• Gardening

    September Garden Surprises

    In the last week I’ve managed to spent a few hours in the garden doing a bit of weeding. It hasn’t been much but it has been enough to start trying to recover from two months of rampant and unchecked growth. Somewhere in the midst of it all there have been a few garden surprises such as this yellow lycoris. We planted the bulbs two years ago and I don’t believe they came up last year, however this year they sprung up and provided a happy surprise near the pathway and our front deck. This luna moth has been hanging out near the front window by our stairs. I saw…

  • Baby Teddy,  Family

    Forest at Three Weeks

    Oh man. Forest at three weeks means that he’s still a pretty good baby, but last week’s evening woes are carrying over into week three, making everything after 5pm until 10pm a festival of crying, feeding, and diaper changing. If it isn’t umpteen diaper changes in an hour, paused by about a 10 minute session of general contentedness, followed by the need to feed for 15-30 minutes, alternated back again with some diaper changes, punctuated with some more crying that we can’t decide what it means (usually means he’s gonna need a diaper change in the next five minutes…he’s just preparing us in advance), followed by another bit of ‘Oh,…

  • Gardening

    September In The Garden

    I ventured outside yesterday to walk around for a few minutes. The air was warm but with a tinge of autumn to it. I missed summer, y’all. I’m a little disappointed by that, missing the growing season and seeing the garden in its peak fullness. We still have a few months left before a frost and freeze, but a lot of plants will start their trend towards dying back for the season in the coming months. I’ve missed a lot of blooms over the last few weeks but I did snap a few shots of what I could find amongst the weeds, like the African blue basil above. The brugs…

  • Baby Teddy,  Family

    Forest at Two Weeks

    Last week on Forest’s one week ‘birthday’, I decided that I needed to take weekly photos of him this year. Let’s hope that as time goes on that I don’t get lazy and forget! Forest had his two week check-up today. He made us look like total rookie parents in the doctor’s office by first completely barfing up the bottle we were giving him, something he’s only done three times since he has been born, and then we couldn’t find the burp rags we had tucked into his bag so we had to suffice by cleaning him up with paper towels and Kleenex. Of course I found the burp rags…

  • Baby Teddy,  Family

    A Difference of Two Weeks

    On Saturday, August 30th Chris and I went out to Sam Houston National Forest to take photos before Forest arrived. Over this last weekend we wanted to recreate the same scene to include Forest’s arrival so we drove out to the same spot in the forest yesterday afternoon to introduce Forest to the forest! Other than a trip to the pediatrican earlier in the week, it was his first trip out. Chris’ dad and step-mom were in for a few days to visit and so we made an afternoon of it, stopping for lunch in Montgomery before heading out to the forest. Timing his feedings with my own eating needs…

  • Baby Teddy,  Family

    Life with a Newborn

    It’s been a week now since we’ve had Forest in our life. With the postpartum hormones and my general sentimentality it doesn’t take much for me to break out in tears, especially when I think about how quickly the week passed by. The time at the hospital seemed to creep slowly, but of course by the end of the day and the visitors left I’d think that it all went so fast. And here we are now a week later and my baby is a week old and only going to grow older with each passing day, it makes me want to grip the reigns on time even more tightly.…

  • Baby Teddy,  Family

    Forest’s Birth Story

    Warning: This is a very long post, at more than 6K words. I had to write it all down for my sake. Photos at the end. As I said in my post announcing the birth of Forest, his birth was not anything near what I’d envisioned all of these months. It all probably started with his 36 week ultrasound and his estimated weight at that time being 7lbs 5oz. With still another four weeks to gestate my midwife was concerned he was going to be quite a large baby. She scheduled a 39 week ultrasound for a followup measurement. It is widely documented that measurements this late in the game…

  • Baby Teddy,  Family

    Forest Katahdin

    Forest Katahdin, born 9/3/2014 at 12:12 am. He shares a birthday with my paternal grandfather, who unfortunately Forest won’t get to meet since he passed away two years ago. Almost 24 hours ago this little dude arrived into the world! It’s hard to believe it has already been a whole day since he came into our lives. We’re pretty smitten with him! He’s was a big guy, too. Not the 9 pounder the ultrasound estimated but close, coming in at 8lbs 12.3 ounces. So far he’s a pretty good baby and doesn’t really cry unless he’s getting his diaper changed. We’re working on keeping his blood sugar up since he’s…