Lillian Faye Grover

Lillian Faye Grover

Born 05/26/11

8 lbs 2 oz, 19 inches long

Lilly is finally here! Thank goodness! I was starting to think that she would never come out of me.

Here are some of her first pictures.

This one was right after she was born. I was soooooooo exhausted.



Once everything was checked out and she and I were stable Paul got to take her to the nursery for her first bath. She had so many rolls! She looks like a Shar-Pei dog!!

Washing all that hair.

Daddy's girl.

We got to come home from St. Mark's the following Saturday, but we ended up having to spend 24 hours at Primary Children's Hospital because her Jaundice got so bad. She spent the entire time under the lights and is doing much better now.

I'm officially back to work part time and Lilly is coming into the office with me. I dressed her up with some bows for her first day at the office.

Will's Third Birthday

We had William's 3rd Birthday party this weekend at Grandma and Grandpa's house. We decorated with stars, balloons, and streamers at Will's request. I managed to get all the way to mom and dad's before realizing that I left our new camera on the table at home. So, we used mom's camera to take pictures. Unfortunately, I think that we had it set to an outdoors setting because the photos aren't as crisp as they usually are. Oh well... Here's William and Kensie eating cupcakes. Paul helped William open his presents. He got lots of books from Grandma Nina and sports equipment from Aunt Erin. He also really liked the Hot Wheels cars and sidewalk chalk from our friends Terri and Ryan.

Will saying "cheese".

This was the aftermath from the party. I am so glad that mom and dad have a house big enough to have this stuff at.

Grandma and Grandpa gave Will a chair with his name on it for watching TV at their house. That night we were all so wiped out that we just crashed. He got all comfy in his new chair.

It was really fun to have everyone over. William had Kensie to play with, Terri brought her new baby, Conner, and Maria and I got to commiserate over being pregnant (she's due in October).

Man, with all these babies around you'd think that we lived in Utah or something!

Maternity Wear Frustration

Okay, I know that I am not the only poor and plus sized girl having a baby in this state. So why is it that none of the stores around here carry cheap plus sized maternity clothes?

I'm not even looking for anything fancy, just some jeans and t-shirts. So far I have managed to find 2 shirts at a local JC Penney's that were 2X, but that's it.

Now, don't get me wrong... If I had unlimited amounts of cash to throw at the situation I could definitely find clothes around here that would fit. Unfortunately, I am not independently wealthy. And, besides, there's even a limited supply of the expensive stuff in my size. (I refuse to wear anything that has a giant bow strapped to my stomach!)

So, I resorted to buying some basics online and praying that they would both fit and look good.

I got my order in the mail yesterday. The shirts are fine, but the pants are a disaster. Somehow they think that if you are large around the middle you must also be as tall as an Amazon Warrior with a butt the size of a VW Bug! I tried putting the jeans in the washer on the hottest setting to see if I could shrink them down a bit (had there been a pair at a store locally that I could have tried on first I wouldn't be having this problem), but that has only helped a little.

I can't believe that I am the only woman in Utah with this problem. Come on people... this state has one of the highest birth rates in the nation, and not all of us look like Twiggy!!

In an effort to resolve this issue I am trying to decide which one of the following strategies makes more sense. Either I am going to open my own store to sell larger size maternity basics here locally. Or, I am going to organize a Million Pregnant Big Girls march to the state capital to demand equal representation. (Imagine a million plus sized hormone monsters waddling up capital hill! That would get some attention!)

In the meantime I am going to sit here, eat my breakfast cookie, and try and get some work done.

Baby Girl!

Okay, I finally am posting the ultrasound pictures from last Friday.

Here are the first shots of our sweet little girl.

This is her arm.


This is her profile. She is looking upward in this one, so that's a nose and mouth on top.

This is a 3D of her. You can see her little face and a hand stretched out in front of her.

Paul and I are still working on a name. We have one that we like, but we might have to have some others in the waiting just in case she comes out and the name that we picked doesn't fit her.

Christmas 2010

I hope that everyone out there had a great weekend and a fabulous Christmas. We sure did.

We spent Christmas Eve with the Grover side of Paul's family. Cousin Jane and her husband Greg always host dinner for everyone. It's so nice to see everyone and to see how much all the kids have grown over the year.

We stayed the night at Mom and Dad's house Christmas Eve so that we wouldn't have to drive all the way back the next morning. Mom and Erin made a great breakfast and then we opened presents. We didn't go as overboard as we have in the past but everyone still got lots of good stuff. Will most of all. We tried to space them out a bit so that he would get a chance to play with everything.

Will got a cool doctors set from Erin. It has interchangeable X-Rays, an IV line, and a doctors bag full of equipment. He took the time to sit down and check Paul's heartbeat, his temperature, and his ears.

The next item was a remote control car from Grandma and Grandpa Noble. It was built for little kids, so all it has is 4 buttons; one that makes it go forward, one that makes it back up, one the makes the horn beep, and one that revs the engine. He loved that! He drove it around for hours, menacing the poor dogs. I tried to get some pictures but he was moving around so much that they came out blurry.

The last big thing was an artist easel from Grandma and Grandpa Noble. One side has a chalk board and the other side has a white marker board. There is also a roll of paper through the middle so that he can color with crayons. He loved the marker board because he could draw as much as he wanted and then erase it and start over.

Later in the morning we brought out his finger paints and taped some paper up so that he could paint. He likes this because it's messy.

In the afternoon Nina and Paul's brothers came over for dinner. Mom and Erin made a fabulous turkey dinner with all the trimmings. We were so stuffed that we could barely move.

Once everything got settled again we got William ready for bed in another set of Christmas PJ's. I think he got about 6 different sets this year. The fun part is now he can wear them until Spring!

Paul had to work yesterday so William and I spent the day back at Mom and Dad's. William played with Grandpa while us girls went shopping. (Yes, we are just about that crazy.)

In the evening we went to Nina's for Sunday dinner. She made her traditional Christmas Prime Rib dinner with all the fixin's. After we ate we opened packages with the brothers. Nina gave everyone ZuZu Pets. For those of you who don't know, ZuZu Pets are little electronic hamsters. Each of us got one pet and a piece of their habitat. So, we spent about an hour setting up a huge hamster run in Nina's front room and sending the little guys scurrying through it. By the time that we left last night it looked like toys had taken over the front room!

After all of the excitement of the weekend it is hard to come back to work and focus. Mostly I keep thinking about all of the toys and gifts that are piled up in my living room waiting to find a home somewhere in the house.

Oh well... Hopefully the cats aren't having too much fun playing doctor.

Snowmen and Christmas Trees

We spent time playing at Grandma and Grandpa's over the weekend. Grandpa helped Will make his first snowman in the yard. Will kept putting big handfuls of snow on the front to give him a big belly.

On Saturday we went to the annual Festival of Trees. As usual they had a ton of stuff to look at. Most of it was pretty standard Christmas fair. I have posted some pictures of some of the more unique displays.

This one was called "That 70's Christmas". There was a big sculpture made out of bike tire rims with flowers and lights. The tree itself was covered in peace signs and more flowers.

This one was all done in dinosaurs (my favorite). I couldn't get a wide enough shot to get everything that was laid out around the tree. There was a small army of plastic dinosaurs on the floor around the tree. I would totally have bought this tree, no matter how much it cost, but it was already sold.

This one was called "A Rockin' Christmas". It was all done in old albums.

Besides the trees they always have great gingerbread displays. The biggest one this year was a candy carnival. It was so big that I had a hard time getting a good picture of it.

This was Noah's Ark.

This was a train station.

This one was a cool idea. It was done as a suitcase that had opened up to show a village inside. They even had painted all of these little travel stickers on the outside of the trunk.

On Sunday we went back to Grandma and Grandpa's and Will helped Grandpa organize and put up Christmas lights. Mostly he was in charge of turning them on and off when Grandpa told him to, but it was a help. We had a great weekend overall.

I am starting to feel a bit better everyday. We had another ultrasound on Friday. The baby is doing fine and growing well. We are scheduled for our big ultrasound on January 7th. That's when we will find out what we are having. I will make sure and post it for everyone.

Thanksgiving and Snow

Well, we had a nice Thanksgiving, considering that Will barely ate anything and I am limited by morning sickness still. Paul helped make up for the two of us. ;-)

Nina cooked a fabulous dinner spread, as usual. Someone asked me why I don't take over the cooking duties so that Nina could have a break, but I told them that when you have a cooking master like Nina you don't mess with it. I assume that one day I will have a house big enough to hold everyone and at that point I can start taking some of the holidays on myself. But, until then I am more than happy to just help with the cleanup.

We had quite a snow storm come through last week. We ended up with about a foot of snow of the ground at our house. It was just starting to melt off a bit when another storm showed up yesterday. It snowed all day long and all last night. We now have over a foot on the ground at our house.

Driving in to work this morning was fun...

The only good part about the snow is that the roofers managed to get our new roof done before all the storms started. So, at least I am not worried that it will all melt into my attic.

Now we just need it to clear up long enough for the siding guys to come in and do their stuff.