Extreme makeover - Nursery Edition

I have a hard time controlling myself sometimes.  This may apply in more ways than one (see "water breaking" in my birth story. oops!), but this time it happened with decorating.  Actually, it happens all the time for me when decorating.  I get an idea and I can't think of anything else until it's done!  So, one day I walked into Benji's room, looked around, and project nursery was born.

You might be wondering why I wanted to re-do Benji's nursery when he was only four months old...well, I didn't get any real good pictures of his nursery before, but here's the idea:

Like I said, terrible picture.  Honestly, it wasn't bad looking and it was actually pretty cute.  Green crib with matching dresser, mosquito netting with a pennant banner, little shelves with books...all in very light, pastel baby colors.  Then he was born.  And I realized how femmy it looked.  Elysha, you gave birth to a BOY.  I don't know how I didn't catch onto that sooner.  Anyways, it had to be fixed because I'm just like that, so here's where I started:

Half the room was still taken up by our "grown-up furniture" that we didn't really use anyway

We sold these pretty quickly, and used the money for everything else in the nursery (I am pretty cheap, so I wasn't going to spend much!)

 To start out, a friend that is moving gave me her very old La-Z-Boy recliner.

It had LOTS of rips and stains from many, many years of use but hey, it was free! Sebasthian disliked it so much (it was pretty ugly, haha) that he was more than enthusiastic about my desire to recover it! YES!

 Basically, if you ever want to re-upholster something, you should probably go see a shrink first to make sure that you haven't gone mad.  If not, then no worries - you'll definitely get there during this project. It was a LOT of work.  And although some of it was fun, much of it was just plain tough grunt work.  I told Sebasthian that if I were to do it again, I would do it a little differently...by never starting!

 ^^This is when I knew I had made a mistake. But as you can see, I muscled through it and....

YAAAYYY! After about a week, it's finished.  Definitely an amateur job, but I don't pride myself in attention to detail, and at this point I would have been fine using a barstool in the nursery just to get it over with!

All of the parts work just fine (a miracle because we literally disassembled EVERYTHING), and it looks like Benji is right at home :)

Sheesh, LONGEST. POST. EVER. I'm only at the chair.  If you're bored, feel free to leave and look up random buzzfeed articles or something, 'cuz I've still got the rest of the nursery to do!  

Next I tackled the crib and dresser.  Painting these took a couple of days, but I think they look so much better and more like my little boy.  Gray may not be exciting, but I think it looks very nice and it matches well.

My mom helped me make this quilt and I love it.  It keeps him so warm and is very cute :) 

After that (though you can already see it in the above photo), I wanted to put his name above his bed.  I saw all of this cutesy Pinterest stuff with canvas and fabric and letters, 

but the cost of canvas +fabric+letters+paint=$$$$, and I didn't have $$$$!

So I tried to make-up my own design, and sure it's not as clean-cut, but it got the point across

Because we seem to have an abundance of diaper boxes around here, I just cut out the background in sizes that I wanted, and then cut out letters to go on top.  I sanded the sides of the letters to smooth it, and then painted them. Then I covered the backs in fabric and glued them on. 

Like I said, it may not be as classy and professional, but it says his name, and it only cost about $4.  Works for me.

Last I did a bit of sewing to make the pennant banners

and then I used scrap fabric to make a pillow for the chair.  I didn't want to buy a pillow, so I used a worn-out one of ours and cut it into a square and re-stuffed it with the stuffing so it would be fluffy again.  Because I didn't have any big fabric pieces left, I had to get creative with the way I made the cases and it doesn't match front/back.  But I don't really care, I think it looks kinda funky :)

Wahoo! The work of the nursery was complete! He has his clothes, bed, chair, and toys

Time for the grand-tour!

 (oh, I made the elephant picture a little while ago because I found this frame at DI  and wanted to put something in it.  It was actually kind-of my inspiration for the rest of the room)

I know this post is probably really overkill for such a simple room do-over, but I guess I'm just really proud of how it turned out.  I am grateful to have a wonderful home and that I have learned these skills from my family while growing up.  

I saved the most important part of this room for last:

Even at this early age, we try to teach Benji about his Savior, Jesus Christ.  This picture will make for the eighth one of Him in our little home, and we love the constant reminder that we are always being guided by His loving hands.  A little while ago I kept getting very afraid at night when I would get up with Benji.  My imagination started running wild and I often prayed for something to calm my fears.  Soon after, I put this picture of Christ on the wall of Benji's room and for some reason it made me feel so much better and safer.  I know it's just a picture, but it was such a wonderful reminder to me that we are protected and watched over every day.

Well, hope you enjoyed seeing my thrifty nursery project! Looking around, somehow I let the rest of my house become a disaster bio-hazard land, so I'm going to get back to that now. Thanks for reading! 

Merry Christmas and a happy new year!

It's been a really great month here in the Ahumada house.  Our Benjito is now smiling and so much fun to play with.  He even laughs, too!  Except...he's a bit of a stinker.  So far I have heard him laugh only a few times: once each with my friends Nellie and Natalie, once with Sebasthian, and a couple of times in his sleep.  But try as I might, I can NOT get him to laugh for me!  He will smile and coo, but I guess he's already trying to tell me that I'm just not funny.  I've taken up reading Laffy Taffy wrappers to try to get a more refined sense of humor.

Earlier this month the temperature plummeted low into the sub-zero category, and somehow this made the power go out.  I'm not sure how these are connected but I usually just believe what the professionals tell me. Anyhow, the three of us spent the morning in bed to stay warm but Benji kept getting hungry and I wasn't producing enough milk to keep up.  I was starting to weigh the likelihood of him starving or freezing to death, and I didn't like either option.  Here's the part where I'm super dumb.  I thought that because we had no power, we had no hot water.  Thus, having no hot water, we would have no way to warm up some water for formula (it was ice cold!)..and Benji would surely starve!  Luckily we had a brilliant idea - we have a gas grill. Yes, we got a pot and put in some water and barbecued it until it was hot enough to warm some milk.  Genius? We thought so! Until Sebasthian had to get ready for his afternoon classes and washed his face in the sink...discovering that we'd had hot water for the past eight hours.  We felt pretty awesome.  Right after, the power turned back on and we never even took advantage of our new-found resource. haha! c'est la vi! All in all, the day was a pretty good learning experience, not to mention that Benji is probably the first two-month old to eat a barbecue'd meal!

The rest of our Christmastime has been wonderful!!  We have lots of fun as our little family and have made some great Christmas traditions.  We made sugar cookies and decorated them to bring to friends! ...but then they ended up being rock hard so we threw them all away (seriously, I've made about eight batches of cookies this fall and I don't think we've been able to eat any!  I can't make cookies.).  And we tried to learn Feliz Navidad on our guitars, but gave up shortly afterwards because we didn't want to be too talented and overwhelm people (or, it wasn't going well.  You decide.)  However, even with our silly mistakes, this has been a great season and we've really focused on keeping Christ in our Christmas.

This year we spent a family night watching Mr. Krueger's Christmas (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AG2xdsKNXy8) and wrote letters to ourselves with how we felt about the year, our testimony, and one gift that we would give the Savior in the next year through improving ourselves in some way.  We put the letters in the tree so that when we take it out next year we can read them again.

On Christmas Eve we ate bread bowl soup (a family tradition) and read the story of Christ's birth.  We also got to Skype with both families to celebrate with them!  Christmas is a wonderful time for family and we are grateful to have such fun and supportive parents and siblings. Sadly Benji has been sick throughout the week and so he wasn't able to join in on much of the fun. :/

Christmas morning....or should I say afternoon?  By the time I dragged my two boys out of bed it was almost twelve!  Sebasthian will have to enjoy this while he can because I am SOO excited for when our kids come wake us up at six in the morning to open presents.  Anyways, it was really great and I was spoiled rotten! We all got some great gifts, and we tried to convince Benji that he would like his toys but he was still pretty out of it.

Sebasthian picked out this present for him, he wasn't impressed.

However these next two definitely drew his interest...

Overall it was a pretty fantastic day and we are excited to ring in the new year together soon!

Merry Christmas to our family and friends and may you have joy and happiness throughout 2014!

1212, 1220, and 8 ...That's how many weeks old we are!

I expected myself to get more involved in "blogging" now that I have a baby to brag about.  And I won't lie, he is pretty stinkin' cute, but he doesn't really DO much, as demonstrated below:

 Okay Okay, so he doesn't sleep ALL the time...but aren't those pictures kind-of precious?  I know, another mom who can't stop with the baby pictures.  No worries - there's a lot more where those came from!  But really, so far he HAS made some marked improvement...which should be expected since he's almost two months old!

He can now scream very, very loud:

...Can grab onto his play gym toys...

(it's always the elephant that he grabs!  Between this fact and that his Elephant PJ's 

are one of the few he hasn't peed on, we've decided these are his favorite animal)

...And he can support himself standing if someone holds him!

What a macho man!

He also LOVES spending time with his daddy

Real, quality time

Sebasthian's biggest complaint is that Benji can't hold his own bottle yet. 

So often I find him set up with contraptions such as this.  At least I can 

give Sebasthian some points for ingenuity!

We've been having a great time enjoying the holidays! We had Thanksgiving with some good friends here in town, and even went Black Friday shopping!  It was Benji's first time (obviously) but he did great!

Here he is with his "Black Friday trophy"! He was mad that Dad wanted to play first

Now that it's Christmastime he also loves looking at the tree!!  We are grateful for this wonderful Holiday season and all the Joy that we can find together in it.  :)

A Birth Story; 'cuz everyone's doing it

I feel like I'm doing pretty well at following the "Mormon" stereotype.  I got married in college to a "Returned Missionary", and after a few months we decided it was time to follow the oldest trend ever of multiplying and replenishing the Earth.  So one thing leads to another...Boom! Zygote-Embryo-Fetus! Just like that.  The afterthought here, is that this little creature had to come OUT somehow.  And this is where our story begins...

I probably had the best pregnancy ever.  I was fit and able to stay active (I still get made fun of by my coworkers for being the bike-riding pregnant lady), and I felt good all around.  Except...dun dun duuuuun...lurking in the deep pockets of my soul was a rigid fear of that whole "giving birth" scene. I was freaked out!!  I prayed a lot for help but didn't seem to be calming down much...yet the "due date" was looming nearer.

On September 23rd I was about to shower when I suddenly felt something funny and then liquid started trickling down my leg.  Commence: super ultimate freak-out panic mode.  I started shaking and hyperventilating, worrying that my baby was on his way!  Quickly and clumsily I showered and then picked up Sebasthian from work.  I told him that I wasn't sure, but maybe my water had broke?  I hadn't felt any contractions, so I didn't want to go to the hospital, but he insisted that we should go "just in case".  And the next morning, our son was born! yay! The end.

Okay, just kidding.  Actually, it turns out that I must've just peed myself or something (lol!), because baby was still happy and swimming around in there.  But it WAS a good experience that helped me get over my fear.  The nurses were nice and the thrill of it was kind-of fun :)

The next couple of weeks passed uneventfully, but I began to grow pretty excited about meeting my little man.  Every day Sebasthian would say: "We could be parents today!!" and I agreed with him.  One Monday morning he said it and I said "No, I think he's sticking this one out.  I don't feel him doing much." haha "Eat your words, Elysha!" Within the hour I was cleaning the whole house spotlessly with an energy no java-holic has ever seen.  Every five minutes I would get cramps and then they would go away after about 30-45 seconds.  I wasn't sure what was going on so I called up my good friend Melissa and we went for a walk for an hour or so.  Well, the cramps didn't subside so that was good and stuff.

I made lunch for Sebasthian and when he came home I calmly told him that I thought I was in labor.  He freaked out a little.  Not because of having a baby, but because I was so ridiculously cool about it.  I'm always cool so he should have just caught on.

We decided he should go to work, since labor usually takes awhile anyways.  After he left I was curious how long I should wait.  So I called the Doctor.  They told me I had to go in. Nooo, I wanted to labor at home.  I resisted, but eventually called my awesome neighbor, Jacquie, to see if I could get a ride to the Doctor.  Once there, I waited. and waited. and waited.  Not unusual for a Doctor's office, but REALLY?  I could've popped out a baby any minute! ...or in a few hours, at least.  Apparently the Doctor had needed to go to the hospital to deliver or something (again, really?  aren't I top priority? ;) ) So they commanded that I go there to get checked. I did not just misuse the word "commanded", as I kept trying to tell them I didn't need to go.  I was a little miffed.  I absolutely did not want to go to the hospital just to get sent home.

Jacquie was super wonderful and took me to the hospital, and I called Sebasthian and told him to leave work...hopefully this wasn't a false alarm.  I kept telling everyone that I didn't know why I had to be there, I didn't feel like I was in labor. Well, the nurse checked me when I arrived at about 5:30 and I was dilated to a 3-4.  So they had Sebasthian walk around with me and we went to the cafeteria and ate.  (Note to self: this is a bad idea when you're in labor. Never again.) After half an hour I was at a 5, so they decided to keep me.  I was so mad that I didn't get my "Pinterest" photo of us leaving with our bags for the hospital. haha. But at least we got some when I was admitted:

The anesthesiologist was busy in surgery so I really got to spend some quality time with my contractions.  

I wouldn't let Sebasthian take pictures of me in pain (don't need to remember that!) so these don't really fit the story well. haha

Luckily we got to watch "Family Feud" while we waited it out :)

Finally the epidural came (yay!) when I was dilated to a 7, and then about 20 minutes later I had to PUSH.  yuck.  I hated pushing.  About halfway through I asked them for a c-section.  They kind-of laughed at me and said I just had to do it.  Fine.  I started pushing at midnight and an hour and 43 minutes later....

Wahoo!! I'm a mom! 

And he's a dad!

and he's a boy without a name...

So we'd been struggling over the past nine months to find a name.  Sure enough, we still couldn't decide at the hospital.  We were about to leave without one and mail it in when we decided, when the insurance lady came and told us we had to have it before we left.  We were leaving in an hour.

Sebasthian brought up the name "Benjamin" and although we'd never considered it we thought it was a fitting, strong name.  I only agreed to it if we could call him "Benji".  So there we have it: Benjamin Thomas, born October 8th at 7 lb 9 oz.

And isn't he the cutest? 

Just a handful

It's the final countdown!  Only 5 weeks left until this little human of ours is supposed to make his grand entry into the world.  That's just one handful!

Although the concept of actually becoming a parent to whatever is expanding my abdomen is a little difficult to understand, we're doing our best to raise him right already.  The other day Sebasthian was playing his favorite video game, Skyrim, and our boy was kicking everywhere!  Sebasthian decided it was time to teach our son his first video game.  So he put the controller up to my belly where the little guy kept kicking and tried to get him to move the joysticks and make the character walk.  It wasn't the most successful attempt, but I guess he just isn't quite old enough to understand.  Maybe next week ;)

Sebasthian also makes sure that our diet is up to his standards. I was eating an apple awhile back and he exclaimed: Don't feed my son THAT!  He needs a cheeseburger! Oh dear, these boys are going to make me crazy ;)

We also have been having fun getting ready for him!  We registered at a few stores for baby stuff (we're not really advertising where to find the registry, we just want the coupons that the store gives you after the baby is born) and it was a blast!  At one of the stores we turned it into a game of finding the most ridiculous products and only allowed those on the registry.  After registering for baby's first bottle of Pepsi, and a personal Jacuzzi tub for the baby, Sebasthian won with this little gem:

Yes, they do look like toilets, and yes they do sing when it's time to potty.  I don't know why we all don't have one!

We have had such a great time together lately and are definitely enjoying our last few weeks as just the two of us, so that we can enjoy even more as we add on #3.  We invited a group over to play fugitive this week and it turned out GREAT.  I'm sure people had some valid questions when they saw a 35-week pregnant lady running through town in the middle of the night. haha!  I have been very blessed with good health and am still able to work around 30 hours each week at Physical Therapy.  It's funny, I get so many people commenting on my "cute baby bump" at work, I never had so many compliments on my figure until I gained these 30 pounds!  

35 weeks. 

We're still having trouble finding a name.  What's funny to me is how many people are trying to help us with it! I don't mind, but I did find it funny the other day when someone said to me: "So, what are you going to name him? Parker?" Haha I'm not sure if she was subliminally trying to tell me a name, or if she genuinely wanted to play a guessing game.  I mean, after all, there are only thousands of names...I'm sure it wouldn't take too long. ;)

Overall we are doing GREAT!  Sebasthian loves his jobs and is very happy and successful.  A few days ago he even set a company record with the longest phone call - 5 HOURS!  He won some prizes and came home a legend. :)  I sure love that guy.

A few other random happenings from the Ahumada summer...

Sebasthian's work had a giant fair!  Free sno cones! 

Silly road workers left the keys inside...it was just too much temptation for him

And I found the party hearse!  Yes, it has a barbecue grill in the casket.

Visiting the Provo temple

This July 23rd Sebasthian turned 23!  And I graduated!!  It was a wonderful day!

Our family had a little combined party for us :)

We were so grateful they could come all the way to celebrate with us!  We are lucky to have such a strong, wonderful, and outrageously good-looking family!

That's it for now!  But I'm sure we'll have some exciting news to update soon :)

I have too many things to be grateful for...and today it is stretchy pants!

So here I am, trying to control the world again.  I decided that this baby can grow like he's supposed to, as long as I can fit into my jeans until the end of the semester.  I thought it was a fair deal!  But, nope, not my son.  This baby's a low rider, and because my jeans are low riders...the two are in a constant battle.  Not only this, but my son and I officially always eat more than Sebasthian does at every meal! I am about to graduate in a health-related degree and have learned that I don't need to double my calories...just raise it by a few hundred, but tell that to this monster-ito that I'm growing!  Always hungry, this baby is definitely his daddy's.


By popular demand, I have consented to post my first baby bump picture...sheesh, I look huge!  And only halfway there, I can't imagine how "bumpy" these next few months will be!  (haha, cheesy...)

Sebasthian is doing excellent and now that he knows he his getting a boy I get whatever I want.  All I have to do is say "it's for your son!" and he immediately consents to whatever whim I am inclined.  I can only imagine how spoiled this child will be!  He found some newborn "thug shoes" of which he is very proud and is now diligently searching for a flat-brimmed baby hat so they can be posers together. haha These boys are going to take over my house!

As for this little swimmer, he is getting very active, and is a whopping 10.5 inches!  He still weighs less than a pound, but I'm sure that'll catch up quick and he'll be nice and fat when he comes to meet us!

Ultrasound pictures are difficult to understand so I'll just explain these:

Left: during the ultrasound he was playing with his feet!  cute! 

Middle:  Freaky 3D picture (these are always weird) but he has a cute little face and features!  And look how big his head is!  It's because he's a super genius.

Right:  He likes to be curled up in the most unnatural of positions..and stay there.  We could not get him to move!

I love these wonderful two boys in my life, even if I am sure they are going to be crazy together! :)  I am so excited to see my family growing!

All in all I've learned a great lesson: If you can't control the world, enjoy every minute of it! ...And invest in stretchy pants.

Look what we made!

Announcing....our new little Baby Ahumada!  Okay, so everyone knows by now but I just thought I'd record how the past couple of months have been for us :)

It's one of Sebasthian's pet peeves when couples say "we're pregnant" so we decided we could only say it if it were true!  He's been getting lots of advice from friends about his pregnancy.  I don't think he knew what he was getting into!                                                                                                                                I'm pushing out a LOT here...I really have no tummy at all yet, which is surprising since this little kid makes me eat ALL THE TIME.  Either it's a boy or a really fat girl.  Either way, I'll be super happy!!

As soon as I knew that I was "with child" I wanted to tell Sebasthian.  But how?  This isn't some little announcement for a date night, or a random holiday, this is a BIG DEAL.  Like, the only thing that would be a bigger deal for us right now is...nothing.  So, knowing I only had one day where he was at lab and I could take the car, I rushed to the store, bought a pregnancy test, balloons, cookies, and some poster board.  I quickly rushed to take my test...invalid result.  PERFECT!  I knew I was pregnant and I knew he wouldn't know how to read the test so it was as good as positive for me!

 Coming home, he found this on the door...."Elysha...?"

"Whaaaat?! Are you serious?!"  He was overjoyed and super excited!  He kept grinning and not knowing what to do, just looking at me and then the sign and then at me...then he picked me up and twirled me around and basically, I am so grateful for eternal families and that we did it right.  We are both sooo grateful to have this little one on the way and joining in our family :)

Then it came time to tell OUR families!  We were so excited to see their reactions!  I made them each countdown calendars so they can celebrate every week with us :)

And we sent them a picture of our new little human....

(Aw, cute...)

It was so fun to see their reactions when we surprised them with the news!  My family jumped up and down and started screaming in excitement!  I was so happy that they all are going to be so great at welcoming this new person into the family :)  None of them expected it and they all treated the news like it was the best they'd ever heard!  I love my family sooo much and am excited to be having my own!  

I wish I could have recorded their reaction because it was 100% perfect.  Luckily, we were able to record telling Sebasthian's family and it was such a sweet experience....

Our families are wonderful and we are so blessed to have them!! 

We look forward to many more adventures as Sebasthian, Elysha, and our little by-product! =D