11 weeks + 6 days

11 weeks + 6 days

After the excitement and weight of the two pink lines sinks in, I think every expectant mom begins counting down the days to twelve-weeks, the hope of lessening morning sickness, the anticipation of a little round bump, sharing the joyful news of the little nugget with friends and family, and, of course, the promise that this baby is here to stay.

For me, for our family, for this tiny baby, the countdown ended at eleven weeks and six days. 

Although today--week twelve--we are overwhelmed with sadness as I hold my empty belly, still swollen from the last three months of growth, we are grateful for this little life. We remember the overwhelming joy with which we began the new year, the hope of meeting our sweet baby, due exactly one year after our first miscarriage, and the promise of new life. We still cling to that promise and believe our home will soon be filled with loud, funny, opinionated, sweet, messy children.

So my dear, tiny baby, I must write you a different letter than I wrote just two days ago. I guess there are really only a couple things to say now. We love you deeply; we miss you dearly. We would do it all over again for you.

Baby "Dot" 8 weeks + 1 day

11 weeks + 5 days: The letter I thought I would be sharing today. I wrote it as a conclusion or reconciliation to the letter that I wrote and shared after my first miscarriage.

My sweet baby-

We are so happy that you are here and so happy that you are growing. We wait in joyful hope for your arrival this September as we remember our tiniest baby that we lost early last fall. 

I am grateful for these first months with you, for the queasy mornings, insatiable hunger, and whoosh-whoosh of your thumping heart. I'm grateful for the time to dream of what your little face will look like and what your sister's will look like when she meets you face-to-face. I can't wait to give you a name, smell your soft hair, and show you the best parts of our world: sunshine, music, grandparents and Christmas. We pray for unending time with you.

I am grateful for your sacred life, for the chance to be your mom, and for the time that we get to share as one body. We are so happy that you are here and so happy that you are growing.

Love, Mama

5 weeks

10 weeks

The Months of May: Twenty-one

It's twenty-one months of May! 

During the past three months Mary Allison dressed up like a little lamb and happily ran from doorstep to doorstep yelling "thank-you!" instead of "trick-or-treat," survived her first serious road-trip to celebrate Thanksgiving with family, and shrieked with utter terror and delight as she became acquainted with her aunt and uncle's sweet dog, Benson. She yelled "WOW!" as she ran full speed ahead into a park of twinkling Christmas lights, reveled in a Christmas filled with five of her grandparents, and took every ornament in her tip-toes' reach off of the tree, one by one. She serenades us with the "ABC's" and "The Wheels on the Bus," shouts "AMEN!" at the end of all of her prayers, and does a hysterical Donald Trump impression. This adventurous tot fills her days filling up her Fisher Price shopping cart, decorating everything in sight with (removable) stickers, and flipping through the pages of her books narrating the story as she sees fit. 

All our love, 

C + B + M

Christmastide 2015

We wish all of you the merriest Christmas and hope that the joy of the season has followed you into this new year. We filled our holiday to the brim with broken ornaments and crooked tannenbaums, Texas brisket and Arizona sun, and lots and lots of grandparents. [re: Five grandparents and just one grandchild.] Needlesstosay she revelled in the doting shenanigans and sneaky big bites of ice-cream from her Pop. Here's a peek!  

All our Christmas-y love,

b + c + m

p.s. sorry half of our Christmas cards are still sitting on my desk waiting to be addressed...

Thanksgiving 2015

I'm guessing that my parents never thought that their kids would end up living in Kentucky or New Jersey. It certainly wasn't on my fifth-grade MASH line-up. But somehow my big brother and I both flew the coup away from our beloved hometown in the Texas panhandle, both 1000+ miles (err... 2000 miles) away from our little white-bricked home on Elmhurst Road and no closer to one another. 

Ryan is a second-year anesthesiology resident at the University of Louisville and, as such, spends nearly every day and night scrubbed up putting patients to sleep and, more importantly, waking them back up. This Thanksgiving he actually had the holiday off so we (lost our minds and) decided to carpe diem! and make the 28-hour round trip to Louisville with our toddler. 

After surviving the winding mountain roads in the dark and fog from New Jersey to Pennsylvania to West Virginia to Ohio to Kentucky, we finally introduced our daughter to my brother and his sweet wife, Ashley. Mary Allison took no time to stick Uncle "Ay-an's" stethoscope in her ears and uncover her Christmas presents that Aunt Ashley had already wrapped. She quickly befriended their "woof-woof," Benson, with her sticky fingers, neck hugs and open-mouthed kisses. Our days were filled with good meals and even better desserts, parks and museums, baby-dolls and magna-doodles, family lore and many more reasons to be grateful for our Hogue reunion.

My dad said it best as he said grace over our Thanksgiving meal. "We are grateful to gather together today and pray that we would be blessed with many more opportunities to gather again."

They should be AARP models, amiright?!?

 Happy Thanksgiving!

b + c + m