Ryan and Caroline

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

1 month!

Our little boy just turned 1 month on Monday. Everyone says this, but time is flying so fast!! He's already gained about 2 pounds and is noticeably bigger (and chubbier). He's starting to look (and eat!) more and more like his daddy every day. He has a lot more control over his movements. He's made a couple beautiful smiles. He can push himself to standing on my lap (with a little help of course). He's had a few poopie diaper overflows on me and others. His sleep intervals at night at getting longer (yay!). He loves to stare at windows. It's true what everyone says that having a baby changes your life completely. It takes 5 times as long to complete a simple task...but it's so worth it! He bring us so much joy. Enjoy some pictures....

Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Sweet Baby James

I'm sure that you have all already heard and seen the pictures....but our beautiful little boy, James Warren Holloway was born on January 28 at 9:53 pm. He weighed 8 pounds, was 20 inches long, and is completely healthy.

My water broke at about 2:30 am on Friday January 28. After getting our things together, we headed straight to the hospital. I was 2 cm dialated when we arrived but hadn't felt any contractions, so we knew it would probably still be several hours before we saw our little boy. So we passed the time watching The Office and The Big Bang Theory episodes. The doctor continued to check me periodically but I stayed at 2 cm for hours. Sometime in the afternoon (I think around 4, I don't really remember) we decided to give me Oxitocin to induce because at that point it had been around 12 hours since my water broke. Once your water breaks you have about 24 hours before the baby must come out or else the risk of infection increases dramatically. So I got the meds, dialted 1 more cm right away, had irregular contractions for a couple hours but didn't dialate any more. Sometime around 7 the doctor suggested that since I wasn't making any more progress and that the risk of infection was now so much greater, we should do a c-section. We decided to wait it out a couple more hours, but at 9:00 when nothing had changed, we decided to go for the c-section. Then very soon after, at 9:53 pm, James was born. It turns out that his head was pushing toward my hip instead of down the birth canal, which was why we weren't making any progress. All in all, the delivery wasn't exactly what I imagined, but what delivery is?? We are just so thankful that we both came out 100% healthy.

James is already almost 2 weeks old, and we can already see changes in his appearance and development. He is a pretty easy baby- sleeps and eats a lot and rarely cries for something other than food, sleep, or a diaper change. He is such a little miracle and I love that I can spend each day with him.

Caroline and her large belly patiently waiting

Prepped for surgery

Mommy and James meet for the first time

A couple days later...sleeping on Grammie

Skyping with Daddy

Wednesday, January 19, 2011

MBRD 2010 earnings

When MiBanco goes public next year the plan is to make MBRD our stock ticker. MiBanco Republica Dominicana. In order to satisfy the NASDAQ requirements we have to meet GAAP requirements.

So, I had my intern, Neil Silveus, who is a certified international accounting system professional create our 2010 financial report.

Since many of our readers are, or could be, investors in MBRD, I encourage you to watch the report.

Lastly, James Warren Holloway will be born any day now, keep us in your prayers.

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Mi Baby Shower!

I think a really funny thing about Spanish is the occasional very clearly English word or phrase that is used as though it were Spanish. An example of this is the term "baby shower." There is no direct translation for the term (at least in this country), so the first time I heard someone say "Vamos a tener un baby shower" I laughed a lot.

The reason I say all of this is that two of my dear friends, Natalie and Melisa, threw me a baby shower on Tuesday. It was such a blast and a blessing for me. They decorated the room super cute and everyone brought lots of yummy snacks. We played several fun little games. Everyone chipped in to buy me a really nice stroller/car seat. Natalie took a risk checking it on her flight back from the States. And I'm so glad she did because it is super nice!! The car seat connects to the stroller for James when he is really little, but the stroller also has another seat so that we can still use it when he is bigger! It is so great and hopefully something we can use for any other little ones we have.

At the end of the shower everyone prayed for me, Ryan, and James. I was so blessed by that and encouraged to know that I have many friends that will be praying for me in this whole process. It fills me with peace and joy! Everyone is also going to rotate bringing us meals for a while after James is born, which is another HUGE blessing. I realize I've used some form of the word "bless" like 100 times in this post already...which is really cool because Natalie wrote a blog post the other day about the shower and how her desire was simply that I would be blessed. Well Natalie...I am blessed, thanks to all of you!

Thank you to everyone who came to my shower and for all of my friends and family here and in the States that have been sooooo generous with your gifts. James is going to be one loved little boy :)

Everyone had to cut a piece of ribbon guessing the circumference of my belly. Almost everyone cut their ribbon too big. I'm not sure what to think about that??

There were 8 jars of baby food with the label taken off and we had to guess the flavor by smelling them. I only got 1 correct, but the winner (Maggie) got 7!! Maybe it has something to do with the fact that she has 5 kids :)