Earlybird Special!

My parents split up their child-bearing years by 13 years. Growing up, I obviously didn't have a lot in common with my older brother and sister, but thankfully I've gotten to know them better as I've gotten older.

As you can imagine, we haven't shared a lot of life experiences...until recently!
When I was at the very end of my pregnancy with Jude, Amy announced to the family that she was pregnant to (this was a huge surprise, not only to us, but to Amy, Perry, and 15 year-old brother Dustin, as well). To add to the surprise factor of this pregnancy, the baby had to be delivered by c-section after Amy was diagnosed with preeclampsia at 35 weeks.

My newest nephew, Dylan Macon Hodge was born last night tipping the scales at 3 pounds, fifteen ounces and 17.5 inches long. By far, the tiniest baby I have ever seen, but oh so cute! I am now the proud aunt of six nephews ranging in age from 1 day to 18 years (and one 20 year-old niece). Our family is so blessed!

Here I am scrubbing up to go see him for the first time!

To top it off, little Dylan came into the world in a very significant way. Besides the obviously cool birthdate of 9-9-09, he is my parent's 9th grandchild, which means he's going to be just fine. God has such a sense of humor!

I'm going to end with a picture of my precious new nephew. Enjoy!

Praying for one night....just one!

I'm up right now, scared to walk to my bedroom for fear of waking the beast...aka...sweet baby Jude. The past couple of nights have left quite a bit to be desired and I feel like a zombie at this point. Daytime Jude is AMAZING! He's got an easy smile and I can still take him basically anywhere without any problems. He's not even super-attached to me...in the daytime...

Then, the skies darken and screams erupt from his little body that sound something like noises you might hear during a car accident. We had just had several nights of him sleeping through the night (basically) and I guess we got a little too over-confident thinking that we might get to experience sleep once again.

Wrong!

Jude has decided that he wants to sleep only with me, only on my arm, only while he is nursing. He's also pretty much been on a paci strike for over a month now. Trying to slip that in during the night is equivocal to slapping him in the face. The biggest insult ever!

Please pray for him to remember how nice it was to sleep through the night...for all of us! Here goes...