Even though I knew it was good for everyone in our house that we do this, it didn’t make it any easier to drop her off and get the wave over her shoulder as she dove into the play-doh.  She is such a social being (no idea where she gets that, wink wink) so it did not surprise me that she barely noticed when I left.  What happened next is what happens to every mother on their child’s first day of school.  I sobbed.  Then I stopped at Krispy Kreme on the drive home and drowned my sorrow in sugar.

Oh, and the backpack that is nearly as big as she is?  It was a gift from a friend and she HAD to wear it.  We’ve since downsized to something a wee bit smaller.  :)

She adores everyone there, especially her teacher

This past October my sister came to visit us from Cali and we took her to Greenville for her first time… we did the usual… Falls Park and lunch, before the rain sent us packing for home.  We did get to duck into the Chocolate Moose before we left, which if you’re a chocolate addict like me, was well worth it.

It was a quick trip, but soooo good to be outside on such a pretty day with the family.

Since life with two kiddos is so much more busy than I ever imagined, I haven’t gotten to tackle Gavin’s photos the way I could with Estella when she was younger.  So please forgive me for the amount of photographs in this blog post!  Here is my little man over the past six months….

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That is why I called my friend Jonathan Goley to document my new family, our tribe of four, just three weeks after baby Gavin entered our lives.

The uber-talented Jonathan makes very different art than I do; he focuses on wet-plate collodion processes with a fine art appeal…. For those of you not familiar with that, it is how photographs were made in the 1850′s and requires a portable darkroom and lots of chemicals.  For this session, however, he used my camera to capture some of the most beautifully real and intimate moments of my family.  I am forever indebted to you, my friend, and will cherish these always.  You rock and we love you. 

This pregnancy was so different than my first; I worked the entire time, shooting a wedding just 3 weeks before he arrived.  Maybe because of that, I was constantly paranoid that he would come early and there would be complications.  Early he came, and complications there were.

June and July were filled with irregular contractions and false labor pains.  For so long, I felt like he would arrive at any moment.  So, on July 18th, when labor started while watching Jeopardy, I almost didn’t even start timing the contractions because I didn’t believe it could be real.  Another call to the doctor; she instructed me to take a hot bath and my labor subsided.  Again.

Fast forward 12 hours to my scheduled 38 week check-up and would you believe it!?!?  My contractions came on like a freight train and were five minutes apart.  I was having a baby TODAY.  By the time the nurse wheeled me across the parking lot to the hospital, they were two minutes apart and my husband was still at the library with our daughter!!  He made it with a little over an hour to spare and our beautiful son Gavin was born at 12:47pm on July 19th. 

Our sweet baby boy was immediately taken to the NICU for respiratory distress, which is not that uncommon for c-section babies who come a little early.  A chest x-ray confirmed that he had excess fluid in his lungs.  We weren’t able to hold him until the next morning because he was under an oxygen hood, but I still wasn’t that alarmed since everyone assured us that he would soon join the other healthy, pink babies in the newborn nursery.  Little did we know then.

The day after his birth started out like a beautiful dream.  We got to hold him for the first time.  They have blocks of time that parents are allowed to visit, so I came back to nurse him at the next visit.  Each baby is hooked up to a machine that closely monitors their heart rate, oxygen levels, and breathing rate.  When we walked back into the room at our next visit, loud alarms were going off and I thought, “Gosh, I hope that’s not my baby,” never really believing that it would be.  Little did I know then.

In the hour before we walked into the room, Gavin had stopped breathing and turned blue TWICE.  These episodes would continue for the next five days, sometimes happening several times a day.  After running multiple tests, his official diagnosis was reflux-induced apnea.  What was happening was, his case of reflux was so severe and painful, it caused him to choke and/or hold his breath for much longer than the normal “allowed ” period of 20 seconds.  Long enough to turn blue and frighten the breath out of my own body.

I was discharged from the hospital on that Saturday, without my baby, but thankfully was able to bring him home the next day.  He had an episode the morning he was discharged, but because he was going home on an apnea monitor, there was nothing they could do for him there that we couldn’t do for him at home.  Terrified to my core, we brought our baby boy home.  The first 24 hours, with the monitor constantly going off, were some of the darkest hours of my life.

I am happy to say that we’ve come a long way since those days… he has only had one episode of turning blue at home (in the first week) and is no longer on the apnea monitor.  He still chokes and holds his breath while nursing occasionally, but I swiftly get him on his stomach and he comes right out of it.  We are managing his reflux and just taking it day by day.

He is now 6 weeks old and, in all other respects, absolutely perfect.  My heart swells every time I look at him and think of his strength.  Being a family of four is the most AMAZING feeling of completion and wholeness and we absolutely adore him!  Especially his big sis… I think she kisses him more than I do.  And I’ve noticed a definite improvement in his happiness/comfortability lately.  He actually even smiled at me today for the first time. 

*A special thanks to our dear friend and photographer, Jonathan Goley, who generously grabbed a few shots of Andrew and me after my surgery.

Since there were four of us on this adventure, we all got to pick our favorite destinations along the California coast and came up with a pretty awesome itinerary.   It went something like this:  San Diego -> Santa Monica -> Santa Ynez Valley -> San Luis Obispo -> Big Sur -> Pacific Grove -> Santa Cruz -> San Francisco -> Sonoma -> Napa Valley -> then down the 5 back to San Diego.  Whew!  So, so, so much fun.  Thank goodness we rented a SUV instead of taking my sister’s little sports car, cause we sure did a LOT of driving.  It totally felt like a once-in-a-lifetime trip that was all about the journey rather than the destination. 

My fave of all faves had to be Big Sur and hiking through the redwoods.  Oh, and staying at an eco-resort where your only room options were a yurt or the tree “nest”.  One day I will opt for the nest, but only during summer!  San Luis Obispo was a close second… the Oprah show deemed it the happiest place to live in America, which must have something to do with the bike valet and weekly farmer’s market on Main Street, no? 

It was also really great to visit with our SF family and enjoy a lovely dinner.    One that featured “crispy pig face” on the menu (apparently a fabulous dish) that, of course, JP immediately ordered.  Turns out, it was a big hit.

I had such a difficult time narrowing down which images to share, so please forgive me… there’s still so many more!

Heather and JP

Wine tasting wore him out!

We ran into this character on our hike.  In.the.middle.of.the.woods.

Best morning coffee EVER!

I just love the old vine zinfandel.

A place that’s long been on my bucket list to spend a weekend is the Pisgah Inn off of the Blue Ridge Parkway in NC.  I decided to take the hubs there for his birthday back in October, and despite having visited the area a few dozen times, I fall in love all over again every time. 

Most of these images are from Graveyard Fields and the grounds of Pisgah Inn (which has a charming little general store and a fabulous restaurant!).

A couple of weeks later, much to my delight, I happened to look outside and noticed the most beautiful light in my front yard.  Being a mother has taught me how wonderful things can happen when we forgo our plans and let spontaneity take over.  Here are the images from our impromptu shoot that was only possible with a lack of planning.