Sedona

Last week we got to go up to Sedona for the day to take family pictures and hang out with the Reynolds side of the family. It was a fun day. That Sedona man, its so pretty. Who knew that little gem of a town was hiding in Arizona? Not I. I've only drove through Sedona but never stopped there. Especially when the fall colors were in full force. Here is two pictures I stole off of DJ's phone, the actual pictures are on our camera and well, you know how that goes. If it ain't taken on the iphone then the chances of it getting uploaded in a decent time frame are slim.

Halloween

Halloween has come and gone and with that another year of family costumes. This year we went with the Wreck It Ralph theme. It seemed fitting since Talis makes us watch it at least three times a day.  I personally wasn't really wanting to dress up along with the boys, I was thinking DJ and I could go a different route this year. But I figured this is probably the last year that we could all dress up as a family. DJ and I put our costumes together the day of so forgive the poor quality and the fact that we both look more like homeless people. Talis and Miles however, they make their costumes look pretty good. Talis was Fix It Felix and Miles was King Candy. 

 I'm positive that I'll be spending my time trying to convince Talis that Thanksgiving is fun too. I''ll say to him "Talis we get to celebrate Thanksgiving this month! Do you know what we do on Thanksgiving? Do you know what we say? We eat turkey and we say 'I'm thankful' !" and he always replies with "we say twick oh tweet. no turkey! eat candy!" Can't blame the kid, he's got a point, candy always trumps turkey. Hope everyone had a good Halloween!

Miles

Two weeks ago from today we welcomed the newest addition to our family, Miles Copelin Reynolds. We are all pretty smitten with him especially his big brother Talis who can't seem to get enough of his sweet little brother. Life with two darling little boys is pretty amazing :)

the comfort of routines

We've been falling into a pretty steady routine these days. I never thought I would think this or say this but...I have come to realize that I am a routine kind-of girl. I thrive off routine and while I do enjoy spontaneity and the unexpected, there's something strangely comforting about a routine.

Every morning I wake to Talis waking up in his crib. I always find him in his crib with his hair in his face and a look like "what took you so long mom?". We head downstairs and I prepare him breakfast while he let's me know in his high chair that he is not feeling patient and he wants his breakfast like 10 minutes ago. We start eating our breakfast of oatmeal, or peanut butter toast and milk, or pancakes, or eggs and turkey bacon (we tend to rotate the same things for breakfast) and it's as if half way through eating breakfast we both decide to be happy and that we are suddenly morning people (although we both are not). Then we clean up and take our sweet time to get ready for the day, usually not getting dressed and doing our hair until an hour or two before nap time around 12 or 1. We fill our day with toys, dancing, cartoons, sidewalk chalk, bubbles, walks around the neighborhood, and the occasional cleaning of the house (I feel guilty even for typing that but hey, it's the truth) until around 4 o clock when we both sit on the bench right next to the upstairs window and wait for DJ's work truck to pull into our cul de sac. In which we both jump and shout for joy and press our faces up against the window and wave to dad because I've come to accept that him and Talis are the real fun in this house and I'm just lucky to have them both. We play together as a family until dinner time rolls around. After our bellies are full DJ and I take turns, while one of us relaxes or cleans up dinner the other gives Talis a bath and gets him in his pj's and brushes his teeth. Then we all gather at the foot of our bed and say family prayer in which Talis crosses his arms and scrunches up his eyes and buries his face into the bed while one of us says the prayer in which he usually starts to rub our back while we pray and if we are taking too long for his liking then he starts to wiggle around and try to get us to look at him. Then he kisses us both and climbs into our bed making sure to get some jumps in. Then we all lay down and put on a movie. Lately it's been Rio or Finding Nemo and we'll all cuddle until he falls asleep. Then we creep back downstairs and DJ and I will hang out before we head back upstairs and move Talis from our bed to his crib. Every night it's the same or close to it. And I love it. Especially when any day now we'll be adding a newborn to the mix and all the unpredictability and flexibility required for that, I am soaking in every bit of routine now while I can.

Birthday weekender

We got the honor of celebrating DJ's birth this weekend! In my opinion getting to spoil your lover on their special day is just as good as getting spoiled on your special day...almost. DJ's birthday fell on a Saturday this year. So I snuck out of bed early Saturday morning to cook him breakfast in bed and to get together the little gift I had planned for him which proved to be harder then I anticipated since the helium tank I got the night before ended up being completely empty and Talis had the attitude of "it's my party I can cry if I want to." And just when I was about to loose my mind with a crying clingy toddler and breakfast slowly burning on the stove DJ came downstairs. I guess he missed the note I left by him telling him to stay in bed until I came and got him. He must have seen right through my attempted facial expression of "it's cool, I can handle all this chaos right now" and smiled and brought Talis back upstairs with him so I could salvage what was left of my birthday morning surprise for him. He's so sweet. He not only played along (he knows how down I get when my surprises don't work out) but he kept gushing about how much he enjoyed his gift of special messages from friends and family I gathered of why they love him so much. We spent the rest of the day going to a movie, getting free birthday food at Joe's Farm Grill, and relaxing. And when I say relaxing I really mean me because when we came home from lunch I was exhausted and birthday boy let me take a three hour nap while he played outside with Talis. I'm telling ya, he is the best. Happy birthday DJ, we sure are glad you were born.

And then we finished our birthday weekender by watching the Ravens win the SuperBowl. DJ was one happy camper this weekend and he sure deserved every bit of it.

our last minute snow trip

Since we didn't get to go up to the snow on Christmas Eve like we planned we were bumming that Talis might not get use out of his sweet new snow gear that my sister Kaylani had spent all day hunting down before our plans got changed. So when a call to your girl friend to ask if they wanna come over for dinner and to hang out turns into them inviting you to her dad's cabin in Heber to play in the snow you obviously get excited and say yes! We love Brooke and Jay, ever since I was young whenever Brooke and I would get together we always ended up with a story to some adventure we never planned on having and just that happened. After arriving at the cabin almost three hours later then we planned due to a ridiculously long drive-thru line at Senor Tacos and a highway accident that shut the freeway down temporarily we got to the cabin to find all the pipes frozen and the heaters barely working. We didn't care so much though because it was still a really fun trip. How can you complain when you have super adorable snow babies, tinfoil dinners, and late night board games? We even got home in time to take a nap before ringing in the new year!

Halloween 2012

Sadly my favorite holiday has came and went this year but the good news is we celebrated it to it's fullest. DJ built an impressize haunted walkway up to our door so that we could easily scare all the neighborhood kids. We had our families over for chili, cornbread and cider and sat out in our driveway during the night passing out candy. The only unfortunate thing about our celebrations is that we waited too long to take our family halloween picture so sadly we only have a shoddy shot like the one below. You can still see how cute Talis is and how amazing DJ's last minute Shredder costume is so enjoy! Only 363 more days till Halloween again...

a year ago today...the birth story a year later

Today is my sweet Mowgli bear's birthday. I can't believe it, I'm filled with so many emotions thinking about it. The past year has been filled with so many ups and downs, mostly ups, sweet-joyful-heart melting ups. I've learned so much about myself since becoming a mommy to my sweet T, lessons that can only be learned when you experience what it's like to love as a parent. So I couldn't think of a better way to celebrate the priviledge of entering parenthood a year ago other than sharing the precious details of  my sweet Talis' birth story and before my memory of them becomes fuzzy...





The week leading up to Talis birth consisted of DJ working out of town in Dunkin, Arizona and me staying over at my mom's house while he was away. Luckily I didn't go into labor then (which I was really nervous about happening) because Dunkin is a few hours away. Fortunately DJ came home from Dunkin with baby showing no signs of coming. So that Friday (July 8th) we went in for my routine doctors visit. With the baby measuring big the doctor wanted us to go ahead and plan on being induced the upcoming Tuesday (July 12th) if the baby had not come yet. We sat dumbstruck. I was hoping I'd have a late arrival baby (due date was July 18th) even though at this point my wardrobe consisted strictly of stretchy yoga pants and baggy pj tees and my feet resembled water balloons with pickles for toes. I was anxious about motherhood to say the least so I was telling myself I still had about two weeks left. We awkwardly agreed (and I say awkward because we were so surprised at the doctors request that we mumbled what I'm sure sounded like "oh um yah? um k aaaaa sure". The doctor checked me before we left and we were informed I was already dilated at a 3 almost 4 and was effaced some percentage that my mind can no longer recall. We had no idea what that meant so again we mumbled an acknowledgement and left. The entire elevator ride and walk to the car we both had permanent smiles on our faces. Tuesday was the day! or so we thought...

Later that night DJ got called into work and worked through the night. He didn't get home until around 11 the next morning and promptly passed out on the couch downstairs. I was upstairs folding laundry when I felt funny. I ran into the bathroom and jumped into the tub just in time for my water to break. I wasn't entirely sure what to do (since no one tells you that once your water breaks, it continues to leak up until baby time) so I stood in the shower for a little bit. I was not about to get water juice (what would you call it?) all over the carpet so I just started taking a shower while simultaneously yelling down at DJ that my water broke. He never heard me so I made what can only be called a makeshift adult diaper out of a towel and waddled downstairs to wake DJ up. He was a textbook freak out of a husband whose wife is going into labor while I tried to act cool and nonchalant about the whole thing. "Oh hey hun, whats that? your awake now? oh well just fyi my water broke. no biggie. no we don't need to go to the hospital. I'm gonna go do my hair." (my go-to stressful situation handling mechanism is to act cool, way too inappropriately cool). So why DJ showered and got dressed I did attempted to do my hair (I was a sweaty nervous mess at this point so any attempt I made to do my hair were pretty futile). After trying our best to explain to our dogs that when we come home we'll have an extra in tow (dead serious) we called our family and loaded up in the car for the hospital.

Once we got to the hospital they did our paperwork (very slowly in my opinion. What happened to parking in the emergency zone and running in doing loud labor breathing and yelling "she's having a baby! She's having a baby!" ? Father of  the Bride 2 is so off). They took us to the holding room and checked me (dilated to a 6) which I still don't exactly understand but am glad for none the less because it meant that I suddenly was important enough to proceed to the delivery room. As soon as I was in the delivery room they checked me again and was dilated to a 7. Baby would be here fast! And then I got an epidural...

Hearing my mom talk prior about how she progressed so fast while delivering my brother that by the time she was ready to get an epidural it was too late I was determined not to make that mistake. So as soon as I heard I was dilated to a 7 I told the nurse I was ready for the epidural even though I wasn't feeling any contractions yet. As soon as I got the epidural things slowed way down. It seemed like nothing happened for hours, which not much did. Our family was so sweet to stay the whole time too. Everyone pretty much took turns hanging in the waiting room and hanging in the delivery room with us. We had everyone taking guesses on the gender and the time baby was going to make his or her entrance. They eventually started Pitocin on me and after a few hours on that I was deemed ready to push. A little after midnight I started pushing. At 1:58 am our sweet little baby was born. Our little baby was 8 pounds 14 ounces and 21 inches long. Tears and smiles filled the delivery room. We had a baby, a baby boy. Soon after he was born they rushed him over to the nursery to run some tests. I had spiked a fever during labor so they wanted to make sure everything was okay with the little one. He ended up needing to get an IV to get some precautionary medicine and they wanted to monitor him overnight in the nursery for the first night or so. We felt so much love from family and friends throughout our hospital stay. So many people came to see baby and to congratulate us. 

I remember the first night we got to keep him with us in our hospital room. Just us three in our dark quiet room, our own little world, our own little family. It felt right. It felt complete. And while I won't say I knew exactly (or at all) what I was doing it felt natural to me, loving this little baby of mine, caring for him. Between nursing him, pumping, changing his diapers, and trying to take care of myself I don't think I ever slept more than thirty minutes while we were in the hospital and I was okay with that. I felt like it was our own special time me and my baby. With DJ sleeping soundly beside me I would study Talis' face, hold his little hand with my finger, and whisper countless times to him how much I loved him.

I still study his face. His expressive eyebrows when he's mad or concerned and how his cheeks seem to become extra puffy when he's asleep. I still try and hold his hand. Sometimes he lets me when he walks by my side, most of the time his independent self shoos me away. But when he snuggles into me when I'm giving him a bottle he always searches for my finger, like it's his way of reassuring me he's still my little newborn back in our hospital room. And I still tell him countless times throughout the day that I love him. Because I do, and I never want him to forget it.



Happy first birthday Talis. Mama and daddy love you so much. We have experienced happiness and love to it's fullest when we met you. You will always be ours. Our boy, our heart, our own little piece of heaven. 

the northwest episodes: quinalt rainforest

We just got home from camping over the weekend with the Reynolds clan and we had a blast. Unfortunately the more fun a vacation the more tired at the end so I'll post about our weekend a little later when my energy level isn't running on low and I've rounded up some pictures of the fun we had (sadly we failed to take many pictures). So here is another post about our Washington trip for you while I go catch some much needed zzz's....

At the risk of sounding repetitive in describing the Quinalt Rainforest (gorgeous, breathtaking, beautiful) I'll just let the pictures do the talking...

the northwest episodes: ruby beach

Ruby Beach was one of our stops on our road trip while we were in Washington. It's hands down one of the most beautiful and unique stretchs of beach I've seen before. Watching your little one discover sand, I mean truly discover it, how it feels in between his toes and hands and how it feels gritty when you shove it in your mouth...watching him learn about everything around him is a sight to see myself. It's mostly funny (like when he tried to eat the sand) but when you step back and see your sweet kid learning about his surroundings with a backdrop like Ruby Beach and you can't help but feel all warm inside and think "god is good. god is very very good."

Hot dogs and baseball

Our Friday night was spent going to the Diamondbacks game courtesy of the free tickets Dj scored from work. I was a little apprehensive how Talis would do since he seems to only be content these days when he's making mischief but between dad's hot dog, the cheering crowd, and the endless amount of coworkers fawning over him it was hard to tell he was a rookie baseball fan. I get pretty bored watching baseball so having this cute face by my side defiantly made the game more entertaining.

memorial day two weeks later

I'm finally getting around to writing about what we did on Memorial Day weekend because Dj finally got around to transferring his phone pics to the computer (I never seem to have the camera charged when I need it). Josh and Carlie stayed with us while Annette, Jeff, Juelaine, and Puna stayed with my mom. It was so fun getting to see Talis and Jayla hang out all weekend together. We spent the weekend with the Noa family relaxing, bbq-ing, and playing games. We spend actual Memorial Day taking the babies to the Phoenix Children's Museum with Josh and Carlie. The weekend went by way to fast for my liking and as usual we are left wondering why we all live so far away from the Noas. We love you guys!

Adulthood

Now that Talis is crawling around and pulling himself up onto everything he has become a handful to watch, a pleasant handful but a handful none the less. And since our current set up for a dining table is made completely out of glass (the super thick and heavy kind) where the top just balanced on the legs I was getting suuuuuper nervous about him playing on the ground around it. In reality though it was just the push we needed. After being married for more than three years I say it was time we started being adults (or more adultish) and spend our money on furniture other than late night mexican food runs and Judd Apatow movies. Dj usually cringes every time I suggest we go to Ikea (I tend to become Uncle Money Pockets there...whoops!) he was surprisingly game today. We noshed on one dollar hot dogs and had a little too much fun with their super swivel shopping carts but the real win of the day was actually agreeing on a dining table (in record time no less!).

Dj's super skilled trunk tetris. Dining table, stroller, and my cheap version of a Louis Ghost chair, I was impressed to say the least.