The Dunstan Dialogue

It's time for the story about my life and my uterus. (Warning: I will be talking about menstrual cycles. If that makes you uncomfortable, you should probably keep reading so that you are better educated on women's health. Everyone knows a woman and most women have had a period before. And a lot of them have a crazy hard time with it) My uterus and I started out on normal terms when I was 12. Normal meaning I bled from my uterus for a few days once a month. NBD. A couple years of this went by and I started bleeding longer and longer, until finally I had bled for a little over a month straight and I told my mom. I think she called the doctor and the doctor was super concerned so they called an ambulance to my middle school  and carted me off to the hospital in the middle of the day. That was my first time riding in an ambulance. They didn't turn on the lights or the siren. I was super disappointed. We got to the hospital and found out I was very close to needing a bl...

I have now organized and included all the weekly themes I want to do. I have 52 themes planned, enough for the entire year.  It is now the beginning of the year and we are starting! I start each new week on a Monday and so technically this all started on the 30th of January and the last week will be the 22nd of December. Most of the themes are random things, but there are some that coincide with holidays which are the week of that specific holiday. OK, here they are: Week 1(Dec 30)- New years resolution Week 2(Jan 6)- Body Week 3(Jan 13)- Alphabet Week 4(Jan 20)- Numbers Week 5(Jan 27)- Animals Week 6(Feb 3)- Colors Week 7(Feb 10)- Valentine's Week 8(Feb 17)- Shapes Week 9(Feb 24)- Music Week 10(Mar 3)- Textures Week 11(Mar 10)- Facial Expressions/mood Week 12(Mar 17)- Spring Week 13(Mar 24)- Service Week 14(Mar 31)- Occupations Week 15(Apr 7)- Different Cultures Week 16(Apr 14)- Easter Week 17(Apr 21)- Body Week 18(Apr 28)- Alphab...

Ok, so I haven't updated the blog all summer long- but this is not the post that will update you on my summer.  This is a blogger in need of advice. I am the kind of person who needs structure to my days. I like to have things planned out so I know whats going on and I can figure out how to be flexible.  So I decided to plan out exactly how each of my days with Olivia would run. I wrote down what I would do at each wake time and each nap time. And I told myself this was a tentative schedule and we would see if it ran smoothly.  Well, finding motivation to actually put my plans into action is super difficult. I made a list of things I wanted to do with Olivia, which I admit, the goals were a bit lofty. What am I supposed to do?? There are so many blogs about sensory boxes and teaching your kid every state in the U.S. and making them a super genius by age 3. So I wanted to make sure Olivia was going to get that from me. I wanted her teachers (when she event...

Hey Friends, I know it's been a long time coming, but I had to make sure I had this down before I posted about my cloth diaper experience. I still have a lot of learning and improving to do but here is what I've got so far. If you want to just get down to business, I have a video at the bottom here that you can just watch without reading the boring story first ;) So to begin, as some of you may know, I received a TON of cloth diapers from a friend and since we were considering trying it anyway, this really tipped us over the fence and here we are doing cloth diapering. At first, I wanted to wait because I thought Olivia was too small for any of the diapers I had, which I found out was not actually true, they just look HUGE when you put them on your baby. You can also make diapers smaller, which I show in the video. My first day on the job was hard. The first time I tried to spray poop off a diaper was, simply put: messy. **Holding the diaper more down in th...

I have given hints here and there that I would do cloth diapering with Olivia. I have put it off and put it off, but have now run out of excuses. We have everything in  order and starting tomorrow, I will begin working with cloth diapers. Periodically I will blog my experiences so that others may learn from my mistakes or maybe give answers to questions I will inevitably have along the way. Wish me luck! Matt installed a sprayer for our toilet     We received a ton of cloth diapers for free from a friend       Snappi's for keeping the cloth diapers together. No pins!    All organized and ready to go!     Now do I stick with disposable wipes or reusable? Thoughts on how to go about this?

So here's the low down on how my baby came to be (not the first stages- we all know how that happened).  It started on a Saturday night at our ward Halloween party. I started feeling contractions every 20 minutes. They weren't very strong, but I knew that finally things were happening. It made me really excited because it was the day before my due date and it would be super awesome if she came on her due date. The contractions continued through the night (very hard to sleep through by the way) every 20 minutes. In the morning around 9, they started to get farther apart and we were sad, hoping that it would have progressed instead of slowing down.  That night they started up again at 20 minutes apart and by Monday morning around 5:30, they were coming 3-5 minutes apart and went on for a good hour. YAY! It's time to go to the hospital! Now, our car has an odd quirk. Sometimes if it's too cold outside, then the ignition won't start and it will alert t...

Matt and I have decided to take on the challenge of cloth diapers. We have done much research and this is the end result. We have not decided to go COMPLETELY cloth, but will do it as much as we can. A.K.A we will do disposable when we go out of the house most of the time.  I was a little nervous to do this at first. Yes, it's better for the environment. Yes, it reduces diaper rash significantly. And yes, in the long run, it's cheaper. But is it really worth all the work?? The thing that tipped us this way instead of the other, I think, is that a friend had a garbage bag full of cloth diapers and diaper covers and gave them to us. So Matt and I looked through them. There were diaper covers of every kind. There were a ton of cloths. Matt tried to show me how to fold one.... I don't think he remembers as much as he thinks he does from his family using cloth diapers. Anyway.. We looked up how to fold and use these things and decided it would be a good thing to do. Esp...

So I recently found this cute idea for a date jar on pinterest from a blog. You can find the original idea here . While I thought this idea what so creative and cute, I also felt there weren't enough date ideas. So I started scrounging online for fun date ideas. I found a lot of different websites with a lot of good stuff. I sorted through for the practical and fun sounding ones (there were a lot of dumb ones that sounded like people were just trying to get filler for their "100 awesome dates"). Anyways, I've gathered a bunch together and categorized them into 3 groups: expensive, less expensive, and stay at home. Here are 48 great dates:   EXPENSIVE: -Bed & Breakfast -Weekend Hotel Stay -Couples Massage & Spa -Concert and Dinner -Horseback Riding -Hot Air Balloon Ride -Sky Diving   LESS EXPENSIVE: -Planetarium -Drive-in & Take-out -Surprise Date (Him) -Surprise Date (Her) -Picnic and Library -Local Museum -Nicklecade ...

I am now 25 weeks along in my pregnancy and I haven't posted any pictures yet! So here you go:                                                  Here I am at 20 weeks: and here I am at 24 weeks Now that I look at them together I do see a difference... It's been hard for me to see that I'm getting bigger, because no one seems to notice I'm pregnant! Everyone says it's a blessing that I'm not big. But I want to show off a little bit... I am about 5 months now!! Anyways.. I have been thinking lately about the toilet seat issue. You know what I'm talking about... Whether you keep it up or down. For a lot of people they say that the men in the household should put the seat down when they are finished. While I agree it is very nice to not have to touch the seat when I need to go, I also have to think about my husband. He has to touch th...

So I am 21 weeks pregnant now. Woo hoo! I'm starting to feel the baby kick more and more. Everything is working out with this pregnancy so far. We have had so many blessings of friends and family being very generous towards us.  The only thing that is a bummer about all of this is health insurance. They must indeed suck all the fun out of everything. I have my own health insurance (not through a company I work for) and I have been a loyal customer for years. No major health problems for them to deal with, just my regular doctor check ups. Then I got pregnant. A very normal pregnancy with no high-risks or complications so far. And guess what? Because I live in Utah, I am not covered for prenatal doctor visits or labor and delivery. If I lived in Colorado, or Nevada, or Washington, or pretty much any state other than UT, I would be covered. rude.  Well, thanks health insurance, now I have to jump through a bajillion hoops to be able to get money for this totally normal ...

I'm about 16 weeks pregnant now and I'm still not over that extremely randomly exhausted phase. Even now I thought I wanted to write a new post and I am almost contemplating ending it and taking a nap instead because it would be more fun I think. But I've already started and I might as well finish.  Matt got to go to the doctor's with me for the first time and he got to hear the heart beat, which was cool. He said it sounded like it was swimming. He thought it was really neat to actually hear our baby. We get to find out the gender in about 3 weeks for our first ultrasound.  We thought it might be a girl, but now I'm leaning toward boy, but either one would be great! Any guesses as to what it might be? 

It's true, we are expecting a baby in October! It's hard to keep such a thing a secret. Not totally because we are so excited, but for one, people ask us a lot since we are married and haven't yet. And two, because there are a lot of other ladies pregnant right now and you want to be like, "I know what you mean!" But you can't. And Also because you are in so much discomfort that you have to stay home or don't want to participate in things because you might puke all over the guy or lady who is wearing too much cologne/perfume or didn't brush their teeth that day.  Soon I will not be as nauseous over little things and then I will be more excited about being pregnant, but until then I still wonder why I am doing this sometimes.... Too late now!