Brynn's Blessing

We had a special day here on Sunday. Brynn was blessed at church and we had family in town to be with us. A baby blessing in the LDS faith is similar to a christening, but it is performed by a lay member who has the Priesthood. It was such an amazing experience for me to be able to watch my daughter be blessed by her dad, and I know it was an amazing experience for Greg to be able to do it. 

Blessing her is something we've been looking forward to doing for years. When Austin and Daniel were born they both received blessings. They were very simple and very powerful. It was a window into who they were. I felt the same way at Brynn's blessing. She has her whole life ahead of her. It was a reminder to me that the whole journey of bringing her to our family was never just about "us," if you know what I mean. She has her own life, her own talents, her own strengths. She's going to have her own struggles and make her own choices. She's so little now, but there are so many things she is going to experience. She's not just my beautiful daughter--she is her own person. Maybe that sounds simple and silly, but having this more full picture of who she is just makes me fall in love with her even more. 

I was pretty proud of her blessing dress. I knew she would be a girl the moment we found out we were expecting, and I really wanted to be able to make her a blessing dress. I practiced sewing the whole time I was pregnant so the dress would turn out nice. It was a little big for her, but Grandma Zollinger helped us fix that with a ribbon around her waist. I thought she looked so beautiful and I'm so glad I started the tradition of making my kids' blessing clothes! Hopefully I can keep it up. 

Isn't she lovely though? 

Greg's parents and his brother Morgan's family came into town. It was so fun to have them here! We took Brynn out on some adventures this weekend and just had a blast. 

I'm so happy she is in our family. 

We took some cousin pictures. James was not having any of it! But they still turned out pretty adorable. 

Motherhood is funny. I've never been so consistently exhausted in my life and sometimes I have no freakin' clue what I'm doing. But she is beautiful and life is so good. 

4 Weeks Old!

Hey, we made it! Brynn is a month old (almost...pretty much).

This past week we had a great adventure and went to church for the first time. Brynn was very cute in her Sunday best, if I do say so myself.

 Church is exhausting!

There was also a time this past week when I was trying to take a really photogenic picture of Brynn to post on an online baby shower page. Most of the time she's very cooperative, but sometimes Miss Brynn just doesn't feel like posing all pretty and stuff. These are samples of the pictures I kept getting: 

It was pretty hilarious. Just for the record, I still think she's pretty stinkin' adorable in all these "real life" shots. 

We're still working on the sleeping/eating/napping thing, but life is pretty good around here. Mom finds something new to worry about every day, but since worrying is BY FAR my bestest talent, I guess I didn't expect anything else. And after a few weeks where Brynn lost a ton of birth weight and really struggled to start gaining it back, she now is packing on the pounds pretty good! For serious though, after a million weight check pediatrician visits, she put on half a pound in 4 days. FOUR. DAYS. 

Good job Baby Brynn! Here's to another 4 weeks! 

Brynn Eliza

It's been a crazy two weeks, but we've finally got it together enough to post some pictures of Brynn. At some point we'll recap the whole labor story and maybe even get around to telling about our adventure with being hospitalized with breastmilk jaundice two different times. But as for right now, let's just post some braggy pictures of our beautiful daughter.

I always pictured that she would take after Greg, but she sure does look a lot like me.

In the hospital (the original time. You know, to be born)

Home, sweet home. 

Baby mullet: 

I don't know why she sometimes sleeps this way? 

With Mommy:

Hello hello! 

With Daddy: 

Even though I've been looking forward to it for so long, I'm not exactly sure what I expected life with a newborn to be like. It's surreal that she's mine and that she's here to stay. It's wonderful. It's very hard. I've made mistakes. It's been hard to forgive myself. I am so happy and sometimes so afraid. Even though having this baby is different than what I thought it would be, I think this new experience with her and with my family is what we've always wanted. We're learning so much and we're changing in ways that we never could have without her. Like I said, it's crazy that she's mine and that I get to keep her here with me the rest of my life. It's amazing. Hard, but amazing, and that's all I've ever asked for. 

So We Moved to Philadelphia.

People always seem mildly interested/genuinely confused when I try to explain this to them, but Greg's finance job at Johnson and Johnson is in a leadership development program that's designed to give him a lot of different experience in the company. It kind-of-sort-of is supposed to take the place of an MBA, which is cool (no worries though...I have a feeling that there is still a lot of grad school in our future!) 

So the reason I'm telling you all this is because we always knew that living in Jacksonville would only last for a year, and then we would be sent to another JnJ subsidiary company for a year. After that, we go back to Florida. It's confusing, but you know, it's not THAT confusing.

Well anyways, now we live in the suburbs north of Philadelphia. Although we really miss our ward and friends in Jacksonville--and the beach, too--we're kind of loving this whole living in the northeast thing. Seriously, I live in the top floor of a 1930s Dutch Colonial house with original hardwood flooring and a ton of character. It's stinkin' cute. 

Made some cute tie-up curtains for my kitchen as soon as we got settled in: 

You'd think that I would have some cool pictures of downtown Philly or maybe New York or the Jersey Shore or something, but I don't yet. I plan to see the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall at some point, but it just hasn't happened in the last three weeks. However, we have found some less intense activities that are still super fun. This past Saturday we took a short little tour of Winterthur, which is a mansion house and gardens that belonged to the Du Pont family across the border in Delaware. Nine floors and hundreds of rooms, all filled with the largest collection of Americana art and artifacts that exists. Yeah, I'm into that sort of thing. All the cool kids are. 

Everyone on the tour was approximately 45 years older than Greg and I. Senior citizens are surprisingly brutal when it comes to jostling people out of their way to get the photos they want. 

Loveliness. 

One of the few full-frontal Heather shots that exists these days. 

FERNS. 

So a list was recently published about the best ice cream places in every state (Reed's Dairy, anyone?) Well, we weren't going to go to Delaware and not go to the best ice cream place in the state. So we went to Woodside Farms and I ate the best chocolate ice cream that has ever graced the tongue of mankind. Also we watched this little bluegrass band and that was pretty cool: 

So now I've been to like 30 US states and have lived in four states in the last few years alone, which I feel like is sort of an accomplishment. Moving is never "easy," but it's a great experience for us, and I love having those kinds of experiences with Greg. When it comes to the big names in exploration, it's like Amerigo Vespucci, Ferdinand Magellan, and Greg and Heather Zollinger. 

Or you know, kind of something like that. 

24 Weeks!

We made it! Today we reached 24 weeks and viability.

I've been counting down to this day since I found out I was pregnant in December. We knew at the beginning of this pregnancy that things could go two ways. I could have a totally normal, healthy pregnancy, or, I could be susceptible to a lot of serious problems. Because of the nature of our past experiences, we had no way of knowing what was going to happen. Sometimes I had a strong feeling that everything was going to be just fine. Sometimes I was scared that I was never going to be able to make it this far. But we did. I know it's still really early and there are still some things that could be difficult. But I also know how big of a milestone this is and I don't think I could describe how lucky I feel.

In general, things are going just about as perfectly as they could. My shortest cervical measurement to date is still the one they took right before they put the stitch in. Every measurement since then has been average or even on the long side. Last week we did an echocardiogram on Baby's heart because her initial NT measurement was a little off, but they didn't find any evidence of heart defects at all. Yay! They told me at that appointment that she weighs around 1 lb, 6 oz. I know it's crazy, but that seems "big" to me.

To celebrate, here's a picture. I sort of have a thing with belly shots. Like, I sort of hate them. BUT my rational side knows that there isn't any reason to. So here goes.

Next stop: 28 weeks and 1000 grams! 

Baby Dress

So, a couple weeks ago I had the idea that now was a really good time to practice sewing, since I actually have a reason to sew stuff right now. For awhile I resisted making stuff for this baby, not because I didn't love her but because it's just scary. But it's important to have some things and I always wanted to be able to approach this pregnancy with optimism. So a couple weeks ago I decided it was time to start sewing.

Here's my finished product! I have to say I'm quite happy about it:

I'm not good at following patterns, and this was a 1985 Butterick. But after a lot of time of staring at some weird pictures and googling some sewing blogs, I got it all figured out--trim, gathered skirt, collar, and all. Go me. Personally I think the little panties are kind of weird. Is it just me, or does the crotch part look a little skimpy? Whatever. 

I even learned how to do buttonholes. Obviously I improved over time: 

One of the hardest parts was gathering the skirt, not because it was complicated, but because my stupid thread kept breaking. Once I did it in sections and stopped pulling so hard, it got easier. The other hard part was figuring out the button placket thing and the self facings on the back, but once I did some searching on youtube it made WAY more sense. I can use single-fold bias tape like a BOSS now: 

I made a little headband with some pretty elastic to match. Hope it doesn't squeeze her head too much. 

It took me kind of a long time to figure everything out and get it done just the way I wanted it. At some point, my mother-in-law's borrowed sewing machine turned into a hat rack. That's okay I guess. Go Round Rock Express.