*happy halloween*

we had a fun halloween! brennan celebrated her first halloween by spending the day in her adorable outfit...

i took a video of her right here too but its being feisty and i can't figure out how to get it to upload... this is not an admission of defeat though, just a minor setback. i will prevail.

and THEN it was time to put on b's amazing ladybug costume. and my not-so-awesome homemade bumble bee.

but the real attention grabbing outfit came from this guy:

all of the little kids thought winnie the pooh was the coolest thing and kept coming up to him to give him high-5's. this is most of the kiddos that were at the party; despite about 10 pictures taken, this is the best shockingly. brennan seems to be obsessed with getting the flower off her friends head.

and here's the three of us celebrating our first halloween together! pretty cute crew if i do say so myself. especially that little ladybug

6 months in review

in order to catch myself up to current day, here is a photo montage of some of my

faves of the past 6 months

bringing b home from the hospital. it looks like she's got a really good tan but no, it was the jaundice. also, where did that beautiful head of dark hair go?!

darn jaundice. this summarizes our first week... we hated the bilibed!

we had our final leadership gathering of the year scheduled for april 29th assuming that we would still have a few weeks before having a baby but since brennan surprised us and came 2 1/2 weeks early, she got to be at her first party when she was one week old! She'll get to hear stories of attending her first young life event at 7 days old. kind of fun.

daddy sneaking in some snuggle time.

i was so sad when she outgrew this outfit, it was so cute.

just the cutest thing in the world. i was actually sad when she outgrew this one too.

this is the brennan we know and love... SO HAPPY

possibly one of my favorite pictures of her to date... she's staring at lane and looks like such a big girl!

let's start at the very beginning

in the name of archiving and remembering, this is a rundown of brennan's entrance into the world.

thankfully lane wrote the basics in his journal to help jog my memory...

april 22, 2011:::brennan grace sandifer born

1:31 pm, good friday, 7 lbs. 14 oz

24 hour labor from start to finish... 18 hours of contractions and hospital time

2.5 weeks early

1 pm thurs, 21st: my water broke, was fairly certain what was going on, but since it was much earlier than we were anticipating, we waited a little bit to be sure it was, in fact, the beginning. once we truly knew (and registered and accepted) what was going on, we prepped the house (meaning, lane installed the car seat because we knew we'd be needing it; i vacuumed and did the dishes), packed the final things in our hospital bags and left for the hospital at 6:45 pm.

7 pm: arrive at the hospital. it was very surreal driving to the hospital calmly, chatting with the nurse as she checked my vitals to be sure i was in labor... i think we had imagined it being the chaotic movie-type scene with screaming and gore.

from then until about 10:30 we just did a LOT of laps in the hallways trying to get things progressing... lunges, squats, everything. things did not seem to be moving very quickly.

nancy arrived around 11 pm once things started picking up. all night long we continued the walking/lunges/squats combination, and labor was very difficult. i got in the tub, threw up in the hallway during a walking session from the pain... the works. they checked me at 7:45 am and i was still only to 6 cm., but we were encouraged that this last little bit is what goes the quickest, if we estimated the average of about an hour per centimeter. after such a long night, we were very excited we only had a few hours left... so we thought.

transition was SO HARD, and it got discouraging as the hours went by. i was at 8-9 cm for a good 3 hours. intense. pain. awful. the weird thing though is that not for a second did i even think of getting an epidural. it wasn't even a decision honestly... i honestly forgot that was even an option. i had set my mind on a drug free birth, and had laser-like focus on that outcome. i never cried... never got super overwhelmed... i just zoned in and focused. i didn't even really talk the whole time, was just focused, though lane tells me that there was one time that i looked at him and asked 'can i do this?' when it was getting sooo hard in those hours of transition. i was in A LOT of pain, there were times that lane was praying for God to just END THIS when it was taking so long and i was struggling with the pain. the quick summation of my labor is: long and painful. end of story. i just did not progress quickly.

at 9 cm dilation, i felt intense urges to push, but i wasn't ready yet... most discouraging hour of my life, when we would be SURE i was at 10, the doc would come in and check me and shake his head and i knew that there would be no relief in the near future. that happened 3 times where he checked me and i wasn't ready, but my body was pushing without my control.

we finally reached 10, and were able to start pushing around noon, and the doctor came in around 1 pm. after being in transition so long, brennan decided to crown for a good 15 minutes. seriously, child? this little girl was putting up a fight getting out! but she made it, had a full head of hair, handled everything perfectly, and was a champ. she put her momma through a bit of a doozy, but once you hold that reward in your arms it really doesn't matter.

she's perfect.

and so it begins...

welcome to the new blog! i have thought this many times over the past 6 months, but i have finally realized how much i wanted a place to keep track of our family, brennan milestone's and funny happenings, and our life. and more of brennan. this really is simply for the purpose of archiving, i already fear that there are little things that i have forgotten... a funny face that she made or when exactly it was she did that thing...? i want to be able to go back, with her someday too, and read stories, look at pictures, and remember. and so, here we go. this is us.