Lazy Sunday

This year we have switched to afternoon church at 1pm. Since having a small baby makes me far less of a morning person than I normally am, this is fine with me. However, time changes with church always take some getting used to. Mostly it feels like I spend all morning getting ready for church without actually getting ready because I’m constantly looking at the clock trying to figure out when to start getting ready so we aren’t pathetic and late when church starts so late in the day. Does that make any sense at all? It did in my head.

In spite of the constant twitch I developed checking the clock every ten minutes this morning, we were able to do plenty on our long Sunday morning. I kept taking pictures of it all because it was just such a luxuriantly lazy morning with cuteness all around.

We woke up this morning to a white world of almost an entire inch of snow. Jay and Rose bounded out into it right after breakfast and played, played, played.

I tiptoed out in my slippers and took a quick picture.

Of course hot chocolate was the next order of business.

They watched Jeff play a game of Ticket to Ride on the iPad…

…and things quickly degenerated into a wrestling match with a bit to much screaming for my liking.

We were visited by a princess. Amber liked that a lot. She looked and looked at those sparkles.

Jay looked at a camera AND did a real smile all at once! I can’t remember the last time that happened. Of course I was still in my ponytail-PJ phase of the day when it happened.

Jay wanted me to take some cool blurry pictures of him dancing.

Eventually, but still too early, we got all cleaned and dressed up for church:

My girls. The sisters.

This year Jay is in the CTR 5 class in Primary. All week in his prayers he said he was thankful that he gets to be in CTR 5.

Miss Rose is finally in Primary as a sunbeam this year. She was so excited to go to Primary with Jay. I think she’s the tallest sunbeam in the history of the church.

And of course there’s little Amber-girl, who is not quite ready for Primary yet.

*fistbite* That bow is a tad out of control, but I couldn’t resist. Glam girl.

The big brother: Jay looked and for-real-smiled AGAIN! Twice in one day! These pictures are true treasures.

Man I love these three. This picture is a miracle too, by the way.

A year of afternoon church is going to tempt me into taking a hundred Sunday morning pictures every week!

AMBER

Our sweet baby. Our expensive baby.

 

She’s the first baby we had without the magical medicaid medical coverage, and boy are we feeling it, right in the middle of our savings account. Actually, more like right in the bottom of our savings account.

 [all the insurance statements from my pregnancy and delivery]

We have a very good health insurance plan through Jeff’s employer, with great coverage. My individual deductible is $4100. We maxed that out in like the second week of my pregnancy, so we thought we were safe from any surprises. Right when we thought we had received all of the baby bills, however, WHAM they plunked another fat one in our mailbox yesterday. It turns out that once the baby is born, she counts as a separate person with a separate deductible, which started ticking away in the hospital.

It cost me, an adult, $4,000 just for hospital room and board when I had Amber. They charged an extra $3200 for a healthy baby to lay in my hospital bed with me for two days. WHAT? I am very grateful for insurance that paid for about 94% of these sky-high medical bills. It makes me feel lame for complaining about the 6% or so that we did have to pay. Thankfully we will squeak by and pay all the bills. Amber is completely worth it all and more, of course. 

The insurance statements were fascinating and eye-opening and intense and slightly humorous, all at once. For fun, I kept a spreadsheet with a running tally of each insurance statement with one column for what we paid and one column for what the insurance company paid:

Clearly, Premera paid FAR more than we did. But $5,576.84 is still a lot of money. Our savings account is crippled! Decimated! (word inspiration credit: Helen) Three years ago we bought a house (well, we paid a down payment on a house). Two years ago we bought a new central air unit. Last year we bought a baby. This year I think we’ll rehab our savings and not buy anything.

All these big expensive numbers made me think that Amber must literally be worth her weight in gold, so I did a little research…

A mathematical interlude, for fun:

Amber was 7 pounds 9 ounces when she was born. That’s 121 ounces. Out of curiosity I peeked at the current gold rates and amber (amber as in fossilized resin from prehistoric trees) prices online. Currently, gold is about $1,200 per ounce, and amber is about $425 per ounce.

$1200 x 121 oz =$145,200

$425 x 121 oz = $51,425

The total cost of bringing Amber into this world = $87,942.86.

So, technically speaking, Amber is worth more than her weight in amber, but less than her weight in gold. The funny thing about gold and amber prices, however, is that they vary greatly based on the quality and purity of the piece.

I’d say that the quality and purity of our sweet baby Amber make her priceless.

Last post of the year

Because I’m trying to stay awake to kiss my husband at midnight…
…here’s one last thought about 2014:
I had two goals for 2014: get pregnant and have a baby.

check and check!
2015 is going to be SO much more fun than 2014 was.
I hope it’s full of this:

and plenty of this:

not too much of this:

lots of this:

and this:

and him:

and these three:

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

WELCOME 2015!

We’re ready for you.

The question is, are YOU ready for US?

December Roundup

Once again, it’s the end of the month and I have a bunch of pictures that fell through the cracks. I don’t have anything meaningful, witty, or mildly clever to say, but I do have lots of cute pictures to show you. I hope I feel clever again soon. I miss the satisfaction and release of writing thoughts down just right. But currently it’s all I can do to remember I even have a blog with two or three people who like to look at it.

Every now and then in my sleepy haze I feel a little panicky about remembering this time of my family’s life. If I can manage to forget to shower, how am I supposed to remember how cute Rose was one day or a deep conversation I had with Jay, or Amber’s darling coos? I’ve written before about my quest for balance between living life and recording it. Now that I’m done having babies I feel like everything is so final—I know I’ll never have another time like this. It makes me want more details in my journal and more pictures in my folders. The pictures are easy. It’s the written details that are proving tricky. I have always been an avid journaler, but recently I have only even remembered to write in my journal 50% of the time. Even those entries are hasty and foggy and bland. They often lack the sweet details that I know I’ll crave later. I’ve been trying my best, though, and I guess that’s all anyone can do.

So for now, I compensate for my muddled words with PICTURES, PICTURES, PICTURES! My December file on the computer has 871 pictures in it, not counting all of the failed family photo attempts (ha ha). Lots of these pictures are series of Amber making various cute faces and I love them all so I keep them in their quantities. But still. I wonder if I’ll make it to 1000 pictures for December.

[Monster pants]

These sisters.

Jay had his kindergarten “Christmas Program” at school before Christmas break. The program involved the whole kindergarten singing 4 or 5 songs about Santa. While the songs themselves left much to be desired, the kids were super cute up there with their shining eyes and smiles. The whole thing lasted about 9 minutes.

All visitors at Jay’s elementary school have to sign in and get a visitor sticker. Amber’s bum wore ours during the Christmas program.

What is it about bare babies? I got the ole cloth diapers out this week. I’ve never used them on a young baby (I started using them when Rose was 9 months old). It turns out cloth diapering a 100% breastfed baby is the easiest thing in the world. No rinsing or scraping or anything—just chuck the diaper in the bin and wash them, because the poo from breastmilk dissolves in the wash. Awesome! And they contain explosive poo so much better than disposables. I still have a nice pile of disposable diapers on hand too, for convenience when I want them. I’m not trying to save the world by using cloth diapers; I just have issues with babies growing out of one size of disposables before we’ve used them all (what a waste!) and I don’t love buying diapers in general—too expensive! So we have these cloth ones. Amber doesn’t seem to care. They are a tad on the bulky side (can we say bubble bum?) but I’d say Amber is cute enough to outshine her bubble bum, ha ha.

Family walks are our favorite. Normally Rose walks too, but this particular day she was feeling emotionally incapable of handling a walk.

Any good picture I get of Jay is candid—the boy will NOT look and smile if I have a camera pointed at him.

Two words: baby leggings!!!! A friend in our ward has a 1-year old girl, and she’s giving us all of her old clothes. In those juicy bags were a large collection of the cutest baby leggings of all time! Amber has at least 10 pairs of these. I adore them. And they make diaper changes a breeze—no pants to pull.

Ayyeee! Sometimes Rose’s architectural ideas can’t wait. Post-bath bare building.

Happyface in the mini-mothers lounge at church. I feel like I’m cheating when I go there—I get to escape the uncomfy pews and keep my cute baby all to myself while Jeff sits on the hard bench in the chapel, keeping the peace between Jay and Rose.

I gave Jeff and Jay haircuts this week, and after a year with long locks, Jay decided to go short again. Goodbye bed head at last!

Oh Rose. She’s so funny—with all her new dress-up clothes, she still dug out this old homemade skirt-turned-dress that I gave her long ago.

Christmas break is great for filling the family room with blocks and BUILDING!

I’d like to add a video of Amber’s sweet little voice, but the only way this program will let me do it right now is to post a link: https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=589305022020&l=4393806763827623500

[product placement]

December: DOCUMENTED.