Happily Four

We’re still working our way towards ever after, but the last four years have been incredible. I almost hesitate to say how happy I am for fear of ‘the other shoe’ dropping. Almost. Instead I’ll say it, trusting God and His plan for our lives instead of holding my breath. Life is so wonderful.

The longer Blake and I are together the more it seems we complement each other. It’s amazing to see what God can do with two people when we let Him grow and change us, albeit slowly, closer to His image. I look back at how we felt when we got married. We were on cloud nine, dizzy with love. We knew we were good together, but we had no idea what God had in store. We couldn't have imagined how He would grow and ground our love even deeper every day.

I know that we wouldn’t be where we are now if God wasn’t a part of changing and growing us. I know we would have struggle through the stresses of life, instead of flourished. I know it isn’t luck when I look at Blake and wonder how I got this lucky.

When I look at my husband’s eyes today I see the eyes of the boy I met so many years ago. They still twinkle when he smiles and flash with mischievousness when he teases. Now they also tear up when they look at me holding our daughter. He’s still the same kind, funny and rugged guy he’s always been, just with a softer heart as he seeks to honor the Lord more every day. I respect him, trust him and I’m so proud to be his wife.

In four years we’ve enjoyed so many special things together. We usually use our anniversary as an excuse to travel, first Venice, Italy and Greece; second was Australia and third was Rome, Italy and Israel. For our fourth we traverse the new world of parenthood and we are loving every minute of it. All the countries in the world can’t compete with seeing our sweet girl looking in our eyes and smiling. We have loved experiencing all that we did together, but we’re ready for this new stage and adventure of a different kind.

We continued our tradition of recreating one of our favorite wedding pictures. 

Four years

Three years

Two years
(after being up for over 30 hours returning home from Australia!)

One year

Our big day

And because I could pick just one.. here was the alternate. Emerson is a little more visible, but it isn't as close to the original.. and lets be honest, it came down to my hair.

We also took one just the two of us.

One Month!

People say it will go by fast, you know it will go by fast, but then you can't believe how fast the time goes.

This month has been a blur and somehow seems like longer than a month. I struggle to find ways to remember the little things that change in a day. It seems hard to remember her being as little as she was in the pictures and how she barley filled our lap. It's hard to remember when she didn't latch without trying and when she had to be encouraged to stay awake to eat. It's hard to remember life before her!

So much of our first month was introducing Emerson to family and sharing her. Last week I had her all to myself and started to get a little bit of an idea of what our every day to day will be like. It was so fun :). I know this is the easy part, she pretty much eats and sleeps all day, between diaper changes that is. I'm mostly soaking up the time and getting in snuggles and naps. She's only this little for a little while and you only have one kid once! 

Her first two weeks she was so predictable: hungry every three to four hours, pooped when she ate, stayed awake for about 30 minutes after eating and then slept about 3 hours. Almost like clockwork, until her little internal clock decided to go on a growth spurt and then all bets were off. She wants to eat all the time and that cuts into her sleeping time, but has started to figure out that nights are for sleeping. One thing that has stayed the same is that she doesn't like to wake up (don't know where she gets that.. ahem) and she likes to be held. She sleeps best on mom's chest, but will sleep in the co-sleeper if she's swaddled. She eats so much she throws up and she's so hard to get a burp out of! 

She absolutely slays us with her facial expressions and hand movements. Her scrunchy faces and stretches as she takes forever to open her eyes and the squeaks and grunts.. it's adorable. We have settled into our little idiosyncrasies of talking for her, labeling her faces and referring to each other as mommy and daddy. We think she's cute even when she's crying (which isn't often so far, thankfully) and we love her to pieces! 

At one month she weighs 9 pounds 11 ounces and is 22 inches long! She is just starting to grow out of newborn clothes and each time we put her in a favorite outfit we know it might be the last. However, with a closet full of cute clothes to grow in to, it's not as hard as I thought to move on. She's still on the first snap of her newborn cloth diapers, but as those thighs get chunkier and chunkier, we know the next snap will be coming soon. 

What a great month! We love her so much!

And some cell phone camera highlights of our first month:

Our first real bath... we love it (except the getting out part.. brr)

I'm a sucker and I stick the towel in the dryer for a few minutes :)

A Finnegan Frost frozen yogurt date with mom :)

I do some funny things with my hands :)

*palm face*

We call this the paparazzi hand - "No pictures please"

And this is respectfully called the "praise Jesus". 

My favorite sleeping position

My first time in the swing!

Sleeping on dad is fun too, even at the neighbor's house!

We (finally) made it to church and stayed cool in the partial shade for the outdoor service!

Oh the People We've Met!

Emerson has met so many people! Some people came to us (thanks!) and most she met when we went home for the fourth of July. Here are some of the important people in our lives..

Auntie Whitney and Lincoln drove all the way from Seattle for the day!

Uncle Jared came late one night after driving the train over for work.

Hello Uncle Jordan!

Finally Emerson and Auntie Mary meet at last!

Ada is a natural

And so is Deacon!

More-like-an-aunt-than-cousin Macey

Great Grandma and Grandpa S. Emerson is great grand number two for them.

My family (minus Blake who was behind the camera)

Dia (Aunt in Italian) Sandy

Uncle Rodney

Four generations of women on my side

Great grandma W. Emerson is her 74th grand baby (out of 75!)

Cousin Emily :)

Great Grandma D

Four generations on Blake's side

Meeting Grandpa Scott and Great Grandpa C. (not pictured) this was as close as they would get until she is bigger...

One Week

We started my 40th week of pregnancy with some light contractions that I didn't think would lead to anything. We took the 40 weeks picture thinking I'd be writing the post to go with it by the end of the week. However, Pumpkin had other plans. Our sweet Emerson Jane joined us the next morning.

Our first week was both magical and a little rough. It was a little like a vacation in that it wasn't reality, no work schedule... no schedule at all, nothing to do but just soak up our new little blessing and learn our way around being parents.

The magical part was of course our sweet Emerson and our new roles as parents. I loved seeing Blake as a daddy and how great he is with Emerson. He was such an incredible support through all that our first week threw at us. We loved having the week with just the three of us (as hard as that was sometimes) to get to know Emerson and to work together to meet her needs.

The rough part was with nursing, jaundice and strep. Emerson had jaundice within her first twenty-four hours, which is a warning sign for pathological jaundice instead of the typical jaundice that many newborns get. We had to keep our eye on it, but as long as she was nursing well we should have been fine. Well, my milk came in on day two and then we had the Day of Tears. My poor little girl couldn't latch onto the bowling balls of milk and we didn't know how to help her. It totally rocked our world and turned it upside down. She cried, I cried and Blake cried. All. Day. Long. We saw a fantastic lactation consultant who came to our home that night and helped a ton. By the next feeding we were making headway and she's been doing better and better each time since. However, because of the Day of Tears, we were worried about her being dehydrated and her bilirubin levels not going down. Our midwife/doctor had us give Emerson activated charcoal through a syringe during her feeds in order to absorb the bilirubin and help her pass it quicker. This solution worked and eventually we noticed her yellow going down.

On top of this drama with nursing and jaundice... Blake got strep. He had a fever and a sore throat, which we had attributed to lack of sleep, lack of eating and lots of adrenaline. His fever didn't come back after a good nights' sleep but his throat was still sore. One day the white spots showed up and we called our midwife/doctor and she called in a prescription for some antibiotics and said we didn't want to mess around with strep when we had a new baby in the house. Having a sick husband and a new baby and a sore momma made for an interesting week. However, it was a total bonding experience and despite being sick, Blake was an incredible support through everything.

So we survived our first week! At our one week visit little miss Emerson had gained 6.5 ounces! Her jaundice was reducing nicely and she is feeding and sleeping well. Blake is feeling better and I'm recovering. Here are some moments from our first week.

She's always making the greatest facial expressions and doing funny things with her hands.

We had our first sponge bath

All clean!

Grandma Val came to visit.

And Grandma Janet came back to help out for the week. 

She has about 8000 pictures taken of her sleeping

"Oh mom, again with the pictures!?"

We also had our newborn photoshoot! Can't wait to see the rest of these pictures!