Happy 27th Birthday, Josh!

Today is Josh's 27th birthday! I thought this would be a good day to write the story on how we met.

Junior year of college, a big group of friends went to Dixie Cafe for a girl's birthday. Josh had just become interested in this girl, and I had a crush on another boy who was going. We both wanted to sit next to these people, but didn't with the craziness of a big group, and ended up across from eachother. Josh made me laugh throughout the entire meal and had the best time. I asked one of my best friends, Kim, (who was good friends with Josh) if Josh was wanting to date right now. She said YES and that she would try to casually talk to him about me to see if he was interested. Well, Josh asked the bday girl out, went out with her a few times, and it didn't work out. I went out with another guy a few times, because I just assumed Josh wasn't interested. Over Christmas break, I told my mom that I just knew that I wasn't going to find "the one" at HU, and that I felt really good about graduating single, moving to Dallas, and finding someone there at church or something. Well, in January when we got back to school, Josh did not like that I was dating this other boy! He told Kim (top secret :)) that he was really interested in me, and Kim and Amanda, who really wanted us to get together, ran in after school and told me to stop dating that other guy because Josh wanted to ask me out. I knew there was something to him, so I told that guy that night that it wasn't working out and there was someone else I was interested in. The funny part was when that guy asked me if it was Josh. I was surprised, and he said that he could tell Josh was interested in me. I, of course, loved that! Well, at the end of January, we went on a group date and had instant chemistry. I felt so comfortable with him and just knew something big was happening because I'd never felt that way before. On February 8th, we went on our first date to a restaurant 45 minutes away, talked nonstop, and the rest was history! I knew almost immediately that we were meant to be together. Everyone else knew it, too. All of our friends said, "I don't know why we never thought about it before!". We got engaged that October and married the next June. Happy Birthday, to the man who swept me off my feet and makes me feel like the most blessed woman in he world!

Josh's back (with update)

**Update- Josh went ahead and went to see his family doctor to see if he could get him in any faster. The dr. was concerned because he was losing function in his foot, which means nerve damage. Josh is going to have an MRI done tomorrow morning, and when the results are back (hopefully by tomorrow afternoon) they will show whether the nerve is being compressed by his herniated disc (what we want) or that his vertebrae has fractured into the nerve. If it has, the only road is back surgery, which we don't want because people have such mixed results with back surgery. PLEASE say a prayer that it's the first one! I'll let you know as soon as I can.**

Josh is having major back trouble right now. He has a back condition, and majorly hurt it in college playing football and lifting too much weight (back when he would work out 1-2 times a day). It has been better since he has started doing certain exercises to help it, kept his weight down, and gotten an epidural stop to help it. He'll reinjure it from time to time playing softball, basketball, and football (he says it's worth it), helping people move, etc. and really hurt it recently helping my sis and bro-in-law move. He always offers to help, and wants to be able to handle it, but I think from now on, he'll remember why he shouldn't. He has not been able to sleep because the pain is so bad, can hardly walk, and now is starting to have pain wrap around his leg. He says this is officially the worst it has ever been. He's going in to the doctor on Monday (he's been calling everyday to see if they have a cancellation to no avail). Please pray for his back to get better, hopefully without surgery! His birthday is tomorrow, and I'm having my family and his best friend over for hamburgers, hotdogs, birthday cake, and presents. Hopefully this will cheer him up a little! I'll keep you updated.

Happy 3 Month Birthday!

Today James is 3 months old. 1/4 of a year old! I can't believe how fast time is flying, and I can't believe he's only been around 3 months. I just updated everything he's doing, so I won't update again. I looked today at all of his pictures since he was born, and I got a little sad at how much he's already changed. His little newborn face is a memory now! I miss it, but I love everything about him now, so I would never want to go back. I look forward to many more months and years with my sweet baby James, watching him grow and change, and falling more and more in love with him as I have these past 3 months!

12 Weeks

This has been a much needed relaxing week so far, full of cleaning, playing with James, and trying to get him back on somewhat of a schedule. I do wish I could be in Florida right now on our yearly trip there with Josh's fam, and I miss my sister a ton who is on the Cape right now (wish I could be there, too), but since I'm here, I have to say I'm really enjoying it! I feel like I finally have all of my energy back, which I haven't completely had since almost a year ago! I forgot how nice it was to have energy!

James is so much fun right now. His little personality has really come out this past week! He smiles all of the time, is being more expressive with his coos, unknowingly makes funny faces (he already has this raised eyebrow look that makes us laugh a lot), and has even done some mini-laughs. My favorite face is his open-mouthed smile with squinty eyes and scrunched nose. It's like he's so happy he can't contain himself! I kiss him constantly and can't get enough of his soft baby cheeks! He is still extrememly cuddly, which just melts our hearts. He has done a lot of changing in the past week and a half. (Warning...possibly boring details that I want to document.) Last week, he discovered his hands, and he cracks me up when he stares at them right up to his face making him cross-eyed. He clasped his hands together this week and is starting to reach out for objects. He loves his activity mat and has started kicking it to make the music start. He loves to stand up in our laps and gets so excited when he does. He can hold his head up for a long time now and in the past couple of days has started lifting his head to try to sit up when laying down. He is a solid boy at 17 pounds!

Tomorrow, Josh is going to Boston for work, and since my brother is also out of town for work, I'm going to go to Dallas and spend the night with my sister-in-law, Jilinda. I'm very excited and glad that James is so portable right now where I can do that. I know it won't be like this for too much longer! I will work on trying to get some of James' faces that I talked about on camera and post them soon.

Three

I got this from Audrey's blog...

Three people who make me laugh:
1. Josh
2. Cody (Josh's friend who just got married...funniest person I know...besides Josh)
3. Nicki

Three Things I love:
1. Being with my husband
2. my job now
3. staying in nice hotels

Three Things I hate:
1. bugs
2. when Josh goes out of town
3. cleaning baby poop off of things I can't stick in the wash

Three things I don't understand:
1. child abuse
2. What Josh does for a living (investment representative)
3. the Saddams and Hitlers of the world

Three things on my desk:
1. Don't have a desk at an office, but at home, my computer
2. pictures
3. James' baby book - I was just using my blog to fill it in (thank goodness for blogs!)

Three things I'm doing right now:
1. Holding James
2. Watching Josh cut the grass out the window
3. Talking on the phone (I'm multi-tasking)

Three things I can do:
1. Teach and relate to kids
2. figure out most things on the computer or fix-it problems around the house
3. cook

Three things I can't do:
1. Always use my time wisely
2. speak in a formal setting
3. anything business (all 3 Josh's strengths...hmmm...)

Wedding/Atlanta Weekend

Here are some photos that highlight our first big trip away from home. We had the best time and did not want to leave. I hate when work gets in the way of vacation!! The highlight of our trip to Birmingham was getting to see Kim and her 7 month pregnant belly! We also loved getting to have a mini college reunion with a lot of our (mainly Josh's) college friends. We thoroughly enjoyed showing off James to all of Josh's side of the family. He has so many people to love him, and it was so special to us to get to see them so in love with our little baby. We miss everyone already!

 
My favorite part of the wedding weekend: getting to see Kim!!

 
Josh and me with the bride and groom, Cody and Lauren

 
The guys (Josh's best friends from college)

What's Lazi?

I'm taking a moment to blog from Atlanta. The wedding was gorgeous, and Josh and I are very much enjoying our first little trip (far away) as a family. It was so good to see our college friends! We have had the best time showing James off to all of Josh's family. He has seen most of them now, and is officially spoiled to pieces. He's been passed around to about 30 new family members and handled it like a pro! (I've also gotten in several GOOD naps while they did this!!) I completely melted because on two different occasions, James preferred a girl with dark, curly hair like mine! It makes me feel like he's starting to really know who his parents are!

About the name...I have had 3 different people in the past 2 weeks ask me what Lazi was. Two people thought it was lazi, pronounced like lazy. To clear that up, lazi comes from my nickname from my parents growing up, which was lazentoodles. The la part is pronounced the same way as the lau in lauren. It is shortened a lot to lazi, lazens, laz, etc. Hopefully noone will think I'm lazy anymore! :) I have lots of pictures to post when I get back on Wednesday morning. Happy 4th of July!

4th Anniversary!

Tomorrow is our 4th anniversary, but since we are going out of town for a week, we went on our date last night. My parents were able to watch James last night, so we got to go out on our own! That was SUCH a treat!! Don't get me wrong, I love being with James and we missed our little guy by the end of the night, but we really needed that. It was so nice to get out of the car and not grab the diaper bag, car seat, and stroller! We went to our favorite nice restaurant, since it was a gorgeous night, walked around a little square in downtown with fountains, and then ended the date at Barnes & Noble.

We put James in the exersaucer for the first time this week and he LOVED it. Of course we had to put a book under his feet and a blanket around his waist because he's not quite big enough to be in there on his own, but it's really good for him to strengthen his back, head, and stomach muscles. We cracked up, because he got the biggest kick out of the sun with the smiley face on it. Babies at this age are most stimulated by faces, and he lock eyes with it and didn't stop smiling almost the entire time. James has not stopped sleeping through the night, so I think it's here to stay for the most part. He actually gave us 9 hours Saturday night! The weird thing is that now that I'm getting more sleep, my eyes look more tired than ever, and it takes me longer to feel awake in the mornings. I'm not complaining, though!!

~~BTW, if anyone out there is about to have or has a little baby, READ SECRETS OF THE BABY WHISPERER!!! That book is AWESOME, and almost everything she says is dead on with what really happens. I can't tell you how much that book has helped us. Josh and I said that we were going to have to start giving that away as baby gifts. You need to read the book cover to cover, and then it's nice because you can go back and reread sections to help you through a problem. I was still getting up in the middle of the night to feed James a few weeks ago, so I reread that section and she gave a simple solution that she said would take 2 nights to fix...and it did just that! Anyways, just wanted to let you know about it in case you were looking for something like that.~~

Josh and I are heading out tomorrow morning at 4:45 (which doesn't seem as bad as it used to) to fly into Atlanta, spend the night there with his dad, drive to Bham the next day for a wedding, and then drive back Sunday morning to spend a few days with Josh's family. I'm sure I'll have lots of pics to post when we get back!

Crazy Weekend and Fun Week

Let me start by saying that James had his 2 month appointment yesterday, and my baby is in the 90th percentile for height and 105th percentile for weight!!! He's off the charts!! Both sides of the family were all big babies, so I'm not that surprised. When I told Josh, he got the biggest smile on his face! He's a proud papa!

Updates:
* He weighs 15 1/3 lbs
* He's trying to stand in my lap a lot. The nurse giving him his shots couldn't believe how strong he was. (Another thing that made Josh proud)
* He's starting to try to roll over.
* He absolutely LOVES to be sung to and kinda started "singing" with me yesterday.
* His hair started growing back, so no bald baby
* Oh...how could I forget...HE'S SLEEPING 8 HOURS EVERY NIGHT NOW!!!
* He loves his daddy and smiles the most for him.
* He's getting to be a much faster eater, which is nice for me.
* He's such a sweet baby, and I think he's going to be laid back and calm (who knows though), but with a great little personality. (It's starting to come out more and more)

Now let me back up to this weekend. We had a really fun time getting away at the Summer Regional. We got to hang out with Michael and Jilinda, who live in Dallas while we were there, which made it extra nice. James was SUCH a good traveler, which made things so nice and easy. He slept in the hotel crib at night, only cried during the day to be fed about every time we stopped. Slept the rest of the time in the car. I couldn't have asked for him to be better. Now the drama was with his daddy. Some of you know this, but Josh is severely allergic to pine nuts. His throat will close up, he gets hives, he throws up, he swells, and more until he gets an Epipen shot. Well, we went to the Blue Mesa in Frisco to eat lunch with a group of people from the convention. He asked the waiter if the appetizer had pine nuts in it. He said no (he was new), so Josh had a couple of bites. He knew right away that he had just eaten pesto (which contains pine nuts), when his mouth started to swell. A guy we were eating with took him back to the hotel to get his shot, but then he realized that he had let it expire 3 years! This had happened 3 times in his life before this weekend...last time being our honeymoon in St. Lucia 4 years ago (3rd world country + ER = scary!), which was the last time he had gotten an Epipen. Obviously that was no good, so we went to an ASAP clinic VERY fast as things were quickly getting worse. They took good care of him there, and he was fine by that evening. Yes, the Blue Mesa will be paying for that! We had an awards banquet, which he didn't want to miss, so he went looking white as a ghost and tired. We learned two lessons...never let the Epipen expire and always ask for a list of common allergic ingredients.

We came back early Sunday morning to go to church since it was Josh's 1st Father's Day! The drama continued when my Grandma passed out in church and had to be wheeled out and taken in an ambulance to the hospital. Luckily everything was fine, she had just gone too long without eating and taken pills on an empty stomach (and maybe had gotten a little overheated). Our Father's Day meal that Elizabeth had spent hours cooking and Father's Day celebration got a little messed up, but it could have been a lot worse!

James and I have had a very fun week, because my dear friend Amanda came to visit. We had the best time together shopping, laughing, reminiscing, eating good food, and most fun of all, playing with James. Thanks for making that drive, Amanda!! I will be doing it early next year to see her baby due in December!

Busy Start to Summer!

Sorry I've been such a bad blogger lately! I was busy all last week, because my wonderful sister-in-law, Jo Anna (Josh's sister) and niece Hannah came to visit. James got very spoiled by all of the attention they gave him, and we had such a great time together! To update you on James...

*He is 8 weeks old now (that sounds so old!!)
*He is smiling so much
*Just in the past couple of days, he is "talking" to us so much more
*He is really starting to look like a boy (it seems like almost every day he is changing to where Josh will even notice it by the time he comes home from work)
*He weighs 14 1/2 lbs!!
*A week ago, HE SLEPT THROUGH THE NIGHT...8 HOURS!!!
*He's giving us more sleep, but is going through a growth spurt and wanting to eat constantly, so no more 8 hours...but better!
*He's starting to push up on his legs
*He's gaining a lot more head control

That pretty much sums up what's going on with James. As for us, we're going to continue to have a crazy busy month. Thursday Josh, James, and I are going on our first away from home trip to Josh's Summer Regional conference in Frisco. We always have so much fun at these conferences...kinda like a mini-vacation. It was going to be at Horseshoe Bay, which we were so excited about, but some kind of construction is going on there, so they postponed that for a year and moved it to Frisco. I'm a little nervous about being away with James, but luckily he's a pretty easy baby. When we get back, Amanda is coming to visit for a few days to see James. I'm sooo excited about her coming!! Then, on June 29th (our 4th anniversary), Josh, James, and I are heading to Birmingham for one of Josh's best friends from college's wedding where Josh is going to be a groomsman. I'm also soooo very excited because I'm going to get to see Kim (very pregnant!!) and her husband and a bunch of other people we went to college with. It's such a treat to see several of my best friends from college who I never get to see in the same month!! Back to my busy summer... after the wedding, we're going to Atlanta for a while to see all of Josh's family. We can't wait to show James to everyone!!