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!!