Three weeks old

We are so enjoying having Levi finally here with us. He's a great eater, a pretty good sleeper and Dave and I thought we had this whole parent thing figured out... until this weekend when Levi decided that he wanted to be awake and eating every hour and half... then we realized that our success has little to do with us and everything to do with him! We're learning!

Here's our cool guy getting some sun before his drs appt. They were checking for jaundice, but his levels turned out to be perfectly fine.

He LOVES to be swaddled and Daddy is the best swaddler around. (It must be because he practiced on Hannity all those months ago!) We think he's already changed so much in his 3 short weeks.

Here's my boys watching the Dodger game.

(Don't mind the mess, it's a controlled chaos at this point still!)

Levi also loves his swing! Really, he does!

He was swinging so calmly and peacefully that I grabbed my phone to capture the moment-- and this is what I got! He must've been done with it at this point, but normally it's his favorite.

Here's Daddy trying on Levi's first Dodger hat-- it's a little big!

I'm having a hard time getting out my big camera so all of these are just from my phone but we are trying to capture some of these moments as they happen. It's pretty incredible to think that he's only been here a few short weeks because it seems as though we've loved him forever. Next up, a trip up North to visit family! We'll keep you posted how the big road trip goes...

Friendly Visitors

One of my biggest fears of being in the hospital for four days is that I was going to be bored. I know, it's a silly fear and obviously when the time came Levi didn't let us get bored! But we were still so grateful that so many friends came to help us welcome him into the world. They kept us busy and occupied and well fed! Here is a few pictures of some (but not all) of the people that came and held our little guy in the hospital...

Lauren and Levi

Tara and Levi

David and Levi

Janice and Levi (Janice also works at the hospital and brought us extra desserts from the cafeteria. They were so good!)

Jim, Levi & Dave

Jim was in town for a conference (he's from Fresno) and was able to drive out to see us!

Krista, Me, Dave, Levi & David

(And little Abigail in Krista's belly! We can't wait to meet her too!)

Sheri & Levi

Sheri had her little girl this past Saturday! We can't wait to introduce Levi and Stevie... I know they'll be great friends!

Crista & Levi

Crista, Mike and her little Jackson drove all the way from Modesto on Monday morning. We were so surprised they made the trip on such short notice with a 9 month old! What great friends they are. :) And we can't wait for Levi and Jackson to grow up together just like Crista and I did!

Jonathan & Lacey & Levi

Angela & Levi

Angela lives in Colorado now but she helped throw us a baby shower in the South Bay and happened to be in town on work travel. What great timing that she was able to be here to visit!

Again, that's not all of our friends that came but those are the ones we have pictures of. I know I say this a lot, and it probably sounds cliche at some point, but we LOVE our friends here and feel so blessed by their outpouring of love and support and encouragement as we start the journey into parenthood. We have been totally humbled by this experience and appreciate everything they have done from visiting to bringing dinners to calling to check up on us. We love you guys!!!

We Are Family

We'll have to do this in two posts because so many people came to visit us at the hospital! Here is Levi meeting his immediate family. We were so glad they were able to come down and visit us in the hospital and meet him the day he was born. What a special treat!

Grandma and Grandpa Lockridge

Grandpa and Grandma Harden

Uncle Bryan

Auntie Sarah

Auntie Alison (Bryan's GF)

Uncle Charlie and Auntie Christina

Grammy H enjoying Levi the day we came home from the hospital.

Cuddles with Grandma L.

Three of my favorite Lockridge guys.

This time with Uncle Charlie. (We need to get all four together in one picture soon!)

Napping with Auntie Christina!

Thumbs up from Grandpa Steve! :)

I know I say this a lot but, we really are so blessed by our amazing families and we're so excited that Levi has so many wonderful, loving people to help us encourage him and grow him into a man of God. We cant wait to come visit soon to meet the rest of our Northern California family!

Introducing Baby L

Levi Daniel

August 2, 2010

7:28 pm

7 lbs. 13 oz.

21 inches

We were scheduled to be induced on Monday morning at 6 am but Levi had his own plans. My water broke Monday morning at 1 am and contractions started soon after. We went to the hospital already 5 cm dilated and hoping for a lunchtime baby. Progress was slow, after 17 hours in labor and 3 hours of pushing the doctor decided that it was time to get him out. We did a c-section at 7 pm and had a healthy, beautiful baby boy at 7:28 pm. It wasn't our plan, or how we thought the day would go, but he's here and we're all healthy and grateful for a successful day!

New Dad Dave got to watch all the proceedings after birth while our friends and family watched from outside the nursery window. It was so special to have so many people stick around for such a marathon day. Levi is a lucky and very loved little boy already!

The hospital photographer was AMAZING! These are from her. You can check out the whole slide show at her website: bellababyphotography.com and our password is: 0802levilockridge. The slide show will be up for another week or two.

Dad, Mom and Baby Levi

It has been an incredible week of getting to know our little guy, spending time with family and friends and recuperating from a rather long birth. We feel so loved and blessed by all the outpouring of support and encouragement we've received in the past week and we are so excited to introduce you to Levi in the coming weeks.

Our last few childless moments

This past week we got to celebrate my sister's 20th birthday, celebrate my 27th birthday and our 4th anniversary, spend some quality time with my parents and we BOUGHT A NEW CAR! We're trying to get out of the house and enjoy the ease of being spontaneous before Baby L makes his appearance. We keep hearing how life changing it will be so we figure we may as well make the best of last few childless moments!

So to celebrate Sarah's birthday Mom, Sarah and I went to the Burke Williams spa in Torrance for some massages and girl time. It was so much fun to relax and laugh with them, and we may or may not have gotten in trouble for talking and laughing too loudly in the spa area but it's probably because they need to lighten up a bit over there. :) Amazing massages, great atmosphere and we loved all the amenities-- we will definitely be going back!

While we were spa-ing it up Dave, Dad and our good friend Jonathan were doing some car shopping. We found out earlier that morning that our stroller was not going to fit in the back of our little car. Literally. Would. Not. Fit. We were already planning on cramming the car seat into a position that would make it uncomfortable for Dave to drive, but now the stroller wouldn't fit. What about the other "stuff" that we will undoubtably be bringing with a new baby?! With a little panic, we stepped up our car shopping and Dave found two great deals and took the men to check them out. It was so successful that he came home with a new (to us) GMC Acadia! It is going to be perfect for us and we are so excited.

Here is a picture of it in the garage.

Then we spent some more time preparing for Baby L. Here is Dad and Sarah putting our swing together. Thanks guys!

And the car seat is officially in the back seat!

We are pretty ready over here for this little guy to show his face but is seems he is going to hold out on us for a little while longer. I haven't been feeling great this week and have had contractions on and off since Sunday night but I hear that's very normal and doesn't necessarily mean labor is imminent. We keep hearing "it could happen in a few hours or in a few days". Thanks Doc, that's so helpful! :) So we're still waiting (not very patiently) over here. We'll let you know when the time comes.... hopefully SOON!

The Baby's Room and Waiting Game

We've been busy busy busy getting ready for our little guy to come into the world! I think we finally feel ready for him to come home now- although Dave's current joke is we're as ready as a person who buys an earthquake kit is ready for an actual earthquake- but I guess we won't really know if we're prepared enough until he's actually home with us! We're ready for the challenge... how about that?

Here are a few pictures of the nursery for all of our non Southbay friends. We were able to move things around so there is still the guest bed in the room which we hope will come in handy when people come to visit us when the time comes. (He'll sleep in a pack 'n play in our room-- in theory!)

The walls are the same color as downstairs and we went with a beachy theme.

Here's the chair that's my perfect size! We have a hard time finding furniture that fits both Dave (6'4") and me (5'3") so we decided that I would be spending the most time here so I got to pick it out. That means my feet actually touch the ground when I sit! :)

This isn't the best picture, but I wanted to show off our creativity. We found a picture of a seashell garland in the pottery barn catalog and thought "I can make that!" So I did! It ended up being a lot easier and cheaper than I thought it would be. So we made the garland and we painted some old frames we had. They're up and ready and now just waiting for some pictures of a little boy to go in them.

And our find from the Fiesta Hermosa a couple of weeks ago.

We have had fun planning out this space for our little guy and can't wait for him to come home and use it. There is a closet full of clothes, a dresser with tons of blankets and onesies (what else exactly are we supposed to put in the dresser vs the closet???), and even some toys for when he gets a little bigger. I hit 37 weeks last Saturday, which apparently means I'm officially full term, so now we're just waiting waiting waiting for him to decide to come. It could still be a couple of weeks but it could also happen any day now! I'm feeling a little anxious as we play this waiting game and every day Dave wakes up and asks me, "Is today the day?" to which my answer is always, "I don't know!" I wish we knew!!! I just hope we have enough warning to be able to tell our families to hurry up and get on the road so that Dave has someone to run out in the waiting room to tell our great news! Fingers crossed!

Till then, we'll keep waiting and praying for a healthy, happy baby boy to come soon!!!

The Long Awaited Wedding

Charlie and Christina's wedding was beautiful! They couldn't have asked for better weather (85 in the end of June in Merced? Who would've thought?!) and the whole day went off without a hitch. We've all been waiting a long time for these two to get married and we're so excited it's official now. They're currently enjoying their honeymoon in Hawaii, but we can't wait for them to get back so we can just live life with them now that they're married and living on the West coast again.

Here's a sneak picture of the Lockridge family after the ceremony.

Dave, Me, Diane, Christina, Charlie, Mom & Dad

Me & Dave

Christina & Me

I got to sneak into the bride's room to spend some time with the girls before the ceremony. She has such amazing friends and I really enjoyed getting to meet them and hang out with them this week. They were so thoughtful to include me in their special times together during the bachelorette and on the wedding day.

My family came to the wedding too (with the exception of Sarah who was still in Europe)!

And of course we danced the night away at the reception!

It was an awesome trip home and a great reason to celebrate!