Tim and I have been really lucky.  Because of the timing of Kaylee’s birth, we have both been able to stay home for most of her first month of life.  I’m new to this parenting thing, but something tells me that this is a pretty rare opportunity.

Christmas Eve
Monday was Christmas Eve.  We had just a few precious hours to spend with my parents before they left Togiak.  We were able to use the school vehicle for the day, so we took the opportunity of having warm transportation to do some site seeing.  Our tour included the post office and a drive up and down the streets to see the cannery, old school, public library, and the weather cams.  Exciting, I know.  It was really a repeat of the tour we had done last week when we were on 4-wheelers and it was close to -20°F.  This time we got to talk a little more.  We waved goodbye to my parents at about 1:30 pm as they took off with Grant Air.  It was so fun to have them visit us.  I only wish they could have stayed longer . . . or just moved next door (hint, hint).

Christmas Day
This Christmas was probably one of the quietest I have ever had.  It was just Tim, Kaylee, and myself.  We slept in.  Not that we weren’t excited to open presents, but feeding a newborn all night long, suddenly changes your priorities.  We made ourselves biscuits and gravy for breakfast.  Without doing it on purpose, I think that has become our Christmas morning tradition.  We opened presents and just relaxed all day long.  It was wonderful.  We got a little fancy for dinner and cooked ham, baked potatoes, steamed broccoli, baked rolls, put out grapes, and made deviled eggs.  It was delicious.  It’s just too bad we didn’t have more people to share it with.

Post Christmas
I’m not about to bore you with specific day-to-day details of the rest of our week.  We have thoroughly enjoyed it, but it probably isn’t very interesting to read about.  We have watched movies, feed Kaylee, changed her diaper, eaten food, feed Kaylee, changed her diaper, played some games, feed Kaylee, changed her diaper, played on the internet, feed Kaylee, changed her diaper, played with Kaylee, feed Kaylee, changed her diaper, and eaten more food and junk food.  It’s been wonderful.

Updates on Kaylee
Kaylee made it to the 3-week-old mark on Wednesday.  She weighed in at 8 pounds 14 ounces on that day.  She gained an entire pound in one week!  She can now fit into many more outfits, which is totally fun.  I love dressing her up in all the cute things everyone bought her and not having to rotate between the 3 smallest newborn outfits we had.

Friday the remains of Kaylee’s umbilical cord fell off.  That’s exciting because now we can give her a real bath!

She is a sweet baby.  She is starting to be more vocal, but she still is pretty mellow and quiet.  She still sleeps a lot, but she also is spending more and more time each day awake and with her eyes open.  She hiccups a lot (pretty much every time she finishes eating).  Overall she seems like a pretty healthy, happy kid.  Her parents are definitely happy!

We talked Kaitlyn's mom, Myrna, into being a guest writer on our blog.  It's kind of fun to get another perspective.  Here's what she wrote:

So here is the guest Post:  This experience has been as close to perfect as it could possibly be. On Monday, December 17th, Tim had to head back to school for the last week of classes but Kaitlyn stayed home with Lewis and me and baby Kaylee.  Kaitlyn spent the whole day writing a final and a final review.  Lewis was the main baby sitter while I started the sewing projects that needed to be done for Kaylee—burp cloths, bibs, and reusable wipes.

In the evening we opted to attend the Faculty Christmas party at the school.  Lewis made pecan pies as our donation to the potluck portion of the evening.  Tim “ferried” us down to the school in two installments, Lewis and me then Kaitlyn and baby Kaylee.  Kaitlyn went into the school office to take off her snow clothes and to get Kaylee unbundled and was immediately surrounded by well-wishers who wanted to meet the newest little Phillips.  They could hardly make it out of the office.  What a delightful evening.  We ate good food, even Eskimo ice cream, had a fun gift exchange, and got to meet many people.  After the party was over, Kait stayed at the school and made copies of her final and final review. 

On Tuesday school was cancelled due to wind and snow so Kait’s diligently-written review had to be done in one day instead of two.  Tim used the weather cancellation day to make headway on his final college assignment.

On Wednesday and Thursday Kaitlyn went to school and Tim took ‘paternity leave’.  Thursday was the last day of school before the Christmas break.  It was also Kaitlyn’s last official day of teaching.  Lewis and I went down to the school to have lunch with her and to see school in session.  We lingered and went to Kait’s two afternoon P.E. classes.  The kids were polite to us and some came and introduced themselves to us.  It was fun to see Kait “in action”—reminded me of watching her with the jumprope team.  “Coating up” to ride the four-wheeler back up the hill to the apartment is quite the process.  It was interesting to watch the kids exiting the school.  I noticed that every single one of them was smart enough to have warm clothing on.  Kait stayed for a long time after we came back to the apartment and got her grades all finished up. 

On Friday, when we woke up to the world-not-ending we decided to stay cozy and warm in the apartment.  In the afternoon, however, Tim was enticed outside by fellow teachers who wanted to have a “snow-go” (snow machine) adventure.  Because of the of amount of freshly fallen snow the adventure turned out to be more of a “go a few feet, dig out a snowmobile, go a few more feet, dig out another snowmobile”.  Tim didn’t get back until after dark and was not so sure that “fun” was the proper title for the day.  We watched the movie, “Big Miracle” before bedtime.    Great movie!  It takes place in Barrow, Alaska and is based on a true story.  Very fitting for us.

Saturday was a highlight for me because we got to put on about seven layers of clothing and go out on the four-wheelers to explore “down-town” Togiak.  (And when I say seven layers of clothing I’m not stretching the truth much at all.)  I am so grateful for the warm-clothes police (that would be Tim) because it was a balmy -8 degrees and when you get going fast you don’t want any skin exposed.  As it was, my goggles got so iced up that I couldn’t see for a time.  Fortunately the goggles thawed out and I dried them off while we were at the post office.  I found the answer; I took off my glasses and just used the goggles and only had minimum icing…  I feel like a true Alaskan now that I can say I rode a four-wheeler to town (and also did not gasp too audibly when viewing the prices in the AC store!)  We ended Saturday’s adventures by watching the movie, “Mirror, Mirror” on the wall.  (No, really, we watched the movie on the wall with Tim’s cute projector…)

That brings us to today, Sunday, 23 December 2012 - the birthday of Joseph Smith, the eleventh anniversary of Vicky’s death, two days before Christmas.  I love going to church in the Bush Branch; however, meetings do take longer (almost 4 ½ hours); but the company is the greatest.  Merry Christmas one and all!

Tim and I are officially parents and we’re loving it.  Monday we checked out of our hotel room at Homewood Suites to check in to our rented one bedroom apartment.  It was nice to have a bit more room to spread out.  Kaylee was able to move from sleeping in her car seat to sleeping in our borrowed pack n’ play.

While we were waiting for it to be late enough to check into the apartment, we met up with Gala for lunch at the Perfect Cup in the Dimond Center mall.  It was a lot of fun to see her and she was really excited to meet Kaylee. 

Kaylee has been a really good sleeper.  She does cry sometimes and she does need to eat in the middle of the night just like any other baby, but about half the time we have to wake her up to eat.  We did have a bit of excitement at about 2:00 am on Tuesday.  The fire alarm in our building started going off.  We looked around and didn’t see any smoke, but decided we should still exit the building anyway.  We figured the fire department would probably require it.  Tim went to warm up the car while I started to get Kaylee in some warmer clothes.  Just as we were ready to leave one of the firefighters came and told us we could stay inside.  Back to bed we went.

The rest of the week was busy, but in a different way than I’m used to.  There were so many things we wanted to do in Anchorage and so many things we needed to do, but ultimately the most important thing was to take care of Kaylee.  Tim’s final project for one of his master classes was due on Friday and I had some final tests and final reviews to write for my classes.  We had that hanging over our heads all week even though we didn’t want to think or worry about school.

Tuesday we had the grandparents babysit while Tim and I went shopping for food and supplies to last hopefully until May.  I was actually pretty impressed with how quickly we did it,  although, we probably weren’t as thorough as we should have been.  We had our Costco and Fred Meyer trips finished in about 3 hours.  Later that evening my parents went to the post office with me to mail 3 totes and 1 large suitcase to ourselves in Togiak.  We still had about 70 pounds of produce in the freezer and refrigerator that we would take in our suitcases with us.

Wednesday morning my parents and I went to LaTouche Pediatrics at Providence Hospital for Kaylee’s first check up.  Tim stayed at the apartment to work on his final project.  Kaylee passed her check up with flying colors.  The doctor said she was very healthy.  She weighed in at 7 pounds 3.6 ounces.  We had her get her second PKU shot as well.  My mom had been telling me how awful the shot was and how much Kaylee would cry, but she only flinched.  I couldn’t believe how good she was.

After the apartment we met up with Angie Alston.  She is a sister in our branch.  She and her husband recently adopted a baby boy.  Levi was born 11 weeks early at Providence and is in the NICU.  Angie has been spending each day at the hospital with him since he was born.  I think she really appreciates having some visitors sometimes.  It was good to meet Angie in person.

Wednesday evening Andrew and Brianna Olsen brought dinner over to our house.  They were so nice to help find us a car seat and lend us their playpen while we were in Anchorage and then to even bring us dinner.  They ate dinner with us, but didn’t stay long because they knew that we had another appointment that evening.  Jessika’s sister was not able to be at the placement ceremony because she was on her honeymoon in Hawaii.  She returned on Wednesday morning, so we went over to Jessika’s parent’s home on Wednesday evening to meet with their family again.  We let Jessika hold Kaylee the whole time we were there.  I think she was really happy to see her again, but I was definitely getting anxious to have Kaylee back in my own arms.

Thursday morning a representative from LDSFS came to our apartment to do our first "home" visit.  They asked a few questions about how Kaylee was doing and how her schedule was.  I guess we passed since they let us keep her.  After our meeting we went to pick up Angie Alston and take her to lunch at City Diner.  Kaylee was 8 days old and had already been to City Diner twice.  I never would have guessed I’d be saying that about my infant.  Tim and I spent the rest of Thursday working as hard as we could to finish up schoolwork.  I was able to get the things finished that needed to be done for Friday.  Tim still had a bit of class work though.

Friday we got up really early to get ready to leave.  We fed Kaylee at 3:00 a.m. so then we just stayed up and packed our bags.  We had to pack our 70 pounds of produce into our suitcases as well as pack up our air mattresses and Kaylee’s things.  We made it early enough to the airport that we didn’t scolded.  It’s been awhile since I’ve arrived that early to the airport.

I was a little nervous about taking Kaylee on the loud, cold planes, but we bundled her up with a bunch of blankets and she did fine.  I think she was more comfortable than I was.  We flew to King Salmon first and then they flew us back to Anchorage because the weather was too bad in Dillingham.  When we got back to Anchorage we were told that we were rescheduled for the 5:30 pm flight into Dillingham.  I don’t think I’ve seen Tim quite so stressed out before.  He still needed to finish his final project and wasn’t very happy with the prospects of trying to focus and work in the airport.  We weren’t left with much of a choice though.  He eventually was able to find a place to work and finished just before we were ready to board.

When we got to Dillingham it was too late to fly to Togiak that evening.  Steve, from our district office came to drop off a vehicle for us.  We had to wait over an hour for a luggage to be unloaded, but we eventually made our way to the district bunkhouse where we spent the night.

Saturday morning about 10:00 am we flew to Togiak in a little Piper Saratoga (6-seater) plane.  It was really cold outside, but once again we bundled Kaylee up in lots of blankets and she did just fine.  I’m glad that AIA has a van driver so that we didn’t have to drive from the airport to our apartment on a 4-wheeler.  It was definitely too cold to do that with an infant. 

It felt so good to finally be home.  We tried to get unpacked and settled in, but we didn’t make a ton of progress because we had a steady stream of visitors.  It was pretty fun to have so many people come over and visit.  We saw Heather, Kim, Belynda, Leslie, Greg, and Evelyn.  A couple hours after arriving home, Shari Abraham, our van driver, came back to our house with a little box that read “Happy Birthday Cikiun”.  day gift for Kaylee, a teeny ivory ring with scrimshaw roses on it.  I thought it was so nice of her to do that.  She wrote  on the box. 

We still hadn’t received our crib in the mail yet, so even though we were home, Kaylee had to sleep in a suitcase.  It actually worked out really well.  A pillow fits just perfectly in a carry-on size suitcase and an infant fits perfectly on a pillow. 

Sunday we attended church in our living room as usual.  After our meetings, we left the men to watch the baby and my mom and I headed down to the school to take the grand tour.  When we returned home we invited our neighbor, Mike, up to dinner so he could meet Kaylee.  It has been so fun to have my parents come visit in Togiak.  I didn’t think I would actually ever see them here.

So, I should probably just say that the Phillips household is sorry for the tardiness of our posting.  We have had a few other things keeping us busy, however, things are starting to mellow out a little and we can get to our missing posts.

Weeknight Phone Call

Monday and Tuesday were normal days to our standards up here in Togiak.  School demanded all our attention, and we worked hard giving it our attention.  Every Tuesday night Kaitlyn and I watch an TV show called “Castle”.  It’s one of our favorites.  We had just finished that show (about 10pm) and were thinking that we weren’t quite tired enough to go to bed, so we decided to put on an Office episode to finish up the night.  We had just turned on the show when we got a phone call on Kaitlyn's cell phone. This was quite unusual because it was 10pm. Kaitlyn took the call and it was Kristine Heckman, Kaylee’s birth Grandmother (Jessika’s mother).  She was the one to drop the bomb on us that Kaylee was going to come early.  Apparently, when Jessika went in for a doctors visit she mentioned that Kaylee hadn’t moved much recently.  To keep a long story short, they did some watching of Kaylee and decided that it would simply be better to prevent any medical emergencies and have Kaylee be born early.  As you could imagine, when we got off the phone both Kaitlyn and I were a little excited.  Excited may not be the best word to describe that feeling and I’m not really sure what would be the best word.  The closest thing I can think of describing the feeling is to relate the experience of little kid trying to go to sleep on Christmas Eve when their excitement, anxiety, and anticipation make them wide awake for hours.  This is what it was like for Kaitlyn and me.   I got about 4 hours of sleep that night and Kaitlyn got even less.

Kaitlyn called Alaska Airlines that night and the soonest we could fly to Anchorage wasn’t until Friday morning (2 full days away). We decided that we were going to be useless as teachers, so we took Wednesday and Thursday off.  Unfortunately, we couldn’t just walk away, so both Kaitlyn and I spent Wednesday and Thursday in the school library making lesson plans for the next two weeks for our classes.  I feel so bad for our students, I don’t think they’ve seen so many worksheets in their life!  Jessika’s mother kept us filled in as we worked, but it was hard to get anything done as we waited, filled with excitement.  Kaylee Cikiun Phillips was born by C-section at 3:54 pm on Wednesday, December 5th.  She weighed 7 pounds 8 ounces and was 19.5 inches long.  

To be safe, we flew to Dillingham on Thursday evening and stayed at Steve Noonkesser’s house.  Steve is the Director of Instruction and Technology (or something like that) for our school district.  He’s kind of the under-Superintendent for the district.  We had a great visit with him and his family then flew to Anchorage the next morning.  When we arrived in Anchorage we were met by Kaitlyn’s parents, Lewis and Myrna Hart.  It was actually a little bit funny, because they met us on the way to baggage claim.  Just happened to be on the escalator to meet us….good timing!  We were really excited to see them and even more so….the McDonald’s cheeseburgers they had ready for us (you really learn to miss that greasy goodness). We rented an SUV and headed on to the hospital to meet Kaylee. 

On our way to the airport we picked up some flowers for Jessika.  We met Jessika’s mother, Kristine Heckman, at the hospital gift shop and she took us to the Jessika’s room to meet Kaylee.  It was a really sweet experience and difficult to put into words.  Both Kaitlyn and I were really excited.  Kaitlyn held her first and held her for a while.  I was asked if I wanted to hold Kaylee, but I declined, because there were way too many people in the room for me to feel comfortable (I can’t imagine what Jessika must have been feeling).  In the room with us was Jessika, Jessika’s mother Kristine, Myrna and Lewis, and Valorie Rampton and her husband (LDSFS rep).  We stayed there in the room visiting until the attorney showed up, then we retreated to the waiting room and allowed Jessika to sign her legal papers and we signed ours.  Really, to make a long story short….we got there, we visited for a few hours, we signed some paperwork, we left.  We then checked into our hotel, the Homewood Suites off of C Street.  

Saturday morning we did some last minute shopping and then met Jessika around noon.  This was a great time for Kaitlyn and me.  We got a few hours to just be in Jessika’s room with Jessika and Kaylee.  We both got time to hold her and feed her.  It was great; and  difficult to express with words.  We spent most of the day there just visiting.  Bro. Rich Hartman, our LDSFS Alaska case worker came over around 5:30 and we signed the official adoption papers.  We gave some time for Jessika and family to get ready for the placement ceremony.  It was originally scheduled for 5:00, but was pushed back to 6:30 because Bro. Hartman arrived a few hours after he said he would.  The ceremony didn’t really start until 7:00.  Jessika had scheduled someone to come take pictures and she spent about 30-40 minutes doing that.  Afterwards, Jessika shared a letter she wrote for Kaylee to be saved for her when she gets older and gave her a little charm bracelet.  Jessika’s oldest daughter, Mckennah, gave her a gift (which was a blanket) and a drawing.  Kaitlyn and I then said a few words and we presented Jessika a necklace with Kaylee’s birthstone.  We also presented Mckennah with a Build-A-Bear.  Kaylee has a matching one at home.  The service ended around 8pm and we began to bundle her up and take her home.  

Click here to see pictures from the placement ceremony.

We took Kaylee back to the hotel and ordered a Papa Johns pizza to celebrate.  That night was very special to Kaitlyn and me….Kaitlyn got up and fed her ever two hours, whereas, I slept all the night through (probably for the last night).  We spent that weekend simply enjoying our precious little bundle.  We got to video chat with a lot of the family and we were very grateful about how much everyone cared and congratulated us.  Sometimes, it feels like congratulations are said without feeling….but this time all the congratulations received seemed to give us strength, so thank you all.  

As you can tell from the title, I really don't feel like much happened this week.  I guess we did have a unique experience on Monday.  School was cancelled to allow for an investigation to take place.  Someone broke into the school sometime between Saturday evening and Sunday morning.  About 20 minutes before the elementary students were supposed to start class on Monday morning, our secretary announced that school was cancelled for the day to allow for the investigation.  This was a really nice surprise.  Our 4 day weekend suddenly turned into a 5 day weekend.  I spent a couple hours in the school visiting with some other teachers and have a tug-o-war with myself, trying to decide if I should stay at the school and be productive or go home and crawl back in bed.  I wasn't feeling very well and thought that might be the wisest options, but I was already dressed and at the school.  Eventually, the go home and get in bed side won.  I lied in bed for 2 hours, but I'm not sure that I did ever fall asleep.  I did enjoy not doing anything school related for the rest of the day though.

Another unique experience I had this week was that my lesson plans were finished for the entire week on Monday.  Ideally this is supposed to be the case every Monday, but I think this is the first occurrence this school year.  I loved the ability I had to come in a little later and go home a little earlier.  Of course, I loved it so much, that I didn't work hard enough this weekend, so I can't claim that I have all of next week planned for.  Oh well.  Worse things have happened.

Wednesday I had kind of a nice break.  I had a class visitor from Bristol Bay Campus in Dillingham visit.  He did some owl pellet dissections with all of my science classes.  This just left me with my PE classes to teach.  I think the best part was that there were no assignments to grade at the end of the day. 

Friday evening, Tim and I had Heather and Nate over for burgers and games.  It was a nice, relaxing start to our weekend.  Saturday, Tim and I attempted to be productive with different projects, but I'm not sure we were very successful.  Tim did do some school work and some homework.  He did get the beast running again.  Unfortunately, in the process he discovered that there is another problem.  We're not quite sure what is causing the problem, so we don't know how to fix it, but it does run.  I spent a few hours at sewing class.  The first hour I spent sewing a binding onto the quilt I was making and the second hour I spent ripping the binding off.  Needless to say, I didn't feel like I accomplished much by the time I left my sewing group.  I did get to attend my first over the phone baby shower.  Some of the ladies I go to church with through a 4-way baby shower for all the ladies in our branch that are expecting.  It was pretty short and sweet, but it was also fun.  We played a couple games, shared some advice, and some stories. 

Saturday evening I attended book club.  I've never been in a book club before, so I wasn't quite sure what to expect.  There were thoughts of good snacks and some fairly good discussion.  Having no other experience to compare it to, I think it was successful. 

Tim and I spent most of today at home.  We had our regular routine of attending church over the phone and then talking with parents over the phone.  Heather and Kim invited us over for dinner.  I always like an excuse to get out of the house for a little while on Sundays. 

We are now into December and still have no snow on the ground.  There are 14 days of school left in this semester, and Tim and I leave for Anchorage in 3 weeks.  It feels like the end of quit