Happy New Year!

Ok, ok, its been a month. But I'm not too late for Chinese new year!

A lot has happened in our lives these past two years...

So pretty much, we moved to Irvine. had another kid. got sealed in the LA temple. and that was the jist of 2008.

2009 goes like this. at the beginning of last year i told everyone we were pregnant with number four. i had volunteered to be the den leader for the tiger cubs. which was awesome, until some of the parents got on my nerves and started taking over. First grade was great for Nephi, he had bunch of adventures. i took a parenting class through the school, which was awesome. What was not awesome was Nephis first grade teacher, Mrs. Glassen. She called me in a couple of times to have a parent/ teacher "conference" which actually turned out to be a verbal attack on me as a parent.

(in a high pitched bubble-your-throat tone) "you're a bad parent. take more parenting classes. you are neglecting Nephis talents. hes doing poorly in school because you dont enforce the ridiculous rules i have set for him and make him do the absurd amount of homework i dump on all the five year olds. he doesn't do his schoolwork well because of you, even though hes doing the homework perfectly. blah, blah, blah, im a judgmental, old cynic. and lets not forget how hypocritical i am!"

ok, so i was paraphrasing, but thats pretty much what she did. and being pregnant at the time all i could do to keep myself from screaming in her face was to cry.

enough of that.

and then came the sweet release of summer break. i never wanted Nephi home from school more than i did from her class.

June, the last month of only three kids! and a fun one it was too. i think we had enough summer fun to last us the whole summer. we needed to because the baby was due july 8 and i would be out of commission for at least the rest of the summer! But i thank the good Lord every day that i had Deanna there to help me. Not to mention two mothers and two fathers less than an hour away, for when i needed them.

and thus on her due date Willow was born!! seven eight oh nine. my longest labor, eight hours, i know, you can hate me. when i saw the red hair i knew i had to name her Willow. it fit so much better than River or Zelda. of course Rose would have been nice. Faye was perfect for her middle name. I wish my Grandma Teddy could see her. thats silly to say because i know she can. i just wish i could see her see Willow. Faye was Grandmas baby sister who had red hair. She talked about her all the time.

Earlier i had mentioned Deanna.

Deanna moved out on October 6th. it was sad to come back from our famous free trip to Hawaii and there was no Deanna to be seen (not to mention Elsie >

I didn't cry when she left. i wanted to, but i couldn't really believe she was leaving, or that she was gone! she was with us for two years plus one month, approximately. I never thought about how much she meant to me until my mom mentioned that she was like part of our family. i mean we were always joking that Deanna was my sister or my daughter, hahaha. but it really hit me that she was like my family about a month after she left. i haven't had a best (girl ) friend since Alise, we were about 18 when we stopped hanging out, mostly because i moved to Santa Barbara. ive been talking to Alise more recently and, even though it had been a few years, its almost as though we were never apart. like we are really sisters. that kind of sisterhood bond is forever. Alas, that is a story for another post. it has been five years since i had a bestie, another girl who i can go shopping with, work out with, eat guilty ice cream with and watch stupid movies and talk about stupid things with. i appreciated all of those times that were spent huddled in blankets on my comfy couch, watching ghost hunters and Seinfield and "i didn't know i was pregnant", those times will be missed, but they will never be forgotten. there will be a time when we can do that again. i know that in my heart. i love all my sisters and my besties still, and i always will.

there will always be a place in my heart and my home for any of my friends and family who need me.

We decided that four is our magic number, so i got an IUD. look it up.

Now i can sit back and watch my beautiful children grow. and wait for my siblings and friends to have kids!!

Elijahs 2nd Birthday

You can see more at my Facebook page,
http://www.facebook.com/?sk=media#!/photo.php?pid=32419194&id=201303044

im not always layed back, dude!

The Ryersons are confused!!!

yes i mean all of us...

Shane has no idea what he wants to be when he grows up... still!! I wish i could tell him but hes just the kind of person to do the opposite of what i tell him unless i didnt mean it, then he does it.

i want to tell him to stick it out and get his math phd, but i know hes gonna be bored and hate it and end up failing out. i want to tell him to go for the engineering program, but i dont want to stay here in student housing that we can hardly afford! i want to tell him to apply in another state somewhere far far away, but i dont know how long i can last without my family or close friends. i have never been able to make a friend as good as the ones i did when i was a kid.

im going straight out of my mind with elijah! ELIJAH, the sweetest cutest most adorable little guy on earth! ever since our trip to hawaii he has been nothing but terrible! well not entirely of course. but heres the thing, my kids get spoiled to heck when gramma takes them for a few days or more, thats why i didnt want my mom to take them away when the baby was born, but of course she did anyway. and it actually wasnt as bad as i thought it would be so i let her take them for a week when we left for our free hawaii trip, which i will write about next!

when we came back elijah would not go to bed on time like he used to, he used to be the BEST sleeper ever! seriously! it would be like nine at night and we already gave him bath brushed teeth and read stories so we would pick him up and say night night its time for bed and he may squirm a little if he didnt feel like sleeping but almost always would just lay back and lift up his arms to get ready for the blankey to fall on him, then he would snuggle into his bed and close his eyes. it usually took at most 2 minutes!!!!

now, well now it takes at least 20!!!! its driving me nuts!!! he doesnt want to go to bed so i let him stay up a little later to run around a wear himself down, when that doesnt work i use force and stick him in bed the exact same way i used to but now he can climb out and keeps doing it, i cant rock him because hes still got enough energy to squirm out of my arms. arrrg!

but tonight was better, everytime he got out of bed i put him back in and told him it was bedtime, then he got up once more and asked for a bottle of milk. so i gave it to him against my better judgment and he stayed in bed! im not doing that every night so his teeth can rot out!!!

ugg, and on top of that he wont eat anything i give him! he says no to the sandwiches and no to the cereal and no to the bananas!!! bananas were his FAVORITE!!! im so sad...

he says, "nandy! keecoos!!" which means candy and cookies of course. and i ask him if he wants milk or juice (which is still pretty full of sugar) and he says, "NO! Hot...ko-ko!" which is his way of saying "hot coco" of course.... geez sugar-a-holic!! oh yeah, he gets in the fridge and pulls out everything he can, like eggs. he loves eggs, but if they arent boiled they make a mess, and if they are boiled they make a mess!!! ugg... poor willow is getting neglected and the house is getting beat up because im either scolding or entertaining elijah or nursing willow!

yikes, then theres nephi. poor kid being the oldest and whatnot. every time i turn around hes turned on some sort of electronics device. i let him play for a few minutes but when i finally ran down the list of banned electronics for the day he complains about going to visit friends!!!!

i want to see this friend i want to see that friend!

why cant you play with your siblings?

i dont want to!!

play with your brother so he will stop making messes please!!

its boring!!

play with him or clean your room, you choose.

elijah, lets go play with blocks!

*sigh*

and at school is another story. i love his new teacher, shes totally awesome and really down to earth and way positive about life!! shes easy to talk to and very thoughtful and kind.

he had been doing pretty good with his peers and not getting referrals from the yard lady. but once in a while he will get one for shoving or bumping or doing something clumsy with his body. he says he didnt do it but we have explained time and time again that just because you didnt do it intentionally doesnt mean you didnt do it at all. saying that would be lying. but he just doesnt get it! also im not so sure it wasnt intentional. also he gets in trouble ont he bus quite often, but the thing is, those kids on the bus suck! they are always being mean to nephi for no reason and nephi doesnt take crap from anybody so he ends up getting himself in trouble. now i like that nephi defends himself, but im scared of him getting hurt or hurting someone else. i dont know exactly how to handle that.

advice on any of this would be quite helpful

and emmalily, shes a sweet little angel... if you are a a grown up. if you are a four year old girl, shes down right a plain little jerk!!! for some unknown reason she can not for the life of her play with more than two girls at a time and gets really mean if youre a third little girl trying to play with her clique. this sickens me because i was quite the opposite as a child. i would play with tons of kids whether i knew them or not and i always thought the more the merrier!! i really do not understand why she needs to have her small clique and on top of that she needs to be the one in charge, the controller of this tiny group, like in mean girls!?!?! it has nothing to do with liking the kids, nothing what so ever. it has to do with being able to control everything they are doing at that moment and being able to control the people she is playing with.... i need to find a way to turn this in to a positive thing!! she would make a brilliant class president or even a US president someday, but i need to make sure it doesnt go down a nasty unforgiving road first.

as for willow, well shes just a baby! i love her and everything seems pretty good. aside from the fact that her sleep schedule is totally off cause of hawaii, but its getting fixed slowly.

i mean, things arent really too bad. i just needed to vent some frustration and this totally helped.

Willow Faye

Willow is getting so big and gorgeous!

Here are a few pics of her lately

Four Children

As im sure most of you noticed by now, Shane and I now have four children together.

Some people would ask me, "Are you insane?!" I noticed that those people usually dont have kids. The ones that do have kids often ask, "So how many more are you planning to have?" I know its usually just a joke, but Im thinking, "Um yeah right, I'm retiring my uterus."
I sometimes feel bad when I think this because I always knew that Shane wanted like ten kids. But he also knew that I didnt want to be pregnant more than four times. Since we didn't have triplets and twins, its just not happening that way.

Also, we can't exactly fit more than four kids in student housing without breaking some kind of rules! We're still on the wait list for a three bedroom as it is!! Even though 860 sq ft for 6 people is totally LAME, it will be better once there are two seperate "rooms'" for the boys and girls. Then mom and dad get their space back and once Willow stops breastfeeding everything will be back to normal. And by "everything" I mean my horomones (aka attitude, patience, overall mood) which will end up being better for everyone.

Seriously, as if childrearing wasn't already physically hard enough, you add the emotional stress from adjusting to a new baby and then chemical imbalances from the overload of horomones during pregnancy and breastfeeding. Then add the fact that someone forgot to mention that "pregnancy brain" lasts a lot longer than just pregnancy! Oh yeah, and im hungrier now more than ever!!

Ill be so relieved if I can make it the whole year.

Life comes at you fast, especially when you have children.

One of my biggest fears (Im sure a lot of people also fear this) is that I won't be a good parent. I want to be perfect so that my kids will try to be even better than that. But, we all know that nobody is perfect, ever. I want to be a better example for them, i want them to succeed in life. to be good people and live a good life, helping others, showing love and being a good example in general. The problem is that ive noticed that the older one gets the less perfect, the less innocent, the less generous, the less loving, the more bitter and hateful they get.
I know this because as it has happened to you, its happened to me. i saw the world so differently as a child.

Birth Story

My mom came over on Tuesday July 7 to go to the beach with us and hang out before the baby came. We took her to Corona Del Mar, because we usually take her to Balboa but this time we wanted to go somewhere closer. Even though it was a Tuesday afternoon it was still full of people!
So we got the kids all dressed and ready to go, everyone was in their suits and ready for some wave action! Yes, even pregnant me and hubby too.
It was fun and relaxing to go to the beach. We all tried out the boogie boards, except Elijah because he was so not into the ocean on this particular day. I got out there in the ocean with Shane and caught a good wave on the board, even with my belly I was still able to ride the board to shore! It was awkward, but fun! I was balancing on my elbows to prevent my belly from hitting the board or the ground. Then after I was at the shore with my mom, we watched Shane catch a huge one. he was coming right for us! And for some reason, instead of running away like I may have normally done, I stood there and opened my legs creating a archway for him to go through! I was a little afraid he would clip my ankles while attempting to make a clean glide through, but not afraid enough to move. And he did it! Boy I wish we had that on video. It would have looked hilarious! Sorry that had little or nothing to do with the birth, it was just awesome.
After we were all tuckered out and hungry, we left the beach with extra shovels and a satisfied exhaustion.
Then we got ice cream at Thriftys on the way back home. And to top off the fun, they had a two scoop special for 99 cents!!!
When we got home we cleaned up Elijah's mystery foot injury that had showed up out of nowhere on the fourth of July. Then had our home teacher come by and help Shane give him a blessing. Since they were already there doing blessings I figured why not do a blessing for my labor and delivery to go safely.
Before my mom left she gave me a pedicure, something i had been meaning to go get but was hesitant because of the cost. After i convinced her to put glitter pink on top of black nail polish, because old lady soft pink just isn't my style and it had to be pink because I was having a girl, she said good night to the kids and took my laundry home to do for me! That was really nice since the next day was my due date and I was so not feeling the laundry thing. She said she would bring it back when I went into labor, assuming of course that labor would start within the next two days.
My friend was joking that would start labor at 3 in the morning the next day. We both wished that would really happen, but on Wednesday July 8, I woke up around 9am and didn't feel any closer to labor. :-(
The poor kids have been getting up by themselves for the last couple of weeks because i had been so tired lately with obvious causes. So this morning since we were out of cereal i decided to make them pancakes, because i was feeling much better, slightly more energetic and they deserved a treat.
Nephi was helping me in the kitchen while the others were playing in the living room. Shane had to go teach his class this morning from 9 to 11 and my friend staying with us went out for a run, so we were on our own for the time being.
its funny, there were a few things i wanted to do this morning but when i woke up i forgot about them.
So we finished the batter, had the stove on and i was about to poor the pancakes when my first contraction hit. It was different from before, i knew it was real but it was a little less intense than my last two labor contractions. So i looked at Nephi and told him that mommy was going to have the baby today, and yes i can still make the pancakes. And so i finished making the pancakes while I called Shane, It was already 11am so he had just finished class when I called him. He came running home! I made a birth plan online while I was waiting for contractions to get harder and frequent enough to have to go to the hospital. We got everything ready, when my friend returned we told her what was happening, she got the kids ready to go to the park and play so they will have something to do while waiting for baby sister to come! We called our moms and dads, then by the time we left it was around noon. Shane joked about going to get a burger before hitting the hospital, because that is what my dad actually did on the way to the hospital when my parents had me!! Of course since my last three labors were less than four hours long and i had so far been laboring for an hour and a half i had refused to let him do that, although we both knew he was half joking.
Shane was on the 73 headed North when he asked me which way to go after that. I looked at him and was in shock, "I have never driven to the hospital this way!" i had always just gone up PCH, although i knew that a closer entrance was off Newport blvd, and i remembered that the 55 S turned into Newport. So that's what i told him, then he remembered too because i know he had driven away from the hospital that way before.
So of course there was really bad traffic getting off the 55 merging into Newport, there ALWAYS is and I straight forgot! But i wasn't too worried, because the contractions were not hard enough to push out a baby yet.
On the way there my mother-in-law called asking for directions to the hospital. i didn't know why she needed them yet or why she was calling me while i was in labor, because Shane and i had agreed that the birth would be more relaxing if we didn't have anyone in the room that wasn't legally obliged to be there. So then Shane let me know that he never actually told her she was not invited to the birth. She missed our first child's birth because she had left the room and when she came back they were not allowing anyone else in because i was about to deliver. i of course had no clue what was going on at the time, but Shane said she was very very hurt by it and he couldn't hurt her more by telling her not to come, so i figured as long as she was quiet and respectful (which she was) why not let her be there this time. Of course i knew my mother would be very upset about this because she wanted to be there very badly, but she was there for the births of our first two and she has five more kids that haven't had children yet, so she has plenty of chances to be at more births.
We got to the hospital and went up to the labor and delivery floor to check in. We had to wait because the place was full! Luckily we didn't have to wait too long... for a room.
Now the real waiting has begun. How much longer will it take for this labor to progress? holy crap, its been two hours. That's already longer than my last labor. OMG, its now almost 3pm. That's four hours, this is officially my longest labor! Its definitely progressing, ouch. How much longer is this torture going to last? I'm really regretting not picking up some burgers now. "Shane, get me some food!!"
"The nurse said you cant eat before you give birth!"
"I don't care!!"
He didn't get me food, but he went downstairs with his mom to get her something to eat. He said he was going to wait to eat so we can be hungry together. He can be so sweet and romantic sometimes. But i was still hungry. OW, I CANT TAKE IT ANYMORE!! Each half hour is stretching slowly, every time I have a contraction it feels like time speeds up in between! They aren't regulating, but they are consistently getting harder and more painful. The nurse comes in when a big one hits.
"Shes transitioning now." She says ever so sweetly.
Oh, I can tell. Then next contraction comes and I can feel my body pushing the baby down into attack position. As the nurse is leaving I'm thinking, where is she going? This baby is coming now.
"shanethebabyscomin" I mumble through clenched teeth. I'm trying to remember my breathing, its easier to relax when Shane is stroking my hair and holding me. Another contraction hits and I'm screaming it now,
"SHES COMING!!!!"
"Mom, get the nurse!"
Shane starts laughing as his mother attempts to open the door but it somehow unable to. She yells at the door as she struggles to open it, finally success! I have another contraction as the nurse and doctor run in with the equipment and begin to set up. Shes crowning, I didn't need the nurse to tell me that this time. This time i new what my body was doing, I could feel it. Shes coming and the doctor was still setting up whatever it was. I wasn't going to wait for him so i just pushed her out with the next contraction.
What a feeling!! The water popped and she came out, nice and slow compared to EmmaLilys birth. I could feel every inch of her body as it left mine. Then I felt everything else gush out, and RELIEF swept through my body and filled every inch of what used to be there. As I held my wrinkly, soft, warm, pink baby girl in my arms for the first time, I was overwhelmed with happiness.

Summer is around the corner!

Husband and Wife!

Children that are already born!

New Baby!

I CANT WAIT UNTIL SUMMER BREAK!!!

Why?

1. Nephi is out of school!
2. Shane is out of school!
3. we get to go camping one last time with only three kids!
4. Fathers Day!
5. Baby shower party!
6. Birth of baby #4!
7. Beach days!
8. Relaxing...