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!