Wedded Bliss

Congratulations to
Josh & Meredith McBride,
the loveliest newlyweds ever!

(Photos courtesy of Jennie McBride)

Aren't they just so cute?


A great time was had by all! Great food,

young cousins running around,

and I got to visit with ALL my siblings,
especially my lovely sisters!

Poor Curly (and all the kids, for that matter) suffered from an intense sugar coma. Notice his joker mouth? Good ol' chocolate fountain!

Photography was in the bag with my SIL Jennie's mad shooting skills

And now I have another gorgeous SIL!

We all had such a blast at the intimate ceremony and reception. The guest list was primarily made up of family, with a sprinkling of a few close friends. It was so nice!
Welcome to this crazy family, Meredith!

For sale or rent...

My wonderful, lovely, imaginative 3 year old.

Always a smart fellow, he opened the MAGNETICALLY LOCKED cupboard at the ripe hour of 5am.

He's so helpful, this morning he cleaned the kitchen for me.

With bug spray.

Then he thought to take out his vitamins.

Which may or may not have been vitamins.

And surmised that they needed a little cleaning, too.

With a FULL BOTTLE of Windex.

Then decided that the carpet needed some cleaning, too.

With Greased Lightning de-greaser.

He knew today was going to be a busy day, so he wanted to be so helpful with all these chores.

You did it because today is your Uncle Josh's wedding day.

Obviously, you didn't want all the attention to go just to him and Meredith!

Thanks, little buddy.

For sale or rent:

FOR FREEEEEEE!

Has it really only been two weeks???

It's already seemed like a month at least!

What I'm feeling right now:

I miss my baby girl.

She is a doll. With red hair (it is officially official!). Who looks killer good in green! :)

I am tired exhausted. All day with energetic boys, then a few hours with Blessing, holding and loving her. Pumping in between all of this, then sleep for a few hours...It wears me out!

I have good days and bad days.

The good days I can get through in a chaotic/semi-zombie sort of way, and the bad days I just want to sleep and maybe whine a little bit.

I am SO happy for the moms I see who have their babies discharged, but at the same time I am also upset that it's not our baby.

EA is very deceiving. Blessing looks incredibly healthy, strong, as perfect as can be. She doesn't look physically sick so it makes me crazy to know that we're going to be spending many more nights at the NICU.

Another maddening aspect is just having to W A I T . . . . . . . . . . . . . . until we can actually get to the point for the study that will give us an estimated time frame for when Blessing can come home with us!

Part of me doesn't know what to feel. Anger? At what? The fact that EA can't be controlled by anything? I'm in the 'why did this happen' phase. I follow the Word of Wisdom, I have a healthy diet, somewhat of a healthy lifestyle, I don't drink, I don't smoke, don't do drugs, I live a relatively low-stress life. So lucky me, my daughter is the winner out of 4600 babies who gets to deal with EA. Lucky, lucky us.

At the same time, we are SO blessed! I can't forget about the dozens of people who are praying for us, giving us meals, babysitting, doing our laundry, calling, facebooking, checking in on us, and just being there for us. Every day I'm amazed at how I need something and all I have to do is call someone and they will help me!

So many emotions to go through.

At least I don't have to worry about PPD, which is a HUGE blessing in and of itself! I feel like we kind of skipped over that part, for which I'm grateful!

But I do feel guilty that I haven't been able to give great mommy attention to my boys right now. Einstein has been an absolute trooper! I thought he would become defiant, but he's really begun to fill his big brother shoes very well. He's getting so grown up! Poor Curly, though, is super clingy and sad most of the time. He's regressed in the areas of talking and potty usage. He basically just whines all day unless he's being held. I'm still not technically supposed to be lifting/holding heavy things yet (hello, 30lb 2 year old!), but a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do! I can only handle so much whining!

I still stay up way too late.

I hope the rest of my 30's won't be this stressful.

I think it might get easier??? I hope!

I'm going to bed.

LOVE

Love this video. Love her tons! This is totally anti-climactic, but it's my baby, and she's AWAKE! She's only been awake when we've been with her one time before. So all this awake time was heaven!



Anya hit 6 pounds. Barely! But it's a wonderful sign that she's growing like a champ. We're told that she eats like crazy (that's my girl!) and is pooping like a newborn should. I've never been so excited about poop before! I got to change her tiny little diaper today {3 days ago. Each day kind of melts into another these days}, which actually was a treat. Like I said, I've never been so excited about poop before. An extended commute to a hospital will do some strange things to your brain! :)I can't wait to bring her home. Here's to hoping and praying that her stay WON'T be a full year... I mean, I'm so grateful for the NICU and all the staff, but I hope I never have to see any of them again! :)

scatter sunshine

Yesterday was a long day. Not particularly bad, just long. I over-did it with physical exertion and now my incision site hurts. Bummer.
Anyway, after going to see our boys and tucking them in for the night at Grandma & Grandpa Harrison's house (can I tell you how GRATEFUL I am that both sets of grandparents live about 15 minutes away?????), we were just exhausted and emotionally worn out. So what did we do??? We went to make returns at Target, of course!

I know, totally random.
The weekend before Blessing was born, I went to get a Valentine's Day dress & shoes, which looked incredibly hideous on me (I don't try on clothes at stores any more. My boys could NEVER handle staying put in such a small space for that long!), so I had been planning on returning it for a while.
Anyway, we did that last night.

On our way home, we were taking an accounting of the day, and Bryan said, "That's it. We are now officially on a date! Do you want a little surprise, or a big one?" Needless to say, I was simply surprised at the outburst alone! Bryan truly is a romantic at heart, he's just not a very good planner of events. So all of his grand (awesome) ideas for love and mushiness usually end up on the cutting room floor. So it was a fun surprise!Yep, we look tired for sure!

Since it was so late (a little after 10. Man, I'm getting old when I say after 10 is late!), pretty much nothing was open. He drove to three different ice cream shops to find closed doors. It was super cute! :) So we ended up at Applebee's for appetizers and dessert.I know, we're total dorks. But that's okay.

It was nice to know that my sweetie is still in love with me,

{ love is... looking really really ridiculously ridiculous on camera together}

and it was especially nice that we had that little moment to release the tension of the past week and just be ourselves for a little while.

We had a nice time just talking about nothing! It truly felt like we were dating again :)Bryan's spontaneous visual representation of HTML coding, which, oddly enough, made complete sense to me. Can you see the divs and the relative spacing? It's like a family tree... um, maybe I should build websites!

It's all about the little things, don't you think? :) Bryan, I love you! You've been such a GREAT chauffer, support, companion, and daddy. I wouldn't want to go through this with anyone else but you!