Emma's dedication/Danny's first Father's Day!

Today was Danny's first father's day!  While we aren't big on doing presents, we did decide to celebrate with a BBQ with all of our friends and Nancy!  It was a lot of fun, and I think Danny enjoyed himself.  Here is a picture of papa with his bean at the cookout.

As for the babe, we had Emma dedicated this morning.  For those of you reading this who don't know what that means exactly, let me explain.  Let me say that we did not baptize Emma today.  Our church does not believe in infant baptism.  We believe baptism is to be done when the individual is old enough to make the decision and know what they are doing and why.

Therefore, dedication is a time when we promise to do our best to raise Emma in a house that is serving the Lord in every way.  That is a very hard promise to make, and one that we can only live up to by the grace of God!  We have already talked about ways we can do this.  Right now, Danny reads the bible to Emma every night, and we pray afterwards as a family.  Right now, she is usually either nursing or sleeping through it, but we figure that one day she will be old enough to stay awake and participate.  I would love if we can continue this tradition over dinner when she is a little older, and it can be a family discussion time!  Until then, we will just read it over her and pray together.

Also, throughout the day, I try my best to talk about the Bible with her.  I will tell her who different people in the Bible are, most importantly Jesus!  I also try to pray with her throughout the day.  We also sing praise songs while she nurses, the most consistent one being Amazing Grace.  She seems to enjoy getting sung to.

It will be harder to raise her to know Jesus when she is older and we have to deal with things such as discipline and teaching behaviors.  We were given the book "Shepherding a Child's Heart" as a baby gift, and look forward to reading that.  It is important to me that she learn not just to "behave" at times or for people, but that she learn why we choose to act in specific ways.  I want to teach her not to try and please her father and I, but to try and please Jesus first, and realize that if she does that, she will please us more than she could ever know!  I don't have answers about how to do that, but I can only have faith that with lots of prayer throughout her life, God will guide us in how to do that.

I know that first and foremost, it starts with a family that follows God, and has a real love for the Gospel, rather than one that just goes through the motions because that is what we're "supposed" to do.  Danny and I need to live out the gospel in the best ways we can, and allow Jesus to work through us and our faith, to reveal himself to Emma.  We have to go to church, read the Bible, pray, and participate in other Christian activities, not because that's what we've always done and because it's routine, but because we have hearts that long for Jesus and to grow closer to him all the time.  That is something much easier said than done sometimes.  It is easy to fall into the routine of things, and forget the heart aspect of doing them.

So here is my prayer for Emma... That Jesus will reveal Himself to her at a young age, so that she can live a long life devoted to and serving the Lord.  I pray that she can learn to be content in her life, with whatever God provides for her.  I pray that she will grow to have a humble and generous heart, who knows her strengths and gifts and uses them well to serve Jesus.  Danny and I are already praying for her future husband (if she chooses to get married), and we pray that through me and other women who have influence over her, she can learn how to be a loving and submissive wife, who serves her family humbly and lovingly!  We also pray that her husband will be raised in a family where he will learn how to love his wife as Christ loves the church, and will learn how to lead his family well, being a strong and secure man!  We both look forward to our lives with Emma, teaching her who Jesus is and watching her grow in knowledge and love of the Lord.  My greatest desire right now is to see the day that Emma accepts the Lord as her savior!!

I'll leave you with the scripture Danny read at her dedication.

2 Corinthians 5:20, 21: Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.  For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

Here is Emma and I on stage as papa is reading scripture.  Notice how she is watching him. :-)  He was in the dark, so he couldn't be seen in the pic.

Here's the fam on our first Father's Day!

Weddings, Nashville Style

This past weekend, Emma and I traveled to Nashville for Wendi Anderson's wedding.  There are few people for whom I'd get on a plane with a 6 week old baby and travel to watch them get married.  Wendi is one of the few!  So, Emma and I boarded the plane on Friday and made the 4 hour flight to Nashville.  I was very surprised at how well Emma did!  The only problem we had was shortly after take off, right after I had just allowed the thought of, "take off did not seem to bother her at all" to enter my head, when she decided to spit up a TON!  Luckily for me, I just happened to have the burp cloth in the right place to catch most of it, preventing it from going on any unsuspecting travelers.  Other than that small problem, she made it there without any real fussiness or problems.

What I think neither of us were prepared for when we arrived was the extreme heat/humidity that is the midwest.  Apparently after a few years of being away from the midwest summers, I had forgotten all about what they were like.  Boy, was it a rough few days.  That heat can just zap the already limited energy right from my body!

Emma was very excited on Friday to meet "aunt" Summer and "cousin" Kyla!  We had a wonderful dinner together, and headed back to the hotel to relax and enjoy the rest of the evening.  I was a little worried about how Emma would do sleeping in a new place, and I feared she would keep Kyla up all night.  She actually slept very well in her car seat, and didn't cry once while they were sleeping.

Saturday Emma got to enjoy the day with me, doing pre-wedding day activities with the other bridesmaids and I.  We enjoyed a bridesmaids' luncheon with the ladies where she was passed around the room and oohed and ahhed over by everyone!  She even got to wear her cute summer dress!

Sadly, this dress which is 0-3 months, is already a little short for her!

After a fun luncheon with the ladies, we went to get our nails done.  Emma slept quite soundly in her seat while I got a nice pedi!  Unfortunately, right at the end the man doing Wendi's nails bumped the seat slightly, causing her to scream like a banshee!  The poor guy didn't know what to do... She calmed down quickly once she was out of her seat.  That night, she got to stay with Pawpaw and Riri alone for the first time while I went to the very swanky rehearsal dinner.  It was the first time leaving her alone with anyone other than Danny, but I was proud of myself for only checking in once! :-)

Sunday, which was wedding day, was another warm one.  We enjoyed a nice brunch with Pawpaw and Riri, before pawpaw headed home and riri and I headed to the wedding.  For the fact that it was incredibly hot that day, and the wedding was located at a place requiring us to walk about 5 minutes back and forth between where the wedding was being held and where the girls dressed at multiple times, Emma did great!  She only got fussy a few times.

Here she is in the bridal suite watching the beautiful bride get ready, and dreaming of her own wedding someday FAR in the future!

The wedding was a lot of fun to be a part of.  Wendi looked beautiful, and all 10 other bridesmaids besides me looked amazing as well.  It was so much fun to be a part of it and to spend some time with the other lovely ladies.  As for the service, Jeff Lash, the husband of Wendi's matron-of-honor did an amazing job!  It was one of the most Christ centered "sermons" I've heard at a wedding in a long time.  It was also very personal to the couple, which was awesome.  His wife Annie, and the maid-of-honor Rachel, sang a few songs throughout the ceremony, bringing many of us to tears.  I don't know that there was a dry eye in the house!  I don't know that I have ever cried that much at a wedding.  I was just so overwhelmed with happiness for Wendi finding a man as great for her as Daniel!

One very cool thing happened during the wedding.  Mom, who was in charge of Emma, said that she was getting a little fussy.  Then, the ladies starting singing Amazing Grace, and she got very happy, smiley, and talkative.  What's cool about this is that I sing this song to her every time I nurse her when we are alone.  I do this, because Danny and I have been trying to find as many ways as possible to bring the gospel into our house and to surround her with it.  We have read a chapter of the bible every night since she was born and while papa is at work, I try to talk to her about who Jesus is.  Another way I thought we could share the gospel with her was to sing hymns/praise songs to her as she nurses.  So, I don't know if she really recognized that song when she heard it or not, but I would like to think she did! :-)

This is three generations of Harvey/Brown women!  You can see she was a little unhappy at this point!

A few more pics from the weekend...

Me and the beautiful bride!

Kicking it on the dance floor!

This is her attitude pose!

Look at those chubby little cheeks! :-)

She is learning to mimic us when we make funny faces!

At the airport saying goodbye to Riri!

This is after we got home.  I literally gave her a bath and put her down for a second to do something and came back to find her out cold!  She was one tuckered out little lady!

The weekend was an overall success!  The wedding was beautiful and my little bean did an excellent job of allowing me to enjoy the festivities and enjoy them herself!  Hopefully all of our travels will go that well.  :-)

Emma's Here...

Hey all!  So, as you can see, I am a bit behind in keeping up with my blog.  There wasn't a lot of exciting things happening before Emma was born, so I took a small break from typing, and since then I haven't had a lot of hands free time!  Nonetheless, I thought I'd go ahead now and catch everyone up, and then I promise I'll try to be better at keeping this blog up to date!

Before Emma was born, our time was spent moving into our new home, and trying to fix it up as much as possible before she got here.  That has involved a lot of painting, some gardening (we're still trying to figure that one out) and acquiring some new furniture (thanks to my mom!).  We were luck to get most of the big stuff done before Emma made her appearance (it helped that she was soooo late) and now we're just trying to figure out what we want to do next.

As for Emma, she made her appearance on May 2, 2011 somewhat reluctantly.  I was 10 days past my due date, and we finally went into the hospital to be induced.  This isn't the way I wanted to do it, but I was very fearful of her being a large baby already, and I was trying for the best chance at a vaginal birth, so we went with that idea.

We showed up at the hospital on a Saturday night around 8.  They weren't planning to start the pitocin until the next morning, but they had me come in to start me on another drug (don't remember the name) to help me get ready for the pitocin in the morning.  Once the meds were in, I had to lay on my side for 2 hours straight, which I didn't like.  I decided to finally give in to having lunch meat, and Danny ordered me a Jimmy John's Turkey Tom, which I was forced to eat laying down on my side.  It was hard, but I pushed through because I had be REALLY looking forward to that sandwich.

Not much happened throughout the night, except for my lack of sleep due to their constant monitoring, so at 6am the next morning, I got up and showered and they started the pitocin.  I really thought things would start going then.  By 11am I was having regular contractions, but no real movement.  I was at 5 cm, so they decided to break my water.  The next contraction after that was like night and day compared to the rest.  I was then in full blown labor.  I tried for hours to use all of the relaxation techniques they taught me in my birthing classes, but not much helped.  My contractions were coming every 20-30 seconds most of the time, and some lasted upwards of 2 minutes.  The bath helped some, because I was able to push on one side of the tub with my feet and press my back against the other side during my contractions.  I was having strong back labor, so that helped those contractions some.  Once out of the tub, I tried moving around, but when a contraction would hit I would almost hit the floor, because I was having so much trouble standing.  So, we decided that an epidural was the way to go.  I had them check me one more time, deciding that if I'd made a lot of progress, I could forgo it, but I was still only at a 5.  Once the epidural was in, I was great!

I labored like that for hours, and by 10pm, I was still only at an 8, and seemed to be slowing down.  My doctor didn't think Emma was turned properly, but she was still high enough that she couldn't really tell.  At this point, I was having so much pressure put on my bladder, that my urine was straight blood.  The doc gave me one more hour, and said that after that if I hadn't went up any more we'd need to discuss a C-section.  After the next hour I was still only at an 8, and I was less effaced than before.  Therefore, they decided a c-section was the way to go.  I was quickly prepared and we were taken to the OR.

Everything I was told about a CS was true!  Once I was in there, I was shaking so bad, and I couldn't control it.  My anesthesiologist sat by my head and tried to calm me down before Danny was allowed in the room.  I was almost asleep before Danny came in due to my complete exhaustion.  Danny came in and was so concerned with my shaking that it woke me right up again.

It took them about 15 minutes once they started the surgery to get her out.  I really thought she was much bigger than she ended up being because they kept making comments about her being a big baby.  She ended up only being 8lbs, 7oz and 19 inches long.  She does have cute little chubby arms and legs, so that's probably why they thought she was so big.  She went straight under the heating lamp to get cleaned off and then was promptly handed to Danny.  Prior to him getting her, he took a picture with his cell phone and brought it over for me to see, so my first view of her was only a pic.  Finally he brought her over and put her up against my cheek so I could give her a kiss, and then sat down next to me for a bit.  It took quite a long time for them to sew me up, but once they were done, it was right back to the room so that I could finally hold her.

I nursed her and then she went right to sleep, and slept the rest of the night.  We ended up staying in the hospital until Wednesday afternoon, and we were both very ready to be home.  We then spent 2 full weeks doing nothing but sitting on the couch and watching movies.  Emma was a great sleeper from the start as long as she was being held, so we lived in our basement until tonight (almost 6 weeks later) so that I could sit up on the reclining sofa and hold her and Danny slept on our guest mattress that we brought downstairs.

At this point, she is finally sleeping all night without being held, in her Froggy bouncy chair next to me.  We are hoping she'll move into the pack and play tonight.  She has had three nights in a row where she's slept at least 6 hours between feedings, and one of those nights she had another 4 hour stretch after her 6 hour one.  I'm hoping we're getting closer to sleeping through the night, but as we've only had 3 nights of this, I won't get too used to it.  She could still relapse back into sleeping only 1.5-2 hour stretches very easily.

Overall the birth experience was much better than I thought it would be.  I had recently watched "The Business of Being Born" and was very worried about having a hospital birth.  I was really worried that I would feel like the doctors didn't care about my hopes for the birth, but would make decisions that benefited them (as the documentary leads you to believe).  Overall, I was incredibly happy with my experience.  I felt very in control (at least in the sense of making decisions... God was the real and only one in control) and I felt like the doctors and nurses were trying their best to see to my wishes for the birth.  I loved all of my nurses and my doctor!  And, most importantly, we got our amazing little girl from it!!

The first pic I got to see

After her first bath!