First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes...

I can't believe that we've had our little guy for a month now.  My mom was saying (when Tyson was only 2 weeks old) "I can't wait for him to run and talk." I looked at her with a sad frown and told her I was already sad that he is changing so much and is hardly a new born anymore.

Dane and I feel so incredibly lucky to have our little Tyson. Dane shared a thought with me that it's strange how if we were babysitting we would be like, "oh my, when are this kid's parent's getting back!" Since Tyson is ours he was wondering if he would get that exasperated feeling, but, (lucky for me) Dane said he doesn't feel any of that and Tyson is just a part of our family.  We didn't have to "make room" for him, he just slipped right into his spot here.

I am getting used to being a mom.  It's been quite a change of pace and hard to figure out how you can still get things done.  Looking for tips on that one...

For those of you that like details of birth stories, you won't get much here. But here are some highlights:
2:10 am: wake up and have two contractions on the second contraction (2:20 am) my water breaks.
2:10-6:50 - continue to have contractions.
6:50- Dane wakes up to his alarm (he was going to go on a run with friends), he walks into to bathroom (where I happened to be right then) I look at him and just say, "I'm in labor." Dane's response was, "Really?!" I had to reaffirm that yes indeed I was in labor.  Then he asked if my water had broken.
8:30 - We call L&D to let them know the situation and get the thumbs up that we should head in there.
9:17 - Admitted to the hospital and was already dilated to a 7! woo hoo!
1:45 - Go time.
ya-da ya-da ya-da
Doc's think Tyson is transverse
ya-da ya-da ya-da
Different doc's think Tyson is sunny side up
ya-da ya-da ya-da
5:00 pm - Tyson makes his appearance!!!

It was quite a flurry from 4:45 to 5:00.  We had a great pediatric team that was able to take care of Tyson as soon as he was born and get him breathing after about a minute and a half. He had pretty terrible color and was as limp as a dead fish when he first came out. After some ventilation he started to come around.

A swollen mom and Tyson.  This was after lots of the swelling went down. The nurses warned each other on the switch of shifts that it looked like I had taken a bat to the face or something like that. One of the nurses on the last day walks in and says, "Oh you aren't as swollen as they warned me about."

 The cheeky little guy.

 Our first family picture as a family of three.

My two favorite boys. My heart explodes looking at this picture.  

Dane's gift

Dane's gift to me to help things move along... He is so funny.  

I knew this kiddo would be late. I'm just sad that I was right.

Duke game

Dane got his wish.  He had been checking the local ACC college basketball teams to see if Duke was ever going to come play one of the teams on a day other than Sunday.  He did this before we moved to Boston and as soon as the schedule came out last year... Finally this year he was thrilled to find out that Duke was coming to play Boston College on a Saturday.  He was thrilled. 

Previous to game day, Dane had prepped me to make sure that I'd be ready in time.  He wanted to leave early, beat traffic, be able to watch the team warm up, etc.  We loaded up on game day dressed in royal blue (Dane in his Duke Jersey), headed out on the previously determined - fastest route to the arena, and got there before the team.  We hung out for a while and were able to welcome Duke to Massachusetts. Dane was tempted to invite Jabari to come to church with us the next day. After that we had to wait another hour or 45 minutes until the doors would open.  We watched warm ups and stood by the tunnel as players and coaches ran in and out of the locker room.  

There was a surprisingly huge Duke fan showing.  The cheers when Duke scored rivaled the cheers when BC scored.   Duke played fantastically and came away with the W. 

Christmas... in March?

Yes, I am posting about Christmas... 

Christmas break was so much fun.  We were able to spend Christmas in Massachusetts and then after Dane's birthday we headed down to Florida with my entire family.  We had quite the experiences down there. 

My mom had booked this vacation through one of those time share agencies.  Big mistake.  It made for quite the interesting trip, which included one less rental car than expected.  But more importantly they provided a hotel that didn't deliver on promises - Including indoor pool (Ok, we could live with out that), cribs that we had reserved for the 3 babies in the family ("I think that we may have some in some hidden room, but I don't know where that is."), room keys (Yes, we had to have someone from the front desk let us into our room every time we left our room for the first day), clean rooms (we had a complementary pair of dirty panties hanging from our lamp shade when we arrived), toilet paper (my sister's room came sans T.P.),bed sheets (of the several rooms and several beds we had only 1 or 2 had both a top and bottom sheet), hot water (I guess the hot water heater broke...), food (It will be here in 45 minutes... 2.5 hours later we're still waiting), or good clean food (I got food poisoning - which has been the only time I've thrown up since I got pregnant).

Regardless of the terrible hotel we had a great time!

We went to Disney World - The magic kingdom, Animal kingdom, Epcot Center, and the Hollywood place.  We had gotten the list of the "must see's and must ride" for each of the parks. That made each day more efficient since we had a game plan. 

Most of the gang. Jeremy and Daniel were in a different park this day. 

Yes!!!! "Race track" at Epcot. 

Our speedy safari... These are called Grant Zebra's... all except the on one the right. 

 Dane and I saw that they had the Orange Bowl (or Citrus bowl) only a couple miles from our hotel. So we went to check it out. What a cool venue right on the water.

Not sure what to say about this one.  My dad has an affinity towards ducks? 

 Good look for Jeremy.

Happy New Years from Epcot Center!

Nikki was literally cowering from the dinosaur. :) so funny! 

Then we went on our quick cruse... 1 day in the Bahamas.  This was more our speed.  We got to spend a day on the beach and we went swimming in the ocean. There was also a little water slide and pool that we took advantage of. There is just something about sand, sun and water that you can't beat. 

While on the boat we had fun playing shuffle board, going to the comedy show, and hanging out with the family.  

Christmas break was a success. 

My eggo is en fuego

I guess it's time to finally post about being pregnant.  Here are the details that I held off posting on FB, which I didn't do until Christmas when I was 5 months pregnant.  I haven't kept up with the blog much, so now is as good a time as any to record all this mess.  :)

I am finally pregnant! It took a long time and it was a big shock when it finally did happen.  Because we had experienced so much disappointment previous to that I think that we definitely had more caution about getting our hopes up at the beginning. I really didn't start getting excited until after a couple doctors appointments when I was about 15 weeks. 

At my first doctors appointment the doctor gave me the check up and her comment was, "woah, you're big." (Even though I wasn't showing at that point.) At our ultrasound the tech said that our baby was measuring with a due date of April 9th... 7 days before my actual due date. Once I hit 27 weeks and they started measuring my belly then I have consistently measured a week and a half or two ahead of where I am gestationally. I figured I wouldn't be so lucky as to have this baby a week early, but rather that I would just have a big baby.  My doctor confirmed that that was most likely the case.

It has been fun getting to "spend time" with our little guy.  I have laughed at some of the funny things that he has done as well as stopped mid sentence when he has kicked some vital organ that left me breathless. 

Here are a few in utero stories about our baby:

During the ultrasound we were looking at a cross section of his head. We could see his little head spinning 360 degrees and we were all surprised with how active he was. He wasn't shy at all, and when they would be looking at something other than him he would come swimming into the picture.  The tech's thought that was pretty funny, and so did we.

It was about 3:00 am, and I was up for my nightly visit to the bathroom.  Once I got back to bed and had been laying down for a little while I felt our baby kicking quite a bit on my left side.  If my belly were a clock it would have been at the 9:00 position. About 20 seconds later I feel him running on the inside of my belly or just kicking as he spun around in there. Going back to the the clock analogy... he kicked me at 11:00, 1:00, 2:00, 4:00... all in about 4 seconds.

My belly had just started to get bigger, so after finishing some cereal one day I put my bowl on my bump.  Right then he kicked the bowl and made the spoon rattle around.  

I was lying down to go sleep and had been comfortably resting for about 10 minutes. I readjusted a blanket to help support my belly.  In the process of doing this I woke him up and he did not like this blanket that was now encroaching on his space.  He kicked and kicked at it to make it go away.  Shortly after I moved the blanket he settled down and we both went to sleep.

I was sitting at work at felt movement, so I look down to see this perfectly shaped mole hill poke up about a half inch... then back down, then back up... then back down. 

Last night I'm in that stage where I'm almost asleep.  He had been squirming around so I was mostly used to that, but then all of a sudden the kid boots the heck out of me and sends a shock through me like an electrical current. I gasp and tell Dane what happened. He comforts me like a little kid that's scared of thunder.  What a funny man.

Then this morning, I wasn't sitting with the best posture and since this boy has really been dominating my body cavity lately he seems to think that he owns the joint... but he starts treating my ribs like he did that blanket that I had shoved under my belly for support.  He seems to think that my ribs are an intrusion on his space.  So, he kicked at them until I sat up straight.


Dane and I have loved our time together just the two of us.  It has also been fun starting this journey and trying to fathom what our lives will be like in just a few short weeks. 

Less than a month to go!