Just can't wait...

I was going to wait until later today after Christmas with my family to post pictures, but I just can't wait. These pics from yesterday are SO cute. Thanks to the Martinson's for the cute reindeer outfit for Mary! There are also some from this morning when we fed her. See how she gets progressively messier.

Christmas 1 of 3!

Last night was Mary's first night sleeping 12 hours in a row! We usually wake her up to feed her between 10 and 11 because I'd rather feed her before I go to bed than wake up at 4 in the morning with her needing to eat. But I guess she didn't need that last feeding after all! Let's keep it up baby girl!

Papaw Riley and Grandma Laura came over today for brunch! For Christmas they got us a Flip video camcorder. It's so cool! We'll probably post a few videos soon because we're nerds and are excited about our new camera! And here are a few pictures we took today with gma and gpa:

Walkin'

Ian likes to make Mary "walk." It's really cute so I have a video:

We also had an unexpected visitor home from college! We love you Dani! Here's a pic of Mary and her new friend, and a few other pics from today. Check out how her head does this unibrow thing in the last two pictures:

Loving Mary

So, we're totally in love with our little girl. I've always loved her, since the first kick in my belly. But it's taken me a while to like her too. A friend told me a story once that she'd heard from a lady, lets call her Jean, at her church. Well Jean's husband had an affair with another woman. Since Jean doesn't believe in divorce she decided to forgive her husband and remain married to him. She forgave, but it was still hard for her to truly love him again. One day Jean realized that God still loves her husband far more than she ever did in the first place, so she told God that she could not love her husband and asked Him to love her husband through her.

This made me think about Mary. Of course it's very different. Mary never committed any crime, unless 9 hours of crying counts ;) But when I heard that story I just remembered that God loves Mary far more than Ian and I can ever hope to love her. So I asked God to love Mary through me. To help me take care of her when I didn't feel like dragging my butt out of bed in the middle of the night, or during the 4th hour of crying every night. I tried to remember what Jesus says in Matthew 19, "With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible."

I have to give credit where it's due...God's totally brought me through that time and has given me the ability to feel love for her as opposed to just choosing to love her. When she takes a really long nap I start to miss her and just want her to wake up so we can play. When I feed her, sometimes she looks up and stares at me. I love to look at her and stare into her eyes that remind me of her daddy. I didn't know it was possible for something to be THIS beautiful. Those are my thoughts for the day!!

three months and talking

Mary is three months old now and is getting cuter every day! About a week ago she started blowing raspberries and it was the cutest thing! We do it in her face and she repeats us. She also does this with smiling and it's so fun! The best is when it's late at night (we try not to play with her then so that she knows it's not time to play!) but she just keeps blowing raspberries and making her talking noises. It's hard not to play with her at those times, but when we do she gets all riled up!

Also, she makes noises in response to our noises. Like if you say, "ooooo," when she's looking at you she'll make the noise back. It is my favorite thing that she does right now!!! We love us some Mary!

The video below is of her "talking" to me. Sometimes we'll hear her in her room just making noises to herself. She's not doing it as good as normal in the video, but every time I turned the camera on she just stared at the little red light on it, so it was hard to get her to do anything else! Enjoy:

Bath Time

Here are some pictures of bath time with Mary. She's such a trooper! She just sits in there and let's us do the washing without complaints.


Funny Face:

Naked Mary!!!

Picture update!

We found a place that Mary loves to sleep now!

Ian thought it would be a good idea to put Mary in the Laundry basket. "She'll like it," he said. Here's what she thought:

She's always happiest in the morning! Here are some smiley pics from this morning:

Outbreak in the Lubbers home!

Ian's sick...and overprotective. The pictures speak for themselves!

Rollin'

Baby girl is almost rolling over!

Big girls sleep through the night!

Last night...for the first time ever...Mary slept through the night. And by through the night I mean I fed her at 10:30, then she slept til 6:30! AWOOHOO!! There is much rejoicing in the Lubbers house this morning. Although I know this doesn't mean she will do it every night from this point on, I'm pretty excited! This weekend is fall weekend for young life which means Mary gets to stay with aunt Amber all day tomorrow and Ian and I get to go have fun!!! Will post with pictures on Monday probably!

On a political note (because who doesn't have something to say about the election?!?): for the first time in my life the guy I picked won! Granted, I've only been interested in two elections before this one, but this time it's OBAMACITY and I'm the mayor ;) My sophomore year in high school (when W ran for the first time) I was one of 4 liberals in a World Issues class with 30 kids in it. Not to mention there was only one other sophomore, a fellow liberal. The rest were juniors and seniors. I felt so bullied because of what I believed. I think mostly because I was younger, it might have been in my head. And then last time, I was on Miami's campus which is full of upper-middle class kids who's parents have them convinced that if you're not a republican you should be shunned (please no hate responses, I realize I'm totally stereotyping, but this is how it felt for me). So it feels good that this time there are others that agree with me! It's always good to feel like you're not alone! Go get 'em Obama. My prayers are with you and our country!

Backpacking and Running

Last weekend Ian took some of the high schoolers backpacking at Red River Gorge. Mary and I hung out with Grandma Julie on Saturday and went to the Colerain craft show. It was a good craft show despite its location. Tonight we have just been sitting around waiting for Obama to become the next president ;) Ian likes to make Mary "run" so there's a video of that below!

Halloween!

Here are some pictures from Halloween! She's moving around so much now; maybe I'll put a video up soon!

Chubs:

Smiles:

Big Girls

My beautiful daughter and niece! Could it get any better than that? The past two months have been the hardest months of our lives, but we are so grateful for our little girl. She is such a blessing to us! Sometimes it's hard to see through the screaming, but she will get through that.

The other day I was talking to a friend and saying how Ian always cried when he was a baby too and didn't like to sleep. I also said that he still doesn't sleep very well. And my friend pointed out that at least he doesn't cry that much anymore!! That made me laugh, and also realize that Mary will be like a real person in a few months (a little less crying, and a lot more interaction). Thanks for that encouraging thought Dee!

One of Ian's friends from college is going through a terrible time right now. His daughter is about a month younger than Mary and she is really sick. We read about his daughter (on their blog) and it just breaks our hearts for them. If you're the type to do so, pray for Justin, Kristen, and Kara. They don't think she will live to see her first birthday, but Justin and Kristen have such a God centered perspective on it all. They know he has a plan for their daughter and that he loves their daughter more than they do. It's sad (an understatement), but encouraging to read their blog because of the way they glorify God in their lives. He's first, despite the dark circumstances that surround their lives right now. They've asked people to pray for wisdom in decision-making and parenting, and a peace beyond understanding in their hearts as they seek after God. We pray for mercy Lord.

Thinking about them made me cry and talk to God more today. While I was praying for them an old song came to my mind. It's called Be Near and it's by Shane Barnard. The lyrics go like this:
be near, oh God
be near, oh God of us
Your nearness is to us our good
It's a beautiful song, and it reminded me what's really important: not the safety of our family, or the abundance of our finances, a big house, or any of those things. God's nearness is our good. That's what we want above all else. The Lubbers' family will seek Him!

8 weeks today!

Mary is 8 weeks old today. The past week with her has been great. It's like we have a new little girl (who is milk free!). She had a rough night last night, but besides that she's been great. Tonight Ian and I are going to watch the varsity soccer team whoop up on Loveland. Some of Ian's players got moved up so we're excited to see them play (possibly)! Or warm the bench (probably). I took a video of Mary for those of you who don't get to see her live and in person. At least you can see her moving! She has the hiccups so she's not the happiest girl in the world, but she's still cute!

All figured out!

Well it's been a rough couple days in the Lubber's household. This weekend with Mary was one of the fussiest (is that word made up?) of all time, and she really looked like she was in pain. So I checked all the foods that I've eaten and it turns out that the soy burgers I eat have milk in them, and so does the taco seasoning I used Saturday night!!! This is just dumb, who puts milk in soy burgers?!?

Anyway, we went to the doctor to see what we could do and we've got her on a ridiculously expensive, but hypoallergenic, formula for the next week to see if that makes the blood in her stool go away. If so, then we know it's the milk allergy. Since it can take up to two weeks for the milk protein to get out of my system, we're waiting until late next week to try mixing some breast milk in with the new formula and seeing how she reacts.

I really think that this protein thing is the problem though, forget the tests. The rash on Mary's face is going away, and she isn't squirming when we feed her. The doctor will confirm it next week, but it just seems like this is what it is to me. We'll see if she's less fussy today! So far so good. Here are some pics, i can't resist ;) Check out her outfit in that pic with Ian sleeping. It's very J. Crew. We did go to Miami after all.These next two are from a little photo session we did with Brooklynn. Brooklynn is so cute with Mary. I need to get a video of the two of them because Brookynn just holds her and when we take Mary away she throws a fit. Then when I put Mary down for a nap Brooklynn kept saying, "baby, baby" and walking back to Mary's room. We had to barricade her because she'd just push the door open and walk right in. But it was really cute when we let her go in because she kept shushing us and whispering "baby, baby." She loves her cousin!

Why God gave us Mary:

The other day I was reading in Psalms and Psalm 105:19 says, "Until the time came to fulfill his dreams, the Lord tested Joseph's character." Joseph went through a lot of crap in life, but he wouldn't have been who he was, or had the faith that he did without going through all that stuff. Not that having a baby is anywhere near as hard as what he went through, but it reminded me that in order to grow, we have to go through hard things. For example, if you want to play soccer, you have to practice a lot to be good right? So if you want to have patience, you need opportunities to practice having patience. I think this is one of the big reasons that God gave us a fussy baby.

Another reason I think is because I was really judgmental before I had Mary. I still can be, but seeing how hard it can be and seeing how quickly some of the things I was SO adamant about before I had her just crumble when she's screaming, I've learned that I have no room to judge. And if I can't judge someone for simple things like that, why judge at all???

OK, enough of that. Here are some pictures:

1 month check-up

Mary had her one month check up on Wednesday and we found out that she has an allergy. We don't know what she's allergic to, but we know she's allergic to something and we can't do a test to find out what it is until she's three months old. So right now we're assuming it's dairy and cutting that out of my diet. Fun stuff. This post was really just so I could put up some new pictures.
I put a hat on her cause it's fall outside finally! This is how I found her when I got her out of the car:
And here are some cute ones that I took today: