Our First Solo Road Trip.......oh, my!

Well, it's official. Will and I successfully made our first road trip together. The funny thing is this was my first long road trip to make totally by myself as well. I know- I am 26, and that just sounds crazy that I've never driven longer than 2 hours on my own, but it is true! Why I decided to try it out with a 7 month old I'm not sure. I think it was pretty successful. I didn't get lost, and we both made it there and back in one piece. Will traveled like a rock star both ways until about the last hour. I will try and block those couple of hours from my memory forever:). Let's just say, we won't be doing that again for a LONG time!


However, the trip was TOTALLY worth it! We went to Lincoln, NE to see my mom's side of the family. My aunt and uncle, grandparents, and cousins all live there. Joe, Mandi, and their little boy Gabe will soon be moving to Florida, so this was one of the last times we would see them for a while. Also, my cousin Katie and her husband Ren came into town from KC, where they are both attending medical school. Will hadn't met any of them yet, so it was really important to me that everyone got to meet my little bundle of joy! Justin wasn't able to get off work, and I knew once school started back up, life would be completely crazy. Hence the fact that we made the trip by ourselves.

Mandi's son, Gabe and Will "playing" for the first time. I LOVE Gabe's face here! He wasn't too happy with Will taking his toys, but by the end of the weekend, Gabe was giving Will all kinds of love.

Will got to meet his Great Grandma for the first time. He was so sweet and calmly hung out on her lap.

I have always been so grateful for the relationship we have with our cousins. We can go so long without seeing each other, and when we get together, it feels like we haven't missed a beat. Mandi (middle of the pic) and I are the middle siblings, and we are both teachers and have little boys. Del and Katie are both the oldest siblings, are in medical school, and feel strongly about medical missions. We have always joked about how similar our life paths and goals have been!

Gabe is SO busy, and this picture captures that. He is pushing Will and Grandma around the room. Too cute!

Grandma and her two Great Grandsons

Will meeting Grandpa for the first time. Will LOVES getting noses, and Grandpa's was no exception to this. Grandpa suffered a stroke last summer, and has had some very serious complications from it. I'm so glad Will was able to meet and hang out with his Great Grandpa.

Saturday night we headed over to Omaha to celebrate Joe's birthday with my Aunt Mary's side of the family. Aunt Mary is one of 14 siblings, which means they have a lot of family! Now, I have a total of 8 cousins on both sides of my family, so I was shocked when an impromptu birthday party with family consisted of 30 people. It was great, though! They sure do know how to have a good time. We stayed up WAY too late, and around 1 am we had a fabulous dance party. I LOVE to dance for fun. I am not good, as most of my moves look like modified cheer moves, but if the music is pumping, I will be dancing. I think we, being my two cousins and one of theirs, danced a good hour and a half.

Here Katie and I are learning the "Hoe Down, Throw Down" dance. It only took us listening to that dumb song about 20 times to get it semi down. Ha. We were told by our teacher, Sam, that we didn't pick it up very quickly. Katie is obviously not doing the right move here. Ha!

We went swimming before the night got started. Will LOVED it and looked SO, SO sweet in his outfit!

After our great weekend trip to see family, it was time to head home. Will was posed and ready in his car seat for our long drive home. This is how Will rides in his car seat most of the time. He is totally relaxed and chilled!

Will was SO excited every time we took a break during the trip home. He may have been crying previously, but he was all smiles when I went in the back to talk and play with him on breaks. I could just eat that little face up. I love that I can tell Will is smiling by only looking at his eyes; they just light up. My in-laws always say Will smiles all over his face. I can't help but agree. Oh, how grateful I am that the Lord has entrusted this little guy into our care.

Happy Father's Day

Although this is late, I wanted to wish Justin a happy FIRST Father's Day!!!! Will LOVES his Daddy- L.O.V.E.S. There is no one that can make Will laugh and cackle like Justin can. Our house becomes a laugh fest when Justin gets home from work; I can hear Will cracking up from across the house! Justin is so natural and laid back when it comes to taking care of Will, which is a great balance to my somewhat crazy Mom ways. Even when Will is exercising his strong will and temper, Justin is so calm and sweet! It really melts my heart when I see the two of them together. It is obvious Will adores his Daddy!

At the NICU, Justin was so PATIENT with Will as he worked on eating. When I would get frustrated at how he was eating, Justin was just encouraging and gentle with our sweet baby boy.

Justin napping with Will

Will starting to realize how cool and funny Daddy is

Oh, how Will loves to sleep on his Daddy

Justin is very excited about raising a little Razorback!!!

Sweet Daddy/Son Picture

I am so grateful for a husband that loves being a dad and is so good at it! We love you very much! HAPPY FATHER'S DAY

Happy 6 Month Birthday

Happy Six Month Birthday to our sweet William James! It is AMAZING how much he has grown and changed in such a short amount of time. I recently boxed up his preemie, newborn, and 0-3 month clothes, and it is so hard to believe he was so, so tiny! It is already hard to remember what life was like without our sweet man; however, I do think it involved a lot more sleep!! Here are some pictures documenting parts of his first 6 months; some are from nice cameras and some from my iphone.

Sleeping peacefully in the NICU; I could just eat up that beautiful face! Our sweet friends Josh and Katie blew this picture up and brought it to the hospital for us to have. It was so thoughtful and is up in his room now.

We call this his "Grandpa face." He looks so wrinkly and somewhat confused here!

First time trying to eat and being burped. One of the NICU nurses showed us this technique for burping Will; he doesn't seem like he enjoyed it much!

Does it get any sweeter than this? Will took a while to get the whole suck, swallow, breath idea down.

After 15 days in the NICU, we are finally home! 15 days doesn't sound very long looking back now, but when we were there, it seemed like we were never going to make it out. We are so, so grateful for a healthy baby boy to bring home!

Here Will is on his ONE month birthday. Will had REALLY bad acid reflux that caused him to SCREAM about 2-3 minutes into every feeding. It was trying to say the least. We eventually found the miracle drug Prevacid that really helped him out. He still cried a lot, but at least I knew he was getting all the food he needed. Our doctor told us preemies are just fussier in general, however I think it may just be a "baby thing" the more I talk to other parents!

Not a great picture, but this was Will's VERY FIRST SMILE at his momma! He was six weeks and 3 days when he gave me this grin. I was so glad to have my phone right by me to capture this moment. He didn't smile frequently until he was about 8-9 weeks.

I am including this picture for two reasons.

1. I thought this little outfit was SO cute on him!

2. Our sweet guy has quite the temper on him; in the NICU our nurses kept telling us he had a quick temper, but we never really saw it there and brushed the comment off. Apparently, they knew what they were talking about because we saw it pretty soon after we got home. He is getting better now, but if he wants something...to eat, a toy, to be held....

he lets us know pretty quickly!

Will LOVES the bath and he recently started LOVING to eat/suck on his feet. It is actually pretty amazing at the flexibility he has!

He started sitting up at 5 months for REALLY short periods of time and gets better every time we try it. He is still working on it at 6 months, but he is getting a lot more stable and sure of what he's doing.

Will also recently started loving being in his bouncer. He also loves his exersaucer his Great Grandpa and Grandma got him. He is really starting to observe the world around him and loves being able to see what is going on. As I type this, he is bouncing away, babbling, and playing with the toys on the bouncer!

We very recently started trying rice cereal and baby food. He is getting better at it and pretty much likes everything we have tried. At the suggestion of our doctor, we tried prunes first because the poor boy used to go 9-10 days between pooping. He surprisingly liked them. Since then we have tried carrots and squash; both he seems to enjoy!

This was our first attempt with carrots; Will sneezed and got it EVERYWHERE!

We have Will's six month appt. on the 29th, so we will see how big he has gotten! I do know he has already TRIPLED his birth weight!!!

We are incredibly grateful God has allowed us to become the parents of the sweetest, cutest boy around!

Let's Start at the Very Beginning.....A Very Good Place to Start...

In order for this to be a place for me to keep up with Will, I want to go back to the beginning of his life. He had quite the dramatic entry into this world- a little too soon if I may add! So, to go back to the beginning, I am heading back to my pregnancy!

My pregnancy was going great; I felt great and loved being pregnant. Here is a picture of me at 26 weeks.

Mr. Will was growing great and everything was pretty ideal. Around 32 weeks I started to notice I was getting a little swollen; I asked my doctor, and she told me to not eat so much sodium. I went along on my merry way. The swelling continued, and I started gaining weight pretty rapidly. Honestly, it didn't matter what I did; the pounds seemed to pack on regardless of my water drinking, eating healthy self. It was actually very discouraging! One night after a basketball game I documented my swollen calves. Justin may kill me for posting this, but they must be exposed to understand the amount of swelling!

Sexy, I know:).

I promise in real life they don't look like this; it was quite shockingto say the least. Unfortunately, they actually got even bigger before I had Will; this was probably about 33 weeks along.

At 34 weeks, my doctor cleared me to go and watch Justin graduate seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. Again, she attributed the swelling to sodium intake. We left on a Thursday, Dec. 10 and came back the Saturday before I had Will on Dec. 17th. I am so, so grateful my body held out until we were home! How awful would that have been?? I am also so glad I was able to be there for Justin's big day!

Anyway, Wednesday, Dec.16th I started to feel REALLY bad. We had plans to hang out with some new friends; Justin didn't want to cancel, so I went to Tim's and a Razorback b-ball game feeling really icky. In Justin's defense, he nor I realized how bad I really was feeling!

The next day at school I still felt pretty bad. During my 5th period class I got a really bad headache and started to realize something was wrong. I got my blood pressure checked and it was 150/110. My sweet friend Katie insisted we head to the doctor. When we got there, they immediately sent me down to triage and quickly diagnosed me with pre-eclampsia. My bp got up to 180/120 and the decision was made that Will needed to make his appearance ASAP. Because my bp was so high, they had to put me on something calling Magnesium Sulfate (I think...I could be off a little). They also made the decision I was in no shape to be induced and needed an emergency C-section. Here Justin is suited up ready to have this baby!!

Here are some of the first pictures of our William James Paslay

December 17, 2009

7:43pm

5 pounds 3 ounces

18.5 inches

REALLY unhappy to be out. Because he wasn't breathing well, they weren't able to give him a bath or clean him well. So, he is still a little white!

Love this picture of Will being shown to the waiting room!

Our sweet little guy still in the nursery. They give babies a little while to try and breath on their own before they take them to the NICU.

Okay, I have given WAY too many details. I will have to finish our NICU story another time! Justin does always tell me I give too many details when telling stories! Obviously, I will need to finish documenting his first 6 months of Will's life on several different posts!

Totally an Amateur

Well, this is officially my first attempt at entering the blog world. I feel very much like an amateur trying to figure this all out! There will definitely not be any bells and whistles to this blog for some time; I am thinking it will be a continual work in progress:). I would normally have called a friend who is an expert blogger to figure it all out, but I recently made a goal to be more self sufficient and to not always ask how to do things. So, this is my first amateur attempt!

After having Will, I spent countless hours in the night reading blogs. My little man may be very sweet and cute, but he is most certainly not a great sleeper! Because we don't have cable, and I get sucked into buying fancy vacuums, work out plans, and blenders from infomercials, I occupied my mind reading about other people's lives on their blogs. I loved getting to know what was going on with their lives- some I knew personally and some I just found through friends' blogs. I love the idea of having so many details about everyday life in one spot. I can already tell I'm forgetting details about Will, and he is only 6 months old (well 2 days shy of his 6 month birthday)! So, hopefully this will be where I can keep up with what is going on in our family.

So, for my first post I will leave some pics of our sweet, growing little guy.

(my sis-in-law Chelsea took the picture on the left and at the top of the page- one of the pictures is at the top b/c I can't figure out how to move it down with the other two.....again, SO AMATEUR!!)