The Good Side of 30

We have a bit of a love/hate relationship with birthdays around here.  We LOVE a reason to  celebrate and get anything and everything we want for a week, AKA 'birthday week'.  But when the actual day comes...we're just older.  We're getting old.  There's no way around it.  But I figure we can either sulk and be down about it or we can look on the bright side.  Stephen has finally hit the good side of 30!!  The 20's are dumb.  31 is where it's at.  He's accomplished a lot in his long 31 years of life.  He met the most amazing girl he could ever dream of and married her!!  Boo-ya!  He has hands down the cutest two little boys in the world.  He own a house....sort of....freaking mortgages.  And he's finally figured out what he wants to be when he grows up.  Yay for huge life decisions!  I'd say he's done alright.  So congrats on making it to the good side of 30 hun!! 

Seriously though, I couldn't have asked for a more amazing man.  He's the perfect husband, supportive, caring, hilariously funny, witty, smart, and ridiculously good looking.  Nothing makes me happier than waking up with him beside me every morning.  Our boys idolize him, and I'm so grateful for the amazing example he is to them.  When he's home he's got the cutest little shadow running behind him...and Win's not far behind crawling after him.  One day they'll know how lucky they are to have him as their Daddy. 

Cheers to the good side of 30 babies!!


Gah!  He's so cute!!

Such a good big brother

 

Yup...he's all mine.  haha

 

 

Filling out his mission papers

 

Just got engaged!!!  We're just babies!

Side note:  We just watched our wedding video.  Good grief.  I really wish we could get married again....like tomorrow.  We'd do everything different.  Oh well.  Still the best day of my life!

First time daddy. So precious

 

My family.  Technically Win is there...five months along in the belly.

 

Second time daddy....he's got it down. Superdad!

You sure have grown over the years.  Happy birthday old man.  Love you!!

TA-DA!

Done and done.  I'm loving my do and am so relieved it turned out just how I wanted and not a hack job. 

This was my inspiration for this cut.



And this is what I got.

First, just as a reminder, this what I had before.

 

 

I ended up cutting 11 inches off.  What?!?!  I didn't even know I had that much left to cut off.  It ended up being enough to donate, so that was pretty cool.  Along with the color and cut I ended up changing my part.  It's been long overdue.  I've just been resisting it, but it was time to give in.  I have a ridiculous cowlick right at the front of my hair that screws my bangs up everyday, so I decided it was time to part it on the right side.  I actually really like it, it's just going to take some getting used to.

 

So I say she was pretty dead on as far as the style goes!  You gotta love when that happens.  I love, love, LOVE it!  I'm so glad I did it.  I am going to go darker in a couple months, but I'm liking the nice transition color.  I love doing drastic changes like this.  I feel like a whole new woman.  Thanks for all the comments on facebook and IG.  It made me feel suuuuuper special!!

My Hair

How about that exciting title.  Yup, I'm back.  I've got like three posts in the works, but this one is the easiest to finish.  Two more sleeps and I'm chopping my beautiful locks.  I'm freaking out.  I've grown especially attached to my hair this time around.  It's been a long time since it's been short, and I'm nervous it's going to be a complete hack job.  It's happened before.  Nothing is worse than a bad hair cut.  NOTHING! 

For fun I've compiled a history of Janna's hair.  It's very exciting. 


1. This is my 99% of my life, until I got up the nerve to chop my hair and dye it dark in grade 11. 

Just me and my bestie taking some fiiiiine pics in her backyard.  Good grief.

2. Then this nightmare happened.  Stephen was not impressed.  I was at the hair school for six hour.  SIX HOURS!!  I was sure my hair was going to fall out.  I  actually did it when my hair was long and it was completely dead so I ended up cutting it like a week later.  I lost 90% of my natural curl.  Dang it!  And Stephen gave me the silent treatment for the next day because I couldn't pick him up from work.  Sorry hun.....sooooooo sorry. 

 

 

3. Then I went completely opposite. A bit better.  Stephen called me his Asian wife for a while. 

 

4. I got desperately sick of short hair....so I spent ridiculous amounts of money and got me a weave!  Good idea????  Not really.  But I liked it for the two months it lasted.

 

 

5.  Then I was done with dark and returned to the blonde.  I still don't know which I prefer.  My poor hair...



 

 

6. Seriously....my poor hair.  It's been way too heavily colored.  I don't know how it's still in decent condition.  I actually really liked the blunt bang look, but it grows out so quickly I got sick of maintaining it. 

 

7. And so this is how I've been the majority of the last 2 years...minus the baby bump for a large portion of that time.

 

 

So what do you think????  It's all going down Thursday!  I'm pretty sure I know what I'm going to do, but I'm completely open to people swaying my mind.  Tune in Thursday to see what happened!

January....and February

Geeeesh I'm getting into quite the bad habit of not blogging.  And since this is pretty much the only place I journal/keep track of everything, I should probably start being better at it.  Although, I'm pretty sure Instagram has that pretty much under control for me.  I'll just print of an Instagram book to pass down to my posterity.  Honestly though, not a whole lot has happened, since my life pretty much revolves around this chubalub these days. 

On Tuesday Win is 8 weeks!  I forgot how fast it goes by.  Last week we went for a check-up....gotta love the six week check-up...only not so much.  It was great news all around for Win though.  He was 10 lbs 8 ounces!!  A chunk and a half.  And he finally grew!  He was 21 inches.  He was such a shrimp when he was born.  He can't fit his new born onsies anymore, but he's still in the new born jammies.  That will probably wrap up this week though.  He's eating every three hours during the day.  He has a good three hour nap in the morning and then another one after lunch.  Then he usually has an hour and a half snoozer before he goes down for bed around 7:30.  He's been sleeping 6-7 hours and then another 4-5 hours so I can't complain!!  And for all you who think i've got it easy, I promise you I put in my dues!!  For the first 6 weeks of his life I was up every 2-3 and then 3-4 hours, so I am sufficiently exhausted.  I promise.  
And yes, he sleeps on his tummy, just like Bails.  Sorry for all you tummy haters out there.  Please don't write me nasty comments and call child welfare on me though.  I assure you that his neck is super strong and he is very capable of turning side to side without smothering himself.  And in case  you can't tell from the picture...this boy is totally a McKee.  I'm interested to see how his looks change as he gets older though because Balian is 100% Steed.  Stephen's not half bad looking though, so I'll take a little McKee any day ;)

As for Bails....he ignores Win like the plague 95% of the time.  3% of the time he's jumping on him, or falling on him, or pushing him away as I force him to hold him for a picture.  2% of the time he actually acts like he genuinely loves him.  I'm really hoping it gets better soon.  It's been 8 weeks though!!!  You'd think he'd have figured out by now that he's not going anywhere so he better make the best of it.  Oh well.  Until then, we go on lots of Mommy-Bails dates.  And I don't mind.  I love that little 2-year-old so much.  He's still the most snuggly boy and gives me kisses and cuddles upon any request from me.  He still sleeps like a gem from 6:30-7 every night.  I couldn't have asked for a better kid.  His favourite things to do these days is wrestle with Stephen.  And once you start him going it's hard to make him stop.  He's got a pretty fierce kick too.  It's no joke.  We've been watching A LOT of "Wreck-it Ralph" lately and so he walks around the house with his plastic hammer and screwdriver fixing things.  There's more than a few black scuff marks on all my walls as a result.  Oh well.  At least we took the real hammer away before any real damage happened.  

There, I think that's a sufficient update on the boys.  Stephen and I are good too.  I'm pretty much loving being on mat leave.  A teeny tiny part of me misses work, but I think I'm good for another couple of months.  Kinda weird being a STAHM though.  Not better or worse than being a working mom, just different.  I FINALLY started getting my mat leave payments.  It was a little stressful there for a couple weeks.  Although they seem a little inconsistent.  Am I supposed to be getting paid weekly??  Bi-weekly??Anyone??  Just wondering is all. 
Stephen is fully enjoying being the breadwinner.  He works hard and plays hard doing his martial arts.  I usually go watch him at class every saturday morning and then we go on a date  grocery shopping.  He's had his jaw knocked out of place and sprained as a result.  Can't say I'm too terribly happy about that, but I'll let him continue for now.  :)

So that's about it!  We're pretty cooped up still with it being so snowy and cold outside, so we haven't done anything too fun.  I can't wait for the summer when we can go to the park and swimming.  We're also taking our first family vacation this August!  We're staying at my boss' condo in Palm Springs, so we're going to make the most of it and hit up Disneyland and the San Diego Zoo and SeaWorld while we're at it, since they're all so close together.  I'm so excited!!  But also very nervous.  haha  We'll have a almost 3-year-old and a 8-month-old.  So it will definitely be an adventure and they won't remember half of it, but I'm still really excited.  Now for a butt load of pictures!

 i love this kid.  haha

one of those rare genuine moments

 the chubster!

 being silly

 best toothy grin

 stud

 oh ya, i got new glasses!

 matching jammies!  Wish you could see Win's big smile better

 Cheeks!!!  That's my new nickname for him.

HE'S HERE!

Holy cow it took me a long time to do the birth story post this time around.  But I need to do it before I forget it!  So without further ado, presenting...

 Winston Charles Alexander McKee!

First off...I know.  It's quite the name.  Stephen once again thought of it...and I once again hated it at first.  I love it now.  Totally suits him too.  Why do I suck at thinking of names??  All my names sounded like they belonged to a dog.  Oh well...I found our girl game and we haven't told it to anyone!  So hopefully we get a girl next.  So Stephen is a bit of a history geek buff and basically idolizes Winston Churchill.  So if when I said Winston you thought Winston Churchill immediately like I did, then you're right.  That's where his name came from.  Charles if my Grandpa Steed's names and Alexander is Stephen's Grandpa Morrison's name.  And we choose two middle names for our kids, one from each side of the family so that we don't fight over whose turn it is to get a middle name from their side.  Then people say just don't use family names...and to be honest we're running out of good boy ones, so I told Stephen if we have another boy it will probably just have Stephen as a middle name haha.  But it's really important to both of us that our kids have family middle names.  So that's the story of the name because I'm sure you all cared.  

Now to the birth.  I was hoping and praying that my water would just break and it would be go time like with Bails.  But it wasn't to be.  Instead I had to deal with contractions, full on, for six days.  And of course the one time I did go in to get them monitored they stopped.  Ugh.  I then had the ridiculous nurse tell me I was just dehydrated and they were cramps.  Look, I can understand if this was my first rodeo and didn't have a clue what a contraction felt like that maybe I was just being hopeful in thinking they were contractions.  But I am not an idiot, I had done this before, and trust me, I was having contractions, and I was in a lot of pain.  I basically didn't sleep for six days.  I was exhausted and I couldn't talk to my doctor, and I just wanted to have my freaking baby.  So yes....there may have been a minor melt down walking back to the car when they sent us home.  Poor Stephen.  haha  He handled it like a pro.  Why do women have to be so crazy hormonal when pregnant!  I feel bad for the husbands.  

So after six days of contractions I finally woke up to quite a good bit of blood.  Sorry folks, but that's what happened.  Maybe now they would believe me.  Even while they were examining me we got the feeling again they would send us home.  Lucky for me my dr was going to be at the hospital in half an hour.  We chose to wait for her.  This was the exact conversation.  

dr A. : Hey Janna how are you doing?
Me :  Um..okay. 
dr A. :  Having pain?
Me: Yes!
dr A. : Okay, let's do this then.  

It's just that easy.  Oh how I love my dr.  I know for a fact she would have done it six days earlier had she been at the hospital when I was there.  Oh well...six more days of baking wasn't such a horrible thing.  So then we went through the drill.  Stockings on, catheter in (THE WORST)  I just hate them so much for some reason.  IV in (also the worst), then the long roll down to the O.R.    I told myself to be calm, you've done this all before.  It's really not THAT bad.  A couple of pokes and then you feel like a paraplegic for a couple of hours.  No big deal.  Ugh...I really wish I could control my mental state better.  It's something I need to work on.  I started freaking out, and shaking uncontrollably.  They hadn't even done anything yet!  And why is it SO FREAKING FREEZING in those operating rooms!?!  They threw some warm blankets on me and that helped a bit, although I'm pretty sure I was more just freaking out than actually cold.  

Then the pokes started.  During my spinal for Balian I was having hard contractions so I honestly don't remember any pain from the spinal.   This was so so different.  I remember each poke.  Each hurting more than the last.  haha  One made my head shoot up.  The nurse did not agree with that and with cat-like reflexes forced my head back into a downward position.  haha  IT HURT!  So we finally got through that.  The spinal dr was actually really nice.  The cheeriest chinese man around...expect for the Pediatrician.  From there it was just some slicing and dicing and then Winston appeared over top of the drape.  He was screaming, and then I started bawling.   Stephen was just so excited.  He was giddy.  It was really cute to watch.  I got to hold him on my chest for a minute or two and then Stephen left with Winston while I got stitched back up and pushed on.  So glad I couldn't feel all of it.  

So Winston arrived at 7:38 AM, January 8 (two and a half weeks early) weighing 6 pounds 11 ounces and was 19.5 inches long.  I love my tiny babies.  I was for real worried I wouldn't be able to love him as much as I love Bails, but no worries now.  I love this little boy so much...even at 2am, then 4am, then 6am.  We are working on sleeping more than 2 hours at a time.  Something i never had to worry about with Bails.  Oh well...I love my morning cuddle times.  

He really is a good baby.  Like Bails, he doesn't really cry.  Just more of a whimper.  I've heard him real cry twice, during his first bath and when he got the snip snip.  SO sad.  Other than that he just whimpers when he's hungry or needs to be changed.  He eats like a pro and my moose milk is in full effect.  We left the hospital at 6 pounds 5 ounces.  At his one week he was up to 6 pounds 13 ounces!!!  Yay for Winston.  

My mom stayed with me in the hospital while Stephen stayed with Winston.  Talk about heaven sent.  I love having my mom stay with me.  She does everything with a skip in her step.  haha  She loves that she gets to be there the first few days and I love that she loves it!  She also came over every morning for a week once I got home and cleaned my house top to bottom and did all the heavy lifting for me.  So grateful for a mom that lives close by that is willing and wanting to serve.  

And Stephen has super spouse down to a T.  He's such an awesome dad and still makes time individually with each of the boys and me, as well as make dinner, laundry, do the dishes, bath time and bed time for Bails.  He's awesome times 10.  Now for some pictures of the cutes magoots!!

First cuddle

I love this more than anything

So teeny tiny

I die every time I see this picture.  Such a good big brother

Me and my boys.  So perfect

One week old

Looking a little chubs and just like Stephen

Such a naked cutie

First Sunday debut. So handsome

 Oh and look....mom got ready for one.  I just love his squishy cuteness!

Taken today.  2 Weeks old!

 

CHRISTMAS 2012

 

 

Apparently I took a break from taking pictures this Christmas.  Why do I always forget to take pictures of the most important family moments?!  I guess the good news is I was living in the moment and enjoying Christmas to its fullest.  These are literally ALL the pictures I took over Christmas.  For shame.  I had a GREAT Christmas this year.  I got work off approved early....which never happens.  So I had a fully SIX days off!!  I don't think I've had six consecutive days off of work since I was in Grade 11.  No joke.  So I was enjoyoing every moment of it.  It was the in-laws year this year, so we did our Christmas with my family early. 

 

We started with Shay and I making breakfast...kinda  a new tradition I think.  And it was delightful.  Then we opened gifts.  Long story short...my parents need a bigger house.  haha  I'm just kidding...but seriously, we're just getting bigger mom and dad!!!  I love being all together as a family though...chaos and all.  My parents gave Bails boxing gloves and a blow up punching bag!!  Best gift ever.  He loves it.  He still prefers his dad's gloves most days, but he loves wrestling with the blow up bag.  haha  It's hilarious.  He'll bounce right off it and fly across the room.  Stephen got some fighting shorts and a hoodie from mom and dad and I got some sewing gear to go with my new sewing machinge!!  It was a great morning.

 

Stephen and I have been planning our Christmas Day feast for about six months now.  haha  We were really excited to show case our dishes and I can say proudly that we pulled through.  It was delicous!  Of course no pictures so you'll have to take my word for it.  And I'm also proud to say we cooked that meal with only one minor dispute.  To say I was impressed is an understatement.  I thought I'd be eating upstairs by myself by the time we ate.  I hope we make it a tradition because I actually really liked hosting Christmas dinner.  

 

Check out my mantle.  I was Little Miss Crafty this Christmas.  I made stockings too, but they were packed already.  I love my decorations and kinda don't want to take them down.

 

 

Bails in his festive red for Steed Christmas.  So concerned all the time

The champ with his gloves.  haha

Bails loves his Grandpa

The craziness

 

 

So because I was going to be like 36 weeks pregnant we weren't planning on going to Edmonton for Christmas this year...but I convinved Stephen about a week before we left that we should go up.  I love spending time with Stephen's familiy.  They're big and crazy and loud and fun and Barb puts on a Christmas Eve dinner delight.  So I really wanted to go.  We stayed with Stephen's brother Collin and his family and so we opened presents with them Christmas morning before heading over to Stephen's parents' house.  Bails didn't get much this year.  haha not why you're thinking though.  HE'S ONLY 2! He could have cared less what we got him.  haha  As you can tell from these pictures though apparently he was a little less than impressed.  Books????  Really mom?  What was I thinking.  Sorry Bails.  I'll do better next year.  He also got a ton of new cars and like five new balls.  He was happy. 

Deep in thought...
I bought Stephen Christmas jammies.  He did NOT buy me any.  We tried to go to Superstore before we headed home Christmas Eve.  Apparently Superstore...or anywhere....is closed Christmas Eve night.  Lame. 

 I love his new Christmas jammies.  So handsome.

 

 

You better beleive I put this picture up here!  The only picture of me with my boy during Christmas.

 

 

 And our tree.  A little charlie brownish, but I love it.  It's now January 31...and still no annual family picture in front of the tree.  It will happen before I take it down though...mark my word. 

 

And my pictures weren't blurry this time!!!  yay!! No clue what was up with my last post.  So annoying.

I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!!  I know we did.  Now we're back to work until this baby comes!! Only 17 more days!!