Viv got two seats to stretch out and sleep!

Traveling with Viv was absolutely wonderful. All the flights - to and from Michigan and layovers - went absolutely swimmingly. We flew Southwest and I couldn’t recommend it enough! The open seating worked very well to our advantage because no one chooses to a) go to the back of the plane and b) sit next to a baby. In fact, I had a man flat out say to me “I’m not sitting by a baby!” in a very rude tone. Well good, I don’t want to sit next to a jerk! So on three out of four flights we had a whole row to ourselves and the other we still had an extra seat.

Pops was so happy to see his little Viv.

Breakfast with the girls - M.E, Busha and Vivian

Once we finally arrived to Michigan, Pops was eagerly waiting to hold his grandbaby girl. They hadn’t seen each other since Viv was born! We got in really late so we drove straight home and all went to bed as soon as we got settled.

Viv enjoying the sunshine with Gramps.

Wednesday we woke up and went to breakfast with my mom and Nana. It was Vivian’s first time meeting my nana, her Busha. After breakfast we ran a few errands to pick up the baby essentials I didn’t travel with (i.e. diapers) and then we took Vivi to meet my other grandparents, her GG and Gramps.

Loving the kisses from Uncle Jamers!

Thursday was a day to relax and catch-up on sleep and get used to the three hour time change. My friend Amanda came over and we went for a walk that ended up in a sprint for shelter because a thunderstorm came out of nowhere in record time! Vivian hated being rained on and screamed. Luckily we were able to hitch a ride back to my parents house instead of walk/running the 15 minutes to get home. That evening the great grandparents and my brother came over for dinner so we spent quality time with family and Vivian met her Uncle Jamers.

All smiles with Grandpa!

Friday Viv and I packed up and headed over to Tyler’s parent’s house across the state. Grandpa hadn’t seen Viv since she was a newborn either so he couldn’t wait to get his hands on her and cuddle. Tyler’s brother and sister-in-law came to stay for the weekend too so Viv got to meet her Uncle Nick and Aunt Sarah too.

Miss Shirley holding Vivi.

Playing on Nana’s lap.

Saturday we went to Miss Shirley’s - Tyler’s grandma - house for another meet-n-greet. Miss Shirley had the magic touch and bounced an overtired Vivian right to sleep. There was lots of Viv snugging and Grandpa got to spend lots of quality time with Vivian - he even let me take naps and sleep in while he and Vivi played.

Aunt Sarah and Uncle Nick snugging on Viv.

Kyle and Viv

Goodbyes are hard, but Sunday night after lots of relaxing snuggle and playtime with Nick, Sarah, Suzi and Steve with a visit from our friends Kyle, Lauren, Caitlin, Carl and their new baby girl Kinsey, we finally packed up shop to head back to the east side of Michigan.

Viv and I snugging after a wonderful
two hour nap for us both!

Viv did great driving the 2.5 hours to and from Grand Rapids. I’m so glad she is a good traveler so far!

On Monday, we woke up early and had to return my rental car then had breakfast with Busha and M.E. again. After breakfast Viv and I went home and took a nice long and much needed nap together. That afternoon my friend Alex came to meet Vivian. We chit chatted and caught up while playing with my little miss. Then my aunts, uncles, cousin and grandparents came over for dinner to celebrate my Grandma’s birthday and also meet Vivian.

Singing to my Grandma to celebrate her
birthday early.

Cousing Beauman and Uncle Jeff teaching
Viv how to read.

Tuesday I went for a walk before we had a constant flow of visitors. Some of my mom’s friends stopped by to see Vivian and then Alex came over again as well as my friend Ashley and her little boy, Jack, who is exactly three months older than Viv. We sat around and caught up before heading out for another walk (I did lots of walking with Viv over the entire trip).

Viv and Alex

Viv and Jack

That wraps up the first week of our trip to Michigan but I just don’t have time to finish writing about the second half. It is just too beautiful of a day today so once my little miss wakes from her nap we are heading out to the park. Time to go get ready!

My blog has officially transferred to Tumblr’s back end! If you were subscribed to the newsletter email and wish to continue receiving updates, you now need to re-subscribe by entering your email in the sun to the right then clicking the “subscribe” button. You will then receive a confirmation email to verify you requested updates and you will need to click the link in the email in order to start your subscription.

If you were subscribed to my RSS feed, this also has changed and you will need to re-subscribe - the orange RSS icon is next to the “Subscribe” button.

You also should have received an email reminder about this. Let me know if you see any issues with the transfer or links don’t work! I am happy to help or answer any questions.

Ok, so it might not be as exciting to you because on the front-end not much will be different from my blog as it is now, but for me on the back-end my blog is getting a sexy upgrade to something that is sooooOOOOoooo much easier to manage!

What does that really mean for you, my friends? Well, the most important thing is that if you are currently subscribed to my email updates via the “Newsletter” you will need to subscribe again once I have transferred over - I’ll remind you when it is time. Why? Well, I am switching to Tumblr’s back-end and they do not let me use ASP.NET (which is the code language I have my site in right now). So initially, I wasn’t going to even support email updates, but after talking with a dear friend and some family, they really rely on my emails. So I did a little research and got a new email subscription tool. That said, I cannot add my current subscribers (probably for spam purposes which is smart) so you will need to do it yourself if you still wish to get emails. Another change to the email format is that it will only send a maximum of once per day. So instead of instant email notification, you will get a daily digest each morning if there were new posts.

And since I can post pictures and videos so much more easily and my Instagram photos will automatically be imported, there is a good chance you will see more quick little blurbs of my, and more importantly, Vivian’s life! Yippee!

The archive will be totally different and easier to navigate but much more boring looking as I am unable to format it as far as I can tell. The post navigation will now all be at the bottom as that makes much more sense than at the top since you will likely read it and not want to scroll back up to go to the next post - duh! I don’t know why I didn’t have it that way in the first place!

Another change you will notice the search feature. Instead of searching anything on the site, now it will only search tags. I’m disappointed in this because that means I will have to do more tagging if I want to be able to easily find something but that’s not going to happen. For example, I search “Zachary” a lot. My blog would bring up anything with his name, but now because “Zachary” is not a tag, the search results will not find anything. So instead of searching for Z, I have made a “favorite links” section in place of the tag cloud.

Finally, the last thing I think is changing is the comments section. Now you will only be able to comment via Facebook, Yahoo, AOL or Hotmail accounts. And unfortunately as all of my post pages will be changing, all previous comments will no longer be visible. That was a sad change for me since I have gotten many very nice and heartfelt comments on posts past that I hate to see disappear, but in the long run it will be a good change.

So anyway, I will be switching my blog over sometime today or tomorrow hopefully, so as I do this, please be patient with any hiccups and let me know if you notice anything strange (missing pictures, bad links or weird formatting). In the meantime, any past links on posts will not properly function as I cannot update those until I have moved my site over to Tumblr.

Server update and posting archive merge in progress… check out www.lifeunderthestars.com in the meantime!

Sure it is probably a one-off but I don’t care… MY BABY SLEPT THROUGH THE NIGHT!!!

For the first time ever, Vivian slept solidly from 9pm to 5:30am and then nursed quick and went back to sleep until 9am! I couldn’t believe it :) She just went to bed (at 11:30pm) after being out all night so who knows what tonight will bring, but I am finally feeling like I am catching up on my sleep.

On another note for celebration, today is my brother’s Birthday and tomorrow is my grandma’s birthday too! Happy birthday!

Vivian has been rolling for about two weeks now but now that she is a rolling fiend I captured it on video!