Monday, September 5, 2016

Maya Journey: Celebrations!

Celebrations!

3 Week Birthday

After we found out that Maya had Trisomy 18, even while I was pregnant we made a lot of opportunities to celebrate her.  Celebrating is sort of our thing.  There are always scraps of streamers stuck up in the corners of the walls at our house left over from some happy evening. So on Maya's 3 week birthday we thought she probably needed some cake and certainly we needed some pink and to see her in this ridiculously cute outfit.  Aunt Rara made Maya the beautiful hair bow and Maya is wearing a bib decorated as a cute dress (the closest I could find to a girly girl dress for such an occasion).


Naturally it was a princess party and the boys are dressed as knights or in Henry's case a transformer knight combo.


I made Maya a chocolate cake, her favorite, second only to lemonade and caramels (what I craved for a solid 9 months).


Aaaand the princesses.  I tell everyone I wear tiaras regularly to remind those guys I live with the reality of the situation.

           

It was a fun party. Ollie made the birthday wish for Maya to stand up, walk over to him and he would give her a big hug and a blanket. Maya gave gifts to her big brothers of jammies and S'mores stuffs.  As is typical of the Smith princesses, as soon as the party was over we immediately changed into comfy jammies of our own.  Being a princess is hard.


2 Month Birthday!!!

We really thought that having mere hours with Maya was us being hopeful and here we are celebrating Maya's 2 month birthday!!!  Our wonderful medical team from the hospital is in contact with us regularly just to see how we are all doing, especially Maya.  It is hard to express our gratitude for these amazing people, they have all done so much to support and love our crazy family through what started out as a very hard time.  They even put together this fantastic Little Mermaid birthday party for Maya!  We were so excited to see them all again and talk to everyone that I was distracted and didn't take nearly enough photos!




You can tell how much they love Maya. Many tears of gratitude were shed.


Those in attendance (not everyone made it into the pictures unfortunately) included our Maternal Fetal Medicine team, labor and delivery nurses, NICU doctors, pediatricians, and Cardiologist.  All of whom have become family and an elite group of people who know and will never forget our sweet Maya. 


 The party was catered with Mac n cheese, meatballs, chicken fingers, salad and this cake!
(pictured with Mindy who was the mastermind of this whole thing!)


We had so much fun! They even had a pinata for the boys and had printed out lots of pictures of our family for the boys to make their own scrap books. 



Maya wore a special outfit made by our lovely case worker Mindy, consisting of a tutu, cute onesie and matching head band.  The boys wore special t-shirts with Maya's footprints from the day she was born (put together by Mindy, Alison and our crafty nurses).


This is how we tried to thank them but it is hard to express how grateful we really are.


Let's not forget Party favors!!
We wanted to share with everyone this beautiful print


and an MG bracelet from Maya Grace, our Mighty Girl!!!


Since we are talking about our amazing medical team you should also know that Mindy went on vacation with her family to the Jersey shore and thought of us.  She bagged up sand, seas shells, bottled ocean water and recorded the waves of the ocean and over-nighted it to us so we could have a day at the beach with Maya!




 Naturally treats were included for those rascal boys!


If your jaw is not dropping about how amazing our medical team is...I have not said enough because they truly have been angels for our family these last several months and have been examples of the Savior, helped us feel the love from our Heavenly Father and have inspired me to do more good (to say the least).

To many more celebrations like these!
Until next time...








Sunday, September 4, 2016

Maya Journey: Maya and Mama

MAYA and MAMA

So.... I really love Maya.
It's pretty much the best thing ever to be her Mama.
Like a lot of people I have a cell phone, but I also have the ability to render my cell phone useless on a regular basis.  I take a million pictures with it, mostly of my rascal kids.  I uploaded my pictures just before it melted down and thought I would share a few of my favorites.

Maya loooooves it when I rub her head.  The photo strip below shows Maya totally awake and alert, then I start rubbing her head and she immediately falls asleep and goes into magical fantasy dream land where her eyes roll all around and she smiles super big.  Pretty much my favorite thing ever.


It is just so fun having Maya for my daughter.  I love dressing her and making her little hair bows and snuggling her into soft pink blankets. 
  

 It's funny because I feel like I have someone to commiserate with and spend time with just us girls.  Her personality is really starting to show.


Maya is now 4 lbs 5.5 oz and is starting to grow out of her doll clothes.  Yeah you heard right, this feisty baby of mine wears American Girl size doll dresses.  On Sundays I like to wear my "Sunday best" to church and even at home if I cannot attend. I like to do this because it makes the Sabbath feel special and different from other days.  I thought it would be special if Maya could wear a dress on Sundays too.  I have always loved seeing super cute dresses on baby girls with all the fluffy tutus and ribbons and I just couldn't find ANY preemie dresses.  So one Saturday I saw an ad for a garage sale near me that listed doll clothes as one of the items for sale.  I thought I would check it out.  Well it turned out to be a tender mercy for me.  It may seem silly but it really meant a lot to me to be able to put my baby girl in a dress.  When I explained to the lady that they were for my daughter I pretty much turned that garage sale on it's ear. I should have known that would happen but I was asking her if she had any cardigans or leggings to go with the dresses and it started to sound like I was REALLY into dolls. Hahaha!  I had people getting all choked up and wanting to pray with me- it was kind of intense :) So I rushed home and made matching leggings and hair bows, it was pretty much the best thing ever.  Later that same lady who made the doll dresses, contacted me and wanted to come meet Maya and brought her another dress.  There are a lot of good people in this crazy world of ours.  And wouldn't ya know it Maya is growing into newborn clothes!!!!  She is pretty much ginormous now!


Aaaand since I do not typically have a professional photographer following me around I take a decent amount of selfies.  Often I am holding Maya next to me and I think how I never want to forget that feeling.


She loves to be held and snuggled.  I often hold her up against my chest and she will try and move her head so that she can just look up at me.  I just love her so much.  

(Feeding Maya with a syringe nestled in my shirt)
 
(Looking right at her Daddy...and yes those are purple polka-dot pants and a floral shirt...and no I couldn't find a matching outfit for me.)

Maya in her favorite sleeping spot.

Maya has had several doctors appointments and some rough days here and there.  Certainly it has been an emotional roller coaster but for now I just wanted to share how much I love being this mighty girl's mama.

"I am the daughter of a king 
who is not moved by the world
for my God is with me
and goes before me
I do not fear
because I am His"

More next time.