The Ever Growing Baby Belly

I swore that I wouldn't be that mom who captures every possible thing for her first child and has virtually nothing to show for the second child. I've seen parents who have baby books for their first that look like a volume of Encyclopedia Brittanica and scrapbooks that could be published in Creating Keepsakes, and then the second kid has a few measly pictures thrown into an album.

But here I am about to have number two and I need to publicly apologize to all the moms I've secretly judged in the past because I now understand why it is so incredibly difficult to keep up! So here's my sorry attempt at capturing a few moments of this pregnancy. Allie, if you ever read this, please know that Mommy and Daddy love you very much and are sooooo excited for you to come join our family! We just forget to record it sometimes! If it's any consolation to you, I haven't even started on Ella's scrapbook yet either!

27 Weeks Preggo

31 Weeks Preggo

I'm gonna try to keep up for the last few weeks...at least enough to show a difference!

She's Gonna Kill Me For This One Day...

Warning!

Contains graphic potty training footage.

Enter at your own risk.

I remember watching Jon & Kate Plus 8 a while back and it was the potty training episode. I thought it so funny and kinda embarassing that Kate was taking pictures of the little girls by their potties after their first successful trip. But now I understand the big fuss. Sorry, Ella. I just couldn't resist.

I don't know if this means we are going to go full force on the potty training, but it's a start! She was very proud of herself!

Splish, Splash

Bath time has to be one of the best times in our house on any given day. Ella loves it. When I say, "It's time for your bath!" she runs to tub and starts tearing off her clothes and tries to climb in before I even turn on the water! Brandon and I love watching her talk to her bath toys and splashin' in the water, even though it usually means that we're gonna get wet, too. We also love the fact that bath time usually means the start of the nite-nite routine and that our little bathtub swimmer will be heading to dreamland within the hour.

So here are some pics of our bathtime fun:

Bring on 30!

So today marks the end of an era in my life. It's the last day of my 20's. That's right. Tomorrow I will officially be the big 3-0. People have asked me, "what do you think about turning thirty?" My answer has pretty much been the same, "I love my life and am in a really great place right now, so thirty doesn't scare me. Bring it on!"

But today as I reflect on the last decade of my life, I am coming to realize how wonderful it's really been. God has done amazing things in and through this ordinary gal, making something extraordinary out of me. It's been His doing, not my own, which is why I don't mind bragging a little bit. I owe everything to God who has given me everything I have, provided for each experience I've taken part in, and grown me up into the woman I am today and the one I'll be tomorrow as I blow out my candles. 

With that being said, here's a snippet into what's happened in my life since I turned 20 in 1999:

• Played collegiate Division 1 soccer

• Been voted captain of my team by my teammates

• Participated in 2 NCAA Division 1 post-season tournaments
  

• Said goodbye to my paternal grandfather (Poppop) as he went to meet Jesus face to face as well as some friends who were taken much too soon
  

• Graduated from Furman University
  

• Traveled to Austria, Czech Republic, Sri Lanka, England, Kenya, Italy, Costa Rica, Israel, Mexico, & Cayman Islands (my first cruise). 

• Skied & snowboarded some of the best slopes in the U.S., seen the Grand Canyon, surfed in the Pacific Ocean, been on an African safari, and zip-lined through a rain forest
  

• Worked in corporate sales, in the service industry, in professional sports, in full-time ministry, and in marketing
  

• Lived on my own for the first time…and made it!
  

• Made some life-long friendships which I cherish
  

• Started my own business
  

• Met, dated, and married the man of my dreams
  

• Moved across the country to Los Angeles…and back again
  

• Graduated from Fuller Theological Seminary with a Master’s Degree
  

• Seen my both of my parents come into personal relationships with Jesus!
  

• Trained for 2 half-marathons which I never ran, and many 10k races which I have ;)

• Bought our first home
  

• Been ordained as a pastor
  

• Been pregnant 3 times; Ella’s been a precious addition to our family, #2 is waiting in heaven to meet us one day, and now Allie is getting ready to make her Berry family debut!
  

• Stood by my family as we have dealt with my mom’s lung disease
  

• Spent time investing into the lives of hundreds of young people through various ministries including some in the country's most dangerous neighborhoods-no one can resist LOVE!
  

• Learned how to be a mommy, and a stay-at-home mommy at that

If that's what my 20's looked like, I can't wait to see what God has in store for this next decade of my life! Praise be to Him, the one who can do more than I could ever ask or imagine (Eph 3:20).

We had her in stitches...

Let me first just say that my husband is a great daddy. He really is. He loves our daughter fiercely and is incredibly precious with her. She adores him and is a complete Daddy's girl. She'll go around the house singing, "Dada, Dada, Dada, Dada...." and it melts my heart.



But Daddy has been feeling a little down on his parenting skills lately because it was on his watch that Ella had her first accident.

He had lovingly given me a couple hours of "Coley time" which I planned to spend at Target and Barnes & Noble...picking up a few household items and giving myself a little book and coffee time. I made it to Target and had just started down my list when I got the call...



"Hey babe." (Caller ID allows me to do this with relatively little chance of getting it wrong)



(Baby crying hysterically in the background) "Um, hey....um...I think you need to come home. Ella busted her chin open and is crying and bleeding and I think she's gonna need stitches."



So much for my time away. Unfortunately, we are a one car family at this point in our lives. Well, we actually have an old beat up truck that I like to call by many different not-so-nice names, but it's obviously unsuitable for a child to ride in (or me for that matter...I try my best not to go near it most days). And, while it may have not been the best move, I had opted for the more comfortable Honda to tote me to my day of "me". It had the carseat in it and everything that he needed to take her to the ER. So I dropped my basket of items in Target, jumped in the car and...



sat in post-Christmas traffic.



When I finally got to the wide open spaces of the highway towards home I put my hazards on. And, while I was not going outrageously over the speed limit, a cop stopped me. I leaned out the window and explained the situation and wouldn't you know...He let me go! I couldn't believe it!


(Disclaimer: you can't use this excuse if you're really speeding...that's lying).



20 minutes after I got the phone call, I walked into the house and saw my husband and my daughter sitting on the steps drawing on the Magna-Doodle a picture of a little girl with an owie on her chin. They both had blood all over their shirts but were surprisingly calm. We loaded her in the car and took her to the ER.

And 4 hours later we finally put her back in the car with 3 new stitches on her chinny chin chin.

The Evolution of The Berry Christmas Tree--Updated

This is our 9th Christmas as a married couple, and as we enjoyed all the festivities of the season, we couldn't help but reflect on what a long way we've come in terms of our Christmas tree.

During our first year, we lived in a less than 600 sq. foot apt in Pasadena as poor grad school students. Since we knew we wouldn't be spending the actual holiday in California, we decided to go with the minimalist theme...

These were all decorations we had around our house that we 'Christmas-ized'. Rudolph is really a giraffe brought back from Africa, the reindeers are gazelles cut out of bull horns brought back from Cuba, Santa is a Socrates statue brought back from Greece, his sleigh is adapted from Cuban cigar boxes, the Christmas tree is the most local item, picked up in some store Charleston, and the elves are Sri Lankan elephants made out of coconut shells. We had a ball putting this stuff together, and were very proud of our little scene.

We moved back to Greenville by the next Christmas, and since we both were bringing home some sort of paycheck, we decided to splurge and buy a real tree at a lot. We were loving it until I found out I was pregnant and my sniffer went on high alert. Every time I walked into our apartment, I almost puked at the smell of evergreen. We also found out that our base had a leak in it, so the water was getting all over the carpet and mildewing! Yuck! It took a lot of cleaning power, but we eventually got the smell out from both, and I was given some relief. This picture was taken while we were still in our tree honeymoon stage. The cute couple next to us is Austin and Chelsey Holmes.Our third Christmas tree was again done on a budget. We had just bought a house, had a baby, and relinquished my paycheck so I could stay home with the baby. So Christmas was low-key, and our tree was borrowed from Brandon's parents. We have high ceilings, and this little thing was only about 5.5 feet or maybe 6. We had to put it on a box just to give it a little presence in our living room! Here, our friends Jodie and David Smith show off their precious gift from God, Avery.
Finally, we come to the Big Kahuna of Christmas trees. My cousin, Jimmy and his wife, Debbie have always been extremely generous, and we have benefited from their generosity on more than one occasion. One year after Christmas we were visiting them in Charlotte and they were taking down their beautiful 10 foot pre-lit tree and decided that they were through with it. They offered it to us and said they'd give it to Goodwill if we didn't want it, but warned us that it had a string of lights that never came on and they always had to turn it so it wouldn't be seen. We had no idea how we'd get it home in our already stuffed Honda, but Brandon and Jimmy bagged it up and we all made it home to Greenville. I hit the after-Christmas sales and got some ornaments and we put it up in the attic until the next year. When we got it out, we remembered there was a strand of lights out, but fortunately I guessed right on the first bulb and fixed it in 5 seconds, and we had a fully functioning beautiful tree. It took some getting used to with the Clark Griswold size, but after we had it decorated and lit up, we were both mesmerized and loved it! We enjoyed it like this for a few years, before we moved to Charlotte.

Here's Brandon with Ella putting the angel on top.

 In 2011, we found ourselves in a rental home in Charlotte and pregnant (again)! The ceilings in this home were a standard 8 or 9 feet, and there was NO WAY we would be able to put up the whole tree. Thankfully, my genius husband figured out that we could use all but the bottom (and biggest) portion, and make it work. The picture below looks cut off, but so did the tree. There was absolutely no room to do an angel on it for two years, but we still enjoyed the tree and especially loved to see people's faces when they walked into our home to see this humongous beast of a tree taking up most of our front music room.

And this year is our first year in our new home which happens to boast 10 ft ceilings, perfect for bringing back the tree in all it's glory. This year we tried to set aside some time to put it up right after Thanksgiving, but between ministry obligations and three small children's random needs and requests we realized it was going to take a lot longer to put up and together than we had previously thought. And, this was the year that most of our white lights decided not to work. Three strands were out on the tree and most of our random other decorating strands also went Ka-put. Awesome. Caroline, our almost 2 year old learned a few new phrases in the process: "No, no touch" and "I broke it". We laid a few ornaments to rest, and vowed to only buy unbreakable ones for the next few years. But that's part of the fun of it, right? Plus, our angel is happy to be back in business this year.

It's so fun to see how God has blessed and grown our family, expanding our capacity for love in our family as h

One Step Closer

Great news!

Mom is officially on the transplant list as of 12/19/08.

Yuck

On Saturday night, Brandon started not feeling well as soon as dinner was over (we had take-out from a local steakhouse). I thought it was because he had stayed up all night the night before with 130+ teens at a lock out. But soon after he started, I did, too!

Turns out we had food poisoning, and it was absolutely horrible! It may have been the longest 9 hours of our lives. We took turns sprinting to the bathroom, and were left completely wiped out by Sunday morning. I definitely was contemplating asking Jesus to just come on and take me home immediately.

Thankfully, after a doctor's visit, it was confirmed that we are all gonna live, and that Baby Berry #2 was unharmed in the fiasco. We took some good meds to make our bellies feel better and after Ella was safe with the grandparents on her way to Hendersonville, we literally slept the entire day.

The only aftermath has been bloodshot eyes and red spots all over my face. Apparently, I was very forceful in getting it all out, and broke blood vessels all over!

Yuck, yuck, yuck. I don't wish that on my worst enemy.

Update on Mom

For those of you who would like to know the latest on what's going on with Mom's Pulmonary Hypertension battle...

After getting dismissed from the Duke transplant program due to an antibody issue, they were able to get in touch with the Cleveland Clinic (CC), which is a bigger program. The CC was able to determine that the antibodies were not an insurmountable issue afterall, and have putting Mom through the process to get her on their transplant list.

She and Dad spent a couple of weeks up there going through tests and endless interviews with everyone from the main surgeons to the custodians who would clean her recovery room, I guess. This was very exhausting for everyone, especially Mom who understandably gets tired quicker than most.

They passed that test, and then were told to start anti-rejection medicine. From what I understand (and that's not much) it's necessary to figure out which anti-rejection medicine will work BEFORE the transplant. Yeah, that makes sense. They don't want to get new lungs in her and then figure out, "oh, this anti-rejection medicine doesn't work..." oops.

The meds have done a job on her, and have had some pretty lousy side effects. She had to go off of them for about a week and spent some time at MUSC (I think she just missed Charleston) trying to get her feet under her again. Since then, she has had to get back on the meds and take them until her tests came back showing that it was, indeed working the way they wanted it to. This sounds pretty straight-forward, but in reality, we have been told we're working against an ever-quickening clock here. (For the record, we believe that God is bigger than a prognosis by even the best, most well-meaning doctor. She has outlived most of the previous timelines that she's been given already and we're believing that she still has a significant purpose which is why she's beat the odds again and again so far).

She has definitely become more easily worn out in the last few months, and is trying her best to take it easy so that she can stick around long enough for those new lungs.

We finally got word on Friday after Thanksgiving that the drugs are working the way we want it to. They were supposed to meet with the board of doctors that make transplant list decisions yesterday, but for some reason her case didn't come up. When it finally does (they only meet on Mondays, so hopefully next Monday), then after they all sign off on it, it goes to someone in the State and could take another 1-2 weeks before she finally gets on the list, officially.

Honestly, we are all exhausted (physically and emotionally), and are in need of some real light at the end of this long tunnel. Mom's other meds have made her especially emotional, which is never easy for anyone, including her. We are all feeling the weight of what we're facing on a daily basis, and though we know God is in control, sometimes we just wish things would work out easily. But that hasn't happened yet. Everything seems to have to go the long way around to get us to the next step...taking precious time.

Please pray for God's peace during this process...it passes understanding and guards our hearts and minds. We thank God for His continued presence with us.

Please pray for Him to open up doors quickly, that her files or her case would not get lost in the shuffle, and that all the other administrative hoops would be jumped through seamlessly.

Please pray for a special breath of fresh air for my dad who has tirelessly taken care of Mom for over three years now. Pray for his strength to keep going, to keep his head on in the midst of frustration, and for his ability to advocate for Mom with the doctors, hospitals, and insurance companies if necessary. Pray that God would give him a special grace to endure what is ahead.

Please pray for the family of the person whose lungs we hope to get (soon). It's an extremely hard concept to grasp that someone else will be grieving the loss of a loved one while we're nervously but excitedly expecting new life to be given to Mom.

Charleston, ER, and the Cruise

The last few weeks have been a whirlwind for the Berry family! My mom was in the hospital at MUSC for about a week, and after a couple of days we decided to make the trip so she could get a dose of Ella--always the right medicine! We drove down on Thursday morning and were there through Friday afternoon when she got discharged. We helped Mom and Dad get home to Columbia, and all celebrated her "break out" with a pizza and some lasagna from Bellacino's...yummy. On Saturday we packed up the car in the afternoon and headed back to Greer so we could be here for Sunday services.

On Monday we met up with Brandon's childhood friend, Erin Foushee, who is starting a photography business, at Furman. It was a little stressful for me during the day to 1) try to make my tired eyes and pregnant body look as fabulous as possible 2) coordinating 3 different outfits for each of us to wear during the photo shoot and 3) getting us all to Furman from different areas of the upstate by 4pm. The shoot was a lot of fun, though I had to give Erin mad props for keeping up with Ella who was all about running around and nothing about sitting still for a picture...or 300. Here are a couple of shots that she came up with (more to come later):

That night when we got home, I noticed that Ella was a little warm. I took her temp, and it wasn't too bad: 100.1. She had had her immunizations the week before and we had been warned that a mild fever could occur 5-7 days later, so I didn't think too much about it. I gave her some Tylenol and a luke warm bath, and put her to bed. A couple hours later, before I turned in, I went in to check on her as I usually do, and put my hand on her cheek...WHICH WAS ON FIRE! She woke up immediately (I guess even my normal temp hand felt cool to her) and I checked her temp...105.5. Yikes. I gave her some more Tylenol and put her in another bath (she didn't like that) while B called the Dr. The nurse on call called us back and we took the temp again after the bath. 106.7. She actually said, "You're kidding, right?" Yeah, lady...I just love to call nurses at 11:30 at night and make jokes about fevers I've never even heard of. Of course, she told us to get her to the ER (not the one conveniently located by our house, but the one downtown because of the Children's Hospital connected to it). We had her in the car and to the ER in less than 10 minutes (it usually takes about 25). At about 2:30am, we were discharged and told she had an ear infection and that we should check up with the dr. on her blood and urine work the next day.

The dr. checked the numbers and said that it probably wasn't a bacterial infection. We were relieved that she also didn't have any more fever that day. But that night she woke us up at 3am, and was again hot...the thermometer read 106.1 and the on-call nurse at first told us not to go to the ER because of the events of the last night, but then after talking to the dr. again, called us back and told us to get her there again because they needed to do some more blood work. So we were at the ER until 7:30am....and beyond exhausted by that point.

So...that was Wednesday morning and we were supposed to leave for a 6 day cruise to the Caribbean on Friday night. I was less than enthused about leaving my sick child with ANYONE, even the grandparents. But Wed, Thurs, and Fri were all fever-free and we knew that both sets of our parents were more than capable of taking care of our precious baby girl. We dropped her off on Friday night, and after going over my 3-page typed "Tips for a great time with Ella" complete with directions to the ER, we said our goodbyes. Ella could have cared less that we were leaving.

Note: The next paragraph is graphic:

We drove to Ft. Lauderdale with the group from church, and around 2:00am, we witnessed the most horrendous wreck on I-95 in Jacksonville that I've ever seen. A black Chevy truck sped past us on the left going at least 100mph, then crossed in front of us to the right lane, lost control, went all the way back to the left, hit the guardrail, flipped 5 times and out came two guys, landing on the interstate. It looked like something from NASCAR. We were about 20 feet away from the whole thing, and it was like angels guarded us like a steel wall...we weren't touched in the least bit, and we were able to maneuver through the wreckage without hitting anything. We called 911, but were past the point to be able to stop and help in any sort of safe fashion. We found out the next day that both men were 22 years old, drunk, and not wearing their seat belts. They both survived the crash, but the passenger later passed away at the hospital.

Needless to say we didn't get much sleep the rest of the way down. Everyone was on edge.

Finally we arrived and got on the boat. It was our (mine and B's) first cruise, and we were so excited, but so tired! But we were able to catch up on our sleep...mainly due to the fact that there was horrible cruise weather the entire time! The first day at sea, we slept in and had room service, then worked out and it was enough for me. The waves were 10 feet high and the boat was really rocking, so we headed back to the room for the day and more room service. We did finally emerge for the formal night at dinner, and a show, and karaoke. The time on Grand Cayman was fun with some friends. We shopped, ate at Margaritaville where B's dancing skills won me a virgin pina colada-go boy!, and did find one small spot on the beach that wasn't too rough so we could snorkel for a little while. Brandon saw a huge stingray and I found a lot of big conch shells which we gave to our friends.

The next day was in Cozumel, and it was interesting to say the least. We rented scooters with some friends, and had a ball scooting down the western coast, finding beaches to sit at to try to catch the 30 seconds here and there of sunshine and warmth, and checking out Mayan ruins. But then, as we were heading around the bottom of the island, we realized our back tire was funky. We stopped, it went flat, and that was the end of that. We had to get a taxi to take us back to the rental company because the number they gave us to call was bogus (thanks). After dealing with the police and the rental company on a dispute, we sat down for some fajitas, but got up before ordering, deciding that if the next day at sea was possibly sunny and nice, we didn't want to take the chance that we'd be stuck in our stateroom sick with Montezuma's revenge. Instead we ate for free on the boat, then B went rock climbing!

The best things about the cruise were the food (B had 3 lobster tails the last night!), the time to sleep (there were a couple of nights that we slept 12 hours easily and took naps almost every day), the fact that everything was already paid for, the fact that we didn't have to make decisions for the most part, and the food (again).

We were more than happy to see Ella after a 13 hour drive from Ft. Lauderdale. We woke her up for some snuggles in the middle of the night, but she didn't mind. We were happy to be home for about 12 hours before we packed the car back up and headed to Birmingham for Brandon's roommate, Danny's wedding. He married a beautiful (inside and out) gal named Angela, and it was a swanky and fun wedding.

Finally we're all home for a couple of days before we head to Hendo for Thanksgiving. Hope all is well with you!