Keep Austin Weird - and Christmas-y!!

There is a tradition in Austin that has been going on for several years, and my family has been taking part in it for 2 years now. Loop 360, one of Austin's highways, is lined by many, many cedar trees. Several years ago, these trees started to wake up in the morning decorated with tinsel, and garland, and ornaments, and all sorts of shiny things! Nobody, not even the trees, knew who was coming in the dead of night to festoon them with Christmas cheer, but one thing was clear: This was something very Austin-y, and it should be encouraged!

So, last year my family picked out a tree to decorate, and my parents, Ryan, and I made ourselves a Charlie Brown Christmas Tree on 360. This year, our troupe of decorators grew! Ryan was sick, so he had to stay home this year (so sad!), but Aunt Susan, Brad, and Will came out with us to Keep Austin Weird in this fantastically Christmas-y way! AND, we can't forget that oh-so-adorable addition to our 360 tradition! Eli was there, too! Although, you might want to tell him that. He slept through the Highway tree decorating in my homemade ring sling! There IS such a thing as being TOO comfortable!!

My mom shops the after-Christmas sales for cheap decorations specifically with our 360 tree in mind! Each year, our box of decorations grows exponentially!

Thankfully this year, we found a tree up on a hill to decorate! Sometimes you have to risk life and limb while decorating a tree very close to the speeding cars! 

Some very brave souls even go up on the cliffs that intermittently line the highway and decorate cedar trees up there! There is no way that this momma and these old fogies were going to be hiking up any cliffs, though!

 We were very lucky to have brought along Brad this year! He helped us reach the very tip top of our tree! Without him, our tree would have looked a little silly. It would have only been covered with decorations until about 4 feet from the top!

Personally, I think our tree was a masterpiece! 

Here is the view of our tree and our crew from the shoulder of the highway! 

 A week or so later, another tree joined our little tree on its hill, and a week after that, there were three decorated trees all in a row! 

We will go back and un-decorate our roadside masterpiece after New Year's and pack away our stuff for next year's Keep Austin Christmas-y tree!

After our decorating, we all met up again at the capitol building for a Christmas Carol sing-a-long and the lighting of the capitol Christmas tree! 

We had a great time singing all of these beloved carols, but, unfortunately, most of the people around us didn't seem to understand the point of the evening. It was hard to hear the music and the choir because the people surrounding us were chatting away! I thought that this was rude, since the point of the evening was a sing-a-long, so I just stood directly behind them and sang very loudly into their conversation. They didn't move, or stop talking, but it made me feel better.

We had a lot of fun making a new tradition. (You may see a trend here, folks! My family is ALLL about tradition!) Hopefully next year, we will have singers near us instead of chatty hipsters. 

A Post-Thanksgiving Visit with Friends!

After Thanksgiving, Ryan went home to the 'burg to see a friend who was in town from far away, but Eli and I went back to Austin with my mom and dad, and while we were there, we got to see some wonderful old friends! Chelsea went to preschool with me about 20 years ago, and we were best friends for our whole childhood. This summer, my mom, my dad, baby Kristopher, and I went to Chelsea's BEAUTIFUL wedding! My mom and Chelsea's mom, Lori, became best friends while drinking iced tea as Chelsea and I ran by during playdates, hoping that they wouldn't notice us and would keep drinking tea so that we could play a little while longer. It has been a long time, but as with all good friendships, no matter how long we go between seeing each other, the love is still strong!

Eli was looking extra cute before Chelsea and Lori got to my mom's house, so we had a little photo shoot!

Chelsea doesn't hold babies, as a rule, but I promised her that she wouldn't break him, and she decided that it might be ok just this once. I think she's a natural!

Eli had a good time snuggling with Lori, too! 

Chelsea and Lori were sweet enough to take a picture of Eli with my mom and me, since we are usually behind the camera and don't always get a good representation in pictures! Three generations, here! Wow! 

We had a great time in Austin visiting with my parents and friends, but Eli and Ryan were both very happy for some father-son time as soon as we got back home! 

Thanksgiving 2012

 This Thanksgiving, the Hoover fam made our way to Waco for the Ledbetter family thanksgiving! It was Eli's longest drive so far (3 hours), and he did great! 

My granddad is 93 years old, and he and my whole family crowded into Aunt Susan's house to celebrate and be thankful! Eli's cousin Paisley (born in August), and his cousin Tuett (born April 2011) were there and they got to play for the first time! Mostly, though, Eli did a lot of cuddling with various family members, especially his Pops (my dad).

One of my family's biggest Thanksgiving traditions ( *sings* TRADITION! tra-di-tion!) is taking the Thanksgiving Afternoon Walk. I wore Eli in my homemade ring sling, and Brooke wore Paisley in her Baby Bjorn to share the babywearing love. 

Eli slept though most of this, his first Thanksgiving Afternoon Walk. 

There were 4 generations at this Thanksgiving celebration! How exciting that I get to be a part of a 4 generation picture now! 

Ryan did not like having to share Eli with so many people, and every time I had to take Eli to nurse, he wanted me to bring Eli to him afterwards so that he could snag some snuggle time, too! Eli is a very lucky kid to have a dad who loves him so much that he doesn't want to share!

We ate a lot of very delicious food for Thanksgiving! I think every dish had at least one whole stick of butter in it! This is why I love Thankgsiving!!

At the end of the day, Eli was tuckered out! He snuggled with Grandmother (my mom) and fell asleep almost instantly! It was a big day for my boy! Can't wait 'til next year when Eli can enjoy a few Thanksgiving favorites with us! I wonder what he will like best?! I hope it's my Gourmet Broccoli Rice Casserole! Frankly, how could it not be?!

PAXbaby.com's raffle giveaway!!

If you have seen me out and about since our boy was born, you probably have seen me babywearing. Yep, don't go back and read it again. Babywearing. Let's talk about how this is the BEST thing that has happened to being a mom since babies were invented. Hold baby and shop? SURE! Feed baby handsfree? You bet! Keep baby close and kissable anytime and anywhere? DEFINITELY. 
And PAXbaby.com is the place to go to find the baby carrier of your DREAMS. Mine is on its way cross country right now and will be under the tree for me this year!! 

Here are the reasons that PAXbaby.com is your one stop shop for all your momming needs.

1) They are SO helpful, and will help you figure out what kind of carrier is the one for you with their Custom Babywearing Prescription! (help@paxbaby.com)

2) They get your package shipped FAST!

3) It's run by sweet Work At Home Moms (WAHMs)!

4) They have SO many great vendors, and a lot of them are WAHMs!! Let's suport those mommas!!

5) Their facebook page will help you hook up with other babywearing mommas (or dads!) in your area so you can have fun babywearing in a group!

6) They sell more than just baby carriers! Go check out their Baltic Amber for pain relief, sweet handmade plush toys, beautiful wrap scrap pillow shams and way more!


They just hit 10,000 fans on their fabulous (and SO helpful) facebook page, and they are having a raffle for some FANTASTIC prizes! (I want the Girasol Diamond Weave Cream weft wrap!!) So check them out!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

A blurb!

A lot of things have happened since last I blogged, and we will get to those in due time. But first, a blurb to supplement my birth story post:

After I posted Eli's birth story, I realized that I left out a very important part of our experience on October 11, 2012. This is, quite possibly, the most surprising and impressive part of our birth story outside of our son's entrance into the world. I do not think that either Ryan or myself expected just how much of Eli's birth would be about us.

There is something very interesting that happens to people who are thrust into difficult situations together. Some something, some desperation to get through the day in one piece and be able to see the other side forces people to band together in a way that almost makes them one unit. I believe that when those individuals are already very much of a unit, (read: marriage), this bonding generates unfathomable strength. I had no idea about this phenomenon before my labor began because, frankly, I had never been placed into a difficult situation. 

I knew that Ryan and I were going to have to be a team to get through labor and delivery naturally. I had even feared that Ryan didn't realize just how active a participant he would have to be in labor in order for me to not need an epidural. I knew that physically, I would lean on him to get through the pain. I did not realize how much I would lean on him mentally and spiritually. 

As the day went on and the pain of labor began to intensify, Ryan stepped up his game. At first, he somehow knew that his role was Comedian. Before labor turned the corner into pain, Ryan distracted me from my contractions by making me laugh. We walked the halls, and he made jokes, and I laughed despite my discomfort. But as the hours went by, there was a shift in Ryan's role. When I could no longer walk and laugh through my contractions, Ryan stood behind me, helping me keep my body as relaxed as possible when each wave came. When tightening turned to pain, Ryan stood in front of me, squeezing my hands so that I didn't have to squeeze his and letting me push all of the tension onto him. And when a contraction threatened to pull me under and force me to lose control of my labor, Ryan looked me in the eye and reminded me that I was in control. For hours and hours, Ryan took a beating with every contraction, letting me push down on his hands with all of my strength over and over again. In the days following Eli's birthday, both of our arms were sore from laboring this way. 

There were moments when I thought that I couldn't do it. I would shake my head at him in the middle of the worst contractions, forgetting to breathe, absolutely sure that this was as much as I could take and that I was done. But before even that single contraction was over, Ryan had pulled me back up out of that doubt and focused me again on maintaining control. When it was finally time to push, Ryan was in my ear, telling me how close we were to meeting our precious boy. There were a lot of voices in the operating room, loudly directing me to keep pushing or relax, but the one that I heard was the whisper that was meant only for me. 

Going through labor and delivery together galvanized our marriage in a way that I could never have anticipated. I knew that I was going to fall in love with our tiny little boy that day, but I had no idea that I was also going to fall in love all over again with my husband.

One month!

Well, Eli is a month old! (Actually, he's 5 weeks old as of yesterday, but this is his official one-month blog post.) It has been a whirlwind of diapers and dinos in our house over the past month, but it has been SO fun! He seriously changes every single day, and Ryan and I are discovering so many fun things about his little personality all the time! 

 

He can smile, but not really on purpose yet. Sometimes when Ryan is making silly faces and boy-noises at him, he makes a happy face, but it still doesn't seem purposeful yet. But sometimes we do catch faces like this, and it is always a thrill!

 

Eli is very curious. My mom and I laugh about how he inherited a condition called FOMO from me. FOMO stands for Fear Of Missing Out, and it looks like the boy is going to be like his momma! He loves to look around and see what's going on, and he has really starting to look AT things, rather than just looking in their general direction. When he was about 3 weeks old he started to actually look in our eyes when we hold and talk to him. It's pretty neat to have your son look you in the eye. Just sayin'.

Eli and I work on some tummy time every morning. He is really getting good control over his head! I am excited for him to start noticing toys and items that I put in front of him and reaching for them. For now, I lay next to him, and we talk to each other while he gets his workout. It's a really special time for me to just look in his eyes and watch him concentrate so hard on his movements.

Eli still sleeps a lot during the day. Just this week, I have started to lay him down when he is drowsy but not quite asleep. So far, this is working like a charm! He puts himself to sleep on his own in his crib! What an over-achiever!

Nights have gotten much better since the first couple of weeks at home. Eli still wakes up to eat throughout the night, but it's starting to be every 2-4 hours instead of every 2 hours on the nose. This past week, when he has woken up at the 2 hour mark, I have been able to put him back to sleep and get another hour or two out of him before he wakes up and wants to eat. This is very exciting news for this tired momma!

In the middle of the night, when he has gone back to sleep after a feeding and I'm laying back down, I always say a little prayer for him before I fall asleep. We waited a long, long time for this little boy. He is the most perfect gift to us.

Ryan and I are very excited to watch this little boy grow! We can't wait to see him smile at us, and Ryan is looking forward most to getting Eli to laugh. Once he starts, he is going to be laughing all the time! Ryan is never short of boy-noises (read: fart noises) and silly faces to make for Eli!

We both have so many big plans for this kid! Ryan and I both love to read, so we each have several books that we want to read to and with him as he grows up. Ryan figures he won't get through all of them before Eli is grown up and moved out on his own!

At his 1-month checkup, Eli weighed 9.35 lbs. This is up 3.35 lbs from his birth weight! His cheeks just get more and more kissable, and those little thighs are getting chubbier every day! Even his feet are starting to look chunky! Bring on the baby fat!

It seems like it can't be possible that our little boy is already 5 weeks old! It's going by so quickly! All at once, I'm excited to watch him grow and missing that tiny-tiny newborn phase! For the most part, though, both Ryan and I are looking forward to seeing who Eli turns out to be, and watching him discover his world.

 

Now that I have this thing up and running, I'm going to try to post something every week to keep friends and family up-to-date on our boy and what our little family is up to. So check back here for more adorable photos and stories about our adventures from dinos to diapers!

Love, 
Caitlin, Ryan, and Eli