Merry Christmas!

We had a very good Christmas, and of course, my goal was to take more and better pictures, and of course-as always-I failed. So here are some of the pictures that we did get. I love the holidays because I love spending time with family. But it always seems like we never get to spend enough time with them. We spent Christmas Eve and Christmas morning with my family and then Christmas Day and the next day with Josh's family. Every Christmas Eve since I was young, we've spent with my Aunt Ruth and her family, but I didn't get any pictures of that.

Here is my mom on Christmas morning with the best Christmas present ever!

Chloe and Audrey

Josh and the best Christmas present ever!

Meili on her first Christmas, she's just ecstatic about all her Christmas presents-can't you tell? She was one spoiled girl this year, and she won't even remember. In Josh's family they said that the younger the child, the more spoiled they were this year-so you can just imagine!

Chloe and Audrey modeling their new princess dresses that my mom made for them (with Jesse of course.)

Gigi smiled like this once for a picture and we all laughed and pointed at her, so she thought it was so funny, and made the same face for every picture after that.

Then we spent Christmas day and the day after that with Josh's family.

Here is Josh's mom with the best Christmas present ever!

James and Grayce, who we found out are expecting their first boy in May and we are so excited!

Kyle

Josh's family has a tradition to play Bingo every year around this time. So on the 26th, we held the annual Bingo game. The beauty of the game is that whoever wins gets to pick a white elephant present. Most of the presents are recycled every year, and we add a couple new ones each year. There have been some pretty priceless memories at these Bingo parties.

The kids are usually lucky enough to get presents that they actually like. So here is Bren with a Mickey Mouse puzzle.

James with a clown light switch that has been part of the family far longer than I have.

Jensen with a President Obama chia pet. It actually said on the box "Hail to the chi-chi-chi- chief!"

Jared with the princess dress he has always wanted.

Jensen with an 8th place trophy that Jared got when he was in scouts.

And Chalisse with a rubber chicken. I told Josh, "It's amazing because I won probably five times, and we still went home with just a car load of crap!" Merry Christmas!

6 (1/2) Weeks

Sometimes I think we gave birth to a 2 month old, and as much as I try to convince Meili to stay small forever, she is already blatantly disobeying her mom.

So here are some milestones...

-Meili is sleeping through the night. Her last feeding is at 11:00 and she generally starts making noise at about 6 or 7 until I just decide to wake her up and feed her rather than listening to her grunting. Then I put her back in bed and she sleeps until about 9 or 10. She probably would have slept through the night from the day we brought her home from the hospital, but I'm a paranoid first-time mom and wanted to make sure she was getting enough to eat. So I'm gradually letting her sleep longer and longer.

-She started really smiling a lot about a week and a half ago. And let me tell you, it is awesome! This is the closest I've come to getting a picture of her smiling, even though this isn't my favorite picture of her.

So I added this one too just for fun! This looks more like her.

-She's getting better at holding her head up, which means less cuddling on my shoulder :( She always just wants to be looking around and keeping her head up.

-And her newest trick...rolling over! She actually rolled over once when she was 3 weeks old. (I know you don't believe me, no one else does either.) I think it really was a fluke, and I didn't think she would be able to do it again, and of course, Josh and I were the only witnesses and no one believes what we say anyway. But she rolled over twice more on Sunday, 3 times on Tuesday, and we finally have my friend, Hope, as a witness today. On Tuesday, when she first did it for me, I almost started crying. It was a textbook roll over, and I can't believe she's growing so fast. I got a video of it. It's probably the least exciting video in the world to everyone but me. But we are so proud!

I know, we have a wonder child huh? Don't get me wrong, it hasn't been all peaches and cream. Sleeping through the night comes at a price, meaning that she has a hard time taking naps during the day. She'll get really tired and fall asleep instantly if I am holding her, but as soon as I put her down she wakes up, or she'll sleep for only about 20 minutes-which makes it hard for me to get anything else done. It's really weird, because at night, she can be wide awake and I swaddle her and she falls right to sleep, but nothing works during the day. If I swaddle her during the day she gets frustrated trying to get out, but if I don't she wakes herself up kicking. So if any mothers out there have any ideas for me, I'd love to hear it.

When we found out in February that we were expecting,

I knew that my life would be changed forever.

But I had no idea

just how

these ten little toes

and ten fingers

eyes, nose, and a mouth,

would change everything about me.

I think Josh has a new sweetheart.

But I really didn't stand a chance.

I have a lot to be thankful for.

Summer Projects/Nursery

Well, since it snowed today, I guess it was a good day to finish up all my summer projects. Since I was very pregnant this summer, rather than going on exotic vacations or running marathons like I would have liked to be doing, I spent my summer... sewing. I'm kidding, it wasn't bad, although I had never really sewn before in my life, I think I took on some pretty big projects considering. This is a T-shirt quilt for Josh that has actually been on the back burner for years. For those who don't know, Josh was quite the athlete when he was in high school, and therefore, had A LOT of t-shirts from high school that were very special to him. He said something to me awhile ago about wanting to have them put in a quilt, and I stupidly :) volunteered. In my opinion, t-shirt quilts are not supposed to be that complicated, but I always have to make everything difficult. You may not be able to tell from the picture, but this quilt is huge. It takes up our whole front room, and therefore, when I was HAND quilting it, it took up our entire family room for a couple weeks. But I really wanted to get it done this summer, because I knew as soon as the baby came, it would be put back on the back burner. So with a lot of help from my mom, I finished it about the end of August. Someday, you'll have to ask Josh the significance of each of the t-shirts, because all that he accomplished in high school is pretty impressive.

When the t-shirt quilt was finished, I was finally able to start on the... NURSERY! Josh and I painted it green, then I sewed the bumper pads, crib quilt, crib skirt, and curtains. So here it is. Finished just 3 weeks after the baby was born. (Actually the nursery was finished awhile ago, I just finished the crib quilt today.)





The quilt was quite the experience. I couldn't find any bed sets that I really liked, so I just kind of made up the pattern, and then adjusted things as I messed up different parts. So this was not the original pattern, but this is what it looks like now.

Now we can start getting ready for Christmas!

I know the shirt is a little big, and makes her look like a boy, (that's why there's ruffles on her bumm), but it's the last home football game of the season.

Go Aggies!

Our newest addition!

As most of you know, we had our little baby Meili last Sunday-on Halloween morning. When we got to the hospital, the nurse asked if we wanted to have our baby on Halloween. Although, originally, I didn't want to, at that point, I was coming around to the idea. The nurse joked that if we held off for 23 hours, she wouldn't be born on Halloween. I told the nurse that that wasn't funny. So I'll skip the gorey details about the delivery and just say that by the time we checked in to labor and delivery I had been having regular contractions for a week straight. I was in so much pain, had been nauseous for 2 days, and neither Josh nor I had had a good night's sleep in 7 days. Luckily the on-call doctor that night was willing to break my water and put me out of my misery. We checked in to labor and delivery at about 1:30 am, and had the baby at 8:58 am. After the week of torture that I had, the delivery was a walk in the park! (Well, not quite, but pretty close.)

We didn't take a picture of my belly before we left our house, because at that point, I didn't care anymore. But I think you can see in this picture, that I was pretty big. Enough said.

This is our beautiful baby girl Meili (pronounced May Lee). It is chinese and means, "Beautiful" and she is living up to her name.

She was exactly 8 lbs. How perfect is that?

This is what they call love at first sight.

Ditto.

These are pictures from our first week at home. I just had to get a picture of this, because from head to toe, this is paradise for Josh. Taking a nap on the Cuddle bag, watching a movie, in his sweats and Scooby Doo socks. Oh yes, and holding the most beautiful baby ON THE PLANET! I think Josh believes this is his most important job as a dad-taking naps with Meili. I have to admit-he's pretty good at it.

This was the first outfit we put her in, and I just couldn't believe how cute she looked!

Can I say beautiful one more time? I'm sorry but I think Josh and I did a very good job!

What an awesome dad!

And I had to get a picture of this because she pulls her legs up like this every time we try to change her diaper. She's either really modest, or likes to make it a challenge.

So that's our first week together! So far every thing is going really well. We are adjusting to our new sleep schedule, and I am starting to get a little stir crazy-being in the house all the time. But she is obviously totally worth it, and Josh has been the best dad and husband in the world. He has changed more diapers than I have, he's given her the only two baths she's ever had, he helps with every feeding, and we take turns getting up to feed her the in the middle of the night. He's cooked more this week than I have, and helped keep up with the house work. A beautiful baby and wonderful husband, what more could I ask for?

Update

Well we're starting the count down, and I can't believe it! In September, I kept saying that we weren't ready for a baby, and she could just stay put for awhile. Well, I don't think I'll ever really be "ready" to bring a human being into the world, but as soon as October hit, I felt like everything became a lot more real. I'm trying to tie up any loose ends at work, Josh and I finally finished getting everything we need, so now I'm really excited! The bad news is, I went to the doctor and she said that I've made no progress, so even though I'm ready, we're not working on our time table. So we'll just wait patiently... kind of.