Three Things We LOVE About Living in Florida

There are many places I have lived. There are things I've loved and things I've hated about each place. Or as the British would say, there are things I quite liked and things I rather disliked. 

Here's the beginning of our Florida list.

1. People have asked us many times what we loved about living in England. We always said, "Our church." People are now asking what we are loving about living in Florida. Our number one answer is the same - our church! The people there have welcomed us with open arms (literally... they're very huggy!). Nathan and I are so blessed to have a new church family that is warm, friendly, and loving. The church is incredibly diverse - so many cultures and ages and stages and family structures represented. They are an amazing picture of the body of Christ.

So what else do we love about living in Florida? 

2. Weather (the number one thing we hated rather disliked about England). It's warm every day. While the rest of the country is frozen over - I've heard of some cities that have experienced more than 70 straight days  of below freezing temperatures - Miami is experiencing the third warmest winter in its history. So shorts and t-shirts and air conditioning every day it is!

3. Produce. Most people know that I'm a huge avocado fan. I was a little sad to discover that most of the avocados around here are not the Hass ones from Mexico or California I would usually find in the supermarket, but instead the big, fat Florida ones. Well, I wasn't sad for long because we are staying near an avocado grove. We arrived at the end of the season and found several avocados just lying on the ground, begging to be eaten.

I ate this whole bowl of the stuff straight up. Just salt and pepper. This was only about half of the flesh on one avocado. IT WAS HUGE!

There is also a starfruit tree on the property, and we enjoyed a few at the end of the season. I've never had starfruit before. It's really tasty!

These beauties are wild lemons from a church friend's tree. I get so excited when she offers them to me. They are mild and oh-so-juicy, and tonight we had them with our salmon. Yum!

There are more thoughts to come!

Exhibits A Through J

I didn't think it possible,  but the boy keeps getting cuter. Please see exhibits A through J.

Exhibit A: You're tired when you wake up with hand prints on your face. You're REALLY tired when you can even see your fingernail prints.

Exhibit B: We took out the infant head rest in the car seat, and now he looks like a proper baby!

Exhibit C: Some friends from church gave us this Bumbo, and he sits in it for a few minutes at a time before getting tired and cranky. But Mikey did join us for dinner the first night we got it.

Exhibit D: Note the alligator hat, onesie and blanket.

Exhibit E: A close up of the onesie. We got this from friends from church as well.

Exhibit F: He sits on his throne of cuteness.

Exhibit G: A golf cart outing with Mrs. Terry to see the neighborhood donkeys. Their names are Eddie and Murphy.

Exhibit H: He's big enough to be forward facing in the carrier. He loves just walking outside and looking at all of the plants and animals around here. I think he likes a good breeze on his face too.

Exhibit I: No one gets him laughing and talking like his dad. Here they are debriefing about the day.

Exhibit J: And all of a sudden he's in a collared shirt and looks like a little man.

I'm working on a post about all the things we love about Miami so far. And the baptism/ordination post. Thanks for your patience! Mikey requires just a little bit more entertaining with each passing day, and his naps are shortening, leaving me with less time than I'd like to blog (which I dislike) but more time with him (which I love). He is such a joy. I love him.

A Blast from the Not-So-Distant Past

Now that I have my fancy pants phone, I never take pictures with my regular camera. It is a little beat up, after all, and it's just so much more convenient to take pictures with my phone. I finally whipped out the old one today to reminisce about times with family and friends before we came to Miami, and I realized that I never posted any of these pictures!

Coming home from a walk in Cali. June took this picture.

With Aunt Deanie

Olive Garden lunch with Mrs. Grueber and Amy

Meeting Uncle Matthew for the first time

At the sip and see with Mary Lou

Coach and Dee come down to Atlanta from Big Canoe.

Katie and Jenn

Anwhitney and Sally still think he's cute despite his receding hair line.

Natalie didn't mind Mikey spitting up on the Auburn sweatshirt she borrowed from Bev. Nat went to Alabama.

In the Georgia mountains with Mr. and Mrs. Bramblett

Down to Miami with Pappy Parker

I know I'm super behind with blogging and posting pictures. I hope to get some more updates soon about our new life here in Miami, including Nathan's ordination and installation, as well as Mikey's baptism this past Sunday.

10 Surprising Things About Motherhood

Overall, this post could be summed up in this one statement: I'm surprised by what surprises me. 

I can expand if you care to read further.

1. Childbirth was peanuts compared to recovery. I did a LOT of reading to prepare for labor and delivery, but it didn't go anything like we'd planned. I'm not really bothered by that. All's well that ends well. However, I was completely unprepared for the difficulty of recovering from severe pre-eclampsia and a c-section. Ho-ly cow. PUPPPS rashes, major swelling in my legs and feet, the inability to laugh or cough without severe abdominal pain, neck and back aches (I think when you lose tons of weight and start carrying yourself differently your alignment freaks out a little), the difficulty with breastfeeding, the surging hormones... There is more but I don't want to get too graphic. People used to tell me horror stories before I had a baby, and I was not in the least bit interested in hearing them because they made me anxious. My point is that the difficulty of recovery does not discourage me from hoping for more children, but I'm now two months' distance from the experience. The thought of getting pregnant and doing it all over again then made me want to jump off a cliff. 

2. It's still weird for me to think that I am someone's mom. Perhaps it won't really feel real until Mikey says it.

3. Little milestones make me happy while others make me sad. When he laughed for the first time (and only, so far), it made me think of the first time Nathan and I heard Mikey cry in the operating room. We just gasped together with happy surprise! On the flip side, I can now hold Mikey with one arm on my hip without his head wobbling too much. It kind of bums me out that I won't be holding him in my arms like a tiny newborn much longer.

4. I am in love with some of his clothes, namely his polar bear PJs that he is now too big - and too hot - for. My Aunt Deanie was describing her affection for a blue outfit she dressed her daughter, Robin, in when she was a baby. "I just couldn't wait for it to get out of the dryer so I could put it back on her." I felt the same way about those PJs! When my cousin, Misty, gave them to me, I thought about taking them back because I knew he couldn't wear them for long, but I'm so glad I didn't. He wore them almost every night for about two months. I miss them already.

I know I've posted this picture before, but I can't get enough of those PJs!

5. I really like cleaning out his finger and toe jam. I know. So weird. It's the clean freak in me.

6. The best part of my day is after Mikey's bath. Nathan does a really good job of bathing him, and when he's finished I put the baby in his hoodie towel and wrap him up like a burrito. I squeal with delight as I walk him to his room to dry him off, singing a ridiculous song that I make up on the spot (something like, "You're my little chicken brain. I love you! You're my little chicken brain. Yes, it's true!"). Then I put Johnson and Johnson's lavender bedtime lotion on him, put a diaper on, dress him in fresh PJs, and brush his hair. He is warm and happy and smells sooo good! It's so awesome! I want to punch myself with excitement just typing this out!!!

7. When he cries in the car, I want to cry (and I often do). Seriously, it's the saddest thing I could ever listen to. He used to like the motion, and it would often cause him to fall asleep. No longer. Ever since we took a two-day drive from Atlanta to Miami, he's hated his car seat. Part of me thinks that Mikey is certain that he will have to live in his car seat forever which makes him despair. Part of me thinks the problem is that he's too hot, which makes him cry, which makes him sweat, which makes him cry, which makes him sweat, which makes him cry, and on and on and on we go until I pull over at a gas station to get a breeze on his drenched hair and soaked onesie. Poor thing got his sweat glands from his dad.

8. I miss him when he's sleeping. The other night while Mikey was taking his early evening nap, Nathan said, "I miss Mikey. I kind of want to wake him up so we can hang out." "Me too!" I said. So we did. We're the parents, so there.

9. Having a baby makes me miss my own family so much more. I'll stop there so I don't short circuit my laptop with tears.

10. I'm amazed by how true some of the parenting cliches are and how not true others are.

Cliches that are true for me:
a) When it's your own kid, you won't mind the spit up and poop and pee on you.
I was holding him above my head and chatting to him a few weeks ago and he spit up on my face and all over my pajamas. If there is such thing as hazing into the club of motherhood, I think that was it, and I just laughed about it.

I'm not sure how Nathan feels about being spit up on...

b) Everyone thinks their own baby is the cutest.
But seriously, mine is. I hope he doesn't summit the peak of his cuteness mountain too early.

It doesn't get much cuter than this, folks.

c) Motherhood is the best and hardest job in the world.
I think I am a pretty stable person emotionally. I don't get too-too down or too-too excited about much. But I'm learning that life cracks open your heart to both more extreme happiness and hurt the longer you are here. I've never felt so hopeless and helpless since having Mikey. I've also never felt so much joy and sheer pleasure to be alive since having him.

Before I got married, my range of emotions was about this wide:

negative emotions ------- positive emotions

When I got married, my range of emotions expanded to about this wide:

negative emotions ------------------------ positive emotions

When I had a baby, my range of emotions expanded to this wide:

negative emotions -------------------------------------------------- positive emotions

I remember wanting to jump out of my skin I was so excited about Mikey the moment leading up to this picture being taken.

Cliches that are not true for me:
a) You'll love him more than anything in the whole wide world the second he's born. 
That actually took a while for me. I'm sure that being separated from him for his first 10 days of life had a little something to do with it. It's not that I wanted to give him back or anything. It's just that it felt that I was caring for a high maintenance pet for the first eight weeks of his life. I don't think I started to truly become attached until he emerged from what my dad calls "the larvae stage."
b) You'll feel like your heart is walking around outside your chest.
Not really. I don't mind walking around Target for an hour just for the heck of it without him. 
c) You'll hate your new body.
Everything's back to normal except my stomach, but it's not so bad. Nathan tells me it's beautiful, which I appreciate. My hands are always sore though. I thought I'd get some killer arm muscles for sure with all the lifting and holding of the baby and whatnot, but I wasn't counting on my fingers getting a workout every day. I am really pleased that my digestive system has vastly improved since having a baby, and I'm also happy about not having to shave my legs more than once a month because my hair has almost completely stopped growing. See? There are good things about a post-baby body.

Cliches that I think will be true for me:
a) When you go on a date with your spouse, all you'll do is talk about your kid(s).
In fact, Nathan and I have yet to go out on a date (unless going out to buy more diapers while the baby naps at my parents' house counts as a date), but I don't think either of us feels desperate for it. We'd just rather stay home and be together as a family. When Mikey gets older and sleeps longer at night, I'm sure we'll venture out for a romantic evening, and when we do, we'll probably talk about him the whole time and then come home early to wake him up to hang out (see #8).

If you're a parent, what has surprised you about being a mom or dad? If you're not, what surprised you about my surprises? :)

Happy weekend, everybody.

Mikey and Family

These pictures are from our time in Atlanta and the past week here in Miami. I got a new phone from Nathan for Christmas - a smart phone! I know... Welcome to modern times, Nicole. I've been texting my family and Nathan's family pictures of Mikey almost every day since we've been apart, so I thought I'd share some of my favorites lately.

Gosh, I could just eat him up, as Southerners would say.

I love the soft lighting on him and my sister-in-law, Joy.

Here he is in my favorite polar bear PJs taking a morning snooze before church. I guess it's fitting that he's too big for them now that we live in the tropics.

My sister-in-law, Hannah, and I went to the mall. We only went in one store (Anthropologie, of course) and were there for two and a half hours. Life truly slows down when you have a newborn. We didn't even buy anything. So, this isn't the most gorgeous backdrop ever, but Mikey's face is priceless and Hannah's hair looks bomb, so it made the blog cut.

Then we started our road trip to Miami. This is at a rest stop somewhere in southern Georgia. Mikey was sooo pumped to be stuck in his car seat for two days. 

I went to Target for an hour or two, and when I came home Mikey had a very irritated look on his face. Nathan narrated the baby's thoughts. "Where the #$%@ have you been? I thought you were leaving us forever!"

Even though it's blurry, I love this picture of Mikey's face. We unpacked Nathan's 80 boxes of books in his new office at church. The wall-to-wall-floor-to-ceiling bookshelves are full. That is not a joke. Nathan said he is going to get rid of some of them, but I'll believe it when I see it.

This is Mikey asleep in the car on the way to Key Biscayne. The dish towel is behind his head because he was incredibly sweaty and therefore grumpy on the drive. This kid is the sweatiest baby who ever lived, and it's only January. I can't imagine how annoyed he will be in South Florida in August.

I saw this onesie on Etsy almost five years ago, and I pinned it on a Pinterest board. My friend Julie bought it for Mikey soon after we announced that I was pregnant. This is the first time he's worn it, and I may have shed a tear or two while dressing him.

There will be more to come in due course about our new life here in Miami. We're still getting settled but we're excited! 

Vamos a Miami!

Sorry for the blog silence recently. We've been visiting friends and family in Atlanta this last week, and we're collecting all our stuff and leaving for Miami on Sunday. After spending one night in Orlando, Nathan, Mikey, my parents-in-law, and I will arrive on Monday to a new chapter of life, and we are excited!

Next week we'll be busy looking for a home, but hopefully I'll be able to show you our new (temporary) digs and the church soon. I am so. pumped. to set up Nathan's office first. Those 80 boxes of books are eager to breathe again. :)

Start planning your trip!

December Photo Dump

We celebrated my grandma's birthday with some chocolate cake. I ate some and then fell asleep in her wheelchair. I was that tired.

My dad got Mikey this pacifier. He looks like a sailor with that onesie as well.

I'm sure Nathan took this. I think Mikey looks like the statue of Jesus in Rio.

Papa and Mikey asleep in a chair at the beach house.

Mikey's first trip to the Pacific Ocean. I did not allow Nathan to put Mikey in the frigid water, although he was persistent in begging me. That would have been torture for the poor baby.

He was content sleeping in my arms, wrapped up in his blanket and protected from the wind.

Family photo in the usual style...