My First Fourth! (by Emma G.)

While everyone else was eating hot dogs this fourth of July, I was busy enjoying my favorite holiday snack-- Emma fingers!

Of course, Daddy decided to try a few Emma toes for dessert after he saw how much I was enjoying them.

A few friends came by to visit on my first holiday, and I got lots of sugars from everyone!

It was a great 4th of July. The best I've ever seen.

Bath Time!

Yes, that is a monkey on your back, baby girl.

The pediatrician gave us the green light for Emma's first tub bath. What an exciting milestone.

Use the Force, young Emma!

Overall, she did very well. I guess it makes sense that she would take to being surrounded by water. She's had 9 mos. of good practice. It still cracks me up to see some of the expressions she comes up with that make it seem as though this is the most alien thing in the world.

Precious

My head is really heavy and I'm still so small. Snuzzlers are a great thing. They keep me nice and snug in my carseat.

Who turned out the lights???

Tennis anyone?

Hey, there's a bunny on my foot! It's a good thing my legs are so long, otherwise that thing might have gotten me.

Emma next to her perfect pet, Bernie. Very low maintenance pup. He's only eaten 3 batteries since we got him.

Mom and baby are coordinating today.

Check out those butterfly feet!

A few photos of the local wildlife...

Mommy deer, Daddy deer and their twin fawns out for a stroll. We've also seen lots of bunnies and fireflies.

And a rare picture of the notorious baby ear eater (also know to nibble tiny fingers and toes).

Daddy

I am in awe. God has blessed me with the most amazing husband. Emma's daddy is a wonder. He has washed and cleaned and kept this place in tip top shape. Emma's schedule requires her to eat every two hours and Robby has been there every step of the way making sure that everything has run smoothly. I hate to think where I would be without this efficiency expert's awesome processes. He's got the assembly line running beautifully. He is the perfect match for me and my more "wholistic" approach to things. God bless this man!

Week Number One

I'm surprised and the relatively few number of photos I've taken so far of this tiny girl who, with those long, lean, legs of hers will most certainly be a super model someday. I guess I'm just so much in awe and can't pull myself from staring at this amazing, less than a week old, human.

Her belly button cord fell off on Tuesday! I thought they weren't supposed to fall off for two weeks, or something like that, not four days. If this is any indication of how quickly the milestones are going to fly by, I had better prepare myself and start taking lots of pictures. So, here are just a few.

So many amazing people have come to visit little Miss Emma. She's quite the social butterfly. Her head pastor and children's pastor came to the hospital for a visit. I hate that I did not get photos. While at home, we've had three couples from the church bring food for us this week. What a blessing! Below is a picture of Emma with our friend Vanessa. She and her husband Charlie brought some good ole Baptist bird (chicken) with all the fixins, including some delicious cherry pie! Yum!

Here we are with Grandma. She's in town visiting for a few days. It's great to have her here to share in these special days. This picture was taken at Gravelly Point, just outside the airport only moments after mom's arrival. Emma had to stop and take a lunch break. I guess you could say this is her first picnic.

She's Here!!!!!

Hallelujah!!!

Praise the Lord for He is GOOD!!!
6 lbs. 14 oz. and stretching the tape at 20.25 inches. Robby says she's a "wall hanger" (apparently, this is some sort of fishing analogy).

Little Emma Grace arrived at 2:58 a.m. Friday the 20th of June. She's beautiful, if I do say so myself! So sweet and wonderful. Sorry, I just can't stop going on about this precious one. :D

Here she is, cleaned and ready to go.

Emma meets her papa. Happy Birthday baby girl!

Yes, that's her Carolina tar heel. She gets that from her Daddy's side of the family.

Daddy and Daughter napping after a hard day of labor.

God has been so good to us. He has blessed us beyond anything we could have ever hoped or imagined. He continues to mercifully treat us so much better than we deserve. He has given us Grace.

Not yet

Well the full moon did not bring out the baby. I thought for sure it would. I started the day at about 3 a.m. with contractions about 10 minutes apart. Surely that meant that at some point during the day she would arrive. Nope! I continued to have contractions throughout the day but they never got any closer than about 10 minutes. So frustrating! Oh well. When the time is right, things will progress. Robby took the day off to spend with me and we took the time to do all kinds of last minute shopping. I went to the Original Pancake House in Falls Church for a great big apple pancake (I only ate a little bit, 'cause of the carbs, but it was oh so good). We spent the afternoon close to the hospital, just in case, but ended up going back home when it became clear that little girl was going to be stubborn (I won't say which side of the family this trait comes from--...it's both).

So, here I am at 3 a.m. Thursday morning. Contractions are still at about 10 minutes apart. I'm trying to distract myself at this point and the computer does a wonderful job at attention stealing I think. I figure when I hit the point that I can no longer point and click... that's the time to get myself to the hospital! ;)

I hope my next post will be soon with great news and lots of photos.

Due Date?

I had an ultrasound on Friday just to check on Emma's size and dimensions. The doctors wanted to take a look to make sure she wasn't too small. Well, the girl is NOT small. As it turns out, she's just planted herself so far down in my pelvis that my belly appears smaller than normal. But she's all there. In fact, they estimated her at 7 lbs. 14 oz. already. Yikes!!! Of course, it's difficult to get an accurate weight from an ultrasound this late in the game. She could be a pound lighter or a pound heavier.
Oh please not a pound heavier!
Plus, they moved up the due date to the 21st. That's the first day of summer and less than a week away! It's also my mother's birthday. And my uncle's birthday too. They are brother and sister and were born on the same day three years apart. So it's a popular day to be born in this family. Maybe that's because it's technically the longest day of the year. The odds are increased by like half a second or something. ;)
But, this Wednesday is a full moon. I hear that has quite an effect on spurring the baby birthing. I'm hoping so. At this point, sooner rather than later, is better. I'm ready to meet Emma and see her sweet little face.
I didn't get a good look at her on the ultrasound precisely because she is so far down. So it will be a surprise when she finally shows herself. The one thing the sonographer could tell about her looks was that she already has a head full of hair. Just like her momma. When I was born I had a ton of hair. The nurses tied little bows in my hair while I was still in the hospital.
I have a feeling she's going to look just like my dad. It seems all of the babies in my family look just like Virgil. Those must be some strong genes. I think it's fitting since yesterday was my first Father's Day without him. I know he would have been so excited to see his latest little granddaughter/clone.
Robby seems to think she'll have a "Wagoner nose". I'm not sure what that is, but, it must be special. I imagine she'll have big chubby cheeks (from both sides of the family). With any luck, she'll get her sense of humor from her daddy and will be completely silly-- dancing around the house to Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass.
It won't be long before I'll be able to see if my predictions are true. I'm sure I will be surprised and completely in love with the unique and wonderful gift that God has given us. This is such an exciting and anxious time in our lives. It's so good to remember, God is always good and I trust in Him to take care of us perfectly like He always has.

Staycation!

With a tank of gas costing more than a car seat, more than 15 white chocolate mochas, more than 300 diapers, more than... well, you get the point, we decided that this year we were going to stay home for the long weekend.

This was a great idea too because I'm not getting around quite as spryly as I used to and we've still got lots to do at the house before Emma arrives.

So, we took the time to finally open up the pool, put together some of Emma's gear, put the car seat in the car and lots of other pre-baby things. Actually, Robby did all of those things. I mostly did laundry and watched all of the hub-bub.

Oh, and I also took a few photos of some of the beautiful sights on our exotic staycation paradise.

There is a peach tree in the front yard that is filled with peaches. This one surprised me because it bloomed at the same time all the cherry blossoms were blooming around here. I didn't look closely at the leaves and just assumed it was a cherry tree too. Nope. Peaches! It's almost like being in Texas! I'm dreaming of homemade peach ice cream already. There are also strawberries and blueberry bushes in the beds nearby.

I think I need to add a blackberry vine to the mix just for old time's sake. I remember many times as a child coming into the house, my fingers and face stained purple from the blackberry juice, smiling a huge purple smile.

Then there was this dogwood. The blossoms on this one started out green, then turned white, and now... they're starting to turn pink! Just for Emma. :D

And there were Tropicana roses just for Grandma. They're her favorite. She'll be coming soon to visit and help out with all of the fun new baby stuff, you know, like sleepless nights and diaper changes. :D

I'm looking forward to having her here and I can't wait for her to meet her newest grandbaby.








Overall, the staycation was a grand success. The weather was great, making for lots of time to go outside and enjoy the birds, and squirrels and other wildlife. The smell of honeysuckle is so amazing. I feel like we've moved to the country. It's wonderful. On Sunday we woke to see two deer outside our window. I didn't get any photos of the pair (unfortunately, I had packed away the camera and fortunately, Robby had packed away his rifles ;) but it was a lovely way to start the day.

Home Stretch

Just one more month to go before Emma's due date and things are starting to get really...real. The thought of having her here is so exciting. I've imagined what she's going to look like so many times and am surely going to be surprised when we finally see her. Up to this point, the days have been an almost constant loop of -- excitement (over the upcoming arrival), fear (of the unknown), worry (about what could go wrong), guilt (for the worry), relief (when I remember that God is in control of all things), and then excitement again. Add to that the fact that I've got a zillion times the amount of hormones in my system than is "normal"/non-pregnant, and you can only imagine the good times.
One more week and she'll be considered "full-term" and so she could be born at any time after that and not be considered premature. So far, she hasn't been measuring big. This is great news because that is the major concern with Gestational Diabetes. My blood sugar numbers have been very good. Hooray!
However,
I have been thinking about some of the things I've been doing without for the past two months and am already making plans: After Emma is born, I'm going to eat cake! Cake with butter cream icing. Then, I'm going to send Robby to Chick-fil-a on a cookies and cream milkshake run. Pizza! and French fries too! Ok, so I'm not going to eat it all at once. Well... maybe not.

Train Ride

Robby and I (and Emma too) took a train trip to Groton Connecticut this past week. It was a nice relaxing time for all of us. Well, actually, I think Emma was stirred up quite a bit by all of the train vibration because she was hopping and jumping like a cirque acrobat.

Emma is already a shining star. Either that or my belly is stretched so tightly that I really am starting to give off a glare!

Groton is only a few miles from Mystic, Connecticut. I wasn't able to take in any of the famous "Mystic Pizza" because it is one of the things on the list of forbidden foods for me. That's ok. We ate plenty of good food anyway.

We also toured the Mystic Seaport and did some shopping in the Olde Mystic Village.

The area is beautiful and the weather was great. I thought the trip itself would be a little more scenic but, unfortunately, I've found that train tracks seem to attract the worst of the cities they go through-- a lot of rubbish and vandalism. It didn't really get very pretty until after we had passed through New York and New Jersey. I did get to see a little bit of the Philadelphia Zoo, but that was about the extent of things to see from the train car window.

But once in Connecticut, the scenery was great. Lots of rocks and water and blossoming trees.

I have now officially been as far east in the US as I have every been. Ironically, that place was in Westerly, Rhode Island.

I'm getting excited about Emma Grace's arrival. The house is starting to look more like a home. I've got just a few more boxes to unpack and a few more items of furniture are arriving this week. Emma's nursery furniture probably won't arrive until she does but I'm pretty sure she won't notice. I have a feeling I won't be putting her down for very long those first couple of weeks anyway. :D

So much

It's amazing how much has happened in the past few weeks. We closed on the house on Friday the 18th and moved in on the 19th. So many awesome folks came out to help us haul all of our stuff to the new place. It was amazing. We started loading the truck at 8 am and were mostly done and eating pizza by noon. By 2:00 that afternoon, Robby had already cleared the garage and mowed the front lawn. It was quite a sight to behold. Unfortunately, I wasn't much help at all. I would get short of breath just watching it all. And the fact that I have strangely lost most of my brain function due to the perfect storm of hormones flooding my body, I wasn't even able to help much in directing folks where to put things. Completely useless. Totally grateful.

On Sunday, Robby and I celebrated our 2 year anniversary! Wedded bliss! We also attended a baby shower for Emma at our Sunday school directors' house. Emma has so many awesome new things to start her life right in the new house. She also has a great crowd of fabulous friends who can't wait to meet her. It won't be long! :D

The past week has been a flurry of unpacking, working, shopping, teaching Sunday school and finishing up the details of cleaning out the old apartment. Robby has done the work of ten men. It's unbelievable. I don't know what I would do without all of his energy and talent and his great "can do" attitude.

Thankfully, to this point, I've been able to keep my blood sugar levels under control through closely watching what I eat and exercising. I can't tell you how many trips up and and down the stairs I've made just trying to get things to the right room. Who knows how long it will be before everything is actually out of the boxes and in the right place. I'm really looking forward to getting the swimming pool opened up and feeling nice and "bouyant", as it's felt like I've been carrying a bowling ball with me everywhere I've gone for the past little while.

Diet and Exercise!

Last week I found out that I have Gestational Diabetes. Booooo! This means that I have to watch my blood sugar very closely and make sure I'm getting plenty of physical activity. Since these are things I need to be doing anyway, this diagnosis is actually a blessing. It has been the kick in the pants that I've needed to pay better attention to my health. My family, on both my mother's and my father's side, has a strong history of Type II diabetes and I guess I've just always chosen to live in denial of my own predisposition to this disease.

Hopefully, this is the wake-up call that will change my unhealthy habits and turn things around for good. Gestational Diabetes usually disappears once the baby is born, but, it is an indicator that I am more likely than those who do not develop GDM to have it again in a subsequent pregnancy and to develop Type II diabetes in the future. This means that it is also slightly more likely that Emma Grace will develop Type II diabetes as an adult.

Since this is not just about my health now, it has been a lot easier for me to stick to the diet, do my walking, and to test my blood sugar throughout the day. Robby's been so good and has been helping out immensely. We're all very tired (including Emma) because we're missing our sugar fix. In the long run, though, I'm sure we're going to have a lot more energy in the future.

We've just about gotten everything packed and ready for the move this weekend. It's been a stressful but exciting time in our lives.

Hooray!!!

It looks like our house hunt is OVER!!! Yippee!!!

We close on the 18th of this month. I'm so excited! Emma is going to have a nursery and I'm going to have a washer and dryer! Woo Hoo!!!

Everything is just going crazy here lately. So many things are happening all at once. Our heads are spinning.

This has definitely been a year of MAJOR changes. Can it be that I am finally a grown up.... after all these years????

Happy Easter!

Yesterday was a very special day. First of all, it was a day for celebrating the resurrection of our Lord. What a glorious day!

Secondly, it was also my birthday! Woo hoo! Since I'm no longer in school, this is the first time in a long time my birthday has also fallen on a holiday (ahhh Spring Break, how you are missed).

The weather was a little chilly (high 30's/low 40's), it was a great day. We started the day early with the morning service at church where we were treated by some special guests from Hawaii who shared their great gifts for music and worship through.... hula dance!

Then we went for Easter dinner at a friend's house. What fun!

Happy Easter Everybody!!!

It's Blossom Time!

Since I've not been home for her to see, my mom has been asking me to send pictures of me "blossoming" as my belly gets bigger. I figured I would send her a real down-home photo, complete with overalls!

In other news, we're still house hunting. We've put in a bid on a place and are waiting to hear back from the seller. It's an exciting time but also a bit stressful. Our last offer was out there for almost two months so we decided to withdraw and start anew at a different location. We're trying to remain content and pray we are doing the right thing. Some times it's hard to know if, in our eagerness to find a place before Emma arrives, we're trying to jump ahead of God's timing. I think that whole "nesting" thing is kicking in. It's all good, though. Our Lord was born into a simple stable and did just fine. :D

Virgil's Legacy

February turned out to be even more hectic than I had anticipated. My dear father passed away on the 19th after a long struggle following a severe stroke 4 years ago. I am absolutely positive that he is rejoicing in heaven right now with our Lord and it makes me so happy to think about him dancing and singing and celebrating at the banquet. The service was in Texas and Robby and I decided to drive. In total, we traveled over 3500 miles. Needless to say, we made a LOT of stops along the way to make sure the pregnant lady didn't swell up like an anxious puffer fish.

The service was a great way to remember how much life Dad had in him before he became trapped by his failing body. There were many laughs and tears and those wonderful memories from all of the great stories told were beautifully focused for all of us to take forward with us as we await our own blessed graduation day.

Knowing how much Dad loved God's Word was such a comfort to me. Though his body couldn't communicate his thoughts to us in those last few years, I am convinced that he had a very active prayer life and that he and Christ were in constant communication. He had the Word of God stored in his heart and it did not forsake him in his time of need.

When Emma grows up, I'm so happy to be able to tell her that her grandfather was a strong, humorous, and fervent child of God. I'll be able to show her pictures, so she'll know exactly where she got many of the physical characteristics she'll most certainly have picked up from her grandaddy. More importantly, I'll be able to tell her the many jokes and stories that those who knew him share and that cause us all to smile whenever we think of him.