Time With Daddy

What mom doesn't like taking pictures of her child? Whenever I see my husband holding Mathieu, multiple thoughts happen at the same time. 1. Where's the camera -- Mathieu looks absolutely adorable! 2. Where's the camera -- Dave looks absolutely adorable! 3. I love my husband so very much. Here are some of the pictures I took this weekend:

Alligator Adventure

Yesterday, we drove to the Savannah National Wildlife Refuge, a mere 35 minutes away from Tybee. This place is beautiful with 29,000 acres of freshwater marshes, tidal rivers, and trees. It's home to countless birds, many of which we don't see on Tybee, deer, boars, and yes, alligators. Much to our delight, we saw baby alligators, swimming alligators, adult alligators, and sunning alligators. And then we spotted an alligator we didn't want to see ... a fully mature estimated 9 foot alligator directly in our path. Note the bared teeth in the picture below!What do you do when you see one of these prehistoric creatures barring your path? Most people turn around and go back from where they came. Our problem was that we were at the end of a loop,Mathieu was ready to be done with the walk, and we would have had over an hour of backtracking to do. Luckily, Mathieu is a baby reptile trainer. His piercing wails could not have come at a more opportune time. It's amazing to see something so huge move so fast into the water. What a splash! Dave and I breathed a sigh of relief and Mathieu continued his wails for the next half hour, presumably to ward off any other alligators lurking on our path. We then picnicked under a live oak tree and took these pictures:

Gift of God

The name Mathieu (or Matthew, Matteo, or any other language with that name) comes from the Hebrew Mattiyahu, meaning Gift of God. That is certainly who Mathieu is. Whether it's friends and family bringing us food, going shopping for us, doing laundry, cleaning, clothing our baby, keeping me company, and wishing us countless congratualtions, we have seen God's love poured on us in different ways we've never experienced previously. Perhaps equal to, or even more important than that support we've received, is Mathieu's ability to slow Dave and me down and just be in his presence. I may want to take a shower, eat breakfast, get dressed, or call my sister, but Mathieu says, no, just stay with me, hold me, and rock me (and usually nurse, nurse, nurse). In essence, Mathieu says nothing else is as important this instant as this moment of intimacy between me and you. Isn't that what God asks of us as well? To just rest in His presence? When I am at peace with just holding Mathieu, not even have him in the sling or the Ergo Baby (which, BTW, are the BEST), I feel closest to Mathieu and am able to reflect on this gift of God that God has given to Dave and me. My cousin Amie, Mathieu's godmother, visited for a long weekend while Dave was away on a retreat. Amie has a wonderful knack with babies and helped me enormously. I was VERY happy she was here.

Surviving on little sleep

According to the pediatrician, little Mathieu is doing very well. At the big weigh-in (always the first part of the visit) we were very excited to see the scale read 9 lbs 12 oz. Almost to the ten pound milestone!

For me one of the toughest parts has been how tired I become around 5pm. By 8:00 I want to sit in bed and hope to capture an hour or two of extra sleep before Mathieu's wails signal the next diaper change/dinner/breakfast/milk snack. Mathieu still becomes real hungry about every 2 hours. It's amazing how fast that time goes in the middle of the night!

Sue has learned new ways to enjoy the daytime hours. Mathieu still enjoys being in the sling, and Sue is learning how to stuff him in there on her own. Sue also has a new friend, another mom from the prenatal classes. She really enjoys the company during the day. They sit around and breast feed together and the time goes by much faster.