New Sounds

So we haven't been the best bloggers in the world lately. But since not everyone is on facebook, where our son is growing up, we thought we'd post our most recent video on here. This is Austin at 5 months doing his best wookie impersonation.

Thank Heaven for Mother-in-laws

I would like to take this moment to thank Alan's mother for her foresight in purchasing a perfect baby jumper for us back in 1984. Yes, 25 years ago Clucky bought "Jumping Jacks" for all of her children to use with their future children. Now, a normal person would have thought she was crazy for buying a baby jumper for her then 3 year old son Alan. But that is why I'm grateful to have a not-so-normal mother-in-law. =-) My son absolutely LOVES that jumper, and I know for a fact, they do NOT sell jumpers like this any more. It has literally saved my sanity. You see, I have a very high-maintenance baby. If he's not sound asleep, he MUST be played with, sung to, and generally entertained. He is not good at playing by himself. Which means, I would only get 30-40 minute chunks throughout the day to get anything done. (He's not a great napper either.)

Well, this jumper will keep him occupied for up to an hour at a time! He jumps and laughs and squeals non-stop. So I can finally eat, work on Symantec projects, follow up on email, clean up my house, cook. It's amazing! I am a whole new woman thanks to this jumper.

So thank you, Clucky, for being awesome and knowing 25 years ago what we would not learn till much later. We owe you one!

Pictures and (maybe) video of the jumping to come...

Our growing boy.

I cannot believe it has already been 2 months since Austin was born. He has changed so much over the past 2 months, and so have our lives. The past 8 weeks have been some of the hardest and happiest of my life. The first 3-4 were mostly hard. I'm still mad at all the mothers I know for now telling me how hard it was going to be. Or maybe they did, I just didn't listen. But now that I've gotten better at this and he's sleeping for longer chunks at a time, life is pretty dang good. Overall, Austin is a very good baby. He smiles a lot, sleeps pretty well for an 8 week old, and is growing like crazy!! Here are some pictures from the past 2 months:

2 weeks. Adorable and exhausting. He's only sleeping for about 1-2 hours at a time.

3 weeks. Starting to be more alert and interested during awake times.

1 month. First day at Church. He's pretty excited.

6 weeks. He attended his first Jazz game and LOVED it. Jazz played the Timberwolves on St. Patrick's Day.

2 months. Already so grown up. Rock Chalk Jayhawk! (First time he smiled for the camera!)

Austin Tyler Bankhead is Here!

I'm officially the worst blogger ever, but I finally have something important to blog about! Our son, Austin Tyler Bankhead, was born on Feb. 1st. He weighed 7 lbs 2 oz and was 20 inches long. He's completely healthy and absolutely perfect. We are enjoying every minute of this. Here is the story of how he came into the world. This is pretty detailed, so sorry if it's TMI. :) For those of you who requested details, here they are.

Austin was supposed to come on February 5th. My maternity leave started on Feb. 1st so I was all excited about having a week off work. I was going to get a pedicure, get my hair done, read some books. Well Austin had other plans. On Monday morning around 6:15 a.m. my water broke on may way to go to the bathroom. It was NOT like the movies, so I wasn't even 100% sure it was my water breaking. We called the hospital and they told us to come in in a couple of hours if I still thought it was my water that had broken. Well, I wasn't having any contractions, so we ate breakfast, I took a shower, it was a very relaxing morning.

We got to the hospital and were admitted around 8:30 a.m. They put me on a mild dose of Pitocin to get my contractions going. The contractions started up around 9:30 a.m. and started out pretty mild. After a few hours they were getting pretty intense. I was only dilated to a 4 at that point, but the anesthesiologist was on the floor giving couple of other girls epidurals, so I decided I may as well get one then instead of wait. The epidural was really scary, but not that painful. The anesthesiologist was REALLY cool and talked me through the whole thing. She was actually about 8 months pregnant herself! So I just held onto Alan and counted while she did her thing. The moment the medicine went in, I was in heaven. Not only did the contraction pain go away, but my hips didn't hurt, NOTHING hurt! I felt better than I'd felt in MONTHS! So I pretty much just laid there and laughed for a while.

For the next few hours, Alan and I watched Arrested Development and played cards. Right in the middle of a game of War, the Dr. came in to check on my progress. When she checked me a couple of hours earlier, I was only a 5, so I wasn't optimistic that I had progressed much. So we were both shocked when she said, "it's time to have a baby!" So they got all their stuff ready and I started pushing around 5:00 p.m. It was just Alan on one leg, the nurse on the other leg, and the Dr. catching. Just like I wanted it, very private. It was very strange, because I couldn't really feel whether I was pushing correctly. It didn't hurt AT ALL thanks to the epidural. But it was still exhausting. During the pushing, his heartrate started dropping a little bit because his umbilical cord was really short so when I was trying to push him out, he was pulling the placenta out with him and not getting far enough. So they used the little vacuum thing for just a couple of pushes and he came out, no problem. He was born at 5:35 p.m.

When they laid him on my chest immediately, I couldn't believe he was real. He wasn't that yucky like I was expecting. His skin already felt soft and his cry was so sweet. I sat there and touched his head and hands and just cried for a few minutes before they took him away to be cleaned up.

We are home from the hospital now and things are going pretty well. Austin is a wonderful sleeper and he gets cuter every day. He has perfect skin and adorable baby features. I think he looks like Alan. He's absolutely beautiful. He's a very calm baby, but he's not a great eater just yet. Breastfeeding has been really challenging for us both. Neither of us knows what we're doing, but we're slowly getting the hang of it. I have to keep reminding myself that I'm not going to starve my baby. He has good feedings about half the time and the other half he gets frustrated and fusses a lot and won't latch on. That has made for some long, sleepless nights, but we're getting better.

It has been a pretty crazy, eventful, wonderful week. We are loving being parents and can't believe how much we love this little person who came to live with us. Here are some pictures of our little Bean.

It's a Boy!!!

We are happy to announce that we are having a little boy on February 5th. We got our first ultrasound today and I can already tell he's going to be cute. It was such an amazing experience to see him in there. Everything is going well for us. Busy with school & work, as usual. We're so excited to have our own little boy!!

Coralville (where there's no coral) and Florida (where there's lots!)

We made it! We are now officially residents of Coralville, Iowa. After driving the Mormon pioneer trek in reverse, we arrived at our new home on Friday, May 1st and got all of our stuff unloaded in just a couple of hours, thanks to the help of Alan's dad. We had a week to settle in and unpack and then it was off to St. Augustine, Florida for a much needed relaxing week on the beach.

It was a perfect dream vacation. We pretty much did nothing but sit & relax on the beach, eat lots of delicious food, and watch NBA playoffs. A whole week of NO WORRIES! Alan starts PA school (and I start being a single wife) on Wednesday so we're enjoying as much time together as we can before then. We really miss Utah and are slowly adjusting to the huge change of moving to a new place where we know no one. I'm sure Iowa will start to feel like home with time. Here are some pictures from our fabulous vacation in Florida.

This is pretty much what we did all week. We went through about 5 bottles of sun screen and completely lost track of the time and date. That is, in my opinion, a perfect vacation.

All you can eat crab legs on the beach. Yum!!

We took a walk/hike in the Anastasia Island National Reserve. The trail went along the marsh and into the jungle! We saw TONS of wildlife including 2 turtles, 2 snakes (I think Alan was more scared than I was), lots of cool lizards & birds, and about a million crabs. So cool.
Looks like the Jungle Room at the zoo, right? Nope, it's for real.

We love St. Augustine Beach!

Graduation

After 5 long years at BYU, Alan is now the proud recipient of a Bachelor's degree! I'm so proud of Alan for all of his hard work! Now he gets to spend his 3 week break before Grad School packing up our house and moving to Iowa.

CONGRATULATIONS, ALAN!!