Couldn't Ask for a Better Father for my Son!

Benj is such a good husband! He truly does awesome with Asher, and makes me fall in love with him every single day. He gets up in the middle of the night to change diapers, or bottle feed him ( we are forced to bottle feed because Im just not making enough milk to keep his little tummy full) just so I can get an extra hour of sleep. I think sometimes he doesnt realize that I catch him talking to him in English and Chinese, or kissing him, or snuggling him. But I love those moments where I catch him loving up on him. We even sometimes fight over who gets to hold him. He is so great and watching him be such a good father makes me fall in love with him more and more everyday! I sure do love my boys!!

Two weeks old today.

We sure love our baby boy, he is such a good baby! We dont have problems with him crying much and right now he just likes to stare and coo at you! It's adorable!

Happy Valentines to my sweet sweet boys!

I truly used to hate this day, I thought it was stupid. But when I married Benj... it still didnt change haha. This year though changed my thought process a little bit. Since I can remember I have had anxiety. I started getting it in middle school when going to school was just a little bit too miserable for me. I had no friends I was made fun of more than not. I finally got it under control in high school. So Benj has never seen that side of me before... until I got pregnant. I would worry about the smallest things. I still had it pretty under control, but when I had baby Asher my anxiety has sky rocketed to unbelievable heights. I do really well during the day to keep it under control but at nights I cant help but crying, I cry pretty much most of the night! Benj in this process has been unbelievable understanding and supportive of my new behavior, though I dont think its been easy on him. He has done some amazing things at night like taking the first shift at night so I can sleep. My anxiety has effected a lot on our relationship, just adjusting to all of the new things in life. But he never fails to show me everyday how much he truly loves me and our son. I now have a new perspective on life and especially this holiday, Valentines Day isnt about buying special gifts for each other or spending money on pointless things. Its about truly realizing how many people care for you. Love is in the air people and im not talking just about couples. Im loving my new little life and my sweet sweet boys and couldnt be more grateful for the two handsome men in my life!

Asher Zhao Yang Bryce- His birth story

Well we finally made it to the end the pregnancy and had our beautiful baby boy. He is seriously the best thing that has happened to us. We really never thought we could love someone as much as we love and care about him. As I sit here laying in bed watching my whole world cuddle and sleep, I start to realize how perfect my life really is. And this is not just the hormones talking i promise, though there has been lots of crying in this house hold not just from mom though :). Anyways I wanted to write down Ashers birth story before i forgot everything.

We went in Sunday February 5th at 8 pm at night to the hospital, I was scheduled to be induced the next day and our doctor said he wanted to see us one more time before we had him. At least that was our impression of what he wanted us to do. He was scheduled to work at the hospital Sunday night so he told us to meet him up there. We seriously thought we were just going up there for paper work and to check and see if Asher was still doing okay. Well our impression was wrong when we got there Sunday night one of the nurses gave me a gown said put this on. I was just thinking in the back of my head okay he is checking my cervix one more time. But then our nurse came in for the night and introduced herself.  We then had the doctor tell us we were staying the night to what they call "Ripening the Cervix" Which is a nice way of telling you that they are going to dilate you that night. Well we took it and stayed because we figured it was an okay thing to do. So they gave me this pill that was suppose to start contraction, and dilate me to a four by the morning so we could break my water and get everything rolling.  Well in the morning to the doctors surprise I hadn't dilated at all. So they gave me more medication and said if I hadnt made any progress by noon they were going to send me home. By eleven that morning my contractions I thought at the time had reached an all time high, little did I know this was actually an all time low for contractions. but when they came back and checked me I was dilated to a one, this still meant that i was going home because they cant do anything until you at least reach a two. but the doctor decided to keep me till two because at that point I was still having contractions and the medication had worn off by then meaning my body was doing it all by itself. So yet again they said if i hadn't reached a two by two then they would send me home. Well two came around and I still hadnt dilated to a two, but the doctor didnt want to come in yet so he had us stay till five, well the nurse suggested that we get up and walk around because it might speed up the process. We did but this was very painful and hard for me to do because I was so weak from the contractions plus the not eating anything for almost twenty four hours. So our laps consisted of making a round sitting down for like five minutes and then returning to do another lap. When they then checked me at five i was barely dilated to a two. So the doctor had told me it was time to go home. We started to get unhooked to all of the monitors and then a contraction came on, this time it made this huge popping noise and gushing noise. I gasped for breath looked at my nurse and said my water just broke. So they hooked me back up to all of the monitors. My contractions at this point were unbearable. so unbearable I was begging the nurse for the epidural.. You cant usually get an epidural until your at least dilated to a four but I had been contracting this bad for over two hours and i hadnt changed from a two to a three yet. So the nurse went and got me one anyways. They are life savers let me tell you. I was in heaven after that! Anyways after only being dilated to a two for over half of the day they started pitocin the pitocin didnt do anything to help the processes speed along, instead it made Asher's heart rate drop rapidly and he was too stressed out. The doctor then came in and said they didnt think he was going to make it if we delivered vaginally so our next best option was a C section. So they got me ready and I was in there in ten to fifteen minutes ready for everything to happen. He was born February 6th at 10:08 pm, weighed 7 lbs 4 oz and 20 1/2 inches long. When he came out he was beautiful I was crying, and once I heard him cry it was the best thing that ever happened.

Anyways here are some beautiful pictures of my baby boy

The New Apartment

I know I have been lagging in posting pictures of the new apartment. But i have been enjoying spending every moment I can with Benj, sleeping in, reading books and just getting ready for the babe to come.  We have been living here for about a month now, and we love it and are enjoying how much extra space we have compared to the old place. We do miss the old place though and the old ward. Its great to have more breathing air. Anyways here are pictures of the new house I am missing one picture of the living room but that's because I feel as though it is never clean enough.

Here is a little look at the babes room. We decorated it in green and brown. We have been very blessed with the amount of things we have received from family and friends. Everything in this room other than the original dresser and curtains I made, were given to us. I still plan on decorating it more when the little babe get here with pictures and others things but we will have to wait until then!

Here is the bathroom. We love it for a couple of reasons A) it has a bath and I love my baths we also didn't have this luxury in our old apartment B) it does not hit the front door like our old one did, in our old house if we left our bathroom door open it made it harder to open the front door. It was just in an awkward position C) our knees do not touch the other wall while we are sitting on the toilet T.M.I I know haha

This is the kitchen, a little small with counter space but we are used to it. But there are some highlights to this kitchen that we didn't have with our other kitchen 1) it has a dishwasher, yeah buddy i said it, a dishwasher! For the last year we have been having to wash dishes by hand, I have never really minded washing dishes until I have had to wash dishes everyday for the last year. 2) we have a garbage disposal I always hated digging out the gross food from the sink. These are things I took for granted until I got married, and now realize how much this is a huge blessing in our lives

this is also attached to the kitchen but separate dining area. We now officially can have guests over for dinner and parties. We recently had my parents over for Borsch.

This is our bedroom we love it and each have our own sides of the bed as you can see and Its big and spacious. WE love our new home!

A Pintrest project

Since I have a ton of time on my hands I have been working on a ton of different projects for the babies room. I have become quite the sewer in the last month or so. Some projects I have made are curtains for the baby room, bibs, two changing table cover, two blankets one quilted/tied, the other just something simple, and a nursing cover.I'm also currently working on crocheting a hat for him as well. My next project I wanted to start working on was something different. I love sewing but I wanted to do something more hands on. So I found thing cute little dresser type thing on pintrest, it looked pretty simple to make and since I have an amazing Grandpa who is really good with his hands and working with wood I thought this could be a good bonding experience for him, benj and I. He used to be an Engineer so he is very precise.
How I made this is I got a simple cheap dresser that has four drawers. I took the two top drawers out and took out the inside lining that holds the dresser up. We then took a piece of wood and put in on the bottom half to cover the third dresser so you couldnt see inside of it. and then cut more wood to hold a dowel so I could hang up baby's clothes the two bottom drawers are used for onsies he will wear under his outfits as well as pants and the other for pajamas and his hats he has. We also decided to paint it. I have decorated his room in brown and green stripes and polka dots, with monkeys. The dresser we bought had a shiny wood covering over top of it. We didnt realize how hard it would be for painting. So after covering it with two layers of white paint and figuring out how easy the white paint peeled off we had peeled the paint off and started over. This time sanding down the whole dresser before painting it this time. It worked soo much better. We covered then repainted it with not two but three coats of white and then polka doted it with green and brown polka dots. We did the polka dots by taking card stock and dye cutting out small and big circles and then spray painting inside the circles.

It turned out super cute so I thought I would share it all with you.

nothing too special

Things have changed a bit since the semester ended. We got a new apartment and moved in two day before christmas a little stressful but it turned out good we love our new place.We have two bedrooms which is pretty exciting because with all of this extra times i have on my hands I have been fixing it up to look like a baby room. Pictures of the apartment will come later. We also have a bathtub and a dishwasher which is heaven sent we didnt have either of these in our old apartment. We loved Christmas this year, it was a first offical Christmas alone. We went to Sacramento and celebrated it with Benj family last year which was fun he still has little sisters who get excited for the day. After Christmas Benj family drove up and stayed with us for about a week or so and my family came in from Las Vegas and Boise. Having so much family here was such a great experience. My sisters put together such a beautiful baby shower for me while they were here and Benj two sisters Sariah and Zipporah and his mom got to be there for it. We missed Petrina, who is serving a mission in Taiwan.

In other news I have stopped working at Gringos and surprising as it seems I really miss working. A LOT. I am nesting (according to Benj) really bad and have been non stop sewing and other projects our latest project is working on a dresser with my grandpa on Wednesdays (those pictures will come as well when the dresser is actually finished), and we only have three weeks till our little man is suppose to be here. We still cant agree on a name but have narrowed it down to two, with a third back up name just in case. These are the names we have:
                                          Dominick (which is my favorite)
                                           Asher (Benj favorite)
                                         Liam ( which is the back ups)
I will just be happy if he come out healthy to tell you the honest truth. We are already in love with this little man and just cant wait to meet him.

In other news, Benj and I switched majors. Benj is staying with a CIT major ( Computer Information Technology major)  and it happy with his switch. I want to still work with Children but not in a preschool setting as much as I thought I would. Dont get me wrong I loved it!! I loved the children and seeing them learn and understanding new things, but just wasn't satisfied with this major. After a lot of praying and researching and an AWESOME Child Development teacher/ Marriage and Family Studies teacher. I have finally decided to go into Marriage and Family Studies with a minor in Child Development. One really cool thing about this major is that starting this fall all of the classes are ONLINE meaning I can stay home with my babe!And still get the degree I want and strive for.

As for my New Years Resolutions, I know they are late but better late then never right??

1. Lose all of my extra baby weight after I have this babe.
2. Blog once a week. (this will be hard one for me)
3. Cook and try new meals on a budget.
4. Be a regular temple attender. ( I have been trying to work on this one for a long time)
5. Read scriptures and say prayers daily.

I hope everyone else's year has started as well as ours have and continue to get better.

Here is a quick 36 week photo for my own sake.