The Color of the Day is Purple

Today Maia is a month old so to celebrate her being a month old I thought she should wear the color purple. The other excuse is to prove to daddy that she has other colors in her wardrobe than the color pink and also just to have some fun pictures to show. Also Caroline and Anna I hope you enjoy these since I have heard of your love for the color purple.

Maia and Daddy Time

Yesterday I thought I would document on Maia and Daddy time. Since Michael has been working tons of hours when he gets home its usually his time to see his daughter while I either finish dinner or get something else done in a flash. Their moments together are precious even though she is asleep and Michael is trying to get something done on the computer, its sweet to see them cuddling.

Splish Splash I Was Taking a Bath

Friday was Maia's first bath in her Whale of a Tub. What I thought would be a screaming fast bath experience, turned out to be a relaxing time for us and especially for Maia. When we put her in the warm water, she was so content, loving every minute of it. It probably reminded her of swimming around in amniotic fluids. We had fun just playing with her. The only time she started to cry was when we took her out of her watery bliss. So here are some happy Maia bath time photos.

"Just relaxin' in my Tub, thinking everything was all right."

After Maia was so fresh and so clean we got together with our friends the Huffmans. We took a walk in a park area near their house. Here is a photo of us wearing our kiddos.

Distracted

What happens when a hungry baby is crying and mom gets home from the store all in a rush? Well, what should happen is dad brings in the groceries, but that is definitely not what happened.

What really happened, was six hours later, going through the fridge, I thought to myself, "Didn't Jeanette go to the store expressly to buy milk? Then why is there no milk in the fridge?" I asked Jeanette, and she reminded me that she had asked me to get the groceries out of the trunk. So I went and looked. And sure enough, a trunk full of groceries, including a gallon and a half of milk. Oops. Sorry honey, I blew it. It took us both a little while to not feel so frustrated, but we're over it now. Oh well.

And in closing, to change the subject completely, here's a picture from almost two weeks ago of Maia sleeping in her bumpo chair:

If you're resourceful enough, you'll never have to buy anything new for your baby. : ) (Disclaimer: we don't have to buy anything new for our baby, but it's not because we're resourceful, it's because we know enough loving people who have already bought her everything. )

Farm

Today Maia got to put on her overalls, cuz she was goin' to the farm! We had a relaxing, enjoyable day being loved on by Helen, Joanne, and Ginya. Maia almost got to ride a horse, but her mom thought that maybe the photo shoot with the horse/cows/chickens/dogs should wait another week or two.

But she did get to meet Ginya!

We went to the top of the hill, which is always so peaceful. I was refreshed standing in the light breeze, absorbing the stillness, while I listened to Grandpa Maynard's soft voice tell stories of farming days gone by.

After feeding a few cows, we got back to the homestead (or flowershop as the case may be) and found that Jeanette was incredibly beat and ready to go. So we loaded up the car, and drove home.

Now when I say loaded the car, I mean loaded. The entire trunk was stuffed. Here's a photo of everything once we unpacked it at home, but it doesn't do it justice-- all the produce is so large, that it actually makes the boxes look smaller, so it seems like less than it is. Wowzers, we are blessed.

In case you couldn't tell from the picture, there's a couple bags of cucumbers, several boxes of tomatoes, a box of green beans, salsa, eggs, three bean salad, plums, grapes, squash, bell peppers, peppers, garlic, chard, beets, salad greens, pears, cantaloupe, and basil (or is that mint-- we already had carloads of basil last time). We've plenty of food for canning/freezing/drying and boiling, though I'm sure we won't be able to keep up with the 110 quarts of peaches that Helen and Ginya canned yesterday. Even with saving all we can, we won't be able to eat all this. So if you're in the Portland area and something strikes your fancy, gives us a holler and we'd love to supply you with produce! And yes, if you were wondering, we do get this much from them just about every time we go to the farm. It's just another example of their love in action.

Goodnight!

Sleep Deprived Parents

So two nights ago Jeanette woke me from a sound sleep, and this was our interaction:
J: "Where'd you put the other half of our baby?"
M: "Huh?
"I know you have the legs over there behind you, give her back."
M: "Jeanette, you're hallucinating from the pain meds, go back to sleep."
J: Curls into a little ball away from me and starts crying, saying, "You're so mean."

Then last night, Jeanette was sleeping on the edge of the bed, and apparently the baby was stirring, so she started to get up feed her. The first move of getting up was for her to roll a little to her side, towards the edge of the bed so she could swing her feet to the floor. That may have been what she was doing, but from my just-woke-up-from-sound-sleep perspective, that is not what I saw.
Just as she started to roll her body towards the edge, I woke up from a sound sleep, dove over her lightning-fast, and grabbed her, hurting her C-Section stitches in the process. I thought my poor, pained, recovering wife was falling out of bed, andI wasn't gonna let that happen. Apparently I didn't save her from any danger, but I did sure scare her to death as I leapt out of a sound sleep. Managed to hurt her a bit too. Ah well, we'll have normal sleep patterns again someday.

posted by Michael

Cabin Fever

We woke up Friday morning to the wonderful smell of bacon frying. (Woke up is relative, and morning is relative as well, since we had certainly been awakened to the wonderful sound of a newborn crying a number of times already this morning.) We came downstairs to find that we had been invaded! David, Daphne, Naomi and Eben had let themselves in (with a little secretive prearrangment from Clint and Merodie), and were working on the largest batch of waffle batter you ever did see. All 9 of us sat down for a delicious breakfast, and they even did the dishes afterwards. What a refreshing time-- we felt very loved.

We had about seven baskets of leftovers afterward too:

Afterwards, since Jeanette was feeling a little sick of the house, we loaded everyone up and went back to the Rose Garden. It was one week ago today that we were last here, timing contractions, hoping that baby Maia would show her face soon.

I tried to get some pictures of Maia amongst the roses, but she was hungry and doesn't look too peaceful.

We even ran into our good friends Dave and Brianna at the garden, who got to see Maia for the first time. (Dave and Brianna are another of the wonderful couples in our church group).

All in all it was a refreshing day, and great to get out of the house and get those C-sectioned muscles working again.

And to show where Maia gets her one quarter of filipino to round out the day:

Videos!

So I wasn't quite sure what to take videos of, since she seems to either be screaming, sleeping, or nursing, all of which do not make for the best videos. Here's three random ones, so you can get an idea of what she looks like when moving. I included one crying one, so you can enjoy her lungs as much as we do.

The next one took place only a few seconds later, but she was completely done crying (we had finished changing her diaper):

And finally, another one so that you can see her eyes. Will they be blue or will they be brown?

Home at Last!

As of about 4:30pm yesterday, we are now at home. Jeanette is recovering, and while she moves slowly, she can get around. This includes navigating the stairs in our house, the once she comes down, she's pretty much down for the day.

Maia squeals and squirms in her sleep, and is fun to listen to. She is pretty wide awake from about 11pm-3am, but then settles in for some long, three hour naps with a feeding in between from then until, well, pretty much the afternoon. I hear this is pretty normal.

Aunt Jennie arrived about 10:30 last night, while Grandpa and Grandma Maynard got here at about 4:30 Wed. afternoon.

To see more pics from the day, click the link.

http://www.kodakgallery.com/ShareLanding.action?c=52bnyf5u.1kegxl5u&x=0&y=xvk31l&localeid=en_US

Sleeping on Grandpa

More Pics!

Visitors!

Sandra, Michael's supervisor at JetBlue, brought us a delicious dinner, and "Where the Sidewalk Ends" to read to Maia.


Ron Floyd, who works most days with Michael at JetBlue, also came by (they are in a motorcycle gang called BlueRiders together). His 4 month pregnant wife Katie came by too. It's been fun being expectant fathers together! (They just found out three days before that they are having a boy!)

Guess who our seventh visitor was? Hailing all the way from Whitesburg, Kentucky, we have...

Jaime Trapnell! ! !