Papi Come Home!!!!!!!!!

So our lovely beagle (Benny) decided to lead the way again, under the fence and into the big wide world...taking Papi w/ him. For those of you who don't know Benny, he has dug out at least 100 times in the past three years - no exaggeration. So after a few hour, Benny (as always) shows up at the front door - but this time without Papi!! And now it's been about 8 hours since they've been out and still no Papi!!! Usually he comes back, but usually before now.

So I'm crazy worried right now. And to make matters worse, just the other day, bruce and papi were fighting and they bit each others collars off...so he has no collar on. :(

If you see Papi roaming around, bring him home!!! I don't even think I'll be able to sleep tonight till he comes home...I love that little sucker. Papi - come home!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Praying For Lincoln's Soul!

So we're REAL concerned cause already Lincoln doesn't like church!!! Ha. We were excited to go back to CCF yesterday morning, got up, fed Lincoln (twice), gave him a bath, dressed him all up cute and got ready to load him up in the car to go to church. Wouldn't you know that about 5 minutes before we were to leave, he starts crying. No panic - he LOVES the car and we'll just drive around the neighborhood a few times to get him quiet and asleep. Yeah - plan didn't work - AT ALL. We made it to the church parking lot and Jason sat in the back seat with him to try and help him calm down, but the little booger was wide-eyed and NOT HAVING the whole church thing! So we ended up having to turn around and come back home. Of course, within the minute of us walking in the door, he fell asleep. Little stinker. :)
So we'll try church again next week! With lots of prayer and a full tummy, maybe he'll be interested in learning about Jesus next week. :)
He has been pretty good these past few days! He'll stay awake at least 4 hours usually throughout the day where he is just wide-eyed and curious - not crying - which is always fun. He has VERY strong hands (and very large) and is already trying hard to roll himself over and support his head even. He likes to hold his own pacifier in his hand and will rip it out with his hand when he doesn't want it anymore. Pretty cute and I think the little man's gonna be smart and strong. :) Jason keeps eyeing which hand he uses and gets SUPER excited everytime he's sees him using his left hand (apparently this is good for sports??).
He's also sleeping well at night. None of his "wide-eyed" awake moments are at night which means he has it figured out that night time is when we all sleep! Thank goodness!
Tonight i the start of Jason's basketball season - we're gonna try and go watch a little of the scrimmage...I am so excited for Panther Basketball! Obviously last year was a phenomenal year and it would be so exciting to have another repeat state championship. My husband is the best high school coach in the state (I swear I'm not biased - he won the award!!!), so we have a chance, right??
Off to wake a sleeping baby...aren't I brave??

Mr. Fussy Pants

That's Jason's new name for Lincoln the past 24-hours. Poor guy. Lincoln has been doing exceptionally well adjusting to his new home...until today :) The poor little guy just can't seem to get happy and when he's not screaming bloody murder, he has a look on his face that says "don't mess with me lady - I'm in a very bad mood!!" In fact, he's starting to get fussy again right now so I'm gonna have to save this post and finish it up later...I'll be back. :)

Okay..the boy must be going through a growth spurt or something b/c he has gone from eating every 2-3 hours to ON the hour! It's EXHAUSTING. But I love it...I really do. It's one of my favorite things. :) So he just finished his 10th meal of the day (okay - a little exaggerated) and is finally sleeping...any bets on how long it will last??? I must have eaten something he's not fond of cause this fussiness is quite uncharacteristic of the little man!

We went up to the school to eat lunch w/ Daddy today cause I had to show Jason Mr. Fussy Pant's true colors while he was gone away at work. :) Daddy was able to calm him down briefly, but that didn't last. The world obviously ran on Lincoln-time today!

Tonight mom is coming over to watch Mr. Fussy Pants while Jason and I go to the football game. I'm kind of excited to get out and it will be fun to see friends for a bit. We probably won't stay the whole time cause it's hard to be away from the little guy - even if he is Mr. Fussy Pants.

Tomorrow night the parentals are having the family over for dinner. My dad is giddy excited to introduce Lincoln to their home - he's cute. Other than that we have a pretty low-key weekend planned.

I will say one thing I've been amazed at through this whole pregnancy thing is how FAST your body reshapes and gets back to normal! That means internally and externally...it's phenomenal how fast everything is healing (healed in most cases) and also how fast my body has shrunk back! I still have about 8 lbs. to go before I'm where I was pre-pregnancy, but it's only been a week! I really thought that would take a lot longer...weird, but no complaints here. It's probably those last 8 that take 9 months, though, huh? Joke's on me.

Below is Lincoln 98% of the day today...second picture is after I fed him for the 100th time...

Heard This Quote Today...

"Rosa sat so Martin could walk. Martin walked so Obama could run. Obama ran so our children can fly..."

Just thought I'd share :)

44th President of the USA: Can You Believe It?!

Congratulations to our new President!!!! Now it's no secret that I personally favored Obama from the beginning and have had many conversations/debates with some of you as to my convictions for him as President...so I am excited and ready to see what God has in store for our country. It's also no secret that I live in an area that is pretty much anti-Obama and not afraid to voice that opinion.

This by no means pertains to everyone, but I will say a HUGE pet peeve of mine this morning was to look on facebook and talk to people throughout the morning who have extremely negative attitudes and are posting horrendous comments about how our country is now doomed to hell b/c of Obama's elected state. One lady actually made the comment "I don't know how I can even call him 'President Obama' - it just sounds so Middle Eastern!" Seriously people? At least have a valid argument for the disappointment of the elected President. For instance, those that are complaining about the "road to socialism" could have some validity and I personally don't have a problem w/ people being upset for that reason...personal preference in my opinion. But regardless, he is now our President and it is our duty to pray for his leadership. I appreciate one comment of an avid McCain supporter that stated, "Today I am praying for our new President."

The fact is that record voters turned out to participate in this election, Obama won, and there's no way people can argue with results of the majority of the country. I truly appreciate McCain's speech and think strongly that we should pray for our new President. I'm excited to see what God has in store for our country...

Is This Normal??

Sleeping and feeling rested, that is? Everyone told us we wouldn't get sleep, and I'm SURE that day is coming, but right now we're truly cherishing being able to get about 8, yes, I said EIGHT hours of sleep...crazy. Praise the Lord, cause we definitely need it! Now it's not all at the same time, of course, but we got up twice last night to feed him (Jason's the burper), and then down he went to sleep for the next 4 hours. It's wonderful!

This is making up for the awful 1st night home we had. I haven't written about that night/day yet, but a quick re-cap - Lincoln all the sudden started refusing to eat and he was having no bowl action down there. This started our first night home before bedtime. I didn't think anything about it and thought he was just tired. But then hours would pass and he still wasn't eating and then I just got scared and couldn't sleep. Then he got extremely fussy and we couldn't calm him (cause the poor thing was starving!) and long story short, but it ended up being about 13 hours and he had refused to eat the entire time!!! I went into sheer panic mode, had zero sleep and was was at a loss of what to do. It was Saturday and I tried calling our medical clinic where our doctor was and they rudely told me that the clinic was busy and a nurse would not be able to get back to me till Monday! I just wanted to ball my eyes out and felt so helpless...Jason convinced me just to call up to the hospital and ask for lactation consultants. So I did, and the head RN at the shift answered and offered for us to just come up there (we live about .2 miles away) and she would try and help us...ANSWERED PRAYER!!!!!!! All that nurse was required to do was give us lactation consultant numbers, but she literally took 30 minutes from her shift and patients and worked with us and GAVE us about 5 bottles of glucose formula to make sure he was at least keeping hydrated. What she taught us was how to "trick" Lincoln...I would try to get him to latch on and while I was doing that, Jason had a syringe where he gave a shot of sugar water into Lincoln's mouth...he didn't latch on at the hospital but we were able to feed him the glucose water and he IMMEDIATELY stopped crying (had also been screaming for past 13 hours), and immediately had an EXTREMELY poopy diaper! It was funny cause both of us almost started crying tears of joy at the nasty diaper!

So the amazing nurse (Danielle is her name) sent us home w/ syringes, glucose water, and other stuff to use until Lincoln started latching on again. But we only had to use it once and ever since then, Lincoln has been feeding PERFECTLY. Danielle is our angel. We had such an amazing hospital experience. If any of you live in Siloam and are wondering where to have your child, Siloam hospital is PHENOMENAL.

So since that night, the past two days have been so fun!! Lincoln rarely cries, is awake a great portion of the day making hilarious faces...and bath time is the most fun!!! i posted pictures below of last night's bath. Jason and I had him ALL CLEAN...and then he started crapping everywhere and literally spitting up all over himself!! We just died out laughing and I actually peed my pants a little bit (yeah i guess I need the diapers, too!) cause he just looked so funny doing it all after we had really given him a thorough bath...he's too cute.

Oh yeah - Mr. Bruce Wayne LOVES Lincoln. He has been precious to watch with him...he's Lincoln's little protector, for sure. e sleeps by him and always checks on him. It's so freaking cute. When I get up in the middle of the night to feed him, he comes too. :)

Just Some Pictures...

Look at our little irresistable bundle :)