Wedding and Baptism!

A whirlwind of a weekend!!! Below is the lovely Mrs. Nicholas... the day after her wedding, looking relaxed... she had to get up early to be the Godmother of Grace!!!

The extended God Family... Amy is Godmother, Chad the Godfather... Josh is now Amy's husband and Jen is now engaged to the Godfather, and Karina is the daughter of Jen.... ahhhhhhh... You will get it somehow. We are blessed which such a loving extended family.... this picture is taken right after her baptism.

Chad taking her to her first communion. She was sleeping, we tried to wake her up before, but she wasn't having it... we had to pry her mouth open.

This is a picture of Gracie that Amy took in her baptismal gown, next to my wedding bouquet. This is the most beautiful picture that I have ever seen. I am going to blow it up and frame it! Thanks Amy!!!!!!!!

After this weekend we all needed a nap!! The wedding was amazing, I am waiting for pictures from it, it was an all out celebration of love!! Since I was the in a nice dress I didn't want to breast feed all the time, so I pumped before and Stephen was able to feed her a bottle all day... She was one of the most popular attractions at the wedding, there was literally a line to hold her all day!!!

The next day at 8:30 we had the baptism, and let me tell you, it was soo hard to get out of bed, but totally worth it, she only cried when she got dunked, and proceeded to pee all over Chad and the floor!!!

Selflessness, hard thing to get used to!

So, I have been a mom for six weeks almost now, and am to the point where I miss being able to do stuff!! Everything from going to the bathroom, making dinner, grocery shopping, taking out the trash, cuddling with my husband and eating has to be perfectly calculated around our beloved daughter. It is a hard transition from being able to do whatever I wanted to do, whenever I wanted to do it for the past 29 years of my life, well at least the last 11.

I love my daughter with all that I have in me, I just miss being able to go to a movie, do errands... eat something other than fast food when I am able to be out and about! I know what you are all saying.... "get used to it Amanda, this is your life from now on" and I know that, and I would much rather have her than not, it is just something that I am getting used to.... this whole selflessness thing....

Today I have to go to San Jose to get a few things, and I am nervous about her feeding. She eats every two hours, so I can feed her right before I go, drive 1/2 hour to get there, and have an hour there before I have to drive back... well I want to stay for longer. Where do I feed her? In a fitting room? In a hot car? Do I take a bottle that I pumped before? We shall see how it unfolds....

It is going to take me a while to get used to this whole mom thing.

5 weeks of love!

Wow, how time flies! Gracie is 5 weeks old already and we are so blessed to have such a wonderful baby. She is just starting to smile a little bit, and boy when she does it just melts our hearts. She is getting to be so much more alert, hopefully the pictures below show how wide her eyes are getting.

This is going to be a big week for Gracie, she is going to be a flower girl at her Godmothers wedding on Saturday and then she is going to be baptized on Sunday!!!! Oh my gosh her baptismal gown is so precious! She is going to wear the same one for the wedding and the baptism and she just looks like a doll. No worries, there will be plenty of pictures next week.

Momma is not having good luck trying to find a dress for the wedding. I am the maid of honor and still do not have a dress and the wedding is in a week!!! My body is just a weird size after giving birth and trying to fit into dresses is really hard!!! Not to mention the fact that I can't just go shopping for a day looking for one, I have this little baby that likes to eat every two hours, and who is hard to fit her stroller in the changing room with me....So, I go to the Internet and order dresses, try them on, get depressed, then send them back!!! I'm getting extremely frustrated, but know that hopefully I will find something.

Our house is almost all unpacked and feeling more and more like home. I can't tell you how nice it is to be close to my sister and her family. Marina likes to go to errands with me to help with the baby which is a total blessing. Zach comes down to help move heavy boxes, and just having somewhere to go hangout is so nice.

Aimee also gave us a chance to go out on a date for the first time since she was born! I just saved some breastmilk so she could feed and gave her to my sister for a couple hours and Stephen and I had a very romantic dinner downtown, something that was sooooo needed. It was nice to feel like a wife again rather than just a milking mother!! I look forward to more dates to come!

Her own music

If you turn your volume up you can hear her constant cooing. She is soooo precious!!! Maryfaith thinks that she will be a singer... if she is anything like her mom and dad, she will sing to her hearts content, it just wont sound that good:( Anyway, I will try to get better audio at a later point

We moved!

This last week has been crazy!!!! We moved out of our apartment in Santa Cruz to a house in Mt. Hermon, and I am sooo happy! I am down the street from my sister Aimee, only a 3 minute walk, across the street from our good friends Juan, Shelly and their little daughter Olivia and just in trees again, something I missed terribly.

Moving with a newborn wasn't the easiest, well at least for Stephen, I was pretty much out of the picture, but we had tons of help from some friends, but cleaning the old apartment was a lot of work for my man, took 8 hours all by his lonesome. I love him, and really wish I could have helped!! Pictures to come of our house. Gracie loves it, so much windows and light, she stares for hours out the windows, it makes it a little easier to start unpacking... but she still demands a lot of my attention.

She is still a wonderful baby! Sleeps 6-7 hours at a time at night, feeds, then sleeps for another 3 or 4. Her eyes are getting wider, and she just loves making noises... all the time!! Sometimes too many noises and I wake up all the time thinking that she is waking up, but she just coo's away. She has grown out of a lot of her newborn clothes, which is not very hard being that newborns clothes go up to 8 lbs, and she was born at 9. She breastfeeds well... bottom line we are just completely blessed! Mommy just has to watch what she eats, she does get gassy and very uncomfortable often... So far I know that she doesn't react well to beans and fried foods...

Mama and her love of loves!

Stephen and Gracie on their way to see his softball game. She is sitting in a glove....

Gracie after a bath, super alert and bright eyed! Look at her blue eyes!

Sometimes all you can do is cry!

The Matthews Come to Visit!

Happy 2 Week Birthday Gracie!

Ever since Gracie was born we have become instantly popular by all our friends and family, as well as our doctors. Gracie had her first doctors appointment this week, and after all the anxiety of "are we doing things right?" and "is she supposed to be doing that?".... a lot of worries came to rest when Dr. Solomon said that she was perfect!!! Yup, that's right... perfect! But, we already knew that didn't we folks??? Mama had her doctors appointment as well, and is healing up nicely, but still needs to take things slow for a while... which proves difficult being that we are moving next weekend!!! Help is on the way though!!!

This week as I said in my last post, Stephen had to go back to work, so my mom came to visit and help all week, which was sooo nice! I got to take naps and go to the store without Grace, and learn some tricks of the trade. My dad was also able to "work" his way down this direction to see his granddaughter for the first time, and just didn't want to let her go... very sweet. My sister Chrissy also was able to come down for the weekend and hold her niece for the first time!! It was a great time for the extended family (the Matthews side) to meet the newest addition to the family. Only one missing so far is Auntie Becky and Uncle Jon to come see her, which will hopefully be soon!

We still want to say thanks to all our friends for bringing us dinner still, and Auntie Chris Haskin-Sommer for making us lunch and letting us eat with her at her pool, Gracie's first all day outing.

Grandma Linda put her patriotic outfit on, and took the cutest picture we have of Grace yet, I love her little face, and then look at her feet!

A proud Grandaddy holding his granddaughter

Auntie Chrissy holding for one of the first times!

This week has been a week of firsts for our little Gracie... Her first Dr's appointment, her first trip to Costco, pulled her first all-nighter (much to the dismay mommy and daddy) her first outdoor picnic (covered of course) Saw her Grandaddy and Auntie for the first time. On Sunday she will see her daddy play softball for the first time... I swear she smiled at me for the first time, but I think I am just eager and she was just happy to pass gas.

The more we have her, the more we love her. We just can't stop looking at her and melting with all her cooing and kaaing... we are parents absolutely in love with our daughter... and couldn't be more proud!

Just wanted to show some family shots of us and our little one. It has been a great time with her and our new family unit, but today her daddy had to go back to work... very hard for mommy to deal with!! Thankfully my mom is driving right now to spend the week with us as I write this. It is a perfect situation, she stays with me during the day, and when Stephen gets home she'll leave soon after so we can have our family time. My mother is the best mom ever!!!!! Just have to give her a shout out!!!!

Another shout out goes to all the wonderful people who have be

en bringing us meals... we are so blessed to have such wonderful friends and church family to help us out.

Being first time parents we are overly worrisome over everything...

Traumatic moments that happened in the last couple of days... (for us, not Gracie) is I opened her pajamas once only to find all this blood on her stomach!!! Then to see it was only her

umbilical cord that fell off.... but the sight of blood freaked me out!!! When giving her a bath, we noticed a lot of puss and didn't know if she had an infection... so we called everyone under the sun, then finally our doctor on a Saturday, only to find out it was totally normal... whew.... She also sleeps so much, and there is so much out there on how much a baby should sleep, should you wake her up to feed her, should you let her sleep? How much is too much?

Call to the doctor again, and she is fine! We just love her so much, we are totally afraid of anything happening to our baby girl.

On a funnier note, I am not the best at always bringing the diaper bag with me... just not used to it yet. I went to a friends house and everyone was playing musical baby, passing her around, and poor Brook Grube was picked by Gracie to be the first one to hold her when she peed through her cloths!!! All the sudden she looked at me, and then looked at her hand, only to find urine dripping to the ground! Since I didn't have anything, we lined the car seat with plastic bags and took her home. The funniest part is I swear Gracie knew what happened, she had this wide eyed look on her the whole way home as if to say "oh my gosh I am sooo embarrassed" it was soooo cute!!! She has a habit of peeing on Stephen too... she just loves her mama too much to do it to me yet I guess:)

Below are some pictures of family, Marina, Isaac and Zach Newberry, her only cousins, are absolutely in love with her, the funniest is Zach, this 16 year old football player, who tries to be this macho guy, was so excited to see her, and mad at his mom for not bringing him to the hospital when I had her!! Gracie and I both met Stephen's grandparents for the first time. They came all the way from Oregon to see their new gre

at-grand baby and new grand-daughter in law...