Today is my one year anniversary. The reason that I am writing about it on my blog instead of filling my house with roses and romance is twofold; I am pretty sick with some kind of sinus thing, and Luke has the car. So here I am, pondering my year of marriage. One year ago, I was about to marry Luke. Less than a month later, I found out I was expecting a baby. It seems like all we talked about and thought about for the next 9 months was the baby, and now that she's here, she's always taken into consideration before every decision. It's difficult to think about my marriage to Luke without a little Ivy asterisk, at the very least, but that's my life, and I'm crazy about it.
Love is different for different people. Last night, Luke and I got home at like 1:30 AM from our family reunion in Washington. Ivy was SCREAMING the whole way home and I was so tired and ill and cranky. When we got home, I changed Ivy and fed her and got her to sleep and then went into the bathroom to find that Luke had brought in and dug through all the luggage to find my contact case and glasses and toothbrush. If you are a contacts wearer, you probably understand how terrible it is to be tired and headachey and just want to take those little devils out of your eyes and sleeeeeep. Luke is so 100% thoughtful all the time. He takes the mean baby, he changes the bad diaper, he helps me find my phone 5 times a day, and he gives me all the cash in his wallet for yard sales every weekend. You can't sum up a year in a paragraph, and devoting a whole post to my sappy feelings is not my style, but I love that man. Boy, do I.
Ivy and I headed up to Washington weeks and weeks ago. I was a little nervous about taking her on the plane by myself because sometimes babies cry for reasons that I don't know and usually when that happens, I feed her or give her to Luke and both of those things are easier to do when you are not on a plane surrounded by strangers with nary a husband in sight. But to my joy, Ivy did great.
This was the first flight, smiling like a dream.
On the second flight, this nice lady had her totally entranced. She was a grandma going to see her twin granddaughters, so I let her hold Ivy. Also we were 10,000 feet in the air, so where was she really going to take her?
Ivy met my dad, Seth, Brian, Marielle, and Peter for the first time. I loved seeing my dad with her. He is magical! He has so much genuine joy in his face when he holds her and talks to her and she seemed to love him too.
He declared her to be the cutest baby he'd ever seen, and I only pretended that the slight bothered me. I mean, look at those shiny, dark eyes and square face.
Ivy, all dolled up for church. And me, looking rather like a 14 year old.
My mom had a little bassinet all set up, but I just had Ivy on the bed with me until Luke arrived. It was much nicer than sleeping all alone.
A few days later, my sister-in-law, Nadine, came with all of her kids. I think Ivy and Julia are going to be best friends.
One funny/terrifying thing that Ivy learned to do during this time is pulling a blanket over her face. She isn't really too great at grabbing things, but if something happens to land in her palm, she loves it.
She sure likes it when I prevent her from smothering herself.
One of my favorite parts of the trip was an activity we did on Monday night for Family Night. Each adult was randomly paired up with a kid, and then we had to do some kind of fun thing for an hour.
I was lucky enough to get paired with Audrey, the oldest grandchild, and we made cookies.
Luke, who had arrived a few days before, was paired with Natalie's youngest boy, Adam. I think they mostly played with toys.
We spent the afternoon at Manito Park after picking up Nick at the airport, our numbers almost complete.
My nephew, Eric, picked these flowers for all of us to wear. Luke was a good sport. And hot. A hot sport.
My mom kissing Ivy goodbye. Well, probably she is just kissing her for fun, but this blog post needs to end sometime, right?
