Due Date

January 15, 2013.

Today is my due date.

Today my baby is 3 weeks old.

Times flies.  I can't believe how fast the last 9 months have flown by.  I can't believe that my baby is already 3 weeks old.  I want to hold on to this precious baby time.  He's so cuddly and loves to be held.  I also love seeing him smile and do new things.  I've been so bad at taking pictures.  I'm trying not to obsess over capturing every little thing so much that I miss it myself but I'm already kicking myself because he changes so much everyday it seems like.  I finally got around to taking some pictures of him in the stocking they gave us at the hospital today.  I want to use one on his birth announcement but I don't want it to look to much like a Christmas card.
Here are a few shots straight out of the camera.  They need some editing but I don't have the energy tonight.  I can't believe how much he has changed in 3 short weeks.

My sweet Christmas baby. 

 I know he's mine but isn't he beautiful.  Hes so sweet too.  He's sleeping 4 and 5 hour stretches at night. He really only cries when he's hungry and when you change his diaper.  He doesn't really cry when he has a wet or dirty diaper only while you're changing it.

 

We are so blessed.

 

We are (still) the Champions

Monday night we gathered at our usual National Championship watch spot to watch the Tide roll to repeat National Championships.  It was glorious.  We kid that if Matt ever sells his house we'll be like the bud light commercial, showing up to watch the big game just because that is what we've always done.  It was my first outing with Barrett by myself and I arrived about half way through the first quarter.  I missed the first touchdown but made it to see the rest of them.  

I'm so proud of my school and my team.  Do I wish they would have scored one of these titles while I was in school?  Sure.  But does that make me any less happy, no.  Am I jealous that of the 4+ years my little brother has been in school they've won 3 National Championships?  Yes.  But I'm still so happy he got to go  to Miami to see the win live.  

I think Barrett enjoyed his first National Championship.  

Source 

It was a great night spent with some of my favorite people.  It's so much fun being Champions again.  

ROll Tide!

2012 Ornaments

Y'all know I love Christmas ornaments. I love these little reminders of the events of the year.  We received several ornaments this year.  I love to document them here each year.  

I told Patrick for Christmas I wanted an ornament to remember the Christmas I was pregnant.  He bought these two to mark the occasion.  

I bought these reindeer ornaments last year after Christmas to give all my aunts and girl cousins on my mom's side. I thought they were so pretty!

I told mom she didn't have to get the Barbie this year but then we saw that it was the last one in the series so we had to buy it. 

I got this cute Santa in a red truck at the ornament swap with Patrick's aunts.

The rest of the new ornaments are all for Barrett.  We received a lot of  "First Christmas" ornaments and it made my heart happy.  This rocking horse was from the Horton's. 

My mom wanted to buy this so badly all season.  I kept saying no that this wasn't his first Christmas.  Well after Christmas she sent my dad to track it down and he did.  Plus, since it was after Christmas it was half price so he got this cute one (below) that you put a picture in because I have one with my picture in it.  

I guess you can tell we haven't put Barrett's picture in it yet. 

I bought this Mickey Mouse one because it was the first in the series and I wanted to go ahead and start a series.  Plus I love Mickey and I thought it was really cute.

My aunt and uncle gave us these cute ones that say "Dad" and "Mom" 2012. To mark our first Christmas as parents. 

Patrick's parents also gave him this beautiful Lenox "Baby's First Christmas" rattle.  

So that's a run down of all our new ornaments for 2012.  I still have our tree up and all our decorations.  I feel like Christmas never happened.  I'll get it put up eventually.  

Barrett's first week or so...

After we had our picture made by the Christmas tree they wheeled me back to our room.  It wasn't much longer that they let our families come in to see the baby.  He was under the heater so they just got to look at him.  I was so excited my whole family was there.  They just finished up Christmas and headed to the hospital.  When we were back in the room they immediately gave me morphine for pain (although I don't really remember being in any pain) and it almost immediately made me sick.  (I finally told them not to give me anymore pain medication until I was able to eat something.)  So while our families are giddy over the baby I'm hollering for a barf bucket.  I felt bad that they had to witness that, especially the kiddos.  My siblings left not long after I started vomiting (can you blame them) they all had other places to be for the holidays.  So it was just us and our parents.  His temp was finally up enough that the grandparents got to hold him.  I loved getting to see other people love my child.  I'm not sure how to describe the feeling.  You feel loved ten times over when someone loves your child. 

Patrick didn't leave his side all day it seemed like.

Nana & Barrett

Grandmamma & Barrett

I'll be honest the first few days were a bit of a blur.  We had lots of visitors in the hospital and we loved getting to show off our little man.  We had a nice stay, the nurses were great.  I was so thankful for all their help.  It was so nice to have someone to ask when we had stupid questions.  We had some trouble feeding while we were there.  Barrett did not want to nurse.  He'd rather sleep than do anything else.  Which I guess isn't really a bad thing.  His blood sugar kept dropping so they made us give him formula to keep it up.  I was so nervous that he was never going to nurse but so far so good.  We've had a few bad days but overall he seems to be getting it. 

I was going stir crazy in the hospital, I was so ready to get out of there.  They checked him out Friday morning and we found out him bilirubin was a little high so we were sent home on phototherapy.  I was so nervous at first but it wasn't that bad and he actually slept so good on it that I was sad to see it go.  A nurse came to our house Saturday and Sunday morning to check his weight and draw blood to check his bilirubin.  Monday we had to get out and go to the pediatrician's office but it worked out because I had to go to my Dr too.  I was so proud that we were early to our 10:15 appointment.  I felt like I'd run a marathon by the time we got home.  His bili numbers had dropped but they wanted us to keep him on the light until midnight.  Which worked out nicely since it was New Years Eve, we counted down to taking the baby off the light!  He slept pretty good that night, not as good as he did on the light.  The nurse came the next and told us that we didn't have to use the light but it wasn't going to hurt him so use them if we wanted.  We put him on it to sleep and that was pretty much it.  We've stayed in a pretty good eating every three hours.  We have to set an alarm and wake him up to eat, so I guess things could be worse.

Heading home.

Meeting his big sister.

Laying on the bili light.

Christmas Party #1

Which turned out to be our only Christmas party of the season.  Saturday (December 22) we gathered with my mom's side of the family for our annual Christmas party.  I look forward to this so much each year.  Everyone was taking bets on how much longer I'd make it (for the record no one thought I'd make it to my due date, most people didn't think I'd make it to the new year).  I was so happy that Patrick got to go with me.  He usually has to work, he had to work early Sunday morning so we didn't get to stay to late.  In fact, my mom wanted to get a picture of our family since we were all there but we really needed to leave so Patrick could go to bed.  I told her we'd all be together Christmas morning and we'd get a picture then.  Needless to say, that didn't happen.  

They put Patrick to work.  Jennifer got this pillow as a gift from a student but she couldn't get the lights to work.  

These are the last pictures of me pregnant.  I was huge and in complete denial of how big I was.  

He fixed it!  Isn't it cute!

I love my Babo.  She wanted us to play this game.  If you've ever been to Elementary school you've played this game at your Christmas party.  It has the pictures and you're supposed to name the Christmas carol.  Sister and I laughed a lot.  

So long 2012

Our 2012 started with a bang in January, Patrick and I got to ring in the new year together!  We were taught how precious life really is when a family friend passed away suddenly.  Patrick got a new job and Ally got a new room.

 

February was fun.  Patrick passed his test to get his journeymans card. (finally!)  We celebrated Valentine's Day with pizza and game night.  Patrick was my date for the annual Mardi Gras party at church.

 

March started off with a relaxing trip to the beach for a girls weekend for Lauren's bachelorette party.  Fun, fun weekend!  We spent the best weekend together going to birthday parties, hanging out with friends, dancing at a wedding and riding fourwheelers. Patrick and I braved the teenagers and went to the midnight showing of the Hunger Games.

 

April brought spring weather and I started a book club with a few girlfriends & I took a day trip to Atlanta to the High Art museum with some friends.  We celebrated Easter.  We had a blast being a part of Ryan & Natalie's wedding! 

May is always busy and 2012 was no different.  We celebrated Ally's 4th birthday and she was on TV!  I spent the weekend in Tuscaloosa watching Hope and Mark graduate! And celebrating John's birthday!  I also found out I was pregnant this month although I didn't reveal it on the blog for a couple months!  I got to spend the weekend at the beach  with my parents and my brothers family! 

June was filled reminiscing.  Patrick finally retired old red and got a new truck!  My parents sold the house in Tuscaloosa and we went down to clean it out.  We told our families we were pregnant on Father's Day.  There were some mixed reactions!

July was hot and exciting.  We announced our pregnancy to the world via social media.  I started doing weekly pregnancy posts to keep track of my progress.  I'm so glad I did this.  It's been so fun to look back on.  I got to spend time with my family at the lake for the 4th.  I was a proud wife and wrote a post about my husband and all his accomplishments this year.  I turned 27 on the 27th!  We thought it'd be fun to try the intelligender gender test to see if we were expecting a son or daughter!

August was pretty low key.  We watched the Olympics...a lot!  We found out we were expecting a sweet baby boy!

Like every year we looked forward to September and football.  We had a wonderful Labor Day weekend celebrating Elise's first birthday and spending time at the lake.  I showed you our new hardwood floors and fall decorations.  I traveled to Arkansas for our 4th Annual SEC road trip.  We welcomed football season! Harper went to her first Bama game.

October brought the third and final trimester of pregnancy, and we frantically started trying to get things ready for the arrival of our baby boy!

November is always one of my favorite months.  Barrett and I witnessed all the is Johnny Football in the the loss to Texas A&M.  We were blessed by Patrick's family with a Mustache Baby Baby Bash and by my family and friends with a Baby Tea for Baby Barrett.  We celebrated Thanksgiving to wrap the month up.

December was busy.  Between getting ready for Christmas and a baby we didn't have must time for anything else.  A Random Friday post to catch up on things.  My little brother got engaged!  We kicked off Christmas weekend with our 5th Annual Gingerbread house competition.  We got a surprise Christmas present when our baby boy decided to come 3 weeks early!  Here I wrote Barrett's birth story while it was fresh on my mind.  Finally, we rang in the New Year as a family of three and it was perfect!

 

 

2012 has been my favorite year yet.  Between finding out we were pregnant to having our surprise Christmas baby it's been amazing.  I haven't really been ready to let it go.  But we must move on and I can't wait to see what 2013 holds!

I'm trying to catch up on blogging but for some reason Blogger won't let me upload photos from my computer. Hopefully I can get it fixed soon, I have so much to write and I don't want to forget any of it!

Happy New Year!

We were so sad we missed getting to go bowling to celebrate my sweet niece Ava's 9th birthday.  I can't believe she's 9 years old!

We spent a quite night at home counting down to midnight to ring in the New Year and celebrate Barrett getting off the bili light!  It was a perfect night.  Everytime I think about the past week, I am overwhelmed with joy.  We were sitting in our big cozy living room chair last night, watching Dick Clark's New Years Rocking Eve as a family of 3 (well 4, Ally was snuggled in there too!) and I just cried.  I'm pretty sure it's still the hormones but I just couldn't help it.  In that moment life was perfect!  It was one of those moments that you've pictured for your life for years and here it was completely real. 

Sweet baby. We have the new parent look of exhaustion glow! I love this one.  Barrett looks like he's at a rock concert with those hands in the air. 2013 has a lot to live up!  There's no way we'll top 2012 but I can't wait to try!