Wow, it's been a while...

After several requests, I've decided it's finally time to update our blog after a 5-month hiatus. We apologize we haven't been more up on things, but this semester has been really insane.

So......where to begin?

The summer went very quickly for us, as I'm sure it does for just about anybody. There was nowhere near enough time for us to play like we wanted to. Just not enough hours in the day, I guess.

I've continued to work at Melaleuca and have now been promoted to Team Lead (assist ant to the supervisor). It's a big step up that I've been waiting for a long time to get. The work load isn't any less, but it's at least different.

Jennie has continued to be a great mommy and loves all the time she can get with Noah. We've truly been blessed to have such a patient baby on our first try. The Lord certainly knew what we needed to get us through.

With this fall semester, we thought we should be able to arrange our schedules so that one of us could always be with the baby while the other was in class. Since Jennie's classes are only available on campus, I opted to take some online courses so I can be at home more often to help with Noah. We started out the semester with Jennie taking 9 credits (including being assistant concert master in the Symphony Orchestra), and me taking 14 (9 of which are online). Little did we know that was just going to be too much. We both ended up dropping one class to lighten the load and we're still busy out our ears. But having plenty to do is better than having nothing to do, right? .........

Noah continues to get stronger every day. He loves his solids, and loves to make a mess of it, too. Since he's started to really go to town on solids, he's making a lot quicker progress. He had a little bit of a late start due to his slightly premature birth (the doctors say he was probably at least two weeks early). He's now a happy, loving, smiling 7 month old who's rolling all over the place and will, hopefully, soon be crawling. Noah's also discovered that the world is a lot more interesting when you can move around to enjoy it. Since he's figured out that he can mobilize, he just doesn't stop.

Jennie had the Halloween concert all last week (which was a big success - Superheroes!), so we didn't have a chance to really take Noah anywhere for Halloween, but we still wanted him to have a costume. We decided to save money and make one, so here's our adorable little solar system!

Things are chaotic, but as there isn't really an end in sight, we're just taking one day at a time, helping each other along, and loving Noah more and more each day. Life is busy, but it sure is sweet!

Two Month Pictures!

Hello everyone! It's been quite a while since we've updated the blog, and since I finally know
how to do it, here goes!

Noah is doing wonderfully. He's turning into quite the little chunk (compared to what he was before) and is getting bigger every day! At his two-month visit on Tuesday, he was 10 lbs 10 oz. He's a very mellow kid - never really cries for anything, and is very patient with our poking and prodding =) We've had to wake him up at night, and watch the clock during the day, in order to feed him since he wouldn't cry for us. But he's finally starting to let us know when he is upset or hungry.

For anyone who's interested (hope I'm not crossing any boundries here), Noah has been taking a bottle, but luckily, I've been able to pump enough breast-milk that we've only had to supplement with formula a bit. We tried breast-feeding, but Noah doesn't really have the strong sucking muscles needed to breast-feed. We've also been taking him to a physical therapist to help strengthen those muscles, and while it's helped him with the bottle (he had a lot of problems in the beginning), breast-feeding just hasn't worked out for us. But, the important part is that he's getting what he needs and is getting good and fat =)

Over Memorial Day weekend, we had his first pictures taken, and they are adorable! We have the cutest baby in the world! Of course, we aren't biased at all =) He's starting to smile here and there, but we couldn't really coax one out of him that day.

Otherwise, life is pretty basic right now. Scott is still working at Melaleuca, and niether of us are in school right now, so we have a lot of time on our hands to love our perfect little boy. Summertime is the best, and we are excited for what it will be bringing!

Welcome Noah George Ostermiller

After a completely insane week, Jennie and I are ecstatic to introduce to the world our newborn son, Noah George Ostermiller.

I'll explain everything that went down.

My grandfather, George Ostermiller, was admitted to the hospital on Sunday night with some fever and aches that he'd had all week. By Monday afternoon, he'd been diagnosed with Leukemia that should be treatable by medication. By Tuesday morning, the condition was labeled as acute progressive Leukemia that would take his life. At 3:15 am Thursday he was gone. I was able to enjoy a few tender moments with him on Wednesday night before he passed.

Wednesday, April 1, was our due date. I skipped a couple of my classes in order to go to our final doctor's appointment with my wife. During the appointment, the doctor told us that something just didn't feel quite right. So, we went in to do a sonogram and found out that Noah was breech. Not only was he breech, he was completely sideways in the womb. Instead of trying to do aversion, where they re-position the baby inside the womb, we decided to do a C-section the next day.

Jennie was happy because she would be able to play her concert that night and not have to worry about the baby. I spent some time at the hospital with my family for my grandpa.

The next morning, we woke up at 4:30 to get ready to be at the hospital at 5:30. When we got there, we prepped for surgery and entered the OR at about 7:40. At 7:54, Noah was born. He weighed 6 lbs 9 oz and was 19 1/2 inches long.

After spending the day with us and being visited by family and friends alike, our little guy was taken away from us by the on-call pediatrician to be taken down to the Special Care Nursery. He apparently wasn't eating well (which was amazing to me that they would think that), and they were concerned about his ability to gain weight.

I was furious. Both of us needed our baby to be there with us. Jennie didn't get to see him for nearly a full day because she was stuck in our suite on the other end of the hospital.

At any rate, we got Noah back after he proved that he could eat well enough. But there was a constant fear that they would come back and take him away again at the first sign of trouble. Needless to say, we were both a bit anxious about it.

Originally, we'd planned on naming him Noah Scott. But as soon as he was born, I knew what his name was. Given the date he was born and everything that we'd been through as a family, I knew his name was going to be Noah George Ostermiller.

Another reason we decided on the name was the message that he sent us soon after he was born. My grandfather had a certain mannerism about him where his lower lip was always out just a bit more than his upper lip. I'm certain that on the other side, Grandpa held our little boy and taught him a few things, including this thing with his lip. He hasn't really done it since, but it spoke to our Ostermiller side of the family as a sign from Grandpa saying that he was alright.

So close yet so far......

The past few weeks have been relatively uneventful, but we do have some things to report.

We're currently two weeks away from having a baby, but I (Scott) think it will probably be sooner than that. Jennie's having the normal pains and stuff, and there's no real reason why I should think that way, but I do.

Anyway, two weekends ago, we made a mad-dash trip down to Utah for the weekend for a baby shower for Jennie. My amazing sisters planned it and we (they) had a great time. (I was up on the mountain blowing stuff up with my brothers.)

Sorry the picture's kind of blurry. This was a great fleece blanket that my aunt Janice and her daughters put together for Jennie.

We pretty much made a haul at the baby shower ;). Lots of stuff. We got plenty of clothes (at least a start). My parents were kind enough to buy us a wooden rocking chair for the baby's room.

We certainly enjoyed seeing family one last time before we can't really travel anymore. We even got to meet my little sister's boyfriend, who was a really great guy. I don't think I'll have to beat this one up. ;)

This past weekend, Jennie's visiting teachers held a baby shower for her as well. (That's right. We got TWO baby showers.) The main thing we got from it was diapers. But we'll be needing plenty of those over the next 2-3 years.

Jennie's looking great. She's certainly turning into quite the cute little mommy. We're both so eager for this little guy to get here, but we're certainly also enjoying the time we have left together. It could be any day now, so we're taking all the time we can get. We're in for the ride of our lives, and we know it.

Love to everybody!

Wow...What a life!

Hey everybody. It's been over a month since I've updated this blog and I'm shame-faced. But, we have had a lot of great things happening for us over the last few weeks or so.

Jennie and I are both very busy with school. Well,....I am, at least. Jennie's been taking some classes toward her Home and Family cluster that haven't really required a lot of her time. But she's got a great seat in the Orchestra this semester and she's positively loving it.

I've been keeping very busy between work, school, and home life. I'm still working at Melaleuca, and I love my job. It's great to work in a place where I can actually help people every day. I'm also LOVING classes this semester. So far it's nothing too intense, but that could easily change. I'm taking a Racquetball class to help keep me healthy (and a little less stressed out). I'm also taking Microeconomics, which, so far, has been almost the same as Macroeconomics, so I haven't had a lot to do as of yet. Music 101 is a great class I'm taking with Sister Mecham. It's kind of an easy class for me but I need one or two of those. The class that's keeping me the most busy, though is Accounting 201. I'm learning the principles of accrual accounting, and I'm actually really enjoying it. If only I could keep up a little more easily with my homework. Most of the time, the assignments we're given require at least 2-3 hours to get done. When I'm going to school full time and working 30 hours a week, that's a bit much to squeeze in.

My Tuesdays and Thursdays are a little less pressed with my World Religions class and Chinese 302. I'm loving WR. It's a great class and really interesting to take a step back from my ordinary views on what religion is and get a much more broad perspective as to what other people in the world believe. It's just a great reminder to me that we're all God's children and He loves us equally no matter how we worship Him.

Chinese is a great class, but also heavy on the homework. And, since I want to make it part of my profession, I really need to pay more attention to it. We're studying Chinese out of newspapers. So, the class is very reading-intensive. (I read in English comparitively slowly. Just imagine how I do in Chinese.) My teacher, Sister Shen, is really helpful and I can tell she loves being a teacher.

Also, as of right now, I'm kind of shopping around for graduate schools. I want to go for an MBA in Marketing with a focus on International Business. Any ideas? I'm thinking of Utah State, but I don't know how strong the program is there. I'd like to get in somewhere a bit more prestigious.

As far as we can tell, the baby is doing well. We're two months away from our due date and we're "uber"-excited. I just don't know how we're going to get everything done that we need to in less than two months. It's really getting to be crunch-time.

Anyway, I hope everybody's doing well. Life is what you make of it. I don't know about all of you, but I'm going to make mine remarkable.