What great weather we’ve been having here in Birmingham, AL. It’s not too hot to enjoy sitting outside in the evening and not so cold that you have to bundle up. Plus, it smells like baseball outside, my favorite time of year.

So what better time for little DJ to have a little while outside with big sister. Bree made mud-pie dinner and DJ did his best Jedi impersonation. Pics below.

Written on April 9th, 2010 , Bree, DJ

Today, after breakfast, we were hanging out for a nice Sunday morning watching some great nature documentaries and playing with Bree.  She had found some headbands and had decided that a head band, a purse and a cell phone were all she needed for a good time.  Melanie, thinking that Bree would LOVE to see how cute she was grabbed a mirror and leaned it up against the couch so Bree could see herself.  That’s when we realized that this was the first time Bree had ever realized that the cute little girl in the mirror was her.  So I took a quick video with my iPhone.

A funny ending… After I took the video Mel wanted to take a look at it.  You can see where Mel is sitting in the video… right behind the mirror.  So while Mel was watching the video behind the mirror, Bree was still looking at the mirror.  When video Bree started talking, mirror Bree was more than a little freaked out.  Of course, she was excited that the girl in the mirror was talking so she had an entire conversation with the girl in the mirror!  It was great… I wish I had video of the video, but the universe can’t handle the paradox.  😉

Written on January 31st, 2010 , Bree

Everyone was pretty tired yesterday, and with Mel sick most of the day was spent hanging out and resting. But last night Bree got 12 hours of sleep and was eager to play with her new toys this morning. So we set up her table and she played for a LONG time with her new cooking toys.

Written on December 27th, 2009 , Bree, Holidays

Of course, I’m referring to the classic Family Guy episode in the title, but today we took Bree and Zoey to have their picture made with Santa at the Galleria.  I met Mel, Wendy, Kathy, Zoey and Bree over at the mall for lunch and we got to watch Bree take her first shot at Santa:  Bree – 1; Santa – 0.  After having their picture made with Santa, it was off to lunch for everyone and then to the carousel for Mel, Zoey and Bree to take a ride.

As always, all of the pictures in the gallery below are on our private Flickr feed.  If you would like access to the pictures, with the ability to get them in digital or print format, check out my previous post with instructions on how to get access.

Written on December 17th, 2008 , Bree, Holidays

Well, technically 5 weeks and some change but who’s counting (I know, everyone’s counting).  Bree was in a really good mood the other night and was hanging out with me in my office so I decided to grab the video camera to get some video of her.  Enjoy!

Written on October 28th, 2008 , Bree

It has taken me nearly a month to get around to posting this.  Usually when I post a story this late I set the date to be the date I intended the story to be done on so that in the future I don’t look like such a procrastinator.  But with this one, I’m going to just let the date show how long it took me to get to sit down and write this article and touch up the photographs for it.  So in the future, if and when I look back at this, I’ll laugh and recall how much fun it is to hang out with Bree.

So this article is basically going to be about the day Bree was born, from our perspective.  I’ll include a photo gallery at the end of the article of never before seen footage.

The day started early… really early… but not so early that Mel and I weren’t both already awake when the time came to get ready and head to the hospital.  We were scheduled to be at the hospital at 5:30AM (I thought there was only a 5:30PM and had to be corrected several times on this) and while we’re often late for things, we were NOT going to be late for this!

So at 4:30AM I told Mel, “From now on, things are moment to moment, you can plan with these little guys, just take things as they come…” and I proceeded to snap the following shot with my iPhone.

Off we went.

The drive in was rather pleasant.  It’s a road I drive every day a couple of times and the people driving it at 5:00AM are much nicer than the people driving it during rush hour.  So the trip was uneventful and we were able to find a really nice parking spot at the hospital.

Walking into the hospital and getting situated was a bit of an adventure.  First, there was a huge puddle in the parking deck that completely soaked both of our feet.  Then, we got into the elevator and it was the hottest spot found on the planet at that hour.  I’m almost positive you could have seen the heat signature of this elevator from space with the proper equipment.

Once we got off the elevator we found a nurses station.  When they asked, “Can we help you?” Mel responded with, “We’re here to have a baby!”  It sounded weird and sent just about everything into a surreal world at that point.  Of course, I was quickly brought back down when the nurse pronounced our last name as “Garlic.”  Um… yeah.  Either way, she directed us where we needed to go and informed us that our nurse, who was supposed to assist us for the entire day, was either late getting to work or MIA altogether.  So much for us finally being on time for something!

The other nurses got us settled into our room, where Mel and I started coming to the realization that we were having a life changing event (it never quite fully sets in).  Before too long, Mel’s mom showed up… and so did her cell phone.  The thing was ringing off the hook and her ringer is set to “A Natural Woman” by Aretha Franklin.  So for the next hour or so that song was, literally, stuck in our heads.

Eventually our nurse showed up and began the process of getting Mel hooked up to the various machines that are required to have a baby including an unbelievably painful IV.  Luckily, our niece was on location to hold Mel’s hand through the IV / knife fight.

The doctor arrived on location at 6:08AM and told us to get started with Potosin.  Game on!

Mel asked for an epidural at 9:30AM and pushing started at 12:30PM.  One of the last things I remember before things got serious was noticing that we were going to spend the entire rest of the delivery with the television showing “Tom & Jerry.”  Fitting.

The delivery was an adventure that I won’t post here.  If you want details, feel free to ask us in person and we’ll give you the entire dramatic story.  But here it should be enough to say that in the end everyone was ok and we’re ready to begin our life with our new little bundle of joy!

Written on October 12th, 2008 , Announcements, Bree

Getting this posted has taken longer than I had hoped, my time has been spent on other things as anyone who is a parent can attest to.  But I did want to get a post up and online with an annoncement that our baby girl had been born and both baby and mommy are doing well with mommy well on her way to recovery.

So, without further delay, here are the stats:

Melanie Bree Garvich – Born at 2:36PM on September 15th, 2008
Weight: 8lbs
Length: 21 inches

I have a LOT of pictures on our camera’s memory cards but they’re huge and I haven’t had a chance to edit them to make them suitable for the blog.  For now, you can get some on the spot, candid shots of our little bundle of joy taken with my iPhone over on the right side of the blog.

Obviously, I’ll have higher quality pictures and more detailed articles available as soon as I can get around to it.  I took notes all day on her birthday so I would have plenty of details for an article, hopefully I’ll be able to turn those into an article really soon.  Until then, this will have to do!

Written on September 20th, 2008 , Announcements, Bree

Nervous excitement is probably the best way to describe what both Mel and I are feeling right now.  I’m told that’s the normal emotion, so I guess we’re normal (at least by that indication).

As most of those around us know, last Tuesday at Mel’s doctor’s appointment her doctor offered us the option to induce labor Monday morning at 5:00AM if Mel didn’t go into labor prior to that.  There’s little risk to mom’s or baby’s health otherwise, but Bree has already gotten pretty big and if we continue on she may be too big to deliver without a c-section.  With that in mind, we took the doctor up on her offer.

There have been several times in the last 6 days where we thought “now is the time” and have come to discover that it actually wasn’t.

When we agreed to the offer, 6 days seemed like such a long time.  It’s not.  Now we’re on the eve of heading to the hospital to get things underway and start a new chapter in our lives.  We’re excited… and nervous… and we’re really glad we have known for the last few days that we were approaching a deadline.  It has allowed us to hang out with family and make sure we spent some time together just being quiet, or watching TV, or anything else that has until this point seemed routine.

I’ll be posting here again within the next day or two and when I do it will be to announce the birth of our baby girl.  Until then, wish me luck not getting a black eye from Mel!

Written on September 14th, 2008 , Bree

Anyone who has been by the house lately has had a look at Bree’s room.  Mel and I both have quite eclectic tastes and Bree’s room reflects that.  However, until tonight we weren’t “done” with her room.

Our friends Kim and Jeremy kindly gave us a shelf (not a normal shelf, a super-engineered omni-shelf) to use above Bree’s bed.  The shelf was originally meant to hold the picture we drew in the sand for Bree on our latest vacation.  Of course, once it was up we put as much on it as we could.  Thanks Kim and Jeremy, pics follow but to really get a feel for how nice this thing is you’ll just have to see it in person!


Written on September 4th, 2008 , Bree

In the last post I promised some pictures so this post will have said pictures.  I’m not posting all of our ultrasound pictures here, because if I did that then what would be the added benefit of actually knowing us?  I mean, if you could come to our site and get all the pictures you wanted why would you call us up and have dinner with us?  That’s right, this is just a teaser, if you want more pictures of the baby then you have to take us to dinner!  We’re holding the rest of the pictures hostage!  So… um… captions follow each image.  Enjoy (then take us to dinner)!

It\'s not a manatee after all!
A pretty good shot that proves she’s not a manatee after all.

Aliens!

She’s an alien!  Not a manatee, an alien!!!  I will ZAP you white bread!

Flex!

To prove she meant business, she flexed for us.

Written on April 28th, 2008 , Bree

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