Knowin the Rowans

Back to Blogging

2011-02-27T14:15:00.003-05:00

One thing that I have discovered about myself during this journey is that I don’t have a future in a blogging career. I am still ticking along with this weight loss thing, but I still have a long way to go to my goal weight. I am not sure that I have it in me to get there. I am getting a little bored with this and tired of maintaining the discipline required to lose weight. I generally have no problem choosing the correct kind of foods to eat, it just comes down to the amount of food that I eat. Even after 38 days of this, I still struggle with portion control. Anyway, here are some pics. Its been a few weeks since posting pics, but here you go.

The Wall

2011-02-13T21:02:00.004-05:00

The Facts: Lost roughly 14 lbs in 28 days. My jump up in weight this morning is probably from the half gallon of zero calorie sweet tea that I drank last night. Though I feel like I am making good progress, I believe that I have hit my a wall a month into this thing. My weight loss has stalled out, My diet is becoming bland and my workouts are starting to get boring. How do I get through this? What will keep me motivated? Is the answer more cardio? How can I shock my body again?
I just had a conversation with a couple of friends on Saturday and it confirmed/reminded me that weight loss and weight management is 99% about diet. Someone once told me that you can never out run what you eat...meaning that in the long term, exercise is never enough to overcome a bad diet. I believe that diet is the key to getting my body to react the way I want it to. No pics again this week, I got too lazy. Maybe next week.

Preparing for the Super Bowl

2011-02-02T19:17:00.006-05:00

Here is my game plan heading into a Super Bowl party. My kryptonite is a table full of party food. I can distinctly remember one time I was hanging out with a friend named Vince at a big gathering. We literally stood around a table full of party food for over an hour talking and we didn't stop putting food in our mouths the entire time. After an hour we both looked at each other and said, "holy crap, we have been stuffing our faces for an hour and didn't even know it."

Now I have always been a believer that one meal never kills a diet, but it can be a major set back or even worse a trigger that leads to days or weeks of binge eating. One time a Thanksgiving meal did that to me. I had been trying to lose some weight and then Thanksgiving came. I ate two absolutely huge meals that day and for some reason, that sent me into a downward spiral of over eating until my New Year's resolution came about month later.

Back to my plan for this Sunday, the first thing I am going to do is to change my expectations. I am going to preemptively remove any guilt associated eating too much. I mean come on, its a super bowl party and I have to expect that I am going to eat a few more calories than normal. I am making a deal with myself and giving myself permission to indulge a little. I will attempt to off set some of calories by getting in an extra workout (cardio) on Saturday or Sunday.

Secondly, I can not go into the party with an empty belly. If I go into it hungry, I'll fail. I'm too much of a foodie to win that battle . I may drink a big glass of milk or something before I head over there. It'll fill my belly some, make me feel fuller prior to eating because my body will be trying to digest all the protien and fat in the milk.

Finally...location, location, location. Once I eat, I need to get away from the table. I can not hover around the food table or I will turn into a bovine at a feeding trough. Luckily, the place I'm going has the media room downstairs and the kitchen is upstairs. It's going to take some serious effort to head upstairs and graze. Good luck this Sunday to anybody following my blog.

Sustainability

2011-01-30T21:00:00.019-05:00

The Facts: I have lost 9 lbs in 12 days so far. I started at 258 and I weighed in this morning at 249. I am currently 5 below my pacing line which would put me about 14 days ahead of schedule.

Sustainability – being able to sustain things long term. I have went about this weight loss with a whole different mindset that I have on previous attempts. My goals was not just to lose weight (which I have done on a number of occasions), but rather it was to settle in on a somewhat normal lifestyle that would reduce my weight my “body’s natural weight” (whatever the heck that is) and then I would hopefully stay there long term. The trend of my adult life has been a slow perpetual weight gain, where I would slowly creep up to near 250 or 260, and then I would crash diet and lose 40 or so lbs and then the slow weight gain would start back up again. I knew in the back of my mind that I could not keep this pattern up long term. This time around I am searching for the new normal on food and exercise that isn’t forced, looks and feels natural and doesn’t disrupt my family. Am I there yet…no, not yet, but I am slowly finding out what works and what doesn’t.

For example: Last Thursday my dinner consisted of a Wendy’s Chili and a baked potato. I didn’t feel like it was enough calories, but I stopped there anyway. I went to bed a little hungrier than usual. The next morning I got up and I worked out, and then my normal breakfast of two eggs, cheese, black beans and salsa was not enough. That usually is enough to tide me over to my protein shake 3 hours later. But since I didn’t give myself enough calories the night before, my body burned through breakfast too fast, thus leaving me hungry again an hour or two later. It threw my whole day off since I was snacks during times I wasn’t used to.

Day 1 Day 12

The Restaurant Dilemma

2011-01-26T20:26:00.004-05:00

When I go out to a restaurant, I am always trying to determine one of two paths to take: do I exercise restraint with the choices I make or do I let loose and enjoy this treat. Here lies the proplem...one indulgent meal won't bury me. In theory this is true, but in practicality it could bury me. Ask any teacher "does one missing homework assignment put me in danger of failing, or is it the culmination of missing homework assignments?" I think the answer is yes to both.

Restaurant food is a special food that is different from the food that I make at home. That is why I want to eat as much as I can while I am out because it tastes so good. Will I never be able to stuff my face until my body falls into a food coma again? Restaurants can be a very dangerous place for people like me who have struggle with portion control. People like my wife don't seem to struggle with going out to eat. She doesn't seem to have this dilemma that I do. I know that I can't flip a switch and be like her, but I have found that the following works best for me.

My solution to this issue is that I have to make the decision about how I am going to eat prior to arriving at the restaurant. Like my pastor said at church on Sunday: "Plan your work and work your plan." If I am going out to a Mexican restaurant...yes, I will allow myself to eat chips and salsa or no I will not. If I'm heading out to a steakhouse...yes, I will chose to eat one roll or no I won't eat any. Prior to heading into Chick-fil-a....do I get the grilled or the fried, do I compensate by not getting the fries? These are the decisions I must make prior to stepping into the doors of a restaurant if I want to have a better chance of success. If I don't own up to a decision, then the food will own up to it for me.

Josh's Weight Loss- 7 Days In

2011-01-23T18:26:00.004-05:00

Purpose of this post:

1. What did I eat

2. Workout schedule

3. Discovery/Future Strategy

4. Show updated pics

1. What did I eat:

I decided to keep track of my food intake for the past week just to see if I thought I was eating too much, so here we go: 3 bananas, 4 apples, a serving of broccoli, 2 servings of bar-b-que pork, turkey soup, 5 servings of chicken and rice, 4 protein shakes, 6 eggs and cheese, 3 servings of black beans, a salad, a taco salad, 3 tacos, 3 grilled chicken breasts, a bacon egg and cheese sandwich, half a bag of doritos (I had a moment of weakness with the spicy and sweet purple bag kind), a serving of grits, two servings of beef lo mien, a zucchini, a yellow squash, two servings of roasted potatoes, a bagel with peanut butter, a grilled chicken sandwich and a molten brownie dessert (more on this last item later).

2. Workout schedule:

I got a workout in tuesday, thursday and friday morning for roughly 40 minutes each. I warmed up with about a 1/4 mile jog and mixed cardio in with my weight training. Over these three days, I pretty much worked out every muscle group and got in about 2000 total jumps on a jump rope. I'll aim for roughly 2,500 jumps on a jump rope this week (or a little more than 600 per workout). I can already tell a difference in the mirror with my muscle tone.

3. Discovery:

Even after a significant decrease in my calorie consumption, I am still eating a ton of food. I have discovered in previous weight loss ventures that my most critical hours are those just after dinner until bed. It was often that I would consume as many calories during that time as I would during my evening meal. So in order combat that I decided to focus on one thing and that was not snacking after dinner. Within reason, I did not exercise any portion control during my dinner with the amount of food I would eat...that will come later...for two reasons. 1) So I devote all mental energy on no after dinner snacking and 2) to fill my belly so I wouldn't want more food later. So far 7 nights equals 7 victories. Now to the issue of dessert: I still wanted to remain as normal as I could, I decided to allow myself one planned dessert per week. This would allow me to resemble a more realistic eating schedule and allow me to enjoy time with friends or family on the weekends when we normally hang out. My biggest victory of the week was at board game night over at a friend’s house. He bought a huge tub of two bite brownies (110 calories each) from Costco. Where I have been known to pop 20 or 30 of those in an evening, I didn't eat a single one. I didn't plan for it, so I didn't eat it. Wish I could say the same for the doritos he had at the house.

4. Pics

6 lbs in 7 days. I’ll include the graph next week, but I’m ahead of pace, so I am happy with that.

Upcoming Posts:

The Restaurant Dilemma, Creating the New Normal

Josh's Weight Loss Log

2011-01-17T21:09:00.012-05:00

Alright here we go. Starting tomorrow on 1/18/11 I am going to begin my weight loss journey again. See if I can get it right this time. My goal is to lose roughly 40lbs by mid May. What is in mid May you ask? Carrie Anne and I are running in the warrior dash together. It's kind of a arbitrary date for me, but I find things easier when I have a start date and an end date to commit to. Plus it works out to about a 1lb every three days. I think this will be a good pace for me. I have posted "before" pics below and will be updating the pics every week or so along this journey. I have also posted my trend line if I were to lose my weight in a linear fashion over the next few months. The horizontal axis is the number of days since the starting day and of course the vertical axis is my body weight. Using the graph, you can see if I am at, above or below my pace line. (I stole this idea from personal conversation with Zac Caudell http://zaccaudell.wordpress.com , though this blog is inactive now.) Enjoy.

Christmas Time 2010

2010-12-28T20:14:00.000-05:00

December was a busy month for us. Besides Davis having surgery, I turned 29 (I should mention that in November Josh turned 30)!! Josh took me to the Dillard House up near the GA/NC line for a night. We woke up had breakfast at their fabulous family style restaurant and then we even went horseback riding. It was Josh's first time on a horse. We had a great time but it was COLD. The temperatures were in the single digits and we definitely had to dress in tons of layers to not freeze. It was a lot of fun and Josh did a good job of making me feel special on my birthday.

We also spent a lot of time with family this month which was wonderful. My brother, Chris, who lives in Los Angles flew into GA for a day before he drove back to LA. We got to go and have dinner with him and Lily and Davis got to spend some time with their Uncle Chris! My parents also went with us to something called Journey to Bethlehem. It is a recreated walk through of Mary and Joseph's trip to Bethlehem mixed with a live nativity. It was very well done and we will definitely do it again next year!

Lily also had her Christmas performance at her preschool. It was so cute. The performance consisted of telling the Christmas story by way of songs. The kids did great, I enjoyed seeing Lily on stage. After the performance we went back to her preschool class and enjoyed a little class party.

Christmas Eve was spent at our church, The Vine. On Christmas Eve the Vine doesn't have childcare for kids under 2, so Lily got to come to service with us for the first time. She did great until the very end when we did the candlelight part. She desperately wanted to hold the candle which wasn't going to happen, her response to that was to throw an all out tantrum during the singing of Silent Night. Nice!

Christmas morning we went over to Josh's parents house. We opened our gifts at home and then went over and spent time with Jay, Katy, Liam, Grammy and Grampy. We had a good time and the kids got lots of great toys and clothes! It's always so fun to hang out with family and let Lily and Liam and Davis play together.

My parents were supposed to come over for Christmas dinner but my dad was having some trouble with his neck and wasn't feeling good at all so we postponed our Christmas until the next day. We ended up going downtown to their condo to celebrate so that Dad didn't have to venture to far out since he still was feeling pretty bad. We did enjoy going over there and hanging out.

We kept up our tradition of giving Lily and Davis 3 gifts total. This helps to remind us of what Christmas really is about and celebrating Jesus' birth by remembering he is the best gift. Jesus received 3 gifts upon his birth from the 3 wise men.

Lily's Christmas presents from us:

Aquatic frogs (real living ones in an aquarium)

Princess Stamp Set

New Baby Doll

Davis' Christmas presents from us:

Tricycle

Wooden Hammer Tower

play cellphone

The Results

2010-12-14T19:33:00.001-05:00

By Friday I was patiently waiting for the phone call that never came but since she said Monday was a possibility I wasn't too concerned when I didn't hear anything. By Monday mid-day I decided that I should call and check to see if the results were available. The nurse paged the Dr. to call me with the results. Not 30 minutes later my cell phone rings. Unfortunately, my cell phone barely gets service in the house so I immediately grabbed the phone and ran outside into FRIGID weather. The temperature was maybe 20 degrees outside and I ran out the door without a jacket. The Dr. started to apologize for not calling me earlier as she had gotten the pathology report on Friday. At this point she starts to explain to me that the biopsy had been sent to Paris to the leading pathologist for "this type" cell makeup. At this moment I felt confused and unsure what she was really saying. So I tried to ask for a little clarification. It went basically like this: "So, what your saying is, the pathologist here in GA found something that didn't look good (she called it an atypical spit or something like that) and to confirm what he was seeing he sent the biopsy to a guy in Paris to confirm what he saw?" The Dr. responded: "Yes." I then asked, "How long until I know the results?" She said in about a week. I then asked her, "if this was your child would you be worried about these results?" This is where the conversation takes a turn because up until this point I thought she was just saying that the results came back a little funky but she had never said cancer or anything like that. She responded by saying, "yes, I would be pretty scared because there is just not treatment for this kind of thing." WHAT?! Did she just basically say that Davis has some sort of incurable disease. I was floored and FREEZING and numb all at the same time. For that brief moment in my life, my mind started racing to, what are we going to do, how is this going to change our lives, I should start praying right now. I numbly responded, "well, I am glad that we took out the lump then. Some friends had questioned why they took out Davis' lump because their son/daughter had an enlarged lymph node and their doctor never mentioned removing it." By this point she gasped and said, "Oh gosh, I am so sorry, I just told you about the wrong patient. Your son's name is very similar to another patient that I did surgery on last week. I am so sorry. Please disregard everything I just told you." WOW. To go from believing for about 10 minutes that Davis had some kind of incurable cancer to being told that it was a mistake was an incredible emotional roller coaster. My main emotion when the conversation ended was RELIEF. I was not mad or upset or angry, just relieved. The second emotion that course through me was saddness for the parents that will be getting that horrible news that had just been relayed to me. The Dr. closed the conversation with, I will call you in the morning when I am in the hospital and can access the results. She did call me the next morning and the results were much different than the ones I heard yesterday. Davis' lymph node came back "reactive lymphoid hyperplasia," which is a benign condition and since the lymph node is removed there is no further treatment necessary. I can't help but be thankful and grateful that Davis is FINE and the road to recovery is complete for him and in the same breath I ache for the family that is getting devastating news that will likely alter the course of their lives forever. I don't know their names or anything about them except that the results of their childs biopsy are severe and will be confirmed by the Paris pathologist by Friday. Please say prayers for that family and thank you once again for all the prayers that you have said for our family and Davis during the past month.

The Surgery

2010-12-08T19:19:00.000-05:00

Davis went in for surgery on Dec 7th. I wasn't nervous until that actual day. I had no idea how it would all go. His surgery was scheduled for 11:30am. I was kinda nervous about that because poor Davis was not going to be able to eat anything until after his surgery and that is a long time for a little one to go without food. Luckily I was able to do clear liquids until 8am so he got a breakfast of juice and jello! Josh took the day off and helped me with Lily so I could take Davis to the hospital. We drove down and got there on time, but when I was trying to find a parking space I couldn't. The entire parking deck was FULL, but for some reason they let you drive in anyway not knowing that there were zero spaces. So I wasted probably 15 minutes trying to find a spot. I was not able to find one so I drove out to the pay booth and asked the attendant where I could park if the deck was full. She told me that there was valet parking across the street. I informed her that I did not come prepared with cash to pay a valet. I was getting anxious and upset because I was late now in getting Davis to his surgery. I started to cry, the parking attendant felt sorry for me I guess because she had me park in some reserved spaces there. We made it upstairs to the surgery center and got checked in. Davis ended up getting into surgery around noon. They had given him some sedative to help him get drowsy and calm before they took him back, but the opposite happened. He got wound up, but he was wobbly. When they came to take him away he was wide away but altered. They let me walk him back to the OR doors where at that point I had to hand him off. It was awful. He freaked out and you could hear him even after the doors closed. I became a basket case but thankfully got to wait in our private room instead of having to go back into the large waiting room.

They came back about 45 minutes later and let me know that he was out of surgery and that it all went well. I still didn't see him for another 3o minutes or so. They finally brought him in and you could tell he wasn't feeling great. He sat in my lap for another 30+ mins before they finally discharged him. We won't find out the results until Friday or Monday. After we left the hospital and I was able to give him some food, Davis was back to his old self!

Here are some pictures from the adventure we had!

The Lump

2010-11-30T18:25:00.001-05:00

Back when Davis was 15 months old (July) I noticed that he had a lump on the side of his neck. We had just had his 15 month appointment the day before so I didn't want to go back in unless it was necessary. So, I called Davis' pediatrician and asked what she thought and she felt that it was just an enlarged lymph node since he was a little sick, but she said that if it didn't go away in a week that I should bring him back in. Well, I stopped noticing the lump and kinda forgot about it for a while. Right around Davis' 18 month check up I noticed the lump again and at this point I was feeling terrible because I was questioning, "was that there the whole time?" I took Davis to his 18 month check up and his Dr. checked him out. He was sick this appointment too and she said, to keep and eye on it again and if it didn't go away after his sickness was gone to call back and get an appointment. This time I was much more aware of the lump. Davis seemed to be sick on and off for a few weeks after his appointment. At just about 19 months I noticed the lump was still there and he was definitely no longer sick. I called the Dr. and she had us come in. She didn't like that the lump had gotten bigger and she didn't like that it was still there after 4 months. She started some basic testing to see if we could figure it out. She did a Tuberculosis test on him first which came back negative. We then did a course of antibiotics which also didn't cause the lump to go down or go away. At this point, she set up an appointment at a pediatric surgeons office in Atlanta. They were able to squeeze us in for an appointment the very next working day.

At this point I am a little more nervous about everything because we got the specialists appointment very fast and Davis' pediatrician seemed a little more concerned but I was trying to stay positive and optimistic. The surgeon said she didn't like that it had gotten bigger and that it had been there for 4+ months either. She said that doing a biopsy would be inconclusive. If the biopsy came back positive then they would have to remove the lump, if it came back negative it still wouldn't rule out that nothing was wrong. The only way to be sure that nothing was wrong was to take out the lump completely. Surgery was then scheduled for Dec 7th.

Thanksgiving!

2010-11-26T18:14:00.003-05:00

We had a pretty low key Thanksgiving. My parents were in Germany over Thanksgiving and my brother Chris was still in California. Josh's brother ended up getting really sick over Thanksgiving so Josh's parents, Grammy and Grampy came over so we had a small intimate gathering! Despite there not being very many people, we definitely had a spread!! The food was great and we enjoyed leftovers for quite a while.

Road trip to North Carolina

2010-11-23T21:27:00.000-05:00

As the holidays started approaching, Josh and I realized that this year he was getting the entire week of Thanksgiving off. We definitely wanted to take advantage of his time off so we decided to hit the road for an impromptu road trip. The last time we went up to North Carolina was 3 years ago. We had gone to Elon's homecoming when Lily was 6 weeks old. We thought traveling with a 6 week old was a lot of work, that's nothing compared to traveling with a 3 year old and a 1 year old for 5 days. We had a lot of fun along the way and got to see a lot of old friends that we wish we could see A LOT more often. Here was our itinerary!

FRIDAY

Leave Friday afternoon 11/19 and drive up to Charlotte (stay with the Powells)

SATURDAY

Wake up and have breakfast with the Powells!

Drive up to Elon

Walk around campus and reminisce (Wow have things changed)

Eat lunch and head over to the football game

Watch Elon play their last game of the season

Drive from Elon to Salisbury (stay with the Jones')

SUNDAY

Eat breakfast with the Jones'

Drive from Salisbury to Winston-Salem

Hang out with the Williams'

Spend the night with the Williams'

MONDAY

Went to the Children's museum with Becca, Isaac and Joseph

After lunch and naps (for the kids of course) drive back to Charlotte

Stay with the Powells and the Bautes

TUESDAY

Eat breakfast with the Powells and Bautes

Get back on the road and drive home.

Make it back to GA around 1pm Tuesday!!

SO MUCH FUN!! We loved seeing all of our friends from our college days! Must say a big thank you to the Powells, Bautes, Jones' and Williams' !!!!

Professional Family Pictures

2010-11-10T21:21:00.000-05:00

We had pictures done by a very talented photographer, Tammy Maglovsky (www.lastingmomentsbytammy.com) I think they turned out great and I love getting our family to get pictures together each year!

Rounding Out Fall 2010

2010-11-01T21:08:00.000-04:00

We stayed busy this Fall. Besides going to Corn Dawgs we also went to the Hoschton Fall festival, helped and participated in the Braselton Fall festival (put on by our awesome church The Vine!), carved pumpkins, went Trick or Treating, ate lots of candy, had a "book character" costume day at preschool, had a Halloween play date with our church mommy friends, and just in general enjoyed the fabulous transition from summer to winter. The leaves this year were outstanding!! One of the highlights of Fall for us was our trip to North Carolina. I will leave those details to a separate post!

My Little Red Riding Hood

Davis was a Lemur (who wouldn't wear his hood)

Nana and Lily at Braselton's Fall Festival

Trip to Corn Dawgs

2010-10-23T20:56:00.000-04:00

I love Fall Festivals or any kind of Corn maze, pumpkin patch type place! This year we were able to go to Corn Dawgs in Loganville, GA that has a TON of stuff to do including a corn maze and hay ride. We even got to enjoy our time there with Grammy, Jay and Liam. It was so much fun. We got there bright and early and were able to avoid most of the crowds that a lot of my friends had warned me about. The day was beautiful with perfect weather. The kids had a blast sliding down the mountain slides, riding a few rides, petting some animals and going on a hay ride! We had so much fun with the family and definitely look forward to doing it again next year.

Lily is 3!

2010-09-05T19:58:00.000-04:00

Lily had an awesome birthday party at a little ice cream/candy shop in Dacula called Scoops! They took great care of us and we had tons of fun. I had asked Lily to name 8 of her friends that she wanted to invite to her party (space was limited). I was fully expecting to have to pick the kids myself because I didn't think she would know 8 kids to name. Boy was I wrong. She knew exactly which friends she wanted to celebrate with her.

Lily is becoming such a brilliant and beautiful girl. She is so intuitive for being only 3. I never really knew how much a 3 year old could comprehend but boy, she surprises me everyday with the things she says and how much she really understands. I love seeing her personality come out more and more. Lily certainly is spunky. There is no lack of personality in her "not so little" three year old body. Speaking of "not so little," Lily is still off the charts for her height. She is now just under 40 inches tall. She finally is registering on the weight growth chart though. She was in the 96%tile for weight this time which was about 38lbs. She towers over all of her friends her age and some older ones too. The funniest thing too is that when we went to her 3 year check up her pediatrician (whom I love and adore) basically said, "it's not a question of if Lily will be 6 feet tall, it's how much over 6 feet she will be." WOW. I can only imagine what that will be like when Lily towers over me (and I am not even short).

Here are some pictures from Lily's birthday party. Her and her friends had a blast and left on a serious sugar high.

Zoo Trip with friends

2010-08-30T20:48:00.000-04:00

Most everyone knows that I am a bit addicted to getting a good deal on anything and everything. Well, going to attractions like the zoo is no exception. I came across some half priced tickets and knew I needed to get them so that we could go to the zoo with the kids. The original plan was to go when Josh was home for the summer but that just didn't work out so we invited my friend Dawn and her little boy Parker (and baby Lincoln) to come along. My dad also came along which proved to be an awesome help as we had 3 strollers to push and only 2 adults (if not for my dad!!). So Dawn pushed Lincoln in a carseat carrier stroller, I pushed Lily and Parker in our double jogging stroller and my dad pushed Davis in a single umbrella like stroller! So it worked out perfect. We had a great time. The kids kept saying, "can we see more aminals...." after we got to each one. Definitely can't wait for the spring time when we can go again.

Class of 2000 10 Year Reunion!

2010-08-28T20:37:00.002-04:00

As much as I can't believe it, it has now been 10 years since I graduated high school. Last year we celebrated Josh's 10 year reunion and this year it was my turn (I should mention that my dad also got to celebrate a high school reunion this year as well.......50 year reunion WOW). My life long friend, Kati, who was our senior class president was in charge of the planning. She was able to get several other friends from our class to help out and get the plans together. I was tasked with the job of getting the name tags made for all the attendees and their guests. The reunion was at the Sky Bar at Five Seasons Brewery in Atlanta. We had a really good turnout and I can say for sure that everyone had a great time! It was definitely good to see people in person. To have a real conversation with someone is much different than just reading a person's profile on Facebook. Overall, it was fun to see people I hadn't seen in a decade. Here are some pictures from the evening.

Don't forget to notice the awesome name tags here!! Handmade by Yours Truly!

My Little Ballerina

2010-08-25T22:45:00.002-04:00

Lily started ballet classes 2 weeks ago and is having a blast.

Into the Woods

2010-08-25T22:16:00.004-04:00

After naptime and a tremendous rain storm we decided to hike a trail at Little Mulberry Park to an area that is said to have a really nice waterfall after a good rain. It was pretty muggy and hot, but it was a gorgeous hike and the shade really helped. The waterfall left a lot to be desired it was more like a water trickle but we got some great pictures of Lily and Davis out of the trip!!

Fun in the Fountains

2010-08-25T21:54:00.002-04:00

Josh and I all Summer were brainstorming things to do during the day that were fun and free (or nearly free). I know this will be surprising but I have never taken Lily and Davis to any fountains to play in up until this point. It was never a specific decision, it just never happened. The kids had a great time and so did Josh as you can see. It was a great afternoon to beat the heat in the fountains.

Trip to Mayfield

2010-08-25T18:57:00.006-04:00

One Friday morning met his mom at Mayfield Dairy for lunch and ice cream. It was hot, but the kids had fun. They enjoyed having lunch and ice cream with Grammy.

Davis' First Haircut

2010-08-25T18:31:00.004-04:00

So after much prompting I finally gave in to getting Davis a haircut. He really didn't have a ton of hair to cut, but it was starting to form a semi-mullet and Josh wanted nothing of it. I didn't think attempting to cut it myself was a good idea so we took Davis to a new little children's salon in Dacula called Magic Scissors. He hated it. Ha! Pretty much cried the whole time, but we made it through.

Here are a few pictures of the experience.

A Beachy Summer

2010-07-31T20:21:00.000-04:00

This summer we decided to not go on a vacation. Instead we invested in Lake Lanier Islands Waterpark Season passes. Lily and Davis did not have to have a pass since they were younger than 3. My dad also got in some good beach time and grand kid time by getting a pass too. We were able to make it out there about 2 times a week, sometimes more, sometimes less. We would get all loaded up, drive about 25 minutes to Lake Lanier Islands. We would get there right when it opened. Set up our stuff on the beach (which is a beach on a lake front) and then swim in the shallow and warm water of the lake, play in the sand and occasionally go play in the kiddie wiggle waves area. We loved being able to go to the "beach" so much and the kids had a great time. The weather was nice a lot this summer and we really made the most of our season passes!!

Rowan Family Braves Game

2010-07-15T20:30:00.002-04:00

The whole Georgia Rowan family packed up and headed to a Braves game over the summer. Josh's dad Frank had gotten some tickets through his work that not only got us into the game but also got us into the "all you can eat" section!! Perfect! So we had a great time. Josh and I went without Lily and Davis (thanks Papa). We had a lot of fun and almost got to catch an awesome homerun. Braves vs. Brewers 7/15.

(if you look in the crowd on this picture, you can see Frank and Cathy and Josh and me yelling as we watch the home run get caught right in our section!) This was a picture on ESPN.com showing Chippers home run for this game.

Strawberry Picking

2010-05-17T21:00:00.003-04:00

On Saturday the day before Mother's Day we went strawberry picking with Josh's parents (Grammy and Grampy). It was a beautiful day and the strawberries were great. Lily and Davis had a great time with Grammy and Grampy. We went to Chick-fil-a for dinner and then went to Washington Farms to pick strawberries. It was a good Mother's Day weekend.

Davis' 1 Year Stats

2010-05-17T20:51:00.002-04:00

Davis at 1 year

Height: 28.75''

Weight: 20lbs 14oz

Dr. Overcash (whom we love!!) said Davis looks great. He will have to have a small surgery sometime in the next couple of years. He has an umbilical hernia that did not resolve itself in the first year as was hoped. Otherwise he is developing great and his hitting all his milestones normally, including his eating (which is a huge praise).

Davis is ONE!

2010-05-17T20:34:00.003-04:00

Davis celebrated his 1st Birthday on April 17th! I can't believe it has been a year since he was born. It was fun to reminisce about the past year but even more exciting to look towards what's ahead with Lily and Davis. Since Davis started crawling so early I was certain he would walk early too. Lily started walking at 10 1/2 months so I thought that Davis would walk even before that. 10 months came and went. 11 months came and went and when his 1st birthday arrived and he wasn't walking I was just so surprised. I knew he would walk soon but was kind of hoping that he would be walking for his birthday party since it was going to be at the Auburn city playground. No such luck, so he sat in the dirt! His party was great though. We had lots of great friends come and celebrate with us. The weather was pretty good, but it was super windy which caused a little havoc. First, one of the little tents we had got blown over and broke (it was borrowed so we knew we would need to replace it), secondly, the 25 balloons I had gotten got all tangled in the distance from the car to the tables so we just had a big clump of balloons. And lastly, the cake that I had ordered turned out not as I expected. It was a pull-apart cupcake cake that was supposed to look like 2 balloons but when I went to pick it up it was just a random cloud-like shape. So, they redid it in 15 minutes and it still looked pretty terrible. So you won't be seeing any pictures of that cake. Instead you will see pictures of the cake that I made for Davis myself (which I am proud of). Other than those 3 snafus the party was great. Here are some shots that were taken by our friend. I am so thankful that he grabbed my camera and got these shots otherwise we wouldn't have much to show for Davis' party. So, thank you Stephen and Kellie for helping at the party!!

New Playground

2010-05-17T20:23:00.002-04:00

So we have been wanting to get Lily and Davis a playground for a while now but we just never pulled the trigger. Our neighbors across the street had started building a playground in their backyard and it got the gears turning. The next day we made a Sams Club run and sure enough the playground that our neighbors were building was there. We asked the manager how much and when he told us the price and what all it included we couldn't pass it up. So, yes, our across-the-street neighbor and us have the same playground....hope they don't mind! Josh did most of the building and luckily he was out of school for the week for Spring Break so he had some extra time on his hands. I was able to help him during nap time and bed time. In the end it took 19 hours to put together (not too bad). It looks fantastic and the kids love it. I love that we don't have to drive anywhere to go swing or slide. Just this week Josh finished waterproofing it so that it will last that much longer.

Easter Sunday @ The Vine

2010-05-17T20:14:00.002-04:00

This year Easter was great. We have become pretty involved at The Vine (the church we have been going to since last June). Lily LOVES going to church and loves her friends in class. The do so many fun things and learn so much every week. I love it. My parents came with us to church this Easter Sunday and Lily and Davis were thrilled to have them there. It was a great service and we are excited to be a part of such a great church, making great new friends. After church and naps we had our own little egg hunt in the front yard. Lily and I had dyed a dozen eggs the day before. Easter Sunday turned out to be a lot of fun and good time with family.

Mommy Group Easter Egg Hunt

2010-05-17T20:10:00.002-04:00

Easter this year involved quite a few egg hunts. We went to our friend Jessica's house with some of the ladies and kiddos from church to hunt for more eggs. This time the weather was much better. Lily had a great time actually "hunting" the eggs. Davis seemed to have a good time too picking up a few eggs for his basket.

Easter Egg Hunt at The Vine

2010-05-17T11:47:00.000-04:00

Our church (The Vine) had an Easter Egg hunt. Lily had a lot of fun, but boy was it COLD that day. It seemed like it should be warm but the wind was whipping. My dad came and helped Lily play on the bouncy houses and do the actual Easter egg hunt which as you can see from the pictures, wasn't much of a hunt at all. There were 10,000 eggs in a not so big area so there were PLENTY of eggs to go around. Once Lily's basket was full she started helping other kids fill theirs up to the brim. Davis pretty much rode around in his stroller and played in the little bouncy house for a few minutes. We didn't stay long, once the hunt was over we booked it out of there to go warm up.

Josh and His Babies

2010-05-17T10:23:00.002-04:00

We enjoyed another "almost" spring day out in the yard. And since getting my new camera (wonder if you could tell when in the progression of posts I got it?) I decided to take a few shots of the kids in the front yard with daddy.

A Glimpse of Warmth

2010-05-17T10:07:00.003-04:00

Just a couple weeks after our snowy experience the weather got nice a warm (for one day). I think everyone in Georgia was clamoring for just a glimpse of the warmth to come in spring. After church and naps we decided to head up to a park a few miles away. Let me just tell you, I have been to this particular park dozens of times and never have I seen it as busy as it was this day. It was CRAZY how many people were there. Like I said, I think everyone is GA was dying for a day with sun and warmth. We had a good time despite the number of people. I much prefer when the playground is almost empty, Josh on the other hand loves it when the place is a mad house. His preference is "the more people, the better." Of course he hasn't really ever tried to go to the playground with both Lily and Davis by himself on days when the place is crazy. And when Davis starts running around, keeping up with both of them when it is crowded is near impossible.

March Snow

2010-05-17T09:57:00.002-04:00

Back in March we were surprised by quite the snow "storm." Here in Georgia we really don't get too much snow. If we get an inch or two the whole season that's about normal. We actually got snow a few times this winter season. The biggest snowfall we got was about 4-5 inches of snow. We had a great time playing in the snow the next day after all the snow was on the ground. It was such a powdery snow and not really wet enough to make into anything so we just played in it for a little while. Davis napped through most of the snow time..

Imaginations at Play

2010-05-17T09:37:00.003-04:00

My church's mommy group had a playdate at Imaginations at Play. Imaginations at Play is a place that has different themed areas where kids can play and pretend. There is a shopping market, a Cookout area, a painting area, a music area, a pretend vet area, a water table, a train table area and even an area where the kids can see them self on video dancing to music. It's a cute place and Lily has a great time when we go, but it is not really my favorite place. It is a little over priced for my taste but it is fun to go to every once in a while. Here are a few pictures from our day. Davis is getting to where he can enjoy "playing" too.

Where Have I Been?

2010-05-17T09:33:00.004-04:00

This year I have really gone MIA with the blog posting. I don't know if I just needed the break or what, but here it is May 17th and I haven't posted a single thing in 3 months. Whew. That is one heck of a break. Here is to catching up!! I am going to try to post a few of the major things that have happened since February. I have to remind myself that when I don't post I am only disappointing myself since I decided that this was the method for doing a baby book/scrapbook. Hope you enjoy some of the updates because there have definitely been some significant milestones since the last post.

Lily's First Verse

2010-02-18T21:33:00.002-05:00

At church Lily's Sunday school class learns Bible verses every week. We have been working on helping Lily memorize the verses she learns. At first all Lily could do was repeat what we were saying but one day we were in the living room and Lily was playing with one of her dolls and she was pretending to put the doll to sleep. As she was putting the doll in the pack-n-play she started praying for the doll and in the midst of the prayer we heard the memorized verse we had been working on! Josh and I were thrilled and started cheering for her and she was oh so proud! And what a good first verse to learn as a child. Just thought I would share.

A series of events.....

2010-02-03T11:40:00.003-05:00

1. Haiti earthquakes - tons of help, prayers, money needed

2. My lack of money but STRONG desire to help somehow and a subsequent prayer that God would allow me to help.

3. A Facebook status from AccessAtlanta asking for nominations for Nurse of The Year.

4. Nominating a very special nurse in my life for the award

5. Wondering if said nurse had a Facebook page so I could connect with her.

6. Finding said Facebook page of nominated nurse and "friend requesting" her.

7. Simultaneously seeing a friends Facebook status that posted a name and number to contact if you were a Dr. or nurse that wanted a free plane trip to Haiti to help with relief.

8. Deciding to repost my friends status as my status.

9. Getting no response that anyone saw it or cared, feeling a little silly that I posted it.

10. Nurse friend accepted friend request about the time I posted the free plane ride status.

OUTCOME: My nurse friend informs me that her church had organized a team of Dr.'s and R.N.'s to go to Haiti to help but had no way of getting there as there were limited flights entering and leaving the area. Upon seeing the number and name I posted she passed it along to the leader of the group and they were able to call and get on a flight the very next day to Haiti (not even 5 days after the earthquake first occurred).

I am so grateful that God allowed me to play a very small part in assisting a country that is in so much need. Sometimes it is more than money that is needed. It is prayer and willingness to help in anyway that presents itself. I am just feeling blessed to know that there are Dr.'s and nurses there in Haiti and that I had a role in helping them get there (no matter how small a role that is).

What series of events has God allowed you to be a part of??

Davis' 9 month stats

2010-01-30T22:57:00.003-05:00

So, I am late on this post. I started a post right after the new year with the details of our Montana ski trip and still haven't finished it. Call me lazy, unmotivated, I am not sure all I know is that I am one of those people who doesn't force an issue. I knew if I tried to force myself to write a blog post it would be uninspired and just plain blah. It may still be those things to others, but I know as I write this that I feel motivated to catch up on a few things. That's a good start for me. So, with baby steps I will start with Davis' 9 month Dr.'s appointment stats. I was sure that Davis would have jumped way up on the percentage scale, that is of course not the case at all. He is growing just fine but he is still my skinny guy.

Weight -------> 18lbs 2oz = 13%tile

Height -------> 28 1/3'' = 54%tile

The Dr. thought he was doing perfect and was pleased with Davis' progress as far as his eating goes. I am also quite happy with how Davis is eating. After months and months of trying to get Davis to eat baby food and taking him to a speech pathologist to get some clarity and help we finally have success. Davis is eating 3 large meals a day. When I was trying to get Davis to participate I was feeding him the sweetest best stuff I could find that would make him want to eat, who cares about veggies as long as he is actually trying to eat right?! Well, once he got the hang of the whole food in the mouth, swallow process I decided it was time that we advance Davis to eating a more balanced diet. I tried just giving Davis pureed veggies but as expected he wasn't too interested. I needed a better plan. A friend of mine introduced me to Dr. Denmark and her "ways" back before Davis was born and I knew that I would follow most of her methods with Davis. Dr. Denmark recommends feeding babies what she calls mush which is a conglomerate of a protein, banana, oatmeal, veggie and fruit, a very well balanced diet if I say so myself. I thought I would give it a try fully expecting Davis to reject the mixture. Well, to my surprise he actually likes it and eats A LOT of it. I was barely able to get Davis to take a small 4 oz jar of baby food before I started the mush, now he will take 8+ oz of mush in a sitting and it is all really good for him.

Here are some of the concoctions I have mixed up for Davis:

Proteins: Black eyed peas, Black beans, Butter beans

Fruits : Pears, Applesauce

Veggies: Peas, Green beans, corn

Cereal: Oatmeal or Rice cereal

Banana (yes it is a fruit but it is separate from the fruit category here)

I make all the mush myself just with a hand grinder. It's pretty easy and like I said before, he loves it! So I am confident he is getting the food he needs. My next step (which is not part of the Denmark plan) is to get Davis to start progressing with his finger food abilities. He is taking his time on this. I gave him a halved blueberry the other morning. He put it in his mouth and started chewing it. I thought, this is great he will be eating table food in no time. HA, 10 minutes later he still had that darn blueberry in his mouth just flipping it around, he did manage to smush the fruit part of it out and all that was really left was the blueberry skin. I am sure he will figure it out soon. It's just hard not to compare Lily with Davis. Lily was on all table food by about 10 months of age (despite the fact that she didn't get any teeth until 10 1/2 months, figure that one out folks)!

Anyway, Davis is doing great. And just so you can see how great he is doing, here is a little picture of my happy growing guy!!

Davis vs. Solids Part II

2009-12-16T11:58:00.003-05:00

Davis had his feeding evaluation appointment yesterday morning. I had no idea what to expect at the appointment. It was a very long day but in the end I feel encouraged and more confident that this stage for Davis is temporary. His appointment was at 8am at Scottish Rite (a hours drive from home). We got up really early and headed out. My mom met me there to pick up Lily so that I could focus on Davis' evaluation. The therapist (specifically a speech therapist) watched Davis for a few minutes and interacted with him a little so he would get used to her. Then we started his breakfast solid feeding. The therapist actually did the feeding. The evaluation lasted about an hour and a half with her feeding him normally and then trying different techniques to see if they helped Davis swallow more. Davis' main problems are that he seems to have a hard time realizing that he needs to swallow, almost as if he doesn't really recognize that there is food in his mouth. He also doesn't use his tongue very well to push the food back in the mouth to swallow it. He also doesn't really seem hungry enough to put the energy in to eat. Something I didn't even realize is that Davis takes the bottle extremely slow. The therapist pointed out that he is having to work really hard to get his milk and that may be causing some frustration as well. She also noticed that Davis doesn't seem to register hunger pains very much and is able to ignore them more than other babies. She thinks that he has some nerve/sensory issues in his mouth where basically his nerves aren't telling his brain that there is food in his mouth which he needs to swallow so he just holds it there. So those are a lot of the problems, what are the solutions?

Well, the therapist said that Davis is basically borderline as to whether he needs therapy or not. So we are going to do a month of strategies at home to see if he improves and progresses and if he doesn't we will then get him started in therapy. Some of the strategies that she has me doing are the following:

1) Pigeon bottle (this is a bottle made in Japan that is often used for babies with a cleft palate.

Since Davis has a hard time making a seal to suck as well as possible low muscle tone to suck efficiently this bottle will help him get milk easier)

2) z-vibe spoon (help develop his nerves and senses in his mouth to recognize food and then to practice swallowing better) This spoon is basically a spoon tip attached to a wand that vibrates that tells the nerves in Davis' mouth to respond and "wake up."

3) Texture and Flavor (offering more texture and flavored foods to do the same thing mentioned above). The therapist said that a lot of times baby food is super bland and some babies that need more oral stimulation need stronger flavors and varying textures to help the nerves recognize the food.

4) Offering more finger foods that are don't come apart easily to promote chewing and oral stimulation but without the risk of gagging or choking.

So, we will be trying these things for the next month in hopes that Davis improves with his eating. He is way too active to not be getting more and more calories during a feed so I want to do anything and everything to help him be as successful as possible and for it not to be traumatizing. Thank you everyone for your prayers for his appointment yesterday. Please continue to pray for Davis that he would progress in his eating between now and next month so as to avoid having to start Davis in therapy.

Davis vs. Solids

2009-12-12T20:41:00.002-05:00

I started offering Davis solids (rice cereal initially) when he was about 4 months old. When we first started he didn't seem interested and he basically sat there and let the food drain out of his mouth, down his chin and onto his bib. I chalked it up to him just not being ready to eat solids. I didn't push it too much, I would offer cereal once a day for several weeks. He never really seemed to progress but I wasn't worried. I mean he was still young, a lot of babies don't even start solids until 6 months so I knew we had time. When he turned 6 months old and we went to his check up I told his pediatrician (whom I absolutely LOVE, she is wonderful) how he had been doing with solids. She didn't seem too concerned either but she thought it was possible that he was still having reflux issues making him associate eating with pain which would lead to him not swallowing. She prescribed him his reflux medication combo that he was on previously in hopes that that would help encourage him to eat. About $100 later (with insurance) I started giving his medication again. Honestly, I didn't notice a bit of difference but I kept trying. After a month of what seemed like no progress I decided not to refill his prescriptions (I am not really all that fond of medicine if it does not have an obvious effectiveness). Now we are almost 2 months out from his 6 month check up and there has been minimal progress. Davis probably takes about 5 bites of whatever I try to feed him. I have offered all the different types of fruits, veggies, grains, oats, etc. I really don't think he minds the flavors and tastes of things it honestly just appears that he doesn't get the concept of swallowing. So, what does all this mean? Well, I called back his pediatrician a couple weeks ago and updated her on Davis' progress and she was disappointed. She felt that at this point it was necessary to go ahead and have Davis evaluated for his feeding issues, specifically swallowing. We have an appointment with a specialist on Tues, December 15th at Scottish Rite. I am very anxious to help Davis be a more successful eater for several reasons: 1) So that when Josh and I leave for our ski trip in 2 weeks that my mom will not have to endure the frustration of feeding him 2) So that the poor little guy will get some more calories and vitamins into his super active body and 3) So that we can graduate to some finger foods before or around his first birthday like I did with Lily. I will definitely post an update about how his appointment goes on Tuesday. Prayers for his appointment are appreciated greatly as well as general prayers for Davis' eating ability!

Family Trip to Mayfield Dairy

2009-12-12T19:49:00.003-05:00

One of the Mayfield Dairy plants is very close to our house. They bottle milk at this location and they have a cute gift shop and they sell some of their fantastic ice cream. What's even better about the ice cream is how cheap it is. We ordered 3 single scoop cups of ice cream and it only cost $4.50. That's a great deal. So, a few weeks ago we took a little afternoon outing to get some ice cream. They have a big cow (and when I say big, I mean MASSIVE) that Lily isn't all that fond of but she has gotten better about getting near it. We took some pictures, ate some ice cream and just enjoyed one of the last few warm afternoons of the season! Here are some pictures of our family outing!

Pics of the Family

2009-11-12T21:42:00.004-05:00

Where are all the ducks?

2009-11-12T21:01:00.002-05:00

We have tried nearly 10 times to find ducks at a pond or lake nearby to go feed. Every time we think we found some ducks we show up and they aren't there. Some friends of ours live in a neighborhood that backs up to a park that has a pond. So, the other day we got together and walked to the pond only to once again not find a single duck, I mean shoot, we would be happy with some geese, but there was not a water floating bird to be found. Oh well! Here are a couple of pictures of Lily while we were on our walk.

Belated Halloween post

2009-11-12T20:06:00.007-05:00

So, I am a little behind in posting some of these Halloween pictures. I think I had a momentary apathy for posting blogs but that feeling has since subsided so I am going to try to play catch up here.

The week before Halloween we had several events that involved getting dressed up! First, we went to a playdate with some of the other moms from our new church. We had a great time and Lily had fun playing with all the other kids. They did a tree craft, ate lunch, and then ate cookies with icing. It was optional to dress up in costume but Lily had such a good time wearing her SuperGirl costume that I found every opportunity to get her in it (besides at home).

A friend of ours through a family Halloween party on Friday night where the whole family dressed up. The kids played some cute games and of course there was eating involved (when is an event not centered around food?!). Since the entire families were there moms and dads dressed up too. Josh went as a referee unfortunately, I don't have a picture of him. He looked authentic though. Black pants, black and white striped refs shirt, yellow foul flag, and completely shaved head (and I mean Mr. Clean shiny shaved)! I went as a snow skier. Free costumes are my favorite, mine was a tossup between a snow skier and an equestrian (I didn't want to wear the spandex pants and reveal all my flaws so I stuck with the bulky ski suit). Lily was SuperGirl and Davis was a lobster. Since he is crawling his costume was not really practical. I bought it at a consignment sale long before I knew that Davis would be an early crawler. Needless to say, he didn't wear it for very long.

Lily got to dress up for preschool one day too. I guess since it is a church preschool and they don't celebrate halloween but still want to let the kids dress up they called this particular day, "Favorite Book Character" day. I guess I could have let Lily wear her Super Girl costume again but I took the book character thing literally. So, Lily dressed as a mouse. She basically was Angelina Ballerina (a ballet mouse). People thought she was a cat though which is probably my fault, either way though she was cute!

We had planned on actually going trick or treating this year but other plans came up the week before. Elon University's (our alma mater) football team was playing Wofford's team. Wofford is in Spartanburg, SC. Several of Josh's buddies were planning on meeting up and going to the game. Some of the guys had their families come too, so we packed up our whole family on Sat morning and drove up to Spartanburg. The weather that day was not so great so the guys went to the game while the wives and kids stayed at home and let the kids play and nap. That evening the group of us got our kids dressed up (we borrowed a Tinkerbell costume for Lily since we weren't planning on being there in the evening) and we went to a church festival where the kids dressed up and got candy and food and played on big jumpy slides. It was a lot of fun but probably one of the most exhausting days I have had in a very long time. Thank goodness kids are resilient because Lily and Davis bounced back the next day like always. It took me a little longer to recover though!

Lily as Angelina Ballerina on her way back from preschool's Favorite Book Character day.

cat/mouse, whatever.

Lily and her good friend McKenzie at Jenny's family Halloween party. Kenzie had purple color in her hair.

Halloween playdate at Jessica's!
Too bad I didn't know that her costume says to spot clean ONLY. I mean come on, a toddler costume that can't be washed? Mac n Cheese is not friendly to the clothes of toddlers.

You can't really tell, but Davis is wearing a skeleton shirt. He was just content to crawl around the whole time.

We sprayed Lily's hair with blue sparkle spray for the family Halloween party at Jenny's. It looked so cute and washed out super easy.

My snow skier outfit and Davis as a lobster.

Marco with his daughter Madison (middle), McKae (right) and Lily dressed up and ready go get candy.
Lily, Brady, Madison and McKae (Lily, Brady and Madison are the same age all born Aug/Sep 07).

The only picture of Trevan that he would allow. Trevan, McKae and Brady are Brannon and Kelli Rice's kids. Madison belongs to Marco and Shannon.

Davis 6 month Stats

2009-10-26T21:01:00.002-04:00

Weight = 15lbs 3oz ------------> 12%tile

Height = 26.5 in ---------------> 65%tile

The Dr. was very impressed with Davis' crawling and pulling up. We spent some time talking about Davis' eating issues. We started Davis on solids back when he was 4 months old. He had trouble from the beginning but I just chalked it up to him being young. I figured with time he would get better (time being a couple of weeks). Well, two months later and he is still having trouble eating solids. Basically, you can put the food in his mouth but he doesn't swallow it unless he puts his thumb in his mouth and that helps him swallow. If you don't let him use his thumb the food just drains out of his mouth. He doesn't gag, he doesn't push the food out, he just doesn't swallow.

The Dr. thought that it could possibly be his reflux issues again. I stopped his medicine a couple months ago because it seems like Davis was feeling better and it was so EXPENSIVE. So she wants me to start Davis on the reflux medicines again to see if it helps him. She thinks that he was exhibiting some oral aversion. When I told her about how he sucks his thumb to swallow she thought he may have a high arched roof of his mouth which would be why he was compensating with his thumb. A final possibility is that he has some muscle issues with his mouth in which case she will refer Davis to a speech pathologist if things don't get better in a few months.

Davis has been on the meds now for about 10 days and things do seem to be progressing. I have also been letting Davis suck his thumb to help him swallow. We are up to 2 "meals" a day of solids. He is eating about half a jar which is not a lot but for him I feel like we are being successful.

That's what's new with Davis these days. He is just such a happy active little guy. ACTIVE is the key word there.

My Early Crawler

2009-10-14T13:23:00.002-04:00

Davis will be 6 months old on Saturday! Time has just flown by this year. Since Davis was about 4 1/2 months old he was getting on his hands and knees and scooting everywhere. The official crawl started in the last few weeks where he is on his hands and knees alternating back and forth. It really is quite funny to see because he is just so small and it doesn't look like he should be able to move like he does. He is also pretty daring. Once he was proficient at getting on his hands and knees he started to pull up on his knees. I didn't think him pulling up to standing would be so close behind but he has been doing that for about a week now too. All this is well and good except that he is still not real aware of his surroundings so he bumps his head on furniture a lot and falls over quite a bit too. When they are this young they don't have as much cognition to go along with the movements and so you end up with a little guy getting beat up as he moves him self all over the place. I keep thinking, what does the rest of his first year have in store for me......I am certainly not bored these days.

A church home!

2009-10-13T10:32:00.003-04:00

For the past 2+ years we have lived in Auburn. When we first moved into our house here we didn't have any children although I was 7 months pregnant with Lily at the time. Before we moved out here we lived in Snellville and had been there for 2 years. During those 2 years we had gotten pretty connected to a local church. We, along with another couple started a young couples small group that allowed us to meet some of our closest friends. So, when we moved out to Auburn we briefly talked about finding a closer church but reconsidered when we thought about trying to "start over" in the friend department. Anyway, so we stayed involved at Grace until the beginning of this past summer. We knew that when Davis got here it would be much harder to drive back and forth to Snellville once or twice a week for church and small group. We actually tried commuting for the first month or two for church and it was just very hard emotionally and physically. We felt rushed every Sunday morning. As most of you know, Davis very much dislikes riding in the car so a 30+ minute car ride each way did not help that situation. It was just a stressful experience. We knew that the small group that we helped start was in good hands so we just left it up to God to help us find a church home that was close by.

Over the course of the 2 years that we have been here in Auburn we have tried several churches and didn't have any luck really in finding a good fit. I was hopeful but realistic that trying to find a good church fit for us might not be an easy feat. The first weekend that we tried a new church we tried a church called The Vine. I was a little skeptical honestly because I had always gone to either a Baptist church or a non-denominational church. Well, The Vine is a Methodist church. After going on-line and reading the mission statement and vision of the church as well as the background I felt like I should just throw out my bias and give it a try. Our plan was to leave Lily with grandparents while we tried new churches because we didn't want her to have to go to a new place each Sunday. Unfortunately, this particular Sunday we didn't have anyone to watch her so we ended up taking her and putting her in the nursery. Davis was so little at the time he just slept in his carseat on the floor next to me during the service. After that first service I think both Josh and I knew that this church was "it." It seemed like a good fit all around. Great message, Great worship, Lily loved nursery, Davis actually slept in his carseat (hehe, not a requirement but a perk), young families, lots of children, etc.....

It has been several months now that we have been attending The Vine and Josh and I have felt led to make a commitment and jump on board with what's going on at The Vine. We attended the membership class last weekend and we will officially be joining The Vine Sunday, October 25th. We are very excited as it will be the first time that we have joined a church since we have had children and we really feel like we are committing as a family to be part of the team there and to serve the Body. It's exciting for us. We already feel pretty connected to a good number of people in the church and have even run into people that we already know there.

We are excited about what is going on at The Vine. I think one thing I can say with certainty is that The Vine really wants to love people. I know from experience that you can't say that about every church. It is definitely a place where I think a huge priority is to Love people. Refreshing!

You can check it out if you like at http://www.connecttothevine.org/index.php or http://vineoutreach.wordpress.com/

So that is a little update about where our family will be serving, worshiping and fellowshipping!!

Return to The Vine Homepage

At Home photo shoot for Lily

2009-10-11T18:37:00.003-04:00

So, a few weeks ago I entered Lily into a Gap Casting Call on-line but didn't have any photos of her that I owned the rights to. So I decided to do a photo shoot of Lily myself. For a 2 year old she was actually pretty cooperative. Here are a few of my favorites:

West Hall HS 10 year reunion

2009-09-21T20:59:00.005-04:00

Josh and I went to his 10 year high school reunion this past weekend. We had a great time. It was a lot of fun to see Josh reconnect with some people that he went to high school with. There were about 50+ people there. The food was good but the friends were better. Here are a few pictures of our night out: (The reunion was at the Legacy Lodge in Lake Lanier Islands).

Lily's 2 year stats

2009-09-09T20:34:00.002-04:00

Height = 36.5'' tall -----> 97%tile
Weight = 33 lbs -------> 97%tile
Head = 19.9'' ---------> 98%tile

She is still my tall girl! Josh and I like to speculate at how tall she will be when she is an adult...... we'll see.

First Day of Preschool!

2009-09-08T11:04:00.002-04:00

Lily's first day of preschool is today! I dropped her off about 2 hours ago and I can't wait to go get her in an hour to see how much fun she had. I got a little emotional when I left the room but honestly I am more excited for her to have this exciting new experience. She didn't seem to mind me leaving her there this morning and I feel certain she didn't even know I left. She loves other kids and loves playing with anyone that will play back, so I know she is going to have a great time.

She has 2 teachers who are really sweet and seem to have a lot of experience. There are 7 other kids in her class. I can't wait to see all the fun artwork she makes for me to hang on the fridge. They have snacktime, storytime, playtime, and music time during each day. She will only be going 2 days a week for 3 hours a day.

I am not only excited for Lily but I am excited for Davis too. It will give Davis and I a chance to bond and get good quality time alone. I look forward to being able to give Davis a lot of attention that Lily was able to get when she was little. I may even get the chance to get a few things done around here while she is in school and he is napping.

Yay for Preschool!!

Lily turns 2!

2009-09-08T10:45:00.002-04:00

Lily turned 2 over the weekend and we had a fantastic time celebrating her special day with her. We had a Winnie the Pooh party. There were kiddie pools, sandbox, sand table, bubble machine, bubble wands, pinata, etc.....The kids had a really good time and so did the adults of course. Lily loved having her friends over to play. She got a lot of neat gifts that she has been thoroughly enjoying since her party. Lots of puzzles, books, a tee ball stand/bat/ball, soccer goals and soccer ball, shopping cart, clothes, lots of fun stuff to explore and enjoy.

Thank you all who were able to come celebrate her birthday with us.

On Sunday after church Josh and I decided to take Lily to Babyland General in Cleveland, GA to continue the celebration of turning 2. For those of you unfamiliar with Babyland General it is the official "birthplace" of Cabbage Patch Kids. The small house is organized like a hospital where the dolls are born in a cabbage patch. You can watch the "birth" and help name the new dolls as well as adopt them too. To adopt a real handmade doll (basically one with no plastic) it costs anywhere from $185-365. Those dolls, beautiful as they are, are unfortunately out of our price range. We did get Lily her very own Cabbage Patch doll there with 2 outfits to go along with it. Her name is Ellie and Lily picked her out herself. The doll reminds me so much of the one that I had as a little girl.

I was so proud of Lily this weekend celebrating her birthday. Seeing her eyes light up at seeing her Pooh cake and being so surprised that everyone was singing Happy Birthday to her was just so neat to see. Lily has grown up so much this summer as she has turned 2. She no longer has her pacifier and the transition away from it was much smoother than I anticipated. She is now fully potty trained. She has not had a single diaper on in almost 2 months now. She can take herself to the potty and only really needs help to pull her panties back up. She is so grown up. You may remember we had her evaluated over the summer for speech delays and after 3 visits by Babies Can't Wait it was determined that Lily is not behind in speech at all and is actually a little ahead with her speech. Her progress over the summer with her verbal skills has been incredible. She went from having just single words to having 4-5 word phrases, using pronouns and possessives, saying friends names, etc. It has been wonderful to see her blossom in her speech over the past 2 months. Lily is an absolute joy to be around, she is funny, friendly, spunky, loving, energetic and just such a charismatic and beautiful 2 year old. I love seeing her learn new things every day and I love seeing her become her own personality. I look forward to this next year of growth and learning with her!

Pictures of her party to come.

Back and forth

2009-08-27T10:12:00.003-04:00

Well in the past month or so Davis has perfected his ability to roll over both ways. He has been rolling belly to back for a while but he started rolling back to belly about 3 weeks ago and has gotten pretty good at it in the past 2 weeks. If you put him on his back, he rolls to his belly. If you put him on his belly, he rolls to his back. He's a squirmy little guy. Did I say little? Skinny is a good description for him. A couple weeks ago Davis turned 4 months old. We went to the pediatrician for a check up and got his stats.

4 month stats:
Weight: 13lbs 2oz -----> 16%tile
Height: 25.25in -------> 62%tile
my tall skinny guy!

A friend of ours let us borrow her bumbo seat and Davis has really really enjoyed sitting in it and playing with toys that Lily so willingly brings to him. He also likes to play in the entertainer that another friend of ours lent to us. He is quite the engaged and active guy.
I have tried to start rice cereal a few times in the past month and have failed each time. How can you fail at feeding your baby rice cereal? well I will tell you. First of all when I put the spoon with the cereal on it in Davis' mouth he just sits there and smiles while all of it drains out his mouth and down his shirt. Clearly not interested. Secondly, what little amount he does swallow seems to upset his tummy pretty badly because he has some serious sleeping issues on those nights. We are getting about 11 hours of his sleeping a night and on the rice cereal nights he sleeps for about 4 wakes up cries for an hour+ and then goes back to sleep to do the same thing again later. SO, a good number of my friends suggested trying oatmeal instead of rice cereal. We did that last night and he still didn't eat a ton of it but he didn't have tummy issues which was GREAT!

So, that is the update on my little man. He is so happy and loves EVERYONE. He will give smiles to anyone who will pay him attention and he absolutely adores Lily and of course she adores him in return.

Here are a few of the professional pics that we got done of Davis at 4 months.

Potty Training Part 2

2009-07-30T13:35:00.003-04:00

Monday we started to potty train Lily again. We had attempted potty training back at the beginning of the summer when Josh first got out of school and it did not go very well. We took a 2 month break almost and started trying again. We are using the 3daypottytraining.com method. I read through the whole method and it seemed like a realistic plan for Lily so we started on Monday.

Monday was a long day with a good number of accidents a few successes but lots of praise and excitement thankfully. The previous method we tried ended about 4 hours in because of the complete meltdowns Lily was having in response to being asked to sit on the potty. This method gets the parent to wait for the child to prompt the trip to the potty either by saying, "potty or pee pee" or by starting to have an accident and rushing her to the potty to finish it out if there is any left. Monday her accidents were full blown with a little success once she was on the potty.

Tuesday felt longer but went better. Lily had fewer full blown accidents and more success of telling us she was about to go, leaking a little, holding the rest until we got to the potty and then finishing. She did a great job on Tuesday and woke up from her nap dry.

Wednesday which according to the method is supposed to be the "final" day of training went as good as I hoped. Lily didn't have any pee pee accidents at all. She told us when she needed to go and went potty successfully each time. She never managed to have a successful poopy experience at this point. We caught her in the act the first day and she finished it out on the potty but the last couple of days she has tried to hide and does it in her panties. We are still waiting.

Today, Thursday we went out of the house for the first time since we started potty training. We were all starting to feel a little cooped up. Lily did great and didn't have any accidents while we were out. She even went potty in a public restroom without her potty chair. Lily also went all night last night without wetting the bed. I was unsure this was possible since she pees quite a bit at night time and wakes up pretty wet every morning but we tried the method suggested by the author of the 3daypottytraining.com ebook and it worked. Basically, we stop giving Lily a lot of liquids after about 4:30 (since her bedtime is 7:30) and we only give her a little bit of milk before bed instead of a full cup. The last technique we used was a result of her wetting the bed the 2 previous nights. Right before we go to bed Josh went in Lily's room and got her out of bed and put her on the potty. She pee peed right away and he put her back in bed for the night where she went right back to sleep. This process resulted in Lily waking up DRY!!!

Lily's diapers do not exist in our house anymore so she will be potty trained one way or another!! Just wanted to share our potty training experience. I definitely recommend this method since there have not been any meltdowns or power struggles in relation to the potty as there were with the "one day potty training" method.

Davis giggled!

2009-07-30T13:31:00.002-04:00

I would like to mark this event for Davis. On Monday, July 27th, 2009 he giggled. I know you may be wondering what Davis giggled at, well....his dear old daddy. Josh has a pretty good ability of making crazy faces and one of Josh's animated faces got Davis to giggle. I do believe that a silly face from Josh is also what got Lily to giggle for the first time too. I am beginning to think that I am just not that funny.

I don't have video yet of the giggle, I am going to work on that soon.

Panama City Beach July 11th-17th 2009

2009-07-19T14:26:00.008-04:00

We just got back from the beach where we spent the week with 2 families that we are good friends with. The trip was a lot of fun and we are glad that we took our first real family vacation with Lily and Davis. They both did great while we were gone and Lily had a great time at the beach in the sand with McKenzie and Haley. Here is a brief rundown of some of the fun things we did while at the beach:

Saturday: Left at 9am and drove for 8 hours (1-1.5 hours longer than hoped) arrived at 5pm and got all unloaded and unpacked at our condo. 1501 Ocean Reef and went to dinner at Hana Japan in Pier Park.

Sunday: Beach in the morning, nap and then dinner at Pineapple Willy's with the families.

Monday: Beach in the morning, nap and Josh, Lily, Davis and I went to Pier Park to walk around. Lily rode the Carrosel and the train there. Dinner courtesy of Josh and his fantastic chef abilities.

Tuesday: Beach in the morning with some pool time, naptime and then a trip to shell island with the Anderson's. (Do not go to shell island for shells since there are no shells there it seems and with a child who doesn't walk and a child who walks in the water with her clothes on). Dinner compliments of the Andersons (Taco Salad Bar).

Wednesday: Beach in the morning with pool time, naptime and then a trip to Gulf World with sea lions, sharks, alligators, divers, parrots, penguins and lots more. We saw a great dive show and a great sea lion show. This is a great place to take the kiddos. We went to dinner at Guy Harvey's Island Grill that night.

Thursday: We went to St. Andrew's State Park to the lagoon beach area in the morning. This is a great place to take little kids because the water is very shallow, few waves, crystal clear with fish and shells to see. Naptime in the afternoon. Trip to Walmart where we had a fight with a woman over our place in line. Dinner compliments of the Lamberts (Lasangna).

Friday: Pack up all our stuff (too much stuff really). Took a 2 hour boat ride on The Sea Screamer. Got some lunch and drove the 7 hours home (shaved an hour off the trip).

Whew....what a week.

Here are some pictures to document our first Family Vacation:

Have I got a Deal for you....

2009-07-13T22:57:00.003-04:00

Davis wakes up sometime between 5am and 7am to eat and I am typically the only one up at that time so things in the house are quiet and dark. I have a hard time staying awake during this time due to the fact that I am sitting in a super comfy glider with a sound machine going. To keep myself awake I get on my laptop and look at my favorite sites.

I am a glutton for a good deal and I have a number of websites that I LOVE to look at in my daily routine, so I thought I would share some of them with you in case you love a good deal too. So here they are (in the order that I actually check them):

www.woot.com
sellout.woot.com
www.dailydeals.com
www.lootpig.com
www.1saleaday.com
www.mamabargains.com
www.tottlers.com
www.greenbabybargains.com
www.slickdeals.net
www.babycheapskate.blogspot.com
www.shnoop.com
www.babysteals.com
www.babyearth.com/baby-sale

Hope you enjoy some of these sites. If you have any favorite sites that you would like to share with me that you think I might like definitely let me know! Happy Deal Hunting.

Lily is Paci-free!

2009-06-27T08:51:00.003-04:00

So on Tuesday the 23rd a lady from Babies Can't Wait came to the house to observe Lily. I had called the program because I have been a little concerned about Lily's speech development and wanted to get her evaluated early. They had sent me a couple of surveys to fill out before she got here to go along with her actual observation. She was here for about an hour and basically watched Lily and her interaction with us and her toys, etc. We tried to get her to talk with us during this time so that the lady would be able to see my concerns. Well, she said that she thinks Lily would benefit from a full evaluation which would be done by 2 people that would come to the house for a longer period. This evaluation will happen sometime toward the end of July when we get back from our vacation. In the meantime I was instructed to get Lily's hearing evaluated just to make sure that the speech problem wasn't due to ear problems. On Friday (yesterday) we went to Lily's pediatrician to get her hearing checked. She passed the hearing screen. I asked the Dr. if she could check to see if there was fluid behind the eardrum causing a problem. She did that test and it did come back positive but the Dr. didn't feel that it was significant enough to be causing a speech delay.

On to the paci part of this story.......the lady that did Lily's evaluation had asked us if she uses a paci. Well, Lily does get a paci at night, naps and in the car. I told the evaluator that and she said that we really needed to get rid of the paci if we want Lily to be successful with her speech from here on out. I mentioned that Lily only got the paci only at night, naps and the car and she said that it still causes Lily to put her tongue in the wrong place in her mouth hindering her from learning the proper way to form words. Well, I guess that was all I needed to hear to convince us to get rid of the paci altogether that day. Josh and I had been talking about when would be the best time to get rid of it.....well this evaluation made that decision for us I guess. That was the last time she saw her pacifiers.

Day 1- Lily did awesome without the paci for nap and night. She only cried for about 15 minutes at nap time and didn't make a peep at bedtime.

Day 2- A harder no paci day than day 1. Lily didn't want to take a nap in the pack n play at her Grammy's house and with no paci I thought she might just not nap but she did nap once I put her in the "big girl" bed that Grammy had in the room. That night was not so good either....Lily basically screamed for 30 minutes straight before she finally went to sleep.

Day 3- Nap time was awesome! Bedtime was awesome!

We'll see what today has in store. She still asks for it when I am putting her down for her nap and bed. She will look up at me and smile and say "Pass" (which is her way of saying paci). It's so sad and cute all at the same time, but no giving in here!!

One transition down.....a thousand more to go!!

A Smile that melts my heart!

2009-06-14T09:14:00.004-04:00

This past week Davis smiled for the first of time. It honestly came as a surprise to me because Lily didn't smile for months it seems like so I wasn't expecting it to come so early. Most of the baby books say that social smiles can show up as early as 6 weeks but are more typical after 8 weeks or so. Well Davis was on the early end of smiling I guess, he was 7 weeks when he smiled at me and getting him to smile is not nearly as difficult as it was with Lily. With Lily you really had to work for the smile. With Davis all you have to do is say "smile" in a really sweet voice and he does it! I knew trying to capture the smile might be hard though but I feel like we got pretty close, here are some of the pictures...

5 YEARS

2009-06-11T10:30:00.005-04:00

Last Friday, June 5th was Josh and I's 5 year anniversary. It is fun to think back on the 5 years we have been married and the 8 years we have been together. Here is some of what we have accomplished in that time: 2 Bachelor's degrees, 1 chopped off ring finger (2 weeks before the wedding), Honeymoon to Niagara Falls, camping trips, rafting trip, mission trip to Ecuador, 2 dog adoptions, young couples small group at church, 1 home purchase, 2 Master's degrees, 1 Specialist degree (Josh finishes in a month), 7 years worth of teaching combined, 3 years coaching wrestling with 1 state championship, 2nd in state and 3rd in state finishes, 2 pregnancies, 2 babies, Lots of tears and Lots more laughter!

We didn't do anything fancy to celebrate the anniversary this past week but we are taking 2 vacations this year that definitely count. We are going to the beach with some friends next month and we are planning a ski trip over Christmas break to Big Sky, Montana. We did take Lily and Davis with us to downtown Gainesville where Josh proposed to me almost 6 years ago. We went and ate at my FAVORITE deli which is also where we ate before Josh popped the question and then we went to the Square downtown and sat on the parkbench where he proposed. As an extra treat we also went to the jewelry store and got our rings cleaned (boy they needed it).

Here are a few pictures of Lily in the square of Gainesville. There is also a video of her dancing to a couple local musicians who were playing in the square.

Sorry the video is sideways....you get the idea though. She really liked the harmonica!

Lily's Swimming Lessons

2009-06-06T12:32:00.005-04:00

Lily started some swimming lessons on Monday, June 1st. She is taking the lessons at Swim Atlanta in Dacula. They are 30 minutes a day M-Th for 2 weeks.

Here are some pictures and video from some lessons.

Davis participating in swimming lessons.....Lily's cheering section.

A Big Thank You

2009-06-05T10:05:00.005-04:00

Josh and I want to thank all our friends who took the time to bring us dinner during the weeks following Davis' arrival. It was such a blessing to not have to think about preparing dinner during that time especially with a toddler and a newborn. Thank you so much for serving us so willingly and generously. We feel blessed with your friendship and generosity and of course we hope we can return the favor in the future!

Love,

Josh, Carrie Anne, Lily and Davis

Lily's Stitches

2009-06-05T09:53:00.003-04:00

Well, I finally am getting around to posting Lily's stitches from the Yellow River Game Ranch incident.

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

2009-05-23T22:54:00.002-04:00

The Good:

A few months ago I bought Lily a potty for when the time came to potty train. I was fully prepared to have it packed away for awhile because I was not about to start trying to potty train her while having a newborn to deal with. Since I have bought the potty however, Lily has been incredibly intrigued by its presence. Fairly often she will point to her diaper and say, "eeewww, pee pee, pee pee" I will ask her if she wants to pee pee on the potty and she will nod vigorously. I will then pull the potty out and put her on it to witness what is to be a long sit with no success in the pee pee department. So, on Thursday when Lily came to Josh and I begging to get the potty we pulled it out, took her diaper off and let her sit on it EXCEPT this time she actually pee peed on the potty!!!! We were so shocked that I pretty much forgot the part about teaching her how to wipe. We just started doing the pee pee dance and congratulating her on her success. We also gave her a piece of chocolate which of course is a rarity in her life as a reward. YAY Lily. All arrows point to her wanting to potty train herself because I certainly have not been helping her effort.

The Bad:

Josh is finishing up grad school and today he had class in TN for the day which left Lily, Davis and I to fend for ourselves. My mom had agreed to meet up with me at the Yellow River Game Ranch which is an elaborate "petting zoo" kind of place. It has all sorts of animals: buffalo, deer, ducks, roosters, peacocks, cougars, coyotes, bobcats, donkeys, cows, goats, etc..... The deer, squirrels, chipmunks, ducks, peacocks, goats will walk up to you and pester you to feed them (some a little forcefully). Lily was not super fond of the deer and preferred to spend much of the time in the stroller where she felt safe, either that or she was being held by my mom or myself. Well, we had pretty much been through the whole place and Lily was finally starting to warm up to the animals. She was even walking holding our hands. One of the last areas on the trail is the bunny area. This area is enclosed but the bunnies are loose and you can go in and pet them and feed them. This whole "ranch" is in the woods and the bunny part is on hill with scattered large rocks. My mom and Lily went into the bunny area together to feed them and while they were in there Lily basically lost her balance and fell on her butt where she rolled down the hill slightly and was abruptly stopped by a large rock and her head meeting forcefully. I was watching and it did look like she hit pretty hard. She, of course started crying and my mom picked her up comforted her and brought her to me where I held her and tried to calm her down. A guy who had seen it happen yelled to us, "her head is bleeding." This shocked me because I was no expecting her to have a cut. Sure enough when I looked at the back of her head her hair was all matted with blood. After stopping at an urgent care center that turned us away because she was too little and the finally ending up at an Egleston Urgent Care center about 30 minutes away Lily was fixed up with 3 stitches, 2 stickers and a popsicle. The gash in her head thankfully did not bleed for long on the way to urgent care and she stopped crying about 5-10 minutes after she fell. She was not really happy about being pinned down on her belly wrapped in a bedsheet to keep her from flailing her arms but she did very well getting the stitches. I hope that this isn't the beginning of a myriad of ER visits and injuries in her future. But for now I must say that I have one tough little girl with a nice scar to show for it!

The Ugly: I will be posting a picture of the battle wound with the Yellow River Game Ranch here......(hopefully tomorrow)

Davis 1 month Stats

2009-05-21T17:25:00.002-04:00

9lbs weight- (23rd %tile) up from the (14th %tile)
21.7'' length - (48th %tile) down from (54th %tile)
14.2'' head circ. - (9th %tile)

The new pediatrician that we are going to see is awesome. She spent an hour with Davis and I in the room. She was very thorough and asked lots of questions about Davis. She thinks he is doing great so far. I look forward to going to see her and the other doctor at this practice in the future.

Life with 2 under 2! (20 months and 1 month)

2009-05-20T11:52:00.004-04:00

I think the saying goes, "time flies when you are having fun" but I would like to ammend that to my specific situation right now....."time flies when you are taking care of babies." I can't believe that this past Sunday Davis passed the 1 month mark. Here are some updates about each of them:

Davis: He is doing really well, getting bigger. Of course he is doing all the normal newborn things....eating, sleeping, pooping, crying, etc. I must change his diaper 10 times a day and he is only awake for a total of 4 hours out of 24. That's a lot of diaper changes in a short amount of time. We have his one month appointment tomorrow at a new pediatrician that we are going to try. I have not had any real trouble with the current pediatrician we go to but I wanted to find something a little more personal. I will let you know how it goes after tomorrow's appointment.

Lily is doing great. She is adjusting as well as I would expect a 20 month old to adjust with a new baby brother in the house. She is the perfect "little mommy." It is incredible to me all the little things she picks up on me doing when taking care of Davis. She likes to take care of her dolls the way that I take care of Davis, down to applying the diaper cream and vaseline. It is funny to watch her being a mommy to all her dolls. She is very good with Davis. She loves to give him kisses, she begs to hold him all the time and she is a great assistant when it comes to diaper changes. She helps me get all the necessary items. Although she seems to be doing great with Davis I feel like there is much to be accomplished in the realm of discipline and attitude. Lily has been in an interesting spell recently. She has been having some pretty impressive meltdowns with seemingly no real cause. She is certainly testing all the boundaries and testing Josh and I's consistency. I certainly think that a lot of her frustration can be contributed to the language barrier. She wants to communicate badly but does not have language for it yet. She is doing much better with her words but she is definitely not ahead in this department. Josh and I are waiting for a breakthrough in her verbal skills.

That's a little update with how things are going around here. I only have a few more days of taking care of both of them by myself before Josh is home for the summer. We are looking forward to doing some fun things together as a family while Josh is home. We are in the midst of planning a beach trip with some friends. Here are a few recent pictures of Lily and Davis that you might enjoy:

Lily hugging on Davis.

My cutie pie!

Lily dressed herself for the first time. She put the shorts and the hat on all by herself. Too funny!

Her HUGE Dora doll swinging in Davis' swing. This is Lily playing mommy.

Davis with his monkey at 1 month old.

Tiny toes

I think I must be pumping around Lily too much because she found the adapters and tried to pump for herself. I had just enough time to grab the camera to get this shot. I can't believe she tried to copy me pumping. hehehe!

20 months and Davis' Mother's day dedication

2009-05-11T10:40:00.007-04:00

Lily is 20 months old and she is a firecracker. A lot of people have been asking me how Lily has been handling being a big sister and honestly I can't complain. She tries to be very helpful by bringing me wipes, diapers, shhshing him, patting him, kissing him, etc. The only real "jealousy" I have seen from her is in response to Josh holding Davis. My daddy's girl doesn't want Daddy to hold her brother. Lily still doesn't seem to care that I am holding him for the most part. If she does want me to deal with her she will "tell" me where to put Davis, for instance she will pat the bouncy seat and pat Davis telling me that I need to put him down. It is actually pretty cute. She is patient though too when I tell her that I take care of Davis for a minute and then I will put him down and play with her.
Lily has gotten a lot more words here recently and she loves doing her animal sounds. Her favorite animal sound is the elephant. Honestly I can't really even do the elephant sound but Josh taught her how to blow through her lips to make the noise. It surprises me how many elephant pictures and toys there are around. Just when you think you are in the clear and there couldn't possibly be any elephants Lily manages to find one. One time Lily was reading a book about puppies and bedtime and she starts making the elephant noise. I tried to assure her there were no elephants in that book. I mean it is a book about puppies. She insists that there is one, so I take a look and sure enough the little puppy is reading a book and on the page in the book that it is on there is a very small picture of an elephant. WOW. How does she find those things?!?
Davis is doing well. We are having a few bumps this past week and weekend. For some reason Davis is super gassy and has started to spit up what I feed him almost immediately after I feed him. I have tried to think about what I could be eating that might make him that way and I am not sure. I am not consistent with what I eat so it is really hard to tell what might be the problem. I even resorted to not drinking coke to see if that was the problem and he is still having the problem, so...... if you have any ideas about what the problem might be I am all ears.
So because of his tummy woes he is a little fussier than he was before but I am optomistic that once I figure out what is going on he will be a happier little man. We celebrated my 2nd Mother's Day the same way we celebrated my 1st Mother's Day......Baby Dedication at our church. We dedicated Davis at church yesterday and big sister Lily participated. Last year we dedicated Lily on Mother's Day. We didn't get a whole family picture but we got one of Davis and I after the service.
Here are a few recent pictures to enjoy.....

Lily's First Ponytail and a Preview of Davis' photo shoot

2009-04-30T09:29:00.007-04:00

I have about had it with Lily's bangs and hair in her face ALL DAY (despite many efforts with clips and barrettes). So, today after a shower I thought I would try to see if her hair would go into a ponytail and sure enough it did!! I am very excited about this new development!

Here is a picture of Davis that we took after a diaper change (can you tell how much he likes the temperature change).

Here is a preview of Davis' newborn photoshoot.

Davis is 1 week old already!

2009-04-24T13:25:00.007-04:00

Davis Stats 4 Days Old:

6lbs 8.5oz = 14 %tile

20in = 54 %tile

13 1/4in head =12 %tile

Davis is now 1 week old (well tonight at 10:12pm he will be). He has done great being home. He is so peaceful and sleepy. Lily loves her new little brother. She gives him kisses all the time and "shushs" him when he is crying. We are all adjusting well. My recovery has been a little rough this time around and I am looking forward to feeling 100% again. It is hard not to be able to play with Lily like I am used to.

I have to brag that Davis slept through the night last night. I am definitely not going to count on it being a trend yet but it didn't necessarily surprise me either. He slept from 10pm-5am. Way to go little man!!

Josh goes back to work on Monday and I am nervous to see how being home with Lily and Davis by myself is going to be. It is inevitable that it will happen and I guess I just need to get it over with and get used to it. I can say though that I would not be as apprehensive about it if I were not so sore, hopefully by Monday I will be feeling more myself.

Davis' Birth Story

2009-04-20T13:25:00.003-04:00

Davis Gray Rowan was born on April 17th at 10:12pm. He weighed 7lbs 2oz and was 20in long.

Here is the story of his AMAZING birth (those of you know Lily's story will understand why Davis' birth was amazing. From the beginning:

Thursday April 16th Lily and I left the house promptly at 7:45 to avoid being at our house while a crew of roofers were supposed to show up and install a new roof on our house. I didn't want to deal with all the banging and ruckus so Lily and I went to Elizabeth's house (Elizabeth is a friend of mine from my "mommy" group that has a daughter about the same age as Lily). Anyway, we spent the morning over there and then went to Grammy and Grampy's house for a nap. At this point I was not having any signs of impending labor. While Lily was napping I decided to rest and watch some TV. So I was on the couch when I started to notice some twinges. I should mention that I have been having a ton of false contractions for a few weeks now that were very consistent but not painful. The twinges were the first real signs of painful contractions. After Lily's nap we got all our stuff and went home to see the new roof on our house and to see Josh come home from work. To my surprise/dismay/frustration, I came home to the old roof with 2 pallates of shingles and a dumpster in my driveway UNTOUCHED. Well let me just say that this is not a good time to mess with a pregnant woman days away from her due date. This is when I started to notice that I was definitely having some sort of contractions that were a not just braxton hicks. They were not consistent at this point and not terribly painful either so I just went about business as usual.

Josh was tutoring a high school student at our house that evening and normally I do some work while he is tutoring. Well I knew that I would not be doing much work with the contractions that I was having so I just sat on an exercise ball in the living room and played on the computer for that time. After Josh was done tutoring I finally told him that I had been having contractions that were definitely more real than I had experienced up until that point. He of course was surprised about it. At this point I was contracting about every 6 minutes. By 11pm that night they were about every 4-5 mins apart. The intensity of the contractions though were not really strong or painful so I was not sure what was going on.

By midnight I had called my parents to come up to stay at the house and watch Lily in case I needed to go to the hospital. They showed up at about 1am and by this point my contractions were about 3 mins apart but they still were not getting stronger so I was very unsure of what to do. So I called the Dr. and they said definitely go in to Labor and Delivery to be checked. I was not surprised to find out that I was only dialated to 2cm when I showed up at the hospital at about 2am. I pretty much told them that I wanted to go home. They said that they wanted to monitor me for an hour before I would be allowed to possibly leave. Josh and I walked the halls for an hour+ and at 3:30 I was still only 2cm so I got to go home, YAY! (I did not want to labor at the hospital at all).

Josh and I got home and were able to sleep for about 3 hours before Lily got up for the day. My parents basically watched and dealt with Lily while Josh helped/coached me and got things together for the impending birth. By 8am my contractions were still very consistent and were a little more painful but still not strong enough I knew. I called my OB and she wanted me to come in again to get checked but I only went to the Dr office not to Labor and Delivery. She checked me at 10:30am and I was only 3cm dialated. At this point I was kind of frustrated as to why I wasn't really progressing. The Dr. offered to admit me to the hospital, break my water and get the ball rolling but I declined and told her that I wanted to labor at home. She sent me walking for an hour or so to see if I would progress or not before she would send me home. Josh and I went shopping and had lunch at this point. This whole time I was having contractions that were painful enough that potentially people around noticed that something was going on. At noon I went back to the office and got checked and was still only 3cm. The dr. said she would let me go home as long as I came back as soon as things definitely started to progress.

Josh and I got home about 1pm and I tried to go take a nap which I must say was not effective at all. I couldn't sleep through these contractions at all and I was definitely dealing with more pain but the contractions had slowed down again. I stayed in bed for about 2 hours before I got up and decided that I needed to do something to help my labor. Josh and I took a childbirth class back in January and it was taught by a doula (birthing coach). I knew that this doula would have some suggestions so I called her. She thought that my labor was stalling and not progressing because Davis was not positioned correctly. She gave me a few different things to do to help my reposition Davis and hopefully kickstart labor. I followed her directions very specifically and no joke my labor started booming. I told Josh that we needed to go very soon. I called the Dr. to tell her I was coming and we didn't even wait for her to call back before we left. I knew it was getting close. We left our house at about 6:30pm.

When we arrived at the hospital the Labor and Delivery unit was packed. There were people everywhere. They told me that they didn't have a room and I was going to need to wait. Hearing this kind of made me a little panicy and the control I had over the contractions up until this point was diminishing. Josh and I walked away to wait and within 2 minutes they called me to go back to a room. They must have realized that I had been in the night before at 2cm and had been gone for the whole day and visibly I was having pretty rough contractions. We got back into the room and they checked me right away and I was 7cm. Honestly, hearing that made me want to cry because I thought for sure they were going to tell me I was only 4cm since my progression had been slow the whole day. There was a lot of relief in hearing that I didn't have much longer. I did know that I was starting to lose control of my focus and concentration through my contractions and I was experiencing some incredible back labor. So I had asked the nurse to go ahead and get the anesthesiologist for an epidural. It was still over an hour before I actually got the epidural.

8:30pm I finally had the epidural and was dialated past 7cm and was able to relax for a little bit. Josh and I started to call family and friends to let them know Davis would be coming soon. I thought for sure that it would be after midnight before I would actually have Davis and I made a bet with the nurse that he wouldn't be born until the 18th. She was so confident that he would be here on the 17th that she had already labeled all our bracelets with the 17th. At 10pm the doctor finally came in and checked me and I was 9cm. She broke my water and said she would check me in just a little bit. I thought that meant 30-40 minutes so Josh and I shut off the light and were going to try to take a nap. Literally within 3 minutes she came back in the room and I was fully dialated and ready to push.

I could not believe how fast everything was going. She asked me to do a practice push and about half way through the push when she told me to stop because she had to get dressed to catch Davis. I thought she was kidding. With Lily I had to push for 2 hours and even then the last few minutes were difficult to get Lily out. So, my doctor gets dressed. I started pushing at about 10:08 and 2 sets of pushes later Davis was in the world. He was born at 10:12pm. I could not believe how fast he came out.

This whole labor experience was incredible for me. It was such a different experience from Lily's birth and it was everything that I hoped it would be. I really wanted to labor at home for as long as I could before going to a hospital setting where I would be confined and hooked up to everything. I am so thankful for this wonderful birth experience. Josh and I were amazed at the difference between our 2 children already and I can't wait to see how Lily and Davis are alike and different as they grow up.

By the way, if you read this far I am impressed. I am writing this birth story for me to document how things happened.

I feel so blessed to have had the birth that I really wanted and I am glad that Davis is here and we can start to adapt to our family of 4!

Davis Gray Rowan is here!

2009-04-19T23:13:00.008-04:00

Davis Gray Rowan born at 10:12pm April 17th, 2009.

Weight: 7lbs 2oz
Length: 20in

Got to the hospital at 7:00pm and had him at 10:12pm

Birth Story to come.

Two Maternity Sessions.....

2009-04-12T13:21:00.002-04:00

If you have a chance, go to http://www.519photography.com/blog/the-rowans/ and http://naturallyposhphotography.blogspot.com/2009/04/r-family.html. I had 2 maternity photo sessions last week and there are some "sneak peek" pictures up before we get to see the real gallery.

I am 38 weeks today, Easter! It could be anytime now and Josh, Lily and I are anxiously awaiting Davis' debut!

Hope everyone is having a Happy Easter and we will keep you updated with Davis' arrival.

Shower for Davis

2009-03-18T14:31:00.003-04:00

Here are some pictures from a shower some of my friends threw for me. Everything turned out so cute and Davis got some cute clothes and decor. He will be here before we know it and I am so thankful to my friends for being so supportive and loving.

Lily's 18 Month Stats

2009-03-16T08:09:00.002-04:00

I have been dying to know how Lily was doing height and weight wise these past few months since she seems to tower over other little ones her age. This past Friday we had her 18month appointment. Lily did AWESOME, better than she has ever done and she was a complete ham for the doctor and nurses. She seems to have a magnetic personality with people all over the place and it was just so funny to see her engaging so many people.

Weight: 29lbs 3oz ----> 95%tile
Height: 36 in -----> 99%tile
Head Circ: 19.75in -----> 99%tile

Her weight percentile has slowed down a little but her height and head are still of the charts. It's funny to think of my little girl being 3 feet tall. She is going to tower over me before I can even blink. =)

I asked the Dr about her speech which I have been a little concerned about just because when we went for her year appointment back in Sept she didn't have any words at that point and the Dr. wanted her to have at least 2 or 3. Well she has definitely increased her vocabulary, I think she has about 15 words now which she uses fairly consistently. Here are a few of her favorites:

trash, shoes, juice, daddy, doggie, "T" (for Timber), baby, fish, more, thank you, bye bye, and hi.

She got 2 shots at this visit and did great, not even a tear or cry. She liked our Dr. so much that when the Dr. left Lily cried for her to come back. It was sweet. Well, that's the update for now! Enjoy the impending spring!

2009-03-07T13:11:00.004-05:00

Lily and I did a 6 weeks "gymnastics" class. On the final day I was able to bring a camera and get a few shots of some of the stuff Lily got to work on. Here are a few pictures from our class. It was fun but I think it was more of a workout for me than for her at times!!

Georgia Snow Day in March!!

2009-03-03T12:08:00.007-05:00

So on Sunday we had a nice snowy afternoon. It was fun to stay in and watch the snow falling for hours, very peaceful. It started snowing at about 11am and didn't stop until about 7 o'clock at our house. After Lily woke up from her nap we got her all bundled up to go out and play. The snow was so wet though, but it was fun to play for a while.

Lily liked the snow for the most part but I didn't have any waterproof gloves for her hands so within a few minutes her hands were freezing. Her cloth mittens came off and we played for a few more minutes until we had to go inside. I also had the slight problem of not having a jacket that would really zip over my ever expanding belly. So my entire shirt was soaked when I went in too.

Here are some pictures from our fun time together.

A little scare but in the clear

2009-02-27T16:40:00.002-05:00

This past weekend I woke up feeling pretty yucky. I just thought nothing of it and went about eating breakfast and hanging out with Josh and Lily for the morning. After eating I felt really nauseous. I have an intense phobia of throwing up so I knew I would be in for a long day of feeling "green." I thought if Josh, Lily and I went out that I could possible stave off the sick feeling I had but right before we left the house I started throwing up. Poor Lily had followed me into the bathroom at that point and was watching me lose my breakfast. I thought it was possible that I had just eaten something that didn't settle right so we went to the store and got ready to go to our friend's little boy's 1st birthday party. I chose not to eat lunch but by the time we got to the party I was starving. So, I ate a couple of chips and drank some coke. Well, it was only about 30 minutes later before I told Josh we had to leave. We didn't even make it home before we had to pull over to the side of the road fo rme to lose it again. After getting home and putting Lily to bed I knew that I was severely dehydrated and the contractions started at that point. Experience with my first pregnancy and preterm contractions I knew that the dehydration was the problem and since I couldn't keep anything in me I called the on-call dr who told me to go into Labor and Delivery.

My mom met up with me there and waited while they pumped a few bags of fluid into me and some anti-nausea medicine as well. The nurse also had trouble establishing an IV so after 3 attempts and a few veins the needle went into and then back out of I finally was getting rehydrated. The contactions stopped after that point and besides being tired and worn out things were much better.

So, Davis seems to be fine and healthy. I am feeling tons better now too. Just wanted to fill anyone who was wondering in on what happened last weekend. I am guessing it was a bug but luckily neither Josh nor Lily got what I had.

Have a great weekend and for my fellow Georgians enjoy the rain and possibly snow!!

My Beautiful Baby

2009-02-19T19:12:00.008-05:00

I just wanted to share a few pictures of Lily that I took last week. This week has been a challenging week for us because Lily has really been testing my limits. Tomorrow is Friday and I am just looking forward to Josh being home for the weekend to help me curb her behavior. Last Saturday he had grad school so I had Lily everyday for the past 12 days except Sunday. But I remind myself in times like these when I am feeling overwhelmed and defeated that she is a beautiful gift that God has given me and despite the challenges she helps me grow as a mother too.

In just a couple of weeks she will be 18 months old, so officially a year and a half. Which also means that Davis' arrival is getting closer and closer....=) Definitely excited but nervous all at the same time, especially since Lily and I are in such a "growing pains" type of stage right now. I hope this passes before Davis gets here. We'll see.

So, here is her beauty captured briefly for you to see.

Lily's First Haircut

2009-02-06T21:55:00.007-05:00

Last Friday after Lily's gymnastics class I took Lily to get her first haircut at Pigtails and Crewcuts. Her hair up until that point had been driving me crazy so when my friend Elizabeth told me she was taking her daughter Haley to get her hair cut there after gymnastics I decided to tag along and she was nice enough to let me take some pictures with her camera seeing as this was a spontaneous trip for me.

Here are a few pictures from the experience and I must say that Lily did awesome. She really liked sitting in the airplane and playing with the steering wheel as well as spinning around. The lady who did her hair made lots of fun noises and kept Lily happy the entire time which to me is funny since she hates me messing with her hair.

The Big Trip to New Jersey/Philadelphia

2009-01-28T21:17:00.008-05:00

My cousin Kristin got married this past weekend in her hometown of Mount Laurel, NJ and it was a family affair. So, my mom, my dad, my brother Chris (from Cali) , Josh, Lily and I got all packed up and flew from Atlanta to Philadelphia. I can honestly say that I was very very very nervous about going on a plane with Lily. She is a fantastic little girl but I know her all too well. In my mind I already had her terrorizing all the other patrons on the plane, screaming, whining, not sitting still, etc. I had talked with many friends who had given a lot of wonderful suggestions that I thought might help. So we packed up all the goodies (snacks, milk, new toys, DVD player, books, etc) and headed off to the airport last Thursday morning. Our flight was scheduled to leave at 11:05.

Let's just say that once we got to Philadelphia I thought we might have to just live up there forever. Despite all my efforts (Josh's, mom and dad's too) Lily was a pill on the plane. She didn't scream the whole time but she WOULD NOT sit still and every time we tried to hold her down or make her sit that is when she gave whining/screaming some practice. It was the longest 2 hours of my life and I was absolutely dreading the flight home. I imagine all the people on the plane were hoping they weren't on the return flight with us (although a really nice couple was kind enough to make me feel better about the experience and told us that they thought Lily was a doll ~ they must have been watching a different child).

We stayed in a hotel suite with my parents and brother. It had two rooms connected by a living room/kitchen area. It was a perfect little set up. I was determined to try to keep Lily's schedule and bedtime as close to the same as possible. Friday, Saturday and Sunday were all pretty good days but I can say that none of it was really a vacation for me. Being the mom that I am I was worried about Lily the entire time we were there just trying to make sure she was fed, rested, etc. Friday was spent with my cousins and aunts eating and chatting. My cousin Kristin married into a very large Italian family who are a lot of fun and very rambunctious! We had a good time catching up with most of my cousins (on my mom's side) and aunts.

Josh and I also had the opportunity to drive to Rowan University (once named Glassboro State) to get a t-shirt and some pictures. Josh was really excited that there is a university with our last name so we made the special trip (30 minutes) to scope it out. It definitely wasn't as nice as Elon but with our last name it couldn't be anything but great.

Saturday was the wedding at a beautiful little church. It was all made of stone on the outside and was small and quaint on the inside. I really enjoyed the architecture of it. The bride and groom had a lunch reception following the wedding and then an evening of snacks and drinks following the lunch. Honestly, we must have eaten more food than you would eat on a cruise. We did not go hungry on this trip.

Sunday we spent the day with my Aunt Martha driving around Philadelphia. Josh really wanted to have an authentic cheesesteak so we all loaded up and went and had a philly cheesesteak there in Philadelphia. It was a good experience but Josh was disappointed that the cheesesteaks, although good, were not any better (in his opinion) than the ones here in GA. I honestly can't contribute because I never had one before and the one I had was good enough for me. We then said our goodbyes to my cousins (and spouses/boyfriends) and went site seeing with my Aunt Martha. My brother suggested that we go to the Mutter Museum. If you don't know what it is I suggest you google it and check it out. Most people probably would not find it to be something they would spend a Sunday afternoon doing but my family enjoyed it. It is basically a medical museum showing different instruments used back in the beginnings of medicine as well as wax models of different diseases/conditions. The most gruesome part I guess was that they had glass jars with fetuses of babies that had died either during birth or through miscarriages. Now, I know you are thinking that is gross but I found it to be incredibly interesting. I mean being 27 weeks pregnant at the time I think people were looking at me weird that I was not terrified of it but I am a science nerd, what can I say. We then went to the Liberty Bell and briefly looked and walked around Independence Hall. It was VERY cold that day so being outside was not too much fun.

Monday we got all packed up and headed back to the airport for the dreaded flight home. Much to my surprise Lily did better. She was very tired and ended up sleeping a good hour or so of the flight which was exactly what Josh and I needed. She of course fought us while she was awake but she at least slept this time. We got home after 5 on Monday and I can't tell you how much I was thankful to be home!!! I love travelling but I think I am going to have to say that I love travelling without kids a lot better. Everyone said how great Lily did the whole weekend and I appreciated all the support and help from my family.

Since being back Lily is back to normal. She didn't even need recovery time to get back on schedule. The next day was completely normal for us and things have been running along as if we were never gone. I am so glad that babies bounce back and are resilient because mommies don't do as well! If you made it this far, thanks for reading!!

Tomorrow I go for my 28 week appointment for Davis and see how things are going. I can't believe how fast everything is going. It should be a pretty routine visit since I already did the Gestational diabetes test last time and passed with flying colors. I will keep everyone update as things continue to progress.

Here are few pics from our trip to enjoy.

Beginning of plane ride there.....
Not crying yet.
Towards the end when she was SO tired but wouldn't sleep....

The minute we got off the plane and put her in her stroller this was the result.....

Swimming at the indoor pool of our hotel.

That bathing suit was mine when I was 2 years old.

Hanging out a the reception.

The only thing with Rowan University was the bookstores sign. Everything else just said Rowan and we wanted it to say both.
Walking through Philly.
Outside of the Liberty Bell museum.

Josh makes that bell look small doesn't he?
Bundled up at the Mutter Museum before we left.

After the site seeing venture in Philly, again we have a sleeping baby.

Lily's new car

2009-01-05T16:23:00.002-05:00

My Dancing Girl

2009-01-05T16:01:00.002-05:00

Lily loves to dance and it is stinking hilarious. Here is a very short clip of her well developed dancing abilities.

Baby Belly at 24+ weeks

2009-01-05T09:10:00.003-05:00

Pictures by Josh at 11pm at night. I realized that I hadn't taken any this time around yet and thought that I should just take a few. I guess I am a little slap happy and acting a little silly but hey, now you can't say that you haven't seen the belly.

Enjoy!!

My Christmas Baby!!

2009-01-04T21:11:00.007-05:00

I know this post is a little late but I guess it is better late than never. My mom bought Lily a really cute Christmas dress and we didn't really have much of a chance for her to wear it but we did manage to get her in it a few times before Christmas was past. She wore this dress to sit on Santa's lap at the mall. The experience for her was a bit traumatic. A little humorous but Lily was definitely mad that it happened at all. I do have a picture of it but I will have to scan it. We also put her in this dress to take her to church one Sunday. She was a hit in the nursery, lots of swooning and ooohs and ahhhhs. She knew she was cute and strutted her stuff the whole time.

We had a great Christmas and New Years this year. Christmas was fun. My brother and his girlfriend flew in from California for about a week. My brother, Chris, graduated with his Ph.D. in Astronomy (astrophysics) or something like that. I went to his graduation at the Georgia Dome of all the humongous places to have graduation. Lily was a bit unsure of her uncle. She definitely spent a good amount of time eyeing him and studying what he was about. I guess she takes a little bit to warm up to some people. We had a little dinner celebration for my brother's graduation as well as his birthday and Christmas since he and his girlfriend were not going to be in town on Christmas day. We had the little shindig here at our house which is always fun.

Josh, Lily and I celebrated Christmas at home a little early this year. We have started the tradition in our family to only get three gifts for each person (3 for Josh, 3 for CA and 3 for Lily). I got this idea from a lady at our church and thought it was great. When Jesus was born (which of course is the reason we celebrate Christmas to begin with) three gifts were presented to Jesus from the three Magi (Gifts of the Magi). I thought that this would help us refocus what the holiday is really about as well as keep our bank accounts in check and our priorities in order. It is so easy to get caught up in the excitment of presents and gifts and I just want to make sure that Josh and I do a good job of teaching Lily the real meaning of Christmas and not just that you get cool presents. That doesn't mean she didn't get cool presents though.

Lily's Presents:

Little Leaps Game System for babies

Cabbage Patch newborn doll

Stroller for her new doll

CA's presents:

Shiatsu back massaging chair cushion

1 Hour massage from Massage Envy

Astronaut Ice Cream (3 packs)

Josh's Presents:

GPS portable navigation system

Set of 3 Santoku Wolfgang Puck knives with cutting board and subscripton to Gourmet Chef magazine (all one gift from HSN).

Ear candles (long story that I will have to share later).

Lily of course got a bunch of stuff from Grammy and Nana here are some highlights (her favorites after a few weeks of play): Horton her Huge sit-on stuffed elephant, Elmo See and Say, Little Tykes Kitchen with play food and tons more. (The grandparents don't follow the same three present rule that we will at our house).

We celebrated Christmas day at Uncle Jay and Katie's house down in East Point with Josh's parents (Grammy and Grampy) and Josh's grandfather (GPops). We had Christmas breakfast and opened lots of presents. Lily ended up being EXHAUSTED from the morning's activities and gifts. We went over to my parents condo after being in East Point and had a good time with my mom and dad (Nana and Papa). With as much fun as Christmas was I was also so glad when it was over. We were all very tired. Lily and I loved having Josh home for Christmas and New Years.

New Year's this year was very uneventful for us. Josh and I were actually in bed asleep before midnight. We didn't even stay up to watch the peach drop or anything. Lily was of course out like a light too. These past weeks have been fun and tiring and I am glad to be getting things back to normal meaning back into our routine.

Sorry this post is so long but there was a lot to update on I guess. I wish I had done it sooner but even the thought of posting seemed overwhelming the past few weeks.

Davis (baby in the belly) is doing great. He is moving a little more now but is still seeming to be much calmer than Lily ever was in utero. We had an appointment on Friday and everything looks great so far and I am not having any signs of the itching (Cholestasis) that I had last time although it didn't show up until about 32 weeks last time either. I am currently 24 weeks pregnant and I keep wishing the time would go as slow as possible =).

Happy New Year!! With Love from the Rowans.

Superman and Lois Lane!!

2008-12-13T20:59:00.001-05:00

Create your own FACEinHOLE

Our little Tinkerbell

2008-12-12T23:59:00.002-05:00

Create your own FACEinHOLE

2008-11-24T17:36:00.003-05:00

Davis Gray Rowan is due April 26th, 2009

We weren't supposed to find out until December 4th what we were having but due to a minor altercation with the pavement and my body I had to go get an ultrasound to make sure everything was ok. Well, I can say I am a little banged up. I have a bruised and cut up ankle, a bruised and cut up elbow, a knot on my head and dirt on my bum. Lily actually helped to break my fall, poor thing, but she is fine and resilient as all babies seem to be. Anyway, they checked myself and the baby out when I got into the doctor this afternoon and the baby looked good, heartbeat was 136 and he was ALL boy for sure. We are very excited and just wanted to share our joy and blessing with everyone else too. I am doing ok, I definitely need to rest for the next day or so to help my ankle and body recover but all in all I am fine.

Thanks for sharing in our good news.

A Great Birthday Present.....

2008-11-18T19:09:00.002-05:00

Well, I had an OB appointment yesterday to check on the baby and make sure things were still going well. Everything was great. The heartbeat was strong and easy to find. I also was able to schedule my Big Ultrasound (the one where you get to find out the gender). That is where the title of this post comes from..... My birthday is December 5th and on December 4th I get to go find out if Baby Rowan #2 is going to be a baby girl or a baby boy. I am very excited about it although I was kind of hoping that they would let me have a peek yesterday. No such luck but at least I don't have to wait another 4 weeks before going back. =)

Just thought I would update everyone.

Weekend Getaway and Halloween Fun!

2008-11-01T14:08:00.007-04:00

A few weeks ago Josh and I had the opportunity to get away for the weekend. We went up to Berry College with some friends of ours (Zac and Dawn Caudell). They both graduated from Berry and so they knew some things fun to do. We stayed in some on-campus cabins that can be rented out. We had a good time. We went on a nice hike and Josh and Zac got to play some disc golf as well as some raquetball. I got a chance to relax a little and read. We went out to a nice dinner and had some expensive food. Overall it was a nice opportunity to a break from life and relax a little. There are some pictures of our trip below.

Yesterday Lily and I got to celebrate some Halloween festivities by going to a Halloween party play date with Lily in costume as well as dress her up for Halloween that night as well to hand out candy. She was a little chick and she won an award at the playdate we went to for "funniest costume."

Here are some pictures of our trip to Berry and Lily's 1st "costume" Halloween.

Josh and I also went to a halloween party a week ago and this was our costume:

If you can't guess, we were a "pair of blue Jeans"

Picture Update

2008-10-14T18:26:00.008-04:00

Lily had her 1 year portraits done back in September and here are a some of those....

Lily and Papa

Lily and Mommy

Lily giving Daddy kisses

Bath time

Hair combed out after bath time

Mommy and Lily rode a dinosaur ride at the Gwinnett County fair, since Lily is SO tall she was actually able to ride some of the rides when she probably really wasn't quite "old" enough. We had a good time she didn't cry she just held on tight.

We bought Lily a big girl chair of her own because I was tired of her climbing on the couches so as soon as we bought this she was a sitting machine....she loves it. I only wish I had bought one sooner.

Getting in her chair

Mommy, Daddy, Lily and The Caudell's went to Col. Cobb's Corn Maze, Hayride and Pumpkin Patch. Here are some silly pictures from the day at the farm.

The Caudell's

Lily and Parker (Parker is 7 1/2 months old)

There was a bouncy thing there too so Lily and daddy bounced together.

Mike Mannschreck, Josh and Lily after dinner together.

Carrie Anne and Kristin Mannschreck (The Mannschreck's just had their 2nd baby a few weeks ago and are going to be moving back to Oklahoma soon.....too soon!!)

Hope you enjoyed some new pictures.

Posting Lapse

2008-10-11T22:37:00.004-04:00

This past month or so has been a long month for me. I have been pretty sick with morning sickness since the end of August. I should be coming out of the morning sickness stage very very soon and I hope that I get a new found energy at the same time.

Lily is a firecracker. She is all over the place and into everything. We have found even more things to childproof than I thought was possible. Some of her conundrums lately have been, eating grease from the grill's grease trap, putting our TV controller in Timber's water dish, eating charcoal, spilling red Kool-aid all over the floor and dining room chair and pouring water in one of her stand-up electronic toys. You would think that I was not even watching her.....but I was and somehow all that stuff still happened. AHHHHH (said with a smile on my face).

Lily is very close to being able to run now, which I am not excited about. It is going to be harder for me to keep up with her as my belly gets bigger and bigger. Lily just learned how to drink from a straw yesterday. We have been trying to get her to do that for a little while now and something clicked with her yesterday, all it took was for her to get it one time and now she knows exactly what to do. Lily can also whistle. I know that you might find that hard to believe but I promise you it is the truth. I whistle a lot around the house and I guess she mimicked my mouth and she was able to whistle (while sucking in). She can replicate it so I know it was not a one time thing. I have not caught it on video yet, but that is coming soon.

Last month Lily had her 12 month appointment with the pediatrician and did really well (minus the shots that she was much more aware of this time around....not happy). She is SUPER tall and just an overall big girl. She is off the charts again for weight, height, and head circumference. The pediatrician said that she was not at all concerned and that Lily's big daddy might have something to do with her large stature. They did say that Lily should be saying about 1-3 words by now and I told them that I really wasn't sure that Lily was doing that yet. I have been working like mad to get her to say things (coherently). She babbles all day long in Lily language but not too many "real" words have come out yet. We will keep working on it.

Josh is doing some leadership training to hopefully become an administrator soon. He is enjoying some of his new opportunities and connections. Maybe next year he will be an Assistant principal which I think would be so fun! Everything else with us is going well. We are looking forward to the Thanksgiving and Christmas season right around the corner. We will probably be finding out the sex of Baby Rowan #2 at the end of November/beginning of December.

Hope everyone is enjoying the cooler weather and the beautiful days of fall. Keep in touch!

Lily's 1st Birthday

2008-09-11T20:46:00.006-04:00

Lily is 1 year old now and we had a fantastic birthday celebration for her on Sept 6th at Fort Yargo State Park in Winder. It was a beautiful day and lots of people came to celebrate with us. Unfortunately, that whole week before her party Lily and I were both sick with a cold and then the morning of her party Lily wakes up at 4 am with horrible diaper rash and diarrhea. The poor little thing was in pain and couldn't sleep well.......we barely got enough sleep for her party and by the end of the day she was EXHAUSTED. The party itself was great. Lily had lots of little friends come and celebrate with her and we had lots of our adult friends to celebrate with us. Lots of fun.

I don't have a ton of pictures yet because I was not taking any while this was all going on. Lily's first birthday cake experience was incredible........I will post a progression of pictures below for you to get the best understanding you can of what happened.

Lily is walking great now and she barely ever crawls anymore (no more dirty knees, yea!!). We have her 1 year doctor's appointment on Sept 15th next week. I also have my first ultrasound appointment next week to make sure baby #2 is growing healthy and strong like Lily did.

On Lily's birthday I took a moment to pause and think about the whole year that had gone by so quickly and remember the moment we first met our beautiful little girl. I know Josh agrees when I say it was the best moment of our lives. All the itching and pain was worth it for such a precious little girl who makes so many people smile when she looks at them. She is really a blessing from God that we feel so privileged to be able to raise. I can't believe that I will be doing it all over again in less than a year but the rewards are infinite and I know that I will be thinking all the same things after a year of his/her life.

Thanks to all the friends and family that were able to share in Lily's special day. We feel so blessed to have some many loving people in our lives!

It's Official.......Baby Rowan #2 is on the way!!!

2008-08-19T13:56:00.005-04:00

Josh and I just found out that we are pregnant with #2!! We are very excited. The only proof I have at this point is the pregnancy test that I took. According to my calculations I will be due April 26th, 2009. Perfect timing for a teacher's baby! =) I just wanted to share the news with everyone!

Here's a little proof....

Lily is Walking!!!

2008-08-03T19:53:00.005-04:00

Lily has 4 teeth now....they came in fast. She has the top two and the bottom two. She is starting to look less like a baby and more toddler.

This past week Lily has officially started walking. She can go about 10 steps before tumbling to the ground. I am so proud of her. She doesn't even get daunted or discouraged. Very determined and independent already! I have included a video of her walking below. I can't believe she will be a year old in a month. What a big girl.

Time sure does fly but Josh and I are loving "almost" every second of it. Lily is so funny and loving and it has been such a blessing to have her in our lives. If I am in a bad mood all she has to do is look at me and my frustration melts away and I start to laugh and smile myself. Thank goodness she is around, she lightens every situation.

So, I guess I should mention how the beach trip went.....let's just say it is harder to go to the beach with a 10 month old by myself than I thought. Lily was only down in Florida from Sunday to Monday and then my wonderful husband was kind enough to come and get her so that I could have a real "vacation." It was however the first time that I have been away from Lily overnight let alone a whole week......my heart was so homesick, but I tried to enjoy the beach and friends as much as I possibily could while missing Lily and Josh like crazy.

Here is a link to the pictures from our beach trip......not too many of Lily though =(

http://www2.snapfish.com/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=237690935/a=100740449/t_=100740449

I am planning Lily's 1st Birthday and am very excited about it. Her present from Josh and I is a playroom in our house. We converted our garage into a playroom so that she can have free reign and lots of room. I know she won't have a clue in terms of her present and her party, but I think it is a good reason to have a get together.

Here are some good pics of her and a video of her WALKING!!!

Lily's playroom (a work in progress)
LOTS of primary colors.......