Abigail's First Christmas

Abigail was lucky to spend Christmas celebrating with lots of relatives from both sides of the family.  We headed up to Phoenix for an early Christmas celebration with JP's family, and we got to see all his siblings and have Abigail meet her cousins, including her baby cousin Greg who is 2 weeks older than she is.  Here are the babies with Grandma Mary:

After that, we met up with my parents, brother and sister-in-law in Phoenix before heading back down to Tucson.  Abigail got to meet her Grandpa Jim and aunt and uncle for the first time:

Abigail got all dressed up for Christmas Eve mass and slept through most of the long children's mass.

We had a nice time hanging out at home and Abigail got a lot of wonderful Christmas gifts from family and friends near and far.

She continues to inspect her surroundings and gets more alert and responsive every day. We are having a lot of fun with her!

2 weeks old: more photos

Abigail is doing well and it is hard to believe she is 2 weeks old today!  We are getting settled in with her although she is still very interested in being awake in the middle of the night.

Here are a few favorite photos from the past week...
Abigail got to meet the birds in her room

And, probably more exciting, saw her Grandma Mary again and more relatives on her dad's side

She is getting to be more alert during the day

But can also be alert at night...she does enjoy sleeping when held

And every once in a while we get her to sleep in her basinette, which is particularly exciting:

First week

Abigail is now a week old and has had an eventful week!

On Friday she arrived

On Saturday she bonded with Mommy and Daddy

On Sunday she got to wear clothes and go home

On Monday she went to the pediatrician

On Tuesday she had her first bath

On Wednesday she practiced sleeping in her bassinette

On Thursday she learned to hang out in the moby wrap

 It is hard tp believe we have only known her for a week!

The arrival!

We are thrilled to share the arrival of our darling baby girl, Abigail Grace Phelan Jarczyk, on Friday, December 2nd at 5:02 pm.  Abigail weighed 8 lbs 2 oz and was 20 1/2" long.  She is beautiful and amazing and both she and I are doing well. 

Pictures from her first hours with us:

Abigail getting weighed

Meeting Daddy

Meeting Mommy

Meeting grandma

Three generations together

Mommy and Daddy and Abigail

More to come...

El Tour de Tucson

Well, I am still here and still pregnant.  While we wait for baby girl to arrive, here are some fun photos from the weekend before Thanksgiving, when JP and his Mom did the El Tour de Tucson bike race.  This is a huge annual event in Tucson--more hype during the week leading up to the Saturday race than the UA-ASU game the same weekend.  There are courses of 111, 60, and 42 miles, and JP and Mary did the 60 mile one.

Here they are in our backyard ready to head to the course:

With their officially labeled bikes and all...

The start line for the 60 mile course was just a mile or two from our house, so they rode over while JP"s little brother Patrick and I drove to meet them and check out the start.  There were almost 9000 racers total, but the 60 mile start was supposed to be smaller. It still looked pretty impressive when we arrived:

We found JP and Mary back in the line. From where they were lined up, here is the view towards the start:

There were a ton of people! And lots of fancy bikes!  It took a while for them to move up to the start in the crowd, but luckily the timing system is all electronic. Here they are moving forward (you can see JP's green shirt in the middle left of the picture):

Once they crossed the start, the pack thinned out considerably and they were off!  Patrick and I went back to the house and met up with them at the finish about 4 hours later:

They both said they had fun and were fairly happy with their times. It was a gorgeous day in Tucson and we were proud of them!

Pregnancy: Week 39

Apologies for the delay in posting...my computer has had a meltdown apparently caused by the motherboard so I have limited access at the moment. Anyway, today is officially my due date and the beginning of week 40, but we can catch up on week 39 since I am still pregnant and we are still waiting for baby girl to arrive.  According to my emails, at week 39, the baby weighs over 7 pounds and is over 20 inches in length, the weight of a mini watermelon.  She is almost ready to come out but must still be working on her lungs since she is still in there!

This picture was taken Wednesday, my last day of work.  I was able to wrap everything up and transfer my cases and at a certain point it seemed saner to have a last day instead of going in and having people say, "you're still here?", stating the obvious in the nicest possible way...So we are trying to keep busy and enjoy some down time before baby girl's arrival. I am continuing to feel good and get my workouts in, and trying to sleep in when I can since I know my days are numbered.

We had a quiet thanksgiving together and I was able to have apple pie, which I was worried I would miss if I was in the hospital on thanksgiving--yum!:

I have also been sewing to stay occupied and made some more decorations for the baby's room:

 I made these flags with the leftover fabric from the bird mobile and we hung them so the baby can see them from her bed...it is nice to have some more color in the room.  We are very excited to meet the baby but trying to be patient for her to arrive when she is good and ready!

Pregnancy: Week 38

We are really getting close now! This is day 5 of week 38, meaning we are less than ten days away from my due date.  Of course, that means she could come after that too, but it is still exciting. At week 38, baby girl is now 6.8 pounds, a larger watermelon compared with last week, and is over 19 1/2 inches long, like a leek.  She is still putting on weight and working on her lung development although she is getting closer and closer to being ready for life outside.

I am still feeling good overall although the baby seems to be dropping slowly day by day.  I was a little more dilated at this week's appointment but I am not having any significant pre-labor or early labor symptoms.  I am still managing to work out three times a week and doing okay.  I am wrapping things up at work and it is hard to believe that I will be leaving soon, at least for a few months.  Now that the nursery is just about finished, we are making sure we are as ready as we can be for our little girl and trying to be patient.  But we are so excited to meet her!

Nursery tour

While the nursery has been nearly finished for over a month and may still have a few tweaks along the way, it is basically finished and ready for our little girl to arrive whenever she is ready. So we thought you might like to see a tour of the space we have been getting ready for her.

Here is the view from the doorway. You can see our ikea bookcase and the lovely glider that was a shower gift from my parents:

Once you enter the room and turn to the right, you can see the dresser, which is on the opposite wall from the bookcase.  The curtain is an old piece of fabric I bought while I was in south africa from nuns in zimbabwe. I used to wear it as a wrap skirt but don't any more. To make it into a curtain I just took out the darts for the skirt and added ribbon tabs at the top.  The animal pictures are from an old calendar.

Turning to the right again from the dresser is the bed.  We chose to do a floor bed instead of a crib and used some decorations from South America to make the space more interesting.

Above the bed is the big decoration project I have been working on--a bird mobile:

Here is an up close view of the birds.  I sewed them by hand using the fabrics I bought and mentioned a while back, and then stuffed them.  JP cut off a branch of the grapefruit tree on our back patio and sanded it so it would be ready to live inside.  I sewed the birds onto the branch and then we made our way through trial and error to hang them up this weekend.  I am really happy with how they turned out!

From the bed area, here is the view looking back towards the wall with the bookcase.  I love the wall decal tree that we got from our registry and how well it fits the space we have.  The bookcase is full of all the treasures from our shower and we look forward to being able to use everything once our little one shows up!

In this closer view of the glider, you can see the great blanket that JP's grandma made for us and the pillow cover that I made with the leftover fabric from my bird mobile project. 

I do have one more small project I am working on with the rest of the leftover fabric but it will be a minor addition to the room once I get it done.  For now it is keeping me occupied while I rest on the couch and be patient waiting for our little girl to decide to make her entrance. I will be sure to share pictures when it is done.

Triathlon!

Last weekend we made the trip up to Casa Grande for JP and his Mom and Step-Dad to compete in the Casa Grande triathlon.  This was JP's second triathlon after the one he completed in Rocky Point this spring.  We got up at 4:45 so that we could leave by 5:30--in the dark! and cold!--to make the drive.  Saturday happened to be the coldest day this fall so it was tempting to skip the trip, but it felt more appropriate to be awake once the sun came up as we approached Casa Grande, which is a little over an hour from Tucson. 

The triathlon consisted of a 400 meter swim in the pool, a 10.3 mile bike ride, and a 3 mile run.  The intrepid competitors got their transition stations set up and then went over to the pool, where the swim was done serpentine-style.  Tom, JP's step dad, jumped up near the front of the line but JP and Mary, his mom, stayed back. This was the scene at the pool:

Look at all those people in line!  At least the pool was heated.  Here is Tom on his swim:

You can see that the pool is somewhat crowded but not terrible.  Finally, JP got in and started passing people (the first picture you can clearly see JP in his gray swim cap in the middle of the picture; the second one you can see his gray cap again approaching the wall):

It obviously got a lot more crowded as the time went on...And here is Mary near the end of her swim:

After the swim, the racers had to run/walk barefoot back to the transition area, where they hopped on their bikes and went out on the route.  I didn't follow them so I don't have pictures. Instead I went and waited near the finish line to welcome them after they were done.  Here is JP crossing the finish line:

And here is all three of the successful competitors at the end of the race:

Yay for everyone!  Here is JP and me (it was cold so I had to break out a ton of layers):

We went into Casa Grande and had a yummy brunch before splitting back up for the drives back home.  JP did a lot of training for the race and everyone was pretty happy with their times. What a success!