Eight Months with Story Lamm

Taking a chance to mommy-blog this weekend before sharing more thoughts from the teacher's desk. I have given up on writing a Story update each month. Life is just too exhausting for that. It's not that I don't have "time," I just don't have energy. Working and keeping things going takes up nearly every ounce of energy, so writing gets pushed to the back burner, sadly. But this weekend, Andy has drill and I'm not feeling super great. Story and I are taking the day to just stay home, so here's a bit of an update on the past few months.

Before Thanksgiving, Andy and I took Story to one of my favorite Austin events- the Junior League Christmas Affair, or, as Andy likes to call it, the "drunk debutante fair." For my Fayetteville friends, this is basically the Austin version of the Holly Day Fair. I love kicking off the holidays with a good shopping trip, and Andy likes to people watch, so it's fun for the whole family. ;) 

My parents and brother came to visit for Thanksgiving. Grant, Andy and I ran the Turkey Trot on Thanksgiving morning. We decorated for Christmas, watched lots of football and started our Christmas puzzle. It was perfect.

Sweet little smocked dress from Grandmomma. I have more Thanksgiving pics, but I don't think I'll have time to share them on this post.  

The weeks leading up to Christmas were fun and went by so fast. I had fun dressing Story up in pretty Christmas clothes, and we kept our family tradition of Advent Sunday suppers. But I didn't really cook anything fancy this year. Kind of hard to spend any extra time in the kitchen. But, even when daddy was at drill, Story and I still had a sit-down supper and lit our Advent wreath. 

We got excited for our 21 hour road trip to Grandmommy's! 

We thought we would leave at night and let Story sleep through. Haha, rookie mistake... we soon found out that Story sleeping through the night in the crib is NOT the same as Story sleeping through the night in the car. But, we hopefully kept our tradition and took pictures in front of our Christmas tree,just before getting into the car for our long drive. 

Andy worked on the car to get it ready for the trip, but (we later found out) that he had been sold a bad part, and so we had car trouble the first night, which forced us to stop in Louisiana. Story also got sick with a really bad cold, and had trouble sleeping, so it was a good thing we stopped. We drove all day the next day, but had to stop again in Georgia. The next morning we woke up to a flat tire. Finally, on the third day, we made it to my Uncle Richard's house in Columbia, SC, where we met up with Grandmommy. We were revived by a delicious lunch, put out by my Aunt Kaye, who had kept the fried chicken away from my Uncle Richard until our arrival- a more difficult task than you might think. 

When we got to Grandmommy's, we all got sick. That was disappointing, but we were thankful that if all three of us were going to be sick, that we were at Granmomma's where there was plenty of help! 

Story tried food for the first time on Christmas Eve. I think we gave her some rice cereal and fruit. It was pretty anti-climactic. She's come a long way since then. 

Here are some pictures from Christmas Eve dinner and Christmas Day. It was unseasonably warm (thanks, El Nino) but I'm still thankful that my baby girl got to spend her first Christmas on Water Oaks Farm. 

Story and I got a little bit of time to visit with some of our Fayetteville friends- here we are at the park with Annabelle, JP and Simmie and Minnie. I think all three mommas are wishing for more of these moments in the future! 

Some of the best moments about holidays are the unscripted ones. We had some great holiday gatherings, but I think my favorite thing about Christmas is the lounging around, eating, drinking cup after cup of coffee or tea and watching endless bowl games. 

For New Year's Eve, Andy and I actually had big plans. We had tickets for the Avett Brothers concert in Greensboro. Andy found us a great B&B in High Point, and we left baby girl with Grandmomma and Granddaddy. I think everyone was pretty stoked about that arrangement. I enjoyed some champagne, NC peanuts and a bubble bath before the concert. The Avett Brothers put on a spectacular show, and I'm pretty sure the grandparents weren't too sad about being the first faces baby girl saw in 2016. 

Coming home after New Years gave us no time to settle back in before our routine started back up. It was a tough transition. The routine can be tough. We're all still in BSF on Monday nights. Andy has started working out at 5:30AM on Tuesdays and Thursdays (good job, baby!) and we both put in our forty hours. My favorite things during the week are feeding Story breakfast in the mornings and taking afternoon walks with the jogging stroller.

Playing at BSF while momma listens to lecture in the cry room. 

Walks after school are momma's favorite. Serial is back... Sarah Koenig is my hero. 

She woke up like this. 

Bundled up in the beautiful blue sweater her Marmie gave her. 

Waiting for hymn time at BSF

Go Pack bib at breakfast. 

One of Story's first real food "likes"- Grits!!! 

An afternoon walk to the park. 

Weekends are so precious. I love letting Story sleep until she wants to get up on her own. It's no fun waking a baby up at 6:45 every morning. I don't even really know what we do on weekends. Catch up on chores? Church? Try to get out to the city? Watch some Broncos? I think so. It all seems like a blur.

Heading to church one chilly morning. I'm all about smocked dresses to church. 

Gats is laying on me!! 

Daddy's work gave us this LuminexBaby onesie

Owl hat is a gift from Annabelle. It also serves as a sleep mask. 

Sometimes you just need to go to Cracker Barrel in your owl hat. 

Another beautiful dress from Grandmommy. 

Baby Bronco! 

We had a treat last week. My parents were in town because my dad had a conference here in Austin. It was a relief to have them here for a few days. Story looks relieved to be back with her Granddaddy.

Grandmomma made chicken and pastry one night, which has definitely been Story's favorite thing she's eaten. I've never seen a baby go so crazy about a meal. We also got to take her out for ice cream, which was Granddaddy's dream come true. I somehow managed to not take any pics of that event, but I know Granddaddy took a few. ;) Andy and I got to go out on a date, for which we could barely stay away, but, hey, we tried. And we got these sweet pictures of Story with her grandparents before she and I headed to church and the grandparents made their way to the airport.

This sweet little bubble is from Lacy's Nana. 

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Story has three teeth now. She eats pretty well and her favorites are chicken and pastry, grits and fresh banana. She can sit up pretty confidently, but still takes a tumble every now and then, so we have to be careful. She's starting to get up on hands and knees, but not crawling quite yet. She loves to be held, LOVES her doggies, especially Gatsby and no one can make her squeal with pure joy like her daddy. One of my favorite things is picking a place for us to meet in our dreams at night. I tell Story all about places I've been and ask her to meet me there in a dream. Some of our favorites are: London, the Pamlico River, the Carolina seashore, the Blue Ridge parkway, camping inYosemite, skiing in Colorado and NC strawberry picking with Grandmomma.

Story is such a sweet little spirit. She's my sweet pea and I adore her. What a beautiful girl. Truly a gift every single day.

Sorry that this blog is not more visually appealing. I would love to get all these pictures looking really nice, but I just do not have time. If I waited for it to look perfect, I would never get it done. So I choose good enough and will continue to share.