2 Years Ago Today, God Blessed Us With 2

We are so thankful to God for another blessed year. The support of our families, friends and loved ones has fueled our resilience. Everyday we learn something new. Each day our babies have grown and are filling into their presence into this lifetime. It has been quite a journey, and watching them meet their milestones is so heartwarming. We cherish every single thing they do, for we know how tough this journey has been as new parents, and also premies. The joys, the stress, the anxieties, the novice mentality of not knowing what to expect have all solidified  our so called parenting skills. 

Nonetheless, we do have a long way to go, however, each day comes with its blessings and challenges, and these pulsatile moments toughens us to be better each day. Now they sleep through the night, and we always anticipate seeing them in the mornings.

Same time last year, we had met our goal by surviving a first year of parenthood, and by far the most challenging. We remember being so sleep deprived and so tired during the day, and still managed to have full-time jobs. It took a while for us to have a smooth rhythm, and once we fell in sync with chores, sleep patterns and feeding cycles, life became a little easier.  The sleepless nights alone took a while to get used to, and not being able to have a sound sleep because of how fragile our babies were sends a rush of adrenaline through our veins as we talk about it. 

Most importantly our babies are two today, and thats so joyful. They're so silly in every aspect. The funny sounds they make as they chase each other during playtimes, come to think of it, everytime is playtime, as they challenge themselves running, or repeatedly call "mama" dada" grandma" over and over again. 

This love in our life is awesome, we want to share our journey with you, and most importantly for for this love for everyone. We hear two is challenging, but we love being here, and we love every second of us growing in harmony, love and God's glory. 

Our Love 

Dennis & Lilian 

Creating Our Baby Registry

It's fair and hones to say that we were clueless initially when we decided to create a baby registry. In excitement, and eager the have a registry, for the sake of the people who asked, we created registries at pottery barn kids, target, baby's r us, and the list goes on. We chose bibs, colorful socks, lots of blue items, and lots of yellow items too. 

Honestly, most of the items we had listed on our registry we chose out of excitement of becoming parents, and what we assumed we would need. We totally went overboard initially, and narrowed down gradually as sheepishly came to our senses. However, before we narrowed down, we did what we had always done best, to consult with our friends who had been through parenting, and their suggestions compared to ours, was night, and day. We later learned differences in the simple items such as glass bottle and plastic bottle, why diapers would be our best-possessed item. 

Read Also: Our Love

So, we settled for target and babies "r" us because of the quality of their products, affordability, and convenience in close proximity to where we live. Also, we centered more on the later as they offered price matching, 1 year returns, mobile access, 15% discount, free shipping, and expert consultation (free) as needed. Furthermore, we resulted to a lot of product reviews from various website platforms, but the most handy advice came from new parents, in the same age group as us, and of African decent. We don't want to sound too ethnocentric, but culture is everything. 

To date, we are so grateful for everyone who chipped in to support us, either in buying the simple items or the highly priced items, because every effort counts. Our parents and the Godparents to our babies bared the costs for the highly priced items and we are forever grateful. Doing the math now, money cannot replace the generosity, encouragement, and motivation as we planned to become new parents. 

We're getting somewhere with all of these posts, hang in there, let's talk about the Baby Shower next. 

Love,

Dennis & Lilian 

Planning Our First Baby Shower

Our wedding location was awesome, and the mere thought of it brings lots and lots of goose bumps. The sweet memories of vows, family, smiles, music, dancing mixed with and all the preparations that took place, make those memories so much worthwhile. Never mind almost lost track here. This is the post we talk about the planning for our first baby shower. 

Focus here. 

We often wonder, if there would be anymore baby shower(s) in the future! Well, we live to see! In planning our shower, our thought processes geared to finding an ideal location with an unforgettable ambiance; as we always want people to have that "wow factor", and be moderately exuberant. We wanted a place with good food, good lightening, and great customer service, parking, and spacious enough for our guests. 

Luckily, we found a very nice place closer to us, and the price was decent to include food and drinks. The tricky part was setting the date, as we didn't want it to be to late in our pregnancy, and too early as well. We agreed on March 6th 2016, as the date exemplified Ghana's independence, and our planned delivery date was June 2016. Also, we thought that people would remember the date, as most of the invitees were Ghanaians. 

Read : This is Lifetime

Our culture dictates that we send out invitations to all guests, so we did.  We bared additional costs in printing the cards, as things would have it, our invitation cards had to breath our excitement of becoming parents, and we needed enough to mail out to all our guests. Some actually didn't show up because they were invited verbally, and, or did not get the actual card in the mail. Any-who, that’s a different future post. 

Mind you, we rented out a hall for about 100-120 people, in doing the math; we had to pay per head. Let's not do the math, no, no, no; let's not do the math. We couldn't leave people out, especially, those who had always supported us. 

The main emphasis for this post is that our co-worker's, and family were outstanding with helping us in all aspects of our shower. They were helping in helping us with decorations, making the cake, and sorting out souvenirs. Every step of our journey has been possible because of God's grace, our family and friends. This is the fundamental message well scripted in most of our blog posts, and we pray this inspires you. 

The shower was awesome!

We'll tell you about it in the next post. 

Feels free to share this post. 

Dennis & Lilian 

As We Reflect On Our First Pregnancy

Our due date is nearing by; soon, reality will begin to set in. We begin to realize that we need more room for all of us, not to mention, more space for all the things we would need! Also, our new lives we require getting two of everything. It's really happening, we would often say to each other. Still don't know why we were so shocked that things were moving as we prayed for, maybe we were overjoyed and drooled in the joys of parenthood.

God is always on our side.
We seem to do well in tougher situations, and God always sees us through.  We are the ideal couple to talk to if you don't believe in God, because our life story exemplifies God's grace. What are the odds that our next door neighbor who had a bigger place decides to move at the same time we begin to look for a bigger place? Not just that, everyone who hears that we are looking for a bigger place joins in to ready our new place, with new closet, new floors, new tub and on, and on, and on. The best part, we did not have to move far, and the transition was painless to the point that, everything would eventually go as planned.

Read Also : Reflecting On Our First Pregnancy 

With a few good family members and friends we would move into our new spacious place, by God's grace. Although, once agin, it looks like we might need a bigger place, as our babies are growing and seem to have overtaken all the so called "space" we once had.

I would soon realize that a new responsibility as a hubby and a prerequisite for fatherhood; baby-shower planning. My way of expressing the joys of life, and the blessings in our lives is to celebrate. Its okay to say, I could sometime go overboard with planning events, but, life is precious, and I'm all about the unforgettable moments that are cherished a lifetime. With that said, the baby-shows had to speak for itself. Our first baby-shower, it had to be grand, it had to be classy, and most importantly, bring happiness and joy to my Queen.

Catch you on the next post!
Let's talk more about Our First Baby-shower.

Dennis &Lilian