Family Alive

For your reading enjoyment today, I thought I’d share with you the list of things that I prefer to eat in these late-pregnant days:

• cold watermelon;
• fresh strawberries with a dusting of sugar – a favorite breakfast, snack or late night snack;
• homemade guacomole – simply mashed avocado with garlic salt and chopped tomato – with Doritos for dipping. This has been lunch for the past couple days.
• oatmeal chocolate chip cookies (particularly from the Betty Crocker bag mix) with a glass of cold milk. This can be justified as a good-for-me breakfast:) Brian needs to go to the store to get a couple mixes today.
• Georgia Peach sno-cones… we’re going out to get one this afternoon:)
• iced mocha or latte (which I’ve been making at home in the past few days – yum! I’m currently sipping on a venti iced choco-latte creation.)

Here’s a picture of what was going on as I was writing this blog. Brian and the stuffed cows were napping (per Analise’s orders), and as he told me to get a picture, Analise got her little camera, too. As I was taking the picture, she said, “Miles! Cheese, baby – cute!” You can’t see it, but she had a big smile behind her camera:)

Today’s a nice day here at the Toone house. My husband has been a hero taking all my orders and helping me get the house “ready”… whatever that means. While he was out riding this morning, though, I took some of my downtime during Analise’s nap to try to get her baby book caught up. (yes, it is good timing, isn’t it?? This is what’s called “nesting” of the pregnant woman.) It was fun to reminisce over her early days, all her firsts and how much she’s changed since she turned one just less than a year ago. It was especially sweet to remember things surrounding her arrival and the first few weeks. A few notables:

• Our first outing – Analise was born on Tuesday night, we came home from the hospital on Thursday evening, and I think on Friday afternoon we went out the mother/baby store in downtown Davis to see if their lactation specialist could verify that we were doing ok with breastfeeding. I vaguely remember it was exhausting and a bit overwhelming to get all of us out of the house, into the car, into the store and back home. The 2nd outing, if you could call it that, was memorable… we were surprised by a sharp banging on our apartment door on Monday (when Analise was 6 days old). It was the fire chief telling us there was an apartment fire in our building and we needed to evacuate! I ask you… what would YOU do in that situation?? We grabbed 2 diaper bags, stuffed all the onesies, burp cloths and diapers into them we could (if we knew anything after being parents for 6 days, it was that we would need a lot of clothes and diapers and stuff to clean up Analise’s spitting up), Brian grabbed his Snoopy dog that he’s had since he was little, a framed picture of the 3 of us we’d just been given, a bible, and we evacuated with Analise in the car seat into the near-100 degree afternoon. Thankfully, we were only outside for 10 minutes or so, but there had actually been a kitchen fire in the apartment on the other side of the building from us – I think we shared a wall with them. What a fun experience! (below, she looks so tiny in her infant seat so I thought I’ld post this ust for comparison, Analise resting in the infant seat this past week – note: she’s talking on the cell phone, and she’d asked for all the animals to sit with her.)


• First travel – Just a few days later, on Thursday, July 8th (I think??), we flew from Sacramento to Denver to Minneapolis for my sister, Anna, and Hal’s wedding. What did we bring (the baby book asked)? What DIDN’T we bring!?! Very little for Brian or I, but tons of bottles, syringes (since we were still finger-feeding Analise and she wasn’t breast-feeding well), a breastpump, lots of diapers, clothes, blankets and burp cloths. It was definitely an experience to travel with one so little!

I’ll close with the heart-warming moment of the day, and another “first” for the baby book. I asked her if she could say, “I love you”, and she said, “I wuv you, mommy” and wrapped her arms around me in a hug. I’m just about to cry just typing it:) I love being a mom.