Avery's 1st Month

Avery is currently asleep so I'm going to try to catch up on some blogging! Yippee!

Sweet Baby Girl - You are one month old! Already you are growing and changing. Mommy and Daddy are growing and changing too! Learning how to function on short snaps of sleep is our newest accomplishment. :) You on the other hand are functioning very well.

1st Month Milestones - 6/4/10

Height - 19 3/4 inches
Weight - 7 lbs 12 oz
Sleeping - you sleep about 2 hours after eating and playing during the day and will go for 4 to 6 hours at night. Mommy loves the 6 hour stretch! You have been sleeping in Mommy and Daddy's room so far and love your sound machine.
Eating - you eat every 3 hours during the day and go for about 4 to 6 hours at night.
New discoveries you made - Mommy and Daddy's faces. I know you can only see a little but you do seem to respond when we talk to you. You are so alert and watch everything that goes on around you (we think!).  You like to sit in your bouncy chair.
New accomplishments - You smiled! Right about when you turned 1 month, you smiled at us. You do it all the time now. And we are pretty sure it isn't gas!
Places you went - We took you to Nonna and Poppa's house in Oklahoma for your first road trip. Uncle Daniel was having his bachelor camping weekend, which Daddy went to, so you and I stayed with Nonna and Poppa. You got lots of loving while there!
Special Memories - You had your first prescription when you were 2.5 weeks old for a clogged tear duct. A few days later you were all better!  You also have been a little colicky but thanks to Gripe Water, most of the time you calm down. We hate not knowing what is bothering you and not being able to soothe you.

Avery Marie - you have been such a blessing to me and Daddy in your first month. You changed our lives forever. People told us what it would be like to be parents, but wow! We were so green (and still are) when we brought you home, but thanks to God, and lots of support from all your family and friends, we made it. Can't wait to see what the next month brings! Love you baby girl!

~Mommy & Daddy

Day 1

Day 3 - coming home

1 week

2 weeks

3 weeks

4 weeks

1 month

3 weeks in and loving it...(Part 4)

(The last two posts were ones I intended on posting at 3 weeks and am just now getting to finish. Avery is now almost 12 weeks and I'm working on getting my blog up to date.)

So now we are 3 weeks in and all our family has gone home. It's just us now. :) My mom stayed with us the first week and Sonia stayed with us the second week. They have been such a blessing! I don't think Randy would have had clean clothes or a clean house without them. Plus Avery got lots of loving by her Nonna and Mim. Our community group brought us meals every other night for 2 weeks and wow! Between Mom, Sonia and our CG, I got spoiled by not having to cook.

Avery is doing well. We finally got the whole feeding thing down, sleeping has been pretty good, and Avery and I had our first week by ourselves as Randy has been working with Seth this week. We did have to take Avery in for an unexpected doctor's visit for a clogged tear duct. But after 2 days of antibiotic ointment and we are all good. 

Thank you for all your thoughts and prayers. We are so blessed to have family and friends who have helped us these past weeks.

3 weeks in and loving it...(part 3)

So I fully intended on finishing this blog way back at the beginning of summer. Then I got caught up in life with our new baby girl and yeah....the blog sat on the back burner. :) It isn't that I didn't want to blog, it just was just one thing on my list of things to do and most days I only got the most important things crossed off the list. So back to the story:

Our family came in to see us in our room, and as you can see from the pictures I posted earlier - Avery is one very loved little girl. My aunts, uncle, cousins, best friend, parents, brother and sister-in-law all came to visit us. Mom stayed with us in the hospital since Randy had come down with a sinus infection the day before and was not feeling well. We had a good first night - Avery slept, but Mom and I didn't. Something about not being in your own bed and sleeping on a fold out couch makes for a rough night.

Wednesday morning, Sonia (Randy's mom) & Bruce arrived.  Avery is the second granddaughter in Randy's family so it was neat to see Sonia and Bruce love on Avery like I had seen them do for Bella a couple of years ago.  We spent the day just visiting and loving on Avery. Mom, Dad, Daniel and April even cleaned our house for us.  In all the hustle of moving and unpacking, our house was a bit of a wreck. We all thought we had another week (at least) before Avery would come. We were wrong!  Courtney and Tanna came by to visit us and they got to meet Miss Avery. 

They finally released us to go home on Thursday morning and boy, were we ready!  After the doctors checked both of us and we got all the paperwork filled out, we loaded up and headed home. As ready as I was to go home, I couldn't believe it had all gone by so fast. Weird, I know, but going home with our baby girl in tow was surreal. I kind of joked to Randy that whenever God does something big in our lives, he does them in 3's. See when we got married, I started a new job, we got married and we moved all within a month. This time around, Randy graduated, we bought a house and had a baby - all within a month.  And it has been 3 years since we got married. Guess we should probably gear up now for year 6!

3 weeks in and loving it...(Part 2)

Avery was born at 4:20 p.m. When I finally saw her, wow! I don't think I can fully describe the feelings. It was kind of surreal to think she was actually here and not inside me anymore. Part of me was a little sad. Weird, I know. There had just been something about feeling her inside of me over the past few months. Like I could protect her, I knew what she was doing (mostly), and let's just face it - having her little feet kick me in the ribs was one of my favorite things about pregnancy. But for the tiny bit of sadness, a ton of happiness overwhelmed me. She was here! We could hold her, see her, know what she looked like. Also, I was a little in shock that the labor/pregnancy was over. Please don't think I am bragging about it going so quickly - because that was totally God - NOT me! But wow! For all I didn't know about labor when we checked in the hospital that day at 12, God was in control and was with me through the whole thing. Plus having Randy by my side wasn't bad either. :)

They checked her, cleaned her up, and handed her to me. Randy and I just stared at her. She was beautiful! We didn't have one of the 3D sonograms done during pregnancy so we had no idea what she would look like. They let our family come in for a few minutes. My parents, grandparents, and uncle came in to meet her. After a few minutes, they left and we had family time - just the 3 of us - before they took Avery to the nursery. It still was all a little unreal. We came into the hospital just the 2 of us and now we were a family of 3!

We finally got moved to our recovery room about 8 that evening and the rest of our family came in. Let's just say, little Miss Avery is very loved! :)