Today was a good day – still hot here – but a good, good day!  We went out to see our friends’ new house which is so fabulous!   I am not an envious person, but I have to say that I am totally jealous of their house!  It’s not the house so much (even though, oh my, it is gorgeous) – it’s the setting.  This house sits on 5 acres (I believe) along a small river and it is just serene.  I honestly feel like we took a vacation today just from the 2 short hours we spent there.  We sat out on their patio and ate sandwiches, played with the dogs, watched for bald eagles, went down to the river shoreline, and discussed the new wildlife they’re seeing such as snapping turtles, various birds, and critters in the river.  It was a peaceful way to spend a Sunday!

Some friends had us over for dinner and cake to celebrate… the birthday.  Their 2 year old was very excited to sing “Happy Birthday” and even though I’m not a birthday person, I couldn’t help but enjoy watching and listening to his excitement!  As he led everyone in the singing, I did dream a bit about my birthday two years from now when M will be old enough to sing to me.  That will be fun  🙂

I was adamant about getting home in time for M’s bedtime.  With the house being so hot, and us always being on the go due to that, M has not been getting good naps this weekend which, in turn, leads to an “off” bedtime routine.  We are very regimented about bedtime.  Bath-PJ’s-Books-Nursing & Lullabies-Bed.  All of this occurs prior to 8:30 (a 7/7:30 bedtime was not working for us – I tried!).  Both Friday and Saturday nights resulted in 9:30 and 10:00 bedtimes due to the chaos of the heat and being anywhere but here late into the evenings.  Yikes!  So tonight, I was insistent that he be in bed by 8:30 and that he get as normal a routine as possible.

I love M’s bedtime.  It is the set time of the day that is solely focused on M – nothing gets in the way of it.  M’s bedtime is all of our time.  I give him his bath while B preps M’s room and bed, we both comb his hair and play with him after his bath (before his PJ’s go on), it takes both of us to get his jammies on (wiggly baby), B reads 3-4 books to him, and then I get him for nursing and lullaby time.  As I sat in the basement rocking him tonight on the sofa sleeper, singing lullaby after lullaby to him as he nursed and fell asleep, I thought about how much I’ll miss this time when he gets bigger.  I wondered if I’ll still sing to him every night when he’s, say, 2 and 3 years old.  Will he let me snuggle and sing to him when he’s bigger?  I don’t know – and I think I’d rather not know because I fear that the answer may be, “no.”  My heart breaks a little just typing that.

My day started with total peace out at our friends’ house, and it ended in total peace with my baby in my arms.  A perfect Sunday – and a perfect way to end a chaotic weekend.

M and I had a darned near perfect day today!

It all started with a good night’s sleep.  M was asleep by 7:55 and slept a full 8 hours until 4:00 AM.  Now, I know that my almost-9-month-old should be sleeping through the night.  But he isn’t.  I’ve tried many approaches to help him learn how to sleep through the night and he just doesn’t want to do it.  Because he only gets up once a night, I’m totally OK with it.  I enjoy the little snuggle with him each night.  AND, if I’m being perfectly honest – what keeps me from forcing the issue is knowing that he could be our only child.  Knowing that, I am soaking up every moment that he wants to be in my arms.

So he slept until 4, was then up until 5 (I tried to put him to sleep without nursing from both breasts = big mistake), and then slept until 8:10!  This is a big deal.  This is a big freaking deal!  M loves, loves, loves to get up at 5:45 or 6:00 AM, nurse, con Dad into playing with him, and then take a cat nap at 8:00, which throws off the whole day and nap schedule.  The fact that he slept until 8:10?  I should have bought a lottery ticket because I knew it was going to be a great day!

I got to go to the gym since I knew M wouldn’t need a nap or be fussy at daycare for the short hour that he’s there.  He had a MUCH better time at daycare than he’s been having, so that was terrific!  We then went to baby gym without a nap for M, which had me a bit nervous.  No need to be – he was his normal happy, social, interactive self!  He had a great time!  I grabbed lunch and M fell asleep in the car for 45 minutes – not a great nap but I’ll take it.

We got a second opinion on our geothermal unit today – and he is in agreement with Bob that we need a new unit.  This was by far the worst part of the day, but I’m used to the idea now that we’ll be shelling out the money for a new unit, so the news just sort of blew by me.  While Neil (second opinion) was here, M ate his lunch and did not refuse or gag on his peas.  Again – should have bought a lottery ticket (I don’t know why I say that because I NEVER buy lottery tickets – or gamble for that matter.  Losing money makes me cry faster than anything else.  Truly.).

It is so freaking hot here right now (80 degrees today) that I had to get Matthew some shorts in his current size.  I didn’t think he’d need shorts in March so we don’t have any 6-12 month shorts.  We do have 12-18 month shorts (and lots of them), but he looks sort of silly in them because he’s got a long torso and shorter legs – so he needed new shorts.  We bought a few pair, put the cutest ones on him, and headed to the park.

We were at the park for almost 3 hours!  We spent half of that time going for a fast-paced walk in the new jogging stroller – listening to Glee the entire time on the sound system B came up with for our stroller.  M slept for 40 minutes of that walk.  Again, not a great nap, but whatever!  Why fret over a nap when the day was going so well?  We went swinging (him alone in the baby swing, and then with me in the adult swing), slid down a couple different slides, rode on a bouncy car, and looked through tunnels.  Oh so fun!  I sent a photo of our fun to B and he called and asked if he could come by since he was close – and of course he could!  We ended the park outing with a quick nursing in the front seat for all the world to see (because when your baby who refuses to nurse during the day asks to be fed, you do it right then and there!) before letting M drive us home  😉

We did go out to dinner (nothing new, right?) and M enjoyed his first patio meal before coming home to a house with no air conditioning again (what???).  But – who cares about the air conditioning, right?  Because we had the perfect day… together!

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As I scurry to put the most important memories of M on this new blog, so that I don’t forget too many things, I find myself walking down memory lane.  The birth photos I posted just a bit ago had not been looked at, in their entirety, in months.  It was so fun to go back and look at them all again.  So many memories are packed into those 305 photos, it’s amazing.  I actually don’t remember too much about M’s birth because I had a scheduled C-section (breech baby) and as the drugs wore off, my memory apparently started to fade as well.  I remember everything up until being wheeled out of the delivery room – and that was when it all went blank (or rather – very, very foggy).  I honestly couldn’t remember holding M for the first time.  I knew I’d done it, but I couldn’t remember anything about it.  His birth photos brought it all back for me, and I am so grateful for them.  I am grateful for our photographer, Denise, who told me stories about each photo so that I could remember even more of the most important day of my life.

Photographs are very important to me.  Obviously, right?  I hired a photographer to attend my birth for 9 hours!  Denise and her girls have become like family to us, and we see her weekly.  A week without seeing Denise is a very sad week for me.  We are two peas in a pod – and M LOVES her.  He talks to her in a way that he does not talk to anyone else.  I truly think he knows that she was there when he was born – I think the sound of her voice is burned into his memory from that very first day.

Denise is a phenomenal photographer.  I have nothing but wonderful things to say about her and her business partner, Lindy.  They, in my opinion, are the premier baby/child/family photographers in the Central Iowa region – and you would likely agree with me if you checked out their site.  I am so lucky to have found her!  She puts us all at ease and can get photos of M that are priceless (well – they do have a price – but I’m willing to pay it!).  Denise and Lindy have their own blog and they document many of their sessions there.  M has been the topic of many a White Linen blog!  I am so grateful for this because it allows me to share M’s photos with everyone without having to post them to FB or attach them to emails, etc.

Here are M’s newborn photos.  These were taken when he was just a week old.  Breathless!  I just love them!

We had 4 month photos takes, and a few of them are actually on White Linen’s home page.  M won a contest to be on their home page – makes me very proud  😉

We had 6-7 month photos taken a while back right after Christmas, and they’re the ones up on Denise’s blog right now.  The session in her studio (teal background) could not have gone better!  I learned that the trick to wonderful, smiley baby photos is to keep your baby up until they’re over-tired and WILD.  It made for a very rough afternoon, but the photos are the best we’ve ever gotten of M!  When Denise came to the house a couple of weeks later to take the photos of M on the bed (we use that bed as our “ages and stages” prop – meaning we take his picture there at each milestone to show his growth), she pulled out her camera and took photos of him and me playing and just enjoying each other in the house.  The candid photos are by far my favorites!  I can’t stop looking at them!

Denise has offered to take “lifestyle photos” of M, B, and me.  I have always wanted a photographer to just follow me around and take photos of my favorite moments (hence the birth photos), and that’s exactly what she’ll be doing!  She wants to capture M’s bedtime routine so we’re starting with dinner (there will be split pea soup or the quinoa to capture his “I hate this food” look!) and then going into bath time, book time, and bedtime.  I CANNOT WAIT!

Denise has also offered to do the same thing for when we do our next round of IVF for M’s potential sibling, and if our RE says OK, we’ll be taking her up on this (she is such a great friend to us!).  I think it’s really important to capture the process, the tears, the joys, the heartache, the EVERYTHING that has to do with the IF struggle.  As much as I hated our IF process, I would not trade it for the world because it brought M to us (not to mention that it taught me so many things).  We are infertile – it’s part of who we are as a family – so why not document it in pictures?  Most people’s pregnancy journeys start with good old-fashioned s-e-x and a positively pink pee stick.  Yay for them (truly!)!  They may take a photo of said pee stick and then move onto fun stuff like ultrasound photos and belly measurements.  We started with blood draws, and tests, and drugs, and needles, and unpleasant ultrasounds, etc.  I want it all captured next time, even if we fail.

I’ll leave you with our family photos, which I have permission to post.  They are sprinkled with a couple of shots here at the house, as well as two in his Halloween costume.  The family photos were taken on a rather cold day in November, but you wouldn’t be able to tell by looking at them.  As I write this entry, I am surrounded by these photos in my living room.  They make me so very happy and warm  🙂

I could write all about M’s birth, but our photographer, Denise, at White Linen Photography did such a great job describing it from her perspective, that I’ll just link to her blog entry about it instead.  🙂

http://www.whitelinenphotography.com/blog/2011/08/matthew-lewis-birth-photography/

M’s birth photos (which are not at all too “up close and personal”) are used for her sample birth photos, so they are all loaded here:  http://www.whitelinenphotography.com/site/#/galleries/birth-photography/1/

Here’s a sneak peak at them: