Happy Birthday Mister Max!

The first phase of house building takes a crap-load of time. A few things are happening here and there. I feel like it is just enough to get us excited about everything until we remember that taking the wood supports out of the basement windows doesn't mean the house is ready to move in to. I don't have any good pictures right now. Todd took some, but they were from his phone and small and you can't see anything new anyways. The biggest news is that they put all of the framing wood out in our front yard. They also poured our basement floors and our garage pad. Things are indeed happening.

Want to know what is even better than building a house? This kid... and the size of my gums. Impressive, right? Max's 1st Birthday was Saturday and we had a super fun fishy birthday party at my parent's house.

Bubbles!

 

 I love this kid!

Warning: This post contains a poop story

Hey all. This week was lame at the dig site. I guess the foundation has to "cure" so to house won't collapse. As if! They sprayed the exterior sealant and put up the window wells, but other than that, not much to report. Here's a picture anyways.

See?! Black stuff and window wells. WOOOOO!

Autumn is so excited to live in Lehi. A lot of family lives in Lehi and she thinks that it has got to be the best place ever. 

Todd wants to Christen our new house "The Honey Bucket"

Hey guys. Here's a blog post for you. Todd is going to try and motivate me to post on here more often, but let's be honest, that never really works. Imagine three laundry baskets full of clean clothes waiting to be put away sitting next to me on the bed. He tried to motivate me to put those away two days ago.

So, big things have been happening. Todd started a new job as a Controller at a company called Chrysalis at the first of March. We sold our house in Riverton shortly after that and moved into my parent's house. (Don't judge, they have a sweet house AND my Mom tells me what I should make for dinner every night, AND my Dad does the dishes. I never want to leave) Sadly, our stay here will be a short one. We are currently under construction in Lehi. That's right. Watch out Utah County. That there house is actually the reason I am starting up the old blog. We want to document the process, but we don't want to annoy every single person that has friend-ed us on Facebook (I'm talking to you, obscure junior high acquaintance) with pictures of each little step. This way, you can block us, or not follow us, and we won't know or be offended. (winking emoticon)

Here are some pictures of the process so far.

 As you can see, we are pretty much ready to move in. We have foundation walls to block the wind, a potty, and a Maverick within walking distance. I don't know why they are making us wait until October to move in.

 This is the back. Some windows and a 10 foot high pile of dirt.

Sweet Life

Sometimes I am entirely overwhelmed by the sweet joy that comes with being a parent. Never could I have imagined feeling like this about another human being. Maxwell is 6 weeks tomorrow and we have enjoyed every minute. My sweet Autumn adores him and can't get enough time in holding baby brother. Life is good. Children are amazing. My husband is absolutely wonderful. My life is full of giving, supportive, and loving family and friends. Just thought you should all know how grateful I am for all of you and how blessed I feel!!

1 week old

Now that Max is 1 week old, here are some highlights of his baby-ness:

- He is so HANDSOME!!!

- He rarely cries, and sleeps very well

- He is a CUDDLER and a SNUGGLER. Autumn was not at all, so we just snuggle him all day!

- He eats like a CHAMP and rarely spits up, if ever.

- He doesn't need a binky!!!!

- He has successfully peed on everyone who has changed his diaper. How do you control that thing?

So far, he is the easiest baby. Knock on wood, cross our fingers, we hope he stays that way. We love him and are so happy. We feel very lucky and blessed that he is healthy and happy!

Maxwell Stats

Oh, he was 7 lbs. 10 oz. and 19 and 1/2 inches. 37 cm huge head.

Maxwell Steven Bulloch

Well, Susie is not so good at blogging. So I (Todd) will post this. This will include the story of the birth, mainly for our records, so if I get anything wrong she can get on here and fix it!

Maxwell safely arrived at 6:05 P.M. on Thursday, July 14, 2011. I will admit it, I was crying my eyes out. It's hard not to with so much excitement and happiness running through your body.

Susie was scheduled to be induced on Thursday, July 14, 2011. We wanted 7/11/11, but a happy, healthy baby on any date is just fine with us. We arrived in the Labor and Delivery on our scheduled day at 9:00 a.m. We had called around 6:30 that morning to make sure there was room for us, and they told us to show up at 9:00 a.m. We were shown to our room and shortly thereafter, we met our nurse. She explained to us some things which we were pretty much already aware of, and then she hooked up the I.V. and the Pitocin. Contractions started almost immediately, and continued steady throughout the day, every 1 and 1/2 minutes to 2 minutes. Susie did not complain of any painful contractions for an hour or two, but they progressively got more intense.

We had always planned on getting an Epidural for Susie, but she wanted to go as long as she could before it was administered to her. We had hoped for her to be dilated to a 4 or a 5. She was a 2 when we arrived, which she had been for 2 weeks. She seemed to be slowly progressing, and getting through the 2 - 4 centimeter stage definitely took the longest. I believe she was around a 3 when Dr. England came to break her water. Things started progressing pretty quickly from there. That was around lunch time.

Susie played it pretty tough for a few hours, breathing and fighting through the painful contractions, now closer together, more painful, and lasting longer. She lasted until around 3:00 and she requested the wonderful numbing juice. The Anesthesiologist showed up 15-20 minutes later and by 3:30 p.m. the Epidural was in. Once the juice kicked in, I persuaded Susie to get some sleep. Things really started progressing quickly after that.

Then came the minor complications and scare. Little Max's heartbeat was slowing down more than the nurse liked during contractions. She (the nurse) gave Susie an Oxygen mask and increased her fluids. She also moved Susie around and eventually found that Maxwell favored it when Susie laid on her right side. I started pacing and getting more nervous with each contraction as I heard his poor little heartbeat slow down to an extremely low pace. Dr. England showed up to check the history and said there was nothing to worry about. The nurse had been checking Susie's dilation and she was quickly progressing. Before we knew it, she was at a 10 and we were ready to go.

Dr. England was extremely busy that night, unfortunately. The nurse was having Susie push and it looked like little Maxwell was not going to wait for the Dr. to get there. The nurse was ready to deliver. The nurse had Susie do some test pushes and the nurse and I could see his little head starting to show up. Dr. England finally showed up after numerous pages over the radio, and he was literally holding Max's head while finishing putting on his scrubs. He did some sterilization and immediately had Susie push. I think it was only her second push and his head was out. One more push and his whole body came. Dr. England handed Max immediately to Susie, and Max had an impressive grip on the Umbilical Cord. Dr. England clamped off the cord, let me cut it, then stitched Susie up and he was on his way. He was literally in the room for less than 5 minutes. It was crazy!

We wanted immediate skin to skin and to try to get him to latch for nursing. After numerous attempts, the nurses were worried about his temperature. He turned out to be kind of low so they took him away from us to the nursery to get him under a heat lamp. I went with him, and stayed there for a while, but returned to Susie to get all of our bags and things ready for the move to the Mom and Baby section. We made the move, and they brought little Maxwell back to us.

Overall, a pretty low-key delivery (easy for the husband to say), but Susie still looked beautiful afterwards with no mascara runs, no sweat, and her hair was still in place. If I had been wearing mascara, I would have looked worse because of my uncontrollable sobbing.

We were discharged around 10:00 a.m. on Saturday, July 16, 2011. We are so happy!