What a SPECIAL day!

Here is a picture of Mason with his great-grandma. This is my (Amanda) grandma from Independence, KS. Both Grandma and Grandpa Parker were able to be here in Newton when Taylor was born and when Mason was born. But this time it was VERY special! Thursday, February 28th was not only Mason's birthday but also Great-grandma's 89th birthday! So here is a picture that will be one of those memorable pictures we will all cherish forever! Happy Birthday Mason and Great-Grandma!

Happy BIRTHday Mason!

We'd like you meet the newest member of our family...Mason Lee!!! He was born yesterday, Feb. 28th at 12:30pm. The c-section went great, but we did find out the cord was wrapped around his neck twice, loosely, but none-the-less, we were grateful everything was okay! He was 6 lbs. 14oz, 19 1/2 inches long. Here's our first picture with him!

Taylor came to see her little brother in the afternoon and was very excited to hold him! She also wanted to crawl all over mommy, which was probably the hardest part about having her visit.

So....here we are, the Balzer Family of 4! We are all doing well. We should be going home from the hospital on Sunday. We will have lots more pictures to share after we get home.

4 1/2 days left!!!

Taylor wanted to share some of her latest happenings before she gets busy playing with her baby brother in 4 1/2 days!! So here she is:

I got a new seat so I can eat at the table with mommy and daddy!
Aunt Barb helped me make a Valentine for mommy and daddy. Here's daddy when he got home from Greensburg on V-day and I got to give it to him....I think he really liked it. I even used a glue stick!

I finally got to go outside and play when the weather was nicer. Here I am poking my sticks into the snow. I found lots of patches of snow and I poked my sticks into each one.

This is my favorite picture of me and daddy!

I got to help paint my baby brother's room!! Here I am helping! I did find it kind of strange that my paint brush was quite dry compared to daddy's! Oh well, I still helped! I know you are all waiting to see a final picture of my brother's new room...but this is all you get for now...and it's not the best. I think daddy is working on coat #1 or 2 out of 4 coats....almost a gallon of red paint for ONE wall!!!

Well, that's all for now! Maybe I'll have time to share some more before Thursday. But after that, I will be very busy taking care and playing with my new baby brother! I can't wait! (Actually, I'm not really sure what a baby brother is...but mommy and daddy keep talking about him, and I know it has something to do with my tummy, or mommy's tummy or someone's tummy! He sounds kind of cool for now!)

Week #6

It's hard to believe that this will be Dave's 6th week working in Greensburg. I honestly have to say that I can't believe Taylor and I have survived 6 weeks without him! I think I try to pretend I'm much more incapable than I really am. So YES, he is returning to Greensburg tomorrow. He stayed home with me today so I could have one more day to recooperate from being sick. He'll leave in the morning and return this time probably on Friday instead of Thursday night. They will then be DONE in Greensburg! They received a call last week that there will be work for them in Wichita starting next week....HALLELUJIAH!!! So Taylor and I will survive a few more days on our own.

I'm going to work tomorrow against Dr's orders (they say I need to give myself more time to recover)....but honestly, it's sometimes more trouble than it's worth to make sub plans and have things ready for someone else to teach for me!! This afternoon I was faced with a dilemma...I had time to either take a nap or I would have to use that time to go into school and get things ready for a sub so I could stay home and rest tomorrow. I chose the nap. Luckily, Grandma is going to watch her most of the day so I can work and then come home and rest before picking her up. The Dr. should be calling me tomorrow with his overall opinion on whether I should be returning to work at all before the baby or not. We'll see!

Last Night...

Well, yesterday I didn't feel so hot all day, I woke up the day before with SOMETHING wrong with my chest! I was short of breath and had that VERY annoying cough that no one likes to listen to. So we went to the doctor and they gave me a breathing treatment and then told me to continue them at home...thanks goodness! The Dr. said there is SO MUCH sickness going around that it could be any number of things...upper respiratory virus, bronchitis, etc. Luckily, with no fever and other worse symptoms, pnemonia was ruled out. So here's what the rest of my evening/night looked like:

2:30-6:30 - nap
6:30 - breathing treatment in which Taylor did not like and cried watching me
8:00 - tried to eat some dinner but no appetite
9:00 - fell asleep on the couch
10:00 - Dave woke me up to go up to bed, in which I went to sleep with my contacts in...oops!
11:00 - Woke up having a hard time breathing = breathing treatment
12:00 - laid in bed trying to fight from throwing up
12:30 - head over toilet!
12:45- 99 degree fever, couldn't stop shivering! (words of the Dr. and thoughts of pnemonia running through my mind!)
1:30- 100.6 degree fever
1:30-3:00am - laid in bed miserable, freaking out about my fever, wondering whether to call the Dr., worrying about the baby, body aching, coughing, taking my temperature every 10 min. (the Dr. said 101 I'd probably need to go to ER...so I was quite worried about it hitting 101!)
3:00 - breathing treatment
3:15ish - finally fell asleep and woke up several hours later soaking wet from my fever breaking

Poor Dave...he was up and down all night helping me and is exhausted today from little sleep!

We had big plans today...shopping in Wichita; going to Winfield for one of my best friends wedding receptions; and my last jewelry show before the baby.

Yesterday the Dr. (family practice not OB) told me not to do ANYTHING all weekend and really said I shouldn't go back to work. I had planned to ignore ALL of these directions until going downhill last night. So now, it looks as though I will be on the couch and in bed all day today and who knows what next week will bring. Yes, Dave is SUPPOSSED to be going back to Greensburg...we'll see! We are just saying major prayers for Taylor and Dave to stay healthy, this is BAD timing for anyone else to get sick with our baby boy coming in less than 2 weeks!

Tip from our house to yours: Quarantine yourselves in your house to keep from getting ANYTHING that is out there!! It's EVERYWHERE!!!!

Nursery #2

We are quite procrastinators this time around...but we FINALLY got going on our little boy's nursery last weekend...with the help of Dave's dad and sister.

The toughest part was stripping the whole room of the wilderness wall paper from the boy's room who lived here before us.

We are lucky to get to have our nephew Jaden's nursery bedding that is SO adorable, so we don't have to buy new! It is a cute patchwork of red, black, brown, green and blue. I always wanted to do a western/rustic room for a boy, and this bedding worked perfectly!

Here's one of the wall colors going on...BROWN on 3 walls.

Of course, Taylor had to help with her little brother's room also!The 4th wall is the COOLEST! I got this idea from a Pottery Barn magazine. We thought a "barn door" look would go perfect with our rustic style room! We actually kind of thought the look of the wood boards without paint looked neat...but the plan is to paint this whole wall a deep red. You can kind of get a look at the window covering that matches the bumper.

We will post pics of the finished product soon! Wait till you see the dresser that Dave's sister painted for us...she painted it with a real antique style and roughed it up so it looks rustic! Now we need a crib, rocking chair and a NAME!!!!

Days of a Single Mom!

So Dave is gone for week #3....we are hoping next week is the LAST!! He's still in Greensburg building and is gone from Monday morning through Thursday night. Taylor and I are managing as best as we can!! Thank goodness for family nearby and lots of friends who have offered their help! Last night we went over to Joel, Kendall and Ollie's house for dinner and playtime! Here's a fun picture of the 2 of them on Ollie's rocking horse:

While we were there, the snow and ice came down making it quite a different adventure on the way home. I woke up at 5:45am to my phone ringing that we had NO SCHOOL!!! Just a day I needed...lounging and relaxing...just the 2 of us! We are STILL in our pjs!! Tonight Grandpa B is coming over to hang out with Taylor and put her to bed while I go to small group for the 2nd week ALONE!! We're doing a super financial study that I don't want to miss out on!! Dave will be home tomorrow evening...we can't wait!!

Here's a tribute to the guy we miss so much...here's a video of a usual bedtime routine...sitting down to read books before going to bed. Taylor loves to snuggle into daddy's lap and have him read to her. She is actually showing off her genious skills in this video...we are quite proud of how much she is learning lately! ENJOY the book!

The life of Taylor

Here are some pics from the last month or so....

Taylor playing with her friend Ollie!
Two of her favorite things...blankets and her Old MacDonald video!

We're trying hard to teach her how to kiss APPROPRIATELY!

Brushing her teeth!

Ready to play outside!

Home Alone

This will be a much more boring blog than usual...no pictures, no funny "Taylor" stories or anything like that. Instead, this blog will be a "pity party" blog for myself! Last week, Dave informed me that his framing crew would be going to Greensburg (where the tornado was, for those of you not around here) to help build. With it being winter, finding work is tough. There's plenty out there but concrete can't be poured so the jobs can't be done. SO, they have found work in Greensburg. With that being 2 hours away, he is gone all week. He left this morning at 6 am and will return Thursday night. So it's just me and Taylor...but tonight it's just ME. I had a jewelry show tonight so Grandma has Taylor overnight since I would have taken her there in the morning anyway. It's 11pm and I have NO idea what to do! I don't typically like being alone and haven't been alone AT ALL since we've had Taylor. So this is very weird...kind of hard. I think going to bed alone will be even harder...so I'm stalling. Dave will be home for the weekend and will go back to Greensburg next week (Mon-Thurs). I should just be thankful that he has work...so I'll try harder to be!

Christmas Recap!

Here is a recap of our Christmas...

This is the OTHER of Taylor's favorite gifts...her baby stroller! Once she opened this, she cared about nothing else! She marched back and forth in the hallway not even caring about more presents to open...we saved them for later in the day! Mommy and Daddy gave her her very first Cabbage Patch doll! She loves to feed the baby a bottle and take it on walks in her stroller!

Here she is making some yummy gourmet food in her new kitchen!

On Christmas eve, we spent all day and evening at Dave's mom and dad's house with the rest of the clan!! Taylor had so much fun playing with her cousins, although she had to get used to Gma and Gpa's house being taken over by other kids, when she is used to being the only child there...so she had to learn quick to give up her territory!

Here are the girls after the Christmas eve service...Aunt Stef and Paige, Aunt Stacy and Sydney and Mommy and Taylor....Gma bought all the granddaugthers Christmas dresses!

On Christmas eve, we always visit Santa at Drubers! Taylor wasn't too sure about the big guy....she wouldn't get too close!

We had such a wonderful time with all of our family.

Dave's brother and his family were here from Michigan for over a week, so we spent lots of time at Gma and Gpa's visiting with them. Christmas eve was spent with Dave's side, all 6 grandchildren, lots of craziness and the Christmas eve service, chili and presents that night!

We were able to be in our own home with my side of the family on Christmas day!

Aunt Rebekah and Uncle Steve (my sister) came from California and stayed for 4 days. My parents also came for several days as well! We had fun baking lots of treats and watching Taylor play! Later that day, Taylor got a 103 fever and was sick for a few days!

We hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and Happy New Year!!