Wrapping up week 3

So, time to try to post has just not been happening, so sorry! I will tell you now that I won't be posting anything else until the weekend at the soonest or early next week (just a heads up)...

This past week has been quite eventful! I guess everything will be from now on, right? :)

Emma was still a little fussy on and off, so one of the things we read about was putting her in a swing...it definitely has it moments when it works :) BUT, we don't want to let her get too used to falling asleep while being rocked, so we try not to put her in there too much.

we had our first stroller ride and walk with mom and dad! It was so nice to get out and just be in the fresh air :)

Ok, our little preemie is a little long for her special clothes! the sleeves are like 3/4 length, and her belly pops out :)

she's been spending more time with her eyes open, so here's a shot of her when we were hanging out one evening - and check out that belly!

in .1 seconds, we can see this face at any time!

then, 1 second later...

...and 1 second after that

on Friday, we headed out to the mall, and Emma had her first trip to a restaurant :) She was just passed out the whole time, so Tyler and I were able to enjoy lunch.

Saturday was a small friend shower (YAY a little girl time) here's Auntie Ginger feeding Emma

...and daddy playing with Emma, showing off her new dress she got at the mall for the occasion. She's just too cute!

Emma's first Sunday at church! Aunt Connie, she wore one of the dresses that you got fr her! :) I did add some pants just to make sure she didn't get too cold with the AC in the building.

afternoon nap with daddy

her 2 week check-up after her first 2 week check-up :)

She had such a great check-up today! She's gained 17 ounces since her last visit, and is now up to 6 pounds 7 ounces, and she's grown a half inch coming in at 19.75 inches. She did so well for the Dr and the nurse, we were so proud of her! Dr said she's growing so beautifully and everything looks great. Such great news. It made us feel like we have been doing a pretty good job with her since she's been home - yay us.

...how's everything going?! Well, we sure are two tired pups! But that's to be expected, so we definitely don't want to complain. Emma's starting to sleep a little longer at night, so that's been nice (getting an extra hour of sleep between feedings). I have occasional bouts of grumpiness when the tiredness sets in, and Tyler is so sweet, he just wants to do what he can to help - i wish there was something that he can do to help :) We are certainly enjoying our uninterrupted family time that we're being blessed with right now with Tyler being off. I can feel how much I'm going to miss him already (tear), but we're excited to fully enjoy this week - the last week he's home with us. If you could please pray for us as we move toward 'normalcy', making our own meals, cleaning the house on our own, and getting Tyler off to work every day. It's going to be a bit of a transition, and rough, I'm sure, but we know the Lord will get us through it!

Hope everyone had a great weekend, and has a great week! I'm sure that once Tyler goes back to work and I'm home solo I'll start to post more regularly ;)...until then!

Enjoy this song

I am hoping to have a chance to post some pics later today...but in the meanwhile, enjoy this song (can't get it on my little player to the right - boo)

3 weeks old!

I wasn't planning to post anything today, but here I am! A little breather between dinner and the next feeding time...and some cute pics we took a couple of hours ago when Emma and daddy were playing a bit.

getting ready for bath time!

and play time with daddy

daddy was proud of the heart shape she made with her fists :)

OK...a little awkward from this angle, but from mine it was an adorable pose :) She was laying with me to come down from all the excitement after playing with daddy.

Another week!

Well another week has flown by. We can NOT believe that Emma's been home for a whole week now. Last Tuesday, the day after she was released from the hospital, we had our 2 week check-up -how's that for 'following protocol'?! Was it really necessary to 'check-up' on Emma when she was in the hospital for just under 2 weeks? Oh too funny :) BUT, we did get her stats for that day:

Weight: 5 lbs, 9 oz

Length: 19 1/4 inches

How's Emma?

Doin' alright! She was on a pretty good 3 hour schedule from the hospital, and we've tried to stick to it with a little massaging here and there. Overall it's working for us. She did begin to get a little cranky and have some spit ups after every feeding. We've been trying to keep her upright more when she's eating and for a bit after feeding to try to help her out. Daddy also found some great helpful hints online that seem to be working for yesterday and today :) Something warm on her tummy. We're also having me try some different things to see if that helps her tummy or whatever is going on with her. Oh how much easier would it be if she could say 'OK mom, this is what's going on'...soon enough, I suppose, before she'll be talking our ears off.

She's eating well, growing longer and her belly is getting bigger too ;0. It's just such a treat to get to hug and kiss on her whenever we want.

How are ma and pa? (said in an accent like the beverly hill billies)

...gettin' used to the 2 hour sleep stretches at night. Actually, the last two nights we've been letting one of us sleep through a feeding, kinda (when Emma cooperates and isn't crying), so that's been nice. It's also great that Tyler's more of a night person and I'm more of a morning person, so he's more alert for the middle of the night and I'm more alert bright and early squirrely in the morning. We do tend to get frustrated or irritated a little easily, and I'm still a little on the over-emotional side...kinda hard to tame that when I am a pretty emotional person to begin with. But, it could be worse for both of us, and we know that compared to lots of stories we've heard from people, overall we have it pretty easy. And we're grateful for that :)

blah, blah, blah...on to what you're really looking for. Some more adorable pics of our daughter!!

disregard the rest of the mess on the table -but how 'bout that centerpiece?! :)

...little nap time with Popi

...and another nap with Teremama...

...and her three grandparents in awe of her beauty ;)

great-grandma Burton

...what neat (unintentional) lighting - and check out the belly!

Here's Emma with her nephew, Isaiah - CRAZY!!

...with Lita - Emma is Lita's 18th great-grand child

...and one of her adorable faces...

the pros with two kiddos of their own! ...and you guys have given us wonderful tips and advice THANKS, it's much appreciated!!

...and...my FAVORITE picture thus far...

it's blurry because it was about 4:45 AM and I didn't want to wake either one of them. Awww...

OK to calm everyone about Emma sleeping on the bed, it was one of her cranky spells and she goes right to bed next to me, so I laid her down next to me to try to get her to hold off on getting up until feeding time. So, I wasn't sleeping but the two of them were :)

Hope everyone had a great weekend! Until the next breather...have a great week as well.

Things I'm loving this week...

I haven't uploaded photos from yesterday; I figure I'll do that later after we take some of Emma in today's outfit (that consists of a onsie and coordinating receiving blanket;) ). But as I sit here multitasking, I thought I'd reflect a little on all the great things about this week!...and apparently in the form of a countdown ;)

5. sleeping in until 8:30 this morning. Well...ya know, after getting woken up by the alarm ever 2 hours or so, so I didn't sleep all through the night, but how wonderful it was to feel like I'd slept in!

4. having my mother-in-law in town and stay with us for a few days this week. what a blessing it's been to have her here. If I can get myself ready real quick she's gonna watch Emma while Tyler and I go to lunch and have a little time out of the house solo.

3. having Emma HOME. it already feels like so long ago that she was in the hospital while we were home without her. It's been so nice to have her in our arms, or sleeping next to us or at least somewhere in the house where we can go to her and pick her up at any time :) So grateful that she was progressing as quickly as she did so she didn't have to be in the hospital any longer!!

2. having my hubby home with me. having Tyler home pacifies me. It calms me down. He is so good at taking care of me and anything that needs to be done. I love you, my wonderful husband!! I'm so thankful that you get to have a few weeks off to be home and we can just be our little family at home with no work distractions :)

1. Thank you, Lord, for watching over us, guiding us, protecting us and getting us to where we are right at this moment! Your plan for us is always better than what we could have ever planned for ourselves...and for that, I am thankful - even if it was difficult over the past couple of weeks. I love that He's always taking care of us and watching out for us and providing for us and...of course the list goes on and on :)

Hope y'all have a great day! Will try to post pics later or tomorrow.

First days...

What a great day today was...and of course the past few days now that Ms Emma is HOME!! Today was nice because we were just home with her all alone all day long :)

Here's Emma starting to wake up in her very own little bed

Yesterday was kind of a full day. We had some visitors in the morning, followed by Emma's first Dr's appt where we learned she's continuing to gain weight - yay her :) Then we went to Aunt Nette and Uncle Jim's house for some DELICIOUS BBQ. Since the Boyd family time started to come to an end today, we couldn't pass up the opportunity to spend a few more hours with everyone last night. Oh and we wanted to show Emma off too since many of them hadn't met her yet;)

Here she is with Aunt Steph

...Aunt Charrie, who's taking this all in since she's now growing her own bundle of joy!!!

Uncle Matt joined in and they had some parent practice time while Tyler and I had dinner

And with Grandma Boyd. I think they said that Emma is great grandchild #26 for her.

Had to get a sibling shot before we headed out...it sure is a shame you each have your families in different states! - Crystal, oh how we wish you, Jason and the boys could have shared this past week with us! We'll have to have Tyler photoshop you in on the end ;)

Today we had our first bath at home and we dried off with this super cute towel that Tia Ann, Jessica and Paige got Emma.

after the bath, she passed right out, just like we thought she would!

...and we're just about ready to get her up for her next feeding here tonight. Nighty-night for now!

Filling in the blanks...

So, some of you may be a little confused on what happened between posts. After our arrival to Kaiser, the 3rd shift nurse that Emma had talked to Tyler and I on Sunday about taking the feeding tube out and just seeing what she would do if we had her nipple every feeding. We were definitely in for that trial, so she spoke with the Dr and he ordered it out and said that if she ate an average of 40 mls per feeding on her own for a day, she could go home.

Tyler described it best when he said that it was like both of our jaws just dropped when we heard that. We just weren't expecting them to say she could come home with us so soon - but we were extremely excited to hear the news at the same time. So we prayed, yet tried not to get our hopes up too much (well, at least I tried not to get my hopes up too high) ...checked in on her after 2 feedings, and she did well...checked in on her Monday morning and the nurse said, "when would you like to take her home"...CRAZY!

So, we tried to get as much 'ready' for her as we could. Thanks to Tyler's great friend, Brian, we have somewhere for her to sleep...and now we're just working on building up our baby 'collection' in our home with things like bottles, bath time stuffs, etc...ya know some baby essentials that would be great for us to have around the house :)

Here are a few shots of her last day in the hospital, and her first evening at home.

'car seat challenge' - she had to sit in the car seat for an hour to make sure her levels would all remain, and of course she passed ;)

her last feeding at the hospital with daddy, while we watched a CPR video

we were so excited to see all the wires coming off

then it was time to get back in the car seat TO LEAVE!!

Emma and Daddy on the way out...

...and stretch time once we got home!!

...and we had a few visitors too. Grandma aka Teremama

Tia Ann, Jessica and Paige

so good to have her home at last!!!