6 Month Check up

She's doing just great!
17 pounds 26.5 inches

A trip to the office

On Friday we took a trip to Nashua and stopped by Ben's office. Tobi got her own little badge and everything :)

Tobi in Daddy's office

Tobi really liked Daddy's fish tank ... an original Ben creation


We were thinking about trying to fool a few people by switching badges.

SIX months!!!

A half a year! Now that's a serious milestone.
New for 2009 : sitting up (with serious supervision since the day I truned around for a second and found her face first in the couch) , self-feeding with the bottle (don't try and take it away whatever you do!), sleeping in her own crib, solid foods (so far just rice cereal and some carrots...plus the occasional ice cream-on-a-finger thanks to her father).

It's a little hard to tell in these pics but she's definitely getting bigger!


Six months

3.5 months

1 month

The never ending nursery project

I really wanted to wait until we were completely done with the nursery to post pictures...but it is so close now. Last weekend we put up the curtains and hung up some pictures. Now we just really need a rug. We have been looking but just haven't found the right one for the right price. We were at building 19 looking and I found a really nice rug, but apparently even at building 19 prices the handmade orientals are still a couple thousand dollars...oops I guess I should have been looking in the machine made factory reject piles! Hard to justify spending a few thousand dollars on what will inevitably serve as Tobi's burp cloth :)

It is officially Tobi's bedroom now. She has slept in her own room all night since Sunday. I thought it would be a much harder transition since she as spent every night in our room sleeping right next to me in her carseat/bucket perched in the co-sleeper. Apparently the transition was harder on me since I didn't sleep well for the first two nights. It was a little strange even thought I can see her crib from where I sleep. Man if I'm having this much separation anxiety about a hallway what's going to happen when she goes off to college???

So here are a few pics of the nursery minus the rug and rocking chair.


Watercolor by Grandma R-B

My favorite part of the nursery (The little babe in the crib)

Tobi's library and toys


Painting by Grandpa Bareford

Little girl in her big room!

Rub-a-dub-dub

This girl has had a serious aversion to water since the day she was born. There has not been a bath or shower experience that didn't end in screaming yet! But a few days ago she decided that water wasn't that bad after all. I won't say she had fun, she was still seriously trepidatious, but there was never a any screaming. I call that a success :)

Goodbye 2008

2008 -
It was my last year of teaching (for now) after 13 years in the classroom and 8 years at NCA
Sadie Mae was born and I became an aunt for the fourth time
We celebrated our 1 year anniversary
I had a (mostly) great experience being pregnant
I experienced my first surgery (C-section)
We welcomed Tobren Lyse into the world and I became a mom for the 1st time
And now I'm staying at home and loving it

This has certainly been a year like no other for us. Becoming parents has been a marvelous blessing. I know Ben and I had both hoped to have a family of our own but we never wanted to completely allow ourselves to believe it would happen. There were so many reasons why this might not have been a reality for us, but God was so good to us. We feel completely blessed to have this little life entrusted to us. My favorite memory of our days in the hospital was the night after Tobi was born and Ben was sitting next to me in the hospital bed with Tobi resting on us...and Ben said "I always wanted a family"... and it hit me just then just how real that was...a family. Tobi means "God is good" and we have seen this evidenced to us through the gift of this little one. Lyse means "God's promise" and we have seen that God is faithful to what he says he will do. May 2009 be a year where you experience God's goodness and faithfulness in abundance.


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Christmas Pictures

This is the video/slideshow I made (with a lot of help from my "friends" at ANIMOTO) for Ben as a little Christmas gift:

We've been waiting for you...even if the nursery isn't quite finished.

I've been meaning to do this for a while. Ryan introduced me to this great website that makes slide shows out of your pics. These are some pics from the first month of Tobi's life. The song is one I heard a while ago. (If you want to watch the slide show I would recommend pausing the song player...it's painful to listen to both). I had to laugh listening to the lyrics because she specifically mentions several times something about taking home the baby and showing her her finished room. It's a good thing that Tobi won't know that we still don't have her room done. It's actually worked out quite well to keep her in our room. She sleeps so well and it means less travel for me in the mornings...so we really haven't felt the pressure to finish the nursery yet. The walls are painted, the furniture is assembled and she evens naps in her crib...but we still have several things to do before we can really say it is finished. Today would have been the day, but instead it was consumed with snow removal. Oh well, I don't think she feels any less loved or safe even though she is still without a finished room. We were waiting for her and we are so very glad she is here.