The Rundown

Wow, I've been bad about posting anything since I started nursing school! My last "update" was in November! We've been up to quite a bit since then!

Here's the rundown:
Jon graduated from ASU in May and submitted his dental school application this week! Now the waiting game begins! We are crossing our fingers and praying that we will get in to the school we're meant to go to and that we'll be able to know without a doubt that is where we should go! He is enjoying his extra time to himself. He has been disc golfing and mountain biking lots since he finished school. We sure have enjoyed having him available to play with more! :)
Danae has been busy being a mom and nursing student. :) Thankfully I've been on brake for the last month and a half so I'm finally getting the chance to unwind and really enjoy my girls. I start back on September 24th and I'm stoked for this next semester (we're studying peds and OB!! Babies!!!)! I've been working on really putting our house in order. It sure takes a lot of time and work...especially with two little ones running around!
Veronika is now officially potty trained! I LOVE having a toddler who no longer wears diapers that I have to change! I drug my feet for a long time...but I finally gave in and I'm never going back. It was surprisingly easier than I thought it would be. Who knew?!
I guess I should put in a word about the whole almost-cutting-her-finger-off incident since that happened since the last time I posted. In March she decided to see how disk breaks work and almost cut her finger off! We are now parents who are experienced in ER trips with their little one! I have to say that I do NOT want to do that again anytime soon! Her finger looks great now and you can hardly tell other than her deformed nail and a slight scar. She uses it just fine and it doesn't seem to bother her any more. I wish I could say that she is more cautious as a result...but that is not the case. She takes after her daddy and loves to live life on the edge.
Natalia turned one last week! My baby is GONE and in her place is a beautiful and intelligent toddler. She finally got some teeth last month (I was beginning to think that she was never going to get teeth since she waited 10 months)! She is currently trying to cut all for front teeth on top and two on the bottom - poor baby! She does however have one of her one year molars peeking through the gums, so at least she's not getting ALL her teeth at the same time! She started crawling at 5 1/2 months and walking at 9! She is ahead in all of her development...except for the teething. Silly girl.
Our Tallie has really opened up the last little bit and loves to explore and discover new things. I can see that cute little mind working all the time! She makes the funniest faces and sure does entertain us! She is definitely a mommy's girl! I love that she loves me so much!

I think that about catches us up. Well I guess besides the fact that we moved in April! We moved into a house! I absolutely LOVE it and am really enjoying having space! You know that thing I only dreamed about while living in a small little one bedroom apartment with our family of 4! Funny thing is that I can't imagine cramming everything into such a small space again, we seem to have accumulated even more stuff since we moved! We are still in Gilbert, just a couple of miles away from our families. The house is just under 1600 sq feet, three stories with 3 bedrooms and 2.5 bathrooms. It is just right for our little family and we are loving finally having that sense of "being on our own" officially!

How about some pictures?

Tallie opening one of her presents on her birthday

Cleaning up after the cake
Can you tell how much she enjoyed the cake?

I adore this face!

Just playing together :)

I can't get over how beautiful she is!

Sisters :)

I just love that little bum in big girl panties!

Holy Places

Read this today and really enjoyed it. It made me think of my life and all of the small decisions I have made in my life that have brought me to where I am today, and also about the small decisions that I continue to make that will affect future generations because I am a MOTHER! I hope I can be the type of mother my girls need me to be so that they can grow into the women they are meant to be. But like Sister Cook says, as long as I keep seeking after holy places I can't go wrong. The most important holy place for my girls right now is the one I can create in our home. I've been nudged by the spirit a lot lately to improve the spirit in our home, to more freely invite Him in. This has just given me extra motivation!

Ponderings

Lately I've been thinking a lot about what being a mother means to me. This probably has to do with the fact that I have recently read Stephanie Nielson's book Heaven is Here. If you haven't read it I highly recommend it! I find that I can relate to Stephanie. All I ever wanted growing up was to be a mother! To marry and have beautiful children that call me "mommy" and love me no matter what! I am living that dream! I have two beautiful little girls who bring me so much joy! But often I find myself caught up in the moment and in the many things that I have on my "to do lists" that I don't take the time to just sit back and enjoy the little things, to teach them the important lessons that I know are my responsibility to teach them. Being in nursing school has added to this as well. But I am on break right now and I have 4 1/2 weeks before I have to get back into school mode. My goal is to enjoy every minute with my sweet little girls! They aren't going to be little forever. In fact my baby turned one on Monday! I can hardly believe it! Where did the time go? And it only gets me thinking about if I truly cherished the tender moments that we had with her as a sweet little baby...because that baby is long gone and a cute little toddler is in her place! I'll admit it, I'm starting to get baby hungry again. My arms are aching to hold a sweet precious brand new life in my arms and know that I made them. But...I have one more year of nursing school! The second year is going to be just as hard if not harder than the first, so I need to push those thoughts away and enjoy my girls, my family in the stage that we are in now. I need to trust that the Lord will let me know when the time is right to add to our little family.

I wanted to share these thoughts that have been going through my head. I promise to post a better update on life soon. (We have internet finally so I can!) Until then...who wants to start a book club with me, my mom, and Chelsea?! :)

Its about time

I know...I've been really bad at updating. But to my credit, I did start nursing school two months ago and I have two babies to take care of as well as all the other stuff to be a good wife and housewife. Maybe I should take that last part back though because my apartment is a disaster...definitely feeling neglected!

I am absolutely loving nursing school! :) It is so great to finally be in school and doing what I want to do. The best part? Everything just makes sense. Yes, I have to spend a ton of time studying and there are concepts that I don't quite grasp fully, but for the most part it all just makes perfect sense. I'm amazed at how much I have learned in 8 short weeks. Nerdy moment, but I look around at my class randomly when we're in lab practicing our skills and am just amazed at how far we've come. I'm starting to really feel like a nurse! We've got two more weeks of theory and then its onto clinicals and finals. Before I know it my first semester of nursing school will be over!

Some of my favorite parts of nursing school:
I get to wear scrubs to school :)
I have the best classmates! We all get along so well and can just be ourselves and joke around. Plus everyone is so willing to help one another, it's great!
My professors are pretty great.
Today I got to go for a ride in a wheelchair. :) Simple pleasures
Elizabeth Tarwater - a new friend that I'm having so much fun getting to know. I especially love watching her cute pregnant belly grow!
My husband is so supportive of me and understanding. -he helps me to feel better about myself when I start feeling like I'm totally neglecting everything but school
I get to spend most of my week with my babies - only 2 days of in class work!

In other news, Natalia is growing up WAY too fast! Last week she rolled over from her stomach to her back. Can someone please tell her that she's not allowed to grow up so fast?! Today I had a bittersweet moment, my mom told me that she got Tallie (that's our nickname for her...we also call her Talia, or sissy, or just plain baby. Baby is Veja's favorite because that's the one she can actually say) to giggle while I was at school. Bittersweet because I'm excited that she's hit this stage and so excited to figure out what makes her giggle, but sad because I wasn't there to witness it firsthand. Tallie loves to talk and will get so engaged in conversations with whoever is talking to her. It's so sweet and I absolutely love it! She always has the biggest smiles for me. :) So sweet!

We blessed Natalia on the 4th and it was a very special day. IT was a special blessing. :) In it she was told that she will play the role of peacemaker in our family. This doesn't surprise me at all! I can already tell that about her in these first couple months of her life. She is the best baby I could have asked for being in nursing school!

Veronika just keeps getting bigger and bigger. She's starting to get even more independent as well. Both good and bad. She loves to watch movies while I do homework, which sometimes I feel really guilty about. My child is already addicted to TV and she's not even 2 yet! I try to make myself feel better by telling myself that this is only temporary and when I'm finished with nursing school I'll have more time to focus specifically on her. Any advice on how to keep her entertained so that I can do homework is greatly appreciated! What do you do with your little ones when there's something you need to do?

Veja is starting to talk more and more. I just love listening to her little voice. :) On Sunday she even "sang" the closing hymn at church. She's so fun and has the cutest little personality! She's really figuring out her world and discovering just all that she can do. Just the other day she pulled all her toys off the bookshelf and then proceeded to climb in. She's just too funny!

Jon is keeping busy with school and work. But he still manages to be the best husband ever! I don't know how I ever got so lucky! I think I'll keep him...like FOREVER! :) Yeah, forever sounds pretty darn good!

My birth story

I've been meaning to write this post for a while, but as you can imagine, life has been a little crazy these last three weeks. Right now both of my babies are sleeping so I'm going to attempt to get this written before one or both of them wake up!

Natalia Jean Zuniga decided to finally come on her due date, August 19, 2012. Jon and I had gone to sleep the night before really hoping that she would decide to come. I got a couple hours of sleep before I woke up to Veja crying around 2:00 am. I was going to go help her go back to sleep, but by the time I got up she had already stopped crying and was back asleep so I crawled back in bed as well. I was laying there for a couple of minutes and then I realized that I was having contractions, and they hurt! (I had LOTS of braxton-hicks leading up to this) I just laid there for a while wondering if I was just imagining it or if I was really starting into labor. Well they didn't go away, no matter how I readjusted myself, and I also noticed a little bit of a bloody show when I went to the bathroom, I figured that it was my mucus plug so I woke up Jon and told him that I was having contractions. Needless to say, Jon was ecstatic! We started timing the contractions. For my entire labor my contractions were 3-5 minutes apart and lasted just under a minute in length. We called Jon's mom to let her know that I was in labor but told her to say and get some rest, we knew she would be there as soon as we needed her. I labored through the rest of the night, and Jon slept so that he could be wide awake and alert when I needed him most. Ann came over just after 6 and started setting things up. This was when Jon took Veja over to his family's so that they could get her ready for church and take her with them.

Jon and I went on a walk down the canal at the end of the street around 7:30. We continued to keep track of the contractions and Jon made sure I could talk through them (he didn't want me to be able to because he wanted his little girl to get here). By the time we turned around I was still able to talk through them, but it was getting harder and I could handle them better if we stopped walking. We got back to the apartment around 8 and I thought that my water may have broken. It did, but it was higher up so it was just a trickle, a MAJOR difference from when my water broke with Veja. This was when Ann checked me, I was dilated to a 7. Sure enough my water had broken, but there was still a forebag of water around Natalia's head. We decided to not break that, which turned out to be a blessing in the end.

At this point I decided to get in the pool. I very much enjoyed the warm water! It felt absolutely amazing! After I got in though my contractions started getting harder and harder, I was in transition. So we texed my mom to let her know she should come. It wasn't very long before I started feeling the need to push. This was when I started using the hypnobirthing technique of breathing the baby down. Because I did this Natalia came with just two pushes! (So much better than 2 hours of pushing that I did with Veja)

Here's where the miracles come in! The forebag of water broke as I got Natalia's head out. Once her head was out Ann was trying to get the chord off of her neck, I heard her trying to tell me something, but another contraction was coming and I needed to push so I did. With that push Natalia came all the way out. On her way out her chord snapped because it was only a little over a foot long! Which is really short if you were wondering. Her chord was also really thin which aided in it being able to snap. As you know I had placenta previa early on in my pregnancy but the placenta moved, but it was still low lying. Because it was low lying I was able to have Natalia naturally without complication! If the placenta was any higher she wouldn't have been able to come out of the birth canal without the chord snapping. The forebag of water also held Natalia up out of the birth canal until the last possible minute so that she wasn't stressed and the chord was loose around her neck until the end. Natalia was perfectly healthy in every way! She is my miracle baby, coming into the world with little miracles along the way. I know that my Heavenly Father was there watching over both me and Natalia and that is why everything went so smoothly and why we're both so healthy.

Natalia Jean Zuniga was born at 9:07am on August 19th. She weighed 7lbs 10oz and was 19.5in long. She is beautiful in every way! Her hair is dark brown with a hint of red in it and her eyes are already brown! She has her own little look and we adore her! Veja absolutely loves being a big sister! The first time we introduced her to Natalia she had the biggest smile on her face! She acts like a second little mother. She loves to hold her and give her kisses. Whenever Natalia is crying and we're in the other room Veja will stop whatever she's doing and bring me to the baby. We are a happy little family and are so glad we have a new beautiful little girl that decided to join us. We weighed Natalia last week and she was 9lbs 13oz...she gained 2lbs in 2 weeks!!! She has already grown so much! I can hardly believe that 3 short weeks ago I was still pregnant! Recovery for me has been a lot faster this time around. By the end of the first week I was mostly back to normal. I am a huge fan of home water-births now! I'm loving being skinny again! Funny how I missed it.

Here are some pictures of Natalia and the rest of us on her birthday:

my first moments with Natalia

getting her first bath from Grandma Roberts

Veja giving her sister loves

our first family picture with Natalia

Helping Veja hold Natalia

I had to get this! She hasn't found her thumb again since then, but it was so sweet to see

Veja gets a HUGE smile on her face every time we let her hold her sister. She LOVES her!

It's official

I'm still pregnant! I am now officially, and will continue to be, the most pregnant I have ever been. By 2:00pm the day before my due date I was holding my sweet Veronika in my arms. I guess Natalia wants to be different. She's still holding off on deciding to come. Every day I wake up thinking "today would be a good day to have a baby" and then nothing happens. I really hope Natalia doesn't decide to wait too long! I'm getting really anxious to meet and hold her!!

This last month of pregnancy has been really hard. I've been so tired and sore every day. It seems that no matter what I do I can't relieve my back or lower abdomen. All of the normal aches and pains associated with pregnancy. This time it is a little harder to deal with though because I have a sweet little 17 month old that I get to take care of and hold. Not to mention I skipped being big and pregnant during the hottest months the first time around! I love every minute of being pregnant, don't get me wrong. But the love is a very unique kind of love. I love the connection I have with my unborn daughter, and I just LOVE being able to feel her inside of me. However, my arms are starting to ache to hold this sweet baby girl! Natalia please decide to come soon! Mommy wants to hold you and love you and kiss you and cuddle you!

The waiting game...

I'm now officially 38 weeks pregnant! My due date is two weeks from yesterday and I am so ready to have this little girl! I can definitely feel my body changing...getting ready to have this baby. I just hope she comes soon because I'm ready to be done, but more importantly I'm ready to hold my little girl in my arms!! I'm excited to have another baby! :) My baby isn't much of a baby any more...she's a toddler that's for sure! My mother-in-law has had me on this herbal blend for the last couple of weeks. It's supposed to help my body move things along, especially the Braxton-hicks contractions. It's supposed to make them come more frequently and help them to actually start the dilation and effacement.  In theory I'll have a shorter labor because I won't be starting from nothing. I hope it's true! Speaking of labor, in preparation I got a book, HypnoBirthing, by Marie Mongan. My mother-in-law suggested it because it has some good relaxation techniques. Well I got it and read it quite quickly! I loved it! It reinforced my own personal thoughts and feelings about natural births. My philosophy: my body was made to bear children so why do I need medical intervention, such as epidurals? I have nothing against epidurals or those who chose to get them, I just feel that I can go through labor and delivery without them, and I have once already. The book takes it a step further though and says that there is no reason pain should be associated with childbirth (not sure I completely agree with this...your body is going through a lot of work and change to have a baby. Anytime you work hard you end up with some degree of pain). While I agree with a lot of what the book presents I don't agree completely with some things. For one, I don't think the method should be labeled HypnoBirthing...it throws a lot of people off, it's more deep relaxation than hypnosis. It is still a great book and a great resource to have for my future pregnancies. I would highly recommend it to anyone who wants to  try a fully natural birth.