Ponderings from a new mom.....

Being the oldest of 4 girls and the first to have a grandchild on my side, I began thinking of advice that I would tell my sisters when they have their first baby.  I've told them that I already broke several of my "rules" that I had set before Eliana was born. Like......

• At hospital my baby will room in ONLY. ha...it took less than 4 hours for me to realize that all those moms who advised me to take advantage of the hospital nursery were 110% right.  During the first 2 hours of sleep, my aching body was out of bed 3 times to check on the baby because I heard her make a little sound or I needed to make sure she was still breathing or she started crying because she got her little arm out of her swaddling. Then I woke poor sleeping daddy to check on her once because I just couldn't make my legs move anymore. We both agreed she would go to the nursery....best thing I ever did. We both got MUCH NEEDED sleep. Our first night home, with the baby finally asleep, we looked at each other and said, "no nursery anymore" :( Bless those nursery nurses for taking care of my baby!
• I won't use the pacifier.... when you have a screaming baby and can't calm her down, the pacifier becomes your sanity saver.  I also said I wouldn't let her have it in bed....yeah she gets it in bed. 
• I'll be tough and let her cry herself to sleep. I'm tough....for about 2 minutes and then I can't stand it any longer.  I've become tougher, or as Brendan would say, my heart has become cold. :)  I do let her cry a little longer than 2 minutes, but sometimes the girl just needs her momma.

Nursing is natural; the way God designed it; the best for baby.... then why is it so darn difficult! We spent Eliana's first 6 weeks with a lactation consultant. For 6 weeks for e.v.e.r.y. feeding we nursed, pumped and fed her a bottle.  Each feeding lasted about an hour or more.  EXHAUSTING!   I'm so glad that for the first 2 weeks my mother in-law and my mom were there to help out. They would even get up for the night time feedings. Bless their hearts, they were so helpful! Around 7 weeks baby girl finally caught on to nursing and by 8 weeks the bottle was a thing of the past! So were night time feedings! Hello 8 straight hours of glorious sleep! It seriously does a body good!

In the first few weeks you spend most of your time consoling a crying baby, feeding your baby, changing your baby, or putting baby to sleep.  All the while trying to find a spare 15 minutes to take a shower just so you can feel human! More common advice from moms is to, "Sleep when baby sleeps." And ladies if you follow any advice follow this! It makes a much happier momma, a happier daddy, and just a happier home!  One day I didn't get a nap and I was a basket case! So my hubby became the nap nazi. He always asked me when he got home from work if I took a nap that day.  I really didn't stop taking naps until she started sleeping through the night. 

Here are some of my top picks on must have's for new mom's...ok, maybe you don't have to have them, but they made my life a little easier.

When parents tell you to, "Enjoy them because it flies by before you know it," listen to them.  I can't believe that I have a 2 month old!  Every day is different than the day before. The sweet noises of a cooing baby that fill my home put a smile on my face and tears of joy in my eyes

Eliana's Birth Story

On Friday, August 31, as I was making dinner I noticed I was having a few contractions.  I told Brendan, "I think this baby is coming this weekend." I'm pretty sure I saw a look of terror cross his face.  As we watched a movie that night I began timing them on a very helpful phone app.  As the evening progressed the contractions became less frequent. So I reassured Brendan that I probably would not go into labor tonight. I'm pretty sure he let out a HUGE sigh of relief.

On Saturday, September 1st I woke up with a small amount of bleeding, so I called the on call midwife and she reassured me that it was probably ok, but to call if it got worse.  We had breakfast and then I had Brendan go to Hobby Lobby with me to finish up an Etsy order that I had received. It was at that point that I noticed my contractions were getting closer together and started timing them around noon.  My contractions were staying at about 7-8 minutes apart. They grabbed my attention, but were bearable. Around 4pm I had a larger amount of bleeding so I called the on call midwife again and she told me to go ahead and come into the hospital.  I told Brendan and his response..."It's Go Time!"

So at 5 pm we got admitted into our labor and delivery room.  They hooked me up to monitor my contractions and the baby's heartbeat.  During a few contractions the baby's heartbeat dropped which caused the nurse some concern.  It didn't drop during every contraction so they never really said that she was in distress.  They wanted to keep me overnight and basically just told us to rest. Which is easier said than done on a hospital bed and a pull out couch.

The next morning on Sunday, September 2nd, they resumed monitoring contractions and baby's heartbeat with the expectation of sending me home. The baby's heartbeat did the same drop during a few contractions.  After consulting with the on-call doctor and midwife they recommended that my water be broken and they start me on Pitocin. I was ok with breaking my water, but I did not want Pitocin, I had heard that this medicine made contractions super intense.  Because my goal was to deliver without pain meds I wanted to avoid it at all costs.  At 11am they broke my water and my nurse agreed to let me go for a while before I started the Pitocin.  After a walk around the hallways, my contractions went from 7-8 minutes to 4-5 minutes apart and much more intense.  At this point I have no concept of time.  My contractions grew closer together and more intense through out the day. I was also experiencing back labor this whole time because baby's chin wasn't tucked and she was posterior.  So we tried several different positions in hopes she would turn.  My incredible husband was by my side the entire time, helping me breathe, applying pressure to my back, rubbing my neck, getting me water.  He was an awesome coach and teammate!  I was also blessed with a great nurse who was there with us her entire 12 hour shift.  If Brendan was counting breaths for me, she was applying pressure to my back and vice versa.

As I reached transition and was dilated to 7cm, I begged them to let me in the jacuzzi. The midwife agreed and I was able to relax a little better during the contractions.  I think I was in there about an hour. This hour helped me prepare mentally for what was ahead.  Because the jets were so loud I had to count and breathe on my own.  I also began saying a prayer during every contraction, just reminding myself that I had the Lord's strength and what more did I need than that.

After I got out of the jacuzzi I hadn't dilated much and so they wanted to start a small dose of Pitocin.  I agreed, but don't think I really needed it, because before I knew it (or at least according to my concept of time) I was dilated to 9cm and then felt the sudden urge to push.  I asked Brendan if this part went as fast as I remembered it and he said no. Oh well, I guess I'm glad it felt like it went fast. :)  Brendan's worse fear was that I would need to push and no one would be in the room.  Sure enough that's what happened.  As soon as our nurse walked in, he said very calmly with some slight urgency, "She wants to PUSH!".  And thus began the hour and a half pushing session.

On a side note: My nurse's shift was to end at 7:00pm.  I told her to come by and visit the next day to see the baby.  She said, " Honey I'm not going anywhere until this baby is born."  So she clocked out at 7pm and stayed with me until Eliana was born.

Towards the end they told me to reach down and feel my baby's head which gave me much motivation, not to mention the excruciating pain!  At 8:05pm on Sunday September 2nd, I heard the words, "Sara reach down and get your baby!" Immediately she was on my chest and I was staring at the most beautiful baby I've ever seen.  She didn't even cry, she was so quiet, looking at me wide eyed with those adorable chubby cheeks. Both Brendan and I were overcome with emotion at this tiny blessing. She was FINALLY here! 

Seeing my daughter for the first time.

Our beautiful blessing, only minutes old

After a while I finally had the clarity of mind to let Brendan hold her.  Oh my goodness, seeing my husband hold our baby for the first time melts me into a puddle and still does!

First time to hold his daughter

First day home and already napping together

After we were home for a few days I began finding out I had some prayer warriors praying for me during the time I was pushing.

A couple days after we were home I noticed a voice mail on my phone and listened to it.  It was my neighbor, Heather, calling at 8:17pm on Sunday, September 2nd to tell me she and her husband were praying for us thinking about us and just wanted to let me know that.  Little did she know she was praying me through the hardest part!

My youngest sister, Mary, told us that several minutes before she received the text that Eliana was born she felt the sudden need to pray and she was praying hard, like crying/lifting her hands/ come to Jesus moment! Definitely interceding for us! After she was done praying she looked at her phone and saw that Eliana was here and thus more tears!

I know all our family was praying for us as Brendan was updating them throughout the day.  What a blessing to know so many were praying us through one of the hardest things we have ever done! I know that there is no way I could have done this without the Lord's strength!

Our Answered Prayer

Our sweet baby girl, Eliana Michelle was born on September 2nd at 8:05 pm.  She is absolutely perfect in every way.  A perfect blessing from the Lord.  I look at her and I am amazed that this little one was inside of me for nine long months.

I teared up when I sang to her for the first time....I've been imagining this for years.

I cry when I see my husband with our daughter....I've fallen in love with him in a whole new way.

I can't stop staring at her tiny little feet.....those little feet that kicked my ribs the last few months.

And oh those cheeks, those chubby little cheeks have had many many kisses from her momma.

When we first found out we were pregnant and went to our 8 week ultrasound, we found out that we might miscarry our little one. As we anticipated our next ultrasound in 2 weeks I came across a song by Watermark called Elliana's Song, you can read the lyrics here.  I told Brendan I loved that name.  Meanings of names are really important to me, so I looked up the meaning of her name.  In Hebrew Eliana means, "God has answered."  I told my husband that if we are blessed to keep this little one and it is a girl, this has to be her name.  He couldn't really argue with me.  I always had an idea that this baby was a girl because I felt the Lord had given me her name. If you read our Baby Williams post you know what an answer to prayer our sweet girl is and how special her name is to us.

Baby Girl's Nursery - Part 2

Only 9 days to go until our due date!!! The past 2 weeks have been full of NESTING! My extra long (and always growing) "Before Baby" To Do List has been mostly checked off! Nothing is more satisfying than a To Do list with all the boxes checked and sometimes I highlight too, just to make me feel a little more accomplished. :) Are you a TO DO list addict? Do you sometimes write things on your to do list that you've already done just so you can check it off?

Ok, moving on.....

We have decided that we will be keeping the nursery a guest room for the first month or so after baby girl is born. Since both our mom's are blessing us with a week of their help we want them to be as comfortable as possible. Which means they won't be sleeping in our unfinished, cob-web infested basement. So there will be a Part 3 post with the nursery completed.

Before

In the Part 1 post about the nursery (click here to read Part 1) I told you my next project would be to finish the 2nd dresser that my sisters and I grew up with.  I later found out from my Granny that the dresser was used by my mom, aunt, and uncle and then by my cousins too. I even found my cousin Micah's signature in the floor of the closet.  So when I was 36 weeks preggo I decided to get the dresser finished.  Thank you 100+ degree temps for making me wait to get going on it.  Here is a before and after:

After
(like all the extras stuffed in the corner?)

I know it doesn't look that different since I just painted it white again, but believe me, it looks A LOT better after sitting in the garage for 10+ years.  I painted it using the same method as I used to paint the blue dresser.  I lined the drawers and made my own fabric liner.  I love this method and will do it in the future to all my dresser drawers.  You can find the tutorial here at Blue Eyed Yonder.  I did eliminate the ironing spray, although I'm sure it would be lovely to open your drawers and the scent of lavender greet you.  Here are a few detail photos:

Cheap brass knobs painted the same color as the 1st dresser
and distressed.

Drawer Liner

Isn't it so cute with little clothes! Thanks Jenn Huff for the
adorable handmade dresses!

Next on my to do list was the glider.  I did not get it painted, but I did make my own fabric out of canvas drop cloth and recovered the cushions.  Again I should not have waited to do this so late in my pregnancy, but its done and that's all that matters.  I have to thank my friend Kathy for giving us the glider.  She noticed that I had pinned an idea for a glider on Pinterest way back in January and offered the glider  to us (she didn't even know we were pregnant yet)! So far this glider has only cost me about $15 which was for the dropcloth, fabric paint medium, and stencil. I already had the green paint. 

Please don't look at my horribly unorganized basement!

The paint has a little "worn" look to it.

Another friend, Janna, was cleaning out her basement and found some toys and this cute little toddler rocking chair she offered me.  I had a rocking chair when I was little and loved it, so I couldn't turn this down! I painted it the same color as the dresser and decided to distress it. I rubbed a tealight candle along the edges of the arms, legs, and back before painting.  While the paint was still wet, I used a wet wipe to remove the paint where I rubbed the wax. Then after it was dry I used sand paper to distress the rest of the chair.  I think it turned out cute and I'm going to try to use it for baby girl's monthly pictures! Thanks Janna!

Before

After

Do you know how hard it is to find fabric in a coral color?  HARD! When I saw this fabric (on the discount rack...score!) I knew it would be perfect for her room. Another easy project that took less than an hour, but adds that punch of color was sewing a changing pad cover. I used the super simple tutorial found here at Sir Bubbadoo blog.

Hopefully my next post will be pictures of my beautiful baby girl!

Babymoon

Babygirl's due date is fast approaching! Only 7 weeks to go! Yikes! Before I was restricted to travel we wanted to getaway for a weekend and I didn't want to be in the car for a very long time. So we decided to head to Kansas City.  My only criteria was it had to be relaxing and I needed a pool. We had a Bedandbreakfast.com gift certificate that we had been hanging onto and decided this would be the perfect time to use it. So after researching many options I came across Inn on Crescent Lake in Excelsior Springs, MO (just North of Kansas City). (check out their website for the story of the Inn and pictures of the beautiful estate) It had what I wanted....a pool! I would highly recommend this B&B to anyone! It was so beautiful, breakfast was simply scrumptious, quiet (even with a full house) and the story behind the B&B is truly romantic.  So here is how we spent our mini Babymoon.

Friday:
Brendan took a half day and after lunch we hit the road.  Our first stop was the bank for some spending $$$. We have been collecting our change in a jar for 6+ years. The jar was just about full so we decided this would be our gas & food money. Brendan guessed there was $93 and I guessed $108.  We were both surprised when they said it totaled to $244.10! Who knew!

We checked in to the B&B relaxed for a bit and then headed to Ventana Gourmet Grill in Downtown Excelsior Springs.  This is the innkeepers favorite restaurant. They had a live piano player and the seriously some of the best cheesecake I've ever had.

Saturday:
At the Inn breakfast is served in the Solarium which overlooks one of the crescent shaped lakes that surrounds the property. We enjoyed some coffee and then had a wonderful breakfast of egg casserole, sausage, biscuits, hashbrown and watermelon.  The innkeeper and her late husband (a frenchman and romantic at heart) created a walking trail that ended at "the Kissing Point"so we decided to walk off breakfast.  I wish I would have brought my camera because this was the most amusing part of our trip....ok most amusing for me.  The tree canopied trail follows the curve of one of the Crescent lakes and it really is quite beautiful.  We *ahem* Brendan figured out early that some friendly spiders had created their webs from one side of the walking path to the other. So my arachnaphobic husband got a stick, a LONG stick, and was waving it in front of him our entire walk. He looked like he was casting a spell or like the Catholic priest who signs the crucifix in mass.  I had to stop several times because I was doubled over in laughter, which is pretty hard when you can't really double over any more.

The rest of our day was spent by the refreshing pool. It felt glorious on the 98 degree day.

This is pretty much what he did all afternoon. Couldn't stop reading....

For dinner I had read about a winery about 20 minutes from the Inn that served brick oven pizza. So we ventured to out-in-the-middle-of-nowhere-Missouri to VanTill Family Farm & Winery. The pizza was wonderful! I think they grow most of their own vegetables, it was so fresh! They made their own whole-grain pizza crust and of course wine.  Which Brendan said was pretty good.

Update on Baby Girl: 

She is still moving like crazy! She is positioned sideways and no matter what position I put myself in she really likes to stay sideways. So we are praying that she will flip soon so this momma can stop stressing out!

Baby Girl's Nursery - Part 1

Lots of people keep asking me how our nursery is coming.  My answer? Slowly but surely.  Its kinda hard since the future nursery is currently our guest room and our basement isn't finished to allow a space for our guests to sleep.  I want everything to be just so and with my taste (ahem, and budget) its hard to find exactly what I want in my price range.  I am also an extreme DIYer.  I find it hard to buy something when I know I can make it.  Its really a curse, because I have an on going to-do list and the bigger my belly gets the less my body lets me do. So I've become practical and know everything is not going to get done before she gets here.

I have finished one major project and that is the changing table.  I wanted to find an antique dresser and paint it.  I had this certain shape in mind and knew it would be like looking for a needle in haystack, but lo' and behold it popped up on Craigslist and we bought it for $75!  Here is a before and after.

I am soooo happy with how it turned out!  I love the color and the technique I used to paint the dresser (which took forever, but was worth it) resulted in a super smooth factory-like finish.  I had a hard time finding drawer pulls that I liked that weren't $10 a piece!  I got a little creative and found some brass knobs at Lowes, the shape was what I was looking for, so I just spray painted them and they ended up working perfectly!

So if you want to learn about the technique I used to paint the cabinet visit this online tutorial How to Paint Furniture by Centsational Girl.  The only thing I did different was I used a foam roller for the drawer fronts, sides and top of the dresser instead of a brush.  Here is another tip! Our drawers were sticking really bad after we finished painting and we purposely did not paint the wood runners along the side.  My dad said to use beeswax for them to slide better.  So I thought, "Ok, where am I going to find beeswax!" I stopped by a honey booth at the local farmer's market and sure enough they had a small bar of beeswax for $0.75 and it worked like a dream!

Joel Dewberry - Herringbone in Pond

I've selected the fabrics for the baby bedding, which my wonderful Mother-in-law is sewing for me. Here is one of the fabrics that I fell in love with! I'm also using some greens and corals in the room!  Can't wait to see it all come together!

Next on my list......
1.  Sand/Paint Child's Armoire
2.  Sand/Paint Glider
3.  Make fabric for Glider Cushions out of drop cloth
4.  Recover Glider Cushions




Here is a picture of my next project which my parents refinished for my room when I was little.

To be continued...........................

2012 Garden

I do not claim to have a green thumb whatsoever.  I do enjoy planting and watching things grow.  It is so exciting to see the perennials that you planted last year start to emerge in the spring or see your tomato plants begin to bloom. In the past I pretty much just planted the plants and watered them, I didn't fertilize or anything, but I am determined to have a healthy and yummy crop of veggies this year.

You might remember one of my first posts about Brendan building me a small raised bed, well he built me another one, but double the width.  If you are interested in building your own raised garden bed here is the link to my post. Fall Garden Prep/Raised Cedar Garden Bed. Spring in Nebraska happened very early in March, so I took a chance and planted my spring veggies around the end of March.  We planted a mixture of lettuces, baby spinach, and sugar snap peas (Brendan's favorite).  I planted them all from seed, which I've never done before.  I couldn't believe how easy it was! I didn't buy lettuce for an entire month!  Our peas are just now starting to bloom and I picked one serving of peas just this morning!

Sugar Snap Peas

Spring Veggie Garden, the peas have taken over!

Baby Spinach

In our larger garden bed we have planted our summer veggies: Big Boy Tomatoes, Yellow Cherry Tomatoes, Jalepenos, Orange Bell Pepper, Green Bell Pepper, and Zucchini. I purchased all of the plants from a lady at church who starts them from seed and then sells them to support the girl's ministry at our church.  Just in case you were wondering, our dirt is a mixture of some organic soil we moved from Oklahoma, yes we moved dirt, and free compost we can get from the city of Lincoln. If you don't know us that well, the Williams are FRUGAL!!!  My Zucchini plant has quadrupled in size already and my tomato and pepper plants have blooms already!

Summer Veggie Garden

Zucchini

Isn't that little guy cute!

 Oh, I also planted strawberries and then found out that it takes like 3 years to get an actual crop.  Oh well, here's hoping we are still at this house in 3 years!

Strawberries

 I've also attempted to spruce up our curb appeal in the front flower beds.  Last fall I found a great deal at Lowes on 1 qt. Hostas for $0.77! So I bought a few and planted them in the front.  They all came back and are healthy. A friend also gave me some Hosta's from her flower bed and they came back as well. The only thing I added this year is some annuals, Impatients and Asylum. I also have Lily of the Valley in the skinny flower bed, its kind of taken over, but there is no way I'm attempting to dig those suckers up.

Beautiful Tiger Lily in my backyard

Front large flower bed

Front small flower bed

ReRoofing the House

So life has been crazy busy, but a good crazy busy! We have been traveling, working on house projects, gardening, and working on the nursery.

In April we decided to replace our roof. Our Sunday School class at church volunteered to help us. They are not new to this kind of service project since they have replaced several family's roofs in our class.  I cannot tell you what a blessing and testimony this was. Financially is was a huge savings, but more than that, seeing a group of 12 men sacrifice time away from their families and their weekend seriously touched our hearts. They started Friday night around 5pm and were able to tear off the old shingles and put new shingles on the entire back of the house by 7:30pm.  Saturday morning they started around 8am and got the rest of the roof done by 11:30, literally 10 minutes before the monsoon hit!  We had about 4-5 neighbors comment to us that they couldn't believe how fast these guys worked.  What an incredible testimony of how the Body of Christ serves each other! Not only did the men help with the roof, but their wives also sent food to help with Friday's dinner and Saturday's lunch, which I very much appreciated! Here are some pictures of the project.

Brother's in Christ at work

They are working on the front of the house, but I had to take pictures, just in case we got hail that afternoon.

As each one has received a special gift, employ it in serving one another as good stewards of the manifold grace of God. 

I Peter 4:10

A Love-Hate Relationship

Yesterday I had a baking adventure.  At least that's how I'm trying to look at it.  You see, baking and I have a love-hate relationship.

I love eating baked goods, I hate the mess it creates.

I love smelling the yummy things baking, I hate when dough sticks to everything.

I love a slice of fresh baked bread, I hate letting things rise, I'm too impatient.

I love cooking! Mixing different herbs and spices, experimenting with different dishes (much to my husband's dismay sometimes), and I really like a good piece of steak or anything covered in gravy...brown gravy, cream gravy, chicken gravy.  Yumm! Can you tell I'm pregnant? 

Ok, I digress.....Don't get me wrong, I can bake...cookies, sweet bread, etc.  I usually steer clear if the recipe involves a rolling pin, you know what I'm talking about, that round piece of wood stuck in the bottom drawer of my kitchen.  I mostly reserve the rolling pin for pounding meat since I don't have a meat mallet or crushing crackers for a topping.  My husband knows that I'm baking if he hears me yelling at the dough or sometimes a bad word might escape my lips. I know this is bad, but I'm just being honest and admitting this so you understand the kind of relationship I have with baking.

In the last year or so, I have become more adventurous with baking.  I've made homemade bread, biscuits, dinner rolls, Pioneer Woman Cinnamon Rolls (baking frustration is totally worth these babies! I included a link for the recipe), and pound cake to name a few. Most of these things have turned out, I had a loaf of bread that was still doughy in the middle and something was wrong with the pound cake, I don't know what it was, but I served it to my in-laws and they were more than gracious in eating it and consoling me that its hard to get a pound cake right.

So, yesterday, I attempted making Cinnamon Cherry Bagels and Wheat-Thin Style Crackers.  Now that I'm approaching my 19th week of pregnancy I'm realizing that my stamina is not quite what it was pre-pregnancy.  So I definitely should not have done both of these in one morning (which turned into a baking afternoon as well).  Anyways, it was a success! Both items turned out very yummy and what makes me even more excited is that I could control the ingredients and I knew exactly what was in them!  So whole grains, honey (no refined sugar), and dried fruits. The bagels were interesting, I've never boiled dough before, the the recipe I used (linked above) recommends broiling the bagels in the oven and then boiling them in water, and then baking them.  So as you can see this is a process. The recipe only made 10, so next time I'll make a double recipe and freeze them. See I'm making progress, I said next time. The crackers were super easy and I'll do those again for sure.  I'm glad to say the Lord has given me grace and I was able to keep my cool the whole time in the kitchen!  However I did almost cry when I surveyed my tiny dishwasher-less kitchen.  Let's just say I took a well deserved nap after all that baking and washing.

My next battle to overcome in the kitchen needs to be baking a layered cake and icing it.  I would like to make a cake once in my lifetime that the layers don't crack on me and the icing isn't full of cake crumbs.  We will see.... until then Happy Baking!

Pregnancy Brain

We first began to notice the slip in my mental capacity to remember things when I heard this from my husband, "So are we letting it mellow around here?" Referring to the fact that I had once again forgotten to flush the toilet.  Oops!  My response, "I've heard that when your pregnant you start to forget things."  Which resulted in a friendly argument, err...I mean, discussion about whether that was true or I was just blaming something else on the pregnancy. Well as the weeks have progressed so has my forgetfulness and fortunately my back-up to prove that pregnancy brain is real.  Just a few instances that have occurred.

1. While telling Brendan a story, I forgot the name of the person in my story.  Halfway through
he says: "Oh, so and so (actually said her name) said that?"
me: "Oh yeah, that's her name..."
him: "Sara, you said her name when you were telling me the story."
me: "Are you sure, I don't think I did."
him: "YES! You said her name."
me: "I'm losing it."

2.  Drive all the way to my weekly women's bible study, only to find an empty parking lot and remember they had canceled for that week.

3. Put my lunch in the oven to heat up and set the timer.  Timer goes off, I check my food to discover that I had not turned the oven on.

4. I was filling up the sink and ran outside to tell Brendan something.  Forgot that I was filling up the sink and almost overflowed the sink.

I'm pretty sure I could go on (and so could my husband).  But after talking to several other moms and dads.  We have found that I am not the only one to suffer from momnesia.  It took a lot of convincing, but I think he will finally admit that its the pregnancy that has induced my forgetfulness.

Any of you mom's have any good stories about your pregnancy brain?

Valentine's Day

I think when we got married I initiated the rule that if we gave each other gifts on Valentine's Day they had to be homemade.  Which for me is not hard, but for Brendan....well its a challenge. But he has always pulled through and given me some cute stuff! One year he made me a chocolate cream pie (my favorite) from scratch! Another year I got a silly poem, like he used to write me when we were dating. 

We forgo the waiting 2 hours to get a table at a restaurant and stay home. I usually go to a meat market and splurge on some nice steaks.  Our cut of choice is New York Strip. Brendan braves the cold and grills the steak.  I make mashed red potatoes with the skin and some cream cheese, butter, and sour cream and then bake them.  Oh they are delicious! A cesar salad on the side and usually something chocolate for dessert. Yummy, Yummy! 

I have to share the story of our first Valentine's Day as newlyweds.  Cue the candlelight and Nora Jones. I made the above meal and afterwards we were relaxing on the couch drinking some red wine from our new hand painted wine glasses my sister gave us for Christmas. I was cuddled in Brendan's robe he got for Christmas because it was so warm and soft.  I reached to put my wine glass on the end table next to the couch. I wasn't really paying attention and missed the coaster and there went the glass of red wine all over the carpet of our rental house (YIKES!). Then they came....the tears, I was upset because 1.) I spilled the wine and 2.) I broke my brand new wine glass.  I was attempting to help clean up the wine with all my blubbering. When Brendan yelled at me, "Your on fire!". Again, not paying attention, I had dragged the sleeve of Brendan's new robe through a lit candle and was now on fire! I froze! I didn't know what to do! So my knight in shining armor came to my rescue and saved my life with his bare hands!  Ok, maybe I'm exaggerating, not my life, but for sure he saved my arm from going up in flames. But this was a polyester robe and now my new hubby was screaming because he had melted plastic on his hands. All I could do was just cry! I had ruined our first Valentine's day as a married couple! Now, 5 years later, it makes for a pretty good story.  I hope your laughing, I am...now.

Baby Williams

We are so blessed to announce that our family will be growing in September 2012! We are so grateful to our Lord for blessing us with our little miracle and every day with our little one is a gift. We always thought we would wait until we were at least 12 weeks to announce because then we would be "in the clear", but we want to take this opportunity to bring glory to God! So we hope that if you are believers in Jesus Christ you would join with us in rejoicing and praising the Lord and if you are not believers that you would be able to get a glimpse of the grace that He gives when you do believe in Him. About 2 years ago we decided it was time for our family of 2 to grow. We had no idea the journey that laid before us. I have Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome(PCOS) which, in general terms, makes it harder to get pregnant naturally and increases chances of miscarriage. We have known this for several years, so it wasn't a surprise that it might take us longer than most to get pregnant. In April of 2011 we decided it was time to pursue fertility options, even though neither of us had a huge desire to start any type of medication. One day before our appointment to discuss fertility options with our midwife I found out I was pregnant! We were overjoyed, surprised and so excited to see God had answered our prayers. Four weeks later we had our first appointment and ultrasound. We anticipated hearing our baby's heartbeat, but God had other plans for our little one. There was no heartbeat and we learned that we had lost the baby around 6 weeks. Our hearts were broken, but we took great comfort in knowing that, "for those who love God all things work together for good,for those who are called according to his purpose." (Romans 8:28). We knew that losing our first baby was for our good, even though it was difficult to understand at the time, we KNOW that God is good and used this to refine us. Over the past 8 months we have prayed and asked the Lord for His will to be done! Of course we prayed He would bless us with another baby, but ultimately we desired His will be done. I'll be the first to admit that the past 8 months haven't always been easy, but I have seen His grace in our lives and His peace that passes all understanding. Brendan and I have grown closer to each other and to our Lord. The day after Christmas the Lord answered our prayers (and the prayers of many of our family and friends). We were pregnant! Overjoyed! We began to cherish everyday I was nauseated and tired, knowing that these are good signs, but also knowing that the Lord is totally and completely in control. At our first major ultrasound we heard the most amazing sound of our little one's heartbeat! We met with the midwife and she told us that there were concerns and we could miscarry again. Not the news we expected, but again, we trusted in the Lord and his sovereignty. I memorized Isaiah 26:3, "You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you." When I began to worry about this little one I just focused on HIM and His truth and His peace was there! So 2 weeks later (February 1) we were back for another ultrasound. The Lord is so good! The baby had grown, the heartbeat was strong, and we even saw Little Williams moving! There were no concerns! Everything looked good! Praise the Lord! We are so grateful for each and every day! We know that He is in complete control and He is the Creator.