Catching Up: The Baby

October, November, December 2016

I birthed a child.  Now I'm raising a child.  Sometimes that still hits me by surprise.

I love our little baby, but it was a little rough getting him here.  I was in labor for a long time, the epidural didn't work as well as I would have liked, and it was all a little traumatic.  And then when our little baby was born, he decided not to breathe.  He made everyone nervous, but after some chest compressions and an oxygen mask, he was breathing on his own.  He was given normal newborn status by the time he left the NICU after a few days.

Our days (and nights) have been filled with feedings, diaper changes, spit-up, and some sleeping.  More recently he has also added smiling to his repertoire, and that melts our hearts over and over again.  We love this child, more than we thought we ever could.  We have found so many new joys and we are so happy he is in our lives.  Now we can't imagine life without him.

There have been so many firsts, including his first Halloween, first Thanksgiving, and first Christmas.

We have also decided to do a "Texas Tour" over Christmas break.  We started by going to Waco.  Many people ask, Why Waco?  Well, we decided to start small to see how the baby would handle outings.  We found out that he does very well!  That child likes to be around lots of people.  (What is is introvert mother going to do?) We went to the Magnolia Market - or Fixer Upper Heaven - and also to a local diner for lunch.  We also made stops for kolaches and fancy chocolate.  We had a great time!

We also went to Houston to visit the space center.  We easily didn't see everything there was to see, but we were there for 5 hours and were pretty exhausted by the end.  Highlights included going inside of a space shuttle, seeing the Saturn shuttle, and seeing mission control.  There was a lot of cool stuff!

Last week we went to Dallas where we hung out with my whole family.  My parents rented a house and we had some good together time.  The baby got to meet his Grandpa Howell and his aunts, uncles, and cousins for the first time. We also went to the Dallas aquarium, which was fun.