The best Christmas present-a baby.

Well my friends, I have a baby.
She is wonderful. We love her a lot. It seems strange that she just joined our family. It seems like she's been here a lot longer than three weeks and two days. Boy, has that time flown by.
I promise I'll write the birth story soon (hopefully this week) but for now, here are some little updates.
Amalie Rose Pearson was born Dec 14 at 6:19 pm. She weighed a whopping 5 lbs 9 oz and was 19 3/4 inches long.
We didn't have a name for her for about three days. Our list of names just weren't fitting for her. I was frustrated because I wanted a spiritual confirmation of sorts but it just wasn't coming. Our first night home (which was the night she was born-I love birthing centers) I was up in a daze at 3 am feeding her and Tanner was in and out. I guess I muttered something about wanting to name her after a flower. Thus, Rose was born. We thought about having that be her first name for a while but it just wasn't working. Amalie had been on our list but we had basically crossed it off a while ago. Then it hit me, Amalie Rose. That's when the confirmation came. She is so beautiful and the name truly does fit her.
We originally spelled it Amelie. That is the French spelling and Tanner speaks French and we loved it. However, we soon learned that no one knew how to pronounce or spell her name. I was annoyed and didn't want her to be so annoyed for the rest of her life.
My Great-Aunt found a Hedwig Amalie in our line shortly after and I thought that we might as well spell it a way that is a bit less confusing. People still make butcher it but now it's Amalie, the German spelling. And yes, I will obviously call her Hedwig sometimes. If I had known before that we had a Hedwig in our family, that may have been her name. Luckily for her, it will now only be a nick name.
PS. It's pronounced Aw-ma-lie with a long A sound and the accent on the A. Confused? Ask me in person and Amalie, I'm sorry if I cursed you with a ridiculous name. I think it's beautiful.

So we've had a lovely three weeks together as a family. We spent the first week at our home, we had some visitors over and it was great. The ward provided wonderful meals and we had a great time. Then we went to my parents house and stayed there for two weeks. This was not our intention. We planned on staying until the day after Christmas and then returning home to get the hang of our new family but alas, it made sense to stay until new years eve and then while Tanner was snowboarding our car and house key ended up who knows where in the snow of Sundance. We stayed longer than we meant to but it was wonderful. We really loved being at my parents house. It was fun to see my siblings ooh and ahh over my daughter .... AH. My parents were equally as adoring.
We had a lovely Christmas and were spoiled. We not only got a precious child but also a beautiful camera. So my new project for this year is to get my food blog going. It was originally made for a school project but I want to keep it going and now I have a nice camera to take pictures of the food and they will actually look appetizing!

I want to say so much more about our wonderful little girl. But words just don't do my feelings justice. I'll put more of my thoughts with the birth story.
All I can say is that this little child is a miracle. Creation is beautiful and we are blessed to have this special spirit in our home. We feel peace with her and peace in knowing that everything happened in the right time. She smiled intentionally at us last night and oh how my heart wanted to burst. You really don't know what love is until you have a child. And you don't know how much you love your spouse until that happens. I feel whole now. I feel like I've left the old Katrina in the dust and embraced who I was meant to be. I have never felt more complete in my life since I've become a mother. It's my purpose in life and I am so grateful for the opportunity I have to figure things out with my husband and our sweet Amalie.