Newborn Pictures

A good friend of mine, Kacy Hamar, took Jestyn's newborn pictures when she was just 5 days old.  I love them!  The only problem is now trying to choose which ones we are going to blow up.  Jestyn is such a cutie naturally, but Kacy did an excellent job with her.  I highly recommend Kacy if anyone is looking for a good photographer. Click here for her website.

Here are just a few of my favorites:

Catching Up

Ugh!  I know I'm inconsistent at blogging, but I have had really good intentions the last month or so, and our internet has been messed up at our house.  So, again, I'm way behind, and I'm missing all of Jestyn's firsts.  I'm going to attempt to catch up over the next few posts.  I'm sure many pictures will follow :)

Jestyn has taken over our lives, and we love it!  I can't imagine my life without her now.  It is so crazy how much a baby can take over your life in such a short amount of time.  Our house has been taken over by baby stuff, our schedules revolve around her, and she consumes all of my time.  She has been such a great baby though!  We are so blessed, and we know it.  I could go on and on about her cute faces and sweet noises and funny moments...and I probably will since this is my blog!  Ha!  I just want to bottle up everything about her, so I never forget any little part of her.  One thing that almost everyone says is that she is very alert for a young baby.  We have multiple pictures of her wide awake and smiling, which is so rare for her age.  I love that she is alert though!  I really think that she's advanced, and I'm not biased at all!

Here she is in the hospital still.  Looking back now, she is so tiny and has changed so much already!  We got her dressed up for some pictures that someone comes around and takes then wants you to purchase.  And of course she woke up and was a photogenic little cutie :)

I love this one of her in her daddy's hands.  

Coming home from the hospital.  She was really unsure of that car seat at first!

At first, every time we'd put her in the seat, she'd sit like a little rabbit!  I don't know what that was all about, but here's another of her doing that:

So funny!  She's gotten very used to her seat since then and is a great traveler.  She loves when the car is moving.  Her daddy was the same way when he was a baby.  Just don't get stuck at a stop light when she's cranky.  She will let you know!

Once we got home, I had many little photo shoots with her.  

5 days after she was born, we took her to Bartlesville for Thanksgiving with my dad's side of the family.  It was pretty soon to travel, but she did great and momma got some sleep while everyone else tended to her every need!  She has been so spoiled because she has so many friends and family who just can't get enough of her.  Here is how she spent most of our time at Thanksgiving.

Although, when she woke up, she was smiling for momma:)

And she got to take part in something really special.  We have 5 generations right now in our family, so we captured it.  When I was a small baby, I was in a 5-generation picture too, so I have now been in two.  That is rare, but my dad was in a 5-generation picture when he was a small baby, so now he's been in three.  That is unheard of and very cool!

Here is the first time I washed her hair.  It was not completely fun...ok, she hated it...

 ...but afterward she calmed down and looked so cute!

Her first bath was just as rough.  She hated it too.

So dramatic.  I am happy to report that the 2nd time we did both, she was much calmer and has been since.  She actually loves getting her hair washed.  I think she likes to be pampered :)

Here is another morning that we just laid in bed and had picture time.  Her daddy was talking to her, and I love the way she looks at him.  She has turned toward both of our voices since coming home, and it melts our hearts that she knows her parents.

Our dogs have been so great with her too.  They are very protective of their sister already, especially if she starts crying.  They both get very worried about her.  Cassius always wants to be right beside her.

This one is blurry, but I caught her laughing. 

These next few were another morning that we were just laying around and she was making the funniest expressions!

and my favorite of that morning...

...such a sweet smile:) 

Jestyn Reese

My baby girl is here!  Jestyn Reese was born on Saturday, November 20, 2010 at 1:21pm.  She weighed 7 lb 15 oz and was 21 inches long.  She is perfect :)

I know that I have been a really inconsistent blogger, but this whole time I was convinced that as soon as she was born I would post about it.  I didn't want to lose any memory of her, and I wanted to make sure that I documented everything when it happened.  So I just knew I would post about her and my delivery and pictures and my feelings the day she came.  Then they placed her in my arms and this face looked up at me....

...and then my angel smiled at me.....

...and I was in love.  I didn't want to do anything except hold her and stare at her.  Seriously, what newborn is this alert and expressive 10 minutes after entering the world?  She's so special.  So anyway, I'm going to attempt to catch up.  I guess I'll start with my labor and delivery story. Then I'll have to do a post later to document her first week.

Dr. Strebel was on vacation until Friday, the 19th, so I was given strict orders to not have my baby without her.  I really thought I'd end up having to be induced sometime the week after her due date, but I listened to my doctor and didn't do any activity the week prior to my due date (the 20th).  Once she got back to town Friday, I started walking, trying to move this process along.  Anita and I walked, went to watch Unstoppable (side note: I love Denzel :) and the movie was awesome), then walked some more.  I didn't feel any different and didn't even feel like she'd started to drop.  But Saturday morning about 4:00am, I woke up with cramps.  Still didn't think anything of it, until I realized I was getting cramps every 30 min...and it finally dawned on me that I could be having contractions!  I was very calm, and decided to get up an take a shower at 6:00, just to see if the hot water would ease the cramping.  Nope.  So I woke up Jimmy at 6:30 to tell him it would probably be happening sometime that afternoon/evening.  We were calm, and even discussed going to breakfast at Jimmy's Egg, then coming home to clean up.  However, by about 7:00, my contractions started getting closer together-about every 7-10 minutes-and a little stronger.  I told Jimmy to go ahead and get ready, just in case.  By 7:30, I was sternly telling him to get me to the hospital:)  I thought they might send me home, but I wanted to make sure I didn't have a baby at my house. 

We get to the hospital and finally found labor triage.  I walk up to the 3 nurses and calmly tell them I'm in labor.  They asked me if it was my first child?  Yes.  When is my due date?  Today.  How long have I been having contractions?  Almost 4 hours, but they have gotten stronger in the last hour.  When was my last appointment?  2 days ago.  How dilated was I?  1 cm.  The longer I stand there, I realize they don't believe me that I'm in labor.  And I realized by my answers that it sounded pretty unlikely.  But I was still irritated and just wanted them to check.  So they do and it turns out that I'm completely effaced and dilated to a 5 already!  Give me the epidural!  I'm pretty sure I said that more than once.  Not so much because I was in major pain, but did not want to get it too late.  They start an IV and do all the blood work, etc, and about 45 minutes later, my water breaks, and I'm dilated to a 9.  Still don't have the epidural.  My contractions became much stronger and closer together.  I'm swiftly moved to a delivery room and the anesthesiologist finally shows up for my epidural, which I barely remember even feeling the shot after those contractions I was having.  I think I told that doctor I loved him about 4 times.  So after that shot I'm feeling good, until I started feeling contractions again and my blood pressure started dropping.  I'm still not sure what happened, but they had to give me a shot to stop my contractions to get my blood pressure under control, then give me another shot to start them again.  Craziness.  If that wouldn't have happened, she probably would've been here about 11:00am.  Anyway, Jimmy and my sister were both in the room.  My delivery was very smooth after that and I didn't have to push too many times.  I was just so exhausted and so excited at the same time.  Oh, and my nurse even admitted to me later that they did think I was nuts when I arrived, they were taking bets that I was in false labor, and that I was way too calm to be dilated to a 5.  I knew it!

So after all of that, I was given the most beautiful girl in the world.  I could not have dreamed I would fall in love with her so quickly and that my world would change so drastically.  I know that I am extremely blessed, not only because I had a great pregnancy and a fairly uneventful and quick delivery, but because Jestyn is just the most incredible baby.  I know I'm biased, but she truly is perfect.  And I'm the luckiest girl in the world to have my husband.  I never doubted that he would be a good dad.  I always knew he'd be awesome.  But he is just the proudest dad I've ever seen.  He's so hands-on and helpful and could possibly be even more smitten than I am with her.  And I'm pretty sure that every time I see him hold her I fall more in love with him.

Baby Shower Weekend

Last weekend, our friends threw us 2 different showers.  We were surrounded by so many friends, and they were both better than I could've imagined!  We have the most incredible friends, and everyone was so awesome to us.  God continues to show us how blessed we are!

First up was a couple's shower at the Bradt's on Friday night.  They are THE most generous and thoughtful couple.  We had an Italian feast.  She made her homemade spaghetti sauce and the most beautiful cheesecake!  I am terrible and forgot my camera, so I don't have any pictures of all of our friends...but check out this cheesecake!

My other shower was Sunday after church at the Hughes' house.  I had so many friends show up!  I felt like a very lucky and loved girl.  Again, I didn't take my camera.  I need to work on that.  Seriously.  But I did get some pictures from people smart enough to remember their cameras:

Here are all of my beautiful hostesses with me behind the yummy food!  From left: Staci, Heather, me, Erika, Christina, Mindy, Nicole, and Teryn.  I love these girls!  They were so great to me!

And another cake!  I'm pregnant, so I can get excited about cake.  This one was tres leches though, made by Yvette, who made our wedding cakes.  I LOVE tres leches cake!  I know that not everyone does.  But it's so moist and not too sweet...mmmm....

Pile of presents!  Told ya, I'm a lucky girl.

One of the games they played was having everyone make a baby with Play-Doh.  I was supposed to pick a winner...and had no idea how hard it would be!  Some of these babies were DETAILED!  I couldn't believe how cute some of them turned out:

The orange baby in this bottom picture was the winner.  She was super detailed.  Check out the bent legs.  Wow.  And you can't tell from this view, but she also had fingers, toes, and was realistic EVERYWHERE.  Nice job, Holly.

Becca (my sister), me, JFlem (or the other Jessica, whose last name is no longer Fleming), and Leah.  Aww, sweet SWOSU memories with these girls.

As you can see, it was a great day filled with great friends and family!  Like I said, Jimmy and I feel so blessed to have such wonderful people in our lives.  We are really so appreciative!

Now we get to find places to put all this great stuff.....

Lately...

So I'll start with what I ended my last post talking about.  It has now been so long ago, but Jimmy's mom, sister, and nephew came to visit us in August.  They came for Watonga Days, and we were so excited to get to spend some time with them.  We've only been around his nephew, Ramerio, once before, and that was last October, so we were very excited to spend some more time with him.  He is SUCH a cutie, but I may be biased because he looks identical to Jimmy's baby pictures.  I didn't get all of the good pictures uploaded, but here's one:

He only spent a few days with us, but I'm pretty sure we were both completely in love with this kid :) He was infatuated with his uncle and did not like being away from him at all.  He stayed with us every night while his mom got a little break in Watonga, and he only got upset and cried if Jimmy left the room.  It was crazy how completely attached he became to Jimmy in such a short amount of time.  I'm pretty sure Jimmy was just as attached too.  He turned 19 months during their visit.  He also became pretty good friends with Cassius.  By the time they left he and Cassius would just follow each other around as he yelled, no no Cassius!  So cute!  We miss him like crazy!

It is officially football season!  Thank goodness!!  I've missed it!  Now if the weather would just cool off...
With football season comes fantasy football.  Yes, I'm a total fanatic of fantasy football, although so far my teams are struggling, and it has been frustrating for me.  I have players that are good, solid performers and they just haven't put up big numbers in the first two weeks.  Of my 3 teams combined, over the last 2 weeks, I've only won one game.  Upsetting.  I'm going to have to ask some of them to step up and live up to their hype.

In addition to my fantasy teams struggling, I'm a little concerned about my OU Sooners.  We are 3-0, but struggled against Utah State and Air Force...huh?  I didn't see either game, but that doesn't seem like it should be happening.  I am encouraged by the way we throttled Florida State.  I just hope we play more like that in the future.  

Pregnancy update: I'm still pregnant, still getting bigger every day, still feeling my baby girl move around more and more frequently.  Still have acne, have developed heartburn, and my feet have started to swell if I overdo it.  But the good still by far outweighs the bad.  I am 31 weeks along and still not much more prepared than I was a month ago!  I called to join the birthing classes, and they informed me they could get me in during December...um, that probably won't help me much!  So I'm going to have to do some research myself I guess.  I'm sure I'll survive no matter what, but I just feel like I should prepare myself a little.  I'm sure I'll post pictures of my nursery someday, but it is so far from looking like a nursery right now that it's ridiculous. Eh, it'll happen eventually.

The Great State Fair of Oklahoma is in full swing!  We went on opening night to partake in the goodness that is called fair food!  I am slightly embarrassed at the amount that I ate, but I of course had to get the fried cheese on a stick.  Yummy.  I can't describe how much I love those things, and I really don't understand why you can't get them anywhere else at any other time of year.  The only crazy thing I tried this year was the chocolate covered bacon.  Not terrible actually.  It tasted like salty chocolate and there wasn't much bacon flavor.  I wouldn't go back and spend money on it though.  

This is season premiere week for all of the good TV shows, and I'm pretty excited.  Tonight was the premiere of The Event.  NBC has been promoting this like crazy and I had no clue what it was about.  I hadn't seen any real previews or read anything on it, so I thought I'd watch just to see.  Well, I still have no clue what it's about!  But it sucked me in.  I was thoroughly confused the first 30 minutes or so.  Things started coming together a little bit toward the end, but you end up with more questions than answers, and I'm fairly confident that is how the entire season will go.  The last thing I need is to watch another TV show, but I'm pretty intrigued.  I'm a little upset that it interferes with Monday Night Football though.  We'll see if I decide to keep watching.

We are having a couples baby shower and another baby shower this weekend.  I'm so excited to see all my friends!  Hopefully I'll be motivated to take some pictures and update my blog afterward :)

Catching Up

So...once again, I have failed to blog lately.  I  have missed some big stuff in the last few weeks, so I'm going to do a little catch-up post.

First, I'll be 28 weeks tomorrow!  Whew!  3rd trimester, which sounds so close to meeting my baby girl!  I am very ready, but not feeling at all prepared still.  I'm working on it though.  My nesting instincts have somewhat kicked in, and I'm busy cleaning out the nursery and trying to make room for all of the necessary baby stuff.  I've always felt like my house is lacking storage space, and that feeling has magnified now!  Babies require a lot of stuff, which is equivalent to a lot of space that I don't feel like I have.  Oh well, we'll make it work.  I also am going to register tomorrow!  Doing that will make me feel like I've accomplished a big task!  It may not seem like a lot, but looking at everything tends to overwhelm me!  Again, there is SO much stuff they need!

She is moving around like crazy now.  I love it!  I've just started feeling her more consistently.  And she still lets me sleep at night!  I really, really hope that continues.  I love my sleep, and I have accepted the fact that I won't get to enjoy it near as much in my future!  I feel really large, but I'm also aware that I'm not nearly as large as I'll be a few weeks from now.  And next week, my doctor's appointment is the dreaded glucose test.  I've been told all about it, so I hope I can down the drink quickly and without much nastiness.  After that, I'll start having bi-weekly appointments, which I know will make the time fly by even quicker.

A big event that I missed...and possibly I did this subconsciously :) was my big birthday.  Yep, I'm officially 30.  Weird stuff.  I don't feel it at all.  I'm not sure what it's supposed to feel like, but 30 has always seemed like it would be life-altering.  We didn't do much, which I was just fine with!  Jimmy took me out to eat at Castle Falls, a local German restaurant.  It was something different for us, and we both had a good time just talking about our future and how different this next year will be for us.  We are so excited to be at this point in our lives, and it was really fun spending my "big" day with my favorite person!

Well, the other topic I want to blog about involves pictures, so I will have to wait until I upload those onto my computer.  Maybe in the next few days?  Or maybe next month at the rate I've been going.  I have a lot of nesting to do in the near future, you know!

23 weeks

I will be 23 weeks along tomorrow!  Crazy.  Everyone has told me that the last half of pregnancy goes much faster than the first half, and so far that has absolutely been true.  I feel like these next few months will fly by too.  Not that I mind.  I cannot wait to hold my baby girl.  I cannot wait to see what she will look like.  I cannot wait to smell her.  I especially cannot wait to watch my husband holding her.  Aw, that will melt my heart :)

All that being said, I feel like I'm not prepared at all!  The nursery is not even close to being ready.  I have a lot of work to do on that.  Once that is ready for her arrival, I'm sure I'll feel much better!  Oh, and the whole labor thing...I have no clue about that.  Any part of it.  I should probably take some birthing classes or read a book or something.  I feel like that is something I will feel better about once I study a little.

I still feel great though, thank the Lord!  Other than my crazy left hip and looking like I'm a teenager again with my acne, I have had a wonderful pregnancy so far.  And I am starting to feel her moving!  I just LOVE it.  It's just the cute little flutters so far.  I have only had one or two swift kicks, so I may take that whole LOVE statement back when I'm trying to get some sleep in the near future!

So other than pregnancy and my whole life changing, everything else is going great too.  I joined my sister, parents, and grandparents today to take a trip to Eischen's.  Yummy.  It had been months since I'd been, and I just love it every time I go.  My mom and grandparents had never been, but I think it was a successful trip all around.  Gotta love their fried chicken and okra.  And the nachos.  Mmmm.....Anyway, it was an impromptu party for my mom as tomorrow is her birthday!  Glad I got to see her and spend some awesome family time.  I'm hoping to spend the rest of the weekend with some good friends, a little relaxing, and maybe even a little nursery cleaning.  Maybe.