Cousins!

I have just been blogging like crazy this week! 3 posts in 3 days, that's got to be a record for me.

In the past week, Audrey has met all of her cousins. Last weekend, Grandpa and Grandma Shelton, Aunt Beth, and cousins Ben and Brandon came to visit. Here is a picture of Brandon holding Audrey. I think he is trying to compare how big he was as a baby to how big Audrey is.

And here is Ben, along with Aunt Beth and Mimi (Grandma Shelton).

Today, Uncle Matt, Aunt Monica, and cousins Mariah and Mark came to visit. Here is Mariah holding the baby. She is very excited to have another girl cousin!

Mark didn't sit still long enough to get a picture with the baby. But here he is being flipped upside down by Uncle Daniel.

Happy Thanksgiving!!

Audrey received a Thanksgiving onesie from her friend Cael that we wanted her to wear today. It was too big for her, and we had to search through all of her clothes (and try on lots of things, which she hated) to find a pair of pants that would fit her and still match. Daniel thought it was OK if she wore blue or pink pants with this outfit, but I said no way! She has to match for all the first Thanksgiving pictures we were going to take.

And here she is with Cael, who was also celebrating his first Thanksgiving today. Cael was supposed to wear this Thanksgiving onesie last year...but he was born a couple of weeks too late!

Christmas Tree

We went to get our Christmas tree today. I grew up getting a real Christmas tree every year. We often went to the Christmas tree farm. We looked for the biggest, fattest tree that could possibly fit in our house. Daniel grew up with artificial trees. When we got married, it was a dilemma...should we get a real tree or a fake tree? Well, it really wasn't much of a dilemma...I was pretty insistent that we must get a real tree every year. The first year we lived in Springfield I even made Daniel go to the Christmas tree farm and cut it down himself.

So today we took Audrey to get her first real Christmas tree. She thoroughly enjoyed the experience...she slept the entire time!

She finally started to wake up as I was finishing decorating the tree. She was not too happy about this picture. I think she is trying to say, "Enough already...don't you know I'm 3 weeks old and could care less about any of this?"

Who Does She Look Like?

That is probably one of the most common questions we are asked...but we don't really know the answer. Sometimes I see me, and sometimes I see Daniel, and sometimes I see neither! I've never been very good at figuring out who babies look like. I think the easiest way to tell is to compare baby pictures.

What do you think? Does she look more like Daniel's baby pictures? I think she does in this picture.

But in real life, I think she looks more like this picture of me. I don't know...like I said, I'm not very good at the who does baby look like guessing game.

This is a picture of how we spend most of our days at home. Audrey seems most content when she is snuggled up on your chest. Maggie is also most content when she is snuggled up right next to you. Therefore, this is what it looks like. Just add a computer on my lap and you get the idea. The only problem with this situation is that with everyone so comfy on the couch, it makes it nearly impossible to get up and get anything productive done!

And here's a fun face Audrey has been making lately, usually when she wakes up. It is very cute!

Sleeping Beauty

I've been trying to take more pictures of Audrey, but she is not always that cooperative. The cutest pictures we have of her recently are from when she is sleeping. Like this one:

And this one:

And here's one of Mommy and Audrey resting on the couch:

The best time to get a picture of her with her eyes open is when you are holding her. But when you are holding her, it is hard to take a good picture. That's what happened in this next picture. She was so wide awake, I wanted a picture of her eyes...but I was holding her and the camera was too close to get a good picture. The flash washes everything out. But still, it's a good look at her eyes.

Time for an update

Well, Audrey is almost 2 weeks old now. It's hard to believe that 2 weeks has passed since she's been born...time has definitely been flying by. We've had a rough start, but I am hoping things are starting to get better at this point. At least, I have a positive attitude about it today.

After we brought Audrey home, we took her back to the hospital to check her weight. She had lost almost 7 ounces in the 24 hours since we brought her home, which was too much. So we spent several hours at the lactation department at the hospital last week and have been supplementing formula. Since then, she has been gaining weight pretty well. We think her face is starting to get fatter, and she definitely is developing a double chin!

On Thursday of last week, I started to get sick with a lot of back pain and nausea. Turns out I had an infection. But even with an antibiotic, I could not get rid of the nausea and could not get my appetite back. It's been a vicious cycle...I feel sick because I need to eat, but I can't eat because I feel sick. Finally, after throwing up while trying to feed Audrey and after fighting with the OB's office, we got in to see my Primary Care doctor. He gave me some anti-nausea medicine that has helped me to be able to get some food down, and I think is going to help me get some strength back and start feeling better soon. It has been extremely frustrating...fortunately I have a wonderful husband who has done SO MUCH to take care of both me and Audrey. And my mom came back for a few days this week to help us get back on our feet. So, as of this morning, I am feeling pretty good and am hoping that things will only get better from here.

Alright, now for some pictures. Honestly, I haven't taken a lot of pictures because I've been feeling so bad...but I do have a few to share today.

We are starting to see more of her eyes as she is becoming more alert and awake.

Naptime for Daniel, Audrey and Maggie!

Over the weekend, we got to visit with our friends, the Bungards, and Audrey got to meet her new friend Ava. Even though they don't live down the street from each other, Audrey and Ava are still going to be the best of friends when we get to visit them in Indianapolis.

Here she is not a very happy baby, but she's still pretty cute!
Our photographer friend Crista took some gorgeous pictures of Audrey last week...if you haven't seem them yet, you can visit her blog here.

We have a baby!

My last post was on Friday afternoon, and I wrote about how tired I was of waiting for the baby to come. I felt like I was just going on and on about waiting and what we were going to do to keep ourselves busy until our baby finally decided to come. Well, it turns out we didn't have any more waiting to do after all. At the exact moment that I hit publish on the last post, my water broke. I thought about posting a quick addition to the post to share that with all of you, but then decided we should probably just get to the hospital. That was about 1:45 pm on Friday. Labor progressed quickly from there and by 5:00 I was dilated to 10. They had me rest for a while before pushing. We pushed for about an hour and she was born at 8:15 pm. There were some scary moments during all that...it was definitely not a smooth and easy delivery. I won't go into all the details here but if you want the whole story, just ask me.

Her name is Audrey Paige. She weighed 6 pounds, 7 ounces and was 20 inches long. She was born on October 31 at 8:15 pm. Halloween was the one day that we really didn't want to have the baby. It just seemed sad that her birthday would be overshadowed by Halloween parties and costumes and such. But Audrey had other plans, and she decided that her birthday should be on Halloween. When she was ready to be born, I had no desire to wait until November 1 for her birthday. I just wanted her out as quickly as possible!!

There is nothing particularly special about the name; we just liked it. In fact, it was really the only name we both agreed on. We think Audrey is a nice classic name, that will work for a little baby or a grown woman. It is somewhat unique (although I think it is growing rapidly in popularity) but not overly different or weird. And we just liked Paige, so we chose it.

Here she is in her car seat for the first time, getting ready to leave the hospital. She looked so tiny!!

We came home from the hospital yesterday and survived our first night. Audrey definitely loves to be held and to be nursed. If she is not doing one or the other, she is not a very happy little lady. I am still in a lot of pain from the delivery and am not able to move around much, which is frustrating. Fortunately Daniel is extremely helpful and willing to do anything possible to help. My mom is here this week too, which helps us out a lot. It is all kind of surreal at the moment...hard to believe that she is now ours to keep forever!

Maggie (our dog) is doing really well with Audrey right now. Maggie was really tired when we brought her home last night (she stayed with her friends Gus and Gertie this weekend, and they must have played a lot!) She came home, sniffed around for a few seconds and crashed for the night. She didn't pay much attention to us or the baby at all. We'll see how she does when she realizes that the baby is not going to go away...ever!

Here we are in the first few minutes at home with our daughter. This picture may be too small, to really tell...but check out her feet in the picture below. They are so long and skinny!!