Beginning of the end

Blogging is hard for me. It takes forever to upload the photos, it is hard to rearrange them, I can never get the captions where I want them to go, and overall it takes me hours! I guess that's why I like Facebook. It uploads in seconds, I can rearrange the pictures immediately and tag them and it's just so user friendly. So I was trying to upload the pictures of our Hawaii trip, Gabi's birthday, a recent trip to Gardener Village, etc and when they finally uploaded it wouldn't let me rearrange them and I couldn't relocate the verbage to the pictures I wanted it near. I tried and tried, finally gave up after a wasted half hour of frustration, and decided to serve notice of the beginning of the end! So in summary, I hope you are all on Facebook because I think that's where I'm going to post from now on!

Summer birthdays

Dad and Avery's birthdays are the same day, mine is 2 days later, Kenzie's is a few weeks later, and Gabi's is not long after that so this is a very busy birthday time for us! Mom and Dad flew out to celebrate the birthdays and Troy and Michelle and crew were passing through on their way to a vacation so we were able to get a few pictures to share:
"In case you were wondering, these are the presents"

Kenzie and Pompa

Michelle & Allyson, Camille & Avery, Amanda & Gabi

Nana's gift of Cinderella figures was a bit hit!

Gabi loves her new easel


Everyone BUT Avery was playing Avery's new computer




"No Pompa, they're MY new clothes!"

1 month birthday

It seems crazy that Charlotte is 1 month old already! She's such a sweet baby. She loves to cuddle and look up at her people. She's starting to smile, getting chubbier cheeks by the day and we can't wait for her to meet her daddy. We've had some visitors lately so we were able to catch a few in these pics:

are we done yet?

cuddle bug

relaxing with her Pompa

with Aunt Michelle

Charlotte and Grandpa G

almost caught a smile!

Firsts

A few of the baby's firsts for her daddy:

First Visitors

Uncle Doug and Aunt Cecile were Charlotte's first visitors the day we came home from the hospital




First Time in the Box of Torture

Anyone that tells you this thing is no big deal has obviously never done it!! The baby has to be naked except the diaper, you have to leave her alone except to feed or change and then put her right back, she is cold, and has to be constantly watched so the eye thing doesn't come off. We also found out you are not supposed to put a blanket under them so the light can reflect off the thin white plastic pad thing but that was just pushing it too far. Torture.


First Photo Shoot

Our friend Kacy Moller was nice enough to come over and take some pictures of Charlotte so Chuck could see her. Very cute!



First Passport Photos

Every time I look at these I crack up! The girl at Costco couldn't get the baby to open her eyes and they have to be looking at the camera for the passport photo so I was basically throwing her in the air to startle her into opening her eyes at least a little and this was the best one! When we got home I took a few myself and ended up using one of those instead but the originals are too good to delete!



First Time in a Snuggly

Charlotte was so comfortable in this thing as soon as I put it on she immediately passed out and slept for 2 hours!






This I just thought was cute: she smiles in her sleep all the time but I have trouble catching it so here is a partial smile for her 3 week birthday today. Miss you daddy!

Day 10

I can't believe we're up to day 10 already! Poor Charlotte has been poked and prodded every day of it, but you couldn't tell by her. She's so sweet and cuddly. She's having quite the battle with jaundice, light boxes and heel sticks and her billirubin levels are still pretty high but I'm REALLY hoping we're on the downhill for all that junk. Very few start kindergarten that way right?!

Charlotte Olivia Gerhauser

Charlotte Olivia Gerhauser was born July 1, 2009. She weighed in at a very surprising 6 pounds 11 ounces and was 3 weeks early, the doctors were stunned! If she had been full term she would have been easily 8 pounds! She was 18 1/2 inches long. She had some health problems initially but luckily both she and I are home 2 days later and she seems much better. Since Chuck couldn't be there I promised I would post the day, including "the cry heard round the world".


Getting started, I was texting with Chuck most of the time and playing cribbage with my wonderful Aunt Karen who came out to help me. The epidural was great, thus the smile! She was born not very long after this picture.



"the cry heard round the world", just for you daddy

Bigger than we all thought!

Karen is so great! She flew out from CA just to help me for the week. She says I only had the baby because I was losing at cribbage! She may be right, it was so quick! One second we were playing, the next the baby was here!

Looks a lot like her daddy

the one and only time I got her to take the binky

Big yawn

All tuckered out from the ride home

How does your garden grow?

I feel guilty that Chuck put in all the work on planting our garden and then won't even be here to enjoy it so thought I would post some pics of how it's coming along. The tomatoes are doing well with lots of little green guys already, the yellow squash has lots of flowers and some little squash even, the green beans haven't started climbing the vines Chuck made but they have sprouted and look to be happy, and several other things are doing well but too early for actual produce yet. Pretty exciting!
(tomatoes)

(above: these will be green beans)

(above: pretty sure these are hubbard squash)

(Not the best picture, but you can see the little squash already!)