 8 lbs even. He was 21 inches long and was born at 1:56 pm on Sunday. Emily and Bryce are both doing amazing. Bryce came home with us Monday night and went to the pediatrition today with no complications. Our little man is just a little sore because his little man had the job done.

I Love My Wife!!!

This is Marty so you know that nothing fancy is coming but since Emily is busy feeding and sleeping she asked me to post a little bit. I am so proud of her. She is such a wonderful person and I am so grateful for the sacrifices she is willing to make for our Eternal Family.

Bob Ross as a labor coach

Does anybody know this guy? He has a show on PBS that I used to watch on Saturday mornings called, "The Joy of Painting." He is this happy, peaceful hippy with the most soothing voice I have ever heard. Well, this morning Marty took Brynn to get our produce basket, so I flipped on this show while I was eating breakfast. I came to the conclusion that, if I didn't have such an amazing, wonderful husband, I would totally want Bob Ross as a labor coach. How can anyone be in his presence and not be calm? Today (in the soft, smooth voice) he was saying things like:

"We don't make mistakes -- we have happy accidents." And...

"We want happy paintings. Happy paintings. If you want sad things, watch the news."

And he was giving the trees little friends, and drawing happy little clouds...ah. How does one become as serene as Bob Ross? :)

Maybe I'll try to round up a couple of episodes to take with me to the hospital!

So far, my bag of hospital distractions includes:

*scriptures

*Games: Canasta, Phase 10, Sequence

*Sudoku

*A little CD player and CDs: Church music, Beethoven's Emperor Concerto, and some Dvorak, Chopin, and Debussy. Calm people. :)

*A baby magazine

Marty was so wonderful I while I was in labor last time. All two and a half days of it! Hopefully this time I won't need so many distractions for such a long time. The night before I went to the hospital to have Brynn, Marty and I watched Rocky IV. He said I couldn't go through something as intense as labor without seeing the "Eye of the Tiger" song/scene. Then when I'd get big contractions he'd start singing that song and acting like a coach or something. At first it was really cute and funny. Then I wanted to punch him. I think he got the point. Last night we You-tubed that scene and watched it again, so I am PREPARED!

I guess it's kind of late to be asking this since we go to the hospital tomorrow morning at 5:00 a.m., but what do you ladies bring with you for while you're in labor?

For the record

Here are our predictions. They are pretty similar.

I say Bryce will be born on April 27th (ya, just call me a pessimist), he will weigh 7 lbs 7 oz, 20 inches tall, and will have more hair than just fuzz, but not nearly as much as Brynn, and quite a bit lighter than Brynn's was when she was born. I'm think I'm picturing his hair lighter than Marty is.

Marty says Bryce will be born on April 26th at 10:00 p.m., weighing 7 lbs 8 oz, 21 inches tall, and will have some dark hair.

Last night a funny thing happened. We were watching AI ("Stayin' Alive," Matt? Seriously?) and I was running through my list of things to do this week with Marty and it was something like, "Go grocery shopping, finish the laundry, have a baby....WHAT?! Have a baby THIS WEEK? I'm having a baby this week!" CRAZY feeling!

Thanks, Christa!

So, my good friend Christa threw a shower for me, and like I dunce I forgot to take any pictures during it. Marty took these later when I remembered. But anyway, thank you so much, Christa! And thanks to everyone who came to show their support as I embark on this huge new adventure!

Ok, I am now finally prepared for a boy - look at all that blue! Marty was a happy camper when he saw all that.

Brynn has gone nuts over this huge balloon. It doesn't mix well with the ceiling fan, though.

Hand 'em in!!!

Predictions, anyone? Baby Bryce's birthdate, weight, height, looks (hair, no hair, etc)...and whatever else. Marty and I have ours all ready to go, but I'll post those later. By the way, my due date is April 26th. And no wise guys putting down May birthdates!

Brynn things

I'm expecting a certain other little person to start completely taking over the blog here in a couple of weeks. So I want to post a little about Brynn before that happens.

The biggest thing I have to say about Brynn is that she is more loving and affectionate than any mommy could hope for. She is becoming ridiculously emotional, yes. Tantrums, yes. But still ridiculously loving. We can already see how empathetic she is by the way she treats us when we are having a down day, or when someone on a movie or something is sad. She gets this dramatic, sad look on her face, then pretends to cradle whoever it is while saying, "Poor, poor ____. There, there, it's ok." Sometimes she'll sing to the person/animal/thing to make it feel better. We took her to see "Reflections of Christ" at the visitor's center a while back, and when we got to the Atonement/Crucifixion pictures, she started to cry saying, "Poor Jesus." A while ago, a bully at the playground started kicking sand in her face. She just looked up at him with a slightly confused look on her face and said, "Uh oh, be careful." And went back to playing. The kid just shrugged his shoulders and went to go torment someone else.

I am so jealous of Brynn that she spends so much more time at the piano than I do. And she's good! Listen to how fast she can play this C major scale...

I've decided that Halloween is Brynn's favorite holiday. After most holidays, she just moves on, but she just keeps coming back to Halloween. When she hears the wind blow outside, she always wants to recite this poem....

5 Little pumpkins sitting on a gate.

The first one said, "Oh my, it's getting late."

The second one said, "There are witches in the air."

The third one said, "But we don't care."

The fourth one said, "Let's run and run and run."

The fifth one said, "I'm ready for some fun."

"ooooooh," went the wind and out went the light.

And the five little pumpkins rolled out of sight.

Happy Easter/birthday

We had a really nice weekend. This is Brynn at our ward Easter "carnival" with an egg painted on her face.
















We painted eggs with the Millers a while ago, and here is Marty's Humpty Dumpty....















And the egg Brynn made that is covered in layers upon layers of stickers. I made one for baby Bryce that was blue with lots of different types of balls on it, just to prove to Marty that I do know how to decorate something without using pink or hearts.
















Here is Brynn's Easter egg hunt on Easter morning.



What would Easter be without robin egg candy all over your face?















AND deviled eggs?

Our ward ended up canceling the last two hours of church due to lack of teachers. It was nice to have that time to spend together as a family. Brynn spent lots of time on Daddy's lap looking at pictures and talking about Jesus and the nail prints in his hands. We learned to stop referring to it as "marks" in his hands, because Brynn couldn't distinguish the difference between those and markERS on hands. So she started drawing on her hands with markers all the time and acting really proud of herself for having markers on her hands just like Jesus. Another nice part of the day was being able to sing with Marty. We met in chamber choir at UVSC and singing together has always been one of our favorite things to do, but it has just gotten so tricky with Brynn around (she is really possessive of the piano). We wanted to sing the version of "Behold the Wounds in Jesus' Hands" that was in this issue of the Ensign because it is one of our FAVORITE songs. We thought maybe we'd be able to get through a verse or two, but Brynn fell asleep on Marty's shoulder and we sang the whole night away! It felt SOOO good!!

Also, my birthday was Monday. On Friday we had a nice night out on the town for as long as I could hold out. But then I decided that my ultimate birthday wish was to take it as easy as humanly possible that day. Which I did. :) Brynn and I watched lots of movies and snuggled like crazy. Then Marty came home that night with the most thoughtful bundle of, I guess spa-type things for me (back scratchers, massaging foot scrub, etc) to make me (as he put it) as comfortable as possible for the next two weeks. And then of COURSE the night was full of games. Anyway, I am now 25 and starting on my next quarter of a century! :)

The Easter Message

Marty here. I have only posted one other time. This is an amazing video from the LDS.org home page.

Update time

Time for a boring update, no pictures or anything. :) The Johnson family is alive and well. Marty's school gets out in May, so things are winding down a little there. But then he starts his Masters program in June. I have mixed feelings about it. I am SO proud of him and excited for him! I am also insanely jealous that he'll have a Masters degree and I won't, on top of which I am going to become a widow for the next 2 years! But I know it will be great for him to have it done. He is doing distance education through NAU (Northern Arizona University) and he is getting an educational psychology degree, which I think is SO COOL since I got my degree in psychology.

Here's the potty training update on Brynn. I really do feel like it is going well. It's hard for me to say, because this is my first kid and first potty training experience, so I have no idea what to compare it to. Here on day 15, she's still only woken up wet a couple times. And it's funny, she'll go for over 4 days without a single accident, and then we'll have days like yesterday morning when she just kinda gave up and had three. The pooping has been an issue, too. She won't go on her own yet, we have to wait until we hear her start to grunt and then run her to the potty. But we don't really worry about taking her out in public anymore or anything, she's pretty trustworthy. The other small issue has been this: Brynn has always been a little bit attached to me, but after spending every second of three days together (I mean, I didn't even take my eyes off of her and she was probably sitting on my lap more than she wasn't), she has become WAY more attached. Every time I so much as leave the room, she freaks out. So we are trying to get that behavior under control and back to normal. But all in all, from the experience that I've had, I would definitely still recommend this method. I love that she made so much progress so fast, and that we never have to deal with expensive pull-ups or anything. We threw away the diapers, and it's been panties ever since. And lots of laundry. :)

As for my update, I guess I'll talk about the baby since I have such a one-track mind lately. I had a dr. appointment on Wednesday and everything is looking good. The head is where it should be, no complications that we can see so far. I'm not anywhere close to delivering, which is a little disappointing. Because these days, I am a bit of an invalid. I've been having a ton of pain, and by the end of the day I can barely make it up the stairs. Sometimes Marty has had to swing my legs over the bed so I can get up! I can't believe how DIFFERENT this pregnancy is from my last one. With Brynn, my last month was the best I had felt the whole time (since for one month I had FINALLY stopped throwing up). People very sympathetically asked me how I was feeling that last month, and I was always like, "I'm GREAT! I feel awesome! No complaints!" This time the first two trimesters weren't as rough, but oh man this last month has been a kicker. I notice it's so much worse when I hold Brynn, but it is SO HARD to look into that sweet little face when she is asking to be held and say "no." So lately we've been watching a lot of movies and reading a lot of books together so I can stay off my feet.

So that's the big stuff. I'd like to make a goal of posting more of the little stuff, too...but I think I won't hold my breath for that one. I just don't seem to have quite as much blogging enthusiasm as I've had in the past, but I'll try to fix that. :) Enjoy conference this weekend!

Conference this weekend!

Yay! It's conference weekend! I have been meaning to post this video that I got from my friend's blog for a while and haven't gotten around to it. But I guess this is an appropriate day for it! This talk was given at the last General RS meeting, so Marty didn't get to see it. But I was SO in love with this talk, I made him sit there and watch it with me online! Anyway, enjoy!




Here is a link to the rest of the talk.
http://lds.org/conference/talk/display/0,5232,23-1-947-37,00.html

It's April 1st -

That means I'm having a baby THIS MONTH!!!!!

P.S. To all of you evil people out there who are tempted to say, "UNLESS you go over your due date and have a baby in May," NO WAY! My dr. says she won't let me go til May, so wahoo! April, it is!