Reed's First Birthday Party

Reed turned one on a Saturday so we had his party on his actual birthday. I decided to go with a modernish theme of colors and circles. My friend Elizabeth made his cake and she did such an awesome job! Not only was it totally adorable, it was addictively delicious.

I painted some plain letters to go over the table and cut out circles to hang from the window. (I took this after we ate - whoops!)
My friend Lisa made this cute birthday banner. I wanted to do something with the mantle but ran out of time. I was thinking maybe putting his monthly pictures would be cute but oh well.
We grilled chicken, steak and shrimp kabobs. They were all good but the shrimp were delicious! I got the recipe here. Look for sweet and spicy honey shrimp. I haven't figured out how to copy the whole link.
I made stuffed bleu cheese potatoes, also from the above site. Even those who dislike bleu cheese loved these!
I made these cookies sort of at the last minute. I do not love how they looked but they tasted good.
I dipped some pretzel sticks as well and they were a big hit. Other goodies included pigs in a blanket, chicken nuggets, fruit and veggies and a cheeseball and crackers.
I found these colorful sodas at Walgreens. I was planning to buy some blue cream soda as well but for some reason decided to wait until the day of the party and the store was sold out.
Ms. Honey came to see Reed and celebrate with us. She brought her granddaughter Austin, too.

After we ate we opened gifts. Reed seemed to enjoy the process but I am not sure he was as interested as his brother and cousins were.

After gifts it was time for cake!
He started out slowly, just taking teensy bites.
But pretty soon he demolished his smash cake!
We had a wonderful time celebrating Reed's first of many birthdays. We are so blessed to have this little man in our lives! His birthday is also our wedding anniversary. I can't think of a better way to celebrate our marriage than the birth of our son!

A Year Ago Today

A year ago today our lives changed when my water broke at 32 weeks and 3 days pregnant. I wrote this post that day and blogged pretty much daily through the next 7 days of my hospital bedrest and throughout Reed's NICU stay.

So many emotions run through me when I think about this time last year. I was scared because our baby was so far from his due date. I was surprised. I mean, who expects their water to break just in the middle of the day while you're at work doing the same thing you do 5 days a week? I was excited. We didn't know the gender of our baby and I was possibly VERY close to meeting him/her!

The whole experience was surreal. It felt dream like. I felt like I was being silly sitting in the doctor's office. I really thought they would tell me to quit peeing on myself and go back to work. But they didn't. They told me to go check in at L&D and that I could possibly be there for up to 4 weeks before I had the baby. Brad was in Louisiana so my dad was with me. I remember getting hooked up to the monitors and finding out I was having contractions every 3 minutes. I remember nearly passing out after they started my IV. I remember getting steroid shots that hurt like the dickens. I remember being so glad when Brad finally arrived. I remember being giddy after getting stadol and phenergan to help ease the pain of the contractions that night.

Most of all, I remember quiet time with God. Some friends from church were at a Beth Moore event in Memphis and they were praying for me. Friends of my parents in Russia were praying for me. Friends across the country were praying for me. I remember waking up around 6 the next morning and feeling like God's arms were wrapped around me and that someone was praying for me right then. It was amazing. God had gotten my attention. I believe he had been preparing me for this time.

Throughout the pregnancy I had several dreams about our baby. I had six dreams we had a boy. In three of those dreams he was born early. In two of those three I met him in the NICU. I only had one dream I had a girl. A couple of weeks before I ended up in the hospital I had a very specific feeling that we would have a baby early. Will was 3 weeks early and I always felt he would be born before his due date and I felt the same way with Reed's pregnancy. But this feeling was different. I felt like we would have a preterm baby. It really shook me up but I dismissed the feeling and told myself I was being silly. I feel like God was trying to say "Hey Sarah! You're going to have a BOY! And he will be early!" I guess if we have a third child I will pay more attention to those things!

Even though this time last year wasn't particularly fun, I would do it over again in a heartbeat. I met some wonderful people and made new friends. And of course Reed was worth every minute of it! I am so thankful for good medical care and an attentive doctor and nurses. Because of what they did, Reed was able to stay inside me for 7 more days. I will forever be grateful to my doctor and nurses and to God for performing the miracles He did.

11 Months

Reed,

You are ELEVEN months old! Just one more month before your first birthday!


You have too much to do these days to sit still and take a picture with your bunny. I tried and tried but couldn't get one. So I tried sitting the bunny next to you but you kept knocking him down before I could get a decent picture!

So I enlisted the help of Daddy. Here you are smiling when Daddy walked in. You love Daddy.
And here is one of the only pictures I could get of you sitting with the bunny. Pitiful. But look how big you are!

You weigh about 24 lbs now. You wear size 4 diapers and mostly 12-18 month clothes. Since the weather has been cooler I got out Will's old shoes and you have outgrown some of them before you even wore them! Right now you can wear a size 4 or 5! You have 5 (almost 6!) teeth and your hair is growing quickly!

You are crawling/creeping everywhere and you love to pull up and cruise the furniture. Sometimes you stand on your own but you haven't attempted to walk yet. You are BUSY. You get into everything. You pull tuperware out of the cabinet and books off the shelf. You love when I am loading or unloading the dishwasher and you constantly try and climb and sit on the door and pull silverware out of the basket. You love balls and books and pushing things. You love Will's vacuum so maybe you need one of your own!

You sing "E-I-E-I-O" from Old McDonald and you have started saying "No no" and sometimes "Nana" as well as "mama" and "dada". Ms. Honey says you can say "eat" but I haven't heard it yet.

You are only taking sippy cups with whole milk now and are eating all table foods. You love bananas and ravioli and anything sweet. You also love green beans and peas. Will would gladly give you all of his.

We will be celebrating your first birthday very soon and I can't wait! Though I can't lie, I am kind of sad that you are growing up so fast.

Love,

Mommy

10 Months Old

**This post will be moved to August where it belongs...evenutally :) **

Reed,

You are TEN months old! We have hit the double digits and there is no turning back now! Look how much that bunny shrunk!

You are becoming a BUSY boy. You like to get into things. You fooled Mommy up until this point by making me think you wouldn't be as much of a handful as Will. Sly little thing.

You are now crawling up on your knees! I think this is called creeping? Nana would know... You kept the army crawl for quite a while then all of a sudden you were UP! And moving fast! You love to play with balls and you laugh a lot! You are cruising the furniture and can even stand up for a few seconds without holding on to anything!

You are eating more and more table foods and still eat quite a bit of baby food. You still take bottles 3-4 times a day though we are working you getting you used to a sippy cup.You are wearing size 4 diapers and mostly 12-18 month clothes with a few 6-12 month things still thrown in there. You are long and lean compared to how Will was at this age. I still get tickled when I put some of his old pjs on you and they are so baggy in the sides.

Your hair is growing quickly and coming in sort of blonde! You have 4 teeth and a 5th one will likely come in soon. See them chompers?

We went to see Dr. Mallette, your opthamologist, for the first time. They dilated your eyes, poor baby. He said that you are far sighted and that you definitely have a blocked tear duct. He wants us to put antibiotic ointment in your eye and massage it to see if it will come open. We will go back and see him in October and if it is still blocked, he will perform surgery to open it. I would hate to put you through that, but we want your eye better!

We enjoy you more and more everyday. It is exciting to see you learn and do new things, but could you please slow down the growing? I love you!

Mommy

Photoshoot, Take Too Sweet

Reed is a mama's boy for sure, but Gigi got some good snuggles in while I took pictures.

These are Will's feet. That's the only part of him that made it in this post!

I love this of my baby boy. He was mesmerized by the sand.

I love this shot, too. I like the sand glob falling down from his hand.

Mmmm...gritty!

8 Months

Reed,
You are eight months old! 3/4 of a year! Wow.

Look how big you have gotten! I am not sure how much you weigh but you have filled out so much recently! I would guess that is because you take five bottles a day, sometimes totalling 35 ounces AND you are eating 4 containers of baby food, 2 at lunch and 2 at dinner. I have given you a sippy cup and you mainly play with it.

I have a hard time getting you to eat green foods. You gag with green beans and avacado and you barely tolerate peas. You love squash, carrots, sweet potatoes, apples, mango and pears. Sometimes you will eat bananas. You eat so much orange stuff, your nose now has an orange tint to it! You love biter biscuits and get goo all over yourself when you have one and you SCREAM if you drop it and can't find it.

You are wearing some 6 month clothes, some 9 month and a few 12 or 18 month things. You are wearing a size 3 diaper and your belly has gotten so round recently I don't know how much longer you will fit in those!

Your hair has grown a lot in the last month and it is hard to tell what color it will be. It mainly seems to be light brown but there is quite a bit of blonde and gold mixed in and sometimes it looks red. Your right eye still has a blocked tear duct and I made an appointment for you to see an opthamologist in August. I am hoping it will decide to open on it's own before then, but if not I suppose we will have to get it probed. :( Either way I can't wait for it to clear up. You get very annoyed with me cleaning it.

You have become so busy lately. You roll everywhere and can push yourself backward with your feet when you are on your back. You do a decent job at sitting up though you are still quite wobbly. When you are on your belly you raise your arms and legs and squirm so it looks like you are swimming. I haven't seen you try to get up on your knees yet but I doubt it will be long. Just tonight you rolled over to your bumbo and were trying to pull up on it. Then in the bathtub you flipped yourself out of your mesh seat. I was right there, of course, and caught you before your head got close to the water but you surprised me!

You love to smile at me and daddy and Will. You also smile big for Ms. Honey. Most other people you are sort of cautious with and aren't as free with your sweet grins. When I come to pick you up from Ms. Honey's or the church nursery, you usually smile at me then fuss until I have you in my arms. You are pretty much a momma's boy and I am totally fine with that! Speaking of the church nursery, you nearly got kicked out again last Sunday. After church you were being held out in the hallway. I think there is just too much going on in there for you to relax so you get aggitated.

You are generally calm and happy, but do throw some fits when we do something unthoughtful like take the remote from you after you have stolen it. You get downright mad. It is kind of funny to watch because as soon as you get what you want back, the tears stop.

You are still sleeping through the night!!! We usually put you in your crib between 7:30 and 9:00 depending on how the day/evening went and you sleep until 6:30 and 8:30. You take 2 or 3 naps during the day, lasting anywhere from 30 minutes to 3 hours.

You don't have any teeth yet and I hope you will get them soon! You have had bouts of crankiness and lots of drooling and chewing on things. I feel some bumps on your gums so we may see them break through soon!

We love you so much and you are such a precious addition to our family!

Love,

Mommy

Safe

I think...
it is safe to say...

our preemie days...

are behind us.

7 Months

Reed,

You are 7 months old (yesterday)! You are getting so big!

You are eating baby food twice a day now and take five or six 6-7 oz bottles. So far you have had carrots (love), sweet potatoes (love), squash (love), bananas (love), green peas (tolerate), apples (love) and green beans (make you cry). Tonight we tried pears for the first time and you made some awful faces but then seemed to like it. You don't really like rice cereal and I can't blame you. That stuff is bland! You are doing fairly well with the sippy cup and seem to enjoy playing with it.

You are teething and though none are about to poke through, I doubt it will be long. You gnaw on
fingers and blankets and burp cloths and teething rings. Everything goes to your mouth. You aren't quite sitting up on your own but can kind of sit/lean for a mintue. You seem to be a good ways from crawling and I am not in a hurry for you to! You can roll from your belly to back quickly and often but I haven't see you go from back to belly. You are very good at grabbing things and holding onto them. You especially love to grab hair and necklaces!

You have so much personality. You are usually sooooo happy but are definitely opinionated when it comes time to eat or sleep. You nearly got kicked out of the church nursery yesterday because you were so tired and the nursery workers couldn't get you to sleep. They were just about to page me when the director was able to get you to dreamland.

You love to SHRIEK now and make goo-goo ga-ga noises. It is precious and I love to hear you babble. You almost always smile at me, daddy and Will. Will adores you and has his own baby talk voice he speaks to you in.

You have pretty much grown out of your 3-6 month clothes and mostly wear 6-12 month things. You have moved up to size 3 diapers and are wearing 0-6 month shoes. Your looks have changed a lot to me and sometimes you look like Will but most of the time you don't.

Check out how much you look like a Gibbs:

You still have a blocked tear duct in the right eye and sometimes it drains soooo much. I know you hate for us to clean it and I hate for it to look gunky. I am hoping it clears up very soon. I know the best option is for it to open up on its own but I worry that we will have to take you to an opthamologist to fix it. If it isn't open by July, Dr. Rogers is going to refer us to one.


You were not very happy with me when I was trying to take your monthly picture today:


You seemed better when I gave you a paci.

But then you got mad again and I decided a quick nap was in order. So this bunny pic will have to do for the month:

You make me smile so much and I feel so blessed and happy to be your mommy!

Love,
Mommy