Mother's Day Weekend

We had such a great Mother's Day Weekend!  My sister and her boyfriend came to visit on Friday night from Washington, DC.  We actually got up on Saturday morning and took Emily with us to eat at Blaine's favorite breakfast joint, The Villager. She slept the whole time and did great!

see she knows to use her fork and spoon :)

On Saturday afternoon we were able to get out of the house again and take a stroll downtown Southern Pines and explore the cute shops they have to offer.  My dad and Blaine walked Emily up and down the street while us girls shopped. 

It was really nice to spend time with everyone and to have help holding Emily since that's what she likes best.    


One of the most special parts of the weekend was taking Emily to church for her baby dedication service.  I was very nervous to take her and this was the first time we'd been since she was born.  It took careful timing to have her fed and dressed but thanks to my army of help we pulled it off.  We must think she's a little baby doll b/c we couldn't wait to get her dressed for her debut.  Here's what she wore:

This Fellman Brothers dress my mom bought her complete with a bow!

Always the fashionista, these sweet little "toe blooms" completed her outfit!
Oh yeah and of course she had on ruffled bloomers!

We are so thankful that along with my family that Blaine's parents and sister were there as well as Emily's Great Grandaddy and Clareese.  It was very special to have everyone there.  There were 5 other babies also being dedicated that day.  Three of them were our friends Laura and Ches's baby girl twins and Mike and Marsha's baby girl that were all born on the same day a week and 1 day earlier than Emily.  We've had to ask for extra help in the nursery on Sunday's b/c of all the new babies!  Our families and church are so blessed to be able to dedicate these precious babies.  

After church Blaine's parents were very gracious to have everyone over to their home for lunch.  We had a great time visiting with each other.  Thanks so much for having us!  

This is such a good picture of my mom and Emily that I have to share it again. I can't believe how much she looks like a little baby doll!

Such a special Mother's Day weekend! Emily is our gift from God and she is so special to us, we just love her so much.  We're grateful for our mothers every day but now that i'm a mommy it was just a little sweeter.  Happy mother's day to all the baby mama's!

Visiting Daddy at work



I took Emily to visit her daddy, grandpa and aunt Kelli at work this week and to meet Becky and Stephennie. She did really good!

Emily and Grandpa Riney



Emily and Daddy



We also went to vote on Tuesday!  She's republican in case you're wondering :)

It was a fun trip and one of our first out with just the two of us. I'm getting more comfortable taking her out by myself. The most nerve racking part is that we're not on a schedule so i never know when we can leave or when she'll want to eat.  She's pretty much on a 2 1/2-3 hour feeding schedule but its not consistently at the same time from day to day.  :(





On Wednesday we met my friend Carrie and her newborn daughter (and Emily's BFF), Clare at Panera for a little date to get the mommies out of the house. It was great until the ride home when she was screaming at me out of hunger. I couldn't get home fast enough and of course hit every red light in town!  But we survived and will venture out again on some errands, timing them just right of course.  She likes to ride in the car though, so that's good.  And we have plans to meet up with Carrie and Clare every week to hang out. :)  We'll keep venturing out and getting more comfortable.

A day in the life of Emily

So I'm not very good at keeping this up unfortunately :( I promise to do better, but when you have a newborn in your arms all day its sort of hard to type. I'll catch you up on what we've been doing lately. 

A day in the life of Emily is pretty good.  Mostly sleeping, changing diapers and eating. We usually get out for a walk in the BOB if its not too hot.  We'll sit out on the back porch in the evenings too sometimes when its nice.

Emily has been spending lots of time on her play mat and she seems to enjoy it. We've even managed some tummy time!  Usually after she eats we need to spend some awake time before going back to sleep (according to the book anyway) and this is a good way to get that done.

She also spends some time in her swing. She'll only tolerate it for a little while.  My friend Amber visited the other day and said that her daughter had the same swing. She showed me some cool features on it so that we can move it to face outside, the TV or us having dinner (which is always quick and usually not together).  It was an ah-ha! moment, this stuff should come with an instructor! I think she likes facing outside best where she can see the trees against the sky.

We haven't brought out the bouncy seat just yet, we're saving that trick :)  And there are other toys for her to be entertained by although right now she really just like watching her friend "Fanny"-the ceiling fan in our living room. Pretty much anything that is dark on a light background she likes since i think that's all she can see.



Her Daddy likes to take her outside to check out the yard every evening when he gets home. He thought she needed to wear her sunglasses though since it was so bright out. They walk around bouncing and making sure everything is growing like it's supposed to.  Seriously, they do this everyday.

 Over the weekend Emily had her first trip to Wal-Mart. We were in and out in 20 minutes, i couldn't believe it. I just needed to pick up some parts for the breast pump so that i could start pumping some milk to give her a bottle with at night. More on that later :)  Kelli and our friend Lauren came by on Sunday for a visit and then to get out of the house we went over to her Grandpa and Grandma Riney's to watch the golf tournament. 

Its a pretty good life if you ask me!

2 weeks old today

Happy 2 week birthday to Emily!  We think she's just the cutest thing so here are some pictures from her first couple of weeks and what we've been up to. As you can see she mostly sleeps but has been increasingly alert as she's grown.  She's even starting to smile a little and not just when she's milk drunk (which is my favorite face).  Yesterday we had her 2 week doctor's appointment to check her weight and progress so far. I must be feeding her chocolate milk when she nurses b/c she weighed 6lbs 8oz the Monday after she was born (typical to lose 10% of her birth weight) and yesterday she had not only gained back to her birth weight but even added some. She weighs a whopping 7lbs 10oz now! I was thrilled b/c I had been worried about the whole nursing thing.  She got a good bill of health-praise God!  She's a good baby and just gets a little fussy in the evenings.  Some nights she'll sleep well, other not so much. We're still working on figuring out a schedule but we're doing well :) 

Emily with her Great Grandaddy (my grandaddy)

Emily and GiGi (my mom)

Emily and Grandpa Riney (Blaine's dad)

Sleep has been precious around here so we snooze when we can :) Blaine is so good at swaddling and soothing her!  He sings songs that he's made up and helps keep her calm.

This sticker says "just born" but you can't see it. Hopefully we'll remember to take a picture each month showing how much she's grown. Don't you just love the lady like pose and hair bow!

This is what she spends most of her time doing...sleeping!

This just melts my heart, such a good daddy; my cup runneth over!

Big yawn in her cute purple pj's

she's a little more alert here in this super cute outfit

We take strolls around the neighborhood in the BOB-she does really good and likes to rest her hand on the safety strap.  Its getting really hot though so we have to walk early in the morning or in the evenings. So far we haven't made it in the mornings b/c we've been napping!

so sweet

Emily does really good in the car too, usually sleeping but here she's just taking in the scenery. We still haven't ventured out with just the two of us-maybe today (YIKES!)

She's even pretty entertained by her play mat/gym thingy.  We haven't really done tummy time though, she doesn't like it :)

Here she is in her swing that her Papa G (my dad) put together!

She doesn't really like this outfit i think but i thought it was pretty cute. Not sure if yellow is her color though :)

This is just before we went to the doctor yesterday.

Such a big girl playing on her mat!



Welcome to the real world baby!

On Friday, April 20th at 7:02am we welcomed our sweet baby girl, Emily Jane into the world.  She weighed 6 lbs 15 oz and was 20 inches long.  She's absolutely perfect and we are totally in love!

And this is how it happened...Sometime around lunch on Thursday my water broke but I wasn't sure that it was my water or if I had just wet my pants.  So I decided to call the doctor and they wanted to see me right away so that they could test the fluid.  I was having some cramps (contractions) but they were only about 30 minutes apart so I was skeptical to say the least.  After a quick exam Dr. Byron instructed us to go to Labor and Delivery now!  What?!? I said "define now"...I still had things to take care of and wasn't really ready for this.  The funny thing is that at our weekly check-up on Monday, Dr. Kantorowski had said we could come in on Friday morning since she was on call and she'd break my water and see how things went. We elected not to go the induction route, I wasn't even due until Sunday 4/22, and let it happen naturally. So after running home, back to the office and issuing a life insurance policy we finally made the 5 minute ride to the hospital. 

Blaine was hoping it'd be a little more dramatic where he could speed and run over curbs but it was a fairly normal trip (we literally could have walked there).  We checked in around 7pm just as the shifts were changing and scored the best nurses (Cheryl & Tammy).  Around 8:45pm Dr. Z came in and said that we should start the pitocin to get things moving since my water had broken so much earlier in the day but I probably wouldn't deliver until 10am or 12pm the next morning. Ha! Around midnight I couldn't stand the contractions and got an epidural which was like heaven-why do people NOT get these!  We didn't get much rest though b/c my blood pressure would drop and they'd come in and give me oxygen or the baby's heart rate would drop and and they would take me off the pitocin. The best part was that I didn't feel ANYTHING...until about 6am when the "pressure" was ridiculous and she was coming NOW!  I progressed really quickly then and started pushing around 6:30AM.  It was the hardest thing I've EVER done but so totally worth it!  Blaine was a great coach (I wouldn't have been able to do it without him) and was poised with scissors ready to go but the cord was wrapped around her neck so he didn't get to cut it right away.  She also wasn't crying right away but it was such a relief to have her out.  She was active and alert and after what seemed like 5 minutes she began that sweet crying.

I still can't believe that we have a baby or that I was even pregnant. So surreal and overwhelming.  Her first two weeks have not been terrible, we seem to be getting the hang of things--she lets us know when she's hungry and when she has a dirty diaper (otherwise we have no idea why she cries!). Thank you to everyone that visited, called, texted, and prayed for us--we are so appreciative of the love you have shared.  I promise to update you with more cute pictures!

here she is on her way home!

Welcome to the real world baby...welcome to the world!

it's a song Blaine made up to help settle her down :)

Feathering the nest

it all started with the paint color (knitting needles by Benjamin Moore) then we found these gorgeous fabrics at Printer's Alley in Raleigh

The nesting instinct has definitely been kicking in these last few weeks. I think I've washed every piece of laundry I can find but mostly we've been working on getting the baby's nursery ready. Here's some pictures but you have to see it in person (its my favorite room in the house now)!

We were very blessed to have Blaine's mom, Nancy, paint the room for us (he painted the closet) and I had a local girl make the bed skirt, bumper and drapes for the room. After lots of searching online I never found anything I loved and that fit the look I wanted so that's why we had it made.



Here are some before pictures of the room that once was for guests...

 Blaine installed a "custom" closet, carefully measured and thought out based on how high I could reach :)  We found a dresser at a local shop that would be great as a changing table, had the crib ordered from Wal-Mart, a comfy rocker and ottoman ordered from Green Pea Baby in Apex, NC and re-purposed some other thing we already had.  After putting it all together, we were really pleased with how it turned out!  Just a few personal touches here and there and it really is a pretty room (if I must say so myself)!

ta-da!

this precious "door muff" came from etsy, how clever!

mirror from Lowe's

Some things from my room when I was a little girl (Beatrix Potter tea set and my mom's Shirley Temple Storybook); I also have a letter to put here but since we're not sharing the name yet, I left it out :)

This chair is so comfy: it glides and swivels!

Above the chair we added a bouquet of paper flowers and lanterns that my sweet co-workers use at my shower at work!

A little closer up shot of the drapes and our solution for the monitor.  Some more things from my room as a girl too.

The crib skirt, and bumper were sewn locally and my sweet Aunt Betty Ann made this quilt for the baby that matches perfectly. I cried when I opened it at my shower, its such a special gift that we will always treasure.

We found these prints on etsy and framed them ourselves, very cute!

My sweet Aunt Sarah gave us this little rocking chair!

My mom found this cross stitched pillow that hangs from the closet door at home and brought it to me to use.

I had to include a view of this little princess's closet since she has SO many clothes, all equally cute!

And finally a repurposed bookcase with toys, books, a night light and a little something from one of our showers (the hand made ribbon topiary courtesy of my aunts).  The little sign paraphrases one of our favorite passages of scripture that was a gift: You are a child of God...You are wonderfully made, dearly loved, and precious in His sight. Before God made you, He knew you, there is no one else like you!



We're also using my old toy box in the nursery that's already filling up.  Blaine was such a tremendous help with everything and I love that's he's so handy, I wouldn't have been able to do it with out him!  Come visit us and play in our new nursery!