A 1 month old... already?

Time. Is. Flying. I have a one month old? It seems like it's only been a week 
since I was bringing him home! 

Here's a few highlights, things Ive learned about being a mom and about my baby 
boy in our first month:

- He's a growing boy. At one month, he weighs about 7ish pounds and is about 22" 
long... such a long, lanky baby boy! 
- This kid has his father's digestive system. he went through almost 20 diapers 
in his first day at the hospital. the black meconium poopy stuff was gone before 
his second day, which is awesome (said the nurses) ;) 
- I never imagined that I would need to purchase preemie diapers. he was so 
tiny! his newborn clothes didn't even fit when I brought him home and he is just 
now starting to really fill them out! 
- I was prepared for the 'no sleep' but i wasn't prepared for the stress or the 
worrying. being a new mom is scary.. if he's losing weight, or not eating as 
much as he needs to, or crying and you cant figure out why it makes you feel 
like a bad mom! 
- Breast feeding is an experience all in itself. i never even imagined.. well 
never mind. I wont go into details. lets just say i felt like a cow and my only 
job is to make milk and i was doing a dang good job at it... i about drowned 
Caden a couple times. haha Words of wisdom, buy nursing pads and gel pads for 
your nips!  
- Caden is a good baby so far. he never really pitches a fit unless your 
changing his diaper or he has some serious gas...which isnt really that often, 
and thank the good Lord for gas medicine! 
- Getting PP'ed on is funny the first time or two, not so much after that. 
- C knows when I take a shower... its almost assured that Im going to get spit 
up in my hair or on my clean clothes when I get out. 
- Santa came to see my baby boy this year.. SO much fun! Having a little one at 
Christmas is a blast.
- I have one super cute, calm, loved baby boy. He is such a trooper. I was able 
to finish all my Christmas shopping and even go to the outlets in Foley with him 
in tow. I'm going to make sure he is his momma's boy. (until he gets older, and 
that becomes not 'cool' anymore) 

What a crazy, fast, fun, tiring, amazing, rewarding, stressful, emotional, month 
full of lots of love, laughter and diapers!!! ;) 

5, ok 6, things I learned in his first month: (Ill try to do this every month) 

1)  Feeling stressed and super duper emotional is normal. Biting your husbands 
head off is normal. You're not a bad mom and your not going to get divorced... 
he may get mad at you, but he isnt going to leave you (he better not anyway). 
Your tired. Your worried. Your stressed. You just pushed a baby out of your 
junk, and it hurts to sit down. You feel fat and flabby and your bleeding like 
crazy. You have a newborn and your main and ONLY job is to take care of him. 
(sorry to be so graphic) 

2) Listen to your doctor, but dont. Your baby may be different than their baby, 
or your friends baby. If he's crying, try different things! Feed him, burp him, 
change his diaper, lay him down and let him kick, put in a paci, wrap him in a 
blanket, hold him close, sing and rock him. You'll eventually figure it out! 
Dont be afraid of gas medicine.. it works. 

3) Dont feel guilty for not cleaning house, or doing the laundry, or making 
dinner. I felt guilty because Mick was busy with work and also having to figure 
out dinner every night so I tried to clean house, do laundry, organize his room, 
unpack from the hospital, etc... I wore out really quick and it only added to my 
stress. Slow down and enjoy your newborn. They dont stay that little very long. 
Although I am so very thankful for a husband who is willing to do house chores 
and dinner every night.. thats what they are there for is to help you, so let 
them! 

4) Becoming a germophobe doesn't make you a weirdo. Having a baby this time of 
year will scare you to death, and if you arent scared to death your Dr will 
scare you to death. I cant tell you how many times he told me that there was so 
much Flu and RSV going around..to keep him covered and not let people touch him. 
I made everyone who came to see him wash and sanitize before holding him. Ive 
never been like that before, but the last thing I needed to add to my emotions 
was a super sick 6lb baby boy and for him to end up back in the hospital. 

5) Store, store and store some more breast milk if you can while he is a new 
newborn. Luckily I had NO problems producing milk... I was a pumping machine. I 
went through a box of 20 storage bags in about a week! Now that he is 
eating more than 2oz, Im having a hard time storing because he is eating so much 
during his feedings and I try to keep a few bottles in the fridge for daddy 
duty. ;) So store as much as you can, as soon as you can. 

6) Breast feeding is hard the first month. Your baby losing a little bit of 
weight is totally normal... I worried so much because C had lost down to 5lb12oz 
and I could hardly keep him awake long enough to eat! Let me just say this... if 
your baby isn't screaming his head off, he isn't starving to death and he WON'T 
starve to death. If he falls asleep, he's satisfied... for now. Yes, your should 
probably try to wake them up if they only eat for about 2 minutes, but if they 
don't eat for the "15 minutes on each boob" do NOT freak out. Caden wouldn't 
even stay awake 15 minutes, much less 30 minutes! I tried everything and would 
cry because I couldn't wake him up and get him to eat... needless to say, 
he is fine and growing like a weed. 

1 month down and a lifetime to go... this is going to get fun. :)

-Linz 
 

2012, What a Year!

Happy New Year!

2012 was an eventful year for us, to say the least. Here's a few highlights from 
the past year that stick out in my head... I threw numerous baby showers and 
welcomed my super cute nephew and lots of other sweet babies into this world, 
finally got pregnant, helped with our 10 year class reunion, my parents bought a 
condo in Perdido Key, hired help at work, my best friend Jenna got engaged and 
we stayed at the Floridian, an incredible resort in Disney World because my 
hubby is awesome at what he does. Our low point of 2012 was when Mick's dad 
passed away, but just two weeks later we welcomed our most precious gift into 
this world... so 2012 wasn't so good, but it definetley wasn't so bad either. 

We celebrated the new year by taking our little one out to dinner with us and 
then coming home and getting him to bed! I bathed him, fed him and he was out by 
10pm so Mick and I had our New Years kiss on Eastern time with all those folks 
in NYC and I headed to bed. Needless to say, I didnt make it until our midnight. 
I feel like a new woman today though. C slept until 5am today so I got 6 hours 
of uninteruppted sleep for the first time since he was born, which was so 
incredibly awesome! Ah, the little things... HAPPY New Year to ME! 

I havent even thought about a New Years resoultion, but the first thing that 
pops up in my mind is to try to be the best momma and wife I can be, which is 
first and far most important. The rest will fall into place hopefully.. Oh, and 
to get rid of these last couple pounds of baby weight! (which hasnt been near as 
hard as I thought it would be, all thanks to breast feeding because I'm surely 
not watching what I eat) 

Caden made a to do list for this next year... Hopefully I'll help him accomplish 
what he wants to do in 2013 ;) 
1) Remind my mom to read to me a little bit every day
2) Give mom some time to blog so she can write about my milestones every month 
3) Smile pretty for the millions of pictures she is going to take this year 
4) Hopefully mom will get better about making photo books & prints made so I can 
look back on them when I'm older        
5) I want to get dedicated at our church
6) Spend time letting my great grand parents rock me 
7) Spend lots of time making memories at nana & pop's beach house
8) To go on a vacation with mom and dad 
9) Go with mom to open my savings account and put my money in it 
10) Grow and learn, but not too fast. :) 

I hope this next year brings us lots a fun memories with our little one and I 
hope you all have a happy, healthy and prosperous 2013! 

-Linz 

A November to Remember

Well, obviously I didn't too well keeping up with this blogging thing but after you read this post you will probably understand why I really was either a) too busy to blog or b) to dang tired to blog. Although I probably should have made time because there has been so much going on that it would have been interesting to look back on at some point. Ill try to fill in the blanks..

So the last time I posted was on July 25th and I was 21 weeks pregnant with our sweet little Caden and I was just starting to decorate the nursery. Since then, I've finished the nursery, had lots of ultrasounds and drs appointments (all of which were good, thank the good Lord), took my big belly to Disney World, had two baby showers, took maternity pics and FINALLY (after 23 hours of an extremely hard labor which I'm saving for another post) on Thursday, November 22, 2012, at 7:59pm Thanksgiving Day welcomed my sweet baby boy into this world!!! Here's some pics to sum up all of that:

Maternity Pics - 32 weeks 

His nursery completed! 

Disney World - 28/29 weeks

17 weeks/27 weeks/34 weeks... woah.

So besides being preggo, we have had a pretty emotional year to say the least.

Last year, Mick's dad was out building a huge barn when he kept getting dizzy. He finally decided to ask his Dr about it and they said he had vertigo. Ok, no big deal we thought. After weeks of it not getting better, they did a scan of his head and found a huge tumor pushing on his nerves at the top of his neck/bottom of his scull... they told us it wasn't cancerous and that they would be able to do surgery and get it out. For some crazy reason they waited another month to do the surgery and in the mean time, the tumor started causing his face to droop and become numb. While in surgery, they discovered that they were wrong... it was cancer. Talk about making you sick to your stomach. The worst part of this, was that the cancer had spread from somewhere else in his body and they had to find where it was coming from. Come to find out it was Renal Cell Carcinoma, which is cancer of the kidneys and it had already spread from his kidneys, to some spots on his rib cage, up to the bone in his shoulder blade and then up to the tumor in his head. Needless to day, there was nothing they could do but start him on meds and pray for the best. This is the only type of cancer you cant do chemo for. You can only take medicine, which is pretty much chemo in a pill form.

My husband was an absolute wreck. It was hard enough knowing we were going to lose him, but to wake up late at night with your husband balling his eyes out, trying to accept the fact that we didn't have his dad for much longer was just as hard and broke my heart to pieces. To see any man cry like that is hard, but for it to be your husband makes it that much worse knowing you cant do anything to help him. (makes me cry thinking about it)

So... they immediately did what they call a CyberKnife on the tumor in his head to kill it and they started him on a drug called Sutent. Some people's bodies have great success on this drug and some people's don't but we were willing to try anything. It was a LONG year of him being really sick and not so pleasant some days, but this drug kept his dad alive MUCH longer than they originally gave him. We were able to have one more Thanksgiving and one more Christmas with him. We were able to celebrate one more of his birthdays, one more (almost) football season and most importantly, we were able to tell him that we were pregnant and that he had to try his best to hold on until December 2 so he could meet his very first grandson!! After losing the first one that would have been here in July, we couldn't WAIT to tell him.. but we were also scared to death of what actually happened. 

Mickey Jeffcoat, Sr. passed away on Sunday morning, November 4, 2011 at 8am that morning.... 2 weeks and 4 days shy of meeting Caden. He just couldn't make it. His body was too tired. He wanted to be in the comfort of his own home when he went to meet the Lord, so we watched him struggle all weekend, counting his breaths per minute until finally he took his last one. My Mick was there, right next to the bed when he finally let go. Longest weekend of my entire life.... and being 36 weeks pregnant, the emotions were overflowing. Here's a pic of Mick and Dad at our wedding:

Mick's "Best Man" - Mickey Jeffcoat, Sr  aka Daddy Jeffcoat 

His dad was a super important part of this family.. especially to my Mick. Dad Js not here anymore, but my Mick is so so much like his father it's not even funny. And some days that drives me absolutely NUTS but it's funny to watch. The things that drove him crazy, like how particular he was with his stuff, how anal and organized he was (you BEST put it back the exact way he had it) and how he wanted to take pics and videos of everything are the things that my Mick drives ME crazy about. I'm pretty organized myself, but good grief! ;) He gets it honest, thats for sure. 

Dad bought Caden some outfits before he passed so when I put him in them we both get a little choked up. I also went and bought one of those recordable storybooks and had his dad read it for Caden, so he would be able to hear his voice. Luckily I had him do it just in time before things got too bad. We haven't gotten that out yet or listened to it yet.. I don't think I'm ready for it. One of the hardest things is not hearing Mick talk to his dad. It was so normal for Mick to say, "Let me call Dad and ask him" and "Lets go out and see Dad".. It breaks my heart that he cant pick up the phone to tell him what a huge rack this deer had or that he cant email him pictures of what he gets on his cameras. I miss that the most and I know Mick does too. One comment Mick made to me while we were dealing with all of this was, "How am I supposed to know how to be a good dad when my dad's not here to help me?" omg, crocodile tears started flowing. I will never, ever forget that. What do you say to that? I simply said "He's already shown you how. He spent the last 34 years showing you how to be a good dad." Talk about heart-wrenching... 

Well, It's been a month since he's passed now and Mick still has his moments and says pretty often "I miss Dad".. all I know to say is "I do too babe." I so wish that Caden would have been able to meet his PawPaw. He would have had an absolute blast riding 4wheelers with him and playing out in the woods at all their land out in Lillian... but I know that God left that for my Mick. To teach Caden all of the things Dad taught him. He was one heck of a hunter and a fisherman, so is my hubby and I'm sure my little boy will be too. Some of Caden's expression look like his PawPaw and he has his ears, for sure... so we know God has a plan and His own timing, so deep down in my heart I think that God knew we would miss Dad so he gave us a little version, with pieces of him, to look at everyday. That makes us sad and happy all at the same time. 

SOOO needless to say.. it was definitely a "November to Remember". One of the saddest and happiest month's of my entire life. And one I'll NEVER, EVER forget.   

Thats all for now. Hopefully I'll be able to blog more now so my posts wont be so dang long! Thanks for reading.... Love yall. 

-Linz 

Baby Bumpin

Ok, so since my last post was just a little background about me I finally get to talk about the 'now' stuff that I'm so super excited about.. so here goes!

After a looooong year of trying, we FINALLY found out back in March that we are PREGGO with a sweet baby boy that will be here around December 3rd.

We started the whole, 'lets get off birth control and see what happens' back in the end of 2010/beginning of 2011 and about 3 months into all that I started all of the 'how to make a baby' research... and MAN, there is so much I had no clue about until now. Since you only have about 12 hours to actually get pregnant, there is no wonder that this whole process is a miracle from God. I started to get serious about it after about 4-5 months, and after about the 6th month I thought maybe I should call the doctor just to make sure all is okay. She had me try for a few more months taking my basal body temperature in the mornings (which is NOT fun) and STILL nothing. I finally called a different doctor and scheduled a consultation with them and they immediately did bloodwork because I came in and believe me... I was prepared. I had a year's worth of calendars with my cycles listed, 3 months of temperatures to show and still not pregnant. Come to find out I have low progesterone. My body just doesn't like to produce it. (A quick tidbit about progesterone: You have to have progesterone to keep a baby. What happens is, your body produces estrogen throughout the beginning of your cycle, then about mid-cycle your estrogen level drops and your progesterone level begins to rise. (aka: ovulation) If your progesterone level begins to drop, you won't be able to hold a pregnancy)

So after having the procedure where they clean out your tubes, and her putting me on progesterone supplements after ovulation....the very first month , BAM. Ive never been happier to see TWO lines in my entire life! We were due July 9th 2012, my birthday. Right about 6-7 weeks, I had some serious cramping and began to bleed so we rushed to the emergency room. They couldn't tell me much at the emergency room because my levels were still high and it hadn't shown that I miscarried yet, but the next day I had more bloodwork done and I lost the little bean. :( One of the saddest days of my life, seriously. BUT, we wernt giving up.. the only good thing about that sweet little bean, was that it meant we CAN get pregnant, God just wasn't ready and it wasn't a healthy pregnancy. All in all, I'm thankful regardless.

We waited one month (longest month ever) and started up the process again. After another month of negative, I decided to make an appointment with Dr Ripps, the fertility doctor in PCola. I was sure something was not right in there. His first available appointment was on Wednesday, March 28th.... another long month away, which gave us one last month to try this AGAIN so we did. I woke up on Tuesday morning (March 27th), took a pregnancy test and Oh. My. Gosh. = a BIG smiley face popped up. PREGNANT. I literally RAN through the house (I was in the guest bathroom so I didn't wake Mick up), turned on the light, jumped on the bed and shoved that PP stick in his face, haha "LOOK BABE!" Talk about timing, God gave me literally about one hour to call the fertility doctor and cancel my appt before getting charged the cancellation fee... and that to me, was PLENTY of time. It truly is ALL about God's timing. He gave us a crazy lesson on that, but it was awesome. One I won't forget, thats for sure.

SO ANYWAY... we're finally pregnant and just had our 20 week ultrasound, and everything looks great so far! THANK THE GOOD LORD! I'm not one of those people who says 'oh, i just LOVE being pregnant' because the first trimester was straight up, miserable. I was extremely nauseated ALL DAY, EVERY DAY. Getting up to take a shower, get ready and go to work in the mornings was like torture. And Im pretty sure I came home most days and slept until time for bed. I couldn't cook because the smell would make me nauseated, I couldn't eat any type of meat, and I was so tired that I could barely function. I kept telling myself..."Lindsey, it could be a lot worse. You could be barfing every 5 minutes, or so sick you had to be in the hospital." I'm so thankful that I wasn't THAT sick, but it was HORRIBLE. I explained it to Mick like this: It's almost like having a stomach bug, and having to hold it all in. Your not throwing up and your so constipated, you cant poop either! haha! Sorry, TMI, I know. But its true!!

Anyway, the middle of my second trimester has been MUCH more pleasant! I'm able to eat now, and I can feel him move which is pretty awesome. Weird at times, but so cool. Mick probably get's tired of hearing me say, "Oh, he's kicking me!" or OOH! Come feel babe, his butt is sticking out!" haha Its actually kinda fun now, but let me just tell you, it wasn't before. My body just isn't one of those bodies that LOVES it.. some days I feel like my body hates me. ;)

So thats how we got to today.... and we are SO BEYOND thankful that God put this little baby boy in our lives. I'm sure it's going to be a interesting journey, but after all it took to get him here we're gonna love that little baby like no other and I cant hardly wait!! ;)

Here's some pics I took last night after Mick painted his room for me and we picked up our furniture. We're putting the crib together tonight... this is the FUN part. Decorating!

Love y'all much! -Linz

We said bye to my pretty pink "Girl Room" and made it nice and boyish.. Blue and Grey! 

Caden's new lamp and the fabric we are making his bedding out of. 

Our sweet baby, saying his prayers. Caden James Jeffcoat
@ 16 weeks 

Gonna try this out... the "About Me" post

Ok, so I've decided to try out this whole 'blogging' thing! Over the past year or so, Ive created about 2-3 different blogs all with different catchy names, hoping that I would be so excited about one of them that it would would make me sit down and write every now and then! After all those hours I spent playing with words, backgrounds, headers, etc... I came back to the original blog I made in the beginning..."Sugar, Spice & Everyday Life". I think this title will be able to sum it all up. Since I'm not planning on writing about anything in particular, I figured this title will be able to cover it all. Sugar = the sweet things in life, Spice = the not-so sweet things and just plain ole' Everyday Life.... yep, that title will work just fine! ;)

Just in case some people come across my blog and don't know me all that well, Ill give you a quick little intro to ME...so, here we go: My name is Lindsey Jeffcoat. I'm a 28 year old, wife, daughter, sister, momma-to-be (which Im SO beyond excited about, of which I'll elaborate later), daughter-in-law, friend, hard-workin', craft-makin', always busy doing somethin' kinda girl!

Me and my hunk-of-a-husband got married on April 17th 2010 and boy, was that year crazy.  I'll start here to give ya a little background on us... We met in 2007 through mutual friends and how cheesy is this.. we first talked by sending messages to each other on MySpace! haha! We dated for about 2 years and then he popped the big question, which was a total surprise! Best moment of my life... I balled like a little baby. :)

We were engaged for 13 months and I'm pretty sure that was the most stressful 13 months Ive ever dealt with, and it wasn't all wedding planning. Long story short... he was in mortgages when the economy tanked (which meant $$$ to $) and we lived off of my awesome salary as a Marketing Rep... can you sense the sarcasm? THEN, I got laid off on March 31st and literally interviewed for another job the morning of my bridal luncheon and our rehearsal dinner. Our wedding finally came (which was FAB, by the way thanks to my parents who are the BOMB) and while we were honeymooning in the Smokey Mountains, Mick got the call to interview/apply for a new company! The month after we got home, we decided to buy a house and let his house go after talking to our financial whiz family and friends. So here we are...two brand new jobs, owning three houses and figuring out this whole 'newlywed' thing... which by the way, is super easy compared to the year we just went through! Holy crap... 2010, we are SO grateful you came but we were glad to see you go! 2011 was MUCH better (only a few bumps and bruises) and 2012 has been so super awesome.

We just celebrated our 2 year anniversary, but no vacation for us.. we got a new washer & dryer (which brought as much happiness to me as a vacay would have). We've decided that we have plenty of time to travel, so our first couple years of marriage we were going to buy the things we want to make our home-life a little piece of paradise and save as much money as we possibly could. Vacations are awesome, don't get me wrong.. I LOVE to travel, but they come and then they go, and then you come home. And now, I love coming home. We love home. Sometimes we run the roads so much, we just want to stay home. Both of our families are home. Our kids (aka puppies) are home. We both, honestly, love our little home. And the past 6+ months or so, we have tried to spend as much time, at home, with families as possible... because you just never know when the last vacation with them will be, or the last time you will see them look the same, or the last time you will have them there for a holiday. It sounds cliche, but it's true... and that's another post for another day.

I wasn't going to go into all that this first post, but writing all this out is sort-of like therapy of some sort. Feels good just to type it all out and re-read it! And now that I've re-read my first post, it's a little depressing. haha! The next ones won't be, i PROMISE! I've got lots of fun, exciting news to write about so stay tuned.. if ya want! ;)  love you peeps!

Here's a couple pics from our past, to our present:

Bama vs FSU 2007 

Me, My Sis & Hubby's 2008 

We're Engaged! 2009

4-17-10 Wedding Day! 

Honeymooning

SanDestin 2011

Our sweet babies, Cobi (Lab) & Max (Weenie Dog)