The Many Faces of Nathan

And this is only one photo shoot! ;)

Baby Blessing Weekend

So I’m over a week late, but better late than never, right?

Last weekend was a whirlwind of family, food and fun. (Trust me, there’s always food involved when we’re talking about my family) Not only was it the weekend we planned on giving Nathan his baby blessing, but it was also my mom’s graduation weekend! She finished her classes several months ago, but it was time for the official graduation. Jason and my grandparents flew in for the occasion. Then we had most of John’s family here as well, and they got to meet Nathan (in person) for the first time! It was so fun to have us all together.

There was lots of ‘pass-the-baby’ ;)

Saturday was my mom’s graduation ceremony, so my mom, dad, grandparents and my brother Jason all went up to Pennsylvania to attend, as my mom only had 4 tickets for guests. The rest of us were able to watch a webcast of the event, which was pretty cool. We then spent the rest of the afternoon hanging out, going out for walks and eating chick-fil-a. After they got back from PA, the rest of us met up with them at an Asian buffet place and had a big family dinner.

Then we were able to get some family pictures at the hotel.
Congratulations Mommy!!!
He’s getting SO chunky!
Nathan was pretty over getting his picture taken at this point…

We also celebrated my brother Cameron’s 16th birthday! He got a very special gift this year – armor! He has been learning something called Kendo – something about the way of the sword and it was time to get the real deal so that he’d be protected when he got whacked on the head ;) Pretty spiffy looking, don’t you think?

Sunday was the baby blessing, and John gave Nathan a beautiful blessing. I was a little worried about Nathan because he was totally fussy right up until it was time for John to take him. But he did great! Nice and quiet, ha ha. Then of course John had to take him out after and make some rounds around the church building to get him quiet again and back to sleep. ;)

Then we came back to our apartment and crammed all of us in there to have waffles and play games together. Lots of fun! Then it was time for everyone to fly back to school/home/vacation destinations.

And now for more picture overload…
Tummy Time! He doesn’t really like it. This day he actually rolled himself back over to his back! TWICE! He’s only done it once more since then, but it was still really exciting!
The rec center next door to our apartment complex finally had its grand opening and they had some open climbing on the rock wall, so John and Joseph went to give it a go. (I made sure John took his ring off, and he came back in tact. Whew!)
This is one of my new favorite outfits. I can barely handle the cuteness of him in that hat.
Napping with Grandpa after waffles :)

Mommy Misadventures

Epic Dinner Fail Edition

It was just one of those days. It started out with me waking up and being almost completely unable to move because of what we think was a pinched nerve in my back. I managed to get up around 6 to feed Nathan, but had such a hard time holding him and carrying him, that John immediately sent me back to bed and took Nathan for me. He ended up taking the morning off to help me because I had to get Nathan to the Dr.’s that day for his one month check-up. (He’s almost NINE pounds now!!)

But then Nathan was fussy all morning, choosing to be awake and cry rather than go back down for a morning nap (which is what he normally does). Nathan barely made it to his next feeding (but thankfully I could move a little bit more by then, so I made it over to the rocker to feed him again) and I threw some clothes on and pulled my hair up and we were ready to go over to the Dr.’s. Where Nathan cried.

And cried. And cried. It was so sad! He was totally screaming before he even got his shot! And you can only imagine how much louder he screamed when he actually did get that shot! Poor thing! I was so sad for him (but I did not start bawling when he got his shot this time, like I did when we were at the hospital).

We got home, John and I had lunch, John went off to work, Nathan ate and finally went down for a solid nap. And I finally got a shower. At 4pm. Thank goodness. By the time I was ready for the day, it was time to make dinner.

Among my many attempts to be supermom (most of which have been unsuccessful ;), I made several freezer meals for us to use once Nathan was here and they’ve been a lifesaver because I never know when I’m going to make it to the grocery store next these days. One of those meals was these Stuffed Bleu Cheese Potatoes from Our Best Bites (seriously tasty – click the link for the recipe!) I found out from another site that you can freeze twice baked potatoes, so I had several of these in the freezer. I had pulled some out earlier in the week and had them thawing, ready to be baked and then, BAM! Dinner would be ready!

Well. It did not happen that way. And you should know that I’ve made these before and they turn out delicious every time. Well, except this time ;) As I was putting the sheet tray of potatoes into the oven, I lost my grip on the pan and allll my potatoes went tumbling onto the open oven door. The 400degree oven door. I sadly scraped off my potato-y mess off the oven door and when John got home he found me on the floor trying to get more potato out of the drawer under the oven, because of course it had to fall through the crack in the door as well (Murphy’s Law). I then got into trouble for cleaning when my back was still hurting.

So instead of my dinner looking like this:

It looked like this:

So we had leftovers instead. ;)

1 Month!

I can’t even believe it. Our little man has already been with us for a whole month!
And for your viewing pleasure, the outtakes of our little photo shoot:
“Check out my pirate impression! Arrrr!”
“You call me cute one more time, and I’m smashing the ‘1’”
“Get my agent on the phone!”
“It’s all the rage in Baby Ballet. 1st Position and hold…2…3…”“And 2nd position…2…3…4”
“How about I wear the ‘1’? No? I thought it looked nice…fine. It was Dad’s idea.”
“Hey ladies. Muscle beach is that way”
“Mom! Mom! Look! I destroyed the photo set up!”
One of those accidental smiles. I am in love. I’m going to have a little heartbreaker here on my hands.
Can’t be without a little cross-eyed action ;)

And because I just can’t get enough of him (which makes me assume that you can’t either if you’ve scrolled down this far) – a few more ;)

Happy 1 month my sweet little man!

New Mommy Misadventure

Postpartum Wardrobe Edition

One of the first things I noticed when I came home from the hospital was that I didn’t really fit into any of my clothes. I was too big for prepregnancy clothes, and my maternity clothes were much too big. I was in this awkward in between stage. Again. (The first time was when my baby bump wasn’t big enough for maternity clothes, but too big for prepregnancy stuff. Yeah, get to be this way twice) I was stuck wearing baggy T-shirts and making sure my maternity jeans didn’t fall down while wearing them after losing my baby bump. And as many new moms can probably tell you, at this stage you’re already feeling frumpy and…well…kinda ugly from your ordeal at the hospital and your body is almost foreign to you, what with the baggy skin around your midsection, the extra water weight that hasn’t come off yet, and all those changes that come with your milk coming in and all that jazz. So a few new cute things to wear are in order to help with the baby blues. It helps. Promise ;)

When my mom was staying with us to help out with the baby, we made it a point to get out of the apartment about once a day (this also really helps with the baby blues – I was getting so stir crazy by the end of the first week). One of those trips was to Old Navy to find me some new shirts to wear. I also tried on at least 15 different pairs of jeans. Those two guys working the dressing room had no idea what hit them. But I digress…

Among the tops I found to try was a really cute patterned tunic-style shirt. Now, you must understand that with all the hormone changes I’ve experienced from my pregnancy and from breastfeeding, I have become very…curvy. So I tried on this cute tunic shirt and decided it wasn’t really for me, so I started to take it off to try the next shirt in my pile.

And I got stuck. WAY stuck.

I stand there in my changing room stall for a good few minutes or so with this silly shirt half on, wondering how on earth I’m going to get it off without ripping it. I really don’t want to have to damage the shirt. Yeah, I’m that stuck if I’m considering tearing the shirt to get it off…Not only would I have to pay for it, I’d probably have to explain what happened to the shirt to those two guys working the dressing room. Seriously awkward. My mom was strolling Nathan around the store, and I wasn’t about to ask the dressing room guys to call her over. Um…excuse me, could you get my mom? I’m stuck in this shirt, and could use some help. Yeah…no. As if trying on 15 pairs of pants wasn’t bad enough.

Don’t worry, I manage to preserve what little dignity I have left (remember how I left it at the hospital?) and though it took some serious contortionism (and several more minutes), I got the shirt off. Undamaged, even. Whew! After I don’t even know how many more trips between the clothes and the dressing room, I decided on some cute tops and miraculously found a pair of jeans AND a pair of shorts that fit my new postpartum self.

After leaving the store, I told my mom what had happened with the tunic shirt and it turns out she got stuck TOO!! (though she was trying on a smaller size) And we laughed at the hilarity of getting stuck inside of a shirt.

Moral of the story? Be careful of those tunic shirts at Old Navy.