* intheMINDofmommies *

The first word that comes to my mind is fear. I think this is because of my current state of being a single parent. As if getting used to having a newborn isn't hard enough trying to do it without the support of your significant other is torture to put it mildly. No shoulder to cry on when you just can't figure out what's going on. No one to share the feedings, the diapers, the sleepless nights and the fear that you are or aren't doing what you need to do to support this little life. I know these are only the beginnings of fear and it will take on many meanings as D grows up but right now I ask the question will we make until Matt comes home? 4 days and 2 hours to go and as D works his way through the 6th week of his life I feel like we won't but deep down I know we'll get through this (never allowing Matt to leave us again....yeah right) and Saturday evening will come and for the first time this week I will get to shed tears of joy instead of tears, of desperation, fear, anxiety and hopelessness.

What's in the mind of my mommy friends? What one word comes to mind immediately when you think of your role as Mom, is it the same word you would have used a month ago?

WELCOMEpierce

Our friends Sheldon & Renee welcomed their little boy Pierce Thomas Sunday morning at 5:11 am he was a healthy 7 lbs 3 oz and 20 1/2 inch long boy with good lungs (Renee said)! I hate that we can't be there with you guys to share in your joy, I can't wait to meet him!

CONGRATULATIONS! WE LOVE & MISS YOU TONS!

This evening after a long day or rain I took a walk to my new favorite place, Silver Lake Park. It's this great park just a few blocks from our new home. It's so peaceful, lots of families spending time together it makes me excited about the days to come with Dealey. Matt is on a commercial shoot in Dallas and we miss him so much, me more than D, I must say as I haven't eaten or slept much in the last four days and I still have 7 days to go....aaahhhhh! Here's a few pics of the park and a special message for daddy!

ps. Daddy, Mommy says you have to come home soon before she goes insane! Personally I think she's one cookie short of a full jar already...hee, but come home soon anyways...The D-man

I decided to institute another picture day not because it's necessary but because I can't seem to always remember to do my Wordless Wednesday so starting today we have Tongue-tied Thursday! Why Thursday well it's usually about Thursday morning that I remember to do it!

NEWfriends

The D man has his first friend, just tonight as we came back from Manhattan on the ferry I looked down and he was hugging Hank's leg. It was short lived but it was too cute. However when we first introduced them I wasn't sure how it was going to go, as you can see in the first pic D had some choice words for the maroon monkey invading his car seat and then threw out one of his gang signs knocking Hank over to the edge of the seat in pic 2. D and Hank are best of friends now spending almost all day together. Hank has been spit up on and nearly pooped on yet he hangs around, I think we've all found a friend for life!

On a different topic isn't the D man getting big? I think he's got to be near 8 lbs now (feels more like 20 lbs sometimes, especially at 6:00 in the morning). I can't believe it! He is still wearing new born size clothes and a few of the smaller sized 0-3 but he's definitely grown maybe by the time we're 2 months old we'll be wearing all our 0-3!

PS. Dealey had several first today...his first ferry ride, subway ride, trip to Times Square, stroll threw the M & M store, hang time in Central Park, meal at Juniors and a glimpse of the Statue of Liberty among other things....I can't believe we're getting the opportunity to give Dealey the chance to spend the first years of his life in such an amazing place!

ROADtrip

We finally got internet access today and I'm so excited, however the lack of it did make me realize I might have a bit of an addiction, but oh well, I could have much worse addictions so I figure I won't obsess about it too much. I'll apologize now for the length of this post but wanted to cover the last few days of traveling and unpacking....


dayONE
Texas sent us off well this morning it was overcast and slightly cool, as if Texas was saying, “see I’m not too bad you don’t have to be so happy about leaving.” I started the day off driving with a sense of excitement I wanted to be the one that drove out of Texas, there was something thrilling and liberating about it. We’re driving into this new season of our life with so much fear, excitement, love and wonder. What does New York City hold for us, what adventures will we have besides the obvious watching Dealey grow and become the little person he’s meant to be. We can’t wait to find out.

It’s been an interesting week leading up to our departure we have some dear friends going through a really rough time in their life and I know Matt and I both have struggled with walking away from friends we’ve had all our lives but as my friend Rana said,” friends come in and out of your life but that doesn’t mean they’re aren’t always your friend...”and it’s so true. Life is full of so many seasons and I think it would be impossible and overwhelming to maintain ever friendship at high capacity through every season and I do believe that different friendships/relationships go through periods of growth when you need them most.

When we stopped on day one we we’re 743 miles from the only life we’ve ever known in the only city we’ve ever lived together and apart. It definitely leaves an unsettling feeling in my stomach, but then I look over to D and he’s so calm, just sleeping the day away with no cares in the world, no stress, luck little guy! Wish we could look at and live life that way.


dayTWO
Well, day 2 started much like day one...TOO EARLY! However I must give props to my mom she took over taking care of Dealey so Matt and I could both get a little extra sleep. We expected this day to be shorter but contrary to our desires it was longer than day one. None of us could pin point exactly what made it so long we had some traffic, maybe stopped a few more times but nothing too crazy. However we ended up in the wonderful town of Haggerstown, Maryland, we got to drive through the historic downtown to get to our hotel and it was so cute and quaint. We can not wait to go back sometime and explore.

WHAT?: Hungry Mother State Park.....you probably have the same look we did on our face....what the crap?! If you haven’t been to Hungry Mother....well you just haven’t lived!

Nothing much else to say about day two of our road trip to NYC just lots of beautiful landscape as we traveled from Nashville, through the rest of Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia and Maryland.....


dayTHREE
Sunday, we all woke up excited that our trip was almost over (it wouldn’t be until later that we remembered the end of driving meant that we had to unpack the truck). It was a short 4 1/2 hour drive from Haggerstown to Staten Island through Pennsylvania & New Jersey. We got in around 2:00 after getting lost and somewhat turned around in Jersey trying to get to a specific bridge to get over to Staten Island. We started unpacking the car and the truck into the first floor apartment......

That’s right I said first floor apartment, the crazy people on the second floor are causing all sorts of problems but they have finally agreed to get out of our apartment by the 31 of July so we’ll be moving again in a few weeks, probably on the 5th, but Carlos & Andy two strong guys, one is the landlords son (Carlos) and the other one is a family friends anyways Carlos has the muscles as his mom Maria put it so hopefully it will go quickly and I can finally after more than 4 months unpack our stuff and get back to a somewhat normal life. The hardest part about it is that Matt’s going to be gone on and off through the month of August so he won’t be here to help with much unpacking and after only spending a short time together here he will leave for a week and half and as soon as he gets back we have to move again so I am desperately looking forward to him being home and being able to spend the little time we have together playing with the Dealey Monster and exploring our new home.

We have to thank everyone for your prayers as we traveled a VERY special thanks to the Avants', Tammy helped us pack all day Thursday and then Thursday night we invaded their home for the night, all 6 of us! They have been such wonderful friends through the darkest and brightest moments of our lives since we’ve meet them and we will miss them and all our friends so much we talked about all our friends while driving and also talked about how we can only hope to find as many wonderful peeps here in NYC. Speaking of meeting people we had our first random meeting today and Dealey proved to be quite the conversation starter. We ate at a great pizza place called Cafe Milano (this one’s menu goes in the definite KEEP pile) we had an awesome NY style pizza with pepperoni and Italian sausage sliced not the ground up stuff, so freaking yummy. Anyways, sorry I got side tracked, this nice lady with a toddler just started talking to me, asked how old D was and it went on from there she said that we would love it here and there’s lots of families and kids, then she introduced herself as Karen and said she see us again, it was awesome hopefully I will see her again walking around or at the park!

We hope everyone is doing awesome, keep those blogs updated and I’ll do the same and seriously anytime you get the urge to take a trip NYC, do it! You get to hang with us and D so all around it’s just the best trip you’ll ever have! :o) The Maples B & L (because you all know I do not do mornings) is always open! Love, Hugs and Skittles all the way from NYC....

HAPPYhour

Wednesday we went and meet a bunch of friends for happy hour, drank a good margarita....okay two good margarita's and said some wonderful goodbyes to some very dear friends. One of our friends Steve took these pictures and photoshoped them up a little...it's just too hilarious not to share, Dealey's first happy hour and definitely not his last. We're raising our little guy right! Updates from the road to come later, we're in Nashville and of course exhausted but the trip is going great!

Thanks Steve for the great pics and thanks Sharon for sending them to us, we love you guys, can't wait for happy hour in the fall!

Also the monkey is D's new favorite friend Hank! Post about Hank (and his evil twin Frank) to come soon!

I decided I had to do one more Wordless Wednesday from Texas and last night Matt and I took this picture, we wanted to see what D looked like in his bumbo chair. Needless to say laughter ensued he's so little the back of the bumbo is a great little headrest...hee...but his feet look huge, it was just too cute not to capture on camera!

LEAVINGtexas

Sorry I haven't blogged in several days, I have plenty of stuff to post but no time to post it, so just wanted to drop a quick not to say hi. We are crazy busy packing up the last of our stuff we leave Texas Friday morning for a 2 1/2 day trip to New York....I do have one comment about our current experience, if anyone is thinking about moving, with a newborn, DON'T, Dealey is fine, but there just isn't enough time between feedings to get crap done and it's down to the wire and stress is the name of the game.....got to run! We will write more from the road.

Matt and I are so excited that Matt's sister is having a girl, she just found out TODAY! Secretly we were hoping for a boy so Dealey would have a playmate at holidays and stuff, but I am so excited to have a little girl to shower with all the cute girl stuff I'll be finding while shopping in New York. Matt and I are most sad about leaving our families especially with another little one on the way it would be much fun to raise our little ones together, however at least Ella can say her cousin Dealey lives in the coolest city IN THE WORLD!

CONGRATULATIONS CHAD & MEGAN, WE LOVE YOU!

in • som • ni • a n. The chronic inability to fall asleep or remain asleep for an adequate length of time.

For years Matt has told me I have insomnia, but by this definition I just don't know. It's not that I'm not completely exhausted and believe me once asleep I can sleep and sleep and sleep. I don't know that I have an inability to fall asleep either, I do fall asleep every night, but here's my problem (okay well, one of my problems...hee) I get the overwhelming urge to DO at night, whether that's catch up on emails I need to respond to, clean (that's a big one), get organized, work on freelance work, or do something off my long "to do" list and sometimes I even have the urge to just make list of stuff. Stuff to do, to see, to make and the list goes on. So what is this? Insomnia? HELP!!!!!!!

THEpark

On July 4th Matt and I took Dealey to the park, in hopes of getting the perfect birth announcement picture, for those of you who know me you know that I'm, let's say, slightly "obsessive" when it comes to pictures, graphics and anything pertaining to the perfection of print media. Well, Mr. D thought it would be fun to torture me and sleep almost the entire time we did get a few great shots of him with his eyes open when he was in his stroller (which made for the intro to D's first photo/video montage) Anyways, regardless of his stubbornness that day (not sure who he gets that from...hee) we did get some great pics!

We're excited to share Dealey's YouTube debut with you, let the fun begin, no doubt this will be the first of many movies by Dealey James!