Adilynn's Birth

**I need to replace pictures with birth pictures for this post, but they are on my harddrive. I promise I will get to it someday though!! For now, enjoy these cute ones!**

When I first found out I was pregnant with Adilynn, Ben and I were so excited!

 It seemed like it took us forever to get pregnant, and we were starting to get nervous. After 10 months it finally happened! I surprised Ben with the news, gifting him a baby shoe and the results of my pregnancy test. And we started planning. I was almost done with my degrees at BYU and working as a journalist for the Daily Herald in Provo, UT. I would have about 3 weeks left of the semester after our baby was due, but I knew my professors would allow me to bring my little bug to classes. I figured after those last few weeks of schooling I would need to get back to work in order to pay off my student loans. We were wondering who we could find to watch our baby for free, given we had no money or knowledge of government assistance at that time, and we were a little nervous. That's when Ben secured a great job as an engineering co-op and we talked with some extended family who agreed to let us live in Ben's grandparents old home for free. Talk about lucky! That meant I could stay home with our baby full-time, something I never thought I would want to do, but it all felt perfect. 

We told our families on Easter weekend 2011 that we were expecting. Honestly, no one seemed too thrilled. Perhaps they hadn't eaten enough candy Peeps yet. Ben's side of the family had just finished their annual GPS egg hunt. We got a few hugs and congratualtions. When we told my side of the family, people seemed even less enthused, some even leaving the room without muttering a word to us. It wasn't what we had hoped for, and it felt like our happy moment was darkened. Our whole pregnancy went on that way. Some family had their reasons for not wanting to be involved, be it jealousy of our pregnancy or whatever other reason, and it made us worry what our family life would be like. That's when Ben told me that we were our own family.

Ben helped me through the pains and scares of our first pregnancy. He gained the weight with me, calmed me when we wondered if I was miscarrying, helped me stay comfortable when I had to sleep on the floor at a family reunion, and tried to keep my naturally negative mind remembering the positives of that pregnancy, despite the reactions of others. I was going to be a mom, and Ben is the one who helped me know what that really meant. He is the one who helped me know what being a family was, and together we knew our baby had all the love he or she would ever need.

After our second prenatal visit, Ben and I went to visit his sister, Heather, at work. She is a nurse and had mentioned that a friend of hers did ultrasounds and could tell us the gender of our baby if we wanted. We jumped at the chance, not wanting to wait for our 20 week anatamy scan ultrasound. The friend told us we were having a boy! When we learned a few weeks later that our baby boy was actually a SHE, we were sad...for about a day. We felt like we had lost a baby, even though we hadn't. It was such a weird feeling. But the next day we went to look at baby things and all the sadness disappeared. We were going to have a girl!!! And she didn't want to wait long to make her appearance.

November 8, 2011 I was very sick, so sick that we went to the hospital because I was suffering from dehydration and we were worried about our baby. When we got to the labor and delivery room, the nurse hooked the IV fluids up and asked how long I'd been having contractions. Ben and I looked at the monitor they had placed around my belly and saw that I was indeed having contractions. They were close together, and I wondered why I couldn't feel them. Had I puked up my ability to feel physical pain!?

I was wheeled into another room where Ben and I figured we would wait till the IV fluids were gone. When a nurse came in and asked if I'd like my epidural we were so confused. What? Were we having our baby? Five weeks early? 

I agreed to the epidural, even though I hadn't felt any contractions. I was ready to sleep off my terrible night of illness, when Ben and I realized we hadn't brought anything with us to the hospital for baby or for us. Ben called his mom and asked her to bring some things to the hospital for us. She did, and then we waited. 

The epidural made my legs feel so heavy, and not the good kind of heavy you get from morphine. Still, I had heard how painful labor was and I had no energy to deal with pain after being so sick, so I stuck with the epidural. At one point I had Ben try to rub my feet becasue I felt like my bones hurt. Weird right!? I asked him to bend my toes down and he said if he moved them anymore my feet would break! Epirurals are weird. 

My labor lasted about 10 hours. My mother-in-law, two sisters-in-law, my mother, and one of my sisters all made periodic visits. When the nurse discovered I was crowning (that's right, I had no clue thanks to my pefectly working epidural), we asked everyone to leave so we could be together for our birthing experience as a couple. This really offended some people, which confused us and made us kind of mad. We hadn't had their support throughout our pregnancy, but they felt like they should be included in the birthing experience with us. Ben and I calmly explained that this was something we wanted to do together and again asked everyone to leave. That wasn't the end of the drama involving why we didn't want extended family present for the birth of our first child, but Ben and I did our best to brush all that aside and focus on the good thing that was happening: our baby was about to be born!!

Active pushing took less than 20 minutes, and little Adilynn Elva, named after her Grandma Jackson, was born, perfect and tiny and beautiful. Her dark hair was curly and her tiny features gorgeous. Ben and I savoured some time together, the three of us, in our new family, holding our little doll of a baby. The doctor who delivered Adilynn at 11pm set her directly on my stomach after birth. I didn't know if I could touch her or hold her, so i just put my finger in her hand and talked with her. Ben cut the cord, and the nurses examined her shortly after that. When Adilynn was found healthy, I got to hold her in my arms, and Ben so did Ben. I did some skin to skin and nursing with Adi for a little bit given it was a recommendation from books I had read as well as from the hoapital staff, but I didn't enjoy those moments. It just felt so unnatural to me. Plus we didn't need to bond or get to know each other. We were already best friends. 

Ben, Adilynn and I enjoyed about an hour of alone time before inviting others in. Everyone seemed to love Adilynn instantly. The grandmas gushed over her and the aunties held her with nervous excitment. Even the nurses commented on how beautiful Adilynn was. 

Despite having terrible jaundice and an underdeveloped mouth, she was perfect! We got to bring Adilynn home, although she had to stay in a lightbed for over a week to combat the jaundice. When her jaundice worsened, we learnes her liver needed more of a jump start. I pushed my guilt aside and spoon fed her breastmilk and eventually moved her onto a bottle. She immediately improved. This made me both happy and sad. Adilynn had a hard time sucking and was so tiny she was rarely awake. Breastfeeding was hard for her, which made it hard for me. I felt so guilty about pumping and bottle feeding, but honestly it is what worked for us. I continued pumping for about 2 months when Adi developed some stomach issues. We decided to switch to formula, and her stomach issues improved. I worried about judgement from others, but only one person ever made a negative comment to me about our decusion to formula feed. We were all much happier with our decision.

Having Adilynn cost us just over $10,000, draining our savings account. That made life rough, but we were okay being poor again. She was worth every penny.

The next two and a half years we spent as a family of three were just magic! Ben went to school at the Univeristy of Utah and continued to support us financially. I started teaching piano and voice lessons from our home two hours a day to make a little bit of extra money for trips, date nights, and swimming lessons for Adi. I look back now and realize we should have used that money to pay off our debt, but we had more fun making memories.

Our next post will be about our parenting style.  Here is a little preview of what it will include:

Ben and I deffinetly parent differently than most people we know. We are seen as strict and we lack the free parenting style that is so popular right now among our peers raising their families. I say to each his own! But we are happy with the way we are raising our children. We can take our children anywhere, so far (knock on wood!!), and never worry about them throwing tantrums, screaming, hitting, not listening, asking for things, being ungrateful, being disrespectful, running off, or getting bored, all things we have heard of other children doing and most parents complaining of. We attribute their "weirdness" to our parenting style and their natural good-natured attitudes (and the fact that God knew if he gave us crazy children none of us would live, ha!). We will include our schedules for different ages. Hope it helps explain why our kids are the way they are, and why we choose to be "strict."

Family Dynamics

The two founding members of the Stoddard family have been changing the world one day at a time since January 14, 2010. We enjoyed the benefits of a dual income and young legs with adventures of all sorts. It didn’t matter if we were learning to roller blade, or doing last minute one-day road trips to Disneyland, we always had fun.

Julie (CEO) has motivated all of the good changes in our life, not by force, but by the simple fact that she deserves every bit of happiness in this life. I will never be satisfied giving anything less than my everything for her. Motivation to finish school, find a good job and work hard all come from the desire I have to make her happy.

On November 9, 2011, our first daughter, Adilynn Elva, joined our family. She was followed by our second daughter, Vienna Annette, born on January 21, 2014.  We struggled through a miscarriage that broke all of our hearts on November 13, 2015, reminding us how fragile life can be. We are currently waiting for our first boy, due the end of November this year (2016). We aren’t sure what we are going to do with a boy just yet, but I’m sure we will figure it out. Here is a little about each of us:

Ben, aka Daddy, aka me: I’m the reason we haven’t needed to buy a swing set. I am the jungle gym our girls play on, and I love every bruise of it. I’m a mechanical engineer, so naturally I think I know everything. I am constantly reminded by her logic, perfect example and love, that in fact, my wife knows everything. I love to have fun, be outside, and cuddle with my wife after putting our girls to sleep each night. I lose track of time easily and sometimes need reminding of things multiple times. I work full-time and try to be home before dinner each night to play with my girls while my wonderful chef wife creates fabulous meals. I do bathtime most nights, follow my wife's instructions in cleaning (I have learned so much, including how not to shrink clothing while washing them), but my absolute favorite thing to do as a father and husband is making my family smile. They are my everything, and I’d sacrifice anything for them.

Julie, aka Mommy: Julie has an incredible ability to care for those she loves, giving her all to others. Her sense of humor has brought me to tears too many times to count. She is the life of our family. Julie fills her days with incredible activities for our girls. Whether she is teaching them about volcanoes or planning and leading a water balloon attack on her unexpecting husband, Julie does it all. The only way to get her to rest is to give her the flu… and that doesn’t even work most of the time. Julie is the most dedicated and motivated person I have ever met. She can do absolutely anything she wants in this life because she is literally good at everything she tries. I am lucky and honored to be a part of her life.

Adilynn, aka Adi: Adi is the kind of girl who will do something big in her life. Whether she cures cancer or ends a war, her little heart has the strength to do it.  She loves EVERYONE, and her cute little, curly-haired self won’t let me kill bugs, tell a lie or let me go without a seatbelt. She is the kind of girl who asks me to drive fast, but then tells on me for doing so. She is a genius, confirmed by a third party, and often comes home from preschool saying how she is re-learning most things. She loves playing with her sister, which makes me sad because I’m not always invited to play.

Vienna, aka “V”: Vienna is our adventurer. She has no fear, perfect balance, can hold her breath underwater for a long time, and has such strong muscles, all of which make for the perfect combination of giving her parents multiple heart attacks a day. She is a big girl and our baby, depending on how she feels at the moment. She will snuggle and tell you she loves you, and then poke you in the eye. Vienna looks up to her big sister, and I love watching her try and do the same things Adi does. They will be friends forever. 

Daisy, aka Our Angel Baby: Daisy is our family’s guardian angel and is always watching over us. We have one ultrasound photo of her that we cherish. We were fortunate enough to say goodbye to her and burry her together.

Baby boy: I am still in denial that we are having a boy, and we have yet to find a name we love. Having a boy will be an adventure, but we sure are excited to have another baby.
Each night we sing a song, share a spiritual story and say our prayers before we talk about our day as a family. Our days are busy, but very fun, mostly because of how we have chosen to raise our children. Julie makes it all possible. We are so lucky to have her.

Our next post will be about how we raise our family. Enjoy!

So much has happened in our lives! I feel like I need to play catch up since I stopped blogging years ago.
Ben and I LOVE to travel. We have hit up NYC, the Bahamas, San Francesco, Oregon, Vegas, San Diego, and Park City over the past few years together. We have been married 6 years now, have purchased our first home and are finally making enough money to pay our bills AND buy food. In some ways we are still on the move. Neither of us likes to sit at home. But we have slowed down a little given our time is no longer just our own.

That's right, we have two little girls, and a little boy on the way. Being parents is a lot of fun! We have had so many adventures together, and we are so glad we decided to have children. We will blog more about our family life and why we chose to have children soon.

I graduated from BYU in 2011 with my bachelor's in communications (print journalism) and minor in German. I worked for The Daily Herald until I had our first little girl. Now I stay home with her and our other little girl, teaching dance once a week at a local studio and piano and voice lessons an hour every evening from our home. 

The bulk of my day is spent with the children, cleaning and cooking. Sometimes I really suck at being a stay at home parent simply because I get bored and anxious. I am hyper organized and scheduled. In some ways that is good, but it is also bad. I will blog our schedule and why I do what I do soon, but suffice it to say I am slowly learning to relax and just play.

Ben graduated last year from the University of Utah with his degree in mechanical engineering. He works for a great company and is able to provide for our family and still find time to golf on his lunch breaks and spoil us after his 9-hour work days.

Ben has changed a lot over the past 3 years espcially. He and I will blog more about that in another post, but it should be known that Ben is a different man than the one I married. In some ways it is insane that we are still together, but as time passes, I am glad he was able to change and that he is doing all he can to make me happy enough to live with the fact that he needed to change.

We are excited to start this blog up again, because even though life hasn't always gone great, it truly is a wonderful life together.

Over the next few weeks we will be blogging about our family dynamics, how we take care of our children (which seems to be different than a lot of people we live around), our personal  goals, financial worries and triumphs, what almost ended our marriage, how our marriage is now, and goals for our family. We hope you will read along, comment where you can and enjoy what you learn.

A Wonderful Year Part II

August was one of my favorite months because Ben made it perfect. For my birthday he took me to this super fancy restaurant called La Callie.

Originally we were seated outside, where a peacock came inches from eating my food. We had our first two plates and then, out of no where, bugs started falling from the sky. We were laughing so hard when they started landing in our drinks and decided to switch to an indoor table. Ben ordered Fillet Mignon, topped with the most potent cheese we'd ever tasted, and I ordered a yummy chicken. For dessert we got Creme Brulee. It was super delicious and what made it even better was the romantic atmosphere.
After dinnr we drove home where I was surprised with roses and candles and romantic music by Steve Tyrell playing in the background. It was a great night :).
September was filled with school and moving to an apartment on campus; not too exciting, but we had fun watching movies and getting organized.
Because October is one of our favorite months, we tried to pack a lot of fun into it, going on lots of walks and running through corn mazes.

For Halloween we dressed up like people from the 50s and went to one of the worst corn mazes ever at "Hee-Haw Farms." We laughed so hard when we pulled up to the muddy, chicken wired farm area, but we had so much fun running around we didn't care how ghetto it was.

Later that month we went with my family to Thanksgiving Point and tried to go through the corn field, eventually giving up and carving our own path to the exit.

Ben and I carved pumpkins and watched scary movies together. It was so fun!
In November we started to freeze! But we bundled up and ventured outside as much as we could.
Thanksgiving was at Aunt Shirley's house this year. We were in charge of bringing enough potatoes to feed everyone. I made two huge pans of them and we rushed over to enjoy the day with family. I know I should have been focusing on Thanksgiving, but all I could think about the whole dinner was buying our Christmas tree!

We bought blue and silver decorations and decided real trees were the only way to go. We bought a cute tree that barely fit in our house and decorated it, listening to Nat King Cole's Christmas album and sipping hot coco. We loved our first winter together!

December was one of the best months we had all year! We went to New York City and spent a few days enjoying the Christmas Spirit on the East Coast. We had so much fun walking through Manhattan, visiting the temple, eating some of the best food ever at the Mediterraneo and Papaya King, seeing Billy Elliot, the Christmas Tree at Rockefeller and more!

We loved visiting the statue of liberty. Ben bought us "Mr. and Mrs. Liberty" hats. It was so fun! We also stood in line for hours to see Santa Claus at Macys and Ben hailed a taxi that we took to the Empire State Building. We did so many fun things! I can't wait to go back and celebrate Christmas there again!

Christmas was at my parent's house this year, but Ben and I exchanged stockings the 23rd. We both got great gifts, but more importantly we were together, celebrating the Reason for the Season. We loved reading the Christmas story together and sharing our testimonies of Jesus Christ.

Ben and I made a ham, potato and asparagus dinner and sat by our tree, enjoying the peace that filled our home.

At my parents we ate lots of great food and made some wonderful memories with my family, exchanging gifts and spending time together.
It was a great year!!!

A wonderful year part I

Ben and I have had such a great year! We've had so much fun on all of our adventures. Here are some of our favorites.
January

The best thing we did in January was get married!! We had so much fun on our honeymoon, came back and finished up Winter semester and moved apartments because of an invasion of roaches!

 Throughout the year we have spent time with the Nelson family, my sister Candace, Kyle and their little girl, Samantha. They are so cute and we have so much fun together!!!

February
What a romantic month! Every day until Valentine's Day I gave Ben a little surprise expressing my love to him through notes and goodies, but I was a little worried our first Valentine's Day together wouldn't be the most romantic of evenings.

 You see, we were spending the night at my parents house, but the day before Valentine's I got a wonderful surprise. Actually, I woke up that morning in a horrible mood. We ate chocolate in bed the night before and after my alarm went off I found chocolate all over our sheets! Ben had already left for work that morning so I couldn't complain to him about our sheets being ruined. Frustrated and upset, I opened the door to our bedroom to get a rag from the kitchen to clean the mess up, but every negative emotion seemed to slip away as I looked down and followed the path of rose petals leading into our kitchen. I followed the path to our kitchen counter where I found beautiful red roses and, hanging on a thorn, a beautiful little locket. The letter next to the bouquet reminded me that it wouldn't matter where we were for Valentine's or any other day as long as we were together. It was romantic and beautiful and we had a wonderful time. On February 22, Ben wrote me a poem.

My Promise

I remember the time our eyes first met 

That you'd be my wife, I'd never had bet

A simple little guy like me

Together with you for eternity.

I'll do my best to always preserve 

The love and respect that you deserve

I'll make you happy all your life

A promise to you, my lovely wife.

March
During March we froze in our apartment. It was a super cute place, but so cold! So we turned the heat up more, making our bill shoot up to the $100's, which was so worth it. It was the month Ben and I wanted to loose weight. We tried to be vegans, ate better and went jogging together a lot. It was our second month being married and we still felt like we were on our honeymoon. Ben tried to teach me how to drive his '86 Corolla, a beast of a stick shift. He also taught me how to do push ups! I know it's kinda lame I didn't know how to do push ups; I've been doing them wrong my whole life!

April
April was one of the best months this year! For our three month anniversary I made cheesy fondue and it was delicious. I really started experimenting with cooking after that. We had so much fun eating together, gaining all the weight back that we lost ;). But the best part of the month was GOING TO DISNEYLAND!

 It was actually kinda crazy and spur of the moment. We had no hotel, no real plans, but we got in the car and drove. We drove through the night and got three hours of sleep in a really scary and creepy hotel. After we got into bed, we heard a "ribbit, ribbit." Ben thought the noise was a frog, so we searched and searched for one, but we followed the "ribbit, ribbit" to the mini fridge. And then we laughed and laughed.

In the morning I was flipping through the TV channels and scram out of fear and surprise. Ben opened the bathroom door and asked what was wrong. Turns out our cheap hotel offered free pornography! AHH!! After that scaring incident, we got ready for our Disneyland adventure.

  We rode almost every ride in Disneyland, including the awesome fanisyland rides meant for children, went on the  best California Adventure rides and made each other laugh so hard.









Here are some of the funnies moments of our trip:

• Our sick hotel- it was so funny. We were so glad we brought our own blankets so we didn't have to touch the sheets provided. We had so much fun their though, laughing about the "fridge frog" and the burning images on the TV.
• Ibuprofen dissolving in my backpack, covering everything in a sick orange, grainy paste.
• I accidentally hick-upped in Ben's mouth.
• Trying to rock climb in the lines of almost all the rides.

• Karate chopping each other. So, I'm not sure how or why we started karate chopping each other, but we've done it for months now. When one of us chops the other, that person must act "dead." The only way to come back to life is to get a kiss. This has proven dangerous at times. Once Ben actually fell over, landing on my foot, hitting his back on the wall and it really hurt both of us! Anyway, while we were standing in the Peter Pan ride line, Ben karate chopped my neck and I pretended to faint. It's a good thing he caught me or I would have fallen on my face! People stared at us and we laughed so hard.

The best ride is probably the tower of terror. We loved it...and we screamed our guts out. We looked like idiots in the photo, kinda like we're the only ones screaming, but seriously! It's so scary!!
We'll definitely be going back there soon, but next time with a hotel in mind!

May
I think we went to Flaming Gorge in May with Ben's family for a night. It was such a long drive, but we had fun camping for the first time in our super duper tent! And the food my in-laws made was so delicious!

I was sad when I looked through our photos and found we didn't have very many of this adventure, because it was the first one with my in-laws.
I have discovered that I need to write in a journal so I can remember when Ben and I do awesome things. Having said that, I know Ben took me to my first EVER baseball game sometime in the spring. We had so much fun, eating nachos and the Salt Lake Bees play against some team I've never heard of. I loved it!! I hope we can go again a bunch.

June
It has so hot this month! We would come home from work, eat Popsicles and dream of the day we could afford air conditioning. :) To cool down, we bought passes to Seven Peaks, a sad investment as we only went twice, but those two times were so much fun! Ben even talked me in to going down the really scary slides. The slides were fun, but I think my favorite parts about going to Seven Peaks were the Lazy River and the yummy food we brought in our cooler each time.

July
Okay, so Ben and I can't remember what month our beautiful sister Heather got married, but we think it was in July. If this is true, this was the most beautiful experience we had this month!

Later that month we went to San Diego! It was the Olson family's first official family reunion filled with the ocean, animals and funny memories, not to mention a little bit of drama. As soon as we arrived to the VERY expensive beach house my dad rented, complaints broke out about how dirty it was. No, there was no exaggeration there. So, we all started to clean, but then realized there was no way we could get that pit Olson suitable. SO, we left! And everyone was soooo happy! But before that, Ben and I went on a little tandem bike ride down to the beach. The bike really didn't work, but we rode it any way. And when we reached the beach the tide was coming in. It was so fun. :)
We ended up at a Marriot, way better! We were all comfortable AND there was a hot tub :). We did so many fun things while we were there including hitting the beach, shopping (almost in Mexico) at an outlet mall, visiting the zoo, and going to the temple.

This is probably the best picture of us...EVER!