…

classiest wedding guest.

most guys practicing choreographed dance moves.

best cake {pie} topper… clearly.

most awesomely intense home made bouquet

best reception entrance.

creepiest first look

best first look

most likely to beat his wife…. hahahah kidding, it just looks likes he’s about to punch her on the dance floor!

most DIY bride… holy smokes.

most camera shy groom/groomsmen…… :}

cutest flower girl/ring bearer

most enthused officiant.

most dedicated photographer… haha

most loved spanks.

best brothers of the bride.

best use of a tin animal train.

smallest wedding, 13 people total!

most clever seating chart.

best party crasher…. Who invited that guy?

most awesome wedding food.

most annoyed wife of the most drunk wedding guest. {he wasn’t THAT drunk}. These people are our friends so we can say that, haha.

best smashing of cake {well, cupcakes}

most awesome theme for a wedding.

most awesome light saber war.

{death via light saber}

best ring bearer…. oh Sandy.

most inappropriate hand action towards the bride.

best use of a prop beard… ever

sweetest moves.

creepiest wedding guest.

best use of a chair.

best dressed… and most bummed that he doesn’t have a smore.

most romantic kiss.

best use of capes.

And last but not least, worst attempt to blend two photos in photoshop…. hahaha

Anyway, here he is….. Myles and his smiles.

Also, we haven’t left our house in… 6 days? Yes, 6 days. It’s been snowing a ton and we live on a hill!

can’t handle how cute he is… can’t. I’ve been trying to get him to notice himself in the mirror and he has a few times. This time he was into it.. “i just can’t take my eyes off myself…”

We cut back a lot on traveling across the country since I was pregnant, so we got to do a lot more local {Washington} and California weddings which was nice. We always love going to CA because we get to see our family and all our friends, sometimes it’s like we still live there!

So needless to say, 2011 was a blur, it’s really hard to believe the year existed at all. It feels more like it went from 2010 to 2012. We really had an amazing blur of a year though, we are so truly blessed and thankful for what we have and the lifestyle we’ve been able to live. We get to work together everyday doing something we truly love, we get awesome time off in winter and we both get to be home to raise our little Mr. Myles.

So it’s that time of year again, time for the “best of” the year, or we should really just say our favorites. Evey year it’s SO HARD to chose!! How do you chose your favorite images out of so many?? Grayson said it’s like choosing a favorite kid, you know you shouldn’t have one but you sort of do.. haha, that’s terrible!

This shoot hasn’t even been blogged yet! one more!

such a good first look!

So hopefully we’ll find some time to get the Floppy Awards together again, those are always a good time and a half… we’ll seeeeeee!!

Anyway, Mark and Meredith are stinkin awesome people, they’ve been together for so long and it was great being able to watch them get married. I saw them dating when we were all in high school!

This place was also covered in succulents, which Grayson and I LOVE {partially because it’s the only plant we can manage not to kill}

They had this joke that some good looking guy comes up to you in a bar, asks if he can buy you a drink, takes off his sunglasses… and is CRAZY crosseyed!

honestly… my favorite photo of the day…. hahahahaha it cracks me up.

cell phone action.

Gotta love tourists… especially when they make me take photo on their camera for them, haha

inside joke, I won’t repeat it :]

Grayson wanted to put this painting in Myles’s room.. haha

Her mom is so pretty!!

They played a clip of their dog making crazy sounds.. so random

So I thought these were all potatos until they were out on the table… pears.

They had a bunch of different food carts out after dinner. Organic ice cream, churros {and a taco cart for dinner}

They also had a few movies playing on a big screen on the dance floor.. 80′s movies are the best.

I want this book shelf. badly.

Churro cart!!!

umm… Meredith there’s something.. someone… coming out of your dress……

A rainbow!!!! “a double rainbowwwww!!!” hahha.. anyone? You tube?

We made it through the first month!! It wasn’t AS bad as I thought it would be, BUT I think that’s because both me and Grayson were home the whole time. I can’t imagine doing that alone, I have so much more respect for single parents, holy smokes. I would have had a mental breakdown if I was alone all day doing all that.

He still sleeps in our bed, we said he would for 2 weeks, but we can’t make the transition! We haven’t even made the transition to the pack-n-play in our room let alone being in his own room. It’s so much easier having him in bed when I have to wake up to nurse, plus we’d feel so bad making him sleep all alone in a room, no thanks! But we’ll make the transition someday! Plus every morning we get to have family cuddle time and we love that.

We’ve somewhat adjusted to life with a baby, it’s weird knowing we’ll won’t get to sleep for more than 3 hours at a time for a long while. But the midnight feedings {I hate calling them “feedings”, it makes him sound like a vampire} have gotten easier, we’ve gotten into a routine of me getting up to nurse while Gray sleeps, then I go back to bed while Gray bounces him back to sleep. He at least wakes up on his own when he’s hungry, we used to have to set an alarm every 3 hours because he wouldn’t wake up, he’d sleep all night if we let him! It’s hard to get up at 2am when there’s no baby making you, no motivation!

I haven’t been able to eat dairy for a while, he may be allergic, so I switched to eating a lot of Red Vines {I NEED sugar, haha} and we figured out that MAY be making him have green poo so I cut that out too! Ahhhh! My amazing midwife introduced me to Trader Joes Soy Cherry Chip ice cream, SO GOOOOODDD!

Every time I think about it I’m so glad we had a home birth, SO glad. We went to the hospital to get his newborn hearing test {passed!} and right when I walked in I was so happy we didn’t have our baby there, it felt so…. sterile and impersonal? I don’t know, just not for us. I walked up and stood in line and they told me I had to stand back behind some yellow line, what?? Anyway, here are some more photos of the boy!

Christmas Eve!

Christmas jammmmsssss!!!

Mimi and Pop Pops, double fisting it.

finally getting to use the blanket I spent way too much time making for him.

best nap spot ever.

We are not choking Myles or giving him a spanking… just an interesting burping technique.  Please don’t call CPS!  And sorry for all the leg that Grayson is showing… he’s all mine ladies

Breakdown…

part one of our completely trashed house. Gray on the little couch, Myles taking up the big one.

worlds most dramatic yawn.

so stinkin cute.

Grayson spending “quality time” with Myles.. he’s on his lap while he plays Skyrim… and our house is TRASHED..  We were all back to normal at 3 weeks

baby acne started kicking in!

when ever our friends who have kids come over they instantly put him into a coma somehow. I’m  jealous.

Auntie Sara got to come visit for New Years! Woooo hooooo!!

g

Grayson thinks this is a weird picture of him, I think it’s cute :]

Our friends across the street had their baby at home too {6 weeks before us}. They’re going to be buddies :] We took our birth class together too and used the same {awesome} doula.

Kingston and Myles :]

Happy New Yearsssss!!! He’s a party machine.

These ones make me laugh, especially the mid-sneeze one.

passed out on the couch. He’s going through a phase of only taking naps on our chests.

So there it is! He obviously LOVES to sleep, unless we want to take a nap, then he just wants to eat and be wide awake. We’ve come to love the exersize ball, it’s one of the only things that soothes him. Or Pandora on the Page France or Iron and Wine station. He goes into an instant trance!

You learn to eat either really slow {with your left hand because you’re holding him with your right} or really fast before he notices you put him down to eat, but you figure it out! He’s a good baby, just likes to fuss when he’s awake, haha.

So overall, a good first month! Our house was overly trashed, dishes piled up and lots of people made us lots of food {THANK YOU, we grovel at your feet}. People came over and showed us tricks, how to properly swaddle… all the good stuff. Grayson has come up with a few tricks to getting him to go to sleep as well. You just learn as you go! Luckily he loves to sleep, and most nights he loves to sleep for long stretches too {YEESSS}

We’re really excited for the next months, for him to start smiling and giggling and all that. Having a baby is awesome, even when they pee in your mouth and spit up in your hair {yes, he’s done both to me}…. It somehow never bothers me that I’m wearing a pee or spit up covered shirt all day, what’s the point in changing when he’ll just do it again? haha. But we love him!

We have to say that this was our first time staying in an RV while shooting and we loved it.  It was a camping trip for us as well.  Well, fancy camping.. we got to sleep in a bed and watch movies on our laptop all night with a bunch of candy bars. And there was a pool!!! We went swimming the morning of the wedding to beat the heat and Heather was 5 pr 6 months pregnant.. She was walking around in her bikini and some 12 year old hit his friend and said “whoa.. look at that!”… Heather wasn’t too happy, haha. Anyway, the reception was out on a lawn right down by the American River.  It was dang hot, but it was SO BEAUTIFUL!

Jill + Nigel got to spend their nights in what I like to call the “Wedding Bullet.” This wedding had so many cool details that made it just awesome. Also, instead of a normal honeymoon they put all their stuff in storage and just  left for a year of traveling around the world after their wedding, so cool.

They gave everyone hobo sacs {matches and other camping essentials)

So instead of doing a seating chart they had everyone pick a card and whoever got matching ones had to sit at the same table… whhatttt? way to mix it up!

I loved the tables at the wedding, just really relaxed.

The look from this kid says, “give me a smore!”

I was super jealous of Jason.  He works with Peter Jackson and lives in New Zealand shooting movies over there.  He told me that he was currently working on the team that is making “The Hobbit.”  That was my favorite book growing up and continues to be in my top 3.

After all the ceremonial stuff was finished, we headed into the great indoors to party it up.  The Flashdance got the party rolling pretty quick and the dance floor was packed.  Thanks Sharon + Jason for having us!

So, you may have heard via Facebook or someone that I had a long, LONG labor. We decided to have Myles at home in our bedroom and it was the best decision we’ve ever made {other than to get married and get pregnant, haha}. I’ll try to summarize this very long story. I went into labor at 10pm on the 6th so I decided to try and get some sleep since I’d be basically running a marathon soon. We went to bed and it didn’t work, my contractions were too strong already to sleep through. So we woke my friend April up and decided to try and watch a movie to distract me- yah right. My contractions were coming as close as 2 minutes apart and lasting up to 6 minutes!! WHAT THE CRAP!!! Keep in mind contractions are basically supposed to be 5 minutes apart and last 60 seconds in early labor. So we did this until 3am then called my midwife, Kim, to come over. She came, I was 1.5 cm dilated, nothing to write home about. She wanted me to take a hot bath to slow down my labor and get some sleep. Did that, it didn’t work, they came stronger. We slept between contractions and they were now 5 minutes apart. I managed this from 4-7am and at 8am our Doula, Mary, came over. She took one look at my stomach, my weird contractions and said he was in a slightly weird position. UGH!!

So we had to move him, and to move a baby you have to do whatever you do for at least 30-45 minutes. At this point I’d already been awake for 24 hours, luckily Gray got to sleep for a couple hours which was great! So we did this thing where I had to lift my belly when my contraction started and do these dip lunges essentially, and Gray had to do it with me and put pressure on my back because I was having back labor. We did this for 1 hour and 15 minutes! My contractions were still double and triple peaking, lasting 4-6 minutes. We continued on all day, then April had been at our house since Dec. 2nd but now had to go… she’d pushed her flight back twice already and my labor was just too long, she had to fly back to Long Beach. That was the start of mental breakdown number one. Mary called Kim and had me talk to her on the phone, she said it sounds like I’m still in early labor, THAT was really frustrating. It had been nearly 18 hours!! So around 5 Mary wanted us to eat dinner and go on a walk, she was going to run and do something. The second she left I broke down crying, I was SO tired and SO frustrated. My contractions were way stronger than they should have been for how dilated I was and I wasn’t progressing. At this point I was considering going to the hospital for pain killers. I REAAALLLYYY didn’t want to go but I didn’t think I could do this anymore. Grayson was telling me it’s ok if I want to go, that I tried and I’m not letting anyone down, he was crying to because he was upset for me and exhausted as well. We went on a walk outside and that didn’t help, I had 10 long contractions in the few minutes we were out there, every 4 steps or so. More crying, then we called Kim to come NOW. I needed to figure out what to do.

She comes an hour later and checks me “I have good news, you’re 3 plus!”. WHAT!?! That’s good news!?! It’s been 21 hours and I’m only 3cm dilated! I was about to throw in the towel but still no part of me wanted to. If we go to the hospital it will be NOTHING like what we’ve planned, and they’ll more than likely give me a c-section because we can’t get him to move into the right position. We took a shower and cried more, Grayson told me it’s ok if we go, but he really thinks I can do this. That really helped, so we got out with a new outlook. Mary and Kim really helped calm us down and tell us we could do this. We decided to keep going.

THEN… they decided to do this technique that they try to avoid if at all possible because it’s really painful for me, but decided it was necessary. They needed to move the baby so that he’d be pressing on my cervix and actually making me dilate, so they had me get on all 4s, laying my head on my arms, so butt in the air. They stuck a sheet under my belly and had someone stand over me, pull the sheet tight and shake it back and forth, basically jiggling the baby out of his position.. for 30, painful minutes, through all my contractions with no break. After the 30 minutes they sat me up into a squat and he slid into the right position. After this things really started to progress, YESSS!! I went into transition {8-10cm} pretty quick which lasted about 3 hours. {Funny, they say the longest it will last is 2 hours.. haha. This is considered the most painful part, people puke, cry, ask for drugs, etc}. Oddly enough, this was the best part for me. The contractions were REALLY intense, but I knew they were doing something now. She had me sleep between them {so in 1-2 minute intervals} because I was falling over before and needed sleep. Kim and Mary slept too, Grayson was…. amazing. I can’t say enough about how amazing he was, there is no way I could have done that without him. He could read my breathing and cues to know when I was starting a contraction and was at my side, holding my hand, talking me through it, every single time. My body kept involuntarily pushing, which made it hurt a lot more. They were moving up to my lungs and covering more of my body. After 2.5 hours downstairs I was ready to get in the tub and finsish this. So we went upstairs, had all kinds of problems with the tub, haha. The temp had spiked and the pump didn’t work so they took off our screen and were dumping water out the window, hahaa.

I had to lay there and wait! Yikes! I was 7/8cm!!!! THANK YOU JESUS! I got in the tub and it was freezing because they were putting cold water in it to cool and it all settled at the bottom, I was shaking but refused to get out, haha. My body kept pushing, it was making the contractions so bad and Kim said my body was trying to break my water, so try to break it. I tried and tried and could NOT break it so I asked  her to break it. She got me out, went to break it and said “Oh! That’s his head you’re pushing!” haha, what?! She popped my water and got me back in, I asked her how long first time mom’s usually have to push, “one to four hours”… ok, I’m going to plan on 3, I was NOT mentally prepared for 30 hours of labor but I can be prepared for this. So I start to push and this was the first point in the entire labor I clenched down at all and made any sound that resembled pain, it REALLY scared Grayson and he started to cry. I consoled him, telling him it’s ok, my body has to do this to get him out, he’s almost here. Did another push, yelled a lot, I had NO control over the sounds I made, it was crazy. He cried again. Then Kim and Mary said not to let the sound out, push it down, that really helped. I was also trying to hold it in for Gray’s sake.

Then they asked “do you want to touch his head?”. haha, no, scarryy! But I did, they asked how far he was, if I could reach him “yah he’s about 2 finger knuckles away”. That caused some excitement, he is CLOSE! With each, enormous and really painful push I got him inches closer. “Call our parents to come back!!” I yelled. They all went back to my mom’s so we could push in peace, but wanted to be here to hear his first cry. With each push he went pretty far. Grayson was supposed to catch him and Kim said “ok, it’s going to be 2 or 3 more big pushes” but I was such a pushing champ that on my next push his entire body came shooting out all at once!! He went from barely crowning to out all at once. All the sudden I am holding a baby against my chest, I’m crying, Grayson is crying, Myles is crying! HOLY CRAP!!! I just pushed out a baby, I just had a baby!! We have a baby! It was the most surreal moment ever. I just did that, I just went through 30 hours of intense labor and pushed out a baby in our bedroom with no medial help, no drugs, nothing but people and support.

They got me out, he was laying on my chest, they never took him from me, they did everything they needed to do with him right on my chest, Grayson got to cut his cord. I still couldn’t believe that all just happened and it’s all over now, we have our baby Myles and he’s beautiful! Crazy sideways cone head and all. He was born at 2:54am and weighed 6 pounds, 11 ounces. I can not express enough gratitude for Kim and Mary, for a home birth, for Grayson and his amazing support. Both Kim and Mary said they were so impressed with how well we went through that together, they wish they could have video taped it to show other couples. Kim said she even teared up when Grayson was crying after my pushes and I was consoling him. It was such an amazing experience!

It was funny, our good friends came over later that day and asked if I’d do it all again, I said “right now, no.. but ask me in a week and I’ll say yes”. And now, yes I would, in a second. He was worth every minute of pain and exhaustion. I can’t imagine not having a baby at home in the water.

Wow….. that was not short, sorry, but it’s a good story! Ok, now onto the photos of his first week of life.

This is when labor started on the 6th..

About 2am, I got to be in labor by my fire and Christmas tree, amazing. April took these photos so they’re a little out of focus, hahah. Love you April!

Mary had me get in the tub for a few minutes of relief {as much as I could have, haha}

I know this photo is blurry, but this is when I was in transition downstairs.

just a few minutes old.

Grayson cut the cord!

The only picture of the 3 of us so far.

Mimi {my mom}. The only photo of when his head was all crazy, it went away in about 2 hours.

Pop Pop {my dad}

This is Grayson’s favorite photo, me after it all… haha

the next morning.. well technically the same morning since he was born at 3am,

I love this photo :]

after a 3am nursing, no sleep :]

oh sleepy bear.

Grayson bought me that necklace for after I had Myles.

hahahah we thought this was so funny, what a little ham, posing.

This is my favorite photo. I made him that bunny {Professor Bun Bun}

Gigi {Gray’s mom} was up for 12 days helping, AMAZING to have her there!!!!!

This picture kills me, he’s so stinkin cute!!!!!

THAT FACEEEEE!!!!!

lounging with daddy. haha

such a cute yawn :]

So there is it! His first week of life. Plenty more to come of course!

One of our favorite moments of the day revolved around a boombox.  First, Kat was frantically searching for the D batteries; kept exclaiming that they are super important.  We first thought that she just really wanted to have music to listen to while she got ready.  Then all became clear at the ceremony when we spotted a boombox planted behind the last row of seats.  Wedding music!  The ceremony was about a tenth of a mile away from any form of electricity. We laughed when Drew came down the dirt isle and very normally bent down and pressed the play button and the music started. There was this moment after everyone came down when the music was still going and the officiant/caterer {haha} says “someone wanna turn that off so we can get this started!?”… hahahahaha we loved it.

After the ceremony they walked back down the isle and pressed play again so it would be on for everyone else. We loved how unofficial everything needed to be for them that day.  They just needed each other.

such good shoes!

That’s a huge bridal party…

They had their ceremony down by the river, about a 200 yard walk.

I love this photo

my favorite of the day {Grayson}

It seems this guy had a little too much to drink…