Shoe Shopping

Gage is wearing his little leather suede-bottomed shoes out with all of his walking running, so he was in desperate need of new shoes!

We went shopping last weekend and were too crazy about what we found. I went to all the kid shoe stores in Birmingham and today we went to Stride Rite at the Galleria. We've discovered Gage has pretty wide foot, so this was our best bet!

He was ready to go this morning!

We got fitted and found him two new pairs of WIDE shoes. He's such a cutie.

 

Then we headed downstairs to eat. Gage didn't eat. He watched everyone instead!

 

We are still in a sippy cup war. I am choosing to not get stressed. I figure that I never see any adults drinking out of bottles, so he will get there one day! Thanks to all my friends for their advice!

Tonight we are eating this! 

 

It came from this blog . Crockpot Potato Soup. It's so good!!

Happy Halloween!

I'm not much of a Halloween fan, it creeps me out a little...but when you have a cute baby, you have to use the opportunity to dress them up in a cute costume! I know Gage will love trick or treating with the kiddos on our street when he gets old enough!

This year, Gage was Aubie!

Each Halloween, our street gets together for a cookout before the kids go trick or treating! (We also get together at the 4th of July and some other time during the year. We live on the best street!). This year we had chili! Last Halloween Gage was just about 10 days old. This year, he was walking up and down the street in his little costume!

Here is Gage with his neighbors, Jake and Owen! Cutest scarecrow and lion I've ever seen! Their big sister was Dorothy, the dad was Tin Man and mom was a witch!

The best costume awards go to Haley! She dressed Mary Ella up as Cruella Deville and Sam was a dalmatian puppy! Precious! I wish I had taken pictures! Go look at her blog to see the costumes! She did an awesome job!

We had fun! Hope you had a great Halloween too!

Gage is ONE!

A week ago we had Gage's ONE YEAR birthday party! I can't believe it! Our baby is one!

His birthday party fell on his actual birthday, so it was so much fun to celebrate that day with family and friends! I (and my mom!) made everything for the party except the Chick-Fil-A nuggets! I really wanted to have fun with it and make it special. His birthday was monkey themed, because he has always been our little monkey - even since day 1!

We put banners on the window and highchair, had monkey themed decorations on the table, and displayed pictures of Gage through the months by poking kabob sticks in bananas!

For food we had: Chick-fil-a nuggets, 7-layer mexican dip (thanks mom!), chicken salad and pimiento cheese sandwiches (thanks mom!), veggies and dip, goldfish and animal crackers, fruit, and monkey cupcakes!

We ate, opened presents and let Gage eat his smash cake! He loved it!

Afterward, we went outside to play with our new toys!

I love being a mom to Gage. It's the greatest joy and I am so thankful for him! We love you Gagers!

Walking Machine!

It's been a while!

It's been a while! I sincerely want to keep this blog updated to show how Gage is growing and remember everything!

We have been busy busy the last few months! Les works a lot with his company, I'm busy working full time and doing everything else full time, and Gage is growing like a weed!

We had some pretty good steps tonight! I can't believe how big he is getting! He will be 11 months next week!

We've discovered some of Gage's dislikes....

Gage is a pretty happy, easygoing baby. We've discovered in the last week or so though, that when he doesn't like something, he is VOCAL about it.

Example 1:

Gage meets a sweet, small dog:

Example 2:
We take Gage to lunch at a hibachi grill. At the beginning of your meal, they put a lighter up to the grill which produces a huge ball of fire. He FREAKED out. The cook felt bad!

Example 3:
Funny voices. In the evening, Gage can sometimes have his grumpy times. Les always does funny voices with Gage, but if it's between the hours of 6-7 pm, he may not get the same response from Gage, as opposed to earlier that day.
I decided to be silly and talk funny to Gage tonight. Here's what I got:

Example 4:
The vacuum cleaner. Gage was happily playing on the floor and I decided to take the opportunity to do a little vacuuming. I turned the vacuum on and Gage lost it...and it was the silent cry, too! You know, the one where their eyes are closed, their face is blood red and their mouth is wide open screaming that silent scream! It's horrible! I picked him up and calmed him down. I decided to hold him and vacuum at the same time, hopefully showing him it was nothing to be afraid of, but no...the same thing happened. Then I felt horrible and decided the floors didn't need to be vacuumed. Poor baby!

I hate to see him get so upset over all those things, but you can't help to giggle! One day he'll realize that none of these things are scary! Except maybe big dogs. I'm still afraid of most dogs, so I won't force him to get over that fear!

Working Mom

I've been back at work since January, so I've had a good 4.5 months trying to balance everything... and it's tough!

It's so hard to leave this face...

Add cooking, cleaning, grocery shopping, and other household stuff to my full-time job and that takes up the majority of my time. Some of that stuff is neglected so I can spend time with my little man. And then I have a fabulous husband who I would like to spend time with, but time is limited. Did I mention he started a business? You can imagine how time-consuming that is!

So....balance. What can be neglected so I can have time for the truly important things. Will Gage suffer if my floors aren't perfect? Or if our meals aren't 5 star quality? No. Do I want to be able to do it all and put too much pressure on myself to do it? Absolutely.

And then there is some guilt for not being there for my baby 24/7, especially when I want to be.

My friend, Haley sent me an email when I started work, reminding me of Proverbs 31 and how this "wife of noble character," senses the worth of her work and her family values her. It's obvious that she's busy from sunrise to sunset. I'm praying that God continues to give me the strength to do all that needs to be done, and to give me discernment on how to use the time He's blessed me with so it may glorify Him.

I'd covet your prayers as well.

On a lighter note, Gage is totally sitting up by himself now. He is growing up too fast!

Our friends, the Irelands, invited us over for dinner this past weekend. It gave our sweet babies time to play with each other!

When Gage was born, Micah had been in the NICU for 4 weeks. Now, he's doing awesome and Gage is going to have so much fun growing up with him!

First Mother's Day!

Les got home on Friday and brought home The King's Speech for us to watch. We loved it.

Saturday, Les grilled us a wonderful dinner!

And got me the cutest cookie cake!

We went to church on Sunday and then met our friends Justin and Adriane and their sweet baby, Micah, at Chuy's!

Gage stats:

Gage is about 6.5 months old. I can't believe it. He's starting to "tripod" and can roll from his back to stomach, but doesn't do it on a regular basis. We just moved him to a 4-hour schedule. He's eating about 7 ounces right now at each feeding, plus 2 ounces of oatmeal or baby food before his night feeding. He's a picky eater right now, and gets constipated a lot...we are still trying to figure that out. He only takes naps 40 minutes at a time, but I have learned that not all babies are the same, and that's OK.
We went to the doctor last week and he weighed 16.6 lbs!

Happy Easter!

I watched the "That's My King" video a few times this weekend. I know it's been around for a while, but it sure is a wonderful reminder of who God is and even how there are not enough words to describe Him. I love that video. Here is a link if you've never seen it!

We spent today with both sets of grandparents for church and then lunch. We even got to see the Easter bunny (insert sarcasm).

She wasn't much of a bunny, just a manager in a pretty sad costume, but whatever!

I still don't know how I feel about the whole Easter bunny/Easter basket thing. I don't want Gage to miss the reason for this day. I know you can do creative things with eggs, etc., to get the message across...and I also know it's fun for kids to do things like that, so I guess it will just be our job to make sure we share with Gage why we celebrate Easter. Fine by me!

This afternoon, Gage was a little tired before his bath time, so I walk into the room to this:

Les will do anything to entertain him.

Laughing

Gage is such a happy baby. It doesn't take much to get a laugh out of him. The first time he REALLY belly laughed, he was watching me take a sip of my drink while we were sitting on a bench at the outlet mall and my straw made that scratching noise on the lid. Of course I did it about 100 times to hear him laugh again!

This time, he thought it was funny to bounce a ball on the ground. Whatever works for you, Gage. You know how to make mom and dad make a fool of themselves to get a giggle out of you!

Mom realized how to post larger pictures! Yay!

Gage Alan Bradford

I had a pretty easy pregnancy. Besides wanting to eat my increasing body weight in donuts, chocolate milkshakes, and coke icees, it wasn't too bad.

My work is pretty great in that they give you 4 weeks off before your due date. That gave me plenty of time to get things ready, make returns, and REST!

We went to the doctor on October 21 (due date), and she said I was still measuring small and to just wait it out. I told her, "Dr..this kid is huge. I really don't think he has any more room to wait it out." She checked me out some more and sent me down to ultrasound. To the doctor's surprise, my sweet Gage had a 39 week old body and a 42 week old head - not too exciting for the mom! After giving us a lot of scary scenarios based on my height and size and the size of my baby, she encouraged us to go the route of a c-section.

I left the office with Les and cried. I hated the idea of having a c-section. It scared me and that isn't what I pictured in my head all my life. But, it needed to happen that way, so we scheduled it for the next day!

We didn't do much to enjoy our last night...I ate a bowl of cereal for dinner and my parents brought us a blizzard. I was too full of nerves. After not a lot of sleep (if only I had understood the extent of the lack of sleep I was soon to get, I may have tried harder), we got up and got ready for the hospital!

Traffic was horrible so we ended up being a little late - we would have been REALLY late if my hero husband had not taken every shortcut in the book to get us downtown. We sat in a triage room for a few hours while they took care of emergencies and then we were off!!!!

At this point, I was excited, but I also thought I was on the verge of a freak out because I was about to have major surgery while I was WIDE AWAKE (and no matter how many times people told me, "you won't feel a thing!" I didn't believe them). My nurse was awesome though, so while Les sat outside while they got me ready, she helped me calm down and get settled.

After that...it was awesome. No pain, just the anticipation of meeting our baby and having those moments with my husband. Les actually stood up and watched. We have it on video, which is gross, but awesome all at the same time. I'm so glad he got the pictures and video that he did.
We heard those sweet cries and they brought him over to snuggle with us and take pictures and then they finished up with me and whisked us all down to our room. It was so quick!
We got to spend about an hour or so in the room, just the three of us and some nurses before family came in. But we couldn't keep them away for too much longer....they were excited!
Over the next few days, we spent time with family and friends (thank all of you that came. We remember it and it meant a lot to us). The worst part by far was having to stay in the hospital. They come in your room at all hours of the night...I understand the need, but goodness...let a family get a little sleep!After three nights, it was finally time to take our little man home. What started as an experience that I was fearful and anxious about, turned out to be wonderful. The Lord has blessed us with the sweetest baby boy that we are in love with!

Let's try to blog...

I've always wanted to blog. I love reading all of your blogs, and so I'm going to give it a try. Les tells me not to do it unless I can promise to update, so I will.

So, I want to start by updating on the last 16 weeks of our lives!