Christmas 2012, A Baby Update and Looking Toward 2013

This is going to be quite a doozy of a post, because I'm combining a whole lot of material. I had planned on blogging Abigail's one month appointment before we left for Little Rock, but due to snow coming in to KC, we left early, keeping me from posting. Of course, once in Little Rock there was no time to post...it was full steam ahead with Christmas celebrations. I also like to do a post re-capping that year and looking toward the new year. Being that it is the last day of 2012, I'll do that now too!

Four week appointment:

I couldn't have been more happy with our doctor's appointment before we left town. I just wanted to see that she was growing as she should and putting on weight. I think as a first-time breastfeeding mom, it's a little scary wondering if your child is getting enough and is growing properly. To my joy, in three weeks she had put on almost 2 pounds and grown almost 2 inches! Two days before her official one-month birthday her stats were:

Weight: 8 pounds 12 ounces--50th percentile
Height: 20 3/4 inches--50th percentile
Head: 14 1/2 inches---50th percentile

As you can see, we have a very symmetrical child right now. :)

I didn't take a picture on her exact one-month birthday, but this one was close and she's in her Christmas outfit!



We are officially big enough to wear size 1 diapers, although we are also still using some newborns. I love it that she has grown into some of her 0-3 month clothing, although I was sad when she grew out of what she came home from the hospital in. Today she is six weeks old and a very joyful baby. She smiles at us all the time, "gurgles and coos" and is a champion at sleeping in her crib. I'm still breast feeding exclusively and it's going well. Sometimes half-way through a feed she'll kind-of turn her head and smile at me, which melts my heart. She eats 7 times a day and gets up once a night. I think she's inching toward sleeping almost all night because I feed her between 10:00 and 11:00 and she doesn't wake me up until 5:00 sometimes.

Christmas in Little Rock was great and quite the adventure. Like I said, we left one day early, which was Wednesday, the 19th. We managed to turn a 7 hour drive into a 9 hour drive because of stopping and feeding. All in all though, we did it very well and with no crabbiness.

We spent the before Christmas days at my parent's house. We had a great time and also got to spend some quality time with Tripp and Kara before their big day (which happens to be this Saturday). Friday night we also celebrated John's birthday and left Abigail for the first time with Mom and Dad (Shepherd was not feeling so good). She did great and I think Mom and Dad enjoyed it. On Saturday we hung around and took a walk and also had a ginger-bread house making contest. We competed in couples...I personally think ours should have won because we had a lot of detail, including a garage with asphalt driveway, edging around our flower beds, and a log pile on the side of the house. However, most people thought Tripp and Kara's was the best because of their butter tree. For the record, they did NOT carve that butter tree and had an unfair advantage since our supplies were purchased at Walmart and one of the things Tripp manages is butter. Mom and Dad's was classically good and included a pond in the back yard.

Our lovely house...





Everyone working hard...







Tripp and Kara's house...don't be sucked in by the butter tree. Remember, pre-carved.



Mom and Dad's...



We had a great day at IBC and LOVED showing Abigail off. We switched houses on Christmas Eve day, but here are some hang-out pictures from the time at Mom and Dad's.







We spent a lovely Christmas Eve night at IBC and at Mike and Kathy's house. Christmas day was fun opening presents and just realizing that we were truly celebrating Christmas as a family of three. Here are some pictures from Mike and Kathy's.

At this point you might notice an improvement in the quality of our pictures, and that's because we got a new camera for Christmas! We LOVE it!











Abigail got a bath in the sink and Shepherd was very interested.



Christmas morning it started raining, and then gradually turned to sleet, which then became snow...this is what it looked like around 8:00 p.m.



By 10:30 we had lost power, along with half of Little Rock, and we were left with a decision. Do we brave the ice-covered, unplowed roads to go to my parents house who still had power, or do we camp out in front of a fire overnight and hope the power comes back on. Both options weren't very appealing with a 5 week old, but we decided to try and stay warm by a fire. So we bundled Abigail in multiple layers of clothing and sat her in her swing by the fire while we slept on pallets. Technically David slept on the floor and I took the couch with a million blankets. She stayed warm, although we were chilly. It was quite the Christmas adventure for sure. In the morning we woke up to 10 inches of snow. David wasted no time when we found out my parents still had power and loaded all of our gear into his Dad's F150 (we had driven the Honda to town). Driving through Little Rock was insane...nothing had been plowed. NOTHING. But we made it back to my parents and to electricity.









On Thursday we went down to the farm to introduce Abigail to her great-grandmother Rainwater. Grandma was so sweet and excited to see Abigail and it was a really special time for David and I. She's a lucky girl to have two great-grandmothers alive and well. We hope to get Abigail down to the farm many more times in the near future.





On Friday we headed back to KC and made it here without any trouble at all. We were even able to stop and see some great friends...the Davis', Rhoads and Bells.

Now we're looking toward 2013 and another big year. It's hard to imagine a year being bigger than 2012...

~~We got pregnant.
~~David passed boards, graduated dental school and is now Dr. David Rainwater
~~I quit my job to stay home with Abigail.
~~We went to Italy.
~~Celebrated 4 years of marriage.
~~Tripp got engaged.
~~WE BECAME PARENTS!

In 2013 we're looking forward to...

~~Finalizing David's job plans.
~~Selling our house.
~~Relocating back to Little Rock for the first time in our married life.
~~Parenting our sweet girl.
~~Growing our relationship with Tripp and Kara.
~~Celebrating 5 years of marriage.
~~David beginning his new job!

There's so much to look forward to and so much change coming!

I'll leave you with the many faces of our Abigail Jane. We can't get enough of her and think every face she makes is cute.











Ready for church! She's looking like a big girl at 6 weeks!



David is the biggest help to me. I couldn't do it without him. Sharing the parenting with him is the joy of my life. Here he is, doing his best to get our girl asleep...it worked on himself at least! :)

4 Weeks!

Our little girl is officially four weeks old as of yesterday. It seems so hard to believe. Technically she'll be one month tomorrow on the 19th. We go for her first real doctors appointment tomorrow and can't wait. Since we're getting ready to leave for Little Rock soon, I don't know if I'll have much time to blog tomorrow, so I wanted to do a quick post with some facts about Abigail and pictures.

First, David and I feel like we're finding a routine and are not quite as exhausted as we've been in the last 3 weeks. David is officially off for Christmas as of today as well.

Our little girl is slowly, but noticeably growing.

~She's starting to wear some 0-3 month clothes and we are going to give size 1 diapers a try this week.

~She naps fairly well in the day and usually has some awake time around 11:00 a.m. and after the 7:00 p.m. feeding.

~Abigail is beginning to like baths more, which I'm so thankful for. We're doing it in the sink and I haven't been brave enough to try it on my own yet...I always wait for David to help me. :)

~She's a great eater and usually falls asleep at the end.

~She's just now beginning to "coo and gurgle" at us when we talk to her and she is doing great at really looking at our faces. It's so fun to feed her, talk to her, and see her smile.

~The amount of diapers we are going through daily is astounding. We had no idea and nothing could have prepared us for it.

~She gets the hiccups almost every night. She doesn't seem to mind them, but it definitely causes her to stay awake for a little bit.

~Overall we feel like she's a perfect little baby...shocking I know. :)

Tomorrow I hope to have some time to blog while we pack and give some information from her doctor's appointment. Also, her newborn pictures came in, so I'll also share some of those. In the meantime, here are some pictures of our cutie-patootie.







Ok I promise I watch my child. But this picture was too funny not to share. I left her asleep in her UNROCKING swing in her room for 5 minutes while I vacuumed the house. When I opened her door, this is what I found. Someone had kicked and wiggled their way all the way out of the swing and was STILL sound asleep. Sweet thing. She sleeps like her father...deep.

Finding Routine

This past week was my first week as an official stay-at-home mom with no family in town to help out and David back at work! I made it through the week feeling really good and trying to find a new routine and my new normal. It's definitely a change to be home 24/7 and I am surprised at how fast my days go by. I look up and half the day is gone. Caring for Abigail's needs of course consume all of my time. I move from changing diapers, feeding, possibly changing another diaper, getting her comfortable and back to sleep, possibly cleaning up spit-up, and then having a small amount of time to do home stuff before I need to wake her up again to change her diaper, feed...etc.

It's such a blessing to be home and be able to take care of these things in the way that I have always wanted to. If the laundry doesn't get done today, it's ok, I have tomorrow. If I want to hold her on my chest during a nap instead of putting her in her crib so I can clean the kitchen, I can...the kitchen will still be here during her next nap.

I feel like she has grown and changed a lot in these last 3 weeks. Sometimes I think she looks like me, and other times I think she's the spitting image of David. Here's a picture of Abigail, me (on top) and David (on bottom) around the same age...you decide!



This weekend David and I made a family outing to the Legends to try and get as much of our Christmas shopping done as possible. It was a big day for me, because we stayed out long enough for me to need to feed her twice away from home. I was successful! Big plus and made me feel great. Abigail slept through the entire shopping adventure and we got a lot done.

She is sleeping pretty good at night. It depends on what day you ask us. We've worked out somewhat of a system to maximize each other's sleep. After her last feeding around 10:00 or 10:30, David takes her and rocks her and tries to get her on to sleep. I usually go ahead and get into bed, after we've picked a maximum time that David will allow himself to stay up to. If it reaches that time, he'll come and get me and I'll take over so he can sleep. Usually he gets her down and then comes to bed. I'm in charge of getting up in the night to feed (obviously), so it works out pretty good. I get to go to bed earlier, but have to get up in the night. He goes to bed later, but sleeps straight through. This is what we HOPE happens. We've had a couple "never-ending nights" when we're both basically up and rotating all night long. Not the best. I can't imagine doing this without my sweet husband. He's never not there for me and up for anything. Not to mention he's an excellent diaper changer, bath giver, rocker, swaddler, and has the patience of Job. The first two years of dental school prepared him for not getting any sleep as well...a perk!

She is nursing great. I am still in a significant amount of discomfort, but it's manageable and I love my time nursing her. She turns her eyes so she can look at me and it's a sweet time when I can talk to her and basically stare at her...which is essentially my favorite thing to do these days.

Sunday was our first day at church and she did great. I successfully used the nursing mothers room and David held her during service before we put her in her carrier to sleep the rest of the service. Pastor Steve and Mary took us to lunch after church as well to celebrate. I was one proud Momma showing off my daughter. I think David and I would both say that taking her out in public and doing something we normally do really made it very real. We were PARENTS, taking our DAUGHTER to church with us. We were even on time...sort of. We'll see how many times we can pull that off.

Here we are by our un-decorated tree for church.




She was dressed up for the occasion of course!



Last night we decided it was finally time to decorate our tree. It was getting really cold, so we made ourselves some hot chocolate, built a fire, turned on the church Christmas program (we opted not to go since we had been out in the morning), put Abigail in her swing, and got to it. It turned out to be so much fun. Our first Christmas decorating as a family of 3! It was definitely something we'll always remember.









One more picture...

2 Weeks!

It turns out it's quite a bit harder to make time to blog with a newborn than I anticipated! I'm just trying to figure out how to get my daily tasks done! :) Anyway, yesterday our beautiful little girl was officially two weeks old! To celebrate she ate, slept, and made dirty diapers. :)

This has been an amazing two weeks to say the least. Your whole world literally shifts...in a good way of course. Here is kind-of what has gone on in those two weeks since coming home.

Right when we came home, my Mom and Dad were in town to help out. Mom cleaned the house, went to the grocery store, did our laundry and cooked our meals. Dad ran all the errands we could possibly need too. We were super thankful to have them here and couldn't have done it without them.

Unfortunately, the day before Abigail was born, David's grandmother passed away. Kathy's Mom was living in Ruston, but Mike and Kathy made the birth, and on the Friday after we came home David was able to go to the funeral and not have to miss it. Having him leave was really hard, but I had my parents here and I was thrilled he didn't have to miss the funeral.

Dad left town on Saturday and Mom stayed until Tuesday helping me out. On Thursday of last week, Kathy came to town to help out for a couple days as well. I'm so thankful for our supportive families. I can't say enough about Abigail's grandparents...she is one lucky girl. Here are some pictures from the last two weeks at home.








Cousins meet!








Getting ready to run some errands...



Picking out our first Christmas tree as a family of three!





Snoozing...



So far...

~~Abigail is a great sleeper in the day. We're still working on the evening time...she seems to enjoy being awake from the 10:00-1:00 time, which is super hard for Mommy and Daddy.

~~Last night was the first time I let her sleep without me waking her up. The nurse said when she reaches two weeks to go for it. Abigail slept for almost 7 hours! I woke up, saw the clock and freaked out. Surely she was uncomfortable and crying...not really, just sleeping. Not sure if it's a fluke or not, but we'll see!

~~Breastfeeding is going good. It's one of the hardest, but most rewarding things I have ever done. Our hospital and pediatrician give lots of support, which I'm thankful for. She takes a while to eat...sometimes over 30 minutes, but it's ok. I can really tell she's growing and I love that.

~~Abigail is still in newborn clothing, but is filling some of those things out a smidge tighter than before.

~~Oddly enough, she doesn't really like a passy too much. We've tried it during those times she fights sleep and sometimes she'll take it, but in general she just spits it out like it's offensive to her.

~~I've gotten out a couple times to run errands and it's felt really good. I think the hardest adjustment for me has just been how much of the day revolves around her feeding schedule and how tired I stay. Sometimes I feel like I just move from one feeding to the next, but I'm finally being able to let some of the household chores go so I can enjoy the time with her while I'm feeding. It's a very special time.

So that's us the last 2 weeks. This is our first full week alone with no family, and while it's only Tuesday, so far so good! Now I need to start thinking about some Christmas shopping!