Madeline’s First Week Home

After 2.5 days in the hospital, James and I were ready to bring little Miss Madeline home to her new world. And I happy to say that I think she rather likes her new home. She has wasted no time in spreading her things all over the house – diapers, burp cloths, blankets, etc. Overall it has been a great first week!

We came home on a Saturday, and my parents were here until Tuesday morning. Then our sis Jessica arrived Tuesday evening, so we’ve had such great help as we transition to life with a newborn. Both my parents & Jessica have been willing to stay up with Madeline for the “first watch” at night, so I’ve been getting a few hours sleep before the feed/burp/change diaper cycle interrupts the night hours. That has been great! And we've had friends bringing us food and meals. Jessica has been off to the city for the weekend, so the last few nights have been our first taking care of baby just the two of us…it’s been going well, but I think we’re both excited for that day when you get a straight 6 or 7 hours of sleep again.

Here we are all ready to come home from the hospital:

We spent a lot of time cuddling with her this week.

She’s had her first baths, and hasn’t minded them too much.

Madeline is learning to make her demands known.

We are working on quality burp sessions in effort to minimize spitting up.

And since we aren’t hiring a professional photographer for infant photos, I’ve been trying to get a few photo sessions in with a new camera we got for Christmas from my parents. I haven’t hit any professional quality photos yet, but I have captured some of the many faces of Madeline.

We have absolutely loved becoming parents to this little girl, and I think it's still settling in to both James and me that she is ours to raise for the next 18+ years. God has blessed us so much with Madeline, and we are prayerful and excited for all that it means to be a mother and father to her. Here's to many more good weeks, kiddo!

Nursery Chronicles 3: The Grand Finale

Here is my final Nursery Chronicles Post:

http://typezofa.tumblr.com/post/15276803248/nursery-chronicles-3-the-grand-finale

Waiting for Baby

I realize that still waiting two days after your due date is not a big deal…a due date is an approximation and the baby could come several days (or even weeks) on either side of your due date. But after waiting 9 months, one becomes quite attached to that day – you want to meet your little child as soon as possible!

My parents flew in on Dec. 27 to stay with us and be here when the baby is born – they wanted to help out with all the new challenges that come in that first week after bringing baby home….laundry, cooking, cleaning, etc. But so far we’ve had 5 days of them helping us sans baby. I think we are all getting pretty anxious for the big arrival, so we’ve all been happy to keep ourselves occupied in other ways.

What have we been up to?

1. Cleaning

Curtis and my mom have done all sorts of deep cleaning around our house that I don’t quite get to all the time (or ever!). Like Curtis dusting all of our kitchen cabinets & cleaning out the vacuum, or my mom wiping down all the slats in our shades and cleaning out the window grooves. Thanks, parents, for help with all this deep cleaning!

1. 2. Finishing up nursery projects

As much as I was hustling the last several months to prepare for this baby, our nursery just didn’t progress as quickly as I would have liked. As in, James and I were finally painting the crib with less than a week before our due date. So once my parents got here, they sprung into action and helped us finish up the nursery. James and Curtis set up the crib, my mom and I went shopping for some fun nursery accessories, and all 4 of us tackled making and haning a pelmet box over the window. The making of the box wasn’t too hard, but the hanging part turned out to be quite the difficult process. But I am very happy to say that our nursery is finally cleaned, clutter free, and fully ready for baby!

Curtis and me making the pelmet box:

Curtis & James on round 3 of figuring out how to hang it:

Mom & me doing some nursery organization:

1. 3. Prepping for teaching

At the end of December, James was offered a job as an adjunct professor in the philosophy department at Wheaton College. This turned out to be a HUGE answer to prayer for us…it will pay pretty well, keep us on Wheaton’s health insurance through July, and will provide James a job that he will love. And in the meanwhile he is still going to stay on in his master’s program part-time. But this did mean that James had about 2.5 weeks to prepare two courses from scratch – he’ll be teaching two sessions of Philosophy 101, and 1 session of Kierkegaard. So, in between all of our preparations for baby, James has been hustling to draft up course syllabi and assignments, read enough about Kierkegaard to be able to teach a 300 level college course on him, get books ordered at the bookstore for students, etc. No matter when our lady decides to show up, James will be teaching his first college courses starting January 9!

Eating & Shopping!

We’ve also managed to eat lots of yummy food, hit up a few fun restaurants (including a cool Greek restaurant for New Year’s Eve), and stake out the Wheaton College game room with Chicago Deep Dish for the Husky game. It was great – we had the whole room to ourselves, with pool tables, air hockey, foosball, shuffleboard, and a monster big screen TV. Would have been a perfect night if the Huskies had actually won! We’ve also explored several shopping centers, and sweet Curtis has tagged along with no complaints. We’ve purchased a Pack-N-Play at Costco, some organizational goods at Ikea, and some fun nursery accessories.

Out for New Year's Eve:

So I guess we certainly haven’t been bored, and it’s been really nice to have family here to help us finish prepping for the baby. But every night I go to bed hoping I wake up with labor pains…we’ll see what today brings!