"Beautiful Girl, You Can Do Amazing Things"

She likes to bend her legs. This 0-3 footie is
also too large for her. Oops.

Our little girl is a week old! I can't believe it. I also can't believe I'm not pregnant anymore. I haven't really had time to think about and process it because there's a lot more to postpartum recovery than I imagined. Of course, experiencing it first-hand now is quite the eye-opener.

We wanted a spring birthday baby because most of our special occasions are celebrated in the fall. Lump that with all the holidays that the fall and winter bring, it's a pretty loaded season of celebrating already. But her birthday is slightly bittersweet for me. She was born on the day my grandfather died. I didn't plan it to be that way, but that's kind of how everything lined up. Her actual due date was a Wednesday. I wanted to give her as much time as possible to come naturally without having to induce. However, my doctor's on-call day is Tuesday, so I figured I'd schedule for the Tuesday after her due date to induce if she wasn't ready on her own. It just happened to be April 3rd. My doctor didn't even end up delivering her because she got caught up in a C-section at a different hospital, but that's another story.

She's goofy like her daddy. She also has his appetite.

My grandfather spoiled me growing up. My mother didn't let him buy me the moon and the stars, but he spoiled me with his attention. It was kind of inevitable. I was his youngest daughter's daughter and his only granddaughter. But even more important than being spoiled, my grandfather saw something special in me.

On one occasion after school as an 11 or 12-year-old when I was eating a snack, he walked over and asked my grandmother, “Which do you think has more nutritional value, cooked carrots or raw carrots?”

My grandmother responded, “Well, of course raw carrots. What kind of a question is that? It’s common sense.” My grandfather looked over to me and posed the same question.

“What do you think?”



“Well, since you’re asking this question, I think it’s cooked carrots, otherwise you wouldn’t ask such a question if the answer was so obvious.” After hearing my response, my grandfather smiled and nodded.

“This girl is smart. She really knows something.”

I feel that way about my daughter, not simply because she is my daughter, but because she has already displayed so much strength and character. From the very beginning, she showed herself a fighter. We renovated our bathroom last fall and did the demolition ourselves. Once I found out I was pregnant, I did the math and realized she was about 3 weeks old when I was slashing away at our bathroom. At the time, I knew my energy levels were different and my body was sending me different signals than the first time we renovated a bathroom, but I didn't think much about it because I knew it was very labor intensive work and just took it slightly easier.

This was at 39 weeks. (We'll just say 40 for the record because
I didn't get much bigger after this photo was taken.)
I could still get away with larger non-maternity tops in my
existing wardrobe. Please excuse the mess.

Starting at my 28 week pregnancy visit, my doctor had me go in for extra ultrasounds because I always measured small. Okay, to be fair, I looked really small my entire pregnancy.

At my last few doctor's appointments, she kept telling me I was measuring small but that was normal for my size and I was just making a small baby. Well, she came out just ounces shy of 8 pounds. She was a week late...but she would have been perfectly sized still if she came on time. It's too bad my doctor wasn't the one who delivered her. I would have really wanted to see her reaction when the nurse read her birth weight off the scale after delivery.










We tried to stay as minimal as possible with her nursery decor and preparations, but as with all things "first," we still went above and beyond in small ways. I've never been one to buy wall art as decoration just to have, but her nursery wall is one where we actually did purchase a few pieces.

We purchased three pieces for her wall and I made the other two, not specifically
intending to put them on a nursery wall, but it just happened to work out that way.

The frame in the middle says "beautiful girl, you can do amazing things." I believe she will. She already has. I'm really blessed to be able to call her my daughter, and I can't wait to watch her grow up and do the amazing things she will.