3 Weeks!

I know that doesn’t sound very old but my baby girl is growing so fast. The day after her one week birthday I noticed all of her features were bigger! Her little tiny nose (still little and tiny) was bigger! Her tiny mouth and tiny ears (still little and tiny) were bigger too! We went to see the Pediatrician for her 2 week appointment and I was sure she was either going to be back to her birth weight or heavier. Either way that is good news, but also sad…babies don’t stay babies long enough! She was heavier than her birth weight – 5lbs. 14oz. Two ounces heavier than at birth. She also grew an inch and a half! She is now 19 inches long! I am sure she is over 6lbs. now. STOP GROWING!

She has pretty much slept through the night for three nights, two of those nights were in a row. Some people think we should be waking her up to feed her if she doesn’t wake us up but, the pediatrician said that wasn’t necessary at night…during the day, yes, we need to wake her up at LEAST every 5 hours, but at night, it’s ok. During the day though, she is pretty consistently hungry every 2 and a half to three hours.

She makes the funniest faces. Usually while she is falling asleep. She rolls her eyes back in her head and it freaks us out. She smiles (involuntarily still) and one time even seemed to laugh in her sleep. She makes her mouth into a tight tiny pucker but, her mouth is still barely open. It is hilarious.

When she is wakeful she looks around so curious. And sometimes she just stares and stares. There are times when we are totally baffled as to what she is looking at. I like to think that she can see angels and they are watching over her and amusing her as she adjusts to earth life.

Now, this is a catch up on posting and especially posting pictures. I still need to download the MOST recent pictures but, here are a bunch. Stay tuned for more. I promise to be better about posting more consistently.

This is the day we brought her home from the hospital. She's trying out her first set of wheels. Doesn't she look cozy!
This is Marlayna trying out her next set of wheels. Well, this is the bassinet/baby bed in our room. It only has wheels so that it is easy to move...not really for transportation purposes. Again, doesn't she look so cozy! Don't worry, she doesn't sleep with all these blankets in her bed.
This is her first bath (sponge bath). Nathan is such a great dad! The nasty part of her belly button fell off last Sunday so, now we give her baby baths. Nathan gave her, her first baby bath too (pictures will be posted in the near future). We have to take turns giving her a bath. She gets a bath everyday, because nobody likes a dirty baby.

Getting dressed.


Clean mommy and clean baby!







This is Mara's first bottle. It's still produced by Mommy but, this time fed from Daddy.

This one is kinda hard to see...but so cute!
Sometimes she holds onto her pacifier. She doesn't know that's what she is doing...she doesn't even know that she has hands yet, let alone how to work them but, it's so cute!

Mara had jaundice or was jaundice (not sure how to say that properly) so we had to put her under special lights. Besides actually giving labor to her, it was the hardest thing we have gone through with her, so far.

Praxair dropped the special light box off at our house around 9:30pm on the 24th of April. Late huh! I fed her and we got her into the box around 10pm. We had to keep her under the lights for 2 and a half hours out of ever 3 hours, so pretty much we just had to keep her in the box all the time and only take her out to feed her. It was kind of a nightmare. It's not like we could just throw her in there and then go to bed. We had to make sure the drape stayed over her face and make sure she didn't look at the lights. We were also instructed to not look at the lights, which was very hard.

Needless to say, Mara did not like being in the box. It had a very thin pad in the bottom of it and it was otherwise an over sized industrial plastic suitcase. She wiggled and squirmed and cried for over an hour before she kinda calmed down and went to sleep. To keep her calm we took turns holding both of her hands, the only comforting touch we could offer her. Even then she wasn't restful and would cry and fuss pretty often. Everytime we took her out to feed her, she was so content and then when we put her back it took awhile to calm her down again.

Also, she could only have a diaper on so we had a space heater on to keep her warm which made us completely HOT!

O, I forgot to mention that for the first hour we had to take her temperature every 15 minutes to make sure she was okay under the lights. That was hard too. With a squirming baby it's hard to take an armpit temperature. If we kept her out of the box for more than 45 mintues we had to repeat that hour of checking her temperature every 15 minutes again.

We stayed up all night in a HOT room with an unhappy baby. It was hard...but, we can do hard things.

The next morning we took Mara back to the hospital and repeated the same lab test we had done the three previous days. The nurse stabs her heal and drips her blood into a test tube. We got her back home and put her back into the light box, took her temperature every 15 minutes for an hour. By this time she was sleeping better in the box. We could at least just sit next to her and read a book and if her arms moved the draper we could just fix it and go back to reading. We were very tired though.

Around 3:00pm the peditrician office called and let us know that her lab results were within the safe range for us to stop administering the lights. We were so releived we didn't have to stay up with her another night. That was our greatest fear at that point, but she didn't even have to be in there for 24 hours. What a blessing! Here are some pictures.

Totally upset.
More calm.
Sleeping...kind of.
DON'T LOOK AT THE LIGHTS!!!!

So, cute! She's holding her binky!
Unky Skunky came in to keep mom and dad company for an hour or so in the middle of the night. He finishes work around 1am. And he has a really hard time looking normal in pictures.
That's it for the Biliruben ligths.

Here is a picture of the first time Grandpa Alger held Mara. He came to visit us both nights we were in the hospital but, I think he didn't want to take time away from others holding her.

What a proud Grandpa.

Bouncy Chair! I wish they made adult sized bouncy chairs!

She often only opens one eyes and looks around.

Mara and daddy laying on the bed.

The many faces of Mara.

Sleeping with her tonge poking out. Her cousin Sam did this a lot when he was a baby. Cute!

Pictures From the Hospital...

Here is mommy sleeping like a baby...well, better than a baby. We now know that babies don't exactly sleep peacefully...nor for very long. I love sleeping on my stomach and was glad to be able to do it again...so comfy.

Mommy and baby sleeping. Awww!


Mommy got tired of being in the bed so daddy took it over for a little while.

She is so precious!


Cute sad face. Great smile!

Here's our first family picture. Where's Marlayna (you know like Where's Waldo.)

Are you my mother?

Marlayna is getting ready to leave the hospital. Her premie outfit was too big!

Aunt Julie holding the dressed and ready Marlayna...ready to venture out of her second home...first home, mommy's womb...second home, the hospital.

All strapped in.

On our way to the car.

I was so glad to get out of that hospital room!

So was Nathan!

Happy parents and baby in back.

We are a happy family!

Marlayna Joy

Marlayna Joy Freitas was born on April 10th at 1:17 p.m. She weighed 5 lbs and 12 oz. and measured 17 and 1/2 inch long.

Labor pretty much began at 4:45 a.m. and lasted until 1:17 p.m. just over eight hours. Not exactly a picnic for any of us. especially being up for 36 hours with a brief nap between. Becky had to overcome vomiting and numbness before she could enjoy her baby girl. Marlayna had lungs that didn't want to work just yet and needed help from a machine to blow air into her lungs. Nathan had feet that felt like they walked through disney land ten times and starvation because he didn't want to miss a thing. Right now we are enjoying the calm before the real life begins.

Marlayna is named after a girl I met on my mission in Montana. My first area was Billings and my trainer and I were the missionaries in a family ward and a single adult ward.

Marlayna Arcile Wiley was a ward missionary in the single adult ward. She was one of the best ward missionaries of my mission. She is one of those people who I met and instantly loved. Not only was she a devoted single adult ward missionary (which is super rare) she is absolutely devoted to the gospel of Jesus Christ. She is funny and witty. She makes friends with everyone and she keeps them! She never says anything negative or cruel about anyone else. She is true! She has been and continues to be a great example to me. Before I finished my mission Marlayna was sent to the Maryland Boston mission! She is now studying at BYU-I.

Serving a mission was a great time in my life. I loved it. Many many many people have impacted my life, but I really REALLY like Marlayna's name and since she has impacted my life by her good example and she happens to be from my mission too, we named our daughter after her.

Marlayna Joy's middle name comes from my Grandmother on my mom's side. She was a great woman! She was killed in a car accident when I was 5 but, I do have memories of her! She would play hide and seek with us and always gave us wonderful hugs! She always seemed happy, a true reflection of her name...Joy!

Growing up in San Jose where my mother was raised was cool! Especially when people who knew my grandmother would tell me things about her! Everyone loved her! She was a very service oriented woman. She devotedly served in many callings of the church. One calling I know she had was the Nature Lady at girl's camp. They called her Madame Butterfly. Isn't that cool!!!

Well, that's pretty much the story on Marlayna Joy's name. She already has a number of nicknames.

I like to call her Marlayna or Mara.

Nathan likes to call her M.J. (her initials and the heroine's name on Spiderman =-)

Julie my sister likes to call her Marley...and sometimes even calls her Bob (because of Bob Marley)

My mom likes to call her Layna.

I don't know if one sweet little girl could have more nicknames.

I am trying to post this at the hospital but I am unable to load any pictures. You will have to wait until I get home.

We finally managed to get a few pictures up. More will be coming so be patient.

One of the few pictures we have of Marlayna. She doesn't open her eyes too often yet so this one is a little blurry but you can still see how beautiful she is.Becky enjoying her new role as a mother!
Nathan trying to look comfortable in his new role as a father.

To garden or not to...

Because Becky keeps getting threatening memos about not posting lately, she has taken it out on me, the farmer, to post. At this time Becky is currently doing a training on conference weekend or she would be doing this.

The topic I have been assignend to brag about as these spots should be called is our attempt at gardening this year. Last week, which would be the 29th of March, I could not refrain from trying out the new Mantis tiller that Becky's parents have bought. It made gardening so much easier for me. Now I just need to convince some people that weeding is not neccessary beforehand but we still had fun. We planted a lot of peas (yuck!) and also did an herb garden of a sorts. with popsicle sticks to label the different herbs. We had to eat four popsicles each that day just to have enough popsicle sticks.





Even though it was a lot of hard work, we had a lot of fun. I don't know why it was fun because it was work! But the real kicker is after a nice productive spring day in the garden on a Saturday nature decides to drown out the happiness with a couple of inches of snow the next day.

The snow has finally cleared off. This week we are going to venture out again with hopes of planting raspberry bushes. They are not blackberries but I guess a farmer has start somewhere.

How To Lose Your Husband....

Well, I have been thinking that I want a new camera, but we really don't have the money. Who does!?!?! Honestly! I wanted one because I want to be able to video our new baby, when she comes. Then I remembered that my current digital camera can do video clips!!! Perfect!!! Problem solved.

I found the button that does the video clips and we had to test it out.

We will practice to to get more cinema savvy before the baby comes. And I'm a little camera shy...especially video camera shy. This video does not do this little dance justice. So, I if you see me and want to see the cute little hip shaking tummy rub dance in person...just ask!!! It's funny! But, very much like something one might do to repell others.

I Like Change....Change is good.

Ok, I know posting a blog doesn’t take very much time, especially a blog with few or no pictures but, I honestly have had NO TIME!!!

Work has gotten MUCH busier with my new responsibilities, which I am so grateful for. They just hired a new guy, whom I’ve been helping train that will take over all my responsibilities while I go on maternity leave. Then he goes off to law school in July or August…just in time for me to return to work and take back my responsibilities. Perfect!!!

So, my plan is to try and post every Saturday. I know that’s just once a week…not the every four days that Julie the Blog Czar demands, but that is the best I can strive for, at this time.

This blog is generally about work but, mostly it's about change and how change is good. There have been A LOT of changes at work. One change I can talk about without having to kill anyone when I’m done (I work with a lot of top secret information) is the topic of moving. Yes, our whole department moved. We were in this area:

Lots of windows, nice big 1 acre plots, big desk tops and three drawers, low cubicle walls so we could still see each other and talk to each other, etc.

This is my old lonely desk and those two gems are my co-workers who miss me so much!!! (They are in a different department now, SO many changes!) Lindsey is my deskmate!!! I miss her so! I put her stapler in jell-o once (there is a blog about it somewhere, still gotta post the pictures, someday)…it was a disaster…That reminds me, I gotta try that again!

This is Lindsey's desk. Since the move was kinda sudden and I didn't have my camera, I didn't get a picture of my desk before it all got moved. So, this is much like what my desk looked like.

ANYWAY.

This is our new cave. (no windows)

And this is my new desk…

Yes, 1/3 of the size of my old desk, only two drawers, much higher cubicle walls.

Ok, honestly, the move was not so bad. And I actually like the cave. I had my apprehensions but, I’m keeping a positive attitude and I think that has made all the difference.

No windows- Yea right!!! I can have any VIEW I want!!!

Breath taking!!! Right?

Or

YES!!! This is an actual “view” from MY “window!”

This one is my favorite!

I love the ocean and the beach! Look at the sky!!!

Going from one acre to a third of an acre is not so bad either. When I took the picture of my cubicle above, I was just settling in and now it’s much more organized and efficient. I think a smaller space will help all of us stay more organized.

Another thing I like is that our whole department is in that room. No more background noise of customer service and collections! Changes occur pretty fast at my job and it will be nice to all be in one location where our manager can say, “Hey everyone! We gotta change this or that” And we’re all there to hear it and get it from the horses’ mouth.

Change is good, especially when you focus on the positive and not dwell on the negative.