Monday, March 2, 2009

Happy Birthday to Anthony!!

3.2.03
I don't know where the time went, but my little tiny baby turned 6 today!  How did that happen? I could've sworn he was just born yesterday! I, of course, have to dedicate today's blog post to my son. A lot of the pics I'll share are old, long before I ever picked up a "big girl" camera, but it's a glimpse into my life (for those of you that don't know me that well).

So my Anthony is such a sweet boy...so polite and so very funny...he's a joy to be around and 99% of the time, very well behaved. He is in kindergarten at Catholic School and is doing really well. He's reading sight words, starting to count money, can count indefinitely (or at least to 1,000), has learned how to write full sentences...I'm just amazed. Brian and I have been so blessed that God gave us our sweet angel. 

Since it's T's birthday..I thought it would be fun to post "the" picture from his birthday (this is the picture that his Uncle Dave saw all the way in Iraq by the news crew that introduced his nephew to him - awesome!) and also his birth story. Some of you may remember the website I had for Anthony when he was first born (and for about 2 years)...back then if you had your very own website, that was a BIG deal. So, I copied and pasted what I had written on there about his birth....(that's why it "sounds like" anthony was writing it)... oh and we lived in Beaufort, SC when Anthony was born...

My Birth Story
Mommy was having contractions all day on Saturday, March 1, 2003. They weren't painful, just uncomfortable. She went to bed at around 1a.m. early Sunday morning, March 2, 2003. She woke up at 4:30pm having more painful contractions. She got up and timed the contractions..they were about 3-5 minutes apart. Around 8am she woke up Daddy and said they should go to the hospital. They arrived at 9:30am and Mommy was 2-3cm dilated (remember 10cm is the magic number). After walking around Labor & Delivery for about an hour they checked Mommy again at 11am and she was 3cm. They decided to admit her. At about 11:15am Mommy's doctor came to her room and checked her again. She was 4cm. The doctor decided to break her water. Mommy was having contractions up until this point but they were not very painful. After they broke her water and started Pitocin the pain started....the contractions were every 2 minutes and lasted about 1min and 30 sec each (which means there was really only 30 sec to "relax" in between). At 12:30, Mommy was in soooo much pain that the nurse checked her again and she was 5cm, it was time for an epidural. The nurse came back and gave Mommy the bad news that the doctor was 25 minutes away. The pain continued...At 1:00pm the first epidural was put in. When the doctor tested it with some saline, there was a block in it, so they had to take that one out and put in a new one. At 1:50pm the medicine had finally kicked in and Mommy was much happier. At 2:00pm the nurse checked Mommy and found she was 8cm dilated!!! I was coming quickly and Grandma and Grandpa Mathews weren't there yet (from Wilmington). At 3:10pm Mommy said she was feeling a lot of pressure so the nurse checked her again and she was fully dilated (10cm). By the time the doctor got there it was almost 3:45pm. Mommy pushed a few times and I was born at 3:52pm. By the way, Grandma and Grandpa Mathews made it in time..they got there about 5-10 minutes before I was born.

Anthony was star student at school a few weeks ago and I/we had to put together a poster to share with his class, so I had pulled out some old photos. One of the things I did was pull a pic from each of his birthdays....sooo....the one at the top of the post is of course his BIRTH day...

Here he is on his first birthday...we had a big party at our house...

3.6.04

His second birthday (party) was shared with his cousin Harry who is exactly 1 year older than him. Brian's family was at Harry's 1st birthday party when we called to let them know I had had Anthony!

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His third birthday was back at home...obviously it was a warm one (and he was big into Thomas) since he was wearing shorts...

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His fourth birthday was held at good ole Chuck E Cheese - umm yea, never again..haha.

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Last year, for his fifth birthday party, we had a backyard carnival. What a hit! We even had an appearance by Binky the Clown (AKA Anthony's Pappy - Grandpa)...

Anthony_Birthday_Party-53

And now...some fairly new pictures.... I decided to break down and buy a backdrop stand and a few rolls of seamless paper...so Anthony modeled for me...

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And here's one with Daddy...

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And then there's a pic of him and his cousin Edwin...

t_and_e-3 the boys-2

And then with the rest of my family...

family pic-2_edited

Finally...here's a collage that I made for my in-laws for Christmas, just in case you haven't seen enough pics of my beautiful baby yet...hee hee

11x14 Year in Review

Happy Birthday Anthony! Mommy loves you more than you will ever know! I can't wait to celebrate many more birthdays with you :) :)

5 comments:

Diana said...

Yay!!!!!!!! I remember the day you called me to tell me you were pregnant. I was jumping up and down in my apartment freaking out!! I also remember how hard it was to be living all the way up in Ohio when my nephew was born...but I hightailed it down to SC as soon as I could :) I remember the time I came to Wilmington to visit...I stayed in Anthony's room and in the morning, I woke up to him covered in my makeup!! He was so darn cute I couldn't possibly be mad at him. And I remember how great it was to finally move back down to NC...for the first couple of weeks, Anthony always wanted me to ride next to him in the car. Oh yeah, and I remember during our wedding when Anthony was busy playing in the sand...so cute! And how shy he was when we brought Edwin to mom & dad's house for the first time...and how much our boys love each other now. Yay!! HAPPY BIRTHDAY ANTHONY!! I love you :)

Unknown said...

Let T-bone know how much his U-N-C-L-E DAVE! Loves him! Every year I can recall exaclly how I felt the day Joe came into my tent and asked me if I wanted to meet my nephew! I jumped from my cot and tore out of the 100 man tent to the one next door. The guys wanted to make it into a story, so they made me wait outside while they got the cameras ready to film. Oh what a feeling!

Happy Birthday Little Man!
Love,
Uncle Dave

Anonymous said...

Happy Birthday Anthony! What a great post!

Anonymous said...

I hope Anthony had a great birthday! I love that you posted all of the birthday pictures from the past years. How about that fancy car cake? wow!
-brittany

Jenny | The Balow Bunch said...

I can't believe I didn't comment on this post yet!! Since Dave commented on T's arrival...I have to add this.

When Dave and I first met, both of our older sisters were expecting, so we talked about the anticipation and excitement of having nieces/nephews a lot! And already having 1 niece, I told Dave that he hasn't experienced anything as awesome as being an Uncle/Aunt yet -- with the love that you have for that person and the happiness you feel everytime you see/hear that person. I'm so glad the way things played out and now Anthony is my nephew too, and that I've been in his life from his birth. He's a terrific kid and I love how excited he is to see us. I feel the same way when I get to visit him. It's amazing how fast he is growing up!

I love you Anthony and hope you had an awesome birthday!!