Evie Update

Evelyn Ray, you are 8 months old! (Where did the last 8 months of my life go?)

 

I am not sure how much you weight, but I know its over the 20 pound mark and you are about 29 inches tall (daddy measures with his trusty measuring tape).  You continue to be the joy of our life.  This month you started army crawling (albeit only when bribed), eating table food (you love peaches, mandarin oranges, toast and avocado), celebrated Thanksgiving and met the man in the big red suit.

You are also much more, well, umm, let's say opinionated. You let us know when you are not happy or have not gotten what you want.  You have moved up to the Infant 2 room and well you have been nonstop ever since.  You refuse to really nap at school because you have to see and do everything (pretty sure you got that from mommy).  But, you sleep like a champ at home at night so I won't complain.

You still have no interest in actually for legit hands ands and knees crawling, but man you want to, in fact you will throw an all out baby fit because you won't crawl.  You also have no desire to pull up, stand up or well be mobile other than rolling.  In the walker you just tend to push yourself or try to bounce.

But when you are content with your toys you are content.  You to bang things together, "pet" the puppies (we are trying to teach you to be gentle), but man Sophie is so tolerant of you and you squeal with delight when you see her.  You are trying to cut you top teeth, so I blame the fussiness on that.  We can see its white edge but it just will not poke through.

You also want to do everything on your own.  You want to feed yourself, hold your own cup and bottle, get your toys out of the box and well I bet you would change yourself if I would let you.  Miss Independent (again you get if from your mama).

This month will be big as you will celebrate your first Christmas and go on your first plane ride! (pray for me).

You have also developed quite the nicknames: Evie, Ev, Peanut, E-Frog, cutie patootie (that's from Uncle Bubby), and toot butt (your daddy).

We love you to the moon and back sweet girl!

Evie Ray is 7 Months Old

 

Evie Ray is 7 months old! Girl is growing like a week. I am going to guess we are over 20 pounds at this point and probably inching our way to 28 inches tall.  She is still a bundle of energy and constantly on the "go."

 

Although she is not crawling, she is pretty mobile with the rolling. She can roll to get to whatever she wants. You can tell when she is frustrated because she grunts and then off she rolls.

She is eating three meals of "solids" a day. If you can call pureed food solids.... She has not met a food she hates as of yet, but girl does not like any texture. She wants all liquid no lumps! So, if anyone has any ideas on how to get her to like a little texture let me know.

Evie currently loves her Sophie giraffe (thanks Aunt Pinky)  her light up musical turtle, soft books she can read eat, and Sophie (our dog).  Evie is quite the talker. She just babbles, squeals and screams her little heart out.

This big event this month was getting her DocBand off! No more flat spot! She is still a great sleeper and goes to bed between 7 and 7:30 every night and wakes up between 5:20 and 6 am. However, she is content to just babble away at herself until Daddy comes to get her up and ready for the day.

She likes to sit in high chairs when we go out to dinner and is content to play with a spoon while we eat.

She discovered she can "see" herself in the phone.

We love her to pieces and cannot wait to see what this next month will bring. Maybe she will finally crawl and learn to stand up. (girl has no desire to pull up or really stand assisted at this point)

Happy 7 months Peanut!

Flat Fixin

And its Monday again! Where did the weekend go? At our house, it went to helmet wearing, shopping and BFF visits.

So, Evelyn has a severe case of Plagiocephaly. Along with it came torticollis. It's been a lot to deal with, but all in all, its fixable. But, it means out precious angel will be adorning a DocBand for 6-9 weeks. Friday so received her custom made headgear and Saturday we got it all decorated. There is a wonderful organization in the DFW area called WrapBuddies. This non-profit decorates DocBands for free. I found a local wrap artist who partners with WrapBuddies since their wait list is rather long. Evie got a custom wrap Saturday.

Adorned by ladybugs, this girl is ready to rock her helmet. She had done quite well with it and other than it trapping in heat, she has slept in it and seems unphased. I am hoping these weeks go by quickly and when its all done, she has an even more gorgeous noggin to go with her personality.

On another Evie note, girl is still struggling with the sleep. Pretty much from about 3:45 on she is up and down and in and out of sleep. Help! When do I just bite the bullet and let her cry it out? Mama needs some sleep (and daddy too).

Saturday while her helmet got decorated, my mom and I and E hit up the outlet mall. We got some steals and deals for sweet Evie. I stocked up on 9 months (yes 9 months) clothes in the form of $6 pj's and onsies from Carter's, cute bibs from osh Koch b'gosh and the cutest swimsuit for next year from Janie & Jack. All I wanted was a pair of sandals, but alas there were none I liked. So J and I ran into DSW yesterday and I grabbed some on major sale (hello they have boots in stock. Did they miss that its still 100 here in Texas? and will be til um mid-October?).

Saturday evening  my BFF from law school arrived! We grabbed some dinner and headed to World of Beer to J could try something new (its kinda his thing and I love the atmosphere). We hung out til 11:30 and then headed home to bed.

Sunday was lounged around and got ready for the week. Well, we tried as again E was up from 3:45 on.

But I love these two anyway.

May Flowers

And like that, its May. I wish I had some exciting news or a wonderful weekend to review for you, but also I do not. No, I spent my weekend doing manual labor on the roof of our townhome. The one big project we have before we put the townhome on the market is to redo the rooftop deck. Who knew 600 square feet of deck could take up 20 hours of your time.

So, as I type this, I have a sleeping baby, a sunburned back, aching feet, legs, arms, etc... and a deck that needs one more coat of resurfacer.

I do not even have any exciting pictures from our adventure in DIY. However, Friday night, J and I did get a little date night. My brother popped by and took Evie for a walk while we had some dinner out. Here are some pictures from Evie's adventures in downtown Fort Worth with her Uncle.

Evie's Birth Story Part 2

So, if you  missed part 1 of Evie's birth story, check it out here. So, after arriving at the hospital and getting checked in, we began to realize we were having our sweet baby girl. We began to let family and friends know we were actually doing this, and then we waited.

My contractions were not very strong, so the nurse started pitocin in a higher dosage. I began to progress and when I hit 3.5 cm, we got the epidural. I admit I cried the whole way through it. It was more the fear of the unknown than the actual process, but believe me I was much better after that. Well, until I began to have very strong contractions. Yes, I felt them. This was 3-4 hours after the initial insertion. I googled from my hospital bed, how much do you feel when you have an epidural and finally I called the nurse and expressed my pain. She had the anesthesiologist come back and he told me the epidural had some a little lose, but it would be fine, he just gave me another dose.

So we slowed down the pitocin, put me on another drug to stop contractions, added some more pain meds and then began basically again. 3-4 hours later, the contractions were back and in my back. I had progressed from a 3.5 to an 8 in less than a hour. Evie was sunny side up and her head was pushing into my spine. The pain was worse than anything I ever experienced in my life. I was crying, J was upset and I just wanted it to stop. Finally the charge nurse came in and said I needed another epidural or I would not make it through the pushing.

Ya know pre epidural fail

So, another epidural I got. This one numbed me from the boobs down and finally I had some relief. We upped the pitocin and got the contractions ramped back up. Finally around 5am we began to push. And push I did. It was such a strange feeling to push when you can't feel what you are pushing.

At 7am, the nurse shift changed and I had my original nurse back. My OB came and checked on me, and we decided we needed to get Evie to roll over. This began the marathon of the every changing pushing position. I pushed in every way imaginable to get sweet Evie to roll over. Finally she moved and the real work began.

Sweet girl's head was just not wanting to come out. We could see her sweet head and the color of her hair, but she was just struck. I pushed and pushed. My doctor finally threatened a c-section since she was bigger than I could handle and we were coming up on 20 + hours. And then at 8:24am, and an episiotomy later, Evelyn Ray came into our world. 7lbs 4 oz. 20 inches long.

After that, its kind of a blur. We headed to post partum and haven't slept much since. Sunday morning Evie was taken from me as her billyrubin level was 15, which for 48 hours old, is very severe. She had a bad case of jaundice and needed to have phototherapy. It was scary and J was not there yet, (side note, he spent the night at home each night because at 6'1 he could not fit on the "bed" they have).

Evie was put on mandatory tanning bed duty and force fed every three hours from me and donor milk. I didn't sleep, I was frustrated with trying to feed her and then pump what I could. It was such an emotional roller coaster.

It was such an odd feeling to leave the hospital Sunday to get dinner and leaving her there in the nursery. I stayed another night in the hospital another night so I could feed Evie every three hours.

Finally Monday morning, her levels where down and we got to take our sweet girl home.

And then the real adventure began.

Timehop Thursday

Low and behold the sun came out and shined upon us! Spring is near and I am ecstatic! Today I bring you a #tbt, timehope thursday, well just a good ole' now and then.

Love the time lapse shown in these two pictures. And my oh, my how little baby girl has grown.

Then: 23 weeks
Now: 34 1/2 weeks
Then: marrying my best friend
Now: more in love than ever
Then: nay a bump in sight
Now: whoa bump

If Only

Hello friends. Its another week, another day, another day closer to baby. Another  weekend come and gone and a lists of "if only."

Friday hubs and I went out for a fancy dinner to the place we had our rehearsal dinner. We had a gift card and so we indulged. Ok, so he indulged. I ate a few bites here and there and attempted to avoid heartburn. He, on the other hand, ate his steak, and more than half of mine, accompanied by shrimp, scallops, potatoes and brocollini. I'm pretty sure he did not eat again until dinner the next night.

Saturday we both worked. He did an 8 hour stint and I did about 5. At least I could work from the comfort of my living room in my pjs. I did however, manage to make it out of the house and over to DSW to grab some new black heels and navy heels. I am pretty hard on my heels with work and I am always in a constant state of trying to find the perfect navy heels, so these were much-needed purchases. I also got in some much needed puppy cuddle time with this one. She was so content with her head on my belly feeling Evie do the rumba on my bladder. When the baby would do a big one, she would look up wide-eyed at me. So cute.

Saturday we did an early dinner at Max's Wine Dive (no wine for me), but had this delish cheese board.

Ya'll it was so good. And since we were already out and about, we met some friends at the bar next door for some good old fashioned catch-up.  The boys chatted, while Catherine and I planned a shower for our other friends who are due in March with a little boy. It was just nice to be out and feel normal for once, despite my lack of a cocktail.

Sunday morning we were up for early church at 8:15. But man I am glad we were. Our church is currently journeying through Genesis and yesterday's topic was abortion. Yeah, heavy I know and the potential for fire and brimstone. But it was so uplifting and just reinforces for me why I love my church family so much.

As most of you know, hubs and I were married when we found out about Evie. I remember feeling scared to tell my church family, which we love and are so close too, but they again amazed me at their love and support. Instead of feeling ostracized, we were loved and open arms embraced us as we began to deal with this new chapter. It reminded me of what the Christian way of life is truly about.

So, despite all the wonderful if only moments of this weekend, like if only I could have that glass of wine or if only I could party all night or be on the beach, I realized, if only I had never met this wonderful man I am now married to, and if only I had never been blessed with this growing life inside me, then my life would never be complete.

Here's to a wonderful week of never saying "if only."