Category: McUpdate

Ok so the perfect girl name is Noel McCulloch. Who agrees with me? Yes our first daughter is technically Charlotte Noel McCulloch, but she doesn’t get in trouble very much so we NEVER call her Noel. So since it’s a name both Joy and I like, why not just name the next one Noel and never call Charlotte Noel with her middle name, or if it bothers her, lets officially take it away, I mean she’s gonna get married some day anyway and have to shed part of her name.

Am I crazy, or crazy smart? Discuss. (Your comment may be deleted if you dis-agree with me)

A few months ago, we visited my cousins up in Farmington who have a similar floor plan to ours. We were amazed to find that they had finished half of their crawl space to be a play room for the kids. Brilliant! We sat in there and chatted a lot of the time, and just loved the idea. I could see the wheels turning in Pace’s head, and I just knew that we were going to have to copy the idea in our own house. When Pace had some extra website work come up, we figured this was our chance to make the “clubhouse” happen!

A contractor friend of ours was totally on board with it. Pace went ahead and cut a hole in the wall after letting the kids kick it and throw ninja stars at it. That night, he wanted to level out the very bumpy, uneven concrete floor. He got some fill dirt stuff that turned out to basically be manure…. Our house smelled BAD. So Gretchen helped scoop it back out of the space after we’d dumped it in there. Our garden was happy to accept the stinky offering.

We have some amazing family and friends who helped with the concrete (the concrete and paint were the only things we did ourselves, and it shows!). It definitely saved us some money on the project. Thanks to Jake, Bracken, Jim, Gretchen, and Tyler for your concrete work!

Rachel, Gretchen, and I tended the children, and these photos were just too cute to not post!

I took a few photos of the insulation on my phone only, but here we skip ahead to the drywalled, textured room– ready to paint! We bought a light sage green paint, but Pace decided after a little bit of painting that he hated the look, so we headed back and got some beige Kilz paint (called “Tahini”). We painted the outer accent wall the same brown color as the kitchen (“Toasted Pecan”). TMom & Jess took the kids to the bookstore so Pace, Gretchen and I could paint. Thanks, everyone! What would we do without our family?

…The finished product! We LOVE it! The room is 4.5 feet tall, so the kids can stand up just fine in there. They especially love running up and down the little ramp that goes into the room. We call this room the “Clubhouse” so the kids will think it’s cool/appealing to play in there. 🙂

We are so excited that Grandaddy has something to do now… 😉 Here’s the notification we got today, thought we’d help pass on the exciting news.

The McCulloch’s are moving to Utah!

Today I accepted the position as Director of Communications for Utah Valley University’s College of Technology and Computing in Orem, Utah.

I’ll be handling the Communications/Marketing for the departments of: Automotive Technology, Aviation Science, Culinary Arts, Computer Science, Construction Technology, Criminal Justice – Law Enforcement, Digital Media (Tyler’s major), Electrical Automation and Robotics Technology, Engineering Graphics and Design Technology, Emergency Services, Information Systems and Technology, and Technology Management.

It’s a terrific opportunity for me and one that will provide the long term stability and benefits that Gretchen has missed out on by marrying a goofy sportscaster/entrepreneur.

I start Thursday 10/22 so Gretchen and I will leave Charlotte probably Sunday night 10/18 (she has to speak in church that day anyway).

We have been staying inside most of the time nowadays, but every once in a while we get to sneak out. When my mom was still here, my sister Rach and I escaped to the mall while my mom stayed here with the children. We came home to see this cute little scene:

Thank you so much to my mom (and family) for coming and helping us out. Unfortunately, my mom had to leave last Saturday, but we are getting by (somehow)! I am quite exhausted, but overall things are fine. I have a supportive and loving husband, people from our ward are bringing dinner, and a couple people are letting Chase come over to play, which is the biggest help of all!

We are happy that Charlotte has joined our family (and I am happy to no longer have her in the womb)!!! She is so cuddly and easygoing, and has been awake more over the last few days.

Chase still loves his baby sister, usually manifest in more forceful ways than I would like, but I know his intentions are good! He really likes to kiss her, smell her, and just be near her.

He also calls his little sister “Charlotte-lee” and says things like “Here comes Chasie!”  to her in a soft, high-pitched, cooing voice. Here he is reading her a book and introducing her to Elmo.

I make an effort to find bits of time to spend with Chase, because I know he needs it! I have been battling with feeling guilty and anxious about what goes undone around the house and not spending enough time with Chase. Parents out there (like Becky S. and Amber P. and others that I tremendously respect) how do you fight off the guilt? I know I can’t do everything and I know things don’t all have to get done around the house, but it’s hard for me to just shrug it off! I’ll get used to it, hopefully.

Yesterday we went on a walk and tromped around in the snow at the park; it was nice to be outside for a while. Chase has been literally bouncing off the walls with this whole staying inside thing! Over the last couple of days, he fell down the stairs and also did a weird backflip off his bed onto the floor, in addition to the regular head/bodily injuries he usually acquires.

…So, any advice on how to get a non-independent child to play on his own for a few minutes at a time so I don’t resort to TV while I’m trying to feed the baby? While Chase IS a very helpful boy, he is with me every second of the day except for the blessed nap time! And look how sweet he is when he sleeps!

My brain is too fuzzy to think of a better title for this blog entry! Anyway, it’s been a week and a half since little Charlotte was born, and things have been going pretty well. I’m really tired, because newborns are tiring, but luckily my recovery has been amazing this time around, and we’re also glad to have Grandma T. here to help out. (My dad and Gino were here for a few days, too, which was great!)

But sadly, Grandma goes home soon, and after that, we’ll see if I survive… But I am happy to report that baby Charlotte is such a calm, sweet baby! I love smelling her baby scent and just holding her close. She’s a pretty good eater and a great burper, and only wakes to eat about 3 times at night, which is SO great. Actually, she sleeps almost all the time, unless she’s eating, pooping, burping, being jumped on by Chase, etc.

As for big brother Chase, he loves Charlotte very much, and he’s quite cute with her. However, he tends to enjoy smothering/squishing/”loving” her a LOT. He has definitely noticed that I don’t spend as much time with him as I did before, so he’s been acting up and wanting to be with me every second just like before, including when I go to the bathroom. I really hope he adjusts over time so I can rest a little even after Grandma leaves!

Everyone has told me to stay home and “hibernate” for the winter so Charlotte doesn’t get sick… But it’s such a dilemma; I’ve been SO antsy and we’ve already gone out at least 6 times! It’s been nice to have the extra hands of my mom when we go places. I’ll probably have to start the “hibernation” after she leaves!

It is still hard to believe that Pace and I have two children now. We can already see that Chase and Charlotte have very different personalities, and we love them both so much!

We woke up this morning to the first "real" snow of the season, and I must say I was not the LEAST bit excited. I have loved and cherished every beautiful, sunny Autumn day we’ve had! Some people love the snow, and the sight of it brings happy thoughts of holidays, staying indoors, or playing outside. But I just think of dark, COLD, long days; shoveling the driveway; eating too much junk food; and not wanting to go anywhere since car accidents seem to happen right and left. I guess I really need an attitude adjustment…

But Chase was excited enough for the both of us! I bundled him up in all his gear so he could go tromp around. He bumped his face and got a fat lip earlier this morning and refused to ice it, so I didn’t care that he kept eating the snow out there. Thank goodness we have an enclosed backyard– he couldn’t convince me to join him, even with all his innocence and charm!

I think this may very well be how it will go all winter: I bundle him up (making him go pee in the toilet FIRST), he plays in the backyard and repeatedly asks me to join him, he gets too cold after a few minutes and comes back in, we take off all his snow clothes, then 10 minutes later he wants to go back out there. AH wintertime.

I am very happy to report that Chase is sleeping great these days! It’s quite helpful seeing as how we all need our sleep! For a while (recently) it was hard to get him to stay in his bed at nap time and bedtime, and we would have to take him back to his bed dozens of times before he would go to sleep. Sometimes I would take him back so many times at nap time, that I would just start to ignore him and then I would find him sleeping on the wood floor in our room, or in the hallway, like this:

Now he is doing much better, though. We didn’t change anything about our approach, but somehow he snapped out of it. Next step: We started working on getting him to not cry about nap times and bedtimes. Pace made this amazingly cute little chart because we wanted to get him a train table, but not just for no reason…

Chase got to put a cardboard smiley face on the chart at bedtime, but we took it off and put a sad face in its place if he would cry. He really didn’t like getting sad faces. One night he was bawling, and he brought his freshly-earned sad face to me, and cried, "I donnnnn’t waaaaaaaaant thissssss!" At the next sleep time he was able to replace the sad face with a happy one because he didn’t cry that time.

He started to get a little frustrated after a few days of this and not getting his train table, and I realized that the reward was probably too far from the work for a kid his age to feel motivated. So we changed the goal from seven days to five days, and he did it! Haha are we softies or what?!? He loves his train table, almost as much as Pace does!

On a side note, he picked out some monster "jammas" at Old Navy that were super cheap, so I got them for him (since he usually just wears a t-shirt to bed anyway).

Here are a couple other photos of our little "angel" sleeping– which we NEVER take for granted!!!!