Here's Eme!!!

So here are some pictures that I took today. I just changed over Eme's clothes to her 12 month stash so we have a bunch of new clothes to show off. We also just received a lot of hand me downs from some friends here on the island. I can't believe that she is 10 1/2 months old. She has grown like a weed.
I missed her perfect smile because I cut her head off. Okay so photographer is not my calling. It is hard getting her to smile just right.

She was not too sure about being on the coffee table but she managed to give me a few cute shots.

Here is my cheese ball shot. She gives me this smile all the time. I am glad I captured it on film, well digi film.

Look at all those teeth!!! She has 8, 4 on top and 4 on bottom.

I am too cute and I know it!!

Cheese!!! Hey mom put that camera up - here is the case, enough with the pictures.

How is she so darn cute??? She is going to be hard to stay straight faced in her naughty times!!!

Where have I been???

Well, after almost a year of motherhood I am finally finding my groove to get back into the swing of things. Where did I go? Well, I have this lovely black hole that I retreat to some times and that is where I have been. Things got really overwhelming and I just could only deal with certain things and everything else went by the way side. Blogging was one of those that was easy to push away. I did not really have anything positive to say so I did not say anything.

2009 is a new year. Yeah, yeah, new years resolutions smosions. No, really, I have figured some things out for my self with the help of some professionals and I have a groove that I am really liking. So I am trying to emerge and join society again.

Eme is doing great. The dr's and I have found a great solution to her discomfort and pain so she is a very happy baby now. It was very rough trying to figure things out but we finally have things under control. She has acid reflux and delayed gastric emptying, with possibly a milk allergy. Really long story so I won't go into it but it is really under control.

Huge mistake in parenting, letting my emotions and the need to help my baby get the better of me when it comes to sleeping. I spent the last 9 months of my life on the couch with Eme in the swing, on my chest or propped up on a pillow at the foot of the couch while she was sleeping at night and during the day for nap time. I also let her dictate her bed time. Why is it that I let a child of less than a year dictate her sleep times and mine??? How is it that I could crate train both of my dogs but I could not train myself to put my child in her crib??? So at the end of Dec, I did sleep training with her all by myself. It took 2 days for her to get on schedule and she only cried for about an hour each night. Nap times took a week but she is totally on a schedule now. She still cries when I put her in her crib but by the time I come downstairs and get the monitor she is out. I really wish I had done this a few months ago but hind sight is always 20/20. Anyway, I have found several hours that I did not think I had and I have regained some Lauren time, which has really helped emerge from the blackness.

So, my goals for this blogging thing? I hope to keep up to date at least once a week. If I don't achieve this I won't beat myself up about it, I will just pick up where I am at that moment. I have this thing about needing to catch up which tends to get overwhelming and then the black hole starts looking really good. So if I disappear, bear with me I will emerge sooner than this latest episode.

I do want to update and let my readers see Eme's first year in retrospect. I have even figured out how to upload video too so I have pictures and video from the past year for you too see. The catch, you have to wait for me to get around to posting them. Remember the overwhelming thing, this is very huge task so I will get there just have patience with me.

So, I am making this a permanent post at the top for the next month so it doesn't get lost in the shuffle. Keep checking back for updates or you can subscribe by signing up with your email on the right. It will send you an email when I post something new.

Sorry for the absence and thanks for your patience with me. Thanks for your support too. I appreciate it.

What a terrible mommy!!!

So I blogged that my child was born on March 3rd which so is not true!!! She was born on the 9th of March. Kind of funny that Dad did not catch that slip up when he proof read my entry. Just goes to show how exhaustion will zap your brain!!! Thank you to a friend who pointed this out to us.

Kind of on a side note, our family birthdays all have a 9 in them.
Brad - 09/07/78
Lauren - 11/09/78
Emelia - 03/09/08

We are also 30 years older than our child. My father is 30 years younger than his mother and 30 years older than his youngest daughter(my sister).

Pretty neat, huh!! Oh, baby's crying got to run!!

Emelia Makana Foster is Here!!

She is finally here. Actually she is about 8 days old now. I have been trying to work on this post in my head since she arrived and have literally had my hands full. Sorry for the delay in the details.

Emelia Makana Foster made her arrival on Sunday March 3rd at 4:33pm. She weighed 7lbs 4.6ozs and was 19 1/4 inches long. The delivery went pretty well. Once I got my Magic Juice (epidural) I was great. Things kind of flew by as I look back on it now. Everyone always tells you it will all be worth it once your child is looking back at you, and they are all right. It was all worth the pain. So life begins a new chapter in the Foster Household.

Here is Dad minutes after Eme came out. What a proud Dad he is!! He was an awesome coach and very supportive partner in this whole process. Wow, this is me after the delivery. Man, I look rough. It was all kind of surreal.Check out our little ham!! Howdy world, I am Eme and I am here to stay.

Here is a much better picture of me and Eme. I had time to get showered and cleaned up after the whole process.

So, Brad's Mom was here for the birth after her flight was canceled on Sunday by the airlines. She left Monday, while we were still at the hospital. We had one day at home by ourselves before my parents came into town. They have been here since the 12th and will be leaving to go back home on the 31st. They actually are on their way to the Big Island of Hawaii for a few days to sight see and give Brad and I some time alone as a family with Eme while he is still off work.

I will try to post some more pictures soon. I have to figure out how to juggle all the things in our lives now so bear with us. Thanks for reading and hope to hear from you!

Her room is getting pretty!!

So I finally got her crib cleared out and put her bedding set up. The pattern that we picked out is Lambs and Ivy "Sweet as a Daisy". It is pretty purple and green with butterflies, lady bugs, and daisies. Here is her crib with the mobile attached. I don't have the sheets on yet because I still have to wash them. I also have to tie on the bumper and fluff the bed skirt but I will do that once we take the mattress out of the plastic. Here is the mobile. The pink blanket in the background was a gift from Susan, who is the wife of Brad's XO on the boat. She is a fabulous quilter; she made the blanket out of a pretty Hawaiian fabric and fuzzy purple fur. The dogs love it so it has their seal of approval. Now I just have to make sure that they know this is a baby blanket and not a puppy blanket. Here is a close up of the comforter. This is the side of the crib showing the bumper on top, then the mattress in the plastic, then the crib skirt.
More to come later...

Nope - not today!!!

Brad did not get his wish of having a Leap Day Baby but he will get the Leap Year Baby. My dr's appt went okay today. I am 3 cm and still 60% effaced. She is still head down and in position. Any day now as I am now 7 days from my due date. I am hoping that she will come early or on time and not decide she really likes it in there and wait it out until they force her out.

Anyway, Happy Leap Day to all those whose birthday was today!!!

Big Belly Pics

Okay, so are you wondering what is happening with the baby??? We are doing fine. Nope, she is not her yet and yup, I am getting much bigger. I thought I would grace this lovely blog with some updated pictures. I did forget to take some pictures so it is a pretty big leap from Week 31 and Week 32 to Week 37 and Week 38. What can you do when you are this preggo and your hubby is never around??? I thought I would start holding my belly for some reason, I think my thought was the week 37 shirt is a non maternity shirt so it doesn't fit real well for this sort of shot.Anyway, I did not think that missing those weeks would really make that big of a difference but as Brad told me last night, "You got a big ole' belly lady". For those who are wondering if my belly button has dissapeared, the answer is yes. I will not be posting the pictures of it because I think it is just gross and weird looking. I just hope it goes back to normal after she pops out.

I had a dr's appt last Wed, 2/20, and found out that I was 2 cms dilated, 60% efaced and she is at -2. My next appointment is tomorrow morning so we will see if I have made any progress. I hope that I have because I have been having Braxton Hicks contractions pretty regularly. But who knows. I will have a Leap Day update because Brad really want's her to make her debut tommorrow. I don't think that will happen but we will see.

She has a room!!

So here are some pictures of the nursery as we have worked on getting it ready for the little one's arrival. This is before we started clearing things into the attic.
Can you find the little rascal in this picture??? The dogs love their resting place in this room. We will see how this will work after kiddo comes. Once we got the room cleared out we brought up the dresser that was my grandmothers for all her little clothes. Then we built the crib that Grandma and Grandpa Staha bought for us (rather for their granddaughter). Yes, I know that she is going to have a hard time sleeping there with all that stuff in the crib with her. I will have to find a place for it once we get the changing table put together and get her clothes in the dresser.

Here is Brad putting together the changing table. In the background, you can see everything piled into the crib to give us some working room. And yes, that is a TV on the dresser. No, it will not stay in the room for her to watch, but this room will serve as our guest room so we left it in here for them. It will eventually go into the office once we get a place to put it in that room.

Here is the changing table all put together. I have to find some storage baskets to put on the shelves to hold all the stuff. I found some great ones online, but we can't have them shipped for some reason so I have to look on the island for some that will work.

More pictures to come of the bedding set and the rest of her nursery. I will also post pics of the stroller and play yard.

Brad's 1st Underway

Brad recently went on his first at-sea ride on the USS Columbus (as in, Ohio; Brad's regular boat is the USS Columbia, as in South Carolina/Missouri/Illinois). His boat wanted him to get some experience on a working boat while his submarine is in the shipyard being fixed up. The USS Columbus has recently come out of the shipyard receiving the same upgrades as Brad's boat is receiving right now. He went along for a two week ride so that he could get his engineering qualifications completed. Here are some pictures of the day he left and then when he came back.Here we are early in the morning dropping Brad off at the pier. The big black thing with the yellow crane in front is the sail of the submarine. Luckily my sister had just come in to visit us so I did not have to go through this for the first time alone while eight months pregnant and very emotional. Here she is with her brother-in-law before he went in to the big briney deep. You can see more of the sail in the background. After we dropped him off, Missy and I went off to see Hawaii and do touristy things. We headed back to Pearl Harbor in the afternoon to see his boat actually leave for the underway.
Here is the boat from the other side of the harbor. It is kind of hard to see but the submarine is in the middle of the picture with what looks to be a crane coming out of the sail. The sail is the big black thing that sticks out of the water when the boat is surfaced. It is the place that the periscope comes out and also it is the place that people come out to look out when they are on the surface. Missy and I went over to Hickam Air Force Base to the officer's club to watch the boat actually leave the harbor. I can't tell you how magnificant of a sight this really is. The anticipation is killer because the boat was delayed and there was not really a good place to see since they were doing construction. But when they actually pulled by it was a pretty awesome sight. There was a police escort because it is pretty hard to see in the water. The police also did not want us taking any pictures so this was as close as I could get. There were a few sailors standing up in the sail waving to us. No, Brad was not one of them. He did get to be one of them on a trip back into the harbor during the deployment but I was not there to capture the sight.
Here is a little closer on once the boat had passed. It was such a sight against the sunset. There were a few other wives that were out there with us as we watched them leave. Not as many as I thought there would be but this was a short underway.
We watched them for a long while. The two boats on the side of the submarine are the police escorts. I am not sure how far out they escorted the submarine because we left once we could not see the boat anymore.

We both survived the time apart. Since my sister was in town, it was a little easier because I did not come home to an empty house right away. We had lots of activities planned to keep my mind off of separation. After a few days, my sister left and I still had some activities planned to keep me busy. I also recovered from her visit by just chilling out on the couch. By the time I started to miss Brad, he sent me an email. We were able to communicate via email quite a bit. I had sent some letters that I had prewritten him to help him get through the time, but I did not expect any communication back from him so this was a nice surprise. He also was able to call me one evening while they were surfaced. We only had a few more days left apart when I received another call from him. He was back in port for a few hours if I wanted to come see him. Heck yeah, I hopped in the car and headed down. FYI - this is definately not the norm, so please don't expect that this is the kind of communication I will receive in future outings. I was actually prepared not to hear from him at all for the time he was away. We will see how much communication we get to have on future trips. Anyway, the time flew by and before I knew it he was back in port ready to be picked up. Well, so I thought. Here is the boat at the pier. This is a little better picture where you can see the whole submarine. Okay you can only see the very top part of it, but there are not many people that get to see the whole boat unless it is in the shipyard drydock like Brad's boat is. We actually got to see the USS Columbia in its entirity but unfortunately they would not let me take pictures of it. There is a whole lot of boat that you are not really seeing. You are just seeing the roof top to compare to a multi-story building. I picked Brad up from his first underway and we finally got home around 9pm. I am very happy to have him home for now. He will not be going out again until after the baby comes. The next time will be harder but we will survive and learn to cherish the time we have when Brad is at home.

Vow Renewal Pictures

We finally received the pictures from our Anniversary Vow Renewal Ceremony. Here we are at Waialae Beach Park, a free place that is pretty remote and hidden from the general public. We did not have any crowds of people to worry about getting in our pictures.

This is the minister who performed our ceremony.

This is the minister and his wife singing a Hawaiian song for us as an added bonus to our ceremony.

Here we are receiving the Hawaiian blessing.

We then took some cool pictures of the two of us on the beach. The water is really cold, if you were wondering. It is about 11:00 in the morning, too.


This is my favorite family picture so far. I wanted to capture this moment forever.