B Update

I know I'm so going to wake a sleeping baby by blogging right now....  but here we go anyway....

Everyone keeps asking how the little guy is doing and my wrote response is 'great!' I've been SO bad at replying to messages and typically when I do, I'm on my phone so it's short and sweet. Several of you have asked about coming to visit and we would LOVE to see you! If I haven't gotten back to you, email me again. (Things were just so crazy busy with visitors in the beginning that I didn't have dates to send out to people. We are a little more free now though so let me know when you can come!)

He really is a good baby but I still haven't gotten much done around here to show for it. Our house is a mess. I'm on an every day and a half shower schedule. I haven't even attempted to try on anything other than maternity clothes. And the laundry piles are huge. But life is so good right now!

B sleeps between 3 and 4 hours at night (until I publish this post then I'm sure he'll be awake all night!). We were struggling with the nursing at night in the beginning. At night, he was too sleepy to nurse and I was too tired to help him. He screamed. I cried. Right away we switched game plans and I started pumping and bottle feeding through the night and nursing through the day. It has worked out so much better for us! I'm a little nervous about starting back to work more often because on the rare occasion that he gets a bottle during the day, he's a lazy nurser and we have to work at it again the next couple feedings. We have been praying since before he was born that he would be a good nurser and we keep saying that same prayer! I wouldn't call nursing easy but he does do a pretty good job!

His official weight yesterday (right after a dirty diaper even) was 7lbs 14.5oz so over 10oz more than where they wanted him! That was great news! Also, he was 22" long at the two week check. He is 25% for weight and 90% for height. Nearly all the Drs comment on how tall and skinny he is! That paired with his big hands and feet get him a lot of comments about what a great basketball player he will be. You know his daddy eats that right up but we always remind him he can choose to play whatever sports and do whatever activities he wants (as long as its not wrestling... ha).  His head is right on track with his weight and is at 25%.

He is going to the family dr here in town and I'm already thankful that we ended up making that our final decision. It was so hard to decide what to do but in the end, I think this is what works best for us. It's already proven to be a great choice and the ladies at the office are so great with him. Everyone loves on him and he's pretty much a celebrity already- they get us checked in as soon as they see us pull in the drive. Makes me feel good that he's not just another patient but that they actually know us!

Well I'm probably pressing my luck so I better get off the computer (I actually did get some cbh work done though!). I'll leave you with a B picture from a week ago. He's already changed so much since then!!

Two Weeks

The last two weeks have FLOWN by. It seems like it's gone so fast but at the same time, an entire lifetime has happened and it feels like B has always been here.
At two weeks old, B holds his head up for short periods of time to check people out. He's super alert when he's awake. He LOVES his cuddle time and is the very best little snuggler. He has met SO many people in the last week. He's had his first Thanksgiving and now his first Christmas stocking is hanging on the mantle. He has a million looks to him. Most of the time he looks like Beckett but we also see his daddy in there. He adores his cousin Morgan and she is so good with him. She reads books to him and cuddles him. He has given her more smiles and coos than anyone else (except his mama and daddy!).  He's grown SO much. He started at 7lbs 4oz and at his lowest weight was around 6lbs 13.5oz. At his weight check this week, his unofficial (with a dry diaper and onesie on) weight was a whopping 7lbs 13oz!! We'll get his official weight at his two week check tomorrow. And lastly... I hate to even say it because I know you wont believe me until you see it, but the kid has rolled over... three times now! The first time was in his crib and he ended up with his face against the railing. :( The second time was at the Drs office and the Dr witnessed it (so I wasn't the only one to see it! R and the Dr saw it too though we all couldn't believe it!). And then just last night he did it again on the couch. I tried recording it but he was getting mad doing it and I didn't have the heart to keep recording and listen to him fuss.
It's amazing how much life has happened in the last two weeks. We couldn't be more blessed!
Happy Two Week Birthday, Little Guy!!

10 on.....

I promise we've been recording a million (almost) things we're thankful for around here. I even thought about posting a 10 on Tuesday yesterday but then I started staring at this sweet little babe and decided I'd rather do that instead. I could blog, reply to the 4 pages of backed up emails (or voicemails, texts, facebook messages, ets) or I could just sit here and snuggle this sweet thang a little longer. I think I'll choose the latter. After all, he's only 10 days old once. And we've got lots of snuggling to do.

You'll forgive me if I show you this... right? :)

Happy Thanksgiving, all! (Cause we all know I wont be blogging tomorrow!)

Beckett's Birth Day

Just over a week ago, Beckett entered our lives on what was one of the most amazing days ever. His birth day went much better than I ever dreamed and I cant wait to share his birth story soon. In the meantime, here are a few photos recapping the day.
Two of my favorite memories of the day my life:
-seeing the look on R's face and the tears in his eyes the first time he held our son.
-at the end of the amazing day when our last visitors left and it was just the three of us left in our room. We were snuggling in the bed and Matthew West's 'Safe & Sound' started playing on the playlist. It was the most beautiful, amazing thing ever.

We thank God every day for this little miracle. We are so, so blessed.





To view on mobile device: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qh1LPTryg_8

One Week

10 on Tuesday

 10 Fingers.






10 Toes.

And 10 million reasons to be thankful today.

We are so in love.

We Are So Blessed

No.....

.... I haven't 'popped' yet. I'm not even sure what that means.

I am trying to remember that people are only asking because they care but I promise when Baby H makes his big debut, we'll let everyone know.

I am appreciating all the notes of encouragement while we wait. You know, the ones that aren't prefaced with, 'have you popped yet?' Ha.



Our bp guard dog was working hard yesterday and by late afternoon almost crazy. Turns out at our regular OB appointment my bp was the highest it's been yet and we had some other preeclampsia signs so the Dr sent us right in to the hospital. We kind of sort of maybe just a little bit had our hopes up that we were getting close to meeting Baby H. After a few hours and lots of labs, they decided it was safe to send me home to rest. And wait.

So that's what we're doing today.


God is definitely teaching me a lesson about planning right now.

I'm a slow learner.



I appreciate the prayers.

(Especially the ones requesting grace. I do feel bad I kind of wanted to slap the adorably cute girl bopping into L&D last night with her basket of ribbon tied favors ready to go. I'd bet money she had the baby's name and birth date already printed on them. Ugh.)  



(Oh I'm kidding.)      




    (Sort of.)

39 Weeks and Counting.....

As we get closer to bringing Baby H home, it's becoming more real to me that this big belly wont be a part of my life in the near future. Just the other day, R was looking at old photos and said, "I had forgotten what you looked like before! I'm gonna miss this." And as incredibly excited that we are to meet Baby H, I think I'm gonna miss this too.

Some Bump Memories:

Best Day of Pregnancy: The day after we found out we would be welcoming Baby H to the family. We were climbing Dunns River Falls in Ochos Rios, Jamaica. God was speaking loud and clear to us that day as it became real Baby H was a part of us. All of a sudden life just made sense.

Worst Day (weekend?) of Pregnancy: The day of my SIL's college graduation party. We at Mexican for dinner (and I don't think I'll ever be able to eat it again). I had a migraine all evening but we really wanted to stay and spend as much time with her as possible so I stuck it out. On the way home, I threw the car door open at a quick 55+ mph and started vomiting out the side. As R tried to pull over (and I thought we had slowed down enough, I started to step out and my foot and leg dragged through the gravel (ouch!). I proceeded to vomit (with a migraine) the next 12+ hours. I popped several blood vessels in my body (especially in my face and around my eyes). The following day was Mother's Day. We had plans to go to church, R's nephew's bball game then we were going to eat lunch with his family. We got through most of that but by lunch time I was about dead again and we headed home and started the vomiting again. I am so thankful though that it was Mother's Day and that we did go to church that morning because the last few Mothers Days had been hard to get through church services for. As miserable as I was, I was so, so thankful!

Biggest Surprise: The wide assortment of symptoms that people don't talk about. And the just plain weird symptoms. Also, I was hoping for that beautiful pregnancy glow, gorgeous hair symptom. It escaped me. I've been shedding since day 1 and I already have the 'baby bangs' that I thought weren't supposed to be here until baby. I cant imagine what it will be like after delivery!

Biggest Surprise to R: My body temp. Before the bump I was cold all the time. Now it's R who is cold because I am SO HOT all the time. And I sweat now. A lot. All the time.

Weight Gain: 60 lbs (so far.) I never thought I'd be catching up to R in the weight category.

Cravings: Everything! I'm hungry all the time (which explains the weight gain). The weirdest craving though is McDonald's Hamburgers. I honestly do not remember ever having one in my life before! I used to eat McDonald's as a kid but I'm pretty sure I stuck to McNuggets back then. One day I just HAD to have a McDonald's hamburger. It was the most bizarre thing. Since then I've had several! (too many!)

Some of My Favorite Things: The way R interacts with Baby H. It is so sweet. The way my niece and nephew already treat my belly like their little cousin. Mo is always telling me she found something special for him and she cant wait to hold him and help change his diapers. Madd is always putting his ear up to my belly then telling me what Baby H has to say. (He's even mentioned that our baby is hungry for McDonald's so he must actually be able to hear him!) :)

As Far as Dakota is Concerned: He completely knows something is up. I've read that it makes sense because they're baby making animals too. He's also started having some very overprotective days where he wont sleep and wont leave me alone for a second. Mom (I think jokingly) said maybe he's a blood pressure dog but the more we see this happening the more that makes sense! It definitely has been correlating with when my blood pressure is sky high! (Maybe he's just trying to figure out who I am though because he doesn't recognize me from my face being swollen so huge?) He recognizes baby's name and sniffs my belly quite often. When we say, "Go say hi to your brother" he comes and lays his head on my belly. For the record, I NEVER thought I'd be saying these things about a dog. But I also never thought I'd have an inside dog that was a part of the family. :)


I'm Wearing: Just a couple pairs of maternity pants. I bought a pair of jeans and my mom bought me a pair of grey skinnies. I also have a couple pairs of pants that were borrowed from friends. I have barely any maternity shirts and they are actually too short to cover my belly right now! (I have a long torso.) I sleep in R's shorts because even my pajama pants are too tight now.

It's been: 274 days. And counting.....





Baby H, it has been an absolute miracle to be able to carry you and I am SO thankful to have been given the blessing... but... your mama and daddy are ready to meet you now, little mister. Please come see us soon!!

10 on Tues 11/8

1. I'm thankful that R is always on board with the blessings calendar. It was fun pulling last year's out as we were setting it up for this year. Finding this one of R's about being thankful for me doing the 30 for 30 made me smile (actually a LOT of them made me smile which is why I love doing it).

2. Massages. R is getting really good about just giving unsolicited foot/leg massages. I wonder if the way my feet, legs, hands, face (who am I kidding.... EVERY inch of my swollen body) looks has anything to do with that. You can still see some swollen piggies in this picture but I spared you the color version that showed off my purpleness. Yuck. But what a blessing! :)   (R affectionately tells me I look like the Michelin man.)

3. Brown boxes at the front door. Ohmygoodness Thursday started out rough. I had a not great Drs appointment and was whining to R about it. I had decided to sit around and feel sorry for myself for the afternoon. R was home for lunch before conferences started and the UPS man showed up. We opened up the absolute best package for Baby H. It completely made my day!!! I would show you all the fun details that made me smile but they have Baby H's name on them. (I know.... I told you it's slipped out a few times. There are a couple people that know it. R was saying how cool the stuff was then went, "WAIT, how does she know his name?!" haha. Oops....) I will definitely have to show you the fun details on these goodies once R lets us start sharing his name! :)

4. I'm thankful R has a job that he loves. And I love talking to him about his work. PE teachers get a bad rep but he works harder and cares more than any PE teacher I have ever met. (By the way CD people, did you know Zeons and Zoraxes was a made up game? I didn't!)
Last week he had conferences and his principal hosted a Christmas party afterwards. I'm thankful I got to get the Christmas dish out for it as I'm not sure we'll make it to many Christmas gatherings this year. (I'm also thankful for the cheesecake stuffed strawberry recipe found via pinterest. Quick, easy and yum!)




5. Since it was conference week, R had the day off and we got to hang out all day Friday. We've been into 'progressive dinners' lately (anyone want to host part of one at their house? I'm thinking it would be a good time!). We did appetizers at Fongs. We tried to check out Miyabi 9 (have you been? I hear it's good!) but they closed before we got there (they close between lunch and dinner). We ended up doing Waterfront Sushi instead. (I'm slowly converting R. He actually loves it now!) We were thinking cheesecake factory for dessert but even after A LOT of walking around the mall I still wasn't hungry for it so we grabbed lemon meringue pie to go from Perkins and had it later. I'm thankful that R and I got to spend (almost) the entire day hanging out. It was much needed.







6. I'm thankful for the neighbor girls. Or 'almost neighbor girls' as the youngest one says. They stopped by Saturday and entertained me with some great stories and theories about life. :) As we were getting them ready to go out the door they decided they wanted to look at the cookbooks. I told them they could pick out a recipe and I would be sure to have the ingredients for it next time they were over so we could make it. They picked one out that they thought we might just have ingredients for already. Turns out they were right so they ended up calling mom and staying for treats too (right before dinner... that's bad, isn't it?!). They are quite the little chefs!



7. I'm thankful for the great weather we've had. It's November and I worked on craft projects (Christmas ones actually) outside while wearing a t-shirt. It was beautiful out! (Granted, I've had more than the normal body heat lately and even R was wearing a sweatshirt but it was still awesome out!)




8. I'm thankful for 'fall back' this weekend. We had called into the Drs office with some questions and she sent us in to the hospital. (It was definitely not a huge concern, she just wanted them to monitor me and Baby for awhile. Had it not been a weekend, we probably would have just went to the office.) We were there longer than we thought we might be and ended up not getting home until 2:30 am. The 'extra' hour of sleep was nice!
And I'm thankful that R changed all the clocks this time. I didn't even have to think about it!




9. I'm thankful that Baby H is still perfectly happy and healthy and that the nurses at our hospital are so wonderful! Being there again this weekend got me really excited to go back soon!

10. I'm thankful for God's grace. He really does have perfect timing- and is so good at teaching me about patience. We've been church hopping for a few months now. I kept praying we would find something we both liked before Baby H's arrival (something about church hopping with a newborn doesn't sound fun to me). I'd been getting discouraged with it. We went to one of the last couple on our list this weekend and we both really liked it! We'll definitely be going back to it again which is progress.


R's list for the week (his are by days and the ones going in the actual calendar. I'm sticking ones in the calendar too, just putting the long versions of them here and sticking with the 10 on Tues instead of just doing 7 for the week):
1. Great weather
2. Insurance
3. Good job
4. Days off to spend with my wife
5. ISU win (barely)
6. Healthy Baby & healthy H
7. My wife

Last Page

Eek! I mentioned that I ordered our 'Dear Baby' book with the Paper Coterie deal this week (I didn't want it to expire while I was in the hospital so I wanted to get the order in!). Ordering it meant I had to write a 'last page' for it. I cant imagine what I'll be feeling the moments before he's actually born so I may need to add a hand written page at the end for my official last page.
But here he is at week 38! (Though R swears he's gotten even bigger since then. I'm to the point where I cant really tell unless I compare pictures side by side.)
The planner in me is having a hard time coping with the fact that he could be here any minute or not for a couple more weeks (to be exact- 17 more days is the latest they'll let us go).
Either way, we cant wait to meet him!! (Though I'm still holding out for this coming week's full moon.)   ;)

Paper Coterie

I don't normally blog about products but I wanted to share this one with you quick before this deal expires.
If you follow The Mom Creative, you may have used the Paper Coterie deal last week. I used mine and got a memory keeper box. It came in this week and I LOVE it! It was a nice size, I like the look of it and I love the customized area on the back to add details. I plan to use it to hold mementos from pregnancy (special cards, ultrasounds, etc.).

If you want one, there's a coupon code for $30 off Paper Coterie today (through Nov. 13th)! (That makes the memory box $8 plus shipping or you could use it on another fun product.)

Just wanted to share this with you in case you don't follow Jess' blog.

And to show off our new memory keeper box (with Baby H's name photoshopped out of course!). 

OH and it came with this necklace as a welcome gift. An extra little smile in the box.

I just ordered our 'Dear Baby' book for Baby H. Cant wait to get it!

Happy Shopping!

10 on Tuesday (Nov. style)

Happy November!!! I have a feeling it's going to be a great month!

A couple Novembers ago, we started doing the Blessings Calendar (check out the calendar here). It's been a great way for us to keep track of all we have to be thankful for. (And you may remember me talking about the blessings jar. It's happening!)

So 10 on Tuesday November Style..... 10 things I'm currently thankful for.

1. A husband with a closet full of clothes he never wears that I can dig into..... because even the maternity shirts are too short right now (it's that darn long torso, I swear!).

 2. A baby belly too big for maternity shirts. There was a time I thought we'd never see this side of the miracle. And then a time we thought we'd never make it this far. I'm so thankful our little mister is growing so well in his current home!

3. A bed that's made in the above picture. Lately the house work has been less than a priority.

4. My new blanket. LOVE it. I really wanted the Pottery Barn Sherpa blanket but at $100 that was out of the question. When we found this $16 version I almost squealed with excitement. I'm almost embarrassed to admit it... but it came from Menards.   : )

5. Time to snuggle up under said blanket. I've just learned that I have to force myself to sit with my feet up or it is not good by the end of the day. I'm thankful I can make the time to do that.

6. Friends. I've been blessed to catch up with some good friends this week. I've also been blessed to receive a surprise package in the mail from a blog friend. R (still) does not understand the whole blog world thing so he's always shocked when someone we've not yet met in real life loves on us and our little guy. We are so blessed! (PS- she's from Texas and thought he could use a little cowboy hat in his life!) :)  Oh and YES those are 0-3 month jeans! Woo hoo!! :)

7. Our home. I know we have about a hundred things to do on our house list but I really do love our home and am so thankful everyday for it. Almost daily, I look at something in awe that we did with our own hands and I just smile. So you could look at this picture taken out our front door and see columns that we never finished painting... but I see a front porch perfect for trick-or-treaters. Something we missed out on living in the apartment world.

8. Pinterest. Because of easy recipes like this baked potato soup one.

9. Popcorn balls. And the memories that come with them. (or as pictured, a bowl of popcorn goodness I ate way too much of before forming into balls.

10. NOVEMBER!!! I kept saying I wanted Baby H to wait until November to make his big debut and he has! Way to go, little guy!!



"Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good; His love endures forever." - 1 Chronicles 16:34