poo and the bmv

Chad and Weston are talking to each other-Weston is very excitable/squeally today...it's so cute. Sometimes he sounds like a girl though...we'll have to watch that.
I went to the wonderful BMV today to renew my driver's license-that's right, I am now 25, goodbye youth :( - and I took Weston with me in the only vehicle available, the pickup. Please don't berate me. I turned the airbag off. I had to go and I really had no other options-we made it safe so don't worry.
During the half hour we were there, Weston decided it would be a good time to fill his drawers. I didn't hear anything but as I was holding him, I could smell it and all of you that have smelt it before know what I'm talking about. He doesn't have the nice newborn poo anymore, you know, the kind that doesn't have a scent. Nope, he's graduated to nasty smelly clay-consistency poo.
So as I'm standing there in close proximity to other people, i am just hoping it was a toot and nothing else, that way it would eventually go away. No luck, it got smellier and smellier the longer I stood there.
We got out of there without overhearing any comments-whew.
I love being a mommy-so many fun adventures!

A New Outfit

Yesterday, Weston and I went to the hospital to get him weighed and to show him off. After the hospital we were going to meet Grammy Clark for lunch and b/c she was going to give me some stuff that I had left at her house a few days ago. So, I packed an extra outfit for Weston for the few hours that we would be away from home, figuring that was all he would need...silly me. I always pack at least 2 extra outfits, I don't know what was going through my mind.

Anyway, on the way to the hospital and while there, Weston decided to puke all over his clothes to the point of being drenched and disgusting. Mom wouldn't let me redress him those clothes. So, i put him in another outfit. We got to the diner in Hilliard in about an hour and Weston was not going to be very patient about getting his lunch. I warmed his bottle and fed it to him. He ate almost the whole 1o oz without a break...oops. Grandma Clark took him to burp him and he immediately lost his lunch all over her!!! I should've known better the little stinker.

Throughout the entire lunch, Weston kept "sharing" his lunch with his grammy.

Needless to say, his clothes didn't fare much better than grammy's blouse and I didn't have anymore clothes for the little guy. So before we got back on 70 to head home, i stopped at target and picked up a cheap outfit. he needed some more clothes for later on anyway.

However, soon after we got home, Weston broke in those new clothes. 3 outfits in a matter of 4 hours...priceless.

here are pics for some smiles:

Myrtle Beach and Other News

It has been a very long time, once again and I apologize. I really have meant to update this thing but every time i think about it, it never happens. So I will now take the time while my little guy is napping, however long that may be.

Weston and I just returned from a nice week at Myrtle Beach with my family. Aside from the 12 hour drive, we had a great time. Ask anybody who has been stuck in a vehicle with a 3 month old for 12 or more hours and they will tell you it is no fun for anybody in the car.

We left Friday night/Saturday morning around midnight in order to drive most of the way while the kids slept. It was a good idea, but come morning, nobody was in a good mood. The last two hours of the drive-and most frustrating thanks to a faulty GPS-Weston pretty much screamed his heart out. His protest was heard by all in the Myrtle Beach area.

The drive home went much smoother with only about 20 minutes total of fussing. However, the worst part of the traveling was Weston's digestive schedule-if you know what i mean. He has been on a "weekly" schedule, meaning, he has blow outs all day long-once a week-and it just so happened that his once a week day occurred on the way there and on the way back resulting in a clean up of his carseat and his body during the trips. Oh what fun-especially when you are cleaning these kind of messes in the dark in a rest area somewhere in West Virginia. Oh boy :) I feel sorry for the person on bathroom duty that had to empty the trash-SMELLY!

During this week, Weston had a lot of interesting "firsts".

He got to "swim" in the ocean, "play" in the sand, and eat rice cereal.

Swimming in the ocean wasn't exactly his choice, but each day he enjoyed it more and more. That is until Grandpa Snyder took him a little too deep. As they were getting their pictures taken-which I will post when I get them-a few big waves hit and Weston did not appreciate the assault of salt water as the pictures will show.

Immediately after the pictures were taken, my dad gave me the screaming monster and i started nursing him to calm him down. He was traumatized, but everyone else was laughing histerically :) No worries though, Grandpa did earn his trust back later on in the week.

We did more swimming in the pool than we did the ocean and I dare say that Weston enjoyed the pool much more than he did the ocean, even though on the last day in the ocean, i got him to smile.

Much to our dismay though, the pool was closed for the last 3 days of our vacation-BOO. This resulted in a 2 hour search for a pool the saturday that we were leaving. We did end up finding the pool, but Weston was in blow-out mode, so he didn't have the pleasure of leaving floaties in the public pool.

As everyone knows, Weston has a bit of a purging problem. my lovely sister-in-law nicole told us that they gave AJ rice cereal to help with the issue and it worked. So I decided i was tired of the constant onslaught of soured milk and it was time to try something else since the Zantac didn't seem to be helping anymore. So we bought some organic rice cereal and gave weston his first real taste of solid foods-well, aside from the yogurt, chocolate, ice cream, whipped cream etc that he's had tastes of in the past :) I would never feed my child stuff like this at such an early age...ahem.

Anyway, he did a great job and I think he liked it. Aside from a face covered in cereal-he did great. Thanks to aunt Erin restraining him, all went pretty smooth.

Weston got to meet his cousins AJ and Elise this past week for the first time. Everybody got along and aside from one squashing attempt by Elise, there were no mishaps :)

Some milestones that Weston has reached in the past couple months are as follows-laughing out loud-sometime in the second month, rolling over from belly to back-around 2 1/2 months, talking a lot-i have no idea when-what a bad mommy, reaching and grabbing things-around 2 months. I can't remember any others right now, but when i do, i will post them.

Weston will be 4 months old-ALREADY!!-on August 8th. he is getting so big so fast it makes me sad.

Now for news on the job front for chad. He started at a job in St. Paris, ohio 3 weeks ago and is doing well. he is happy there for now. There may be another job opportunity in the future, but we're not sure. We are living with my parents for now during the week and we are traveling on the weekends. Hopefully our house sells soon so we don't have that burden anymore.

So if anyone is looking for a house in the Northwest Ohio area, we have a beauty that you may be interested in :)

That is all for now :) it only took 3 hours to get this post done-so i am done-whew

Still Waiting...

Chad had another interview yesterday morning...we are supposed to hear back from the company this morning...and he has to call a different company by today to let them know if he would like to accept the job offer they have given him. The one that is supposed to call him this mornign would be a better career move for him, so we are anxiously awaiting the phone call :)
Updates on Weston...he is doing GREAT! he sleeps through the night already! He started this about 2 weeks ago and it has been wonderful. We put him down around 11 pm and he doesnt wake until 8 or 9 in the morning. We've only had one night when we were at grandma and grandpa snyders house when he decided he didn't want to sleep. he woke up several times and i ended up on the couch with him. Luckily grandma snyder was having trouble sleeping so she took him and slept with him until 7 am. Thank you for the break! We didn't want to wake up daddy b/c of his interview the following morning!
the house is coming along very well. We have a couple big projects left-countertops in the kitchen and painting the basement-but other than that, everything else is small-touch up painting, hanging trim and cleaning!
hopefully we'll have the house on the market soon. We still dont have regular internet access and i can't post pictures at the library, so hopefully i'll get some up soon.
My great friend Carolyn took some awesome pictures of weston this week. He is now 2 months old! i can't believe it.
hopefully more will be posted later!

Long time...

I haven't posted in a while b/c of the hassle of internet access...sorry about that :)
In any case, until we have more/easier access, I will probably not be posting much and that means infrequent pictures.
Here's a little update...Chad has a job interview at the University of Akron on Wednesday. He has his second interview with KTH 2 weeks ago and we are still waiting to hear from them. We aren't sure which direction God is leading us, but we are keeping open minds and ears.
The pro's and con's we are dealing with are making this decision very hard if he is offered both jobs. Being at KTH will allow us to be close to both sets of parents/grandparents. However, we will still be far from a "big city" and we are anxious to not be in the boondocks anymore :)
At the U of Akron, Chad would be an assistant professor (he wouldn't be an assistant, its just what they call professors who aren't tenured). I think in the long run, this is what he would really like to do, but who knows.
Anyway, we would be farther from the parents-3-4 hours from mine and 2 from his, but we would be near a city and Chad would have his foot in the academia world.
Please keep us in your prayers as we have to make a decision soon.

Weston just had his 1 month checkup. The doctor didn't tell us his percentiles, but i did a little research and i think this is where he stands:
At birth, he weighed 8 lbs 3 oz and was 20.5 inches. I believe when i checked he was near the 90th percentile...but i can't remember.
At 1 month:
weight: 10 lbs 6 oz
Lenth: 22 in
Both put him in the 90th percentile...i think. i did a calculator thing online and it said he was in the 39th and 38th percentiles, but i thought that couldn't be correct, so i looked at a chart myself and found the 90th percentile rankings. i couldn't tell you if this is correct or not.

Some issues we have been having with mr weston are a lot of spitting up and he is starting to get very fussy when he is tired...that means he crys-A LOT.
however, he is still a joy and when he smiles at us or talks to us it melts our hearts!
That is all until i have internet access and time for more!

Weston Lee Clark

Well, it has been a long time since i've posted...so here's the rundown of what's happened to us the past few weeks:

After going in for my appointment on Monday April 6th, (before the squirt was born) the doc scheduled me to come in Tuesday night to start the induction process. Well, Tuesday morning around 2:30 I woke up having slight contractions. I was able to fall back asleep in between contractions until 4am. At 4, the pain in my back was pretty terrible and the contractions were 10 minutes apart. After about 4 of them...being painful enough to make me think they weren't braxton hicks. I woke chad up and he immediatley woke up and started rubbing my back. Around 4:30, the contractions jumped to 2-3 minutes apart and they were completely in my back. At that point, I decided to get in the shower and let the hot water run down my back. Chad rubbed my back the entire time. Unfortuneatly the hot water only lasted about 15 minutes and then it was gone :(. I wanted to cry.

At that point, i started walking laps around the house and squatting each time I had a contraction.

I called my mom at 6am to see what she thought. At one point, i had to lean over the sink b/c i thought i was going to vomit. My mom started laughing and said, "that my dear, is a contraction". Funny mom.

We decided to wait it out a little bit more and then finally at 8am after taking a walk around the block, we decided to head to the hospital. When we got there, they checked me and i was 90% effaced and still only 2 cm if that, dilated. My doc came in and broke my water around 8:30-commencing the long and tedious birth process. The contractions didn't get too horrible until around noon. I was trying to avoid pain meds unless i needed them, and boy did i need them.

I was having all back labor which was horrible and my contractions weren't even giving me a break. After contractions one on top of the other-literally no break from the pain-I decided to get an epidural. They gave me Nubaine to tide me over until i could get the epidural...well, it did NOTHING aside from make me loopy :) Chad said he would ask me questions and i wouldn't be able to answer them. I would just kind of stare and mumble.

I was finally at 4 cm and we were hoping the epidural would help me to relax and dilate a little faster. So at 2 pm, i finally got my epidural-how amazing it was...while it lasted.

Both sets of grandparents were at the hospital by 4pm on Tuesday. The Clarks arrived around noon and the Snyder's arrived at 4. Everybody hung out in my room as we talked, laughed, and watched TV...until around midnight when the pain was getting bad again.

The parents got kicked out of the room when the pain got more intense. When i finally asked if they could redo or up the epidural, the nurse said it was too late b/c i was 8 cm. What horrible news to hear!

So chad helped me breath through the contractions until it was time to push...and that didn't come until 3am. that was a VERY long time.

The nurse had me start pushing at 3am Wednesday morning-almost 25 hours after my labor started. This was without pain relief! I wanted to try without pain relief...but that was before i was in labor and i wanted something.

When i first started pushing, the squirts heart rate would drop, so the nurse called the dr in...however, when the doc got there, his heart rate was fine.

After 2 hours of pushing, the doc came in and said the we would need some intervention. They figured out that the squirt was coming out sunny-side up...which means he was facing up instead of down...hence the back labor and terrible pain. If he would have been facing the correct way, he probably would have come out a bit easier, but the doc seemed skeptical. So, my doc said that he could either use the forceps, but i would have 4th degree tearing that would be very painful, or we could do a c-section. At this point, my doctor didn't know that I didn't have any pain relief. As I winced and moaned through each contraction he asked me if I was feeling everything, and boy was I, especially when they tried to manually turn the little guy...that did not feel very good at all!

So when the dr figured out that I had no pain relief, he recommended a c-section. They were a bit concerned at this point b/c I had developed a fever-probably b/c of my being in labor and having my water broke for so long. I really didn't want a c-section from the beginning, but at this point, i wanted the pain to end. I had my mom come in to give me her suggestion and she told me that if it was her she would go for the c-section. So that's what happened...we went in for an emergency c-section.

They gave me some drugs to stop the contractions and they gave chad scrubs to change into. All of this happened at around 5:15am Wednesday. They wheeled me out of my room at about 6am. The anesthesiologist (sp?) came into the OR, took out the epidural and gave me a spinal...WONDERFUL!!!!! That was the best pain relief in the world. I couldn't feel a thing from my armpits down.

I was a bit upset that we had to resort to this, but it was the best option at this time. The whole c-section took only 25 minutes. As i was laying there, chad was by my shoulder and i could hear the doctor talking to chad but i wasn't sure what was going on. i was a bit out of it. I heard them talk about our little guy as they were pulling him out and I started crying b/c i couldn't see him and I didn't hear him cry. That was horrible. after a while they brought him to my head as they were stitching me up and they let me kiss his cheek and then they took him away. he still wasn't crying at this point and he was very limp.

i started crying even more and chad was also crying. Chad followed the little guy out to his recovery room and then they rolled me out to my recovery room. Since our little guy wasn't doing very well, i couldn't see him or hold him. Apparently, he wasn't responding very well and his color wasn't very good either. they had to keep putting a tube down into his lungs to suck out all the fluid. He couldn't cry very well and his oxygen levels were very low.

Fortunately, there was a video camera in my recovery room that allowed me to see my little guy as they were working on him. I pretty much was crying the entire time.

The pediatrition came in and told me that if he didn't start improving faster, then they would send him to Toledo...which really made me cry. At this point, the nurses fetched chad so i could have some support. After about 2 hours, my nurse snuck my little guy in so i could see him and hold him for the first time. I got to hold him for about a minute and then she had to take him back to put him back under the oxygen hood.

Luckily, mr weston started improving, so he didn't have to go to Toledo. After 4 or 5 long tedious hours, i was taken back to my room and weston was brought to us. Hence ending the long process of our little guy coming into the world. We got a taste of both worlds-natural birth and c-section. I will never have to go through a natural birth again-which i am ok with. Everybody says you won't remember the pain that you went through having your child...well, i remember every minute of it, but let me tell you, it was completely worth every minute. I would do this all over again for my little man. He is such a blessing from God!

That is Weston Lee Clarks birth story. Our little guy-born April 8th, 2009 at 6:23am; 8 lbs 3 oz; 20.5 inches long. Blue eyes, brown hair, long fingers, skinny toes and long skinny feet just like his daddy.

I love my handsome boy-i love being a mommy. I wouldn't change it for anything!!

Weston Lee Clark

Chad and I crying when they brought Weston to me in the Recovery Room.

That is a thermometer on my forehead in case you were wondering :)

Eviction Notice

I am issuing 5 day notice for EVICTION. Tenant will have 5 days in which he can either gather his belongings and promptly vacate the premises, or wait until the final day. After which, he will be physically removed from the property.
He's being evicted due to breech of contract and destruction of property. Expansions only to the FRONT of the house, within reasonable limits, were discussed. Not only have these limits been exceeded, but additions to the back of the house were also made! Remodeling and gutting of the home was never approved, nor was changing the initial layout and base structure. And due to property damage, there are now leaks in both the upper AND lower levels of the home. On top of which, the landlord has received numerous complaints about nightly disturbances.
After 5 days from this day that he doesn’t comply with the notice will result in immediate and forceful removal at my discretion.