Trip to Baby Land General

My mom and I took Genevieve to "The" Baby Land General hospital in Cleveland, Georgia where Xavier Roberts grows Cabbage Patch Kids. This is their brand new hospital that they have just opened, can you believe this thing?I would have loved to have visited this place when I was a little girl. When I was little Cabbage Patch Kids we all the rave and you practically had to get on a waiting list to get your ands on one. I remember hearing stories of women fighting over them in Toys R Us at Christmas time!!

When you walk in there is a very palatial lobby with a huge curved staircase. You are first lead into the nursery where you can pick out any of the babies that you would like to adopt. This picture is of Genevieve standing in front of the Christmas tree that stands in the corner of the girls nursery.
Then you enter into the main hall where all of the cabbage patches are growing "I guess"? If they are completely exposed they are available to take and adopt. If just its head is showing then I guess the Cabbage Mother still has some pushing to do.. :0

Ok, get a load of this...... Periodically a nurse will make an announcement over the intercom to summon all of the children around this big tree in the center of the room. A nurse appears and starts taking Mother cabbages vitals etc.
She reaches in and pulls out a new born cabbage patch....That's how they are "born". As you can see on Genevieve's face in the next shot, she was a little shocked at the whole procedure. She just had a baby brother and didn't see any of these big trees or cabbages in that hospital?Regardless....She had a wonderful time, it's a very magical place for a little girl to visit. I'm so glad we took her and I'm happy to announce that she became the proud parent of a little blond haired, blue eyed girl named Sheila Arlene! (It's better than my first CPK "Archibald Haywood")

Funny Story: I worked with a girl who's sisters CPK was named "Girdie Nelly". She and her dad nicknamed it "Dirty Smelly" just to torment her sister! Ahhh, what are families for?

Merry Christmas Sugar.....

Love Mommy

Christmas In The Park - Genevieve's first ballet recital

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

MCA Fun Run!

MCA held a FUN RUN at the school to raise money. Genevieve and all the other students participated and had a great time running and walking laps to earn money for the school!!!

She ran/walked a total of 16 1/16 mile laps = 1 mile total!!! What a big girl Whooohooo!

We're off to Trick or Treat!!

We're off to friends to go trick or treating!!! Genevieve is going as a witch this year and Garrett is a little pumpkin!

We're going to make a couple of stops at neighbors houses and then we're off to their neighborhood....

HAPPY HALLOWEEN everyone!!!

Annual trip to Berts Pumpkin Patch

Last Saturday we took or annual trip to the pumpkin patch and this was Garrett's first time of course. He must have been super snugly warm in his pumpkin suit, he never cracked an eye lid the whole time we were there.

Todd brought his girls Allyn and Hollis along while Maci was having a good time visiting her college roommate in New York City.

The girls had a great time. We'll be visiting again this Saturday so Maci can join us......

Happy Halloween!!!

My First School Pictures

Genevieve Did such a good job!! These are her very first school pictures ever and the photographer did a great job getting her to smile and pose like such a big girl. I don't know which one is my favorite. I really like the one where she is standing next to the bench, but I also love the way she's smiling in the close up with the pink background Hmmmmmm......Oh well, I'll buy them all!!

Here he is!

Garrett vs Genevieve

I know these pictures probably aren't the best to be using to make a comparison with. I just wanted to show everyone how much they look alike. They could have passed for twins is all I'm saying!

Baby Pics

I can't believe he's finally here! He already shows signs of having blond hair... He looks a lot like Genevieve when she was born. I need to take some more pictures of him so you can see a comparison.

This picture was take in the hospital Friday 9/25 when my mom arrived from Texas! She stayed until Sunday but will be coming back in a few weeks.

Here Genevieve is making a silly face. I guess she really can't smile any harder! Genevieve loves her baby brother and she loves to help. She really likes to hold him and to give him a bottle. She's turning into a great "Big Sis"!

Here he is!

Hi there, well as most of you already know Garrett decided to make his appearance on my due date 9/24/09 and not one minute sooner. Wednesday started out weird to begin with. I can't explain it, I was just extra miserable that day and I didn't think I could take much more. Emotionally I was at the end of my rope. Mary watched Genevieve most of the morning while I worked on aschool project then the three of us went to Olive Garden than evening so I could ge some eggplant Parmesan (just smelling it put me into labor the first time). Later that evening I took a bath in hopes of relaxing a little. My water broke at 9:45pm as I was getting out of the bath tub. We arrived at the hospital around 10:30pm and got settled in for the night. I labored with moderate contractions throughout the night. At 6am I received an epidural and was started on Pitocin. With in 2 hours I was ready to push! The epidural was a little too strong so I had to come off of it a little before I could start pushing. Once I started feeling a little bit of pressure we began. I had to push a little bit longer than with Genevieve however it went relatively quick. He was born at 8:53am and weighed in at 8lbs 13 ounces, and was 22 inches long (1 pound heavier than Genevieve and and inch longer!).

Update #1

Welp, nothing as of yet. The doctor stripped my membranes this morning since I was 80% effaced but hadn't dilated any further. I'm still only 1cm. That doesn't surprise me to be honest. My water broke with Genevieve however I never actually dilated on my own. We checked into the hospital at 8pm Sunday night and they didn't start giving me pitocin until that next morning around 6:00 I think. I don't think I would have ever done it on my own.
I have a feeling that this birth will be similar. Stay tuned!!!

In the mean time I'll keep busy with class work and playing with my embroidery machine. This burp cloth turned out cute (It's for a friend). This is more applique than embroidery but the machine still made it ;)

Say Good Bye!!

Say good bye to the baby bump. It hasn't officially gone away yet but it will be gone any day I can assure you. "Good Riddens" is what I say! Pregnancy is a wonderful thing however I am totally over it at this point. I have another doctors appointment Tuesday and my official due date is Thursday the 24th. I'm sick and tired I tell ya, tired and sick of not being able to sit or lay comfortably unless it's in the bathtub. I'm tired of the surging nerve pain that pulsates through my lower back and buttocks with every step. I'm tired of swollen ankles (although that just started) I'm still tired of it. I'm tired of the weak little contractions I've been experiencing for the past 2 weeks, come on little boy.... give me something I can use here! And last but far from least, I'm tired of always having to bend over to pick stuff up! What ever I need is always on the floor, usually because I just fumbled it and DROPPED IT AGAIN, AHHHHHHH!

Hmmmm What will your birthday be? Any guesses?

Happy 3rd Birthday Genevieve!!

Friday was Genevieve's 3rd Birthday!! I can't believe how time has flown by. She celebrated with her class first. Matt took her McDonalds for lunch and cupcakes to share with all of the kids in her class and her teachers.

Later that night we gave her her birthday present, a BIG bike!!!

Saturday, she went to Ballet class and when she got home her friends were here and a moon jump!!! Everyone had lots of fun!!

Happy Birthday Sugar!!

Embroidery Machine

These are my first attempts to embroider on my new machine. This is the Addi font and I really like it! I was a little intimidated by it at first but I soon figured out what I was doing, well kind of ;)

Sorry, its been so long since I last blogged. I've been super busy with school and therefore haven't taken taken any pics or even spent much time with anybody so I have nothing to write about.

Genevieve's birthday is Friday and Garrett's will be here soon to so I should have plenty to blog about in about a week or so.

See ya soon!!

A little summer time fun

Matt and Genevieve are in Dallas visiting while I'm slaving away in Atlanta, Whaaa! This picture was taken by my mom this afternoon. She took Genevieve to Cedar Hill to do some shopping and afterwards let her play in the fountains..She's so darn cute!!

Dog and Boy or Wolf and Girl? Depends who you ask...

Here is the tree silhouette that I have been working on or the past few days. Thank goodness it was a solid color, I might have thrown in the towel. It actually turned out just like the picture, I'm pretty happy with it!

It's a little boy climbing a tree with a dog watching him from the base of the tree right? Genevieve argued with me that "no, it's a Wuff and that's a Girr on Bransh"...... What ever you say SISTA!

Sleepy Bear for Garrett

The bear on the right is Genevieve's Sleepy Bear, it used to be pink and out of all of the stuffed animals she recieved from people before she was born her favorite was this one. You can get them for $4.99 at Babys-R-Us when you check out, they are made to hold a gift card. While I was there yesterday I saw the boy version and felt compelled to keep up the tradition.........Every little body needs a good Sleepy Bear!

Happy Fathers Day

Happy Fathers Day Daddy!
Love, Genevieve

Coming Home

It's now 3:15am back in Atlanta, everyone should be sound asleep dreaming of me ;)......I am in the airport in Krakow waiting on my flight to Warsaw. From there it's a 10.5 hour flight to Chicago and another 2 hours to Atlanta. Should finally get in around 10pm tonight.
I am very happy that I decided to come to Poland, learned a lot and experienced many new things. Looking forward to visiting family in the Republic of Georgia next year!
I am very glad to be returning home even if it's 90+ with high humidity "Uhg".
"Click, Click, Click......There's no place like home, There's no place like home, There's no place like home...."

Zakopane and Slovakia

Friday we left for Zakopane, Poland.

This is the Monestary that we stayed at while in Zakopane Poland. It's a mountain/ski town on the southern border of Poland, very pretty and what I had imagined the Polish country side to look like.

This is Katie, she's my roomate in Kraków. We were happy to be staying at the Monestary, the accomodations are much nicer than what we've had in the dorms.

Saturday we drove across the border into Slovakia to tour an Ice Cave. We had to hike from the road below (can you see it) all the way up to the cave, about a 15-20 minute hike...try doing that 6 months pregnant!!

Went down lots of slippery wooden steps to get down into the cave, climbed 600+ steps to get back out of the cave and then hiked 15 minutes back down to the bottom, Yaha!

Nice time! Sore muscles!

Alive and Well

Hi there, I finally feel somewhat human again. Katie and I are able to get online inside the Teachers work room. This is the network I have been detecting since we arrived but because of the cinder block construction, the signal was too weak to connect to from my dorm room. I'll have to take pics of the buildings and post those later. They are typical buildings that were constructed during the cummunist period, very stark and dreary by even Polish standards.

Lets see.....We're 6 hours ahead of Atlanta so jet lag was pretty easy to overcome. It is colder here than I was anticipating, I don't think it will get out of the 50's this week and I think we're heading to the mountains this weekend to site see... "Brrrrrr"!

Here are a few pics that I took yesterday, they are the first of many.

This is the "City Centre" in Krakow. It's literally the center of the city. Lots of shops, restaurants, Mid Evil churches, theaters etc. No cars, every one is on foot inside this area which

I believe is approximately 10-13 Square Kilometers? I'll have to double check that number.

This is a shot of outdoor cafe's in the center square.

The famous altar inside St. Mary's Basilika (worlds most ornate).

This is the center of the square, it just so happened to be "Childrens Day" yesterday, a national holiday like Mother's Day, so there were children everywhere on field trips. i think there were more Polish children in the City Centre than foreign tourists.

Take care, I miss everyone but will be able to make blog posts regularly which makes me feel closer to home!!

Love you