First Day Back At Work

It went well. I didn't cry like I thought I would. Dropping off Amelia was tough but I know she's in good hands. I missed her, though. I dropped her off at 10am and visited her at 11am, 12:30pm, 1:30pm and picked her up at 3:30. Do you think they'll nickname me "stalker mom"?

Here we are all dressed and ready to go.

It was great seeing everyone. Joy brought me a cinnamon crunch bagel from Panera and this made my day a little easier....
Thanks, Nathan, for the sweet flowers. So thoughtful and loving! I love them and I love you!

Light the Night

Last night Amelia, Nathan and I went downtown for the Light the Night walk in honor of Amy.

Here's a little blurb about it from their website just in case you don't want to go to the link above...

The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society's Light The Night Walk is the nation's night to pay tribute and bring hope to people battling cancer. Walks take place in communities throughout the United States and Canada, typically in the fall. On these special nights, thousands of participants carry illuminated balloons and raise funds for vital, lifesaving research and patient services.

Anyone can take part - children, adults and seniors are all welcome. This is a casual fundraising walk with no fitness requirements. There are many ways you can help. You can register to walk individually or, even better, as part of a team; just make a donation online; or become a volunteer or sponsor/partner.

Funds raised through Light The Night Walk support the work of hundreds of the world's best and brightest researchers in their search for better therapies and cures for leukemia, lymphoma and myeloma.

It was a great night. The weather was perfect and the turnout was just as impressive as last year's.

Here we are just before the walk began. Mike, Amy, Addison, me, Amelia and Nathan.

Amy is doing really well. Her strength is good and she recently had a scan done that came back pretty clean. The chemo continues to do what it's supposed to and the great news is she has just started the preliminary shots for her stem cell transplant process. She's had 2 of the 4 shots she needs and in a few days they'll extract the cells from her bone marrow and take on another dose of chemo and after that they will transplant the cells. This is a very big deal and we're praying that come Thanksgiving, this will all be behind her. What a huge thing to be thankful for! She needs to stay healthy so pray for all colds and flu to stay far away from her and her family. Stem cell is a risky process but from what I understand if they don't do it, the lymphoma will just continue to come back in different areas of her body.

I'll leave you with a cute picture of Amelia in her sling.

2 months old

Today Amelia is 2 months old. I know that everyone says that "time goes soooo fast". Well, it's true! I can't believe that my little bundle is already two months old. Here's what she's been up to....

*Sleeping through the night. Thank you, thank you, thank you!! What a blessing that is.
*Smiling at us when we talk to her. She loves to smile at daddy in the morning and mommy whenever I talk to her.
*Napping a lot still during the day. Just about after every feeding.
*Nursing 6 times a day. 7am, 10, 1pm, 4, 6:30ish, 9:30ish and bed at 10pm
*Sleeps until 7 or 7:30am
*Sleeps in a bassinet in our room at night and naps in her crib during the day
*Cooing. She likes to talk too!
*1st roll over yesterday (Oct. 23rd) from back to tummy. I heard her crying during her nap and when I went in she was on her tummy!
*Follows mom and dad with her eyes
*Loves riding in the car
*Loves bath time
*Uses her leg muscles to stand. She can't balance, of course but she can hold herself up with her little legs.
*Spits up quite a bit
*Loves her sling
*Loves "Goodnight Moon" and "Barnyard Dance"
*Loves "Part of Your World" from Little Mermaid and "Itsy Bitsy Spider"

I can't wait to see what you will learn to do this next month.

Bottle feeding

I'm going back to work on MONDAY (wahhhhhhhh....wahhhhhhh!!) so I thought I better try to feed Amelia with a bottle to make sure that she'll still be able to eat if I'm not there. Nathan was so excited to be able to feed her.

At first, I think Amelia was thinking, "What the.....?"

Success!
I can't tell you how relieved I feel knowing that if I'm unable to make it over to her room she can still eat via the bottle.

Now, about going back to work......
Geesh! I just don't know. I love my job, my co-workers and my boss! I've been at Concordia for almost 10 years and I truly enjoy my work. It's challenging, satisfying, and I believe that my ministry/work does make eternal differences. Not me, but God through me and our staff.
Rarely do you find something you love doing and get paid for it. I know God has called me to work as a Children's Ministry Director but now He has also given me the awesome gift of being a mom along with my current role of wife. I just hope that I can find a healthy balance. I'm so happy that Amelia will be on campus with me. I'm so blessed that I can still nurse her and go see her as much I want.
The next few weeks will be challenging. Pray for me, sweet friends! I need it!

Weekend Wedding

Last weekend I sang in a wedding for a beautiful bride from church. My friend Leslie's niece, Stacy Peterson, tied the knot and they had a beautiful day. Here we are at the reception. Amelia had a great time being passed around. We made sure they slapped on the purell.

Here are a couple of snapshots of our little girl getting ready for the wedding. I just love the twinkle she has in her eye. She's doing a great job holding her head up. She can balance herself on the couch for a short while.

Baby in a basket

I Love Fuzzi Bunz

Nathan has a co-worker that just had a baby around the same time Amelia was born so they were chatting about daddy-hood and the topic of diapers came up. This guy told Nathan about the cloth diapers they were using. I guess this guy made an impression because Nathan came home all excited about them. I didn't want to hear about it. Cloth diapers? What a hassle! I was a total pessimist......at first.

Nathan ordered a couple of them for us to try out. Well, we've tried them and I'm hooked! Amelia is 8 weeks now and has been sleeping "through the night" 10pm until 7am for 2 weeks now (pretty freakin' awesome, right?!?!) and I really think I have FuzziBunz to thank for that. Well, that and the schedule we put her on. You see, our little princess doesn't like to be in a wet diaper. Not for a second longer than she has to. I don't blame her! The first night we put a FuzziBunz diaper on her was the first night she slept through the night. Coincidence? Maybe but now I'm hooked on FuzziBunz.

Baby Rolls and misc

Amelia is such a good eater! I love the fat she's getting on her little body. Baby fat is so precious. Look at these little turkey legs in the making....

Play time with daddy...

Let me introduce you to the giraffe that has stolen Amelia's heart...
That little purple giraffe makes her smile and coo everyday. She loves her! She hangs from her play mat but I thought I'd take her down to amuse Amelia during her tummy time. She enjoyed talking to her and making love-y eyes with her.

Happy Birthday, Lacey!

Tomorrow, Oct 15th is Lacey's first double digit birthday! I can't believe she'll be 10. It seems just like yesterday when Kelly called me at 5am to tell me they were going to the hospital b/c she was in labor. I rushed to the hospital not realizing that the first baby takes a looooong time to arrive. I was with Kelly and Clint for the beginning of her delivery and then let our mom come in for the actual birth. Mom was at lunch but she made it back just in time to see her first grandchild come into this world.

Lacey is such a wonderful little girl. She's sweet, smart, talented and so loving. She loves school, crafts and singing. I pray that she continues to grow to be strong, independent and confident. I know she'll go far in life no matter what she chooses to do. She's a great big cousin to Amelia!

We're going to Outback for dinner tomorrow night. I'll post more pics later.

Happy Birthday, Lacey! I hope you have a special day!

Sweet little feet

Fall Fun

Saturday Nathan and I took Amelia to the pumpkin patch in Medina. It was a gorgeous day and she had a great time.....sleeping. We took a lot of pictures so she can see all the fun she had that day. Joy, Brad and Jayla went with us but I didn't get any pictures of them. Jayla was movin' and shakin' and was hard to keep up with.

Here's our first Fall family picture.

Nathan did a great job holding Amelia in these face framed cut outs. Still sleeping peacefully.

They have a great petting zoo. Here she is with a baby chick on her tummy.

Amelia's lunch time. By the way...this is my awesome Hooter Hider! I love that thing.
It's so awesome!

They have a nice apple orchard on site and here I am getting some fresh apple cider. It was so good. We took the Apple Tour and they demonstrated how they squeeze the apples. The cider is $8 for a 1/2 gallon. wow.
They also have delicious apple ice cream and apple pie. Soooo good!

It's Raining, It's Pouring

Over the weekend we had some awesome rain! Rain has been a real stranger lately in San Antonio. Such a stranger that once the rain came down in buckets early Sunday morning we found that it had no where to go. The ground was so packed and dry we ended up having a small lake in our backyard. Look at all the standing water. Great. You know what that means....mosquitoes.

Here's our back porch.The rain has stopped and our lawn is much happier.

Morning walks and fun pics to share

Amelia and I have been going on morning walks pretty regularly. Walking is the only thing I can do workout-wise. My doctor hopefully will clear me at my next visit to do a little more exercise.

--wait a minute...did I spell exercise right? It looks so funny. It's so weird when you use a word and look at it spelled and you are totally baffled b/c it looks so foreign. Anyway, back to this post--

Nathan and I usually walk on weekends and on Monday morning since he's off from work. My next door neighbor saw us walking and asked if I'd like to start walking with her. She really wanted to start so that's what we did this past Monday. Amelia loves going on walks. Kelly gave me her jogging stroller that she used with Lacey and Ashley and even though it's for kids 22 lbs and up we still use it for Amelia. Bad momma? Noooooo....we are very careful and we pack her in using extra blankets. She's very safe and secure although I'm sure the gal that taught our car seat safety class would look at me and say to herself "tsk, tsk, tsk...shame on her." We go really slow. I'm not running or anything and plus, I need to get out of the house! With the flu going around I'm hesitant to take her to the mall so morning walks around the neighborhood are a must!

Robyn got her a cute pumpkin beanie to keep her head warm. Amelia loves it and she looks so cute!

She also got her some Halloween tights and a cute Halloween baby t-shirt that says "Got Candy". I'll be sure to take her picture in it and post it soon.

Here's a cute outfit that I think is for a boy that was handed down to me but I girled it up with a bow....
Here are a few tummy time pictures. She's getting better at holding her head up for longer periods of time. She even had herself propped up on her elbows.

Nursery

I've been working on a little project for Amelia's room and I just finished it. Thanks to my sister Kelly for coming over to help paint the letters for Amelia's wall. They turned out really cute. First, we painted the letters a solid green and then used pencil to make a trim which we painted chocolate brown to match the elephant colors in her room. I loved the look of it.....
Fun, right? How about a little whimsical pink added? Now that SHE'S here we seriously need a little pink in her room. I bought a stencil of different sized circles and penciled them on to the letters and added the bright color...