Sweet smile!

Lately, Eli has become a lot more alert.  He loves gazing around the house and loves laying on his activity mat and staring at the toys.  My absolute favorite developments are that now he will respond to my voice, follow me with his gaze and respond with the sweetest smile.  It doesn't matter my attitude or what I am doing, that smile just melts my heart!

He is getting so big though.  I weighed him on our home scale yesterday and he was 12 pounds.  That's almost double his birth weight already!  And he is getting just as tall:

Eli is still our favorite photo subject.  Here are a few of our recent favorites:

Eli, I can't believe you are almost 2 months already, but we love you more and more each day!  Today, I am so thankful for your sweet smile!

A Confession...

Allow me a moment to confess something to you:  parenting a newborn and adjusting to being a family of three is hard.  I love Eli more than I could ever express, but I have to admit, I thought maternity leave would be a glowy time of bonding with my new son, planning fun outings, and managing the household with ease and grace.  While I certainly have had glowy bonding moments, I have also found endless hours of nursing, a million disgusting diapers, and many sleepless nights.  I had heard about this, but I suppose I just assumed this was other babies...not my perfect child :-)  Let me tell you, Eli is not perfect; adorable but certainly not perfect.

These realities took a hit on my sanity and definitely how I treated my husband.  Mix hormones and a lack of sleep and what do you get....an insane mother.  I found myself struggling with anger and resentment.  I even found myself angry at Eli as though he did anything to me.  He is a baby just doing what babies do.  Poor Matt probably didn't know if he was going to come home to a house that looked like a tornado hit with a woman nursing in the dark crying or a crabby lady.  Thankfully many of those hormonal moments have passed, but I definitely still have my moments.

Last night was one of "those moments."  I was trying to make dinner and clean things up before Matt got home.  Eli was sleeping peacefully in his bouncy seat so I bound around the house putting this away and preparing dinner...a premade dinner that someone dropped off.  All I had to do was follow the instructions, everything was measured out perfectly and accompanied by easy directions.  I was trying to make Gorgonzola burgers with sweet potato fries and fruit.  Easy enough right?  I mixed up the burgers and formed them into patties...but as I cooked them, they kept crumbling.  It looked like I was browning ground beef, not making burgers.  Yikes!  Then in the middle of it, Eli woke up and started screaming.  Burgers abandoned and oven turned off in hopes to not completely burn the fries, I quickly attended to Eli.  He would not calm down.  He looked hungry but I had just fed him an hour before.  Could he seriously already be hungry again?  Yep!  So a crabby mom, started to feed Eli and texted Matt, "The burgers are falling apart.  Eli is screaming.  My dinner is screwed."  Poor Matt.  He simply wrote back, "Oh no.  I will be home soon.  Sounds like we both need a glass of wine."

Thankfully he got home a few minutes later to find his crabby wife on the couch nursing Eli.  He poured me a glass of wine  (don't worry, I waited until after I was done nursing :-)) and surveyed my crumbled burgers.  He then took the mess and turned them into awesome sloppy joes from scratch.  (Thank goodness my husband was blessed with his dad's cooking gene).  Twenty minutes later, Eli was again sleeping peacefully (for a 5 hour stretch!), I had a glass of wine in hand and was eating a yummy dinner. Crisis averted!

Today I was thinking about how that is just what God does for us.  He takes our crumbled mess and the bad attitude that comes with it and turns it into something beautiful.

All I can say is THANK YOU!

Back in the land of the living!

Well, I can see that my last post was at the beginning of my third trimester.  I guess it has been a while!  Honestly, I really needed to step away from the blog for the end of my pregnancy.  Its not that I forgot about Isaiah for a second, I just really needed to focus on staying positive or I might have gone crazy - especially because I had a scare at 34 weeks (but more on that later).   Thankfully, Eli (Elias) Matthew arrived safely on August 29th.  I can't believe he is already almost 7 weeks old and I haven't updated the blog with the news about him....but let's be real, I barely have had time to brush my teeth or take a shower.  My hair has been in a pony tail since I went into the hospital.  (Thank goodness Matt likes pony tails.)

Here is the scoop on the last couple of months:

The remainder of my pregnancy was a little frightening.  I had a bleeding scare at 34 weeks and ended up in the hospital for three days.  Thankfully, they were able to stop my contractions and keep the baby inside for a few more weeks.  I spent the rest of my pregnancy on modified bed rest (A lot of couch time for me.  Would you believe I actually got tired of napping.  Crazy!)

Thankfully Eli stayed put until he was supposed to and at 38 weeks, I headed into the hospital to be induced.  Here's the last picture of Matt and I as a family of two on the way into the hospital.

My labor was fairly quick.  I was finally induced around 1:00p and at 6:57p, Eli weighing in at 6lbs 12 oz and rocking out at 19 inches long, made his screaming entrance into the world.  (I had prayed and prayed for the chance to hear that adorable scream!)

The nurses got him cleaned up and handed the adorable bundle into my arms.  It was love at first sight!

Leaving the hospital with Eli was amazing.  Knowing what it was like to leave with empty arms made that moment even more joyous.  The days since then have been a whirlwind of trying to figure out this little man and survive on a negligible amount of sleep.  Though we have had frustrating moments, we have loved getting to know Eli.  He is such a joy...even at 2:00 in the morning.  He has become Matt's new favorite photo subject.  Here are a few of our favorites:

Many more updated photos to come!  For the meantime we are going to delight in every moment we get with Eli.  He is such a precious gift!

Delight yourself in the LORD and He will give you the desires of your heart. ~ Psalm 37:4