Christmastime Is Here

I've been collecting photos and thoughts for a Christmas blog post for a week or so. Rob is at band practice and Liam is finally sleeping for the night (I hope!) and I'm ready to share.

I've been reading through Isaiah in preparation for the Christmas season. Every time I read the parts of Isaiah that predict Jesus' birth and proclaim him by so many wonderful names I am reminded anew of how awesome is our God. How awesome he is to send his only son as a baby, a helpless, weak infant to a mother who was just a child herself and to a father who was a righteous man, but desperately poor and uneducated.

Emmanuel, Wonderful Counselor, Prince of Peace.

Christmas has taken on new meaning for me now that I have my own son. True, it is much harder to get things done (I'm not even close to finished putting gifts together and forget baking cookies), but holding him in my arms I think of Mary, holding Jesus. I think of Jesus as a baby - did he fuss and spit up and coo to his mother and father? He was completely God and completely a helpless baby at the same time so I think he must have. It is so humbling to think that the Savior of the world came in such a miserable, meager way. So often we think we must come to Him with gifts to give and flashy trinkets like a Target ad. But no, he wants us to come to him in the humbleness of a child, an infant, helpless and weak, desperate for Him. We can bring nothing and yet He gives us all of him freely.

This Christmas feels different to me. I am tired. I am distracted and disorganized, a place I do not like to be. I feel behind on everything. I miss my husband and often the life we had before Liam. I feel guilty at times for thinking of our old life when I have this beautiful baby I love so dearly. I am stressed about traveling with him (to both Ohio and Pennsylvania!) even though I know we will have much help along the way. It's just harder to travel with a baby.

And then I think of Mary, traveling on a donkey, escaping with Joseph and Jesus to Egypt, knowing the king behind them wanted to kill her son. I think of Mary, humbly submitting to God's plan for her. She didn't seek excellence through the things she did with her life; she worked hard to love her child and husband and God.

Thinking of Mary makes me thankful this Christmas season. I'm thankful for the Lord's plan in my own life. I'm thankful that he gave me a righteous man who is both strong and tender as a husband. I am thankful I have a beautiful, healthy baby boy who was given to me to raise and is a gift to our family. I'm thankful for a Savior who came as a baby, not as a king, to save me and love me in spite of myself.

I pray you will recognize this Christmas what you have in your life to be thankful for.

And on a less serious note, here are some photos from Christmastime at the Bedinghaus home!

Going to get our Christmas tree. It was very uneventful as we didn't get to cut one down this year. Liam slept through the whole process in his bear coat.

Before decorating...

After decorating!

Rob drinking our new favorite holiday drink, hot buttered rum. Delicious!

Daddy and Liam

Nothing as sweet as a sleeping baby under the Christmas tree

So I decided to make this cake for our friends Conor and Kerri. Every Sunday we watch Amazing Race with them and this past week was the season finale. This was definitely a season finale cake! This is a Peppermint Fudge Torte from the Taste of Home magazine. Most definitely the biggest cake I've ever made! We had to take photos because it was so big. It was really, really good too.

If I don't post again before Christmas I hope yours is wonderful! Thanks for reading my blog and being my friend. :) Merry Christmas!

A Very Merry Shutterfly to You! (And Me :)

When I visited my parents at Thanksgiving I noticed my mom had a catalog of products from Shutterfly (a photo website that allows you to make all kinds of cool gifts and cards) that looked really pretty and fresh. Since we do an annual Christmas card, and since this year we have a new family member, I got really excited about doing our cards again.

Shutterfly came to my rescue by offering free Christmas cards to bloggers. It's a great deal and it's really not hard at all to talk about how great Shutterfly is. (Sorry though fellow bloggers, the deal expired on Dec. 10). They have such beautiful Christmas card designs this year that I'm having a hard time picking my favorites! I'm loving this one though:

One tradition that I would love to start doing with Shutterfly is a family photo book every year. My cousin Heidi does this with her kids so I can't claim it to be an original idea, but it is so fun. Instead of having random photos everywhere or attempting to scrapbook everything (not my idea of a good time) she uploads photos from their adventures all year and puts them in one book. Then, each year they literally have a "yearbook" they can keep going back to look at

This year I'm also wishing we had money to send out birth announcements for Liam's birth because they have such cute designs for those too. I mean, how sweet is this?

Maybe our next baby? Oh wait, Rob will probably still be in school then too and therefore we will probably still be poor...

Oh well! At least this year we will have a lovely Christmas card from Shutterfly. Check your mailboxes for ours soon!

Two Months Old!

Liam is two months old today. It seems like time is going by so fast! I can't believe it has been two months already since he was born, but at the same time it does feel like we've known him for a longer time than that.

He is a healthy, happy (most of the time) baby and we are so thankful for that. He is well over 13 pounds by now and growing more everyday. He loves his blind friends still and gives them big smiles every time he sees them. He also loves his bathtub (as you saw in the video in my last post). He is becoming more interactive with us by smiling and cooing more and more. Slowly he seems to be mellowing out and can sit by himself in his bouncy seat and not need to be held all the time. So far his longest stretch of sleeping at night was 7 and a half hours, but usually I am still up feeding him once a night. He is slowly learning how to fall asleep by himself and doesn't need to fuss very much anymore when we put him down for a nap.

He still does not like his carseat or getting bundled up to go outside. He still fusses to be held and would absolutely take every nap on mama if he could!

He truly is a joy to us and we love watching him grow and become his own little person. Here are some photos from the past week or so...enjoy!

"I'm two months old today!" He would give me these huge smiles whenever the camera wasn't on him so this is as close as we got to capturing one of them.

My sweet chunky monkey

Trying to capture the elusive smile again

I could not resist posting this photo. Somehow I captured this crazy look on his face...priceless!

Bathtime Baby

At Thanksgiving my mom started sitting in the bathtub with Liam in the evening, something she used to do with me as a baby. When we got home we started doing the same thing as part of his bedtime routine and it really helps Liam calm down. We think he really likes his tub too, as you can see from this video. It is so fun to watch him kick and kick but keep his face so steady. This actually wasn't the funniest video of him, but in an effort to be modest...well, the washcloth video won out. I hope you enjoy my baby as much as we do!

Top Ten of the Past Month

It's been a bit of a rough day today with a baby who was up half the night because he slept all evening, (and then refused to sleep this morning), a busy daddy and a cranky momma. So I thought I'd do a quick summary of our past month focusing on the good moments to cheer myself up.

10. Fall. I felt like I missed most of the beautiful parts of fall because of having Liam, but I still got in some walks on the semi-warm days and got to enjoy the change of seasons during November.

9. Poop. Dare I say I'm thankful for poop? I just did. Yes, Liam has a constipation problem that makes him fussy about every three days until he poops. I actually find myself looking forward to those poops because they make a happier baby!

8. A healthy baby. I am so thankful that God has been merciful to give us a healthy baby. He continues to grow and sometimes I think he is already growing up too fast! We weighed him on my dad's scale in PA and he is 13 healthy, chunky pounds already.

7. New baby announcements. I've had several friends tell me this month they are expecting little ones. What a joy it is to find that out from people and look forward to meeting their sweet babies.

6. Cheese. I tried a dairy free diet for two weeks to see if it helped Liam settle down when he was nursing. Wow, it gave me such an appreciation for dairy products! I really missed cheese especially. I reincorporated dairy a week or so ago and it hasn't seemed to change him so I'm back to eating dairy, thank goodness! Life is hard without cheese and chocolate.

5. Reforween. Basically Reforween is an excuse to have a party with lots of friends from church. No really, it's actually a celebration of Reformation Day when Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of the Whittenberg Chapel. And when you combine it with Halloween you get Reforween and you get to wear costumes and sing Reforween songs. It's loads of fun. We went as the classic question -- which came first, the chicken or the egg? Rob was the rastifarian (sp?) who asked deep questions about life. I was an egg. The chicken is self-explainable.

We ran into some nerdy friends while we were there

4. The end of the semester is closer today than it was yesterday. This is a huge thing to be thankful for! The end of the semester for Rob is always major crunch time and it's so hard for me because he works constantly. Add to it this year are lots of practices for our church's Christmas concert and....yea....let's just say December 15th can't come soon enough!

3. Baby smiles. Liam has started smiling at us a lot more and it just melts my heart. There's nothing like it. He still likes to smile at inanimate objects which is weird, but he does smile at us when we smile at him and talk to him. I love it.

2. Thanksgiving. We had a great week in PA with my family celebrating Thanksgiving. Liam did pretty well in the car and it only took us 12 hours to get there. I was so thankful to be there and finally have my dad and Ben and Heidi meet Liam. It's different doing family stuff with a baby, but we managed and lots of extra hands to hold him definitely helped.

Hanging with future Aunt Heidi

The family at Thanksgiving

Introducing Liam to Pops and the open house Pops has every Thanksgiving weekend

We couldn't resist putting Liam in one of dad's big bowls

1. New mercies every morning. Praise our great God that his mercies are new every morning! There's always tomorrow and a new day coming. And that over all is something to be very thankful for.

What's your best things from this month? I'd love to hear!

Liam's One Month Birthday

Today is Liam's one month birthday. Wow! I cannot believe how fast this past month has gone. I'm sure it only goes faster from here on out.

He didn't do much today to celebrate this milestone. It wasn't an awful day, but it wasn't our best. He was really fussy most of the afternoon and didn't sleep much during the day -- dozing here and there -- so I think that had something to do with it. He is also deciding that is way more fun to scream and pull away while nursing which is stressful to both of us. I am beginning to realize he does it mostly when he isn't hungry and I think that he still is.

But....such is life with a newborn! Every day is a new adventure. :)

"Ok seriously. Why are you making me hold this sign and take a picture?"

"Whoa mom and dad, one month is amazing!"

At one month Liam is starting to smile at us, he loves to lay on the couch or on our laps and look at the window blinds, he is starting to be awake a lot more during the day and he just discovered his pacifier, but is not very good at keeping it in his mouth. He currently hates his carseat, getting his clothes changed and going to bed.

I'm anxious to see what the next month brings!

Happy Birthday Rob!

Rob's birthday was yesterday and even though we have a newborn, it was really important to me to make it special for him. He always makes my birthday so special and since birthdays are really important in our family, yesterday was no exception. We have had a very stressful week, especially Rob, with all his school work, extra projects and meetings that keep him away from home. Add to that that Rob's birthday was a very stressful day with Liam, resulting in me deciding to give up dairy products for two weeks to see if that makes his little belly feel better. He has been very fussy and gassy and not like himself the past few days so I decided dairy could be the problem. He is already doing better today so we'll see if it works.

So needless to say, we needed a little celebration around here. As a gift I bought Rob Season 6 of 'Lost', which was perfect because we just finished Season 5. We are definitely hooked. I also made him some of his favorite foods -- waffles for breakfast (heck, I was already up at 6:30 feeding Liam anyways!), a harvest stew he loves for dinner and then a dessert he selected, Peanut Butter Pie with Nutella. It turned out pretty well, but apparently I have issues making runny pies...he liked how it tasted though.

Yum! Oatmeal waffles

Liam was excited to celebrate daddy's birthday too with a homemade party hat

Five candles to represent Rob's 25 years. Liam is done partying.

He even wore his confetti onesie for the party

Today we continued our birthday celebration with our first date without Liam. Rob's mom came over with her friend Cindy and watched Liam for us while we went out to lunch. He was perfect for her of course and slept the whole time. It was so nice to go out with just Rob and we had a good date together. Thanks Mimi and Cindy for coming and loving our baby!

Passed out for Mimi

Sweet Pea (err...Chubby Chicken)

Growing up we didn't celebrate Halloween in our house. Instead, my parents would take us out of school on Halloween and we would go on a family trip. We went to places like the Statue of Liberty, Gettysburg, the Crayola factory and other such places that would have some kind of "educational" value. I still cherish those memories of our annual family Halloween trip.

Now that I'm a parent I still don't really like the idea of Halloween and someday I know we'll cross the trick or treating and dressing up bridge with our kids, but with Liam being so little, he doesn't really know what's going on, so I figured this year it was pretty harmless to dress him up. At one of my baby showers a friend gave me a chicken costume that was hilarious, but I thought it was too big for him. So I traded the costume with a friend for her son to wear (who coincidentally is also named Liam) and she found me a pea pod costume at a garage sale for my Liam.

We are invited to a costume party in a few weeks, but we didn't really have costume plans for Halloween itself yesterday. We ended up having a game night with our small group and I took the pea pod costume along for Liam since the other Liam would be there in his chicken costume and we wanted photos. When it came time to actually put Liam in the pea pod I was shocked to find that it didn't fit him! I couldn't get his other arm in the sleeve, nor could I actually zipper the costume. Target apparently doesn't factor in 10 pound plus newborns when they make baby costumes.

The failed pea pod. That's as far up as the zipper would go.

Before the other Liam gave up his chicken costume for us. Two chickens and an ill fitting pea.

Thankfully the other Liam was gracious enough to give back the chicken costume and of course it fit our big boy just fine. Rob even texted me today to ask how the "chubby chicken" was doing. Really, he is just so precious, and yes, I'm a little biased.

Mommy and her sweet chubby chicken

A close up. Rob used this photo today to encourage his students before they took a test telling him their "mascot" was cheering them on.

Now the only question that remains is what should Rob and I go dressed as to compliment our chicken to the party we're invited to in a few weeks? Suggestions are welcome. :) We were going to go as a steak dinner (Rob as a steak, me as mashed potatoes and Liam as the peas) but obviously that won't work now!

Liam's Dedication

On Sunday we had Liam dedicated at church. It was our first time to church since he was born and we were excited to go and see all our friends and be part of the dedication ceremony. I was a little nervous about how he would do with all the noise and people, but he slept almost the entire morning. It was also his first time hearing daddy play the drums, but that did not phase him at all.

We are so thankful to be part of a church that affirms the fact that children are a blessing and a heritage from the Lord. Not only that, we are thankful for the teaching and admonition we receive to raise Liam in love and discipline to fear the Lord and obey him. It was a sweet moment for us on Sunday to see the congregation rise to say they will walk with us to help us raise our son.

We also had the joy of having Rob's parents (Mimi and Boppy), Aunt Lauren and great-grandma Nan with us for the ceremony. They were so good to drive over from Cincinnati to be there for church and then lunch afterwards. It was a full day and I think we were all pretty tired by the end, but it was a good day too.

Ready to go to church! You can't see here, but Liam has the sweetest little overalls on for his first Sunday. Thanks Aunt Joan!

Dedication ceremony at church

Pastor Bayly talking to us and Liam

The family after church

Liam and Boppy

We've had a pretty good week so far. I am starting to feel a lot more "normal" and have more energy to do stuff around the house. We had one night this week where Liam slept from 1 to 5 am and that felt great. Last night though we were back to about every two hours of being awake. He is definitely changing though and becoming more of his own little person. We went to the doctor yesterday for his two week checkup and he now weighs 10 pounds, 10 ounces! The doctor said he is doing great and everything looks good so I was thankful to hear that. It is still hard to believe this is our life now and we can't just give him back to someone else -- that he really is our son -- but at the same time that is amazing and we love him so much.

Here are a few photos from this week at home too.

Sometimes we call him Capt. McChubbs. This photo explains why. The other day Rob literally had to lift the fat roll around his neck when he was buckling him into his carseat to make sure the strap fit properly.

He is having longer periods of awake time during the day which is great. His favorite things to look at are the blinds and curtains in our living room. He is totally fascinated by them.

Hey dad, that flash is too bright!

He would much rather sleep on other people than in his bed. But how sweet -- Daddy and Liam together.

Aunt Logan's Photography Studio

Over the weekend while Luke and Logan were visiting, Logan asked if she could take some photos of Liam for us. She is currently in a photography class at Indiana Wesleyan and thought it would be good chance for her to get more practice. We were thrilled at the idea of her taking some photos and I am so pleased with how they turned out. Liam was fairly cooperative, more on the second day when we took the photos outside. I think he really liked the warm sun. Enjoy!