NYC

Morgan and I had our first baby free weekend get away this past weekend. Since he has been working in CT we decided to meet in New York City. It was SOOO much fun!! I had not been back since I moved from NJ about 10 years ago (that is a long time!) and Morgan has only been once so we were so excited to do this together. We stayed at the Hilton on Times Square and loved being in the middle of everything! Friday evening we got to meet up with my friend Marissa and her boyfriend Craig for dinner on Murray Hill. We were inseparable before I moved to TX and it was like we picked up right where we left off! It was so special to get to see her! Next time we go we will stay longer and spend more time with them! Thanks for a GREAT night Rissa and Craig!! And Congrats to Marissa who got promoted to Associate Buyer while we were waiting in her office lobby!! So excited for you! Does that make us your good luck charms? ha ha.


Saturday we saw all the sights! We WALKED and WALKED and WALKED!! (Morgan google mapped our trip and we walked over 8 miles on Saturday!!) Our legs were burning by the end of the day, but we had a BLAST! It was so nice to just spend some quality time together. We started in Battery Park and ended in Central Park. We did as much as we could in between. We saw the financial district, hit up China town, ate in little Italy (Lombardi's for lunch...yum!), walked through Greenwich and SOHO, stopped by the Empire state building, Times square, and then headed down 5th til we hit the Plaza! Quite a day! We ended the day with dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe and then headed back to the hotel for room service dessert and a movie.


Sunday we just walked in Central Park and did some more window shopping on 5th Ave before heading to the airport. Relaxing. Oh and did I mention they had record setting highs for the weekend weather? Yep, April in NYC in the 90's?? SOOOO glad I had brought some shorts! It was a fantastic trip and it made me even more excited to go back for a longer weekend to take in more of what the city has to offer. Oh and to do some more shopping, we didn't have time to do much, so next time i will really have a lot to make up for! ha ha ha. I must commend myself for walking through SOHO and down 5th without buying much at all! This trip was extra cool b/c I felt like I got a feel for some of the different areas of the City. Makes me that much more excited to go back!


JD stayed with my parents all weekend and had a BLAST! I'm sure they spoiled his rotten, a true win win for everyone! Especially, b/c they wore him out so badly that he slept til 9:30 on Monday morning!!! (which means so did I) JD has never slept til 9:30 unless he went down for an early morning nap. ha ha. So thanks mom and dad, he will be back again this weekend...JUST KIDDING! Kidding aside, thank you guys so much for allowing us the weekend away. We really appreciate it!


Here are some pics from our wonderful weekend:

Carriage Ride in Central Park

Marissa and me at Dinner. Pardon my tired eyes.

Morgan in the Financial District
Hanging out with old Friends!
The start of our day Saturday!

Easter Weekend

I hope everyone had a great Easter. We sure did! Morgan came in on Thursday night and got to work from the house on Friday. It was so great to have him a day early this week! My sis-in-law Lindsay came in Friday afternoon and we had a great time just hanging out and visiting with her all weekend. J.David really enjoyed having her here to play with! Due to Morgan's travel schedule our weekend was filled with errands that we were not able to accomplish daddy-free during the week, luckily Lindsay was forewarned of this and was a great sport!

Sunday was busy but great! Before church we had an egg hunt in the living room and saw what the Easter Bunny brought for JD. He loves hunting for those eggs! He also got a special delivery package via Aunt Lindsay from his Mimi and Jay Pops. He had a fun morning and loved having Jelly Beans with breakfast. ha ha ha. We then headed off to church and delivered some beautiful roses for Alexander on the way. It was a great way to start the days events! After church we had a FANTASTIC brunch at my parents' house that was complete with another egg hunt for JD, more Easter gifts, candy, and a birthday celebration for my dad. (still not 50 but gettin' close!) We had a lot of fun hanging out with my sisters and fam before saying bye to Lindsay and then heading off to my uncle's house for Easter Dinner. Talk about eating well. We visited and had a good time with the Brockhaus side of the family into the evening. We came home pooped, but it was well worth it! Here are some pics from our Fun weekend!

Aunt Z-Z, and Auntie Em showing J.David how to use the playground equipment.

Dying Egg on Saturday night...he LOVED it!The finished products. "The Brown Egg" is a tradition of my dad's that had to be passed on!

The Easter BasketThe Hunt (obviously successful!)
Family Photo (why don't Toddlers smile for pics?)

Aunt Lindsay and the boys

Showing off all the eggs he found at Granny and Pap-pa's.

Starting the search, just not quite awake from the car ride...ha ha ha.

Finding the goodies inside the eggs!

Kisses for the Birthday boy! JD loves Pap-pa! Granny and Pap-pa with the life of the party!

Easter Egg Hunt, the mom-mobile, and just some cute new pics.

Saturday was the annual Easter Egg Hunt with our church. J.David loved hunting for eggs and did a great job! We were actually really surprised. There was a 12 egg limit and we thought we were going to have to lead him and slide some eggs in his basket for him...WRONG! He watched the little boy next to him grab one egg and he was OFF. ha ha. We actually had to stop him from hunting and put a few back b/c he went over the 12 egg limit. It was hilarious...ALL BOY!

Here are the pics! There is one of him and his buddy Asher hunting together and one with Easter Bunny and our small group mommies and babies (minus Becky, Grace, and Andrea). The last one is of him trying to fall asleep in the car while Morgan and I were trying to keep him awake. He thought we were funny, but not funny enough to open his eyes.

He has been soooo stinkin cute lately. Here are some of his new favorites:

-he loves to pretend he is a dog, he crawls around "barking" (hilarious!)
-he is really trying to talk. it doesn't always make sense but he is really repeating what we say and you can tell he is learning sooo much!!

-he is saying mama, dada, gurl (squirrel), wawa (water), key, car, bubbles (his fave), three, go, jaxon, pap-pa, mimi, shoe, please, ball, and other things I can't remember or that we will ask him to repeat.

-he is slowly working away from the paci, it is crib time only now.

-loves his blankie
-gives butterfly kisses and likes to fist pound (ha ha ha)

-feeds himself with a spoon (and makes it to his mouth with food!)

-still LOVES music and loves to dance

-knows where most of his body parts are

-thinks quacking like a duck is SO funny, once he starts he won't stop!

These are just a few for my record keeping. Thanks for allowing me the opportunity to brag on my little guy. ha ha.

Running around the backyard.

Playing with sidewalk chalk.

Playing Doggie...his is laughing b/c i was saying "come here doggie...good boy!"
Such a good helper.

So Proud b/c he put this hat on all by himself!

Looking in the backyard for squirrels!

Love that smile!

"I don't want to smile!"

And lastly, the mom-mobile. For anyone that knows me well, I have probably told you that I will NEVER drive a minivan. Well, guess what?! I am eating those words!! ha ha ha. We have been car searching for months and after lots of research have decided that the thing I have been fighting for so long is the one things that fits ALL of my car needs. So, we took the plunge on Saturday! I am officially a mom, and is it funny that I feel more like a "grown-up" mom? stupid i know, but i do. Anyway, I love it and hope to one day fill it up with babies and lots of love and laughter. And for those of you laughing right now b/c i just went against everything i believed in...no hard feelings b/c i too am still laughing at myself! for those of you that think I'm uncool now....go check one out, drive it, and see the SPACE! then tell me who's uncool! ha ha ha!

Friday's Appointment

I wanted to thank everyone for your constant prayers. We had our appointment on Friday and physically I am doing great. The tests confirmed that it was an infection that took our sweet Alexander. This is extremely rare since the amniotic sac is intended to keep out bacteria, but for some reason it did not for me. According to the tests run on Alexander (there are still a few more results still pending) he was a completely healthy baby boy. This brought me both tears of joy and sadness. I find comfort in knowing that he was a healthy, perfect baby boy, in some way it validates even more his short life, but it also cuts even deeper knowing that this rare case of infection took the life of a perfect, innocent child.
To answer a few of those open-ended questions...

1. Could this have been prevented?
No, they do not know how this happens, why it happens, or how to prevent it. It is simply a "fluke" thing that is very rare.

2. Why didn't they catch this?
Due to how rare this is and how quickly it moves there was nothing pointing them to this. My crazy week of traveling, illness, and business explained all my symptoms and Alexander, along with everything else on the monitor looked perfect Tuesday morning.

3. What if i would not have gone into labor?
If they had suspected and tested me for infection there would have been nothing they could have done to stop or post pone labor. If they would have discovered the infection before labor set in they would have had to put me into labor.

4. Future children?
As far as they can tell it is highly unlikely that this will affect my ability to conceive or carry a perfectly healthy baby. For preventive reasons i will have some blood work done and be sent to a high risk doctor in a few weeks. The dr. basically just wants to get a second opinion on the situation to ensure that they would not do anything differently so whenever we are ready to have another baby we will be prepared.

Overall it was a very bittersweet appointment. It was good in knowing that we left there with the knowledge of what it was, but sad because we don't know why. Good knowing that we still have a positive future to look forward to, but heartbreaking to know that we will always be missing one perfectly healthy baby boy. We left there with a good sense of closure for the situation, and we praise God for that. Now we can focus on healing our hearts and our sweet J.David!

J.David

This post is about J.David. It's been a while since I posted about him. He is really growing into this amazing little boy! He understands so much and even though most of what he says is in a language i have never heard before, he is really trying to talk to us. He is so full of love and joy. There is not a day that goes by where I don't laugh at something he does or smile because even though he may not say the words "I love you" he will do something to make sure I know he does. That's not to say we don't have fits...screaming and throwing himself on the floor are part of his new fit-ness program, but he full of more good days than bad ones. He has no idea what has been to me lately. He always knows when to bring us a smile and cheer us up. We are so thankful for him and his ability to bring so much light to such a dark time. Thank you, God, for my precious J.David. I know HE is working through my son to help give me the strength to move forward. Here are some cute pics of the last week of so...

Playing with his new dump truck and wearing Daddy's hat. Couldn't take it off of him!

Helping Daddy and Jay Pops roll out mommy's new rug. Pics of new Living Room coming soon!
Scraping his "cleats" in the Cardinal dugout! He put his Teddy Bear there to look outside with him. SOOO cute!! We tried to move the bear, and he kept putting it right back facing outside...ha ha ha.
Playing golf outside with Daddy. Here he is practicing his caddy skills.

For a quick update: We are doing really good and are so grateful for all the cards, calls, prayers, and encouragement. We are so blessed to have such an amazing support system. We buried Alexander last Thursday with a small private graveside service. It was so beautiful and his location is perfect. Please just continue to pray for us as we continue to heal and also for my Dr. visit on Friday. We are going to find out the results of the tests that they ran on both Alexander and myself to help solve this mystery. There is a significant chance that there will be no findings and we are simply going to have to accept that this was a "fluke" type of situation. Please pray that we are accepting of whatever we find out. Thank you!!

Before the Storm...(lots of pics)

The week before we lost Alexander we had a wonderful mini-vacation with J.David. We went down to Orlando to see Morgan and spent 5 days there with him. It was so wonderful to enjoy some warm weather and take it easy! We got there on a Wednesday and found out that Morgan was actually going to get Thurs and Friday off...A four day weekend!! woo hoo!! We went to a Braves spring training game, Seaworld, and best of all Magic Kingdom. We had a blast!! Sadly the last day we were there Morgan and I caught a bug and didn't leave the hotel room. It was sad, but luckily it was only a 24 hour thing and we were fine by flying home time. Here are some fun pictures from our trip. Enjoy!!

Reunion Dinner with Daddy at Jason's Deli

Braves Game @ Disney! Full of hotdog eating, smiles, and J.David screaming "GO GO GO!!"

Seaworld! This day trip was more for mom and dad but JD really enjoyed Shamu's show and the dolphins. Daddy loved the rollercoaster!

Of all the fun places we went JD LOVED the playground at the hotel best! ha ha. It doesn't take much to make them happy at this age!

Magic Kingdom! We took the ferry over, met Pluto, Buzz lightyear, mickey and minnie. We had so much fun and although he wouldn't smile for the camera almost all day JD loved every min of it! (except for maybe the characters.) His favorite rides were Dumbo and Small World. At least someone likes Small World. ha ha. He also really enjoyed the parade that night. I just wish he would have embraced his Mickey ears. We had to distract him with ice cream for that picture.

Of course we have to wear our new Mickey sunglasses home!