Wednesday, January 14, 2009

6 weeks old

Here are a few pics of Gage. He's six weeks old today!

My friend and co-worker, Katie, bought this cute little reindeer hoodie blanket for Gage...so cute!


First smile...well, one of the first :-)


"Hey, whatcha doin', lady?"

Monday, January 5, 2009

Happy Birthday, Gage! (Finally...more pictures of Gage)

On Saturday, we celebrated Gage's one month birthday! I can hardly believe Gage has been with us for an entire month! Where did the time go? And today as I post this, he's actually 5 weeks old today!

On Friday, we took Gage for his 1-month well check-up. He weighed in at a whopping (sorry to use that word in 2 consecutive blogs) 11 pounds, 0.2 ounces!!! Doc says he's doing great, but we already knew that :-)



Gage has hit the following milestones:
-- he loves tummy time and can turn his head from left to right like a champ
-- he loves to look up and all around while being held up at my shoulder
-- his eyes follow a toy and he turns to the sound of our voices
-- he's cooing (I think), and it's so sweet!
-- he smiles (while I realize it's most likely not a social smile, it still melts my heart)
-- a few nights ago, he actually did miss a meal! He ate at 7:30 p.m. and didn't eat again until 2:00 a.m.!!! That means he actually missed his 10:30 feeding and gave me 4 consecutive hours of sleep (yes, I'm bragging, but no worries, it hasn't happened again since)

I'm sure there's more, but I just want to get to the photos since that's all you care about anyway :-)

Brrrr! It was cold when we went to the doctor!!!


Savannah really does love her Baby Gage.

Happy New Year...2009!

New Year's Eve started with my 4-week follow-up appointment with my doctor. All is well with me and I'm now ready to start taking some walks, although they may consist of 100 laps in the cul-de-sac to avoid the monster hill.

We spent the evening festivities with Sophie and her parents and their neighbors, Ian, Carol and baby Harry. Savannah and Sophie played so well together in Sophie's playroom that we barely heard from either of them the entire evening. Gage, once again, slept through the entire party.

Around 9:30, it was time for the girls to go to bed. Now, I've put Savannah to bed at Sophie's house before, but then when we were ready to leave we took Savannah with us. This time, however, Savannah spent the entire night with Sophie. She slept through the night, stayed dry, and while Susana reported that she was a little worried when she first woke up, she adjusted very quickly at the sight of Sophie. The girls had breakfast together and then played. Susana called us around 8:30 (so nice to sleep in!!!) and Stephen picked up Savannah not too long afterwards.



Earlier in the season, Stephen took Savannah for a haircut...really just an attempt to help me by getting Savannah out of the house for a little while. By 9:30 a.m., they were finished and ready to come home. Because Stephen and Savannah can only spend so many weekends at the GA Aquarium, he opted to take her to the Macy's Pink Pig at Lenox to kill some time. I was totally bummed! 2 reasons...1)I have wanted to take Savannah to ride the Pink Pig since she was 6 months old. 2)Stephen didn't have a camera, and therefore, I could not blog about it. When they got there, Stephen walked right up to the tent thinking, "this is great...no line!" Uh, wrong! Once you have tickets, there's no line, however, they waited, get this, an HOUR AND A HALF!!! for tickets. I'm not sure how either of them lasted and he didn't have a stroller to boot! How does a 2 1/2 year have the patience to stand in line for an hour and a half??? How did I get so lucky to marry a man with patience to stand in line for an hour and a half with none other than a 2 1/2 year old??? If I had taken her, we would have been back in the car at the first sight of the line. "What's the point of all this," you ask? I decided that we would make a New Year's tradition to ride the Macy's Pink Pig. So after Savannah's nap, we packed up the kiddos and the point-and-shoot and headed to Lenox. I waited a whopping 3 minutes for tickets...not too bad! Was it worth all the fuss? Will this really become a New Year's tradition for the Barnetts? ABSOLUTELY NOT! I was not impressed at all. However, Savannah was thrilled to ride the Pink Pig train again. Will she miss it? Probably not. I think black-eyed peas and collard green will go down easier with me than another ride on Macy's pitiful attempt to recreate the old Rich's Pink Pig monorail. However, I did get a few photos of the occassion.





Sunday, January 4, 2009

The Day After

The day after Christmas is when we celebrated with the Harrell/Rainwater side of the family. My mom and step-dad drove in from St Marys. All my brothers and sisters and nieces and nephews came over to play. We had lots of yummy appetizers and sweet treats (including the cut-out cookies Savannah and I baked).

The entertainment was provided by my brother-in-law, Joe, who stole the show with his vocals playing Guitar Hero World Tour. Stephen started charging admission before Joe performed his rendition of Michael Jackson's Beat It. If your dog was howling at 10:30 p.m. 12/26/2008, Joe is terribly sorry.

Savannah donned her 'Papa Santa' dress for the occassion. However, before too long, she added her own style...the photo speaks for itself.



I took a picture of this group at Thanksgiving so we didn't feel the need to take another family photo. Here we are...my Aunt Brencie and Uncle Dick joined us for Thanksgiving this year so they are included in this photo. I took this picture thanks to a tripod and the self-timer on the camera. I took 2 pictures...this was the second one. Can you believe even with all these kids and a very unhappy Skylar (in Melanie's arms), that everyone stood still, smiled and looked at the camera???



Gage made his grand debut by sleeping through the entire party. He did, however, stay completely alert through round 2 of present opening madness. Stephen said he looked scared to death, but I'm pretty sure he just really enjoyed having his familiy around and didn't want to miss a minute of it. I don't even have any pictures because I just wanted to enjoy time with the fam.

I hope you all had a very Merry Christmas!

Christmas Morn

I know...it's been a long time since I've blogged, but more importantly, posted pictures!!! No excuses here, just been taking advantage of sleep where I can get it and overly enjoying daytime HGTV, FLN and The Food Network...just being honest here.

Christmas morning started a little late. This year I wanted to be showered and dolled up before the chaos of the morning began. Last year's pictures showed the previous day's mascara under the eyes and PJs and oversized sweatshirt. I vowed to never look like that on Christmas morning ever again. We'll see how that pans out in years to come when Savannah and Gage understand the significance of Christmas morning. This year, we didn't get downstairs until after 9:00.

The day before, Savannah and I made Christmas cutout cookies. Savannah helped roll the cookie dough and enjoyed stamping out the cookies. No pictures were allowed during this undertaking due to my vanity...no shower for mommy on Christmas Eve (and it's likely I didn't have one the day before either). Stephen asked me to keep the cookie cutters out so he could make a special treat for Christmas breakfast...Christmas shaped pancakes! Stephen doesn't even like pancakes, but knows how much Savannah and I do! What a man :-) I did get a picture of the lovely pancakes. I thought they were beautiful!



After breakfast, the present-opening madness began! Savannah is finally at an age where she LOVES to unwrap gifts. Doesn't really matter what's inside; paper tearing is what counts. She was happy to help Gage open all his presents too. Here are a few photos of Savannah. Here favorite gift by far was her Pat Pat Rocket (Little Einsteins for those of you not fortunate enough to have experienced this phenomenon yet).



After the presents, I dressed Gage in this cute number and tortured him for a little while :-)