Carolina 2 Months

Carolina 2 months
This is Carolina happy. Yes, it does happen  but not as often as I would like

Carolina 2 month check up:

weight: 12.1 lbs  66 %

height:23.5 inches 65 %

head: 38.6 percentile 28 %

Things have been going pretty good. We are just doing the same old same old but we have had like a whole week now of sun shining weather and it has been wonderful. I don't mind the gray days or the rain but its hard to take the kidos out in the rain when I want to go for a walk or get out, so I have been doing some exercise videos to try and get back in shape and to keep my sanity. Jesse is doing really well so far being off the medicine. We go to the doctor in a week or two to see his progress and to get his labs and xrays. We are hoping that everything is working the way it should and that it will keep doing that. He loves being outside and gets mad at us when ever we have to leave the park or when we come back from our walks. We have trying to find things to do to keep us busy on the days that we can't go outside, we watch movies and read lots of books. We go play with some friends to try and pass the time. Cam has been super busy with work with getting ready to deploy sometime in May or June (still no official word on that yet). So when ever he is around we try and get as much quality family time together. 

Jesse has been very cuddly lately. He loves to lay on his dad when they are watching tv 

Jesse when he wakes up

Super Bowl Sunday, both kids decided to take a nap on me while I am watching the game

Snow Bound

Wow have we had an exciting week. Being from Utah we are used to the snow but apparently the Northwest can't take it. It started snowing on Monday of last week and it didn't stop until Wednesday, then we had freezing rain and then just plain rain. In total we got 1 foot of snow here at our house and who knows how many inches of rain. But on Wednesday the base shut down and everyone but emergency personnel got the day off. Cam would of had Thursday off as well but he had staff duty and he had to be there and its a 24 hr shift. The power had been flickering since the big snow storm hit Tuesday night and but it stayed on on Wednesday but when we woke up Thursday morning to the freezing rain it really started to go in and out. I was terrified. If it were just Jesse and me then I could of handled not having power but having a new baby, and a dramatic one at that, really terrified me. So I got everything out that I could use, our Coleman stove, hurricane lamps, candles, I filled all our pitchers with water, I hung sheets up on the big windows to keep the warm air in longer, and I prayed, boy did I pray. We never lost power! I couldn't believe it, there were probably close to half a million people without power from the storm but ours managed to stay on. But we did all right being snow bound. When Cam had the day off we went outside and played in it and had a good time and got some good exercise walking through a foot of snow and pulling a 35 pound kid on a sled. Jesse LOVES his sled. He just lays in it while we are in the house. It just makes me smile.

Helping Dad with his new combat gear

Sledding!

Carolina has been doing a little better. She is still a pretty fussy baby but I have found that she feeds off my mood, so if I talk softly and try not to yell or get upset then she is much better. And if I can keep her from really crying then she seems to not cry and fuss as much as she would otherwise. But that leaves me with hardly anytime during the day to get things done. She takes cat naps mostly during the day so I really have to hustle to get things done when she does sleep. She has managed to melt my heart when I can get her to smile. She has a very big toothless grin and it makes the bad seem not so hard. She is doing much better after I stopped breast feeding her. I know breast is best, but when we are both crying and yelling and not happy it was a no brainier. She still gets a little fussy when she is eating but it is tolerable. I know it will get better once she gets a little older so I just have to wait it out.

Jesse is doing really well, he has been off his medicine for a little longer than a month now and he seems to be doing really great. We are still waiting for his appointment but so far he is doing really great! He is wanting to help me with Carolina and he loves playing with his little kitchen. He brings me all kinds of things to eat and drink.

Carolina and Christmas

There is so much to update. I am feeling a little overwhelmed by all the info I need to put on the blog. I guess that is what I get for going 4 months without posting anything. Well here goes.

We have been settling in nicely here in Washington.  We haven't seemed to mind the rain and gray skies too much. I do prefer sun and bright blue skies but I figure we are going to be here for a few years why hate something I have no control over? Jesse has done well with moving, he does really miss his friends from Cincinnati however. When ever we get in the car he lists off all his friends that he would play with there and I have to be the mean mom and tell him that we can't play with them today. He is doing really well health wise too. He is now totally off the medicine and so far so good. We had a little bit of a worry just this last week because he caught and awful cold and his x-ray wasn't very clear but now that he is over the cold he is back to being crystal clear in his lungs and his x-rays look great. He loves nursery, as soon as its time to go he runs into the room without so much as a look back to me or Cameron. But I am not complaining one bit. I am glad he likes spending time on his own with other kids his age. Its good for all of us. 

Cameron is really liking his job, he is totally busy 24-7 as they are getting ready for deployment but he liking what he is doing and he likes the men he works with. 

We would like to introduce our newest member of our family. Carolina Beveridge was born on December 6th weighing in at 8lbs 14oz. She came out screaming and wanting to eat and some days that seems like all she does, not really but it feels like that when you can't figure out what she wants or its the 10th time you have tried to put her down to sleep and she keeps waking up. We are getting used to each other and trying to figure out how to make each other happy. Jesse really doesn't seem to mind that there is another human being in the house. I think that only thing that he cared about was that his mom and dad left for 3 days. He sure did not like that, but we are all getting adjusted figuring out how to have a new baby again. 

A few weeks later it was Christmas and we traveled down to Utah to visit our family. We drove all day and made it there safe and sound. We had a few days with each family and enjoyed Christmas with everyone. Jesse loves his new toys. He got a Woody and Bullseye and some Legos and a play kitchen which he loves to cook us food with. Its so awesome to see his little imagination take off. I can't believe how smart he is, I find myself looking at him and thinking you are only 2 what happens when you are 5 and 8 and 12 and 16? He is so much fun to be around, his grandma said while we were down there, "How can you be depressed/sad with that kid around?" AMEN. He lights up my days and helps me to be a better mom. 

Jesse playing with his new sister

Cam reading to the kids at bed time

Cute little Christmas dress

Carolina's Blessing day

All the grand kids on my side of the family with  great  grandparents and  grandparents

Carolina on her blessing day in the dress  I was blessed in. My great grandmother made

All the siblings on my side of the family
Shawna, me, Cameron, Kristen, Jake, Hannah, Daniel and Raygan

All of Cameron's family
Jon, Rachel, him, Jesse, me, Carolina, his mom Nancy, his Dad Ken and  Katie

We blessed Carolina while we were with all our family and everyone was there! All the brothers and sisters and grandmas and grandpas. It was such a special day. My mom saved my blessing dress and Carolina was able to wear it. Looking at my little family I am so blessed. They love me unconditionally and we try and help each other to be better and we love each other. I am so blessed!

While we were there Cameron celebrated his 30th birthday! We had two celebrations. One with my family the day before, our sister-in-law, Hannah makes the best homemade tortillas and we had a big tortilla buffet and my brother made non-alcoholic mint mojitos. Everything was sooo yummy and the company was great. Thank you to Hannah and Jake for the yummy food drinks. I love food.

On his actual birthday we spent the day with his family. We had a good day of just hanging out and playing with new Christmas toys. We went to his favorite place to eat for lunch, The Purple Turtle and got all the good stuff there, then for dinner we went to the Brick Oven and had oh so good pizza and homemade root beer. Vacations are never long enough and we had to go home the next day but we are so glad that we live closer to home this year and that we were able to spend Christmas with our families.

October Already!

Jesse and his cousin Peyton splashing at Grandma's and Grandpa's house

Time sure does fly by. I swear it was just summer time and we were outside sitting around the fire pit. But that kind of weather has come and gone. We are now into Fall here in the northwest. Which to me means cold and damp. But it hasn't been all that bad, we do still get to see the sun even if for a brief moment, but I am counting it. Things have been rather busy in our house since that last post. Cameron had to do some training and was gone for two weeks, so Raygan came up and visited Jesse and me, we took her and did a little sight seeing in Seattle and then to the beach. We then made the 900 mile trek down to my parents house to drop her back home and say a quick hi and goodbye to the family. The trip back home went amazingly fast! I couldn't really believe it when we hit the OR-WA border and it was still daylight. Jesse is the best little guy, I don't think one tear was shed the whole time we were in the car.

Pike's Place Market 

Cameron's sister Katie came to visit us for a week and so we got to do some more sight seeing. We went up to Seattle again and did Pike's Market and walked all over. I really earned the pizza that we ate for dinner that night. We all wanted to take a ferry ride so we went to a nearby island called Bainbridge Island. It was so much fun, really windy and a little cold but way fun. It was my first boat ride on open waters like that. I could sit there and ride them all day but we still had things to do and places to see. We had some great seafood for lunch at Ivar's and then had some of the best pizza at a little alley pizzeria. Super good food that day!

Ferry Ride!

Yummy seafood at the market

Craziness at the market

We wanted to go to Mt St. Helen's on Columbus Day but the weather just wasn't that great. We wouldn't have been able to even see the volcano so we decided to just stay local. We went out to breakfast and then we went to a hands on children's museum in Olympia. Jesse really loved it. We would try and get him to go look at different things but he would just get mad because he was loving what he was doing. We could have spent the whole day there and that would have been A OK with Jesse.

Jesse and Dad wearing hardhats and playing at the museum

There is a park that we love here. It is called Falls Creek Park. It's in Tumwater and there are 3 waterfalls along this portion of the river. It has had a wood mill and a couple distilleries on this part of the river but now they have put ladders on the river to encourage the salmon to come up the river and spawn there. We were able to take Jesse there while the salmon were running and it was the coolest thing ever. I have never seen the salmon going up the river but it is pretty amazing. Jesse loves this park because there are bridges and water and water falls.

Falls Creek Park

This is his "cheese" face

It is pumpkin time! There is a local farm near our house that sells pumpkins from their field and so we thought that we would take Jesse and let him pick his first pumpkin. He really didn't care too much about the pumpkin all he cared about was the wheel barrow. He loved being pushed all around and being able to look around at everything. He especially thought it cool when we started to put the pumpkins in it and he got to sit on top of them. There were rides and food and home local produce but our favorite thing was the caramel apples and the fresh apple cider. It tasted almost as good as Cam's family makes it, almost not quite but it was good. We are excited to carve up the pumpkins and see how Jesse does with all the goo, he isn't really into getting his hands yucky.

So many choices!

Things are well here with us. There are just about 5.5 weeks left til we add another member to our household. I can't believe that this pregnancy has gone by this fast. I am so excited to meet our new little daughter and to see who the person that she will become. And to see how Jesse is as a big brother. He seems to do ok with other girls but we will see when its his sister.

Getting into the Swing of Things

Well we officially moved in and settled in our new place. We have gotten pretty well adjusted to the area here and we are loving being here. Up to this point in our military career it has been relatively easy but that is all about to change. Cam's brigade is getting ready to deploy sometime next year and he has a lot of training between now and then. So that means a lot of alone time for me and Jesse but I hope that we can adjust and make friends to make the time go by faster. But that is what military life is all about, so I am not complaining I am just saying it will take some getting used to.


We have been exploring a little since being here and before Cam had to really buckle down with work. We have been out the Mt. Rainer a couple times and we absolutely love it there. It really makes me feel at home, like we are back in Utah hiking through the mountains and enjoying the cool weather. Jesse is even starting to like hiking, he didn't really like it at first, mostly because we wouldn't hold him and made him walk. But he is liking it more and more every time we go. Cam had about a week off of work and we wanted to get out to the Olympic Peninsula before it got too cold to go camping and explore it. We went to Quinault Lake for the first night and camped there and went to the beach before it got dark. I  thought that the beaches out here were all rocks, but the first beaches that we went to were perfect. It was a little chilly but it made me want to move to beach and live there. I could have sat there all day and just watched the waves roll up onto the nice sandy beach. Jesse really enjoyed it too, running around and running from the waves was really fun to see. The water was absolutely freezing but we still had a lot of fun. Cameron really enjoyed Ruby beach. There were tide pools and big outcroppings of rocks out in the ocean. We had to bid the beaches farewell for the day and head back to get some dinner going and get camp set up. We were a little worried about how well Jesse would do because we had only been camping one time before but he did great. He slept the whole night and woke up when we did. Camping in the West is definitely better than camping in the East.

The view from the road to the beach

Yummy camping face!

First steps ever on the beach!

The next day we went into the Olympic National Park. It was the most amazing thing to see these huge trees and to see how old they are. I just couldn't get over their size! I haven't been to the redwoods but these are amazing. We did a little hike and Jesse did better than I did, I had to take more breaks than I would have liked but being 6 months pregnant I didn't want to push it. We then camped just outside of Forks, WA. Yes, it is the same Forks that are in the Twilight books. It was really quite cool there though. We went out the beach there too, at La Push and it was not my favorite. It was all rock and almost impossible to walk on. The waves really were crashing there but all the rocks made it really hard to explore the beach. We did find a hamburger place to rival that of the one Cam grew up with. He wanted to just eat there the rest of the trip.

The rival hamburger joint

The start of the hike in the Olympic National Park

We had to head back home the next day but we went the rest of the way around the peninsula and we like the part that we had explored  much better. We wished that we had moved here a little bit sooner so we could go back there and go camping more.

We are doing really well and things are all on track for my pregnancy. I still haven't decided if I am going to try and go natural or go with a c-section again. I guess I will mostly just wait and see. But we are so excited for our new little girl to join our family in December. Jesse is growing like a weed and is getting more and more independent every day. He loves to help with the chores. When we bought our lawn mower he knew what to do with things before we did. Good thing I grew up with handy boys. I have to keep him incredibly entertained and I am always finding things for him to do so he doesn't take some thing apart or open something that shouldn't be opened. I can't believe how far he has come, sometimes when I look back I think was that real, did we really go through all that? It feels like a dream now most days. He is an absolute miracle and I am so thankful to be him mother, I feel inadequate but the Lord knows things I don't so I will trust him and hope for the best. Cam is liking his job here and is getting the hang of being back in a non recruiting unit. The base is big but we are liking being by one again. And thankful to be back closer to our family.