Mariana Ellen

Well this post is quite late but I realized last night that something was missing from my blog. Turns out I forgot to post about my newest beautiful niece Mariana (pronounce like Mario minus the o plus than ana, not Mary-ana) who was born March 18th. Matt and Amanda did not find out if they were having a girl or boy before Mariana was born. They enjoy that suspense and surprise. So while no one knew for sure, many people including Amanda speculated that the newest member of the Winkelman family would be a boy. I however, did not agree. I thought she was carrying this baby more like she carried Hailey and less like she carried Micah. But very few agreed with me and I figured with the track record in our family a boy would not be surprising. When Mari was born I guess Amanda's jaw about hit the floor. When I heard they had a girl I whooped for joy. I am so excited to have another girl in the family. These boys were really starting to take over. Mari will have to be a tough little cookie to put up with all of them. I was so excited that things worked out for me to go visit Amanda and Mariana the day she was born. I hardly took any pictures of her because I spent almost my whole visit holding her and rocking her and marveling at her smallness. It's amazing how the teeny tininess of my babies is already a distant memory. All of mine were smaller than this 6 pound 11 ounce beauty and yet I swear I can hardly remember them being so tiny. Here are a few pictures of Mari, hopefully I will get a chance to take some more in the coming weeks.