happy week birthday!

Matthew and I can stop singing Abigail a daily happy birthday song and start counting her life in weeks instead. It is so hard to look at her and imagine that just 7 days ago she was upsidedown inside of me, brightest blue, waiting to start her journey of air, voices, hands, cries, food, life!

Here are some of the highlights of the week...



Abigail started off more like a premie baby, only waking every 4-5 hours to eat quickly and then fall back asleep. She has slowly decreased her sleeping periods to 2 hours now (with the occasional 4 hour nap). Eating more frequently is good, because it means she's gaining all the weight she needs to be (we're back up to 5lbs 11 oz). She is also spitting quite a bit less, but still needs to sleep upright.




As much weight as she has gained back, 95% of her clothes still don't fit her, as evidenced by these newborn pants that are big enough to be called "m.c.hammer" pants by matthew and barely staying up. We're happy to have so many clothes that will fit her soon though! :)





We've had some more visitors like a good friend of matthew's brian brock here, but matthew really loves this bottom picture, because it so perfectly shows how Abby is rarely content unless at least 1 appendage is sticking out of her swaddle. It's usually her hands that NEED to be free (she will do the wiggle-worm dance until they are, no matter how tight the swaddle, or what type of contraption we use to try to keep her tucked in) but here her foot made do.


Amma and Jamie had a great visit with us!!! They stayed all week, leaving Friday morning and we are already missing mom's 3 gormet meals a day, loving hands to cuddle Abby, and helpfulness all around. It was so nice not to have to worry about ANYTHING besides Abby all week. One thing we have discovered is that she loves to read! No we're not kidding!! Our cousin Megan gave us this great black and white image book that she will gaze at and trace her eyes around all the images (her favorite is the butterfly). Our teacher/reader selves are very excited with this reading notion. Her second favorite book is global babies.

This was a long awaited moment where proud uncle Jamie displays his oh-so-gentle side (his shirt is displaying his other shark-eat-shark side).

Here are a few Abby favorites... 1. hungry 2. preaching 3. wondering if she's wasting her words on you, or if you get what she's saying. Also, anything pink or even remotely girlish that she has (that fit her right now) are from Amma, thanks mom!

This is a long post, but it was a long week!! Wednesday was the last day of school for my kiddos, and even though it was a little crazy, I knew I needed to share Abby with them. They had walked with us all year watching my belly grow, asking millions of questions that often go unanswered at home, and being so so excited for me. They were absolutely out of their minds to finally see the child they had been hugging, talking to, and getting excited for inside me. We only stayed for about 1/2 hour and it was enough! We left pretty exhausted, but it was well worth it.

We got some EK Powe school visitors at home too, which was great. Meg (on the left) and I will be co-teaching a bigger class next year (around 25 kids instead of 15 each). I'm planning on helping to teach math/ science/social studies in the morning... and then another teacher who is a literacy specialist will take over helping in the afternoons. It will be unconventional, but then again so are Meg and I. Join me in praying this will work out wonderfully.

Last, but not least... we had some special visitors, Scott and Jane Ickes toward the end of the week. Scott, Matthew and I have been friends for more than a decade as we all ran in neighboring schools in highschool. We have celebrated many new stages of life together, and we were thankful that the ickes' could join in our joy in Abigail Rose too!

It has been the most amazing week of my life. There are so many new emotions, thoughts and experiences... but the greatest of these is love.