Snoozing

Posted on January 20, 2013 by Mdfrisco

Look at what Jacob found last night…

His thumb! He was sucking away with all his might.

We spent the morning at church and actually made it on time! We high fived each other in the car on the way because this was our first outing that required us to be somewhere by a certain time (besides doctors appointments) and I didn’t think we would make it. Granted it took us 3 hours to get everyone ready and fed, but we did it! After our big morning we came home and took our 2 week picture
Now we are snoozing with daddy watching football…

Happy Sunday!!

Jacob Carl Frisco

Posted on January 19, 2013 by Mdfrisco

Thanks to Facebook, phone calls, emails, texts and word of mouth…I’m sure you have all heard the news that he has arrived! Jacob Carl Frisco was born January 6, 2013 at 9:04 am, he was 7 lbs 8 oz and 20 inches long. He’s perfect! We are so in love! I will save the story about my labor and delivery for another post, but all in all everything went well.
These last 2 weeks have flown by in such a blur, so much has happened and I want to write it all down before I forget, so here goes…

Jacob was born on Sunday, January 6th and we came home from the hospital on Monday, January 7th. Sharp Mary Birch is a fantastic hospital, but it felt so good to come home!

We’ve visited our pediatrician 3 times, whose office is literally right down the street. So we have already put our stroller to use. We absolutely love him! He is such a nice man and I trust him completely. As you may know it is normal for babies to loose weight after birth until the mother’s milk comes in. So at his first appointment (at 3 days old) he went from his birth weight of 7 lbs 8 oz to 6 lbs 14 oz. Two days later (at 5 days old) we saw him again and he was almost back up to his birth weight weighing in at 7 lbs 5 oz. Our pediatrician was surprised at how fast he regained his weight and actually weighed him twice at two different scales to make sure it was accurate! Since then Jacob has been labeled an overachiever! His weight gain didn’t surprise me that much since I know first hand how demanding he is when it comes to eating, ow!! The 3rd visit was at 11 days old for his circumcision, that day he weighed in at 8 lbs 4 oz. He handled it like a pro and didn’t seem to be in any pain afterwards, I didn’t have to give him any medicine and he never cried.
Speaking of crying…he rarely does. We truly have been blessed with a very content, good baby! He loves to snuggle and be held, but he is also okay with being put down in his crib/bouncer/swing/car seat. Occasionally he’ll let out a brief wail to let us know something but then stops. We keep waiting for the other shoe to drop and all of a sudden he will be crying non stop, but that hasn’t happened. Like I said, he’s perfect!

We gave him his first bath.
We’ve had visits from friends and family. Grandpa Lance, Auntie Stacey and the Hardy family came to meet Jacob while we were in the hospital. I was a little out of it and didn’t get any pictures of them. The Ford family came after we got home and Jacob got to meet one of his girlfriends who is 3 weeks older than him.
Aunt Heidi came for dinner one night
Auntie Dana brought us lunch and snuggled with Jacob for the afternoon.

Papa, Noni and GiGi (Justin’s parents and grandmother) came for the day and brought us lunch.

The Haigis family came one afternoon and Jacob met his other girlfriend…two girlfriends in less than 2 weeks, we are going to have to keep an eye on this guy 🙂
Our good friends took Apollo to dog sit the first week while we got settled in at home, so they brought him home and the two brothers finally met. The first few days Apollo wasn’t quite sure what to do about Jacob. Every time Jacob made a noise or cried, Apollo would cry. He was really curious. With every passing day he is less and less curious and is starting to get used to the new noises and smells. I’m sure they will be good friends in no time!
Grandpa brought Oma and Opa (Michelle’s dad and grandparents) to visit for a day.

We took a picture of the 4 generations

I am planing on taking a picture every week with his giraffe and elephant to watch his growth. Very ambitious of me, I know, we’ll see if it actually gets done every week…but here’s week 1.
We had a photographer come and do his newborn photos, I can’t wait to see them and share with you!
And then it was time for me to give my mom back to my dad. My mom has been with us since I went into labor and she has been a huge help with meals and cleaning and of course spoiling Jacob with love and affection. Grandmas are amazing and it was so reassuring for me to have her around to ask “is this normal?” or “what do I do now?” and I could take a real nap knowing that Jacob was in good hands. We are so thankful for all her help and it was a sad day when she left. Can’t wait for her to come back and visit!
It has been a busy, busy 2 weeks!! Now it has been fun settling into our new “normal” and figuring out our new family dynamics. Thank you for all your notes, texts, emails and calls, keep them coming, it helps to have something to read while I am trying to stay awake during the 2:00 am feeding 🙂

Almost 3…

Posted on January 4, 2013 by Mdfrisco

Yes, I know I am on a blogging roll! So much to share these days! We had our follow up appointment today and I am now almost 3 cm dilated! I am still having a few mini contractions a day, but they are random and nothing to really keep track of. Everything else looks great, he is in position still and she guessed him to be about 7 to 7.5 lbs. She basically told me it could be any day. So we wait…There are things that I heard about pregnancy and always thought they would never been an issue with me, now that I am 38 weeks, I can say that I was wrong. Here are the things that surprised me the most.

Tying my shoes…
Pssshh…I’ll always be able to tie my shoes, or bend over to pick something up…yeah right. For the most part during my pregnancy, I wore flip-flops or slip-ons which made taking my shoes on and off so easy, I never thought twice about the difficulty of this simple task. Now that it has been so cold (yes I know I am in Southern California, but it has been really cold by Southern California’s standards) I’ve been breaking out my uggs, boots and tennis shoes and the simple task of putting on my shoes has now been transferred over to my husband. I just can’t do it anymore.

Preggo brain…
Throughout the years while all my friends were pregnant, I kept hearing them talk about “preggo brain” and I never really thought much about it or took it seriously. If you know me well you know that I have a pretty good memory and am able to recall things with specific detail. I am the one that my friends turn to to when they can’t remember something. I can remember things like street names, birthdays, wedding anniversaries, I am great with directions, recalling what someone was wearing, what year something happened, etc… you get the point. On the day I took my pregnancy test, I had blood work done at my doctors office in the morning, my mom was in town and after my appointment we went to breakfast, did some shopping and ran some errands while we waited for the phone call with the results. That day I can’t tell you how many wrong turns I took, forgetting to go somewhere we needed to go, I almost felt like a stranger driving in my own town, I didn’t know where I was going, and that is really unusual for me, Justin would be the first to tell you that I am a backseat driver and am constantly telling him where to go. I figured I was distracted since I was waiting for my test results, besides at 4 weeks pregnant, preggo brain is not really that much of a problem, right?

One morning earlier in my pregnancy, Justin and I were getting ready for work and I said something about him taking the dog out for a walk before he left, he looked at me and said “I have my morning meeting today, remember” meaning it was my turn to walk the dog. I said “No, it’s Tuesday, you have your meetings on Wednesday, you always walk the dog on Tuesday mornings”, again he looked at me and this time had kind of a funny look on his face and said “No my meetings have been on Tuesday mornings, for a long time” and I was so adamant that he was wrong and his meeting was on Wednesday, that I actually made him second guess himself and he reached for his iPhone to check his calendar, of course he had his meeting on Tuesday AM. He kissed me good bye and I took the dog for a walk. While I was walking the Apollo I was still mulling things over in my head and feeling really confused, but it eventually did hit me that his meetings really were on Tuesdays (in my defense, about 2 years ago they used to be on Wednesdays, so I guess I was traveling back in time?) It doesn’t end there…after walking & feeding the dog I finished getting ready for work and left for the day. When I was halfway to my office I was thinking about something I saw on the news while I was getting ready (don’t ask me what, I don’t remember!) and I was thinking about the TV and couldn’t remember if I had turned it off before I left. But I was not too worried, leaving the TV on would at least provide Apollo with some kind of entertainment. But then I started wondering what else I didn’t do before I left and remembered that I had curled my hair, so I started wondering if I unplugged the curling iron and for the life of me could not remember if I did. In fear or burning down my house, I texted a friend at work and told her I would be late, and turned around. Sure enough, I got home the TV was blaring, curling iron plugged in and to top it off I had left the downstairs window open, which is like an invitation for someone to remove the screen and come into our house (although Apollo would probably bite their leg off). After I turned off the TV, unplugged the curling iron & closed the window, I started my drive back to work laughing at myself and realized that this was truly my first official preggo brain day. So to all my friends, I believe you now, preggo brain is a legitimate thing.

And I am sorry I don’t have a 38 week belly shot to show you. I just simply don’t have the energy right now to put something on that I don’t mind being photographed in and then downloading it to my computer to post on the blog, it’s the little things these days. But here’s a picture of my first baby, he’s absorbing all the love he can get before the little one comes.

Thanks for checking in and will keep you posted 🙂

Showers of love

Posted on January 2, 2013 by Mdfrisco

We always talk about how blessed we are to have such an amazing support group of family and friends. We both come from big families that truly enjoy being together and celebrating together. We have some fantastic friends from college and church who have become our San Diego family. We both also work with some pretty awesome people which is great since we spend all day with them during the week. Plus our childhood friends, clients turned friends and others who we have created friendships with along the way. When we announced that we were pregnant I knew there would be plenty of people who would be so happy for us, but I never imagined the outpouring of love that came from everyone or all the people who wanted to celebrate with us. It has really been special. These people came together and gave baby Frisco 4 baby showers, they’ve sent gifts from all over and they can’t wait to meet him and welcome him into our circle of family and friends. I intended to get a group photo at each of my showers and take lots of pictures along the way…but that didn’t really happen. I’ve learned there are times when I am in the photography mode and want to document everything, but there are also times when I just want to kick back and enjoy it all. Thankfully there were others who took on the job of photographer so I do have a few pictures to share.

First up was Justin’s office. It is not very common that an office that consists of mostly men would get together for a baby shower, but with the wonderful planning of the (female) office administrative assistant they gave us a fun shower! We played baby Pictionary, where everyone agreed that hopefully baby Frisco will not inherit our drawing skills, although I have to say that Justin does have a pretty good artistic side to him, but he wasn’t showing it off that day. We had lots of snacks and yummy cupcakes. We opened gifts and received lots of well wishes and a personalized poem for baby Frisco. Then it was time for family. My aunt hosted both sides of our family at her house. Most of our family lives in Southern California so almost everyone was able to come. We played some games, including one where we all had the name of some famous baby, group of kids, real or cartoon on our backs and we had to ask people yes or no questions to try and figure out who we were. It was a great way to get the party started. Lunch and lots of yummy treats were served. While opening gifts we had the person whose gift I was opening tell a funny story about Justin or I when we were a baby, which brought on some laughs! Everyone brought books along with their gifts to build a library for baby Frisco and I had them all write a note to him on the inside of the books so we can think of them as we read along. I am so excited about the library he has now! Since it was November and we are having a little man, we had a moustache theme in honor of Movember.

Next we celebrated with my girlfriends. One of my San Diego girlfriends paired up with my best childhood friend and threw us another shower. I love all these women and the fact that they are all currently moms to one or two little ones makes for a wonderful resource/support group. This is the group where I soak up the stories and advice and am so thankful that I have them to turn to and lean on when needed. The day was filled with lots of personal touches and crafty Pinterest ideas. The girls who threw the shower are some pretty serious San Diego Charger fans and they did have a little bit of Charger touches here and there…but as hard as it was for them, they did respect Justin’s team and decorated with the Pittsburg Steelers in mind.
This was the one shower that I did get a group shot

And remember these girls…they now have their little girls cradled in their arms!
Last but not least was my office. Opposite of Justin my office consists of mostly women, and with women a baby is definitely a cause for celebration! Two of the girls got together and threw a shower filled with lots of yummy food and champagne cocktails (virgin for me of course)! It is so great to work with people who enjoy being together even after we have worked together all day long. Almost everyone in the office was able to come and baby Frisco got so many fantastic gifts. Sadly we didn’t take any pictures at that shower, but we did get a picture of the adorable Little Prince cake!

Outside of the showers, we’ve had friends take us out to dinner or brunch to celebrate, we get phone calls, emails and texts from people asking if there is anything we need and we are getting gifts from our parents friends. It really has been overwhelming how awesome people are. The bottom line is, it’s really not about the parties and gifts but all the love that everyone has for this little boy. Who knew he would be so popular before he was even born, he is a pretty lucky guy!

Thank you everyone for all your support, we can’t wait for you to meet our little boy!

Twenty Twelve

Posted on December 31, 2012 by Mdfrisco

Yesterday morning at church our pastor asked us to stop and think about the best year of our lives…This was a hard question. There are so many milestones, accomplishments, vacations and fun things we’ve done over the years it is hard to pick just one. I was thinking about when I graduated college, all the fantastic vacations we’ve taken, the year we planned our wedding and got married, etc… But then I started thinking about what I’ve learned in those years and how they have changed me as a person, it was really a thought provoking question. After a few minutes, he asked us to raise our hand if our best year was 20+ years ago, within the past 10 years, 5 years or this last year. As he was asking I was still deep in thought and then both Justin and I raised our hands when he asked if it was this last year. We looked at each other, smiled and Justin put his hand on my belly.

As you know from our story, 2009-2011 were some pretty rough times for us. Sure we took some vacations, celebrated some milestones and had lots of fun along the way, but there was another part of our lives where we were struggling to start a family and it was pretty dark and really hard. 2012 started off pretty hard as well, with some unexpected surprises, surgeries and the stress of going through IVF. But it worked, and it was all worth it. Other than the obvious reason that we are pregnant, I also choose this last year as one of the best years of my life because of what I learned about myself, my husband and our relationship. It wasn’t easy, it wasn’t all fun and games, and we didn’t take any wonderful vacations. But I know that I married a wonderful man, our relationship is solid and I know that we can survive the hard times hand in hand. The reconfirmation of that in this past year is also what made 2012 a wonderful year.

I love it when people ask you questions that really make you stop and think. Usually this time of year, we are busy making plans for our New Year’s Eve celebration. It becomes more about staying up past midnight, champagne, noisemakers, dressing up and dancing the night away or watching the ball drop on TV, which is great and I don’t see anything wrong with that. But maybe we should take just a few minutes to stop and reflect back on the year no matter how great or how difficult it was and think about not only what you did, but what you learned about yourself and others, it can really open your eyes and maybe it will help us to make some more realistic resolutions for the new year!

I have a feeling at the end of 2013 I’m going to say that was my best year since we will actually have our little boy in our lives and I know that we have lots of struggles, fun times and learning experiences to look forward to.

Since I cannot do a post without a picture…I’ve waited years to be able to park in the expectant mother parking spaces, and this year I was finally able to do that 🙂

Happy New Year!

Almost 2

Posted on December 28, 2012 by Mdfrisco

Hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas! I can’t believe how fast it flew by! We had our parents, Justin’s grandma and my brother and family over for a traditional German feast on Christmas Eve,
followed by a great service at our church and then back to our house for dessert and game playing. Christmas morning it was our parents, Justin’s grandma and Justin’s sister Stacey and Sue, we had our usual Quiche and homemade sweet rolls. We opened presents

New golf shoes for the daddy to be

and I got the MommaRoo I wanted 🙂

Apollo played Santa
and Molly helped shred the wrapping paper

We had a lot of laughs, played more games and settled down for Christmas dinner. It was a wonderful time with family.

Now that Christmas is over, we’ve spent the last 2 days putting away decorations and finishing up the piles of laundry for baby Frisco. My hospital bag is packed and the car seat is installed. I had an OB appointment this afternoon and all is well, we heard his strong heartbeat and she measured my belly. My blood pressure is good, she also noted that I’ve lost weight since my last appointment, I reminded her that it was actually because I had quite the splurge the day of my last appointment, I learned my lesson not to do that the day I have to weigh in 🙂 And the most exciting thing is she determined after an exam that I’ve started thinning and am almost 2 cm dilated!!! She said what I thought were Braxton Hicks I’ve been feeling actually could be mini contractions, or both. So it could be any day…or a few weeks…we shall see…

Here’s my 37 week belly – Merry Christmas!

Smile

Posted on December 19, 2012 by Mdfrisco

When I was looking for a photographer to do a maternity session, I was trying to find a reasonably priced one. Photographers are not cheap, and with good reason, since I’ve been exploring the world of photography I have a much better appreciation for what goes on to achieve that perfect photo. Especially all the work that is done on the computer after the photo shoot. After researching many photographers I was sitting in the waiting room at my doctors office and they have these gorgeous photos of one of my OB’s kids on the wall and the photographer’s business cards readily available. So I grabbed a card, looked at her website and decided to contact her. There was a discount if you were a patient of my doctor, so we scheduled a session. I was wanting something outdoors that was more of a natural setting rather than a perfectly manicured photo. I was asking her if she knew of any wooded area in San Diego that wouldn’t require us to drive an hour to Julian or somewhere in the mountains. She said there was such a spot she has always wanted to try and was wondering if we would be up for it. Turns out it was exactly what I wanted!

There was a forest of trees and a pathway going through

We took our time trying out all different kinds of angles and poses

Turns out the path was a jogging path, so we had to jump out of the way for a few joggers

But it was perfect, just what I had in mind…

The lighting coming through the trees was beautiful

An outfit change and location change later we found ourselves at the top of Torrey Pines

Looking forward to this picture in the future only replacing the stuffed elephant with a little boy

I love the pop of blue with this neutral setting

This is Justin’s favorite one, he calls this my sassy pose. I have this same picture 6 years earlier, only I’m in my wedding dress

Another outfit change and we headed down the hill to Torrey Pines State Beach

Just in time for the sunset!

San Diego is such an amazing place to live!

Beautiful family

Posted on December 17, 2012 by Mdfrisco

So remember the post I did about those kind of friends…well another family that fits into that category are these people. We’ve known Drew & Keri for a several years through our church. Actually, Keri’s family and Justin’s family are old friends and go back even further. It is a small world since years later we ended up in a different city, at the same church and living about 2 miles apart. We’ve been in the same small group and spent many nights at their house in fellowship. Another thing that makes them good people in our book is they are Pittsburgh Steeler fans and we enjoy getting together to watch games with them!

Drew and Keri have 4 beautiful children, 2 boys & 2 girls, the perfect combination! The thing I love about them is no matter how busy or crazy their lives are (remember, 4 kids!) they always make time for you and always make an effort to get to know new people and build friendships. They are sincere, genuine and a lot of fun. I also love their parenting style, they have a calm, relaxed (at least what we see) style of parenting. It is very obvious how much they love their kids, but more importantly, it also is obvious how much they love each other. I’ve often thought over the years, I want to parent like they do when our time comes, they have been a wonderful example.

Keri asked me to take some updated pictures of her family and if you know them well you know exactly why, at first, I freaked out! They have a long history of absolutely stunning, beautiful family photos done by a professional photographer. They are the ones that make you gasp when you open their Christmas card and make a mental note to yourself to find out who their photographer is so you can use them next year. So…I was a little intimidated because I didn’t want to disappoint them. But then I remembered that they are the kind of people who don’t stress about those kind of things. Besides their family is so stinking cute, it’s impossible to get a bad picture of them. So I told Keri I would do it.

It was another beautiful San Diego afternoon and we spent a few hours at the Rancho Bernardo Winery. We had no idea how it was going to go with trying to get 4 kids to cooperate and smile at the camera (or at least look in the general direction of the camera), but I was impressed, there was only one child who was not to wild about this activity at first, but once we got in the swing of things they did a great job! Those years of practice with photographers paid off (or maybe they were just having a good day).

I love the outdoor, rustic type pictures and the winery provides lots of different backdrops. There were lots of old buildings and cool barn doors
The boys found all kinds of things to climb up on, wagons, tractors and a good old fashioned tree (I was excited to get a shot with his smile cracked to reveal his missing tooth)
The favorite spot that we kept returning to was an old wooden swing. Here’s momma with her girls
And dad with his boys
See what I mean by a cute family…
They sure make it look easy!

Thanks for giving me the opportunity to take your pictures, for setting an example of how to be an awesome family and especially for being those special kind of friends!

15 Minutes of Fame

Posted on December 13, 2012 by Mdfrisco

Yesterday I had an OB appointment. Overall everything is good. My belly measured normal, we heard the heartbeat, and she was feeling around trying to find out where his head was and couldn’t feel it so she got out the ultrasound machine. Which means I got a quick peek at our little guy! Sorry I don’t have any pictures to share, she didn’t print any up. It was just a brief look to see where he was positioned and he is head down, his torso is on the left side of my belly and his feet and hands are stretching out towards the right side of my belly. Same position as the last ultrasound. She predicted that he is probably 5 lbs right now and said we most likely will not have a small baby, which is what we’ve been told from the beginning and is normal for my height. All is well…

We talked about my weight, since it did jump a bit since my last appointment. I was honest and admitted that my diet has been absolutely horrible these last few weeks. I have been so careful and eating really healthy all throughout this pregnancy but this past month has been pretty bad. Mainly because we are so busy that we are rarely ever home for dinner which means eating take out on the go, or when we are home, we’re too exhausted to cook so we order a pizza, or pick up some more bad take out. Plus I’ve developed a sweet tooth that I never had before which is not so helpful. I know all that needs to stop, it’s been bugging me in the back of my mind. She was not too worried, but just told me to keep an eye on it. I also told her that my wedding ring has become uncomfortable to wear due to my fingers swelling and yesterday was the first day that I didn’t wear my ring, she checked my legs and noted that I do have a little bit of swelling which also contributes to the extra weight gain. So it begins…

She also asked me if I was feeling any contractions. I haven’t felt any contractions yet, but definitely braxton hicks. In fact I felt several of them yesterday. She told me if I have more than 6 in 1 hour to go to triage and get checked out to be sure I am not in early labor. Then she proceeded to tell me that I need to slow down…and rest…That is really hard for a person like me to do. I am not the kind of person who will ask for help nor do I feel comfortable resting while someone else is working around me. On top of that as I mentioned before our schedules are kind of insane right now, just like everyone else this time of year and I am trying to wrap things up at work so I feel comfortable starting my maternity leave which has been a big added stress. She kept repeating herself telling me to slow down and r.e.l.a.x. so I need to find a way to do just that, I don’t know how, but I’ll try. I’m afraid if I don’t she’ll put me on bed rest and that will be even worse!

On my way out of the office I didn’t stop to make my next appointment since I have all my appointments already booked until my due date, so I smiled and waved good bye at the receptionist and she stopped me. I went over to talk to her and she asked me if I had professional maternity photos taken (Side note: I found our photographer by the pictures she has on display in the office) I said yes, I did. She grabbed the stack of the photographers business cards from the counter and pulled out a bunch that that had our picture on them. She said I thought that was you…we all love the pictures! So we are famous, at least in my doctors office 🙂

Here’s the front and back of the business/referral card:

Baby Morpher

Posted on December 9, 2012 by Mdfrisco

We’ve had a lot going on since our last update… December is in full swing and we have been busy with baby showers, holiday parties, childbirth preparation classes, fundraisers, etc…I ordered my Christmas cards and did all my Christmas shopping online this year, I love Amazon! I really enjoy going to the stores during the holiday season, it is a great way to get in the Christmas spirit. But this year we really, truly do not have a free day to do that. It makes me a little sad, but I also feel good that everything is ordered and all I have to do is wrap it when it arrives, hopefully they will all arrive before December 24th as promised!

On the baby front, there’s not much new to report. He is active as always and with the help of my mom we’ve been putting the final touches on the nursery, washing the clothes, blankets and putting everything together. You may have noticed that the blog header has changed as well as some of the pictures in about us, we got our maternity photos! I love the way they came out, I will do another post later and show you all of them.

One thing that Justin and I often talk about is what we think our baby will look like. I got an email from TheBump.com that introduced the Baby Morpher tool on their website. So for fun I uploaded a picture of us and it showed us what our baby will look like according to them. Here are the results:

PLUS

EQUALS

Hmmmm, what do you think?

It’s a cute baby but I’m sure baby Frisco will be cuter!

The Frisco Project

Adventures in life, pregnancy, friendships, family & a little photography