Sweet Faces

Being the mother of Haddon Pugh means I get the privilege of looking at his sweet face all the time. As I sit and watch him, he can have some pretty dramatic expressions [he gets that from his Dad]. An interesting thing about our little guy is that he seems to be most animated on the changing table. I'm not sure what it is about this magical little spot, but we have some fun interactions while we're there [which is quite often because our son has very healthy bowels :)]. I decided to film one of these sessions and of course he doesn't make any of his crazy faces but he's still pretty cute to look at.



How about that for a fun little man to spend my days with? Would you be surprised if I told you that his is actually my second favorite face to look at? Coming in at number one is...

This handsome man. What a blessing to be at his side. I'll never grow tired of looking at this face. The Lord is so kind to have made me his wife. What an excellent husband and father he is.

Well, I'm off to go look at these precious faces the Lord has blessed me with. I may even throw in a few kisses while I'm at it. I encourage you to go do the same to the ones you cherish so much. I know I'm not the only one living the dream :)

Boxing Gloves

Our son wears mittens. Well, "boxing gloves" is our more masculine way to put it. He initially wore them because I couldn't cut his fingernails yet [they tell you to wait until after 4 weeks because if you cut them too early and too close, the skin could grow over them. I know—all you ever wanted to know about infant fingernails!] so these little guys helped protect his face from scratches. The day came where I was ready to face the challenge of doing the snipping and it wasn't too successful. They were trimmed, but still jagged, which didn't take away the threat of scratches. Hence the continual presence of the boxing gloves...

Why am I telling you this, you might ask? Well I needed an intro to this video I was about to show you. I thought you'd appreciate seeing our son in action after the over-abundance of still shots you've gotten in the past few posts. I apologize for the brief footage. My camera cut off because my memory card was full [welcome to motherhood].



P.S. Because I know you're all dying to know, I've removed Haddon's boxing gloves today. I attempted a cleaner manicure today and hope it's good enough to keep our sweet boy scratch free. I guess the condition of his face by the end of the day will let me know whether or not my efforts were successful...

Month Numero Uno!

[Haddon's one month birthday was actually yesterday, 9.10.12, but I'm just now finishing this post! Just so there's no confusion on the dates...]

We have reached the one month mark with our little boy [not to be confused with the 4 week mark that happened on Friday— don't worry, I was confused at well]. In some states of mind, one month sounds so long, yet in others it seems so short. Regardless, the numbers don't lie. Haddon has been an official resident on this crazy planet for 31 days. I don't think I'll ever cease to be amazed at his sweet existence.

This is what happens when I try to have a cutesy photo shoot to document this monumental birthday. This is a milder display of his displeasure with the notion, but I laugh out loud every time I look at it. Each day is unpredictable, which is why we try to take it one day at a time around these parts. This attempt also included a moment where Haddon decided to express his utter disgust by spitting up on the quilt. That boy... If you are a facebooker, you can get a broader look at his range of emotion here.

I am about to pass things over to Haddon to close out this entry. I have a friend [shout out E. Harwell] that writes blog posts every month from her little boy's point of view. It's a very entertaining way to recap the month's achievements and developments and I'm totally going to implement that clever idea on here for the HadMan. Hers are very witty and so convincing that I'm surprised when I see videos of her son and he's not chatting it up in complete sentences and telling you about his life.

Here goes nothing...

Hey guys. J. Haddon Pugh, here. Mom decided to let me take a turn at this whole blogging thing to tell you fine folks what I've been up to this past month. I think she made a great decision, you won't be disappointed. I'm pretty pumped about getting to try out this laptop contraption. Mom and Dad have theirs out all the time so it's good to get to see what the fuss is all about. And I finally get to lose these silly mittens Mom makes me wear. Come on Mom, a guy's gotta develop his dexterity...

I decided to throw in the photo above because the one Mom decided to show you was not one of my better moments. For the most part I'm pretty laid back, but today was just one of those days where I wanted to hear myself scream. I do that from time to time—gotta keep the parentals on their toes. 

Speaking of screaming, that's how I came into this world. I'd been kicking on mom's ribs [primarily her right rib cage] for at least a month and she finally got the picture and started having contractions. I know it was earlier than they all expected, but hey, it was time.

Here's me showing off my lungs. Everyone was pretty impressed. I'm not going to lie, so was I. It was a completely new experience for me. I am Haddon, hear me roar!

Our time in the hospital is kind of a blur. There were so many new things going on and so many people to meet. I'm pretty pumped about my grandparents. They already think I'm awesome. I can't wait to spend more time with them.

Here they are! Papa, Nana, T, and Big Daddy

  They finally let my parents take me out on their own and since then I've been living in a cozy little duplex with good 'ole Mom and Dad. They even let me have half of one of the bedrooms! That's so much more space than my previous dwelling. The other half is filled with my Dad's books. He must be really smart.

This panorama photo got a little funky, but you get the idea!

My Dad also has this really cool thing on his face called a beard. It doesn't phase me at all, which Mom is so happy about. She thought I might think it was too bristly and bother my face [I don't know why she was concerned, it certainly isn't an issue for her face]. Apparently a lot of people thought I'd be born with a beard. Sorry to disappoint, guys. Don't know if you noticed though, but I did come out with a fabulous head of hair...

Let's see... what kind of things would interest you about this first month of my life? Mom's scared to say it out loud, for fear it won't last long [she isn't superstitious, I promise] but I'm sleeping really well at night. The past 5 days or so, I've developed a pretty stellar evening schedule. I carry on for a bit before I actually sleep, but I can't be perfect at everything! There was a series of days where Mom tried to wake me up more during the day but to no avail. Sorry, I sleep like a log during the day...

This was one of Mom's attempts to wake me up by changing my diaper. She definitely underestimated my ability to snooze like a pro amidst adversity.

I tend to be a wiggle worm as well. There are times when Mom and Dad check on me in my crib and I've freed my arms from that crazy swaddle they put on me and am in a completely different position. I tend to have a love/hate relationship with the swaddle. Still can't make my mind up. I also like to kick my legs a lot. Once I get mobile, there will be no stopping this guy. Mom's not sure how she feels about this.

I get the hiccups a lot and I'm really good at sneezing. Mom and Dad really like to sneeze, so I thought I'd take it up as well. It is rather relieving. My parents can be a little cooky sometimes [they often just stare at me and talk amongst themselves about how "cute" I am. I hope that's a good thing!], but I think they're really great. I think we'll have a lot of fun together. I'll let you know how I'm feeling after another month of being a Pugh.

Well I must leave you, I've got some milk to chug! Until next time...

Love,
Haddon

Look-alike?

The recurring question... "Who does he look like?"

First of all, I'm really bad at seeing this in other people's babies, and apparently my own! Everyone asks and we have a few conclusions, but I'll let you be the judge.

I'm not sure what's more awesome about the picture above, my mom's wicked glasses or the fact that we did not intentionally recreate this shot [I stumbled upon the similarities when looking for pictures for this post]! So yes, these are my baby pictures. You may or may not see the resemblance, but there are times when I look at him and it's like I'm looking at myself 24 years ago. [Yes, I've come to grips with the fact that I looked like a little boy at birth]

But my boy is definitely a Pugh. And there are days when there is a lot of resemblances between him and these handsome guys...

I definitely wouldn't mind our little guy looking like them when he grows up. As I tell Kameron often... You ain't ugly :)

What a Difference a Day Made

What a difference a day made, twenty four little hours...

Okay so maybe that's taken from a Jamie Cullum song about a girl, and it was more like 15 hours, but I thought it had a nice ring to it as our title and intro into this little guy...

Photo credit to the wildly talented Lynn Pugh.

So this is our little stud at 8 days, he has now been in this world 19 days. Let me take you back even further...

Tuesday, August 7th, I went in for my 38 week checkup [I was officially 38 weeks on the 5th]. All checked out well— I was 70-80% effaced and roughly 1.5 cm dilated. I was having some cramps that morning, but thought it was due to my checkup. I was having the same crampy feelings on Wednesday, but didn't think much of it. Then the feelings continued on Thursday... so what did I do? I googled "What do contractions feel like?" [Oh the age we live in!] The results I found described exactly what I was experiencing. I was having contractions. Oh my.

These lovely muscle movements consisted pretty regularly throughout the day, but had yet to reach the magical combination of 5-1-1 [5 minutes apart, 1 minute long, for 1 hour]. We were told not to go to the hospital until you had reached this point. Well by 10:00 Thursday night, mine were anywhere from 3-10 minutes apart, from 30-70 seconds long. We called the hospital to see what we should do and I was told they'll get to a point where they feel much more intense and will be a consistent 4-5 minutes apart. That finally happened from about midnight to 1:00 a.m. — so it was time.

Can I interrupt here to say, at this point I was probably still in denial? That night Kam kept saying, why don't you pack your bag? Or this is really happening, O. Or we can go to the hospital to check, it's okay if they send us home. He probably felt like he had to convince me I was in labor! Sweet man. What a silly wife he has...

For some reason 1:23 sticks out in my mind as a significant time, so maybe that was when we left for the hospital or maybe when we arrived. Regardless, it was the middle of the night and we had a bit of a journey ahead of us!

For those of you that are a lot like me and get overwhelmed if I see a blog post with numerous paragraphs of type, I will now trick you and sum up the rest of my labor story in bullet points :)

• Once checked in, I was dilated 3cm and spent an hour in the observation room where I progressed to 4cm.
• I was admitted into one of the delivery rooms and struggled through contractions and got to 5cm.
• After some conversations with my dear husband and a couple of nurses, we decided to go with the epidural. A kind, kind man administered that miracle at 5:30 am. 
• After an hour I progressed to 6 cm, but then for an hour and a half after that was at a standstill.
• Since I wasn't progressing, they put me on pitocin to get things going again.
• At some point they broke my water [not sure where that fell in the timeline — definitely post epidural though].   
• For the next while, I got to relax with my husband until we reached the magical 10 cm mark.
• I finally reached 10 cm, pushed for about 40 minutes and had our baby boy at 2:58 pm on Friday, August 10th — 6 lbs. 11 oz. — 20 inches.

This had to be taken post epidural!

A fresh Joshua Haddon Pugh. He wailed with perseverance for a while once he made his escape. So thankful for those little lungs— most of the time :)

We were not surprised by the blonde hair, but definitely surprised by the amount in which it expressed itself!

Though there were some things about the delivery we wished we could have avoided, the Lord was so gracious through it all and we were so pleased with how everything went and how wonderful the nurses and doctors were. So many prayers were answered and our great wise God proved Himself to be faithful once again.

During this process, I had an amazing husband encouraging me and loving me all the way through. Since then, he has continued to amaze and bless me with how he cares for Haddon and me. Words can't describe what Kameron means to me and how my love for him has multiplied since the birth of our son. Our time together is definitely different these days, but it has opened my eyes to so many more ways the Lord has made Kameron and I specifically for one another. My, my, my... such kindness from the Lord. How did I get it this good?

I love this picture because you get to see Kam's wedding band so clearly as he holds our sweet Haddon.

We also had the loving support of some kick-butt grandparents. They were such troopers to drive to Auburn in the middle of the night and then wait the agonizing wait as we went through the whole process. So often I forget how blessed Kam and I are with the parents we've been given. Times like these are sweet reminders of how good we have it.

The next day we got a visit from this fun family! I'm so thankful they're back in Alabama. Now to only get that other sister of mine moving back to Bama...

Since then, we have had a continuous stream of people coming to see our new little family member, bring us meals, check on us, and pray for us. We have been blown away by how people have just loved on us. We have found much encouragement in your support, which makes this new season less daunting. Please continue to pray for us. More than anything, please pray that Haddon would love and give his life to Jesus. That is our greatest desire for our son. That he would know and be known by our Savior and King.

Pugh party of 3! Sorry for the low quality, it's from my sister's phone. I realized we never took a family shot on our camera at the hospital. Oops...

Haddon, my son, we're so thankful it is you that has filled these shoes. What a blessing it was to receive you into our arms 9 days early. 8.10.12 is probably the coolest birthday ever, but all joking aside, the Lord knew exactly when you needed to come. We're so excited to see what He has in store for the rest of the days that were written in His book, every one of them, that were formed for you, my son, when as yet there was none of them [Psalm 139:16].

What a difference a day made. And that difference is you.

 

Preparing a Place

INTRODUCTORY DISCLAIMER!! So I began writing this post about 2 weeks ago. I was waiting until I had some final shots in order to post it but then I had a baby :) I still don't have those final shots, maybe one day you'll get to see the completed project. Right now a newborn has taken over it and we couldn't be more thrilled [more to come one that in another post]. But for now, you'll have to be okay with perusing my creative endeavors one by one. We'll be in touch soon!

------------------------- 

Finally. At least I think so. I'm not sure there's room for anymore decor to be added, so surely I'm done.  I think it's just the hesitation to claim that Haddon's room is ready because then I think he'll come scrambling out as soon as possible and we'll never be "ready" for that! [Yes, I do want our son to arrive, but I'm perfectly fine with him sticking it out through his due date. We still have more "to-dos" to check off in the Pugh home. But yes, God is sovereign and we will welcome our HadMan with open arms when he decides to join us on the outside. Okay, disclaimer ended...]

Back to Haddon's little home in the PughPlex... I've had so much fun with the task of preparing a place for him. Not only do I get the joy of getting my craft on, but it's for him. Our son. I know he won't have lasting memories of our Auburn home, but it's still been fun to do. Let the tour begin!

So from the beginning, I was going from a color palette as opposed to a specific theme. Call me dorky, call me an art snob, but I really like my color palette. Here's a preview of some color inspiration for you to get an idea of where this will all end up.

The primary players consisted of teal, brick red, sage(ish) green, and a golden/mustard yellow. 

My first major project was the dresser. We were blessed to find this beauty on the side of the road and my mind was scampering away with how I was going to give it a makeover.

This thing was going to be teal and there was no stopping me! [In case you don't know me super well, teal/turquoise, is probably my favorite color. If you've seen my car, the Mermaid, then you're very aware of this...]

I went with the dry brush technique to make it look somewhat distressed and textured. I know, I know - so trendy, but I really had fun with it and was very pleased with the results. 

On to the hardware! I probably spent at least an hour rummaging through bins at Mike's Merchandise in Auburn before I came up with my final selection. In my defense, they just have a bunch of random handles in about 20 different bins - so it's an adventure to find what you're looking for. This may have encouraged my lets-just-do-a-bunch-of-random-ones approach!

Before...

After!

Bring that all together and... TADA!

Hopefully Haddon will share his mother's love for color - there's no getting around it now!

Now it's time to get something on those walls. Enter project #2...

What I have here are some canvas stretchers [to make (3) 12"x24" panels - you can find these at Hobby Lobby on the canvas aisle], fabric and wooden letters.

The stretchers are very easy to assemble and I just secured the joints with a staple. The staple gun is your best friend for this project. I love that I just said that, because this project involved a very sanctifying story involving the staple gun. Let's just say I cried a lot and made multiple trips to Walmart and Home Depot. So embarrassing. In the end of it all, I now know how to properly load a staple gun...

Stretch and staple the fabric down on the frame. 

Finished panels! I recommend not using stripes, they're not as forgiving as other patterns. Hence the ripples... 

Final product! I spray painted the letters silver and glued them onto the panels. I transferred his name onto the H using a handy little trick I learned in college with a blender pen and xerox copy of the text. 

On to the next project!

Enter Pinterest nightmare... I followed this little tutorial and was miserable. It's not the tutorial's fault, it just wasn't as fun as I thought it would be.

I was very pleased with the way they turned out, just don't think I could make them again. Ever.

So maybe I was a little dramatic on this one. Here are some helpful hints if you would like to pursue this craft:

• Make sure your yarn pieces are 3 feet long [at least] like the tutorial suggests. The longer the string, the easier it is to place and work with.
• It calls for thin cotton yarn - yes, yes, yes. Thin + cotton = ideal yarn to use. This will also make it easier to work with.
• It says equal parts glue and water, but I would go heavier on the glue.  

Moving right along... The next project is one done from a handful of of frames I bought from the thrift store.

Ignore the centerpiece. I ended up using that element elsewhere. 

Painting the frames - staying true to that color palette!

And the finished product...

The mirror in the middle is also a thrift store find. It had a few scratches on the frame part, so I just used sandpaper all over to give it a "brushed metal" look. Worked like a charm!

The items framed are some random, fairly neutral, scrapbooking paper I found as well as some pages from a typography magazine. 

Thanks to mom and dad for the beautiful crib!

Another little decor detail for your viewing pleasure is my button accented lamp. Very minimal, but it added a little character to a plain white lamp we had in our living room that got confiscated for the HadMan's setup. I initially had something like this in mind, but didn't have enough buttons on hand and decided to go with something a little more subtle.

Another accent piece to add a little color to the crib is this fun little banner.

I used the fabric left over from the  panels I made earlier, as well as some of the paint from the frame project to make this little guy. I thought it was a fun little addition!

My next wall pieces were achieved with three $5 Walmart frames and mirrors. I forgot to take a before picture, but the frames were a lighter wood color and had mat board in them so that you could frame 4 smaller pictures in them. I got rid of the mat board and just used the entire space to frame collages I made from scrapbook paper and burlap fabric. I used the dry brush technique again to paint the frames a darker brown to match our crib and glider. Here's the end result!

KamPughs self-portrait included free of charge :)

This is the framed collage on top. 

This is the framed collage on bottom. I included a piece of the mirror's frame so you could see some detail in that as well. 

Collage detail. Hooray for fun scrapbook paper!