A Not So Natural Childbirth

So 2 1/2 years ago I posted about my childbirth experience with Emily. And it was a pretty "uneventful" experience. Everything happened as it should have. Well.... it has been the COMPLETE opposite with Ana. It was definitely a whole lot worse than with Emily. This just goes to show that every pregnancy and labor experience is different even with the same mother.

Last Post of 2015 (Christmas, 3rd Trimester Update, and Name Reveal!)

Merry Christmas, everyone!

We didn't do anything big this year because of #2, but we did do some things for Emily to make Christmas fun for her. I took today off as cook so I didn't make anything fancy to eat. Instead we concentrated on making sure Emily enjoyed opening her presents and playing with her new toys. And as she naps from the excitement this morning, I'm taking this time to give you guys an update on things since things will start to get really hectic once 2016 (!) arrives.

Emily's present area

It's a HUGE Update!

Things are staying busy here at the Lyons' house. And as autumn has finally arrived (although I will miss summer), I figure I would do a summary of what has happened this past season since my last update in July.

The New Home Sweet Home

So there's a good reason I haven't posted anything for a while (again). We were in the process of buying and selling homes! It was a whirlwind of prepping for showings, seeing houses and dealing with 2 closings within a month. It was a tad hectic here.

But Sue! You haven't been in your house for very long. Correct. We have lived at house for 2 years once we finally moved, but certain circumstances had us consider moving now.

Update in Life

Happy Easter friends!

It's Been a While!

It's been several months since my last post. Nothing incredible major happened in that time. It was more like a bunch of little events that piled up onto each other and it's harder to get back on track with a toddler.


So, what happened?

We traveled to the Tampa Bay area to visit the in-laws and friends and go to a wedding.

Emily and grandpa

We celebrated Christmas with a very sick baby.

Not fun.

We celebrated my mom's birthday by flying my parents here for a week. My sister and her boyfriend also flew in to celebrate.

Birthday dinner: lasagna, salad, cheesecake

Emily got sick... again, but not as bad as Christmas.

David got sick. I got through all the sickness with a mild cold, whew!

And here we are today, with me having the time to catch up!

So, hopefully, I will be a little more consistent with my posts. I have some recipes to share, show crafts that I have completed, and share baby knowledge, like, we're sleep training Emily right now to transition easily when Daylight Savings begins. Also, I want to share the stuff that I'm watching or reading because I love talking about them! Like, right now, I am watching the second season of Game of Thrones. I'm only done with the first episode but it's really good! Good first episode for a season.

Crossing fingers guys!

1 Year Retropsection

So~~~~ My baby is one!! Seriously, where has the time gone? And in the 6 months since my last update, Emily has changed so much... again!

We had a great first birthday with my parents flying in to celebrate. I got a cake for Emily and we had a traditional setting with fruits and rice cakes.My mom even borrowed a hanbok (traditional Korean dress) from a friend for Emily to wear.

Happy birthday!

Traveling Alone for a Breastfeeding Mom

It's been so long since my last post. Oh, life. But I really wanted to post about my adventure traveling alone and pumping.

So, a few weeks ago, my book club celebrated our 5 year anniversary. And we planned a weekend trip to a house in Virginia. It was a wonderful time but underlying with some stress.

Birthday Brunch

This past weekend was my birthday! And as birthday weekends go, this one was pretty good. It included my family, friends, video games and a 5k.

First birthday with my family!

Chalk Art Festival

It's been so long since I posted about an outing. Even though Emily is still on 2 naps, it's at a pretty consistent time so if we plan things well, we can maximize how long we are about to be out. Her first nap is always short so I don't feel too bad if she falls asleep in her stroller but I do want her to be home for her second nap because that is the long one.

I found out that the Chalk Art Festival was happening this weekend so we decided to head over downtown to look at the chalk art. This definitely reminded me of the Festival of the Masters at Downtown Disney. Obviously, this one was only chalk art but the Festival of the Masters also had chalk artists at work. Of course we went Sunday because that's when a majority of the art would be complete.

I'm so glad we went. The weather was perfect, Emily was in a good mood, and the art was fantastic.

Artists hard at work

Mother's Day 5k

Sometimes I feel like "Hallmark" holidays are a little much. Especially, if someone gets really bent out of shape if they aren't given an expensive gift or something. But, Mother's Day is a nice little holiday to take a day and really appreciate someone you love and I do like that about these kinds of holidays.

Christmas Tradition

Merry Christmas everyone!

Even though we are having a very lowkey Christmas this year, I am very excited. This will be our first Christmas together as a family. Last year was our first Christmas as a married couple but we traveled for Christmas so we did put up a tree or anything. And we did not have Emily so this is our first Christmas where we can start new traditions together.

A Very Natural Childbirth

It has been 7 weeks since I gave birth to Emily. And I just want to say that giving birth is still the most awful thing I have endured. Don't get me wrong, the end result was worth it.

One Year 10/11/13

One year has flown by. And I don't even mean it figuratively; I mean it literally. So much has happened since the day we got married, it's hard to believe that we are here celebrating our one year anniversary. Of course the most important being that we now have Emily in our lives. And today also marks her being one month and officially leveled up from newborn to infant. (And soon in the future, hopefully, I will be able to blog about that special day)

Honeymoon Adventures Part 1

Now that we are playing the waiting game and I am finding ways to fill my time to keep me distracted, I realized I never shared our honeymoon photos. Or even talked about it. And it was an amazing trip!! Well, one of the reasons why is that we have photos but we have a lot of footage on the GoPro that we wanted to cap and share. Unfortunately, that footage is inaccessible at the moment so when we can get access to them again, I'll try to cap some and put it up in the album so check back in a bit.

So, I am finally going to talk about our awesome honeymoon and share pictures of a time when I did not have a belly. Also, I am breaking this up in 2 parts because I want to talk about the food separately. It was so delicious that it deserves its own post.

Lasagna Debacle

This is the story of how this week's lunch is going to be sandwiches.

Originally, the menu was going to be this awesome looking recipe for turkey, spinach, and mushroom lasagna for lunch and kimchi jjigae (kimchi stew) for dinner.

Turkey Spinach and Mushroom Lasagna

(Healthy. Delicious.)

And

Kimchi Jjigae

(Maangchi)

Before I continue, I would like to say this to the lasagna lover, it is not for the faint of heart. And now I will start at the beginning.

Concert: Music of John Williams and the Movies

My nerd intake was happily fulfilled this night. The Colorado Symphony Orchestra was having a concert of movie music with John Williams being the focus. The concert was Tuesday but it was actually postponed from a week ago because it was going to be held at the Red Rocks Amphitheater but due to bad weather it got changed to Tuesday at Boettcher Concert Hall which is in downtown Denver.

For a weeknight, it was a pretty great night!

Baby Shower!

Being pregnant apparently does not stop me from doing a million things. I will do it SLOWER, but the amount of work does not decrease. But that's okay because it leads to awesome things!

This past Saturday, David and I had our baby shower for Baby Lyons. It wasn't anything fancy but it did take some planning and I did get a few decorations for the house.

Whoo, Winnie the Pooh theme!

Third Trimester Update

I am officially in my third trimester! Guys, I am two-thirds of the way there! I thought this would be a good time for a big update on my pregnancy so far.

29-week bump!!

Too Much Going On

I've been meaning to post a number of things for the past couple of weeks but it has been quite busy in the House of Lyons.

To summarize: we bought a house, moved, David was out of town for a week and we had friends over for the weekend who arrived while David was still out of town. This all happened in two weeks.

So, to the most exciting news.....

We bought a house! Well, townhome, if you want to be specific.

It's definitely happened a lot quicker than we expected (I, especially, was not expecting it) but, in the end, it was for the best. When we moved here from Florida, we moved into a one bedroom, one bath apartment. Then we found out I was pregnant. Well, we could have made do for at least the first year, but we would have needed a bigger space sooner than later. David was very anxious about space and the like so after discussing it, I agreed that we could start looking for houses, but there was no rush at all in finding one right away.

The only reason I was reluctant was because I didn't want to deal with the whole process of buying, moving and maybe even renovating a house while I was pregnant. Especially in my third trimester. There were plenty of sites that said you shouldn't buy a house while you're pregnant because it could cause a lot of unnecessary stress which then can lead to early labor. No thanks. So I told David we can start searching but if we didn't find anything by mid-July, we would stop looking. It was a good compromise since he promised he would take care of the bulk of the house issue. All I had to do was pick the one I liked.

So, it does seem like it's out of the blue but we have been looking at  townhomes for months. And we finally decided to go with the home we moved into. It had all the criteria we were looking for. The price was right, the location was good, the size was perfect, and it was ready to move in to. Sure there are several things that could be changed, and they will, but they are all things that are not urgent or dire that needed to be taken care of before we moved in.

It's all ours!

The day we closed on the house was also the day we started moving. And man was it a pain. Only because we didn't want to do any major packing until we knew for certain the house was ours. And the only way to know for certain was to close. So I focused on packing while David and Joe (thank God for Joe) started transporting things to the house (It was not far from the apartment). Then the next day he did all the heavy stuff and the rest of the boxes with the help from his boss and coworker.. oh, and boss' 4-year-old daughter (thank God for them).

Why didn't we wait a little or take our time? Three things. One, David didn't want to pay more rent since we had to break our lease anyway. Two, he was going to be out of town for the week. Three, we were having guests over the next weekend.

We pulled through and made it and while David was at his conference, I started to slowly unpacking the house. It got to a point, though, where I couldn't do much since I am unable to lift heavy boxes in my present condition, but I did what I could.

Last Thursday, our friends came into town for the weekend. Then David came home Friday. It was a fun time. Celebrating a birthday is always a great time to get together. And, as always, there was cosplaying.

Can you guess who they dressed up as?

I did not dress up but I was partying for a little bit. Until I got tired and went to bed around 11:00. You can even see that I'm tired.

So tired. But I stayed up long enough to play one game.

I'm impressed I even made it that late.

So, that's what happened the last couple of weeks. We are now finally having a normal week in our new home and it's exciting. Except for the unpacking part. But I'm not too stressed about that since I have time. And now, I can earnestly start baby shopping since we have the room for it!

Oh, and Baby Lyons was in top form this weekend and she was showing off to our friends. She was wiggling, punching, and kicking and they got to see and feel it. Seriously, that is the best part of being pregnant.

Lastly, to end the post, I am officially in my third trimester! I'm almost there! So the next post will be a lovely huge update on how it's been so far.