A word to the wise: watch out for gift receipts

So, I finally got around today to taking a gift back to the store that I had received at Christmas. I really wasn't worried about getting the full price back (the price sticker was still on said item) but soon found out that the store was only willing to give me $2 (yes, you really heard me right) for it since that was the price it was listed at now. Having the gift receipt did absolutely nothing for me and I lost 80% of the original value of the gift. I then remembered that WCCO did a story about this exact issue. You can see the video here and read the story here. I guess we have to revert back to giving people the actual receipts since we are getting absolutely nowhere with gift receipts. It makes me wonder how much money these corporations are making by essentially stealing money from consumers....

After a long absence

Yes, I really am alive and so is the rest of my happy family. I purposely didn't blog for a while because, well, when you don't do anything but lounge around the house in pj's, take care of a very demanding little boy and be the housewife, there is really nothing new. It is for those very reasons that I am looking forward to going back to work in a few weeks but also for those very same reasons that I am dreading it. Brice would love for me to be a stay at home mom but I just don't think that I could do that day in and out. I am longing to be able to be just me for at least a few hours a day even though I will be missing Karsten terribly.

Speaking of Karsten, he will be 10 weeks old tomorrow....boy does the time fly! He had a doctors appointment last week and had to get his first round of shots and he was a trooper - we didn't have to give him any Tylenol for the pain at all (hopefully he is like that next time!). We finally found out how much weight he has gained since his 2 week appointment and.....drum roll please.....13 pounds and 10 ounces! We knew he was putting on some good weight but I couldn't believe how much! Every day it seems like he is getting bigger and smarter. He does have a new "trick" that he started doing one day when we put him on his tummy to exercise. He finally figured out how to get his thumb into his mouth and suck on it. He is so content sometimes sucking his thumb that he'll fall asleep. In the past couple of days he has finally figured out how to suck on his thumb when he isn't laying on his stomach. He also can almost sit up by himself when he is reclined and he is starting to babble more when he isn't provoked. The thing that I love that he has started doing lately is finally sleeping through the night. When we took him to the doctor we were told to feed him more less often and to start training him to sleep through the night because a boy of his size doesn't need to get up and eat in the middle of the night. After a couple of nights of him crying for about an hour after waking up and not getting to eat or as much affection as he is used to and figuring out how much he needs to eat before going to bed he slept all night and I got the first 7 hour stretch of sleep without interruption since I was pregnant. It feels so good to be able to sleep that long but he now gets up for the day at 6am which is going to be an issue for Brice when he gets home from work at that time and I have to leave to go to work. One funny thing about my kid is that he will be completely asleep and I'll change his diaper one more time before putting him to bed and he will wake up and start smiling and laughing at me because he LOVES having his diaper changed!

We had a good holiday season this year. We did an early Christmas with Brice's dad's side of the family the friday before Christmas and then took the trip to my parent's house in North Dakota since we've been married. My parents hosted Christmas dinner and I got to see my cousin Lindsey and her new husband for like the first time in years so it was a lot of fun. Karsten, of course, got so spoiled for his first Christmas! He got a ton of toys and clothes that we won't have to buy him anything for a long time. Of course, after we got home from the trip it took me about 3 hours to go through all the toys, take the tags off and then figure out where in the world I was going to put them all.

Last but not least, some pictures of our happy family.


All of us on Christmas day in good ol' NoDak.


My cousin Lindsey's husband Shane with Karsten.


Grandma Koppinger with her new great grandson.


A four generation picture with my dad and Grandma.


Karsten with his Christmas treat.


Another four generation picture with my mom and grandma.


Karsten displaying his new "trick".


Daddy and baby getting in some good bonding time.


Who's the boss?


This one has a story. Karsten was being super fussy last night and I couldn't console him so I put him in his swing. After about 15 minutes of screaming he finally decided to fall asleep. Somehow he had wiggled around so much that he got his hood up on his head. He looked too cute to not take a picture.

More baby tales

Karsten will be 5 weeks old in just 2 days and I can't believe how fast the past month has gone. I have realized that when people say that the time goes faster when you have kids is true. Pretty much every day it feels as if I wake up and 5 minutes later I'm crawling back into bed.

Karsten's colic is now getting under control. Brice was recommended a book by one of his co-workers called The Happiest Baby on the Block. It gives a pretty fool-proof way to calm babies with colic and it works amazingly! The first step is to swaddle the baby really tight with arms to the side to keep the arms from flailing about (which he does quite a bit when he is angry) and then doing rocking, bouncing, laying on the side or stomach and sucking on a nook. He is getting so used to the tight swaddling that now all I have to do is lay him on the blanket and he quiets down. I highly recommend this book to anyone who has a colicky baby because it really has been a godsend for us.

Karsten is also starting to have the beginnings of cooing. He is now making small noises and his tired cries sound much different than the loud, angry cries he had before. I have found that during the day he likes to nap right on my shoulder as I try to carry him around (he is actually napping on my shoulder as I type this). It's difficult to put him down because the minute I do, he wakes up and ends up being more tired in the end. I have hoped that all of this being awake during the day would come out to sleeping more at night but it has not. I think he is going to be an awake at the crack of dawn baby because the past few nights when he has gotten up for his 4 or 5am feeding he stays awake for almost 2 hours and it is impossible for me to get him to sleep. Hopefully within the next few weeks he starts to stretch out his sleeping hours a little more so we can all start getting a few more hours of sleep in a row.

Of course, I can't end my blog posting without a few pictures to brag about our pride an joy!

This is proof that the swaddling makes a happy baby!

This is what happens every time he goes in his swing.

I call this my abominable snow baby.

All decked out in his Old Navy Baby overalls.

This is what happens when he falls asleep in his swing with a bib on and then moves his arms around while he sleeps.

This is prior to falling asleep in his swing.

Baby's first Thanksgiving

Karsten had his very first Thanksgiving this week. We were a little worried about how he would handle the trip to Stillwater to Brice's aunt's house because he has gotten a little colicky in the past week. He actually handled the trip there and back like a pro and woke up in time to eat while we were still there before having to pack everything up and head home. Brice had to work a shift that day so we could only stay a couple of hours and then I had my first night alone with Karsten all to myself. Of course, him being as inconsolable as he had been lately, I knew it would be an issue. He finally woke up from his nap around 6pm and pretty much screamed for a good 6 hours before he finally decided he was just exhausted and fell asleep. Of course, by then I was completely frazzled because there was no way I could calm my child and all I wanted to do was go to bed myself. By yesterday Brice and I finally decided that we can't keep letting Karsten be so miserable and we invested in some gas drops which, so far, seem to be working. We actually had a happy baby last night that was awake and alert and didn't cry....of course, for me, one night too late. Hopefully gas was his only issue and we don't have a colicky baby forever.

Hey, mom, get that camera out of my face!

Why do I always sleep through the cute picture ops?

Mom, dad and I at Thanksgiving....and I'm sleeping again!

Thanks for getting me those gas drops Dad, I feel so much better!

12 days old

Things we have learned about Karsten thus far....

When he gets upset, he pants like a puppy before he lets out the cry. He is a pig! He can sometimes eat 4oz of formula at one sitting....he should only be eating half of that (he'll gain all of his weight back and then some in no time!) He is overall a good baby; right now all he does is eat, sleep and do a little fussing inbetween.

Being cute sleeping in his bouncy chair. A big thanks to Donna for this gift, he loves it!


His first trip to a sit down restaurant while my parents were here this past weekend.


Napping in his swing (a gift from grandparents Koppinger while they were here this weekend) still decked out in his church clothes.


All else seems to be going well. I am finally starting to feel much more back to normal and can actually venture around the house to get some chores done so Brice doesn't have to do it all. I'm looking forward to finally digging out my normal clothes this week and getting back into them. I'm still venturing around the house in my maternity pants for fear of zippers at my incision site until it heals completely. We are looking forward to the time when he is awake for more of the day so we get to see what his personality is like when he's not hungry or needs a diaper change.

Karsten Brice has arrived!

As you all know, we were scheduled to go in for an induction on thursday to have the first of 2 medications administered. Once the nurses got me all situated and checked my cervix, they found that I was already almost 4cm dilated and having contractions (which I couldn't feel) and the medication would not be needed then. They said we could go home and come back early the next morning to get the pitocin started but I was not going to do that again since they already had an iv in and I just wanted to stay and wait it out. Around 5am on Friday the nurse woke us up so she could get Karsten's heart rate on the monitor for a while before starting the iv up. It was actually a lot slower than they wanted it (in the 110's) so they had the doctor come and break my water so that they could put a probe on his skull and see if the heart rate was better that way....it turned out the heart rate wasn't better and when doctor Hirt broke my water, he found out that Karsten had his first poop inside which is not good. After about 45 minutes of talking with the doctor about what we could do or couldn't do, we decided that I would have a c-section. That was really nerve-wracking for me because I get really nervous about stuff like that and they wouldn't let Brice in the OR until right before they were ready to start. Thankfully, they never told me when they started so I had no idea what was going on and I couldn't feel a thing with the epidural. He was born at 7:25am and weighed 8lbs 10oz and was 21 inches long. Hearing his first cry was so amazing, it's impossible to put into words! I just wish that I was able to hold him right away and take care of him like I wanted to. They did let me hold him for about a minute before they had Brice take him to the nursery to get checked out and for the doctor's to close me up to go to recovery. That was the longest wait! By the time Brice got back to recovery, I had already been there about a half an hour and I still hadn't seen Karsten all cleaned up. They did finally bring him in and I got to hold him and tried to feed him right away but since I couldn't sit up it really didn't work. We then went up to our room and they sent Karsten to get a bath so that he was all clean for us. After that, we had to wait for him for about an hour and a half because the nursery was backed up on baths and I wanted to hold him so bad! After that, everything seemed to go smoothly. He did loose a pound while we were at the hospital and also had a little jaundice so we have to take him to the doctor tomorrow to get him checked out and make sure he is doing better. He seems to be eating much better today now that the nurses aren't always bugging him. Here are a few of his first pictures. I hope you all enjoy them as much as we enjoyed taking them!

Tomorrow is the day!

We took another trip to the doctor today which I was kind of dreading but kind of excited about at the same time because I know that the end is near. One of the first things out of her mouth was that she had already scheduled me for induction on Friday when I hadn't called to say I was in labor. We will be going into the hospital tomorrow night at 7pm so that they can administer one drug overnight while we are sleeping after which they will give me the second drug by early Friday morning. If all goes well, we should have Karsten in our arms by late Friday afternoon. I am going to be so excited to not be pregnant anymore and to have him in my arms. The only bad thing is that I have to eat a really good meal before we go to the hospital tomorrow and after that I can't eat anything but popsicles and ice chips so Brice is going to take me out for my last pregnant dinner at the Cheesecake Factory and then all we have to do is go up the block to the hospital and have this kid. We should be able to come home by monday after which we should have a lot of pictures to post. Please keep us in your thoughts and prayers during this exciting time for us.

Still miserabely pregnant....

Yup, you read it right, this kid refuses to come out. He is now 3 days late and I honestly feel like he's not coming out on his own. If I make it to my appointment on wednesday, my doc will probably be inducing me on thursday so we should still have a baby by the end of the week but I'm so tired of all of the waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting. Hopefully my body decides that it's finally going to go into labor by itself because I would much rather it do that than have to be induced.

The last update

As many of you already know, we made a trip to the hospital on Friday thinking I was in active labor when it turns out to be what they call prodromal labor....I guess it's the pre-labor of labor and people like to call it false labor but it does actually have a purpose. Since then I just really have not felt much like myself, had my birthday on Saturday and we just spent it together inside the house. I really don't feel at all like talking to people so if anybody has tried calling me, I have kind of purposefully not answered my phone - I just really want to spend some time by myself and will update after we actually have some good news. Until then, I don't think I will be blogging at all, I just really have absolutely no desire or anything real to talk about.