Week 5 (Aug 20th-26th)

This week had a lot of firsts in Caroline's life.

Jake left for the first time since Caroline was born. He left very early Monday morning for New York City for the US Open. He will be gone for 3 weeks and we will miss him a ton. I am sending him a picture every day of Caroline so he can see how she is growing.

Tuesday Caroline and I went to lunch with the Scoop Group, which is a group of women who work for lobbyists. We met them at Harry's downtown and we had a great time. I needed to get out and socialize so it was fun and it was really good food. I had the chocolate bread pudding for desert and it was wonderful!

Some people may not know that I play volleyball on a city team every fall. This year my team decided not to play because we did not have enough people and could not recruit anyone to play with us in time. My friend Kinsley and I joined up with another team for this year. We had practice Thursday and it was Caroline's first time in a gym and first time watching volleyball. It was late and Caroline did not love being there, but there was a really nice woman who works at the gym who picked her up and walked her around.

Wednesday was Caroline's 1st trip to Maclay. We took Debbie lunch and visited all of my old teachers. Caroline was so good and we had fun. We may even go back this week too!
I have some friends who own a photography company and they came to take pictures of Caroline on Friday. We had a good time playing dress up with her and putting her in fun positions. The pictures are wonderful and if you want to go look at them click on this website http://share.shutterfly.com/action/pictures?a=67b0de21b356ab842526&sid=0BYuWbJw5YsWST
If you love these pictures and want to hire my friends here is their blog www.volajphotography.blogspot.com and their website address www.volajphotography.com.

Jake's grandmother came over to Tallahassee on Friday to spend some time with Caroline and I. We had a good time visiting with her most of the day and then met Pete and Brenda for dinner at old town. Grandma was a big help because she stayed up with me until I got Caroline down for the night. I think that was 11:30! I hope Grandma can come back again soon.

Caroline attended her first bid day on Sunday. I am the Zeta Tau Alpha New Member advisor for the FSU chapter and I went to check out the new girls. It was a hot day, but we had fun. She wore a little strawberry outfit so she fit right in with the Zetas. All of the girls loved her and want me to bring her back to the house more often. Hopefully Caroline will want to be a Zeta when she grows up.

Week 4 (Aug 13-19th)

Week 4 started off a little rough. We took Caroline back to the pediatrician on Tuesday to get her weight checked. She was 8lbs 10oz and we were very excited about her weight gain. The doctor was not as pleased as we were so she is making us supplement with formula. Jake and I are not happy about it, but if it gets the doctor off our back then we should do it for now. I can't wait to take her off of formula. We went back to the doctor on Friday and she weighed 9lbs 3 oz. We had a different doctor this time, thank goodness. She was much more compassionate and understood us when we said that we did not want to supplement anymore. We go back to the doctor at the end of September for Caroline's 2 month checkup.


I had to go to the doctor this week as well. I saw Dr. Douso and he said that I was healing well and that everything was fine. We are so sad that he will not be delivering babies anymore!



Michele, Walker and Will were in town again to visit with us and to help take care of my mother after shoulder surgery. Will is potty training so he can give Caroline his diapers. He is doing very well and we are so proud of him.




Philip, Ashby, Heather and Grandma came through Tallahassee on the way to the cape. This was Philip and Ashby's first time seeing Caroline. Philip fed her and she slept in Ashby's arms for a while. Grandma was the sleeping magnet this time. Caroline just sat in her arms for an hour, if not more, just as comfortable as she could be.
















Caroline smiled for the first time this week! Jake and I gave her a "Georgia Bath" (that is a washcloth only bath) and we were playing with her and all of a sudden she smiled. It was great! I can't wait for her to do it again because it was so cute.

Week 3 (Aug 6-12)

Kate and Ed came to visit us for a couple of days. They stayed with us and we had a good time visiting with them. Kate cooked soup for us one night and it was really good. We still have some in the freezer for later.

Thursday of this week I signed up for a pumping class at a local lactation service here in town called Best Beginnings. I had so many questions about pumping so I thought it would be very helpful. The class started off a little slow, but once we go to ask questions I started finding it very helpful. I am glad I went, but pumping is not going to be as easy as I hoped it would be.

Friday was Do's 82nd b-day. We all went to her house and Michele and Debbie cooked hot dogs for us. Jake, Caroline and I went and had a good time with everyone.

Here is a crazy pic of Caroline doing her Touchdown pose.

Jeff and Zach, Jake's uncle and cousin came to visit over the weekend. They would have come the weekend before, but Jeff was sick so just Vicki and Griffin came. They arrived on Saturday around lunch and stayed at our house for a while and then we met them over at Pete and Brenda's house for dinner. We had a good visit and I am very glad they came up from Tampa.

Week 2 (July 30-Aug 5th)

Caroline had her first real bath this week. I assume she did not like anything about it because she cried the whole time. Maybe she will learn to love it later in life.
She does seem to love her bouncy seat and her swing. She loves being soothed by large movement. We have to turn the swing on full blast or she is fussy. Our house is being taken over by baby stuff. We have diaper bags, car seats, the swing and bouncy seat, pacifiers, burp cloths, books about the care of babies, and everything else you could imagine sitting around. Babies have a ton of stuff to be so little.
We are all still sleeping pretty well at night. Of course we take occasional naps during the day. Jake and I are guilty of falling asleep rocking her to sleep. She is such a cuddler and we can't help but love that! Caroline and I attended our first Breastfeed support group meeting on Wednesday. It was nice to meet other new mothers and find out that we are not the only people that are sleep deprived. Actually the mothers I met said that their children, who are a little older than Caroline, only sleep 2-3 hours so we are very lucky. We caught ourselves a good one!
We had a lot of out of town visitors this weekend. Jake's aunt Vicki and cousin Griffin came to visit from Tampa. Caroline and Griffin have the same birthday and were born only 11 minutes apart. Jake's sister Kate and brother in law Ed came to visitand so did my sister Michele and her kids Walker and Will. Also Robin Giles, one of my best friends from college, came too but I forgot to take a picture while she was here.

Paulan's Wedding

Some of you know that my best friend Paulan got married on July 28, 2007. Unfortunately we could not travel all the way to Baton Rouge to attend the big event. We decided to go ahead and pretend that we were there...

We got all dressed up for the big event! I wore my bridesmaids dress, Jake put on his suit, and Caroline wore a cute white dress that Paulan gave her. We had a great time dressing up, but we really missed being there.

Here is a picture of the Zeta's that attended. L to R: Cassie Laird, Robin Giles, Mesha Steib (maid of honor), Paulan Smith Varnau (Bride), Summer McKee, Sarah Smith and Kelly Brewer.

Week 1

So week one was fun and challenging. Caroline seems to sleep pretty well...knock on wood. She is sleeping about 5 hours at a time so Jake and I are getting more sleep than most new parents as you can tell by the picture. We are still getting use to her schedule she has put us on. Caroline and I are still having a little trouble breastfeeding so we went to a consultation with Molly, our local lactation consultant. It went well and we were reassured that everything was going better than we expected. Just hanging out at home and trying to get things done.
We have had a few visitors this week including Susan, Andrew and Claire Wellman. Claire was very good with Caroline and even shared her taggie with Caroline. Susan is having a baby girl, Megan Grace, and is due in early October. Claire is going to be a great big sister and We can't wait to meet Megan!

A ton of people have brought us food and we want to thank everyone. We have eaten so well lately so thanks a bunch!

We also had our first Doctor's appointment for Caroline. We had Dr. Long, who was my pediatrician when I was little, so that was fun. He said that everything was going well and for us to come back in a week for her 2 week checkup.

She's here!

On July 23, 2007 Caroline Brooke Garner was born.

I started to have contractions on Saturday night while Jake and I were at the movie No Reservations with his parents and our friend Kinsley. They were about 30 minutes apart and were very short. They continued throughout the night and into the next morning but then stalled for a few hours in the afternoon. Jake and I thought that it could be false labor. The contractions returned later that night so we decided to go ahead and go to the hospital and find out what was going on. They confirmed that I was in labor and was 2 cm dilated. I was then given the option to be checked into the hospital or go home and sleep in my own bed. I decided to go home and sleep in my own bed. I did not sleep much Sunday night because the contractions became stronger and closer together. Jake and I woke up early Monday morning because I had my weekly doctors appointment and I insisted on going and having my doctor tell me weather or not to go to the hospital. He told us that I was about 2 cm dilated and to go check in at the hospital and he would see us over there. We were very excited, but I was scared at the same time. We got checked in at about 10:30am and were given a huge room! I kept joking that we could have fit 4 or 5 bunco tables in there with me. I was given an epidural around 1:00pm and then Jake and I took a nap so we could be rested for the rest of the day/night. We had family and friends come visit us until about 6:30pm when my doctor came in and said I was 9 cm and it was almost time to push. I started to push about 7:00pm and then at 7:49pm she was born. Pushing was not bad at all because of the epidural. I suggest every woman have one!

The hospital that we were at has a waiting private family waiting room attached to every labor and delivery room so our parents, sisters and other family members and friends were there to hear Caroline's first cry. We then had everyone come in the room in order to meet her. It was a long day and Jake and I were tired. We were moved into a postpartum room at 11:30pm and got settled. About an hour later they brought Caroline in to "room in" with us during our hospital stay. We had a good night taking care of her, but not much sleeping happened. It was so much fun, but a lot of hard work. We had a ton of visitors the next day . They brought candy, cards, flowers, food, and everything else you could think of. It was great. I did not get much sleep Tuesday night because Caroline and I stayed up teaching each other how to breastfeed. Jake did not get much sleep either because she kept waking up wanting to eat.

We were discharged on Wednesday a little before noon and we were so excited to get out of the hospital and get some fresh air. We arrived at home and tried to get settled in a bit. We had a good first night and Caroline slept for about 3-4 hours at a time which we were very pleased about.

We are going to try to post at least once a week so please check back when you get a chance.

Love,

Kelley, Jake and Caroline