Twenty-Five

I spent today thinking about what I would write about my twenty-fifth year and couldn't think of much.  Hallelujuh, you must be thinking...or not because you haven't read to the end of any of my previous pre-30 posts but whatever.

Just after I turned 25, we headed to Disneyland with my family to celebrate my brother's mission home coming.

Greg and Rex got buttons for being there for the first time.

Here's what I came up with for twenty-five.  I was in my mid-twenties, by definition, and in reality.  Nothing very exciting happened and much of the year is a fog of memories.  I was back in school.  I started babysitting Regan when her dad stopped me when I ran past his repair shop at the end of my street.  I didn't even know his last name.  Not one of my best ideas.  I hated it but Greg wasn't making as much as we thought he would and I secretly enjoy being stressed out about things I shouldn't stress out about so the little bit of extra cash was nice.  The fall was spent as I had spent the summer: running, playing at the park, putting Rex (and Regan) down for naps, doing homework/napping myself.  The winter consisted of playing at McDonald's, playing at the mall, and playing anywhere else we could indoors, naps, dinner, running at the BYU in door track and bed.

Rex chilling in the jogger

Cowboy and indians that year for Halloween

I mean really, how could you not love Provo after looking at this picture?

At some point Greg bought this riduclous truck, which was nice as we had gone about a year with only 1 car and even though I walked most places, I hated the idea of not having a car.

In January (we're in 2011 now), when I put the kids down for naps, I would get out my favorite blanket and try to study, but could not stay awake.  I remember Rex waking up and crying once and I tried to open my eyes and get off the couch but I couldn't.  I feel back to sleep for another few hours.  Rex must have too because he stopped crying.  I thought I had mono.  Turns out I was pregnant.

That summer, I continued to be pregnant while watching Regan and Rex.  I got some fun looks.  But this is the summer I am most nostalgic about Provo for.   I pulled a ligament in the spring trying to run while pushing Rex in the stroller, so had to stop running.  Rex, Regan and I spent the summer walking to the Provo library for Canopy Capers (outdoor story time with lunch, preceded by a craft hour), walking to various parks around the city, turning our swing set into a water park, mini golfing and going to 7 Peaks (this was the first year they offered the Pass of All Passes).  I just had so much to do and a fun little toddler who was starting to talk to do them with.  I mean Greg was still around, but he was working.  Though Greg and I went on a lot of mini golf dates with our passes and got pretty good.  It was a Sand Lot type summer.   The kind you try to repeat every year, but you just can't.

Rex, Beaver and the best stroller every at the airport.

Rex and Regan playing on our backyard water park

One Sunday in June we walked to a nearby park for a concert in the park--just wonderful.  I mean, really, are you at least starting to see why I love Provo so much?

And then we flew to North Carolina for Greg's sister's wedding and Greg thought it would be funny to apply for a job in North Carolina.  Two weeks after we got home, he packed his truck up and drove to North Carolina to start his new job.  His sister and her new husband moved in with me on my 26th birthday.

And so begins the dark days of North Carolina.

Four and Twenty Years

Twenty-four is to me, what twenty-nine is to my dad.  Just about the perfect age. Something about 24 is pretty magical and when people ask me how old I am, my first thought is always 24.  Well, until recently.  Rex figured out how old I really am and constantly reminds me so it's hard to forget that I'm nearly 30 these days.  There's a lot I miss about being 24, and some I don't miss so much.

My twenty-fourth year started as most of my years have started--at a family reunion.  They really are one of my all-time favorite things.  I just really love my family and not just because I have to because we're related but because I think they are pretty awesome people.

Shortly thereafter, we started feeding Rex solid foods and he stopped crying so much, got on a rigid schedule, which suited me just fine, and was becoming less of a lump and more fun to be around.

Doing the dishes one night while Greg was in class--Rex was being silly.

Greg was still in school and working, which meant two or three nights a week of just me and Rex.

I spent a lot of time being really, really bored.  Rex took four-hours worth of nap a day and 12 hours at night.  This was the first time since elementary school that I had significant amounts of time with nothing to do.  It was an odd adjustment to go from studying 15 hours a day to working 15 hours a day to sitting and waiting while a baby slept 18 hours a day.  And then when said baby was awake, he didn't do much because he was a baby.  We spent a lot of time walking around downtown Provo just to walk around.  We walked to the library, to the grocery store, to the park, and just around.  I miss those walks, but I don't miss being so bored I emailed the Relief Society president several times begging for things to do during nap time--make the calendar, redo visiting teaching routes, anything.

I felt useless; most mornings I woke up and laid in bed listening to Rex whine from his bed wondering how in the world I was going to fill my time.  Greg was working and going to school, and I was reading books and napping.  I applied for a few jobs producing content for websites and heard nothing back.  I posted an ad on KSL to tutor.  I got 3 students.  Two for just a few weeks and a third who called me back again a year or so later.  I also edited a book.  Then I applied for graduate school.  Greg finished his course work after the fall semester and I started in the spring on a Masters of Secondary Education.  I had missed school and it felt good to be back.

Greg and I went back to Manti without Rex for a little fall break.

I made this dress for Halloween--Lucy, Charlie Brown and Linus

Around Christmas, I snapped out of my post-birth stupor and started crafting.  A lot.  I crocheted a rug from sheets and repurposed several of Greg's old shirts in to shorts for Henry and skirts for me.  I started making up sewing patterns and taught myself to resize others.  I was still bored a lot, but at least I had learned how to make use of some of the time.

By the time Rex turned 1, all the crazy pregnancy hormones had finally exited my body and the weather was warm enough to run outside again.  Rex and I went running every morning, stopping at a park half way through to play for a hour or so and then run home for nap time.  I then thoroughly enjoyed a few hours to myself and my school work or various crafts projects.  I miss those runs and park mornings.

Then I made Rex's hat, suspenders and pants for Easter.

This was my favorite park--it was 1.5 miles from our house and was always full of other moms to shoot the breeze with.

I made dinner every night, and making up the occasional holiday to add variety.  After dinner, we left the dishes undone and retired to Rex's room to play for an hour or so before bedtime.  Then Greg and I continued in our TV binge watching ways, watching 4 seasons of Law & Order SVU, 4 seasons of Law & Order, Doll House and I'm sure several others that I'm forgetting.

Post bath, pre-playtime Rex.

Those are fond memories--they ones after the pregnancy fog lifted--of playing silly games with Rex after dinner.  Greg coming up with riduculous story lines, Rex not really understanding what's going one, and me just about peeing myself with laughter.  Greg even made up a song about a pair Rex's PJs with an accompanying dance.  In high falsecitto "I'm a little dancing boy, dancings what I like to do."  I miss those carefree nights--I try to recapture them still and succeed on occasion.

20+3

Twenty-three was another good/bad year (again, isn't every year a good/bad year?).

We went to an Orem Owlz game for my 23rd birthday.

The good: Rex.

The bad: Rex.

As mentioned, just before my 23rd birthday we found out I was expecting.  And we kept it a secret.  It was fun having a little secret between just the two of us.  Because I was still teaching, I had the summer off so I rode my bike to the library and checked out every book on pregnancy available.

We entered the BYU Pinewood Derby again for the "My Major on Wheels." We didn't win anything on account that the car was too heavy to compete (we'd covered it in clay)

And that's when I went crazy.   By which I mean, I formed very strong opinions on the way pregnancy and birth should play out to which I still hold strongly today.  These strongly held beliefs in the divine nature of a woman's body and its ability to create and birth a baby without medical intervention plays a significant role in the "bad" of this year.

Greg also bought a scooter that summer, which was pretty amazing.  It had all the ease of use of a bike, in that we could squeeze between traffic and park up close, but without the effort--meaning we could go further.

And then school started.  And it was about 50% better than the previous year.  I spent several months at the end of my first year teaching making a color coordinated, detailed calendar of when I would teach each standard and the projects/book reports/ field trips, etc. for my second year and gave it to the principal to get him off my back.  It worked.  Kind of.  He still didn't let us watch The Crucible even though we studied both the Salem Witch Trials and the McCarthy trials in history.  He said it was because he didn't like the way the girls acted and how they made him feel.  Um, duh?  They were evil, mean little girls who got a lot of people killed.  I digress.

I really liked my students that year, and even got invited to a wedding this year (yes, it's been that long that they are getting married and having babies now).  I had a better grasp of the curriculum.   It was better.

And a football game sometime in the fall--on the scooter.  Parking is so much better on a scooter.

Weekdays continued as they had the previous year: work, dinner, running, study--only this year we studied in the Talmage Building because Greg had added a computer science minor and wanted to be closer to the TA's.

We went on our 2nd annual fall break temple excursion to Logan.

We were Doug Funny and Patty Mayonessa for Halloween

Weekends were not the same.  Once we announced the pregnancy in September, we realized that we lived in a fairly small one-bedroom, which barely fit our queen bed.  While I was busy thinking of ways to squeeze a baby into our current abode, Greg decided we should buy a house.  Which made sense.  It was 2008, the market was down, we both had good jobs and a decent savings account.  So we spent weekends looking for houses with an apartment to rent to cover part of the mortgage.  And we found the perfect house around the corner from our apartment.  We wouldn't even have to change wards (although the house and apartment are now in different wards.  Utah).

We put an offer in on the house, hosted Thanksgiving at our tiny apartment and packed before Christmas.

I was pretty proud of how the tables turned out.

Thank you Smith's.  You will always be the best grocery store,

Then we went to Myrtle Beach for Christmas, which was terrible.  Well, the going, not the beach.  Greg found tickets for $200 cheaper leaving from Las Vegas, so we drove to Las Vegas with his sister and her husband.  Six-foot-two-inch Greg, and 6-month pregnant Heather got stuck in the back seat of a Toyota Corolla with two suitcases for six hours.  Then Greg bought my plane ticket under "Heather Robins" instead of "Heather Baker," so getting into the airport was fun.  Then our flight was delayed by 6 hours.  Then coming home from the beach, we got over $600 worth of electronics stolen out of our checked luggage.  We later got reimbursed, but I also only check dirty underwear these days.

Who doesn't love matching Christmas jammies?

A few days after we got home, we moved into our new house.  We painted a few rooms, redid a floor, bought some new couches and enjoyed the luxury of 2800 square feet.

Our first house, how cute.

Sometime in January or February, I wore heels to church and slipped on the ice walking in.  Greg freaked out.  I thought nothing of it.  Until we got home from church and noticed that my skirt and underwear were wet.  My water broke!  We called the doctor and went to the hospital.  We were admitted and tested and waited.   As it turns out, when you fall on frozen water, you get water on your.  But then the nurse noticed how small I was for how far along I was.

And so began the bad.

Through a series of tests, Baby Baker was diagnosed with Inter-Uterine Growth restriction.  Basically, the placenta wasn't working the way it should, so they said, which clashed with my strongly held beliefs that pregnancy is not a medical condition.  And thus began weekly, and then bi-weekly ultra sounds and non-stress tests.  And up climbed the hospital bill.  At 37 weeks, the perinatologist, said that the baby still wasn't growing as fast as he should be and that it was time for him to be delivered.  I, however, was the school Mock Trial coach that year and had a competition that week, so could not have a baby.  We pushed it off a week.  We went in on Wednesday night to be induced, Rex was born Friday night, and rushed directly to the NICU.  Now six years, and two babies later, I know that he didn't have IUGR.  What we should have done is push the due date back a a week like we did with Alice and Henry and then expect a late baby.  Hindsight is 20/20.

I spent many a-afternoon sitting like this.

Those months were rough.  I've never been a real lover of doctors and then to not trust them but have them tell me that my baby will die if I don't do what they say and being pregnant and hormonal anyway.  And then when Rex was in the NICU I felt like such a failure.  I couldn't even take care of my own child.  My milk came in pretty late and the nurses harassed me constantly about it.  Then when it finally did come in, I couldn't get Rex to nurse properly.  I felt like the doctors were testing me to see if I could be a good mother and that I just had to prove to them that I could.  I did everything I could.  I challenged the doctors and their weighing methods.  I started going to the hospital every six hours all through the night.  At one point, I was so tired I nearly threw up.   Luckily, my mom was in town to talk a bit of sense into me.

 Through all this, Greg had to deal with me and my hot mess while also having a baby in the NICU.  One day, when I went to the hospital to feed Rex, I found Greg there, just holding Rex.  He was supposed to be at work, but had decided that maybe Rex just needed to be held.  It was like a humility slap in the face; I had been so worried about me that I almost forgot that Rex was a little human.  Seeing Greg, just sitting there, holding our tiny baby, is still really tender to me.

Seriously, look how pathetic he is.  I honeslty think he would have been born April 8th at 7 pounds 14 ozs and about 20 inches if the doctors had let my body do it's thing.

I mean really, how sweet is this?

After 13 days, Rex finally came home, oxygen tank and all and that's when the real party started.  Not really.  Rex was a bad baby.  He didn't sleep through the night until he was almost 10 months old.  For the first few months, he ate for 45 minutes every 2 hours, which gave me 15 to 20 minutes at a time not attached to a baby.  I didn't realize it then, but looking back now, I had a pretty bad case of the baby blues for about a year.  I hated leaving the house for fear Rex would start screaming.  But I also felt trapped in the house.  Again, Greg pulled it through on that one and tried his mightiest to keep me sane, while working full time and going to school.

Finally home, the day before his due date.

Blessin day--outfit made by Grandma Pattie

I remember one night we were going to go out to dinner. I had just finished feeding Rex and we were getting in the car, when he started crying.  I gave up and decided not to go.  Greg got a bottle and said we should go anyway, so despite my fear of a screaming child in a restaurant, we drove down to Flying J (yes, it's a truck stop) and ate at the diner there.  And we didn't die.  I don't even think that Rex cried all that much.

Just before or just after, I can't remember, my 24th birthday, my cousin stayed with me for a week between semesters at BYU-I.  I wanted to badly to not bore him to tears and to take him out to do stuff, but I just couldn't get out of the house with Rex.  My aunt also came to visit one day.  She wanted to know when she could come over.  I said we weren't ready before 11, which she questioned--what was I doing until 11?  When she did come over, she commented on all the dirty diapers hanging around my living room.  I was a mess.  On the bright side, I read a lot of books that year.

And so ended my 23rd year--I had a baby and a house but I was a wreck.  Too bad I didn't know what a wreck I was so I just continued in my hot mess ways until Rex started on solid foods.

And then 24, it was pretty good.  24 is, after all, the best age.

Twenty-2

The good/bad year. (But let's be honest here, aren't all years, weeks, days or even hours, good/bad?)

Good: Greg.

Bad: School/work

First, the good.  Greg.  As it turns out, being married is pretty awesome, especially to Greg (not that I have any thing to compare it too, but I'm glad we worked our the differences from year 21).  And being newly weds is even better.  I spent about two weeks unpacking our first 400 square foot apartment--washing all the dishes, lining the shelves, perfectly placing the pillows.  We bought couches and a mattress.  We were set.  Then we spent the rest of the summer riding our bikes around Provo and falling in love with it and seeing it for the first time as non-students (well, just me, Greg still had two more years of school).  We grilled out at least twice a week, riding our bikes to some of our single friends' complex and using their grill.  Greg grilled the best steak I have ever had that summer.  I still compare all steaks to that steak.  Words cannot explain.  The worst part was Greg worked nights a few times a week, which I hated.  I had never slept alone in a house before and being apart, even for necessary things like work was just unpleasant.  I made me tuck me in before he left for work and I called him more than once because I heard a weird noise.  Luckily for me, he soon got a better and day-time only job.

We entered BYU's pinewood derby and won an award for "Your Major on Wheels"--Greg majored in Political Sciece.

One night we bought a bunch of stuff to roast over a fire and rode all the way to the end of the Provo River Trail trying to get to Utah Lake just to find the trail was closed.  I was bummed.

The best steak ever.

Once school started, our bike riding and constant grilling was confined to weekends.  We also added walking all over downtown Provo to explore the culinary treats of a reviving downtown area.  We were lucky in that I had a full-time job and Greg worked part-time off-campus at an office so we had weekends to ourselves and money to burn (relatively speaking--remember we had just come from the student life so anything above $10 an hour was AMAZING).  

The weekdays.  That was a different story, but  I'm still pretty nostalgic for that first year.  I left for school/work at 6:30 am every morning, trying to wake Greg for family prayer each morning.  And counted the blocks until I'd be home and see Greg again when I left at 5.  Greg did a mixture of class and work and would meet me at home sometime around 5. Then we'd lay on the bed and I'd teach Greg the fine art of listening to a woman complain without giving any advice because said woman just wants to whine.  He got very good at it.  Then we'd make dinner together.  We specialized in mini-pizzas (pizzas made on refrigerated crescents) and grill-cheese sandwiches. Then we'd head up to campus.  Greg would drop me off at the in-door track and then head to the library.  I'd run a few miles then meet him on the first floor of the library, where he had saved me a comfortable seat and had carried my girly and heavy bag for me.  He'd study and I'd do lesson planning and grading.  We'd head home around 11 and go to bed, just to start it all over again the next day.

Sometimes we didn't go to the library.  We also spent a lot of time at Hollywood video that year.  We had a monthly pass to check out as many movies as we wanted.  Sometimes we binge watched whole DVDs of House or Heroes instead of studying.  We'd put all the couch cushions on the floor and have a slumber party in the front room, which was not super comfortable, but fun nonetheless.  

We were Dr. House and Cameron for Halloween that year.

The Hari Krishna Festival in Spanish Fork before it got crazy popular.

We also went on several trips.  Because of my (along with all other plain white girls' obsession with fall) and Utah's deer hunting break in October, we went to Manti for a night and also fell in like with Manti, its temple, and its one and only bed and breakfast.  We went to San Diego for Thanksgiving.  We went to Seattle for Christmas. Then, just after our anniversary on a roadtrip with Greg's old roommates to another roommate's wedding in Newport Beach (that was weird being the only married couple crashing for one night with a bunch of single guys--we stayed with my grandma the rest of the time) and then flew to Charlotte after.  Holy cow is it easier to travel without kids.

At SeaWorld in San Diego with my cousin Kjersti.

in front of the LA temple

The the Chinese Theater in Hollywood

We also went on our first camping trip to Manti for the Manti pagent.  Greg was not super thrilled with our accomodations.

I also did a lot of running that year.  In fact, I won a race for once and ran my one-and-only half marathon.

winning a 10K

That was the good.  The really good.  I'm getting all half-smily, teary-eyed and longing over here just remembering it.  

And then there was the bad.

That was work.  I taught at a charter school for the academically gifted and wealthy, which was fun.  I didn't have too many behavior or language problems to deal with.   I enjoyed the students and the teaching.  My problem was the principal.  He had a firm idea of what he thought a teacher should look like and act like and teach like, but failed to tell me any of this.  Not until half-way through the first quarter did he finally articulate to me that I was supposed to teach a grammar lesson with grammar homework each week.  This happened more than once--he'd get on me for not doing something without having told me that I was supposed to do it in the first place.  It was rough, to say the least, not having the support of the principal while fumbling through my first year of teaching five different subjects without a textbook.    But Greg perfected the art of listening to me whine and we got through that first year teaching together.

Just before my 23rd birthday and after our first anniversary, we found out we were expecting our first child, which brought on another good/bad year.

Year 21.

Year 21 was rough.  I blame it on Greg.

Greg got home from his mission on July 10.  I turned 21 on August 1.  I went back to school sometime between that and the beginning of September (remember I had been in Ecuador and then flew back to Seattle to stay with my parent for a few weeks before school started again).

I made the huge mistake of offering to pick Greg up at the airport as he was also coming back to school.  It was too much.  Rather than going on a real date, it's like we went right back to where we left off, only two years later--we were no longer teenagers and were different people.

We dated for two weeks before he broke up with me.  That was horrible.  And that is when I lost all the weight I'd gained in the Amazon.  Two weeks later we were back together.  Which lasted another two weeks before I broke up with him.  Two weeks after that I was ready to start again, but he wasn't and then it was Christmas.

Meanwhile, I was finishing my last semester of course work at BYU.  I wrote my senior thesis about my great-grandpa Melvin Henry, for whom my Henry is named.  I entered that paper in a writing contest and won $150.  I bought myself a new outfit and a hair cut.  The rest of my classes were a blur because my romantic life was such a wreck.  I had a difficult time focusing in class and felt like I was walking around is a cloud of mush most of the semester.  It was horrible, but I learned a lot about being alone and the comfort of the Holy Ghost in our darkest, numbest, most disconnected times.  So school was...school.  I was still TA-ing for PS 100 and History 202, so between two jobs and a full class load, I had plenty of reasons to stay in my happy spot--the library.  I was still running too, but Pierce had gone a mission so I was running alone.

Luckily for me, that year I had some really good roommates.  I was living in University Villa, across the street from my previous apartment complex. My roommate, Julie, of the previous three years was just about engaged to a boy I wasn't a fan of at the time (I've since changed my opinion of him), so had decided to move in with his sister.  And I wanted to live with mine, so we parted ways.  That year, I lived with my sister Amber, our cousin Elizabeth, Amber's roommate from the previous year Corrine, Amber's friend from high school Kristi, and one of Corrine's friends from high school Natalie.  I was the oldest one in the apartment by two years, which meant I was able to maintain the aloofness that I found suited me so well the year before.  The other girls made friends with a group of guys, one of whom eventually married my sister, and I hung out with them on occasion, but I also kept up with some of my friends from the previous year and spent a lot of time drowning my sorrows in the library.

Kristi, me, Eric (one of "the guys"--also a BYU cheerleader), Amber

To cheer me up after the first break up, the roommates all took a drive up the canyon one Sunday.  Natalie, Corrine, Amber and me.

My FAVORITE dance of the year--Monster Mash.  Amber as Wilma Flintstone, me as a mermaid (I spent weeks making that costume), Kristi as Sherikai, Elizabeth as a newsie, and Corrien and Natalie--don't remember what they were.  Greg showed up to the dance dressed as a greaser because I was obssessed with The Outsiders that year.  He was trying to win me back. 

My aunt Deb got us all tickets to the First Presidency Christmas Devotional--see what I mean, I had great roommates that year.

Christmas break came and I went home to Seattle.  It just so happened that my best friend from high school--good old Tommie--had also moved to Seattle. We stayed up late talking one night.  She gave me the best advice ever: if I wanted to date Greg but didn't want the pressure of getting married (remember this is BYU we're talking about), I should date him in secret.

Amber, Tommie, me and Jessica (Tommie's sister) on New Year's Eve in Seattle

And that's what I did.  Winter semester I did my student teaching.  I taught American Studies, which was an advanced English/history class to eighth graders and I taught on the east side of Provo, which meant I had all the rich, smart kids in my class.   Really though, one kid had an indoor basketball court and pool.  Another was the son of the offensive (or was it defensive line?) at BYU.  It was stressful, nerve-racking, energy-sucking, infuriating, but I had a good mentor teacher and I survived and had two job offers at the end of the year.

First day of school picture

I don't remember who called who first, but Greg and I met up for Subway one day after school, when my roommates would not expect me to be home and near the school where I was teaching.  I didn't tell my roommates.  Then we met up again.  And again.  Always at Subway.  And slowly we built a real relationship built on mutual admiration, rather than on expectations of friends and peers at school.   Valentine's Day, we went on our first date that I told my roommates about.  We decided to get married on Greg's 22nd birthday but didn't get officially engaged until April.

Shortly thereafter, I graduated from BYU.  Then I spent a month doing a long-term substituting job at the school I had done my student teaching and finishing up a few independent study classes I had started the year before.  Then I went to Seattle to pick my mom up to go to Ecuador for about two weeks (I had decided to go back during one of the periods Greg and I were not together).  Shortly after returning to Seattle, Greg came out to Seattle and went though the temple with me.  Then he flew back to Utah and I drove out with my parents and Tommie.  And then, a month before my 22nd birthday, Greg and I got married.  We spent the rest of the summer riding our bikes around Provo, swimming, and grilling at the single's complexes.

Graduation

Me and Juan Jose, one of the babies I wanted to adopt.

Davide--the cutest baby ever.  Also wanted to adopt him.

Sight-seeing with Greg in Seattle (why do I look drunk/stoned in all these pictures?)

Signing the marriage certificate

Last picture single

first picture married

Only picture of the honeymoon (I forgot to clear my memory card before we left--oops)

And thus began, what I will call the good/bad years.