Family Pictures with Harriet Tubman

We got our family pictures back this week from the fabulous Brad Cook.  Brad also did our engagement photos and captured our wedding, so it goes without saying that I highly recommend him if you're in need of a photographer in the Atlanta area.

I absolutely love the pictures he took, but can't help but wonder what I was thinking when it came to our outfit choices. More specifically, Julie's outfit choice in some of the pics.

Let me explain. We took the photos while visiting my family in Atlanta for Thanksgiving. Translation: I had to plan outfits way in advance with limited suitcase space.

Enter unfortunate circumstance #1: it was waaay colder than I had estimated "Hotlanta" to be, and thus had to throw jackets/sweaters on meself and mebebe. Did I mention that my now covered shirt and Julie's dress were tied together? Hints of pretty purple in my shirt would make for a super-cute-but-not-obnoxious match to Julie's purple polka-dot dress.  Well that tediously planned connection was lost with the addition of our outerwear, which in itself didn't quite match the chosen scheme.

Unfortunate circumstance #2: the ever dilemma of what to do with 6 month bald-headedness. Does one attempt to cover aforementioned blank canvas with a feminine headband of sorts? Yes, one apparently does when its purpose is two-fold in that in clarifies gender AND keeps said head warm all at the same time.

Unfortunate circumstance #3: Julie's baby jean jeggings weren't tight enough or long enough to cover her enviously long legs, resulting in some scandalously exposed calf, which definitely looked tacky if not risque.

The result in some pics: Julie channeling a homeless Harriet Tubman*, who, needless to say, doesn't quite go with our theme of "let's pretend mom knows how to dress the family."  And so begins a lifetime of failed attempts to hide what we truly are: a family of knuckleheads.

The fact that that shone through makes these pictures a definite success.

*Okay, this is obviously a slight exaggeration and I really only think this applies to the first few pictures.

The Things Too Small To Forget: Julianna's First 6 Months of Life

How is December upon us already? Since Julie's birth, time has seriously picked up speed. When you have a newborn, random strangers at the airport tend to give you advice.  Albeit thoughtful and typically good-intentioned advice, like "Cherish every moment! Before you know it, she'll be 18!" I know it must be true, because that is the advice I get from most.  If the past 6+ months have been any indication, I will be gray-haired with grown children before I know it.

Before they get away from me, there are so many little and seemingly insignificant details about Julie's almost 7 months of life that I want to remember. So, true to my analytical personality, I'm breaking them out in list format:

• Her long and dainty fingers that everyone commented on (now her hands are chubby little paws :), so great) and how she loved having her hands covered- mittens seemed to calm her down

• The first time Julie smiled at 2 weeks: it was the middle of the night and I was almost out of patience and completely exhausted with how many times she had woken up. I picked her up and she looked right at me and cracked a gorgeous grin.  My heart melted all over again. It was a gift from God to this frazzled mama, I am sure.

• Even though she hated the first couple, she quickly learned to loooove her baths and used to cry as soon as I took her out. Here is a picture of her very first bath, followed by one at 4 months:

• The first time I laid her in the crib for a nap and how my heart hurt at how tiny she looked in it

• The obvious joy that lights up her face when she is about to nurse is completely hysterical

• After a long nap, she has taken to popping off from nursing to look at me, say a few nonsense word/ sounds with a grin plastered across her face, before happily latching back on. Repeat.

• Sometimes, she latches back on slowly after babbling, but other times she flings her head with reckless abandon and hopes for the best. She often misses completely. 

• Her laugh. A baby's laughter is probably one of the most joyous sounds there is: 

IMG 1028 from Katie Braman on Vimeo.

• The way her dad holds her like a football, sometimes even while watching football:

• Her habit she developed around 6 months of having to pop off nursing any time there is movement, or new conversation in the room, before popping back on

• When she wakes up in the morning, smiling and chatting with me as if we hadn't seen each other in a long time

• When she wakes up happy and I can hear her talking to herself in her crib.  I was so excited I was able to capture one of these moments: 

IMG 1285 from Katie Braman on Vimeo.

• The mornings when I have brought her into bed with me to get just a littttle more sleep, and I wake up and look down and see this face:

And to recap, here's the little turkey from 0-6 months in pictures:

Julianna Marie: The Story of Your Birth

My dearest Julianna, you are now 3 months old, and I'm just now getting around to writing your birth story.  I can see my grand plans of blogging about your life are off to a rough start... Let me start by saying we decided on your name because it honors multiple people including my confirmation saint, my paternal grandmother and sister named Anne (hence the spelling with two "n's), and my dear Aunt Julie (we are calling you Julie for short).

It was Wednesday May 8th, and I was minding my own beeswax like a good busy little bee at work. I was waiting for a reasonable hour to approach so I could leave without feeling too guilty that my fellow coworkers weren't planning to leave before sundown. At around 4 o'clock, I was chatting with a sales rep who was telling me how he hoped he could meet me in person when he visited our office in June.


"Ha! I really hope I'm not here, seeing as that would mean my baby still hasn't arrived, especially since he/she's due next week!"

"Whoa! Congratulations! I can't believe you're still working this close to your due date!"

"Yeah, let's hope there's no embarrassing water breaking at work stories. HAHAHA!"


Joke's on me folks.  No sooner had I hung up the phone, walked myself to the bathroom, and sat down to do my business than my water broke.  Julie, it can never be said that you don't have perfect comedic timing. That's my girl!

I quickly went over to my fellow coworker, told him I was pretty sure my water broke (at which point he instinctively and innocently looked straight at my crotch- nope, God loves me and it happened in the bathroom bud), and said I was leaving.

Now, a side note to this story is that this day (of all days), I had accidentally dropped my cellphone in the grass outside our place on the way to work.  Some nice neighbor picked it up, and figured out how to get in touch with Matt so that we could retrieve it at 6:30 when her husband got home from work.

Sans cellphone, I sent Matt a nice and sensitive email with the subject line "MY WATER BROKE!!!" He was at a cattle farm, of all places, and called my desk phone (why I didn't think of that is beyond me) to tell me he would meet me at the house.

After getting home and scrambling to get the last few bits into our hospital bags, we were finally ready to head to Denver to the hospital. But first, we had to get Chick-fil-A (naturally). I got lucky and my neighbor came home early too, so I was able to retrieve my cellphone. Serious crisis averted there. The stage was finally set for a baby...

The Last Supper: Braman version

We're about to be parents?!

...Minus the fact that I wasn't having any serious contractions yet.  We checked into the hospital at 7pm, and by 8:30 I had the IV in, and it was decided I was going to be put on Pitocin since I wasn't laboring on my own yet. The doctor on call decided to go home.  I got the Pitocin around 9:30 and it wasn't much longer after that when labor started to get real.

Pitocin is a nasty drug- on top of helping my body start having contractions, it also gave me the "hippy hippy shakes," as my nurse Rhonda called them.  Throwing up with contractions was simply the icing on the cake.

Clearly pre-Pitocin... 

Still pre-Pitocin

Around 12:30 the resident came in to make sure the Pitocin was working its magic.  I assured her that it most definitely was, and begged her to check and see how dilated I was. I was at 5cm, which was good enough for me! I asked for the drugs. The anesthesiologist gave me the epidural around 1:15am.  All pain disappeared- modern medicine is something else, y'all.

Rhonda went ahead and checked me again around 2:15ish whilst she was inserting the catheter (tmi? schwoops) and I was a 9.5cm and 100% effaced!  She went to go call the doctor, who had told me before she left that she only lived "8 minutes away, should I need her." Well, I'm calling Dr. Lady's bluff, because it took slightly longer than that for her to make it back to the hospital. Matt and I hung out until she arrived right around 3am (I will forever wonder how this would have played out if I didn't have the epidural... would the resident have caught my offspring? I probably would have even gone so far as to test Rhonda's hand-eye coordination, but I digress...) and we prepared ourselves to meet our baby!

I started pushing, and at 3:13am out came the baby that had been growing inside of me for 9 months. Matt made the grand announcement we had been waiting for:


"It's a GIRL!!!"


Please excuse the poor picture quality for the following pics- my better half got frustrated with the fancy camera and opted for his cell phone camera instead. Thanks, honey.

Julianna Marie, you were 7lbs 13.5oz, and 20" long when you were born. I will never forget what you looked like as they pulled you out and placed you on my chest, and when your eyes met mine for that very sweet, first time.

You've been on this side of my belly for a little more than 3 months now, and I honestly can't remember what life was like before you.  You are God's greatest gift to me.

Pregnancy Brain...

…I has it.

Earlier this week, my car got locked in the garage. The garage door broke, and my car was its hostage.   These things happen, right?  Wrong.  If you’re pregnant and feeling just a tad bit emotional, this is less of a “s*** happens” situation, and more of a “the universe has turned against you and is going to come to a screeching halt” crisis.

I broke down crying.

More like sobbing.

I was quite hysterical, and while I was bawling my eyes out and managing to smear my recently applied makeup all over my blotchy, bloated face, I could hear the logical part of brain calling to me from somewhere in the distance: “Why are you crying?” “This isn’t a big deal….”

Let me tell you what- being aware of your sanity as it is overrun by those monsters called hormones is the worst.  It’s a double hit. You’re not only going crazy, you’re aware you’re going crazy.

And yet I couldn't stop for a good 5 minutes.

As my mom has always said though, crying is the most efficient way of getting rid of excess hormones.  Well, at least I’m efficient.  Often.

I don’t know what’s worse though: the mood swings, or the fog that lies over your brain, rendering your memory/ thought processes useless.

Exhibit A.  This morning I was blow drying my hair, when I started wondering “hmmmm, now did I actually wash my hair, or just get it wet….?”  I quickly convinced myself that no one is dense enough to forget step 1 in a 2-step process, and told myself I must have used shampoo… even though I couldn’t remember the shower at all.  But my hair gave me away as the day progressed. Lovely.

Ohhh well.  Getting to our sweet little baby on the ultrasound yesterday made it more than worth it.  My mom and the ultrasound tech thought our 24 week old bean looks like his/her daddy. What do you (my non-existent readers) think?

I can't wait to meet you, my sweet baby

Somewhat Old, but Not Dated

I wrote this post after the election and forgot to post it.  I found it again today and thought "Well, this is still relevant, so why not?"




I stumbled across this post on a very good blog, from a young priest. His entire blog gives me a strange sense of peace about the election results.  As I’m tempted to feel a sense of doom of the ever-descending judgment this nation brings upon itself, it is reassuring to hear the rise of a new generation of men.  These men, priests that will shepherd their flock, have been formed in THE Truth.  They will shepherd, not by shying away from the divisive issues, but by uniting their parishes on the foundation of Christ’s Truth.

We live in a world where truth (let alone Truth) no longer exists.  Our relativistic society screams “Whatever seems true to you, is your truth”… not to be confused with “my truth,” of course.  It is screaming this so loudly, that I get a weird sense of calm and peace.  Satan knows he must scream in an effort to distract from the alternative: the most beautiful Truth. The knowledge of God and of all that HE IS.  This Truth stops us in our tracks when we finally hear it.  It sings to our souls if our hearts have not yet been hardened.

But as the history of humanity demonstrates, Truth is often confused with the web of lies that Satan is constantly weaving, as he cleverly takes what is pure and good and lovely and subtly twists it juuust enough to confuse.

I take further consolation in this quote from Archbishop Fulton Sheen, that His Church will always be able to discern Truth.
       
          "Since a week ago last Saturday, we can no longer expect them to defend the law of God. These
          sects will work out the very logic of their ways, and in 50 or 100 years there will be only the
          [Catholic] Church and paganism. We will be left to fight the battle alone, and we will."
               
                        --Then-father Fulton J. Sheen, March 1931, reacting to the United States Federal Council of
                        Churches of Christ endorsement of the use contraception by married couples

I think this gives me peace because it simply admits the task at hand, the task that we of the “one, holy, catholic and apostolic” faith have ALWAYS been tasked with, regardless of this past election.  At one time, we could count on a majorly Christian society to stand with us on most social issues. As seen in the quote, up until the 1930’s, all Christian faiths said that contraception had no place in marriage.  Today, in 2012, we have now seen abortion and gay marriage added to the list of things that were once sinful, but are no longer considered to be so by society and many Christians.

Is the connection not obvious? But more importantly, does Truth change?  Can God deny Himself?  Regardless, Satan has taken most into his clever clutches, leaving the Church alone to fight this great battle.

And She will.

I am thankful for this Church, Christ’s beloved bridegroom, who is unwavering in doctrine, and has been a steady proponent for the Truth for its entire 2,000+ years of existence.  She has been through many trials and tribulations and has survived, and she will do so again, because Christ promised her that “the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it.”

Well Said, Mr. President

The battle between good and evil begins at the moment of conception: "The dragon stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth, so that he might devour her child the moment it was born." ~ Revelation 12.4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Opl0jnKbn5Y

One year and couting....

Exactly one year ago today I married the man of dreams, the one and only, Mr. Matthew Andrew Braman.  We met in the magical land of New Zealand, and my heart has belonged to him ever since.  

This past year has flown by and I’m so grateful for every bit of it.  It feels like our adventures are only just beginning, and that’s a thrilling feeling indeed.  I would like to recount the adventures we have shared thus far:

• Honeymooning in Italy- a fabulous trip indeed
• We (you, me and Maxx) moved into our first apartment in downtown Denver
• We became registered parishioner’s at Our Lady of Mount Carmel parish (how appropriate?!)
• I got my first “big-girl” job
• You switched to your second “big-boy” job, signaling the true start to your career
•  We shared our first Christmas and Easter together, and our second Thanksgiving
•  We had multiple friends visit and explore CO with us

And we were blessed to celebrate it all by staying a night at the oh-so-fabulous Broadmoor Hotel in Colorado Springs. 

Thanks for the best year of my life thus far.  I'm so excited for all the blessed things to come.