Christmas prep!

I'm such a little kid about Christmas! I just think it's the best time of the year, and I've always been so excited to have kids to share it with. Here a few from my camera roll of our little fam getting ready for our first Christmas as a family of 3. I'm so thankful to get the opportunity to be a mommy and to celebrate the season of remembering that Jesus came as a baby who needed lots of love and care like my girl. Oh, how He loves us to come to earth like that!















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Halloween

The little miss had some seriously low-key costuming this year! We took her to the family festival at our church, but we were only there for about 45 minutes because it was right during naptime. I was afraid that might happen, so I only spent $2 from the Target $1 section for her costume. Doesn't matter--she's always the cutest thing I've ever seen!

Here's Princess Avery!


Halloween itself was on a Wednesday and Lance had to be at church, so we didn't really do any trick or treating. Instead, she got to be a wildcat!


Note that she is a wildcat wearing witch socks. Haha

This isn't Halloweeny, but she also had her first ponytail that week!


She is just presh! I love her so!

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Walk to Cure Diabetes

On Saturday, my family did the Walk to Cure Diabetes with/for my dad, who's been diabetic since before I was born. It was amazing to see so many people there for a cause so near and dear to our hearts.

Our team name was Bob's Beauties. :)


It was a great day. Sweet little miss did NOT want to be in her stroller, so I ended up walking the 3.1 miles with her in the Moby.


I loved the time with my family, Avery slept for 2/3 of the walk, it was a gorgeous day, and it was such a great cause!

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Rangers game

We took Avery to her first Rangers game on Tuesday! She was just the cutest fan ever, and she did surprisingly well at the game. I was amazed because she does not care for loud noises. She was just her precious, wonderful self sporting her pink Rangers onesie!









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THE tooth

Still just the one... But too cute to keep to myself!


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Hooray!

We just got home from the physical therapist, and I'm so thankful to share that Avery's evaluation went great! They aren't recommending any treatment at all! Praise The Lord!


This is how adorable she looked at church Sunday morning. I mean... Melt me, am I right?

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The Checkup

Avery had her 6-month checkup yesterday, and overall it went really well. She is growing great, and the doctor even remarked that she seems very smart! The only thing I'm concerned about is that Avery tilts her head very slightly (I'd never really noticed it except in pictures, and I thought she was just being cute), so we have to take her to a physical therapist to make sure it's not torticollis. I'm a little nervous about all of that.

She is still wonderful and precious and such a blessing to my life!

And because she is too cute NOT to share a picture.... I just love her hair in the mornings. Makes me smile every day.



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Sweet face

Because there are very few things cuter than a messy baby face...



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Six months. Six months?!?!

Oh my goodness!  Sweet baby girl is 6 months old today!  How is that even possible?  I have been a total failure at blogging because I was working hard at mommying instead.  It was totally worth it.  :)  I'm going to try to do better about posting on here though.  I know it will be fun to look back on if I can keep up with it.

My sweet sister (who now lives only 10 minutes from us!) came over to take some 6-month pictures of Avery.  They are absolutely adorable.  For your viewing pleasure...

These six months have been some of the most amazing months of my life.  I feel so blessed to be this little angel's mommy.  The Lord has blessed us indeed!

so in love

She is amazing. I have no time to blog these days... But she is too precious to keep to myself.








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she's here!!!!

My tiny angel has arrived! Avery Jordan was born on Monday, March 5th at 4:12 pm, weighing in at 7lb, 9oz and surrounded immediately by a loving family. She's doing wonderful, and we are over the moon. She is gorgeous too, by the way. Evidence:







Hopefully I will get to post more soon. We are still trying to figure out our new normal while recovering and not sleeping much... So blogging has been low on the priority scale. However, I want to make sure I remember the sweetness of these days, so I will do my best to document it all soon.

We are amazed and feel so blessed. Thank you, Lord!

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bows!!!

I think we have our hospital bow situation under control...



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church shower

We had a pretty wonderful shower at PR. We were amazed and SO blessed. We felt (and feel) incredibly blessed. My sweet dad took pictures for us (and there are MANY), but here is a tiny snapshot of our shower.

When we got home from the shower, our sweet families helped us bring everything in--isn't this amazing?!?!Such an overwhelming and humbling experience. We feel so blessed. (I feel like "so blessed" is our catchphrase these days!!!)

big ol' belly

My goodness, things have gotten busy around here! We're ever-growing these days!

31 weeks:

32 weeks:

33 weeks:

34 weeks (this is at the very end of the day after our PR shower... I was a bit tired!):

35 weeks:

heritage shower

We had a lovely shower at my parents' church on Sunday, December 4th. It's such a blessing to feel so loved!

It was such a surreal day... I just couldn't believe that we were the ones who were opening baby stuff! Such a blessing and dream come true for us.

Can you tell we're happy? :)

her name

Our baby girl will be...

Avery Jordan Parrish

Jordan is both Lance's middle name and my mom's maiden name... and we both just loved the name Avery. Anyway, we love the name, and we love her.

tying up some loose ends

I’ve mentioned several things in passing but haven’t circled back to address them, so here is my attempt at tying up some loose ends:

• I think we’re settled on our baby’s name… we just need to make sure there are no major familial objections, and then we’ll be 100% sure. I’m excited to start calling her by her name. Maybe. Sometimes I get choked up when I say her name, so maybe calling her by name is not a great idea...
• My glucose test came back great—in fact, in the nurse’s words, I passed “with flying colors.” I was so thankful to hear that! I even told the nurse on the phone that she made my day. Ha. Oh well… I’m sure she’s used to talking to crazy pregnant folk.
• We had a very busy December (with several wonderful Christmas celebrations) and are facing an equally busy January, but we are way too blessed to be cranky about that.
• We went to our birthing class, which was very informative. We didn’t stay to watch the delivery videos, as we had both seen them before at some point in life… plus the class ran long, and we had plans that night, so we had to head out. One cool thing is that one of the nurses who taught the class is one of my doctor’s nurses, so it was neat to hear her go on and on about my doctor and how wonderful he is.
• Sweet Lance painted the nursery (and the once-yellow closet!), and we set up the crib yesterday. We are hoping to get Baby’s room all set up this weekend! I feel 100% certain that I will cry. However, I am so excited to have a space for her… plus I think it will help me feel less panicked about how close we are getting to her arrival… and just to help me process a little bit more that she will actually come live with us and have a room and her own stuff. I hope to have pictures to post soon!
• We had a shower at my parents’ church on December 4^th and felt SO blessed by the love we received there. My sister got some great pictures, so I will post those soon. It was surreal to actually be the one opening stuff for a baby though (after hostessing more baby showers that I can count on my fingers… and maybe toes). I kept getting a big lump in my throat as I opened things. It kind of feels like a dream…
• On a more serious note, I had mentioned my sweet friend Erin and her baby, Emma, in a previous post. Things are not looking great for little Emma right now… and after three rounds of genetic amniocentesis testing, they have not yet been able to diagnose the root of Emma’s problems, and it is EXTREMELY rare to go that many rounds without any answers. We are still praying fervently for a miracle for baby Emma. I ask that you take a moment whenever you think of it to lift her up as well.