One month pictures

For my birthday Jody bought me a new Canon EOS Rebel T2i DSLR camera.  Fancy way for saying that it's not just a point-and-click camera.  I've really enjoyed learning how to use it over the last few months.  It takes great quality pictures but there is a lot I still have left to learn.  Gemma has been a great test subject.  Recently we took her one month pictures.  Each month I'll take new pictures so we can see  how she grows over the course of her first year.

Here are a few of my favorites...

Admittedly these were taken from my phone using Instagram instead of my Canon.  I thought they were really cute, though.

It's hard to believe that this little girl is growing up so quickly.  It seems like we were just in the hospital yesterday.  Today marks 7 weeks since she came into the world.  Everyday I see her growing and changing.  Lately she has started to smile more and more and it absolutely melts my heart every time.  Gemma has been such a well-tempered baby, too.  She's been sleeping well and has been doing great on her daily schedule.  We are so blessed in so many ways with this little angel.  I wish she could stay little for a bit longer so we could enjoy these moments more, but watching her grow up and experience new things will be equally as fun.

Gemma's First Bath

Technically this wasn't her first bath, since she got a sponge bath while we were in the hospital.  Nonetheless, this was our first time as new parents giving Gemma a bath at home.  And, let me tell you, she absolutely loved it!!
 

She was so calm and happy just sitting in the warm water.

 

We got a little squirt bottle to help wash her off.  This was her favorite part.

A long, long, long awaited update!

Ok, so it's been quite a while since we updated our blog and, as many of you know, a lot has transpired with our family.  On May 11th at 6:33 PM we welcomed Gemma Lyne Smith into the world.

Jody did an amazing job throughout the labor.  When she went into the hospital at 9 AM she was already dilated to 4 cm.  Jody giving the thumbs up to let the games begin...

After laboring for about 6 hours on her own she finally asked for the epidural and it was pretty smooth sailing from there.  She pushed for an hour and was able to enjoy a peaceful moment with her new daughter...

Gemma opened her eyes pretty much from the moment she came out.  This little angel has just melted my heart.

She weighed in at 7 lbs 7 oz and was 20.5 inches long.

I just love her little feet!

The nurses at the Morristown hospital were awesome!!  The nursery made her this cute little hat.

After two days in the hospital we were ready to come home.  Gemma was pretty happy to see her new home, too.

After 7 years of trying to get pregnant Jody and I cannot fully express our gratitude to our Heavenly Father for the blessing of this sweet child.  I have such a strong testimony that He hears and answers all of our prayers accordingly.  He does so on his schedule and not our's, and the last 7 years have taught us the lesson of patience.  Many times our patience felt like it was running on empty, but the reward was so sweet!

She's now 3 weeks old - I cannot believe how quickly the time has gone by - and she is doing great.  She's been sleeping on a really consistent schedule at night and is just the most pleasant, sweet baby.

It's a GIRL!!!

Ok, so I think most of you probably know already that we're having a girl.  For those of you who haven't heard the news yet...SURPRISE!!!  Baby Girl Smith is expected to arrive on May 5th (Cinco de Mayo) and we couldn't be more excited to welcome her into the world and into our family.  Jody's doing well.  I swear her baby bump grows everyday, which tells me that our little girl is growing more and more everyday.  She's been really moving around and kicking a lot lately.  In fact, momma isn't getting much sleep because baby has been so active.  I guess the little one is just preparing us for the lack of sleep that's coming our way soon.  I'm not looking forward to that aspect of becoming a parent!

To reveal the gender of the baby to our family we decided to have Rebecca (Jody's sister) bake one of her amazing cakes and color the filling with either blue (boy) or pink (girl).  It was suppose to be a secret, outside of telling Rebecca ahead of time so she could make the cake.  However, between the sneakiness of Jody's sisters and Jody's inability to call the baby "it" instead of "her" when talking with our friends and family, nearly everyone pretty well knew that we were expecting a girl when we carved into the cake.  Nevertheless, we had a good time with the family and this was a different twist on "the big reveal".  Perhaps we'll try a different approach next time.

Here are a few pics of the big reveal, followed by some of the ultrasound pics where we learned that we were having a girl.

This one is a bit fuzzy, as I had to use a scanner to copy the pic, but it's a 3D ultrasound.  Again, not the best quality but it is pretty wild to see you baby in 3D.

Anniversary in NYC

On Dec 17th, 2011 Jody and I celebrated our 7th year of marriage to each other.  It has been a glorious 7 years together and I look forward to so many more years and memories to come with my wife.  For our anniversary we decided to head into NYC for the weekend to experience the "New York" style Christmas.  We booked a night in a boutique hotel downtown and bought tickets to the Rockettes Christmas show at Radio City Music Hall.

Here are a few pics before we went into the theater...

                                         

                        

Before heading in to the show we stopped by Rockefeller Center to check out the infamous tree.  It's hard to tell from the pictures but the tree was enormous!!  

     

      

You can almost get a good perspective on the size of the tree in this picture.

      

The Rockette's show was amazing!  I highly recommend it to anyone coming to NYC at Christmas time.  They ended the show with their Nativity spectacular, which was really beautiful.  It's nice to see at least one thing in today's world that celebrates the true meaning of Christmas...the birth of Jesus Christ.

                   

Although the evening was a lot of fun I made one costly mistake - not making dinner reservations.  I actually had two places in mind but we couldn't decide before we drove into the city.  Bad move on my part because literally every restaurant was packed by the time we wanted to eat dinner.  After walking around for a least an hour or more we decided on a Mexican restaurant near our hotel.  The food was decent but we paid typical NYC prices...$60 for something that would have cost $15 back in Arkansas!  Lesson learned.