One Month

Weight: 6 lbs 6 oz

Length: 19.3 in

Head Circumference: 36.0 cm

Has it seriously already been a month since I got to meet my precious little girl? Time is flying way too fast.

This first month has been full of ups and downs. Transitioning into parenthood hasn't been hard, but it hasn't been the easiest thing I've ever done either.

Once we finally got to bring Penny home, we were up every two hours to feed her. We had to stick to that schedule pretty tightly since she was such a tiny baby. She's now eating anywhere between 3-4 ounces every 3-4 hours (longer at night). We typically let her wake us up to eat at night. We've been going to the doctor weekly for weight checks just to make sure she was eating well and gaining weight adequately. She finally got to be taken off the preemie formula last week and has started wearing some of her newborn clothes. Her pediatrician says she looks "absolutely perfect," she's just tiny, but is catching up quickly.

She is a great sleeper, most of the time. She'll wake up to eat and have her diaper changed. After she gets all cleaned up, one of us will hold her until she falls back asleep and then she's out until the next feeding. We have had to start using a pacifier occasionally to help her calm down & relax. She's awesome at putting herself to sleep and soothing herself back to sleep when she wakes up. We'll put her in the cradle when she's slightly drowsy to help encourage her to go to sleep on her own and typically within 5, maybe 10, minutes she is sound asleep.

Penny's One Month "Firsts"

Leaving the hospital & heading straight to the 930

First MC Family Dinner

First Bath

First Trip to the Park

First Pool Party (in newborn clothes!)

Penny is an absolute sweetheart. She's finally started smiling at us. It is seriously the most precious thing in the world. As different and difficult as this first month has been I wouldn't trade this life for any other one. She has made our lives richer in so many ways. I'm pretty excited to see where she is a month from now, the advances she's made and the things that we've done.

Penelope Claire

Surprise!!

I feel like my husband should be telling our birth story, because I don't remember any of it. 

Penelope Claire Collier was born June 15, 2013 via emergency C-section. James says he knew the moment he needed to take me to the emergency room...I came walking down the hall and told him I couldn't see and asked him to turn the lights on...Every light in the house was on.

When I came in, they diagnosed me with preeclampsia, toxemia, high blood pressure (I think James has said it was something like 200/130...NOT GOOD!) and HELLP syndrome (which stands for: Hemolysis, Elevated Liver Enzymes, Low Platelet Count). Because of the high blood pressure my brain had started seizing & the low platelet count meant they had to give me a transfusion of platelets. I lost my sight for about a day and a half, if not longer. The seizures are probably what lead to a lot of the memory loss I experience about the entire ordeal. The only way to "cure" any of these is to get the baby out as fast as possible.

My family says that I literally "went crazy." My OB had to call for restraints for my bed because I would not lay still and I was ripping IVs out of my arms. I guess after so long of not co-operating and being so out of it, he pumped me full of valium and got Penny out of there. They say that Jen post C-section was the funniest thing they had ever seen, as scary as everything was. James asked me if I knew what had happened. He says my response was, "I don't pregnant anymore." I was on a pretty rough morphine drip, what can I say.

Bonding with Dad

In all of the craziness of trying to save both Penny and I, my husband was able to get our entire family to the hospital. It wasn't until days after that I found out just how many people had sat in the waiting room and prayed for us. I'm so glad that they were there for James; to provide some stability and support in a extremely scary and trying time.

Not even a day old and Robbles is already photo bombing.

Dad & Penny

Cuddles with Luke

My earliest memories of life with Penny are of that Sunday night (June 16). Two of my pastors came in to pray with me. That was probably around 8 or 9 pm. When the nurses brought Penny into the room, nothing about it felt weird. You would think with me having no memory of anything that happened, bringing her into the room would spawn some sort of response, but it always felt natural having her there with us. 

I am in love with these big eyes!

My vision, thankfully, has returned to normal. My blood pressure, which was monitored by my OB for about 3 weeks, has returned to normal. If you saw me on the street today and knew nothing about my pregnancy, you would never be able to tell that anything was wrong. 

Penny's "extra thumb."
The doctors tied it off and it fell off a few days later.

Penny and I are both very lucky to be here today. God definitely had his hand on us that day. I can't wait to see where life takes this precious girl.

Memorial Day Weekend

 My husband and I have been together for almost 2 years; last weekend is the first time I can ever remember his entire family being in the same place at the same time. Saturday afternoon we had the entire Collier family over to help paint Penelope's nursery and grill. It was great having the whole family together for a couple of hours to hang out and have fun.

Uncle Bubs

Uncle Devin & Dad

Pawpaw Jim

Daniel - Joshua - James

Daniel - Joshua- James- Jim

Woo Pig!

I am by no means an Arkansas Razorback fan. Yes, I've lived here practically my entire life, but my family wasn't into college football until I "discovered" it my senior year of high school. I was pretty hard headed back then (more so than I am now) and picked "my team" based on very few facts...I didn't want to be a Hogs fan (because everyone else was. I wanted to be different!), LSU sucks (per the advice of a classmate and my mom's boss's son), and who honestly wears Tennessee orange (ok and this girl I didn't like was a Tennessee fan...).

That year, the University of Alabama was doing really well...so that's the team I picked and have stuck with ever since. I have rooted on quarterbacks, running backs, corner backs and watched them be drafted into the NFL.

So, when I got a request from a friend to make a Razorback hat and blanket as a baby shower gift, to say I was lost would have been a HUGE understatement. I don't spend much time looking at Arkansas's mascot, so I barely even knew what this hat should look like, much less how to make it. Luckily, after many Google and Etsy searches, I was able to come up with and idea that I thought would work.

Using Sarah's newborn Owl Hat pattern I made a basic ear flap hat in Red Heart Super Saver's "Cherry Red." The rest of the hat I pieced together from other pig hats I found online; pieces I couldn't find, I just made up myself.

For not being a Hog's fan, I think it turned out pretty great. What do you think?

This "New" Old House

The last 6 months have been CRAZY to say the least! Since my last post (all the way back in November!!) life has changed in more ways than one for the Collier Clan.

Around the beginning of October, James and I found out that we were expecting! We were excited for about 2 weeks, and then the morning sickness set in. I have never been so sick in my entire life. I ended up in the hospital 3 separate times for dehydration...one of those trips overlapped with Christmas...not fun! By New Year's I was back on the road to good health and able to start getting excited about "Baby C" again.

As if dealing with being 7, almost 8, months pregnant wasn't enough, we just moved out of our apartment into our very first house. Our "new" old house as I like to call it. Our house has been in my family for over 30 years. My great grandparents bought the house in the early 1960's and rented it out until my Papaw retired a few years later. We have had so many Thanksgiving dinners in this house. It's where my cousin and I became best friends as kids. Papaw taught me how to paint and love gardening, while Mamaw taught me how to cook and love family. I love that James and I now get to call this place home and add our story to the ones that are already here.

There's a lot of work that needs to be done since it's an older home and I can't wait to dig into all the little DIY projects. My Pinterest boards are exploding with ideas and designs that I'm waiting to try out. The first room to get redone will be the nursery, and there's only a few more weeks to get it done! No pressure! 

Definitely glad to get back to blogging and sharing this exciting adventure with you guys! 

Cookie Monster Hat

I got a request on my Facebook page a couple of weeks ago from a mom wanting a Cookie Monster hat for her little boy. The pictures she attached with it were great inspiration. I spent a couple minutes looking for a pattern that I could follow (I haven't gotten the hang of writing my own patterns yet), but couldn't find one that I liked or even looked enough like Cookie Monster.

Using Sarah's Gingerbread Man crochet hat pattern at Repeat Crafter Me, I made a baby size hat in Red Heart's Blue Suede. For the eyes I used Sarah's eye pattern for her Owl Hat's. For my Cookie Monster Eyes, instead of starting with a color for the iris and then putting white around that, I made the whole eye white. For the pupils, I started with a Magic Ring and crocheted 6 Half Double Crochets into the ring. I wanted to do the eye and the pupil separately so that I could put them in different positions to give Cookie Monster his "crazy eye" look. The mouth was my own original pattern made up of Double Crochets and Half Double Crochets.

I'm really proud of the way this turned out and can't wait to see how it look on the little guy.

Breakfast for Dinner

Sundays are my favorite day of the week. Since James and I started our journey at Fellowship and started living as family and missionaries, we look forward to getting together for dinner and discussion with our MC family almost as much as one would look forward to Thanksgiving or Christmas. With such a blend of ages and backgrounds, I feel like we're getting so much wisdom from those who have been where we are, as well as growing with those who are on the same part of their journey as we are.

This Sunday, it was Breakfast for Dinner night, which is almost like a Southern tradition. Biscuits & gravy, lil smokies wrapped in bacon (because meat wrapped in meat is ALWAYS good), banana bread, sausage & cream cheese casserole...Such an amazing spread! I'm definitely blessed to be part of a family with so many amazing chefs! Oh! Can't forget Gina's pancakes! Those were AWESOME!

Lou & Gina working in the kitchen

I've loved getting to know these people and grow with them on this journey. It's fun to look back at this time last year and see how far we've grown together. God has taken this crazy group of sinners and strangers and really brought us together as a family. We aren't perfect, and we don't claim to be, we just want to live and love like Jesus did. I can't wait to look back in October 2013 and see how much more we've grown.