dyer [not so] diy: kitchen edition

after five years of dreaming, planning, and also procrastinating, we officially said goodbye to the original 78th street kitchen on august 12th. and a very, very, very long four months later, we finally have a working kitchen again!

as someone who is not great at making decisions and loves to overanalyze everything, a kitchen remodel that we plan to enjoy long term was quite a daunting task. throw in the fact that i'm kind of a perfectionist with impossibly high standards and it's borderline impossible. after the literal years we spent designing the layout and choosing the finishes, the final hurdle was finding a contractor to do the actual work. this was another lengthy step in the process, but in the end we found robert and he was delightful.

it was interesting timing to be without a kitchen when jack was starting solid foods. we did have a refrigerator and microwave, but no running water on the main level of the house. generally our eating habits weren't stellar to begin with, but the no kitchen situation brought them to a new low. thankfully i discovered microwaveable pot stickers, which became a staple of my diet, and a friend lent us her kitchen for some crock pot meal prep, so we muddled through.

the transformation is pretty stunning in both appearance and function. it's very surreal, but we're thrilled with the final result.

Read more

jack's first flight

the original plan was to take jack's first flight as a family for our mostly annual trip with the pullens to visit the taltons in north carolina. unfortunately ku had other plans and scheduled the opening of their new freestanding psych unit on the same weekend. so long story short, donald had to stay home. never one to pass up an adventure, i decided i was up for tackling the flight with jack solo.

we arrived at kci as prepared as we could be and hoping for the best. i was already slightly concerned about getting through the dallas airport and making our connecting flight with a pretty short layover, then our flight out of kc was delayed due to a bird strike. that was a new one for me. it ultimately ended up that everything was delayed out of dfw as well, so it all worked out in the end. on our first flight we unexpectedly ran into the parents of some college friends, which was a fun surprise. and we also completed our first in-flight airplane bathroom diaper change, so i imagine my merit badge should be arriving soon.

jack was a great little traveler and made a lot of new friends [i haven't interacted with this many strangers in an airport since i flew with the harry potter books]. our long weekend in nc was delightful as usual. lots of good conversation, london broil, low country boil, and of course more than a few games of wizard. jacob and i also kicked it old school with an impromptu audio adrenaline sing-a-long, which is now officially one of the highlights of our friendship.

Read more

life with jack

after a few months in survival mode and an insane amount of pumping and supplemental bottles [which in hindsight were probably largely unnecessary] we've settled into a good routine. jack typically wakes up for first breakfast after sleeping eight or nine hours, a feat which mom and dad are both incredibly thankful for. soon after he and i both head back to bed for a bit because the love of sleep is one of our core family values. jack does his sleeping in a bassinet by our bed partly because he is "supposed to" and partly because his room isn't ready, but he's a pretty great roommate so we don't mind one bit.

our days mostly consist of a repetitive cycle of eating, playing, and sleeping, along with a healthy dose of spitting up, which seems to be jack's favorite activity. we have dyer dinner every thursday and church and lakeland lunch on sunday. we do our best to get out of the house a few other times each week and get ourselves to a pool as often as possible.

Read more

the baby blur

no matter how much you try to prepare for bringing your first baby home, there's just no way to really understand what it will be like until you're in the thick of it. your friends try to warn you, the books and blogs give you advice, but ultimately you just have to jump in and hang on. looking back i can see how the days and weeks unfolded, but at the time it was all a blur.

that first month was literally all about survival. i heard this a lot when i was pregnant, but it's hard to comprehend just how true it is until you're in it. aside from my obvious new job of taking care of jack, i had exactly four priorities and the number one priority was sleep. this was by far the most important thing to me and i'd say the pursuit of sleep consumed at least 80% of my thoughts that first month. i was constantly calculating how long it would be until i could sleep again and how long i'd be able to stay in bed once i got there. numbers two and three sometimes switched out of necessity, but generally priority number two was eating and number three was going to the bathroom. while both of these things did obviously happen, they would easily get the boot if sleep was an option. coming in at a distant fourth was taking a shower, and we only made it that far down the list on a few rare occasions.

in the second month small glimpses of normal life started to appear. don't get me wrong, sleep was still very much the number one priority, but i would occasionally have the capacity to think about other things. we made it to church. we'd do something wild and crazy like go out to eat, visit a park, or walk around target. embarking on one of these adventures usually necessitated a day or two of recovery after, but we were beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

we're now in month three and i'd say we're figuring out our new normal. we've emerged from the blur and i usually have enough mental capacity to think about more than just sleeping, eating and pooping. we're making plans to leave the house to see friends and family instead of them having to come to us, and i've even started working on a few house projects. the progress on these projects is slower than slow, but progress is still progress, and life is good.

Read more

the day that jack was born

donald went to work as usual on a regular monday night with plans to meet me at the doctor's office early the next morning. it was to be a routine appointment, and while this wasn't our first choice, we expected to have a conversation about potential induction dates later that week or early the next since there was no indication my body was gearing up for labor and my doctor did not want me to go past the due date because to my advanced maternal age. which incidentally is a delightful phrase to hear on a regular basis.

spoiler: it was not a routine appointment.

when we arrived my blood pressure was a little high and we were sent directly over to labor and delivery. the plan was simply for me to be monitored in triage for a few hours to rule out preeclampsia, but in a confusing and comical series of events i was instead taken straight to a delivery room. the staff was certain i was there to be induced and it took awhile to convince them otherwise. ultimately the monitoring showed i was fine and we were given the choice to go home and come back the next day to be checked, or to just stay and be induced. it is worth mentioning that donald had been awake for well over twenty four hours at this point. that was a strong argument for team 'let's go home'. on the other hand there was yet another big snow storm brewing, and much more importantly, i had already been stuck with an iv. it's probably important to know that i do not like needles. at all. so when i realized that if we went home i'd have to get the iv taken out and then get stuck again, i made up my mind. with the iv in my arm i was basically halfway through labor anyway, so i wanted to stay. and when you're the one having the baby, your vote counts twice.

once we made the decision to stay things progressed in what i can only assume was a very typical way. my body responded well to the medication to induce labor and things were moving along. throughout the evening i started feeling a little more uncomfortable, but i was surprised and honestly a little confused that i wasn't really in any pain. i alternated between walking the halls and sitting on the ball until it was late enough to go to bed. i kept asking when i should get the epidural and my nurse said i would know when it was time. when i woke up and couldn't to get back to sleep for an hour i decided it was time. those epidurals are marvelous things.

aside from a few interruptions, i slept soundly until my doctor showed up the next morning and told me it was time to push. donald's job was to support me by holding me up behind my shoulders during the pushing, and he was doing a great job. while the encouraging tone of the doctor and nurse indicated otherwise, there was not much actual progress being made and the people who knew that were settling in for a long labor. then, without consulting anyone, donald decided to see what would happen if he held me up by my lower back instead. and what happened is the baby came out. this surprised everyone, including the doctor.

they laid him on my chest and there was a flurry of activity as a bunch of people, who were also surprised by the sudden arrival, rushed to our room for various tasks. i was awake and alert for the first few minutes and remember donald standing up to cut the cord before suddenly feeling very, very sleepy. and this is where things got interesting. i laid back and closed my eyes as a second wave of activity flooded the room. the basic gist is that i had some significant tearing that a typical repair wasn't going to fix and i was losing blood fast. my blood pressure tanked and donald could only sit and watch as a scene from ER unfolded in front of him and they whisked me away.

i was groggy in the operating room, but still mostly aware of what was happening around me. this gave me the advantage of reading the voices in the room and recognizing that once the doctors got to work everyone seemed much calmer, which is how i knew i was going to be okay. unfortunately donald did not have the same luxury. i'm certain the whole ordeal was much worse for him as he was left alone in the delivery room with our son and very few updates over the next two hours. we did eventually make it in and out of recovery and into a regular room. ultimately i couldn't feel my legs for a day and a half, and my hospital stay was slightly longer than usual, but things otherwise went back to normal. in true dyer fashion we didn't settle on a name until almost two days later, but we finally got there and officially introduced jack marshall to the world.

Read more

anniversary number six

from the beginning of this pregnancy we knew we were in no particular hurry to find out our baby's gender, but i was also pretty sure we wouldn't wait to be surprised in the delivery room. when the day of the revealing ultrasound came we had the tech seal a photo in an envelope, and donald was in charge of hiding it when we got home. i didn't think much more about it, but there was a close call one evening when i was home alone and accidentally discovered donald's hiding place. i was confused by the blank, sealed envelope i found stuck in a random book, and was seconds away from opening it when i suddenly realized what i was holding. [and no, i did not peek.]

since our anniversary happened to fall about a month before the due date we figured it was as good a time as any to pull that envelope back out. we grabbed fun treats from the store and some sharx fried chicken and had a little indoor picnic. after dinner we opened the envelope together and were both a little shocked to see 'it's-a-boy!' typed across the ultrasound photo, but happy to know we're having a son.

Read more