Introducing Rydge Glen Jacobson

Due to my (Lance) non-existent blogging ability and Chemene's current state I am deeply saddened to inform you that this post will not be earth shattering. What you get are pictures of our big day and a promise that Chemene will right my wrongs shortly. Thank you for your patience.


Rydge Glen Jacobson -- 6 pounds 14 ounces -- 19 inches


Rydge, Grandpa Dixon, and one proud big sister


The same big sister after a long day of sistering

One proud (and good looking) momma

Update

Isn't it weird how the time involved in 35 weeks of pregnancy seems to be equivalent to the last 5 weeks? I can't believe how slow time goes in these last stages. I got my hopes up that I would be having my baby last Wednesday, but told my doctor that I wasn't quite ready yet. I was dilated to a 3 and 70% effaced. I didn't even know if I had insurance yet. I also had just hit 37 weeks, and my belly was measuring small. I got to go get an ultrasound to make sure he is healthy and growing. He's even measuring a week ahead (I was 37 weeks, and he averaged 38 weeks in measurements). Since then, it has seemed like time is standing still. I really can't complain, though, because I'm pretty sure this baby is not going to stay in there until his due date. I'm thinking Wednesday night/Thursday morning because that's when my next appointment is. Maybe I'm just hoping. I have a narrow time frame to work with, though. Lance's brother is getting married out at the cabin on Bear Lake on Sat. the 20th. My mother-in-law has requested that I don't go into labor that day. That could get a little stressful for her. Anyway, I just thought I'd give an update for those of you who were curious.

Home again!

Well, I was going to do a great post about Lance finishing his first year of medical school, the celebration we had with most of our friends, and also post a picture of all the successful students that were at the party, but alas, my husband forbade me to do it. He said that everyone beat me to the chase, and you'll have to look at all the other blogs for pictures. I will just say that we did finish up our first year of medical school, and that we are officially second-years. We had a great year. It went by so fast.
We are lucky enough to be able to spend our summer at home in Bear Lake. We have looked forward to being able to go home so much that we can't believe it is actually happening.
We had pretty uneventful flights, and were very grateful for the lack of excitement, as I had entertained many thoughts of delivering a baby on an airplane. Since we've been home I've been thinking about all the things I have missed about being in the wonderful valley of Bear Lake. The most obvious reason is the family members who all live here, or close by. Another thing I've missed are the mountains. They bring a sense of security, and produce breathtaking sunsets. Along with that is the actual lake. It's gorgeous. I can't wait until we get good weather long enough to warm the water up. I also have missed driving down the street and seeing familiar license plates. I know who's in a lot of the cars. Call me a weirdo for memorizing license plates--my husband does all the time. It's also great seeing people I know in the grocery store. It makes grocery trips that much more enjoyable.
There are many more reasons, but I won't bore you guys anymore. Now that we're here I can look forward to baby #2 coming. We still haven't decided on a name yet, but don't worry, we will at least before he leaves the hospital.
We miss all our friends in Wisconsin, but we'll be back soon enough.

Pregnancy pictures

Well, my friend Danielle took some pictures for me, so you will finally get to see some pregnancy pictures. I am not fond of me in pictures, but she did a great job with what she had to work with;) These were taken about two weeks ago. I feel like my belly has gotten tons bigger since those were taken. Jaycee ended up taking some way cute pictures, though, so I put those in, too.

Blogging slacker!

So, lately I have not had much to blog about. There are a couple of contributing factors to this problem. The first factor is that Jaycee won't really smile for me when I try to take pictures. The second is that we don't really do much out of the ordinary to warrant taking pictures. Our days have all been blogged about before. Another reason is that it is finals week(s) for Lance until May 29th, and that is when we just kick into survival mode and wait until the stress levels go down a bit. The last, and most important reason, is that one of the main reasons I blog is to appease the grandparents, and we are soon on our way to see them. We're looking forward to that so much that it makes it hard to find motivation to endure to the end (so to speak). We're going back to Idaho on the 30th and staying the whole summer until Aug. 19th. Sometimes I think we might be crazy, what with being 8 months pregnant and traveling, and all that goes along with that. Not to mention having the baby there, and figuring out all the insurance and everything. As soon as everything gets figured out and we get settled, I know we'll have a blast. It will be nice to be home with parents and in-laws with a new baby. Anyway, the top picture is showing you when Jaycee will smile for me, which is only for silly pictures. The second is showing you a little tantrum she was throwing, and also her new favorite toy that she can't live without. There isn't an event that goes by in the day that she doesn't ask to take her stroller right along. We'll be getting ready to go to the store, the park, a friend's house, the library, or whatever else and she'll ask if she can take her stroller. The answer is always no, of course (I'm not lugging that thing around). We do let her take the stroller with Mimi when we go on walks in the evening. She begs and begs to go for walks with her stroller. Whenever we go to Abi's house (below), Caleb's house (in birthday blog), or anyone else's house, she will get so excited because there are strollers at their houses, which always end up being fought over.

This picture is to show you the cute girls I babysit every once in a while for Melissa Schmutz, Abi and Kaitlyn. They are really good girls, and Jaycee loves having someone to play with. Look at the cute smiles I got from Abi and Kaitlyn, and then there's Jaycee. The baby's smiling better than she is, but that's the best I could get. Oh well.

What a night!

Last night was not the best night of sleep for Jaycee. She didn't take a Sunday nap, which was hard for mom and dad who like their Sunday naps, and then wouldn't go to bed early either. I put her to bed at 8:00, and she kept getting up and playing with her toys. I got impatient with her and went in there all huffy. When I put her back in bed she bonked her head and cried. Then I decided I would rock her just so she would go to sleep, and she fell asleep in less than a minute. She woke up in the middle of the night to go potty. After going potty and being sent back to bed, she woke up again because her belly growled and she was hungry. I put her in bed with us and told her it was not time to eat. She didn't last very long in our bed before it was time to kick her out. She likes to pat shoulders, or give kisses. Not very cute at 3:00AM. Back to her bedroom she went and I could hear her up and roaming around, but at this point I didn't care. When I went in her room this morning she wasn't in bed, and it took me a minute to realize she was in the closet. She looked quite cozy. When she woke up she told me she was hiding from me so I wouldn't put her back in bed. I'm not complaining because usually she sleeps just fine. It's just that I thought I would be up three or four times a night after the baby came...not before!

5 years, baby!

As the title says, it was five years ago today that we were sealed for time and all eternity in the beautiful Logan Temple. It has gone by so fast, and it seems like time keeps picking up the pace constantly. I find myself wondering on a daily basis how I was able to convince Lance to fall in love with me, but thankfully, it didn't take a ton of persuasion. It all worked out great--now we're stuck with each other, and I couldn't be happier. The sealer who performed our marriage gave us some great advice (most of which has long been forgotten because we were so nervous), but we both remember one thing he said to us. He said that he and his wife had decided never to yell at each other unless the house was on fire. He gave us the challenge to do the same. I can honestly say that we really have never raised our voices at each other (in harsh tones), and we have been blessed because of that. I say "harsh tones" because sometimes Lance has senile moments and can't hear unless I raise my voice. If only I could work on that policy with Jaycee now...but she actually has those senile moments as well, so I'll blame it on that.

Anyway, I just want to say, "I love you, Lance! You are amazing!"

P.S.--Sorry for the quality of the first two pictures. They are pictures of pictures, because I don't have any wedding pictures in my computer.

My baby turned 3!?!?

I never thought she would grow up so fast, but she has. Who can complain, though? She's so fun and full of excitement and life that I would be crazy not to enjoy this stage of her life. She's such a sweetie! For her birthday she said she wanted a Dora cake and a Dora party, so that's what she got. I decided to do a little adventure for the kids at the park we had her party at, and it turned out kinda fun. I didn't want to wear myself out doing all sorts of crazy things, but still ended up being exhausted when it was all over. Lance says it's a good thing that birthdays only come around once a year, but I can't imagine having 4 or 5 birthdays to plan a year. We'll think about that when we get there, I guess.

The Dora adventure started out with Swiper the Fox taking the candles for her birthday cake. They had to go to three places to find the candles, and Lance was their tour guide. He was originally going to be Swiper, but got stage fright when he saw all the parents there. He did a good job being the guide, anyway. Their first stop was Lollipop forest. They got to cut suckers down off the branches of a tree.

This is Jaycee's friend Caleb, and they were so cute just standing there. He's got the cutest laugh, and it's so readily available. He will laugh when I look at him sometimes.

This is the beginning of the second adventure, the Rainbow Tunnel. We just put some picnic tables together and covered it with tablecloths. Some kids were scared to go through, but most of them braved it out.

The last stop was the Balloon Garden, which contained the birthday candles. We stuffed the candles in the balloons, and them blew them up. Then just taped them to knives and forks and stuck them in the ground. Unfortunately, I blew up all the balloons, and was left with no backups. Just our luck that the wind came up, and popped one of the balloons holding a candle. I just stuck it on top of a knife and called it good.

Do you see Jaycee holding her ears? She was quite scared when they started popping the balloons. Good thing we had the older kids to help us out with the popping.

For Jaycee's first two birthdays, I made her a cake, but got scared away when she said she wanted a Dora one. I decided to order one, and I'm really glad I did. Maybe I'll make one next year, though...we'll see. She loved her cake, and was so excited to go pick it up from the store.
I just happened to snap the picture at the right moment. She really wasn't that excited about any of her presents. I just found little dollar store presents for her. She didn't need any more toys, really.

After she took a very needed nap, Andy and Omar (introduced in the previous post) came over and gave her this present. It's a Maltese dog with its own carrier. She has named the dog Tinkerbell, and just had to take her to church today.

A big thanks to everyone who came to Jaycee's birthday party, and to those who gave her presents. She had a great birthday, and enjoyed all the excitement. I have to apologize to the grandparents for not putting pictures up of their presents. Lance's mom sent a whole box full of adorable new clothes to Jaycee, and I actually recorded it. Lance just said that I can't post it on the blog. Jaycee was kind of very unappreciative in the sense that she said, "Ooh, clothes! There's something in the bottom." She proceeded to pull all the clothes out without even looking at them until she got to the bottom and said, "Oh." That was it. Not the best way to react to a present, but it was way funny. The worst part of the video is probably that I was laughing so hard. Oops. We appreciated the clothes, and she really does love them. My mom also bought her some new dresses and shoes (proxied by me, and she supplied the money). It's great having friends and family.

Baseball!!!

On our golden weekend we decided to go to a minor league baseball game in Brewers stadium. One of our friends was giving away free tickets, so why not? The game was the Appleton Timber Rattlers vs. the Peoria Chiefs. The significance of it is that they are the "farm" teams for the Brewers and Cubs, meaning that some of those players someday have the potential to play on those Major League teams. The game was not dull, but not anything like a Brewers game as far as crowd excitement goes. Hence, the reason for showing this picture:


Jaycee was less than thrilled to be watching the game, and finally gave up. It was also past her bedtime, and she had not taken a nap that day. Anyway, Lance and I have disagreed on the final score of the game, but it was either 4 or 5 runs for the Rattlers, and 3 runs for the Chiefs. I still need to look that up to prove that I'm right, but have had a lack of time lately.

Then, on Tuesday night of this past week we decided to go see the Brewers play the Pirates. From left to right in the picture below (minus the baseball players): Brad, Andy, Omar, Jaycee, and Lance. Andy and Omar are friends and fellow classmates with Brad and Lance, and we actually have them over for dinner every Wednesday. Jaycee loves both of them, and they are so sweet to her.


This slide is obviously Jaycee's favorite part of going to the baseball games. She was even given the glasses and a bracelet by Associated Bank, and was thrilled to have some sunglasses.

We got to the game a little early, and went to the right field home run fence to see if we could get a ball from batting practice, but no luck. We even had a few people hollering at the fielder to throw a ball to our little girl. One time the fielder did throw us a ball, but ended up throwing it way short. This is Lance in his element at a baseball game.

The famous Klement's Hot Dog actually came up to us when we were trying to get home run balls. You can see how excited Brad was to see the Hot Dog. This hot dog is actually the one that usually wins the races in the famous sausage race at Miller Park. They have five different kinds of sausages, or whatever they are, and they race from dugout to dugout. When we were there, this guy's record was 6 out of 9 races that he had won. He's a stud! I'm sure it's not that easy to run with a costume like that on.

Another favorite thing to do at a baseball game for Jaycee is to suck her thumb. I am trying to break her of that habit, but have realized it might be a longer process than I thought. That's Omar's Brewers hat she's wearing.

I just had to put this picture in because it's so cute. Austin, Devenee, Drey, and Gabi showed up, but were not there earlier for all our photo ops. I did snap this picture of Drey and Jaycee intently watching the game.
Actually, Jaycee was bumping heads with Drey, and I just caught one with her not being mean.

This is a fake sausage, but Jaycee wanted to give him a hug.

The Brewers played a good game, and came out on top with a win 6-5. We had a great time, and will definitely be there again. Hey, if we can get tickets for $1.00, sometimes it's hard to resist.