bye bye galbladder

Yesterday I said goodbye to my galbladder. And as my friend John so correctly articulated, I never liked the galbladder much anyway - good riddance!

But once again I'm recovering from surgery. This one is easier, but still not pretty. I have five incisions - one just below my belly button and four across my right set of ribs. So I now have six incision sites on my abdomen - there were zero there before june 20th! :)

Our biggest challenge - breastfeeding. It has never gone smoothly and now, because of the drugs in my system, my little girl has been taking food from a bottle. As of this morning, the drugs have worn off, but my incisions are so sensitive that I can't figure out any holds that would be comfortable enough to keep her away from my incisions - plus Annabelle is a mover... this morning she gave my belly button incision (the biggest and most painful) a nice elbow! That's when I decided I better pump one more day and give her the bottle.

But otherwise, we have a beautiful angel on our hands. Okay, angel is probably strong, but she is an incredibly sweet little girl. And to everyone's surprise when they meet her, she is a smiler. An intentional smiler.

I'm doing my best to keep up with all her changes, but the last 5 1/2 weeks have flown by. She has been in more doctor's offices for me than you would believe, and has never once screamed through an appointment. She is still trying to decide what she thinks about bath time. She loves to be naked on her changing table/dresser and kick and stretch. And Miss Annabelle has so much personality.

Most of all, she is adored by all her family and friends. Everyday she gets something more in the mail and everything has been so thoughtful and generous.

Check out what I mean about the smiles!

what's in a name

Many people have asked us how we came up with Annabelle Juliette.





Annabelle was a name I had heard before and found it very endearing. Joel and I both felt like it would be a great name for a baby, but also a great name for a woman. That was important to us. We wanted something that was fairly timeless. But I guess only time will truly tell.





Juliette was easy. We debated about using it as a first name, but Annabelle (the name) charmed us early on. Juliette is my maternal Grandmother's first name. As many of you know, my grandmother and I were great friends and she meant (and still means) so much to me in her years, especially the last ones. Though Joel did not have a chance to get to know her well, he knows how influential she was in my life. We hope and pray that our Annabelle inherits her ability to love everyone individually (and many more things). Between my Grandma and Joel's mom, we just might have an artist on our hands, also!

pictures

For those of you who have too much time on your hands or just love cute babies, I'm attempting to upload Annabelle's pictures to our shutterfly site. This would be all the pictures (most of the good ones are on Facebook already).

www.klullo.shutterfly.com