Homesick Texan

(Not my own photo)
I LERVE to cook. I'm a frequent Recipiezaar searcher and have also found a blog that makes my tummy so happy!
The Homesick Texan... mmmm!


As soon as I find out how to show links on my sidebar, this will be top of the list (besides care group blogs!)

Oma is 98!!

Or two years old, as she has started counting backwards. Here she is holding Syd:
And blowing out candles in her birthday streusel!

Welcome to the World Campbell!

Campbell Shaw was born this past Sunday- welcome girlie! She is beautiful!
Here she is- making a face but no sound came out at all! Looking at the photo you would think the windows were shattering, but she was just so quiet!

Bumbo Time!

Shawn and Sydney got some quality time on Saturday while I was shooting- they sat on the couch and watched basketball all day! Here she is in her Bumbo (thanks Julie!)
Seven weeks old today!!

Family Resemblance

God is so cool! I was over at Mom and Dad Melton's Sunday and they had out baby pictures of my brother James. It was like looking at Sydney via 1981!

James:


Sydney:


Oh and Mom (Grandma), you can thank me later for cropping out your Eighties perm!

Way to go F3's! The Annual F3 Academy Awards were held last Wednesday-
it was so awesome to see everyone participate! F3's are small high
school student groups that meet during the week for bible study. Each
year a group puts together a video - anything from American Idol spoofs
to Star Wars battles. So far Shawn and I have helped with three years
running of Academy Awards. Everyone dresses up like stars and feasts on
decadent food!

Kyle and Jeff entertained the crowd with manly singing while votes were tallied:
and Francis Howell won best picture!!


The pics we took are in the youth office- in a hard drive :) Ask my hubby Shawn if you would like some!

Oh so cute!

Holy junk, have I stumbled upon something yummy:

Watermelon Lemonade

1	cup lemon juice
1	cup superfine sugar
4 1/2	cups water
3	cups chopped seeded watermelons
2	tablespoons light corn syrup

1. In a blender, puree the watermelon with the corn syrup.
2. Strain to remove any bits of seed that remain.
3. Combine the lemon juice and sugar in a large pitcher.
4. Stir until the sugar is completely dissolved.
5. Add the puree along with the water.
6. Serve over ice in tall glass.

I bought seedless watermelon at Costco and it was too ripe, kind of like biting into some Memoryfoam- so I looked for drinks on Recipiezaar (my new fave site). One of the raves about it said that 'it is the nectar of the gods', so I thought I would try it. So yummy!

Sydney's Big Bath Day

Sydney got a bath today in her new bathtub (courtesy of Courtney and Kelly!) and she really had fun. She smells really good now! See the photo gallery here!

Children's Books

One of the best things about having a little girl to grow up with is the realization that I will again be able to collect children's books. I had a Master's Collection in college thanks to the Columbus City Library's $1 discard book shop, with two whole shelves in my bookcase filled with children's books featuring awesome illustration.

The bad thing was that college people like me at the time move quite a lot- and those two shelves of books added up to massive poundage and achy back! So little by little I gave or threw them all away save for the Stinky Cheese Man (Lane Smith is my hero) and The Emperor's New Clothes.

Now I am married and old and have pretty much a permanant residence, so shelves, get ready!
This weekend the Friends of the Library are having a book sale which we will SO be at. It's like, a grocery brown bag of books for two cents. I remember going as a kid and the smell of the books and the excitement of getting them would make me so excited my stomach would get upset. I was kind of a wierd kid that way.

A list of books I loved as a kid and want Sydney to experience:
*Anything Frog and Toad
*Anything Beatrix Potter
*Anything Marguerite Henry
*Little House on the Prarie
*Narnia Series
*Babar the Elephant
*George the Monkey

I'm not sure if I'm going to introduce her to Captain Underpants. I like the book, but if she has an imagination like I did, she will try to BE Captain Underpants at the grocery store or something.

Almost a Month Old!

Lookout! Cute Baby on the loose!
She is ONE MONTH old on Monday!










Sydney Desktop Wallpaper (1024 x 768)- right click and "Save as" to your desktop.














Mom trying on a baby wrap and Sydney almost falling out:




























Shawn and Sydney falling asleep on the couch:




























Great-Grandpa Eschner (well, his hands) holding Sydney:

Thanks Brenda!

These ducky slippers keep me nice and warm!

Dad, the burping master

More pics of Sydney!

Pumping Action

So we broke down and bought a pump so Shawn can have 'Sydney' duty during the night... I was really leery of using it.. all I could think of was the Napoleon Dynamite time machine bit. I had these premonitions of yelling in pain to Shawn, "Turn it off! turn it off!" while the Medela pump makers just laughed at another chump mom.

BUT it turned out fine, and I was able to have a full night of sleep last night thanks to my wonderful husband. My only recollection of the night was Shawn laying down next to me around two a.m. and Sydney starting to cry a few minutes later. Shawn just cried out, "Noooooooo!" like Superman trying to turn back time after Lois died.

First Bath

Here are pictures of Sydney's first bath!

So tiny.

How funny! Everyone keeps saying how small Sydney is. She just looks normal size to me, until I see a picture of someone's head or hands next to her. Even then I don't think she's small. I automatically think , "Jeez, I've got an enormous head!"

Thus the beginning thoughts of yet another parent whose child can do or say no wrong. I even can say 'her poop don't stink', truthfully!

Pictures and updates

Well,

Between interruptions and other responsibilities (changing, feeding, etc.), it's only taken me (Shawn) 4 hours to make this post. Granted, I cherished and enjoyed every interruption!

Here's some pics and info for you:

Here's another pic of her with her beautiful eyes open:

Here's a pic of all 3 of us:















Here's a pic of (newly) Grandpa Ross holding Sydney:




















Here's a nice close-up pic to give you some perspective:
















Here's Sydney saying "wow, who are you?":















Here's a pic of the 2 leading women in my life:















Keep checking our blog, because I may be able to cut some video together later!

Thanks for everyone who prayed for this bundle of joy, Michelle, or I during the process of Sydney coming to us.

Pics set 1

Here's a couple pics of our new bundle of joy for your perusal:

Sydney Grace not long after birth: (that's Shawn's finger being squeezed by her hand)














Another pic of her squeezing Shawn's finger:















Last shot of her doing her daily stretching exercises!:

And three makes a family!

Soooo, how a perfect little angel graced our family.....

I started having contractions at 7am, oh, on Sunday morning. This is not counting the contractions I had saturday night from 6pm to 5am. So the Sunday 'wuss' contractions kept going and going every ten minutes or so during the day, through walking the mall and watching TV. During Happy Gilmore I was bouncing on the birth ball, walking the stairs, and eating like, fifteen mozzerella cheese sticks. The next hour, during Battlestar Galactica, the contractions got really bad and I cried like crazy over Lee and Dee's marital problems. Then Shawn said, "We should either go to bed and sleep or go to the hospital." so I promptly produced a bunch of barf and bloody show (TMI, hee hee) and decided we were going to the hospital. So much for the cheesesticks!

We take a twenty minute bumpy ride to the hospital, bumps negated by lamaze breathing techniques, thank you very much! Lauren, our doula met us at the ER. Walked up to the baby floor and found out I hadn't dialated anything since my check-up last week. Two lousy centimeters! Stink! So I was sent home with Perkaset and Ambien to sleep through the night. My stomach and uterus now felt like a big bruise from contracting for twenty four hours. Lauren came home with us, and a good thing too! The sleeping pill and the narcotic served to loosen up my cervix to four centimeters in one hour. Whammo! Did that hurt.

So back again to the hospital at four thirty in the morning on a bumpy road, and no lamaze breathing techniques were really helping this ride! We popped back into the old room from eleven pm. and called an anesthesiologist PRONTO. He was actually at the hospital and came in within about ten minutes. Meanwhile, Shawn was doing an awesome job keeping me sane by counting to four within two inches of my face. He said later that I was exhaling so hard I was drying out his eyeballs... and my breath wasn't so nice. But that's what love is all about!

So I recieved the epidural during contracting, which was kind of nice because I didn't notice this huge needle gong into my spine. I was too busy blowing on my husband's eyeballs.

So within an hour I was seven centimeters and within two I was fully dialated. Alisha had arrived for photographing the birth. Dr. Voegtle came to break my water and got the junk all over her street pants. Woops! While she went to change into scrubs, Sydney crowned and within ten minutes popped out. Whoopee!

Success!!!!

Well, the next queen of the Ross household has arrived!

Sydney Grace Ross came to us on Monday, January 29th at 10:31AM CST.
She weighed in at 6 lbs., 9 oz., and is 19 inches long.
She has beautiful black hair with possibly some blonde mixed in. Pictures to come!

Edit: I changed the birth month to the correct month (January). I mistakenly put it in as September originally (in my half-awake state).