Happy Father's Day!

First of all, I'd like to wish all of the dads out there a very happy Father's Day, especially my own wonderful Daddy. He's always been there when I needed, provided a great example for me my entire life and since I've become a parent myself, I've grown to appreciate my own mom and dad even more. I wish I could give him a big hug right now, but there are just too many miles between Enid and Pittsburgh.

My baby with my Daddy

Today was a simply wonderful day for our little family. It's Dan's first Father's Day and I wanted it to be special, especially since he gave me such a great Mother's Day. I let him sleep in as long as possible and Anna and I were very quiet with her early morning feedings. After we all were up, Dan opened gifts and enjoyed a pancake breakfast with fresh squeezed grapefruit juice. His gifts included a keychain from YorkPhoto.com that had Anna's picture on it, a Willow Tree "New Dad" figurine and a certificate that entitled him to a grill plus all the accessories needed to be a grill master.

We had a potluck with his class in the afternoon where I got to spend some time with the wives of his classmates while some of the boys played Mario Kart on the Wii. When Anna started to fuss because she was hungry, we headed home and enjoyed some down time. After a little while, we headed out to "Daddy's favorite store" (Lowes) to pick out Daniel's grill. With Anna in the Baby Bjorn, we picked out a great grill, some utensils and a few handy accessories- a grill brush, a holder for the utensils that attaches to the grill and a grilling basket for making grilled veggies and other sides for summertime meals.

Daniel and Anna

We finished the night off with a meal at Chili's which Anna slept through giving Daniel and I some time for grown up talk and a delicious dessert of a brownies sundae. All in all, it was a great day and I hope we'll have many more happy Father's days like this.

Roomies: Enid, America Edition!

I had some great roommates during my four years at Saint Mary's but none quite compare to Annaliese, my roomy since 2006! We had some good times, some bad times and some really crazy fun times. One of the best and biggest adventures we had together was my trip to Ireland to visit her while she studied abroad there during our junior year.

Roomies: Ireland Edition

While visiting, I met her boyfriend, Brian (bree-un) who is an Irish native who hails from County Cork. At the time, Annaliese insisted it was just a short term thing but after more than 2 years, several transatlantic visits and thousands of emails, I'd say it's more than a few dates to the pub! He's a true sweetheart and he makes my roomy happy so he's a good guy in my book.

This summer they took a road trip to visit some friends in the heartland- Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma. We were happy to host them in Enid and had a great time showing them around the base. Annaliese was thrilled to meet Anna and it was so cute to see Brian watching the World Cup with Anna on his lap. We went swimming on base, watched Dan do some training during the Aerospace Physiology and had a Sonic picnic in the park. We also watched a lot of soccer (or 'proper football' as Brian would call it.) since the World Cup is going on. Their visit went too quickly, but it was great to see them. I hadn't seen my roomy since my wedding- July 25,2009! Hopefully, we'll be able to see each other in August when Anna and I are in Chicago.

 

Roomies: Enid Edition (plus Anna!)

Welcome to the Catholic family, Anna Grace!

It's been a crazy couple of weeks and I've loved every minute! My friend, Sharon, came out to visit for a whole week including Anna's baptism on June 12 since she is Anna's godmother. She was the driving force behind all the unpacking that happened before our families came in for the baptism festivities. Even though Daniel's family helped us over the weekend to pack and unpack the entire house, there was still a lot to do and with Anna's 4am wake up calls, my motivation and energy level weren't very high... and that's where Sharon came in and saved the day. "Do you want to unpack some boxes? Where does this go?" were frequent questions and little by little we got boxes unpacked and our new house set up.

Daniel started pilot training in the middle of Sharon's visit but still was home to enjoy the fun of having a friend here in the evenings. We had some great meals (with 2 new recipes) and lots of fun with board games and our ever-entertaining Anna Grace. She was all smiles for her Aunt Sharon and we captured some sweet pictures of the two of them.

On Thursday, my family arrived and I was so happy to introduce my brother to his little niece for the first time and show Dad, Mom and Gracie how much she'd grown since they were here in April. Unfortunately, my sister, Katie, was unable to make it. With a case of mono, an eighteen hour car ride was not the best thing for her. We missed her a lot but I'm looking forward to seeing her in August!

My mom, the party planned extraordinaire, helped me plan my first big celebration as a mom- Anna's baptism luncheon. She brought her delicious Italian sausage from Pittsburgh and I made some shredded beef for sandwiches. With pretty pink plates to go with our pink theme, our guests enjoyed lots of yummy food, including this cake:

After a little clean up, our little family headed home so Anna and I could grab a nap and then we were off to St. Francis Xavier Church to get our little girl baptized! She slept through the whole thing except for a few peeks to see what was going on when Father Kevin poured the water on her head.

After the Mass, we headed back to the community center to eat some leftovers and finish cleaning up. It was a wonderful day and I was so happy to have our friends and family here to welcome Anna into the church!

The Joys of a DITY Move

In the military, last minute notices are just part of life. But I'm still adjusting to all this. So when Daniel found out that his training got bumped up from the end of July to next Wednesday, it was a bit of a curve ball. However, after the initial shock, we have found some positives in the situation and one is that we get to move into a new home before he hits the flight line. We had hoped to move in the latter half of June so we could avoid moving while we had house guests. But that isn't happening...

What is happening? Well, we found out on Wednesday that we have to move by June 19 or we'd have to wait until August to get into a renovated house. With that in mind and knowing that in August Daniel would be flying, we decided to move this weekend. It all happened really quickly. We got a call Wednesday at 4:30 that we could move and by 6:30, we had a list of 4 houses to choose from and toured one of the possibilities. Yesterday morning, I looked at another one and decided to go with the first option. Daniel and I wanted to stay on our current street and it turns out that our move will be across the street...literally feet from our driveway.
Easy move, right? Just walk everything across the way and be done with it.... Not quite. Not when the Air Force is reimbursing us for the move and they need to know how many pounds of stuff we have to move. So we rented a 26' moving truck which we'll pick up, drive to a weigh station (to weigh it empty), drive it to our house, load it up, drive it back to the weigh station and then take it back to base to move our stuff about 50 feet across the street from our current home. It's not exactly the most practical, but it's the way it has to be done. Thankfully, Dan's family (mom, dad and brother) and his best friend from home are driving up tomorrow to help get us moved and set up before my friend and Anna's godmother, Sharon, arrives on Monday.
Once we're moved, we'll have lived in 7 'homes' in about 7 months and Anna will have lived in 2 different houses in less than 2 months. The house we're moving to is the same type of house that we're living in now but with a few improvements: wall-to-wall carpeting, new tile in the kitchen and bathroom, ceiling fans and new light fixtures, new countertops, updated shelves in the laundry room, and the exposed brick walls are now covered and so are the cedar ceilings. Also, instead of a carport, we'll have a garage which will be so nice in the winter!
I'll post again when we're moved in- now it's time to get packing!!

Oh Baby!

Our little girl is one month old! We had a little photo shoot on May 25 to commemorate this milestone and thankfully, she was very cooperative!

She had a little growth spurt over the weekend which meant she loudly demanded to be fed every 3 hours. This is our normal day schedule but she usually goes for a longer stretch at night but not this weekend. Hopefully, she'll sleep well over the holiday weekend since we're heading to the "big city" for a couple days and one night to have some fun outside of Enid. Our hotel has an indoor pool and we might even visit the Oklahoma City Zoo! One thing is for sure- we're doing some shopping! We'll hit up the stores that our little town doesn't have, including Target, Bed, Bath & Beyond, Babies R Us and the Home Depot.

In other baby news, our friends Nathan and Megan just found out that they're having a little boy! They had their 20 week ultrasound and the baby was cooperative in showing "his Y chromosome at work" according to Megan. It's so exciting to have friends going through a pregnancy so soon after our little girl arrived. And even though they live in Florida and we're out here in Oklahoma, we stay in touch via Facebook and talk about our babies through wall posts and photo comments.

Also in baby fashion news, I found some really cute Air Force related apparel at CafePress.com where they also have apparel for all military branches as well as just cute baby things!

Here's one of my favorites:

I love being a mommy!

As I sit here with Anna fast asleep on my chest, I still can't believe she's ours. She is so sweet and wonderful and Daniel and I can't get enough of her little noises and faces. She changes everyday and is growing big and strong. She's visited the pediatrician twice for her well-baby check ups. The first visit she was back to her birth weight (6lb. 3oz.) and on Friday, she weighed in at 7 pounds 1 ounce which means she averaged more than an ounce per day in between her visits! With this news, the doctor told us we don't have to wake her for feedings anymore- she'll let us know when she's hungry. And she certainly does! Her little cries come over the monitor and we're up and tending to our little princess.

She's met all of her baby friends and they (along with their wonderful mommies and more of my friends) welcomed her with an All Pink baby shower on Thursday. It was so much fun! Anna slept through a good part of it, but I enjoyed talking with my girlfriends, eating delicious food and playing shower games. We got so many beautiful gifts and Anna has been in a new outfit every day since then! She's so tiny that many of her 0-3month clothes are still too big but she has a lot to grow into and she'll be stylin' for a long time.

Anna Grace is Here!!

Our little miracle arrived at 7:32pm on April 25, 2010 weighing 6 pounds 3.4 ounces and measuring 20 inches long. Her debut into this world came after a long, hard labor for me but she is well worth all of it.

I went into labor Saturday afternoon during a game of Scrabble with my wonderful husband. My contractions became more regular by 5- just in time to go to church and I breathed through them every 20 minutes until it was time to go home. We ate some dinner (which happened to be a terrible idea on my part.) and got ready to go to the hospital. A little after midnight when I threw up my entire dinner, we decided it was time to go to the Birth Place at St. Mary's Hospital. With my contractions coming every 5 minutes we were sure that I had made some progress but was disappointed to find out that I was still only 1 cm dilated after the nurses had set up a room for me. They weren't sure if they were going to keep me but I'm so glad they eventually registered me as an in-patient the next morning- after a long night of contractions and no sleep for Daniel or me.

I was still only about 3 cm after lots of walking up and down, up and down the halls as well as laboring in the whirlpool tub they had in the room. With the contractions getting more painful and me getting more tired, I decided to get an epidural. After 16 hours of unmedicated labor, it was the right choice. Unfortunately, even with the epidural and some pitocin, I wasn't making much progress. To make matters worse the nurses had rolled me onto my right side to try to get the baby's heartbeat doing what it was supposed to be and none of the epidural was going to my left side- I felt everything for about 15 minutes (felt like an eternity) before the anesthesiologist came in to fix it. Shortly after that was corrected, Tonnya, one of my nurses, came in and told us that the doctor (not my doctor since he wasn't on call) had made the call to do a c-section. It was an extremely disappointing moment for us since I had labored more than 24 hours at this point. However, it was the best thing for the baby and we knew that a regular delivery was no longer an option. Dan called both sets of our parents to let them know and then changed into scrubs while they got me ready for surgery. Once I was all numbed up and scrubbed down, they started the surgery and after a few minutes, our little baby was born. Daniel saw her before I did since I was behind the big blue screen but after she was all cleaned up, he introduced me to our beautiful daughter. This is very fitting since he was the one who told me that the pregnancy test I took in August was positive.

We received excellent care while at the hospital and came home Wednesday afternoon. It's been wonderful having my mom, great-aunt and little sister here. They've taken good care of us and eating my mother's cooking has been fabulous! (She made us chicken parm last night. It was so yummy!) My Aunt B left for Pittsburgh this morning and my Dad is coming on Wednesday.
Thanks for all your prayers and well wishes. We are so happy to finally have our little angel.