Holiday Happenings: Part One

This is the blog where I am going to attempt to recount our holiday happenings.  I started this Sunday, January 6, 2013 and didn't make it very far...

Wow, so the past few weeks absolutely flew by and Tony is headed back to work in the morning after a very wonderful two weeks off!  I have been so spoiled with him home - he's helped out with so much that it will quite possibly be a rough transition back to real life.  But I have to admit it will be nice to get back into a regular routine again.

I feel like so much has changed in these past two weeks!  Presley has started to put herself into the sitting position and has started to pull herself up onto her knees using objects around the house.  Both front teeth came in as well as one of her other top teeth.

So, I am attempting to pick up where I left off...

The week has gone good with just me and Presley so far.  I'm glad we had the weekend home just the 3 of us so we could readjust to home life after two weeks of living as nomads who were surrounded by amazing friends and family nearly 24/7.  The past weekend was rough, mostly because Presley was very clingy and whiny - I'm guessing it had to do with the change of scenery, the fact that it was just the three of us, and her teeth coming in.  When we were in Tennessee, we were always on the go and when we weren't, there were plenty of people to interact with at all times.  By the time Sunday night rolled around, I was very low on patience, missing our friends and family, bummed my hubby was going back to work in the morning and honestly wasn't feeling very hopeful that things were going to go well this week.

And then I did something I hadn't done in a while.  I try to send out a few encouraging text messages every week to about 40 friends and family members... but what was different is that this time I decided to put my worries aside and pray for their week ahead; I prayed that they could face their worries and troubles head on - that if they weren't able to change the problems in their life then I prayed that they could change the way they see it and improve their attitude.  I consider myself a christian, but when it comes down to it these days, I am not holding myself accountable.  I can't remember when the last time was that I went to church or had a conversation with God.  Anyways, afterwards I just felt better and headed in the right direction.  And so far, Presley has snapped out of her funk as well.  (Currently giving her 2 opportunities to take a nap a day and I think that's helping!)

So let's rewind and start at the beginning of our trip.

We got up at a freaking UNGODLY hour on Christmas Eve to catch our flight from Moline to Detroit and finally to Memphis!  My mom was on our first flight with us and then we split up (she was heading to Nashville to stay with my sister).

Once at the Detroit airport, for some reason, I was set on getting Starbucks during our layover.  Let me draw you a picture:  Tony and I were both hauling around two bags each that were jam-packed full of all our million items we would need throughout our time gone so that we wouldn't have to pay to check a bag.  On top of it, we were taking turns carrying our heavy little independent nugget who thinks she deserves to crawl around on her own these days instead of being carried.  Instead of taking it easy, I insisted on getting Starbucks - which we had to super speed walk (we call this "Disney walking" because that's how it was at Disney - we were always in a hurry to make it to the next attraction or meal or to catch our transportation, which was usually on the other side of the park...) to get there and back before we needed to board our next plane.  We get there, and of course the barista was unpleasant because that's just my luck.  So now, Tony and I were both hauling around two bags that were packed to the brim of all our crappy items we would probably not even need over the next 2 weeks because we are cheap asses who don't want to pay to check bags.  On top of it, add a squirmy, happy, heavy baby we were taking turns carrying... oh yeah and a tall, hot Starbucks drink to the list of things we needed to carry.  We finally get to our gate and I take the first sip of my drink (I have a thing where I am really scared I will burn my mouth on hot coffee so I hadn't really tried it until then...) and it tasted like body odor... I kid you not.  Sooo, into the trash went my (roughly) $4 drink!

But honestly I was so excited for our trip and for all the time we'd have together that all I could do was laugh.  Plus, I had only gotten two hours of sleep the night before so I was mostly delusional.  The three of us had our Christmas clothes on and it was starting to really feel like the holiday season.

In case you were wondering, that is mistletoe hanging from my headband.

Presley traveled like the absolute rock star that she is and the plane didn't phase her at all.  I was able to breastfeed her during take-off and landing each time, so she didn't seem to have any issues with the pressure and her ears.  (Highly recommend doing this if you are ever in a similar situation!)  And finally, we landed in Memphis.  We were greeted at the beautiful airport by some happy faces - Tony's younger brother (Sean), Tony's dad (Mike), and Tony's best friend & his girlfriend (Chris and Kristen).  We picked up Presley's car seat (which we checked in Moline at the beginning of our trip for free - thanks Delta!) and headed to Mississippi to Siano Appliances - which is where Tony's mom works.  We picked up lunch (hallelujah, Back Yard Burger!!!!), hung out for a while, and then I nursed Presley in the back room where Presley finally got in a cat nap.

After we left there we finally made it to Tony's Aunt Kelly & Uncle Bob's home which would be our home-away-from-home the majority of our trip.  Sean (who is in the Navy and lives in San Diego) was only in town for the first 3-ish days of our trip and we wanted to see him as much as we could, so the first part of our trip was spent in Memphis before heading to Nashville for a day and a half, then Chattanooga for two days, back to Nashville for a night, and then back to Memphis again for a few days.

This is all I can muster for part one of our trip - hopefully the second part will be a little more organized!  I'll share some pictures, funny stories, and hopefully will be able to remember all the fun we had (minus New Years Eve... definitely don't remember all of that night... though I do know it was a good time!) while in Tennessee and Mississippi.  Until then, happy new year and I'd love to hear how everyone spent the holiday!

Christmas with the Duggans.

I absolutely love looking back at Christmas pictures that we've taken with Tony's family throughout the years... so without further ado...

Sean (my BIL), Selena (my MIL), me, Tony (hubby, then boyfriend), Granny (Tony's grandmother) & Mike (my FIL) - Christmas 2006

Cousin picture - Sean, me, Tony, Lexi & Bobby (Tony's cousins) - Christmas 2006

Mike, Sean &  Tony - Selena, Granny & Daisy - Christmas 2007

Sean, me & Tony - Christmas 2007

Sean, Tony, Mike & Selena, & me - Christmas 2008

Cousin picture - Sean, me & Bobby, Tony - & Lexi - Christmas 2008

Cousin picture - Me, Tony, Lexi & Bobby - Christmas 2009

Me, Selena, Tony, & Mike - Christmas 2010

Me & Bobby - Christmas 2010

Sean, Selena, Mike, Tony, & Me (pregnant with Presley) - Christmas 2011

Sean, me (Presley in my belly!), & Tony - Christmas 2011

And I am SO excited to see everyone this year and to add pictures from Christmas 2012 to these wonderful memories above!

Merry Christmas!

Here is our Christmas Card from this year - ordered from cardstore.com and they were fabulous to work with as usual.  I super duper highly recommend them because their prices are fantastic, the website is very user-friendly and easy to navigate, and they really do offer some great stuff.  This will probably be my last entry for a while since we'll be out of town, so have a Merry Christmas, everybody, and enjoy all the people who mean most to you.  See you later 2012 - very excited for 2013 and looking forward to all the great memories to be made next year!

Happy 10 month birthday, Presley girl!

Showing off her bottom teeth!

 Alright, so, there have been a TON of changes this past month!

• We've got a big, bad CRAWLER on our hands!  And I'm talking, belly OFF the floor kinda crawling.  One day last week she just decided that she was gonna get a move on and the rest was history.

In addition to your 4 beautiful bottom teeth, you will be getting both top teeth in no time, it seems.  One of your top teeth has cut through all the way and the other is not far behind.  Hopefully this won't be too painful of an experience for you - so far you are totally handling it like the champ that you are!

Child of mine, you have some SMELLY feet!!!!!  Looks like we're going to have to up the amount of baths you have a week!

Your favorite words are "baby" and "dada" and you sure do wear them out!  Sometimes you get too excited and put both words together by saying "bay-da" - very cute!  "Mama" isn't on your radar these days... when and if you do say it, you are often shouting it.

You just love your puffs!

Just this week you started clapping.  So darn sweet!

 

• I believe we will be moving to your bigger car seat pretty soon!  You still fit in your baby one, but you sure are pushing its limits.  I think you will be more comfortable but it will be tough for me... just another indication that you are growing up!

So, I would be lying if I didn't mention that I am a bit bummed we won't be starting any Christmas traditions for our little family of 3 this year.  Because when I think about how nice a relaxing Christmas at home would be, it sounds pretty darn wonderful.  Plus, babies are just not made for traveling, if you ask me!  Though, I know if we stayed home for Christmas we would end up being pretty damn sad and just wishing we were with my in-laws and sisters the entire time.

Plus, like my sister and I talked about, our kids are so small now that it won't matter a ton in the big scheme of things... it's not like they will have any true memories about this first Christmas!  So, I am just telling myself that we will have another year to prepare for any and all family Christmas traditions we look forward to sharing together.

With that said, any sacrifice is worth the reward we'll be gaining because we will be spending time with our family whom we only get to see a few times a year.  That includes traveling to Memphis, Nashville, and possibly Chattanooga (gotta iron out those plans).  We'll be having another big "first" along with Presley's FIRST Christmas and that will be first plane ride!  I'm just a wee bit anxious about how it will go, especially since Presley hates to sit still now that she has started crawling... but she really is such an easy-going kid.  Now, any tips/tricks/advice for flying with a baby in tow - send them my way and don't be shy!  I really would like to take our Boppy with because I can't imagine being without it, but I'm just not sure we'll have room since the plan is (for now) to not check any bags.  We are flying with Delta, which I am super pumped about because they still serve in-flight snacks (SWEET!) and have no problem with us bringing our car seat and stroller (not sure if we'll bring that or not) and neither of those things count towards our carry ons! Woo!

In other news, we just had our first big snow of the year.  This resulted in Presley and I being home bound all day.  Which resulted in these silly pictures.

Happy ten months, Presley Rose.  Ten down and only two to go until we're all celebrating your super special first birthday!  Very hard to believe but even more exciting. 

Today.

I just can't even handle what happened today.

That is a lie.  I can handle what happened today because you know what?  The people directly effected by the shootings today in Connecticut had to handle it... and if they could do it, then I certainly can as well.  But what I cannot do is wrap my mind around all the details.  I can not accept that there is this much evil dwelling very directly in our midst; someone so tortured that they would take lives of the youngest school-aged children as well as adults who are doing wonderful things for our community and for the next generation.  Someone who would kill their own mother; shoot her in the face at point-blank range.  Someone so filled with hopelessness that they would then take their own life, just at twenty years of age.

After learning this was such a horrific shooting at an elementary school, I immediately reflected back on my experience in elementary school and those were easily some of the best days of my young life.  I had such amazing, kind, and patient teachers who encouraged us.  I had my two sisters - one who was always a few steps ahead of me and another who was just a few steps behind me - both who loved me and kept every day at home and at school interesting.  I had both of my parents in my life who made frequent trips to see me at school for various reasons - sometimes just for the sole purpose to make my day special and have lunch on the stage with me in the cafeteria.

Elementary school was a time to test the waters and find things that interested you.  For me, it was environmental club, APEX, and taking part in student council.  Sometimes you realized you had both strengths (won many-a-foot-race in my day on Field Day) AND weaknesses (losing two years in a row when running for student council).  Despite some setbacks and typical childhood drama, I loved my elementary school and was so proud to be a Seahawk at Southwind Elementary School in Memphis, TN - and I'm still proud. 

That's what filled my mind this morning.

How DARE some deranged fool take that away from ALL those students at Sandy Hook Elementary School.  He blemished their experience from here on out - and that is to say that they survived the day.

Before my husband went to bed tonight, he shared that how different it is to hear about today's events as a parent now.  Mid-way through the day, after not having shed a single tear yet, I was on my way to change my daughter's smelly, poopy diaper and I burst into tears thinking, "Thank God for this poopy diaper!"  because it meant that she was very much here with me right now.  I just hugged her and sobbed into her tiny, little shoulder and begged her to never take someone else's joy or to take their life... I also asked her to please never leave me in such a traumatic way.  (As if she could control that.)  As I changed her diaper, I thought about how much I've assumed that Presley will make it through her childhood and well into adulthood and I came to the crippling realization that that may not happen; all of the children gunned down today were babies at one point who likely have parents who changed many diapers a day just as I do for my daughter - parents who had the same hopes, dreams, and assumptions that their family would never be struck by such violence and grief.

It.  Sucks.

It sucks that you can't control what happens to your family in bad situations and that you can't always save them.  My dad was shot and killed when I was twelve and there wasn't a day that went by that I wasn't trying to come up with ways to go back in time and some how save him from the horrible choices that someone else was making.  And that was my mindset as a child.  Can you imagine what the parents of the children who were taken from the world are thinking?  You just don't expect to send your child off to school in the morning and instead of picking them up from school, you're picking them up from the morgue.  That sucks.  It sucks that not everyone is good out there.  It sucks that not everyone cares enough to realize how many people they will be hurting through their actions.  It absolutely sucks! 

I talk with my Gramma frequently through e-mail and just a month ago she wrote me saying, "the way the country is going is not the America I was born into and raised to love."  And how true is that.  It has changed so much since I was a young kid - and that was less than twenty years ago.  I thought for the first time today that maybe it would be a disservice to any future children of mine to bring them into the world - what a sad thought that was!  And so many parents are thinking that in order to keep their children safe they must home school them now.  I can't blame anyone for feeling that way!  For me personally, as I said before, I had a wonderful childhood in public schools and I would hate to take away so many beautiful opportunities from my child.  But I would do it - IN A HEARTBEAT - if that meant keeping my child alive.  I just can't believe that's what it may come down to five years from now.

It's going to take a lot of love and investment in one another to combat things such as what happened today in Newtown, Connecticut.

I know this isn't the most uplifting entry, so I will leave you with what has cheered me up throughout the day in hopes that it will lift your mood as well.  A video of Miss Presley from today:


We have every day to make better decisions than we made the day before and I just hope that we can continue to live our lives without fear of the worst happening.  I pray that we can all try our best to make our communities as safe, happy, and healthy as possible.

Pregnancy with Presley!

So after reading Megan's (fabulous blogging mama to one heavenly angel and her twin earthly angels) post about how she documented both of her pregnancies, I decided to put together a collage of a bunch of my belly pictures and ultrasounds and various pre-Presley pictures... all leading up to one of our most recent pictures of me and her at 9 months post partum.

After having a painful, drawn-out birthing experience, becoming a new mom, and going through the newborn phase - I swore to Tony we were not having any more kids.  I never would have imagined the joy I could have and how complete our family feels now that Presley is here in our family.  I think I could go through it all again in the future, but we are truly happy with life right now.  Who knows how we will feel down the road from now.  If another pregnancy and baby is in the cards for our future that's wonderful but if it it is just the three of us from here on out then I would be just as ecstatic.

And Presley, if you do read my blogs someday (way, way, WAY down the road) our dreams are so complete with you here.  If God would have asked us to describe the baby that we thought we wanted, we would have gotten it all wrong because you, my dear, are ten times sweeter, smarter, funnier, & cuter than we could have EVER imagined.  We love you so much and no amount of time or anything else in this world could or will ever change that.  I can't even imagine how much our love will grow as you do throughout the years but I can tell you that I am so ready & so excited - just as your daddy is. xo

Dear this past week,

Thank you for being awesome, once again.  I really don't want to sound like a talking cliche, but in the last week it has really started to feel a lot like Christmas in our house.  We got a few of our decorations up - which includes our tree - and I can't wait to crank up my favorite Christmas albums (this, this, this, and this) while we decorate the rest of the way!  Some of the happenings of the past week...

We took family Christmas pictures!
And Presley did amazing, as always, with family pictures.  I think this is the 4th year in a row that Tony and I (and now this year, Presley, too!) have gone to Portrait Innovations to take pictures for Christmas!  They always have such a great staff who are friendly and take such great pictures - not to mention the awesome deal they have for the holidays.  Ideally, I'd like to have more relaxed family pictures taken outside of a studio sometime, but for now - this works!  I'll try not to overload you with too many of our pictures & post just a few of my favorites...

Presley's legwarmers at Sparkle in Pink for such a good price and they are such good quality!

Went to the mall with some of our favorite gals!
As if I need any motivation to go shopping as it is, Megan said her and the girls were going to do some shopping at the mall so Presley and I met them out there!  The girls were so well behaved - despite them taking turns throwing their toys out of the strollers every few minutes.  And on top of the fun outing, I ran into my best friend's sister, Hope!  For the first week in a long time, we didn't get to have our weekly play date with the girls... so no picture of the three of their adorableness!

Got our Christmas cards ready to send out!
Not much to say there... just happy to have them done!  Even if people get them super early in the holiday season - for once I won't be waiting until the last minute!

We bought Presley's first Christmas present!
We didn't go out and do any crazy Black Friday shopping - but we did go to Walmart that afternoon and found a few blu-ray movies as well as Presley's first gift!  Tony and I have always agreed we wouldn't be huge on buying Presley a ton of things and going overboard for birthdays and holidays - but when I saw this I felt like Presley would really like to play with something like this - plus we got a really great deal on it!

Playskool Explore and Grow Step Start Walk n Ride

Made our holiday plans!
This includes booking some flights for the three of us - which I am looking forward to.  We finally cashed in our credit card points so we didn't have to pay a dime for our transportation this Christmas!  Woo-Hoo!  It also means we will be bypassing the awfully long car ride!!!  However, this will be Presley's first time flying - so we aren't sure how she will react but I am feeling optimistic about it.  Have any of you moms flown with your little ones while they could still sit on your lap?  If so, how did it go and do you have any tips to make the trip smoother?  She will be 10 months when we leave and I've heard that breastfeeding during take off will make it easier on her ears - so I hope she can relax enough to do that.  (When there is noise around her she wants to be up and investigating everything!)  Anyways, I'm just really looking forward to the holidays this year.  We'd like to stay put as much as possible next Christmas because Presley will be a little older and we will want to start our own traditions with each other at that point!  But that is a whole year away - who knows what our life will be like twelve months from now!!!

Did some secret shopping for my main squeeze!
Like I said in a previous post, I am the worst at keeping gifts a secret, especially from Tony!  I just get so excited about it that I end up telling him right away.  Especially if it's something he'd really like.  For example, the first two stocking stuffers I bought him I ended up giving them to him right away - I am that awful!  In the last week or so I've found 3 gifts for his stocking that I know he'll enjoy and they are still a surprise... so far.  Too bad we have nearly a month to go!

So, that's about it, really.  Hasn't been a terribly eventful week - but it was another wonderful week in the Duggan household!  Now, I'm going to work on my cousin, Breanne, sharing her labor & delivery story and see how she would feel about doing a guest blog... I don't know about everybody else but I absolutely love hearing birthday stories.  Anyways, I will leave you guys with my Nine months in - Nine months out picture!  I got the idea from Megan! How fun!

Have a great weekend, everybody!