Happy Holidays!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving! Ours was great. We had one with each side of our family, so we had more then enough to eat. (Not easy to stay on track with eating healthy when your mom and mother in law are both making huge meals!)

(My mom and sister preparing the feast!)

(Our little family on Thanksgiving at my mother in laws house.)

We were also able to see my sister and brother in law who live out of town. Braxton was excited to see them and had an important question to ask them. He was hoping they would say yes to being his Godparents, and luckily they did! We are lucky to have people who love him as much as we do, and they had some early Christmas goodies for Braxton! We can’t wait for them to come back and visit in December.

(Braxton with his Godparents, AKA Uncle Thomas and Aunt Dawn.)

Before they left, Thomas (my Brother-in-Law) took our family Christmas photos for us. He is a brilliant photographer and also took Braxton’s newborn pictures. Click Here to see his Photography website. (He has amazing pictures of their travels from all over the world!) We are saving our favorite photos for our Christmas Card that we are sending out in the next few weeks, but here’s a few sneak peek pictures. We’ll post our Christmas Card photos closer to Christmas! (Pretty much all of today’s photos are courtesy of Thomas Chen Photography. That’s why they look so much better then usual.)

(On the front porch of our house. We are so thankful this Holiday Season to have our own home to raise Braxton in!)

(Braxton loves his mini rocking chair, but loves feeling like a big boy in our rocking chairs too!)

So the only downside to the Thanksgiving weekend was that I got pretty sick. My throat starting hurting on Thursday, on Friday I was feeling kinda icky but by Saturday I was down for the count. My head was throbbing, I was burning up but I felt like I was freezing cold, my nose was completely stuffed up and my whole body felt completely weak and ached. I pretty much slept all Saturday and Sunday. It made me realize a couple of things:

1. I was extremely lucky to have a supportive husband. I have no idea how single mothers do it. They are super strong women, because I don’t think I could have made it through that weekend taking care of a baby by myself. He took care of Braxton so I could take care of myself. The only times he woke me up was to feed Braxton (still breastfeeding) and then he would refill my water/gatorade/orange juice, bring me medicine and then I’d go back to sleep. As sucky as I felt, it was nice knowing that Braxton was taken care of and that I could rest.
2. Being sick while breastfeeding is just as bad, if not worse, then being sick while pregnant. It seemed like there was even less medicine that I could take to make myself feel better since I am breastfeeding. When I was pregnant and sick I could at least take Tylenol Cold Medicine. But if you are breastfeeding, then anything with a decongestant in it could dry up your milk supply. Which is pretty much any type of Cold or Flu medicine. So it was pretty much just Benadryl and a Humidifier for me.
3. A women’s body is amazing. Not only can it literally make another human, but it can also feed another human. Breastmilk has everything a baby needs, and it can even prevent a baby from getting sick! Even with how sick I was, Braxton never got sick. And it’s all thanks to my breastmilk. Breastmilk adapts to what a baby needs. As they age it changes, and it can detect sickness and create antibodies to protect them. It’s amazing. And I’m so thankful for it because I would have felt horrible if I got my little one sick. It would be hard to see him in any pain. It made the fact that I couldn’t take any strong medicine (see #2 above) worth it.

(Thomas can even make Braxton playing with his toys look like a picture perfect moment!)

I’m finally feeling somewhat better, and thankfully my mom has been able to come over for a few hours each day to watch Braxton so I can get some rest. I’m hoping to be back to 100% by this weekend so we can start doing some Christmas stuff with Braxton! I want to take full advantage of all the Holiday events around town for his first Christmas, including the Trail of Lights (here in Austin), visiting Santa, maybe going to Santa’s Wonderland (in College Station), possibly going to the Zoo Lights (in Houston), and anything else I can find! If anyone knows of any other fun Christmas events around then let me know. I love Christmas time and I want to start as many traditions for my little family as I can!

I can’t wait to show you more of our Christmas photoshoot and pictures of all the Christmas activities as we celebrate Braxton’s first Christmas!

(And thank you again to all who voted for Braxton in the Gerber Baby Photo Search! We will find out the results in January!)