We have been so busy this year and sorry for not updating much over the past few months. First and most important is we had our baby girl Taylor Rose Neilson. She was born March 26th 2018 in the evening and Alyssa went through a rough labor but fortunately decided to finally do an epidural and it helped the contractions greatly. 41 hours of labor and our sweet baby girl came. Alyssa did amazing and the delivery was uneventful, thank goodness. Baby girl was and is healthier than ever.
Baby adjustments
The first few months were crazy with newborn baby girl. She was like all normal babies who would sleep during the day and stay awake all night long. It was as if our days got flipped upside down and much of what we did was staying at home. Looking back now I don’t know how we survived it all. It wasn’t until 4 months in that baby Taylor was starting to get a hold of what we parents wanted.
Thankfully Alyssa was on maternity leave from teaching and didn’t have the stress of preparing lessons and tests for her students and had a full-time sub that took her roll. Since I worked from home we were both able to watch Taylor and do things we needed to get done.
Things we have learned raising a baby
Everything you do must be planned and can’t be last minute, most of the time. Babies in general need a lot of attention. Diapers need to be changed, they need to be fed, clothed, bathed, napped and so much more including doing all their laundry, especially with cloth diapers. They definitely are a full-time task. Traveling is also another difficult challenge. We haven’t stopped traveling yet especially with our new purchase of our new vehicle but it has slowed down a little bit. Just going to our parents places we have to think of ever little thing just so we don’t have a crying baby but I think we overthink things but in the end it is better to be safe than sorry.
Our Summer Vacations
Our summer kind of started early since Alyssa was on maternity leave and for her birthday in April we decided to get Disneyland Passes again so much of our weekdays have been running to Disneyland and California Adventure with little Taylor. Tammy (Alyssa’s mother) loves to dress little Taylor up in all the Disney Princesses attire almost every time we go there. So Disneyland has become our little second home.
As far as traveling goes this past summer we had a couple of small vacations. First vacation we drove up to Utah to watch Isaac Neilson and Heather Baker be formally wedded which was an awesome little trip and congrats to them. We spent about a week up in Utah running around after the wedding spent with family and seeing friends, flying in an airplane and going sightseeing in the mountains. Taylor did great and was quite the little highlight of the wedding.
Our second big vacation was going to Carlsbad just South of Oceanside where we stayed at a mini resort next to Legoland and had our own private entrance into the park. We did 3 days of Legoland and we spent one day at the San Diego Zoo. Three days of Legoland was more than plenty but it was still a lot of fun.
We drove our Blue Bayou Prius to all these locations as it is the most efficient way to drive. It was quite the experience and fun time we had visiting Utah and parts of southern California that we don’t normally care to see.
Stay tuned for our next blog post in which we talk about our new big purchase!