now and then

my sweet friend jenny did a "then and now" post a few days ago. and i thought it was so fun to see her precious twinsies last summer vs. this summer! so because i am dumb about putting pictures in order on blogger, ours is a now and then post!

first, this is a little family photo taken just this summer (in july actually). look at bella boo stylin' and profilin'.

this is a photo of adam and i just 2 or 3 days after we found out we were expecting (in july of 09) at j-creek!

my how times have changed! life as two was so much fun, but my oh my how much more fun life as three is! b sure does keep us on our toes and laughing!

5 months!

yesterday, my sweet baby girl turned 5 months! really? already!? look how big she looks! i get weepy every time i compare her new monthly picture with her 1 month picture. she is growing so fast!

at 5 months:

• you are wearing 3-6 month clothing, but quickly out growing the 3 months end of that because you are so long!
• you love to play in your exersaucer!
• you love bath time more and more each time. it is so fun to watch you splash excitedly in the water.
• and speaking of excited, you get so excited when you see familiar faces. you get a big open mouth smile and kick your legs like crazy!
• you make real big girls laughs.
• you can roll over, but you don't seem to want to very often.
• you can not sit up unassisted, but you will be soon!
• you enjoy tummy time. you prop yourself up and often times seem as though you are going to stand on your head because your legs are so strong.
• you put EVERYTHING in your mouth! fingers, toys, feet, other people's fingers.
• you are nursing and being formula fed. you watch us like a hawk when we eat. don't worry baby girl, you get real food in a month!

bella boo, we love you so much! we love to watch you grow and learn. i wonder what fun new things we will get ourselves into this month!?

on gisele and breastfeeding

ok, so if you've read my blog in the past 5 months, you know good and well that i have been doing everything in my power to nurse my baby girl and that it is my deepest desire to give her my breast milk until her first birthday. so when i was watching good morning america last week and heard the story of gisele bundchen saying that it should be a "worldwide law" for women to breastfeed for the first 6 months of her baby's life, i was a little taken aback. i wasn't angry. i think it brought my feelings of inadequacy back all over again.

for the first 5 or so weeks of sweet bella joy's life i nursed her whenever she cried. it was around that time that we recognized there was an issue and we went to see the lactation consultant. that is when we discovered the issue with b's tongue. at her 2 month check up dr. f referred us to an ent. we couldn't get in for another month. and then when the ent decided surgery was necessary, he couldn't get us in for another month.

so here we are, 4 months old-starting our nursing journey. i pumped like a mad woman for 4 months in anticipation for this day of surgery. i began nursing my baby girl regularly 2 days after surgery. at first it seemed like everything was going to go wonderfully! but i think b just had some extra healing she needed to do and she just wasn't really that hungry still. when she got her appetite back, we quickly realized that i didn't have enough milk to satisfy our growing girl's hunger.

i do not regret going ahead and having the surgery, as she would have had to have it in a few months anyway, but i am very sad that i can't provide breast milk for my sweet baby girl.

so i know that gisele has taken back what she previously said. and i'm sure she didn't mean it when she said it in the first place. i do agree that "breast is best" and i personally think that all women should give it a go. but man, is it so much harder than i ever expected, emotionally. i wasn't breastfed as a baby, and i turned out fine-so i know i shouldn't feel like an inadequate mother. we are still trucking along and praying for a miraculously increased milk supply :).

thats all. i felt this way before gisele made her grand statement, it just made me want to talk about it.

happy first birthday lylah mae!

last year at this time, i was very sleepily waiting in the hospital with my mom and dad for the arrival of my very first niece! my sister had called at around 230 am to say that her water broke. a few minutes later she called back and told me not to go to the hospital yet, but i was already half way there! :) i met lara and nathan in the parking lot and walked up the labor and delivery with them. i waited. then i went to kroger to get a magazine, a sudoku book, and some disposible razors for nathan. then i waited. then mom and dad arrived and we waited together. what a wonderful day of waiting it was! when we heard brahm's lullaby play, dad and i looked at each other and cried. i'll never forget the first time i laid eyes on that baby girl! i think i was the proudest aunt ever!!!

auntie em and lylah mae just a little while after birth
lylah mae with her very first cupcake, one year later.

happy happy birthday lylah mae! you have brought so much joy to our lives this year! you make us laugh. you love your baby cousin bella! and she loves you! and i do too!

we're going to the zoo, zoo, zoo. how about you!?

saturday, we took advatage of some pf changs gift cards and some free zoo tickets and made a little trip to nashville with adam's parents. we enjoyed a lunch of lettuce wraps, crispy honey chicken, and mu shu chicken. and then headed to ashmill's house to head to the zoo! b did such a great job!

b with the elephants!
b with a scary snake! :)

we decided that since we were at the pf changs on west end, we couldn't make the trip to nashville without taking bella joy to the place where her momma and daddy's romance began! so we headed over to centennial park for a few photos with the parthenon.

our family of 3!

the cutest baby girl on the planet with her daddy at the parthenon!

we had such a fun day! we were all stinky and exhausted when we got home, but it was well worth it! and the best of all, it was FREE to us!! thank you west chester, OH pf changs for thinking your services was bad enough to give us gift cards, pf changs for emailing us a free order of lettuce wraps, ashley miller for the free ticket, and humana for making saturday free zoo day for grandparents!

the big day

we started our day at 515 am. i rolled out of bed. i pumped, packed b's diaper bag, packed bottles and accessories into the pump and then got myself ready. we were out the door at 6. adam drove his car into town and his sister amanda, bella, and i rode together. we didn't really say much on the way. when we got to the hospital, we checked in and waited. they called us back pretty quickly. they brought us a teenie tiny hospital gown, check b's heart and temperature. and then we waited some more. we played. we sang. we bounced. pastor jason came in and prayed with us and encouraged us. adam noticed that b's hospital gown said "soooooooooo big!" all over it so we sang "my God is so big" as a family. when my mom and dad arrived, we were still waiting for someone to come and talk to us. b started to get fussy, but thankfully i was able to get her to sleep.
after lots of waiting...at about 805 (surgery was supposed to start at 8) dr. sims came in and asked if we had any questions. we didn't. then the nurse came back in. then the anesthesiologist. we asked him a couple of questions and then they took my sleeping baby girl from me. i cried. when we got back to the waiting room we had two sweet friends from church waiting with amanda (thank you lisa and irene!). it was wonderful to have people there to talk to. if it would have just been adam and me, we would have cried together until they told us our girl was out. we had probably been waiting for about 15 minutes when the sweet volunteer called us to the phone. dr. sims was on the line. he told me that she was out and doing great. he did give her two stitches just to hold the cut. he said that in cases like this he likes to do stitches so that the tongue doesn't just grow back to where it was. he told me that b had 1 1/2 to 2 cm of extension. we sat down and gave everyone the scoop. and i called my sis. then we waited a little longer. eventually a nurse came to get us and we rushed back to the room only to find that it was empty! so we waited some more. :) when they brought us our baby girl she wasn't really crying. when she saw our faces, she smiled and i cried again. i took her and gave her her bottle.

while i was giving her her bottle i noticed blood coming out and i flipped out and cried some more. the nurse assured me that she was fine and she sucked down nearly 6 ounces of breast milk like it was her job!

after she finished her bottle, she smiled and talked to us as if nothing had changed. (minus the occasional blood coming from her mouth).

we love our baby girl so much!

my dad works nights. he got home at about 4am and he and mom left for bg at 5 am. they arrived at about 730 and left at about 915. my dad is at work tonight too. talk about an awesome bebe and poppy/mom and dad!!!!

after mom and dad left, b spit up some nasty bloody milky stuff. the nurse again assured us that she was fine. adam left for work at about 930 and amanda, b, and i were back in alvaton by 1030.

b has had a great day. she is eating (from at bottle still at this point) like a champ. it is VERY hard to keep a 4 month old from putting her hands in her mouth. she has had a little more bleeding this evening, but over all she is doing wonderfully!

we are so thankful that our God is so BIG, so strong and so mighty-there's nothing our God can not do!

surgery week

as you may or may not know-sweet bella joy is having a minor surgery on friday morning. we have been working toward this since she was 2 months old. her pediatrician didn't think it was needed, but after seeing dr. sims, he felt that it was. she is having a frenulectomy (or having her tongue clipped) in hopes that our feeding issues will be no more (and i will be able to nurse my baby girl!!!). please pray that the surgery would be quick, that dr. sims would not have to put in a stitch, that adam and i would have a peace that surpasses all understanding, and that b would recovery quickly and feeding issues would be obsolete!

in more happy and fun news, at her pre-op appointment, b's weight was 14 lbs and she was 25 inches! she is growing growing growing!! her 4 month check up will actually be a 4 1/2 month check up on july 30th.