Our Hershey Kiss

Well, we welcomed our sweet little bundle of joy into this world on January 12th. We had decided on a name.. It was going to be Avery Lynn. Back Story: Tommy had a sister who passed away 25 years ago and her name was Christine. I went to the hospital to be induced the morning of the 12th. Tommy's mother called and reminded us that the day we would welcome our sweet baby girl into this world, was the same day that they said goodbye to theirs. I knew immediately that our little girl would be Avery Christine.
Labor was well... labor. A little brutal at first but the miracle of an epideral made it a wonderful (but long) experience. They started the pitocin at 11 am and Avery was born at 8:17pm.
Now to the "Hershey Kiss" part of this post. As she was delivered we discovered that our daughter had a cleft palate. Boy did a gazillion different emotions run through my body.. but we can save that for another time :) Anyway... We call her our hershey kiss because...

.... her mouth is the shape of a hershey kiss :) 

Anyway, we went to the specialist today to learn what treatment will be like for her. At about 4 months they will repair her lip (and yes, Tommy and I are actually going to miss the hershey kiss). And then between 8 and 12 months they will repair the palate. Then we will be working with many different doctors for the next 15 years :/. I will be seeing a feeding specialist in the next few days and then we will have an appointment with a genetic doc and eventually an ENT (ear nose throat) doc. And when she is older if needed a speech therapist and orthodontist. Her cleft palate is VERY minor and we are very happy that with today's technology, this birth defect is one that can be corrected. 

Avery is such a blessing to our family. We are so lucky to have her and although there will be challenges we know we can get through them together. She has already brought our family closer together.

Sorry this is such a short post, I will do a longer one with more pictures later :)

I HAVE TO DO EVERYTHING RIGHT NOW!!!!!!

Just to clear things up, I am not freaking out. We are all so excited and as ready as we can be to bring this little girl (still no name decided) into our family! I just realized that I better like, forget getting rested up and have some fun and do things with Maddox nonstop this week because I know things are about to change. Big time.
So, Tommy is out of town. (Yes, I am due in 6 days and he is in Dallas for a training meeting). We flew his sister, Stacey, out to be with me heaven forbid I go into labor or something! Fine by me... Stacey is just the right person to drag along to do all the things Maddox and I love to do! We have a fun week planned but today we went to the Aquarium. Maddox couldn't wait to go and see all the fishies....

He had so much fun!!

I love this little guy. As excited as I am to bring baby girl home, I am going to miss the mommy and Maddox time. We have so much fun and we have such a special relationship. I hope he always knows how special he is to me and he will always be my baby!!

*Christmas Fun*

Well, it was an unusual Christmas for us this year.. As many of you know we can hardly keep our feet on the ground and we travel almost non stop. However, with my due date a close 2.5 weeks away, we had to stay home this Christmas. It definitely had its pros and cons but we enjoyed it! My dad, stepmom, and niece ended up driving down for a quick visit. We had to cram as much fun into two days as we could! On Christmas Eve, we took them to do one of Maddox's favorite things... BOWLING! We all had so much fun spending time together!

 Kaley and Maddox

 38 Weeks Pregnant... Bowling? No problem.

 Loves his green ball!

 Cindy and Maddox

So, something that was fun for us this year was doing the whole "milk and cookies" for Santa. I don't know if we haven't really done it before cause Maddox has been so young or if its because we have never been home but we did it this year and it was so cute how excited Maddox was to decorate them and then leave them for Santa.

This is Maddox's note to Santa..... "Thank you for the presents. Love, Maddox" And then he absolutely insisted that his hand print be on there! :)

 Here is what we woke up to Christmas morning....

Maddox loved his tool set....

....and his basketball hoop......

He really loved his train. and his train hat. and his train whistle. :)

Grandpa was worn out after all the excitement :)

Later on Christmas we went and saw Gulliver's Travels and then spent the rest of the day stuffing our faces and watching more Christmas movies. It was great! It was wonderful to spend Christmas with my dad (We haven't since we were first married)

We hope you all had a very Merry Christmas!!