Different.

It's been a while. A lot has changed. Like, a lot. I'm not sure if all of the changing things has shaped me or if the change in me is what has shaped everything around me. Either way, it was God hand at work.

Life is different. I'm a mom now. I was a mom before, but now I'm really a mom. With a toddler and a 6 month old. There's no turning back. They are turning into actual kids. Not just tiny babies who lay in my arms all day while I gawk over them and cry about how beautiful they are. I do that sometimes, but usually I'm crying because I stubbed my toe on the bouncer or because I haven't showered in a week and I can smell my own armpits and I have no idea when I'll get a chance to take a shower. Or because there are dirty diapers on the floor of every single room and Ellie Grace is trying to play in the cat litter and the dishes are stacked out of the sink and onto the surrounding counter because every time I even look at them I get overwhelmed and run away. Or because they are both crying and I don't have enough arms or strength to hold them and love them like they need to be loved. But right about then is when the Lord meets me. He picks me up and puts them in my arms and makes my heart bigger. He shows me how to love them like He loves them. He gives me words to sing to them or the the comforting touch they need to know they'll be ok. And it's not because of me, their mama, it's because of His great love bursting through me. That is what comforts them. I just know it.

I pray that there will be more of this. That I will start to share what life looks for us now that Scott is done with the Marine Corps and we are the type of married couple that sleeps in the same bed every night and sees each other every single day. And I pray that I am honest what mom-life is like. That'll I'll share our messes and hardships instead of just the cute pictures of outfits and bubbles. I want to do more of this blogging thing. It helps my heart.

Life with baby.

This is about to be a gush of emotion. Skip down to pictures if you don't care about my hormonal, love struck, motherly feelings. Or if you are a boy (besides my dad).

I want to say the last year of my life has been crazy (Scott came home from war, my best friend moved to another continent, my mom went to Heaven, I had a baby...). But then I realize that the year before that was pretty chaotic, too (I moved to California, we started our lives together, Scott deployed...) But really, the one before that was also nuts (Scott graduated boot camp, we got engaged and then married a couple weeks later...). On top of the milestones I mentioned, so much has happened. I've grown. As a wife, as a mom, as a daughter, spiritually, emotionally, and unfortunately physically. Is this what it's like to be an adult? Life just picks up the pace and rushes past you? Each passing year seems busier than the last? You feel completely out of control, and yet so joyful all the same time?

I have a baby. A perfect beautiful baby. If I didn't believe in God before, I do now. I can barely fathom that she was made inside of me. That perfect little girl was created within my body. And now she is outside of my body. Asleep in the next room. Rocking peacefully in her swing. It is difficult for me to even know where to begin to describe her. Everything about her is a miracle. Looking into her eyes is like nothing I have ever experienced before. She is so innocent. Her eyes are so big. When she stares up at me I feel this connection. I feel like she is looking deeply inside of me. And I feel the same looking at her. It's a bond, a love, that I have not ever experienced. Not with Scott, not with Bruce, not anybody. I have always been pretty carefree and laid back. I have always known that I can have fun and that I don't need to worry about stuff. Kind of a "it'll all work out" type of attitude. Not with her. I want her in my arms. I want her to know her every need will be met. Her cry literally makes my insides hurt. I want her to be insanely happy. Never lonely. Never bored. And never, ever sad. How am I supposed to accomplish this? She has to go to school one day, right? No. I won't let her. We'll homeschool. What about college? I can't homeschool her through college. I can barely get through college myself. Online school? Ok. That settles that.

Ok, so that's not what I really want. I mean, I don't ever want her to leave me. Or to be hurt. But I do want her to experience friendships. I want her to have BFFs like I do. I want her to experience love. I want her to grow up and get married and live happily ever after. With me right next door.

How do I even think about having another baby? I can't live right next door to more than one child (unless I can convince them to live on either side of me). How could I possibly love another baby like I love this one. She is perfect. Is it possible to have two perfect babies? Does that happen? This baby laughs, she rolls over, she reaches up and grabs my hand and squeezes so very tight. At night she cries just loud enough for me to hear her to know she needs to eat. Not overly loud, not a scream, just a little whine for her mama. And then I pick her up and pull her under the covers with me and I hold her all night. It's the sweetest thing. And in the mornings when the sun comes through the curtains and shines on her face she starts to wake up. She gets really squirmy. And then I un-swaddle her. Without opening her eyes, her arms immediately shoot up and she arches her back really big, all the while scrunching up her little face. Such a big stretch for a tiny baby. And then she slowly begins to blink her eyes open. I am right there, with a smile on my face waiting for her to focus enough to see me. As soon as her vision is clear she smiles a big gummy grin at me. It is one of my favorite parts of the day. We sit there for a half hour or so and smile at each other. She tells me all about her dreams in a sequence of little coos and ahhs. I tell her how pretty she is and how much I love her. I would not trade it for anything.

She is the greatest thing that has even happened. Nothing else seems to matter. Our floor is covered in cat hair. There are BBQ sauce dishes in the sink. The laundry never seems to be done. But, right now, I don't care. I care that my baby is sound asleep. I care that she is having sweet dreams. I care that I will be there tonight when she is ready to be held. I care that I will get to see her beautiful eyes and her heart warming smile in the morning. That's what matters. The rest will get taken care of with time. But not tonight. And probably not tomorrow.

Now that I got that off my chest... here are some pictures from the last months. For those of you who skipped over that long mushy part to get to the pictures you didn't miss much. It was just me doing my best (but not even coming close) to putting into words the deep love that I feel for my baby. But, here's the good stuff.

October

We carved pumpkins and handed out candy for Halloween, my dad came to visit, I got pregnanter, we planted a garden. The pictures from October and some of November are here. 

The Gilchrist Garden.

November

We went to the Marine Corps Ball. The pics from that are in the link above. We did Thanksgiving dinner with friends and then Black Friday that night! 

Thanksgiving Dinner. 

BLACK FRIDAY!

December

December was Christmas, duh. I got super pregnant and my dad came to visit. 

Baby's Christmas tree.

Big Christmas tree.

And the normal sized Christmas tree is behind where I'm standing. Too bad you can't see around me. 

Scott's ginger bread women. 

My dad came to visit!

Scott turned into my dad.

And my dad turned into Scott. 

My dad also turned 25, or so. 

January

January 15th baby was born! I plan on doing an entire post about those couple of days. 

February

Sweet girl went on her first trips to Texas and Oklahoma. And Aunt Amber and Uncle Bobby came to visit but I need to find those pictures. 

Plan ride to TX. 

She got to meet her Pappy G for the first time. 

And several other important people. 

Oklahoma!

First Leo meeting. 

March

Lo and Kara came to visit for Spring Break! 

Aunty Lola playing mommy.

April

Easter! And Scott's 24th birthday! And a camping trip! 

Easter egg fun.

Hiking the trails. 

Eventful few months. But what would you expect? Who doesn't wanna see this babe? Hopefully my posts become more regular. I'm also going to try and find the time to upload the rest of the pictures from all these months to my Facebook. Here's the thing, typing takes two hands if you want to do it in a reasonable amount of time. I don't generally have two free hands these days, or a reasonable amount of time.  And when I do, I try and spend it on schoolwork. I'll do my best. 


Love to you all! 

Beginnings.

It took me a while to decide on a title for this post. I had the general idea of what I wanted to write about, but it's difficult to put a jumbled mess of emotions and feelings from a pregnant woman's brain into a format that makes sense to everyone who doesn't live inside my head. 

It's been a month since my mom went to Heaven. I know that line might make some of you cry, it makes me cry. But, I am aware that she is not crying. She is not sad that she is in the presence of our Lord. She is dancing and loving and laughing and singing more than she ever has. If anything, we should be crying tears of jealousy. Tears that we do not get to sit at the feet of our Savior. Tears that we don't get see the beautifulness that is our God. Tears that we are not with her. I cannot even imagine or begin to imagine what she is witnessing at this very moment. She is seeing all the beauty and glory that is our Father and his house. That is not something we can be sad for. We can be sad because she is not here with us. We can cry because we miss her and love her so, so much. But we should not weep for her current situation, she is taken care of. More taken care of than she ever was here. She is healthy and happy. God knows her better than any of us. He loves her more than we humanly could. One day, we will see her again. It will be the beginning our eternity. I can't wait. 

Thanks for being so wonderful and loving and supportive and great over the past few months. We have received more sweet letters, flowers, messages, visits, and meals than I could ever have dreamed we would. You have all been so wonderful. Thank you for praying for us. We are doing good. My dad is keeping busy doing his photography and giving our house a make-over (and joining a volleyball team, as of last night!). I am keeping busy growing a human inside of me. And Scott is busy being an incredible Marine and husband, like always. We are all okay. Thanks for taking care of us. 

Moving on, I'm still pregnant. This baby is HUGE. I mean, relatively speaking. I can feel all of her movements and kicks and hiccups. It kinda hurts. But, I'm not complaining. I love to feel her. I think she's really pretty and fun. The doctor says she's doing great. Scott and I have started baby classes. They are with a teacher who practices the Brio style of birthing. We do a lot of relaxation stuff. Every class is super informing. I have learned a whole lot. I'll share some with you. We've learned:

• The best way to sit. 
• The best way to lay. 
• The best ways to exercise. 
• The most important nutrients to get. 
• Stretches to do a million times per day. 
• More than I ever wanted to know about what happens when you have a baby.
• How to relax through contractions.
• How to massage me through contractions.
• Ways to sit during contractions.
• Ways to lay during contractions.
• Things to say to me through contractions.
• What medications do to you and your baby.
• What sonograms can potentially do to you and your baby.
• What certain vaccines can potentially do to you and your baby.
• The importance of breast feeding. 
• The importance of kegels. 
• How to avoid varicose veins. 
• Tools to help get that darn baby out of my ribs. 
• Types of music to download and listen to during labor. 
• Exactly how big 10 centimeters really is... whoa. 
• What the doctor will want to do at each check up. 
• What the doctor does and does not actually need to do at each check up.
• And much, much more...

I don't think I realized how much there is to learn about birthing a child. It's all great information and I am very happy we're doing this class. It's nice to have a heads up about things. I like to plan. This helps. 

Her nursery is coming along nicely. I'm not ready to post pictures of that yet, but just know it's way cute. 

I'm getting big. I caved and let my dad take some maternity pictures a couple of weeks ago when he was here in California. Surprisingly, I don't hate them! I thought that I would. Not because of my dad, he's a wonderful photographer! Check out his website here (you're welcome, Daddy)! But because of my massive belly and swollen body. I decided to post a few because I knew that if I didn't I would get lots of angry messages. WARNING: YOU ARE ABOUT TO SEE A NAKED PREGNANT BELLY. IF YOU DON'T WANT TO SEE A NAKED PREGNANT BELLY GO AHEAD AND CLOSE THIS WEBPAGE NOW. I'VE ALREADY SAID EVERYTHING IMPORTANT, I PROMISE YOU WON'T MISS ANYTHING. 

There ya have it. I did it. I posted belly pics. It's me, in all my bigness. Hope you enjoyed that. 

Other great things: Santa brought us a Vitamix blender! I know it's early, but when your dad is Santa you can get an advance on Christmas. We made our first grown up purchase, a Kirby vacuum. It's pretty awesome. We love it. My sister-in-law visited. She was beautiful and wonderful, as always. My dad also visited. I was so happy to have him here. I tried to get him to come back for Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, his birthday (December 28th), New Years, and the birth of his first grandchild but I don't know if he will. He already missed Halloween, rude. And, Bruce got a girlfriend. I don't know if that's great or not, it actually kinda stresses me out. But, it makes me feel better to tell the world that our cat has a girlfriend- thanks for listening. Halloween happened and that was fun. November is here and that's exciting because it's one month closer to January! Jane Wayne Day was last week. I didn't get to do much because of the whole pregnant thing but I still managed to win some awards! There are pictures of all of this greatness in this facebook album. Unless you're looking for the Jane Wayne Day pictures, they are here. They aren't just of me, they are of everyone. I'm in several, though. If you want the description of what happens at Jane Wayne Day, here is the link to last year's JWD. Don't mind my lack of hair. 

Thanks again for being wonderful. We have needed the support lately and we sure have gotten it. 

Love you all forever and ever. 

Baby G... irl!

We're having a baby girl!

How stinking cool is that? It makes this whole baby thing real. Some day, she will get her ears pierced. Some day, she will have a boyfriend. Some day, she will come to me crying because she is a hormonal teenage girl. Some day, she will get married. Our baby is a real person. A real girl. This is getting crazy. 

She kicks all the time, now. She can totally dance. Sometimes I feel bad because I don't think she has enough room, and I feel like she's banging on my insides asking me to let her out. I realize that babies like that claustrophobic comfort stuff. And if she came out now she wouldn't be happy or healthy. So, I'm going to make my first hard mom decision and I'm forcing her to stay in my belly for 20 more weeks and then she can come out. It's for her own good. Don't argue with me. 

I bet you want to hear about the doctor's appointment. Ok, I'll tell you. We didn't go to our normal doctor's office. We went to an office in the hospital that we will deliver her at. We were having our full anatomy ultrasound. It was an hour long ultrasound done by this fancy guy who knows a lot about looking at the baby on the monitor. He went through and measured all of her body parts, he checked her heart valves, looked at her brain, looked at her face and lips, and did a bunch of other stuff. She's perfect. There was not one thing wrong with her. Wanna see how cute she is now? Like, really. She looks like a baby. A super cute baby. 

She's smiling! 

Such a happy baby girl. 

CUTEST FOOT EVER!

She has biceps. For real. Look at that. She isn't even born yet. I guess we know whose muscles she'll be getting...

The dude asked if we knew the sex, or if we wanted to know. We said yes. 2 seconds later, he checked and told us she's a she! That was a weird feeling. Knowing that she is girl. It gave her an identity. Like I said earlier, it made her even more real. My brain felt like it was going to explode (how many times has that happened in the past 5 months?). I had so many thoughts. I didn't want to put up her crotch pic. I thought that was weird. I feel like it's violating her. I'd be mad if someone put up a crotch picture of me. 

I have already bought so much stuff for her. Don't tell Scott. Wanna see the snow boots I just ordered off Etsy? 

I'm sure you're saying to yourself "Why would a baby need snow boots? Especially when that baby lives in Southern California?" Well, she needs snow boots because they are freaking cute, ok? I have a feeling this pattern will continue. Sorry, Dave Ramsey. I want things with ruffles on the butt. We're painting her crib yellow. I think she'll like yellow. 

Ok, back to the appointment. Basically, the guy went through and looked at everything and then called the doctor in to take a look and they both said she was the most perfect and cute baby they have ever seen. Then we left and skipped down the hallways. We giggled a lot and hugged a lot and brainstormed names while we planned out her future.  I want her to do whatever she wants to do. As long as it's not drugs or the Marine Corps. She is not allowed to be a Marine. 

We ran a couple of errands on the way home and then Skyped with our parents to tell them the news. We decided my dad got to know first because Scott's family got to know that I was pregnant first. We captured his expression with a screen shot: 

He said he knew it would be a girl. He has 4 sisters, Scott has 2 sisters, and I am a girl. Good reasoning. He also told us that we would be so emotional and in love when she came. I totally believe that. I'm so emotional now. I cannot even imagine what I'm going to be like when I can actually hold her. 

Next up was Scott's mom. Scott called her and woke her up to make her get onto Skype. He made her cover her eyes while we got our little sign in place:

She was also so happy. She was even dressed appropriately! She is sending me pink bows to sew onto everything. 

We then called Scott's dad because he doesn't have Skype. Scott said he seemed a little disappointed but I thought he sounded happy. He just wants us to have a healthy, precious baby. I am anxious to see him interact with the baby. He's going to love her so much. 

Finally, we Skyped with Amber and called Danielle. They were both excited. Except for Danielle, she was asleep. She was as excited as you can be when getting woken up in the middle of the night. I woke up to an excited text from her the next morning, of course. Speaking of Amber and Danielle, they threw me a really cute and heartfelt baby shower a couple of weekends ago. The day before their shower my friends from Texas through me a vintagey Anthro inspired baby shower, it was right up my alley. They were both the greatest baby showers ever. I have not yet posted the pictures, but I will realllly soon! Here are two different albums, one that my sister Danielle posted of the Oklahoma shower and one my friend Danielle posted of the Texas shower. 

 The next day we sent out a text to our close friends letting them know, which was immediately followed by a mass email to our extended family and friends that included pics. I'm sorry we couldn't tell y'all in a more fun way but it's been a pretty crazy two weeks and I don't feel like I have a lot left in me. This is as good as it gets this time. 

That's the whole story. My next post will hopefully include pictures of all of her sweet gear and the beginnings of her nursery. 

Other things happening in our lives:

My mom is in the hospital. She had a seizure and fell face first onto the kitchen floor. Thank God, my dad and I were there. It was horrible and awful and scarring but we were able to help her and she wasn't alone. She broke several bones in her face. She had surgery, got 4 metal plates in her face, and is now recovering. She will be transferred to a recovery nursing home where she will stay for 20-100 days. Then she will be moved to a hospice/nursing home where she will live. I thought about writing an entire feelings post on this but I know that would only cause you guys to feel bad for my family. Don't do that, just please pray. God is the only thing that can fix her and our broken hearts. Pray that God heals her dementia. Pray that the insurance pays for her hospice care. And please pray that my dad is comforted during this entire process. 

Scott is doing great as a sergeant. He is settling into his role and learning more every day. He was made to be a Marine. 

A couple weeks ago we met the Young Life San Clemente Area Director at church. I did not think I wanted to do YL right now because of all that is going on in life. But of course, God had other plans. I met with him today and I'm pumped to be a leader! Scott can't make the full commitment to be a leader but he'll help out as much as he can. We are both so excited God has lead us to this. We love Young Life. We fit there. It's gonna be great. 

I'm sitting at a coffee shop and they have an Internet time restriction. I wish I could write more but they are going to kick me off. I'll leave you with some of my wishes for our sweet, tiny, baby girl:

I hope she's confident in her self and in her body. I hope she's cool. I hope she loves Jesus more than anything else. I hope she likes to have painted nails. I hope she likes to play outside. I hope she's creative. I hope she makes friends with everybody. I hope she is sweet. I hope she loves me and her dad and always wants to hang out with us. I hope she knows we love her a lot. I hope she tells her friends I'm her BFF. I hope she has a really fun BFF, other than me. I hope she likes to cook. I hope she's compassionate. I hope she wants to live radically for the Lord. I hope she knows Texas is her real home. I hope she doesn't want me to buy her expensive clothing, but instead likes to go thrifting and sale rack shopping. I hope she doesn't have a stupid boyfriend. I hope she some day has a super cute boyfriend. I hope her husband loves her the same way Scott loves me. I hope she has a talent, like singing or painting or something. I hope she enjoys physical activity. I hope she doesn't say cuss words, unless it's funny. I hope she grows up to be exactly who God wants her to be. 

Also, I have been stalking baby blogs (duh), and these are some of the posts that moms have written as advice for friends and family who are visiting the new baby and new parents. I think they are pretty great. You don't have to clean my bathroom but I'd love for you to bring me food. 

http://avital.blogspot.com/2011/03/how-to-be-best-post-partum-visitor-in.html#axzz1JdTIvWli

http://lipstickjunglegym.blogspot.com/2011/04/brand-new-momsa-must-read-for-you.html

http://www.wild-and-precious.com/2011/07/taking-care-of-new-moms-guest-post.html

http://itsahuntlife.blogspot.com/2011/08/guest-post-jora-from-domestic.html

Thanks, love you!