Joy!

The word "Joy" is frequently used to describe this season: the joy of the news of the Savior's birth and the joy of knowing that God sent His Son to fulfill His plan so that we can not only be saved from sin (if we continually repent) but also be resurrected to be able to live with God and our families forever.

This year, the word "Joy" has a whole new meaning to me. Being a mother to such a sweet little girl has brought me so much joy. I literally have woken myself up because I was laughing in my sleep. And every time I wake up and see this little angel in my arms (she usually sleeps on my stomach or in my arms these days) I can not believe how lucky Jeff and I are to have her. It's so weird to me because I was so happy before her; I have the best husband ever and we have so much fun together...I never thought I could be happier. But Ginger has proved me wrong and I feel like happiness is just radiating from me. I know Jeff feels the same. When he is watching Ginger, I hear him just laughing the whole time. What a privilege it is to be her parents.

McKeown family (the ones Ginger has met)

Johnson family

Ginger

Life has been pretty good these first few weeks.
I've gained a whole pound already.
I spend most of the day eating.
I only like to sleep when I'm in someone's arms--or at night on my mom or dad's stomach.
I do not like baths!! and, although at first I was hesitant, I'm getting used to the carseat.





Here is the first time I met my Grandpa McKeown.












I have a mom and dad that love me a lot.

The Baby!!!... IS here!

Ginger Marie Johnson was born Friday November 14th, 2008, 11:17pm. She weighed in at 7 lbs, 2.8 oz at birth, and was 21 inches from head-to-toe. you can see here a picture of Erin the day before the birth (Thursday). As you can see, she is was not happy about the baby being late. That night, Erin did not sleep much because she was having contractions all night. She also felt her water break around 2 am. She had an appointment with here midwife at 11:00 am on Friday and when we got there, the midwife said she was dilated to 4 cm and told us to go straight over to the the hospital. Erin had contractions until about 4:00pm when her midwife came over and checked to see how dilated she was. After 5 more hours, she was only at 4.5 cm, so the midwife broke the bag of water that was below the baby's head and then contractions came a little quicker. At that point, Erin decided that this natural birth idea wasn't as cool as she had thought. So she got the epidural. At that point, there was no more moving around, and Erin was wired to every machine in the room. Here's a picture of Erin with her machines.
With the epidural in, Erin was able to relax and conserve her energy for the pushing. which was good, because she was able to push the baby out in just 30 minutes, which is pretty quick for a first baby.
As a side note here, I'd like to say that, despite the fact that I had felt our baby kick thousands of times, and despite the fact that I knew perfectly well that there was a baby in Erin, it was an amazing experience to actually see a baby come out of my wife. It's a hard thing for me to explain. I suppose that in my mind I had kind of thought of Ginger as this thing that was just a bump in my wife's belly that often kicked and squirmed, and when her head and her body came out she had just become a human being, and she had just come out of my wife. I suppose that that is what is meant by the miracle of child birth. Anyone reading this at this moment might think that what I just explained is strange or silly, but prior to Friday night, I had never seen a person be born before.
Anyways, enough of that. Here are some pictures of Ginger. Her with Erin right after birth, her on the scale just seconds after she was born, her with her Great-Grandma and Grandpa Badger, and then the most recent picture I took of her about an hour ago with her mohawk.

The Baby!!!....isn't here :(

In other news, there are no babies born yet (today is Saturday, Nov 8th). This makes the baby overdue. As you can all see from the floating fetus, baby is due today. Here is a picture of a ridiculously large belly.

The greatest bike race in the history of ever

So the Draper Boys Downhill Invitational Annual race was held on Oct. 18th. This is a bike race as old as many of the bikes ridden in the race, namely Tyler's old Cannondale with the head shock. I almost won, but I had a bolt come loose on the rear triangle of my bike that got jammed in my gears behind the crank, so I gracefully bowed out, and allowed Tyler to win. Here in the picture to the right, you can see two of the more attractive racers with their trophy wives. Also, Luna came to offer moral support and to eat cow turds.

Our little artist

Jeff titled this work "Self-Portrait"

Six Months

I haven't been good at taking photos to show the progress of baby. This may have to do with the fact that I haven't had energy to really get ready for a day during the past seven months (which, considering I've had to appear on Good Things Utah and Fox 13 News, is pretty pathetic). One day before church I was feeling pretty good, so I not only did my hair, I also took this picture (self-timed 'cause Jeff was already at a meeting). The baby rides pretty low, so it looks smaller than it really is. This pic was taken at 6 months. Now I am 7 months and if there is another day when I have energy, I will get ready, take a picture, AND post a blog of it. Believe me, baby has done A LOT of growing during this past month. And, according to 'the books' she's still got 25% more growing to do--which should be about 7 more lbs. I have no idea where she is going to put that 7 lbs because she's basically used up every square inch of space (even the space that my inny belly button was occupying).

Part VI: Low Iron/Anemia

Man, I can't tell you how awesome it is to have low iron. Not only does it guarantee you one of those fun finger-stabbings every time you visit the doctor, but it also generally means another supplement--yippee!
The great thing about the iron supplement is that it causes constipation and nausea--and to make things interesting it shouldn't be taken with calcium (because it will bind to the calcium and then not get absorbed by your body).
If, hypothetically, the finger prick and extra supplement aren't your idea of a good time, well, no one is forcing you to do them; you are welcome to just suffer the exhaustion and complete draining of energy that accompanies low iron.
Now, imagine the best of both worlds--taking the supplement, eating all sorts of foods that are high in iron, suffering the constipation and nausea, making sure that you eat your servings of calcium at a different time than taking the pill, STILL suffering intense bouts of energy loss, and then getting your pricked a month later only to find out that your iron count has dropped.
Do you:
a) stop taking the supplement because it obviously doesn't do any good
b) try to figure out if there might be something else you are doing that inhibits absorption
c) take a finger-pricker thing and stab it into the nurse saying "see how you like it?"

Part V: Breathing

Do you remember Adam Sandler's "Fatty McGee" skit? I honestly have to take a break half-way up the 20 stairs that get me to the second floor of the Cannon building where I work.
But aside from struggling during aerobic movement, about a month ago I began having movements where I wasn't doing anything labor intensive at all and I would become short of breath. Now, originally, my thought was that I was suffocating and that the baby wouldn't be able to get the oxygen it needed, so I would become panicked which would only exacerbate the problem. Then I read in a book that it was normal to have trouble breathing during the late months of pregnancy--after all your lungs are quite crunched for space. Just reading that (and realizing I wasn't the only one) alleviated the problem quite a bit--at least now I can go on with what I'm doing without worrying that the baby is at risk.

Part IV: Back-->ab-->back pain

If you had a time-lapse video recorder focused on my desk at work, you would see me start the day sitting on my chair. After about an hour, the chair would be pushed back and I would continue working at the computer standing and occasionally arching and flexing my back. I would then proceed to a squatting position--still typing--until my legs became numb and I would take a lap around my desk to loosen up before returning to the chair. This cycle would continue throughout the day except that I am usually obliged to attend one or two meetings where the majority of attendees think it appropriate to sit down for consecutive amounts of time. In these situations, you will see me scooting to the front of my chair on occasion and arching my back as imperceptibly as possible.
The trouble with all this back arching is that inevitably by the end of the day I have gone to such lengths to relieve the stress on my back, that I have strained my ab muscles in the process. Now I am forced to switch between the pain in my back to the pain in my abs or to try to find the exact position which puts no pressure on either. This has become the main activity that fills my evenings: finding a position that eases the pain until I can manage to go to sleep. Sometime during the course of the evening, I also need to get up to eat something, but I have already written about the difficulty of that duty.

Part III: Speaking of food

On the subject of food, you may have the experience of never wanting anything to eat. Nothing ever sounds good and nothing ever seems worth the effort of having to cook. The only factor that motivates you to eat is that you know that biologically speaking food is important to the growth of baby. Now, if your husband makes food and is eating it, you will want some of what he has on his plate. If, on the other hand, he makes food specifically for you, it will probably not sound appetizing. It will be impossible for you to come up with a food that sounds good on your own--you will need to coach your husband into being able to generate a long list of fast options of food that are also healthy. Since it is practically an oxymoron to have fast food that is healthy, you will end up eating quesadillas with cheese and beans for every meal. You will question whether it is this specific meal that is making your stomach so upset...

Part II: Deciphering hunger

You will be told to eat a healthy diet. You believe that a healthy diet is important and you will probably do your best to consume the best of foods so that baby gets all the nutrition it needs. This is easy until about 6 months. At some point, your stomach has been squished so far into the crevice between your ribs and the rest of your organs that it has become impossible to discern whether it is completely empty or completely full. You may eat something in the morning and then feel sick. This may lead you to believe that you have over-eaten, thus, you wait longer than usual before you eat again. You have now begun down a slippery slope of trying to figure out whether it is indeed hunger pains or stuffed pains that you are feeling. The bad news is, this doesn't seem to go away or get any clearer with time--you will simply go on feeling sick every single time that you eat something and you will never be quite sure whether it was because you waited too long or ate too soon.

Part I: Quadruple-Leg cramps

You may have heard about these...they are pretty common. What you may not be aware of is that it is possible for a single leg cramp to last 4 minutes and actually move from muscle to muscle in your lower leg like some sort of anaconda. You may have a wonderful husband who tries to stop your screaming by saying calming things like "it's almost over" and helping you to flex your foot--which generally can stop a cramp in its tracks--but nothing can stop this force of nature. You may be crippled for several days, needing a hand-rail or shoulder to lean on in order to descend stairs. Everyone will have a confused look on their face when they ask you what happened and you say "Leg cramp" so it is better to say something like "polio" or "leishmaniasis"--which has nothing to do with loss of control of your limb, but at least no one will know what you are talking about.

Happy to be of service

So, while wide awake at 2:00am the other night, I realized that I am doing a great disservice to all the mothers-to-be by limiting all my complaining about the woes of pregnancy to only my husband (mostly). Why should he bear the burden of all my suffering when I could share it with expecting mom's who may actually find comfort in my discomfort? So, I've decided to write about some of the most recent developments in my world of being pregnant. I'll fast-forward the first 5 months (4.5 of which were spent hovering over a garbage can) to the present.

The most hap-happiest time of the year...

Jeff's birthday. July 31st. Which this year meant celebrating at Boondocks. Aside from mini-golf and go-carts, we got a bunch of tokens. Jeff won the cash-cow of tickets on Deal or No Deal. (in the pictures: Mary, Steve, and Jeff. Jeff and Erin. Katie and Connor--we had unlimited mini-golf passes so we played late into the night. Mary with Jeff right behind crashing into her and Kater and Connie in the car to the right--Steve is also back in the row somewhere. Jeff and Erin cashing in all the hard-earned winnings.)

DC/NYC for July 4th

Jeff and I went to DC to visit my parents for the fourth of July. On the 5th we took a bus up to NYC and saw a performance called Cirque Dreams. Here are a few pics of us in Central Park and Manhatten.

Arts Festival

This weekend was the arts festival in Salt Lake City. The bands were awesome, the friends were awesome, the art was awesome...but the best thing about any festival in Utah is when you come across crazy characters like the one in this video below (to be attached later because it isn't working right now for some reason.)

Sailing and such

We spent Saturday up at Rock Port Lake with some friends. Jeff and I got stuck on the sailboat in the middle of the lake without wind for about 20 minutes--you never know what nature will give you. We also had some kayaking time---so fun!

Announcing...a baby for Jeff and Erin

So... there's a little secret we've been keeping for the past few months :)...a secret I've been keeping in my belly.
We are expecting our little one in November. We won't know the sex until end of July and we'll let you know once we do.