Thanksgiving weekend

This year we have yet another reason to be thankful. God has blessed more abundantly than we could ever imagine and now one of those blessings is our baby boy!

With our newest blessing I was hesitant to leave or travel on Thanksgiving day. Luckily both of our families were very flexible and let us host Thanksgiving lunch at our house. When I told people my plans of hosting Thanksgiving they thought it was more work than just going somewhere. However, you'd be surprised at all the food that shows up when you tell people you are providing a turkey. We had more than enough food for our group of 8 adults (both sets of our parents and my sister & brother-in-law) and 2 children (my nieces). Hopefully Aunt Rachel and Uncle Eric can join us in the future.

Our first Thanksgiving with Blake!

We did not participate in black Friday shopping.
But we did hit the road to visit some great grandparents that Blake has not had the chance to meet yet.
We made some special visits to Pryor and Moodys, OK.

Here is a four generation picture on Bob's dad's side of the family.

 Then Saturday was the extremely dramatic bedlam football game. Here are my boys rocking their OU threads.

 All in all it was a laid back Thanksgiving holiday, just like we prefer things around here. No big deals, just great times with family.

Learning to smile

Our baby boy is finally to the point where he is smiling! I'm so excited. He just gets so happy sometimes. It's totally cute and adorable (says his mommy)!

Here he is working on it.

There it is! Sweet boy. 

Happy Halloween/Two Months

Our baby boy celebrated being two months old the same week as Halloween.

Even though I did not feel compelled to dress him up, I did anyway. I especially felt guilty when the pediatrician asked what he was going to be and I said, "that" meaning himself. I had a feeling of "bad mommy" guilt. So we managed to find a pumpkin costume at Target on the day of Halloween.

So here we are rocking the two Halloween outfits.

Our boy is growing so quickly. Happy 2 months!

The smartest things nobody told me

While being pregnant and having a baby there are so many resources out there: books, online articles, websites, and advice from family and friends. Today I am going to share just a few things I stumbled upon just out of my own dumb luck, nothing I read about or heard from somebody else. This is my advice I will share with others in the future.

Swollen feet

Yes, I did read about and hear about swollen feet, but here's the problem: what do you do when your shoes don't fit? During my fifth month of pregnancy I ordered two pairs of Crocs on line. I previously had a pair and loved them! So I figured, if my feet are going to be hurting later I'd sure like to have some more Crocs since they are so comfy.

I wore both pairs for a while before I discovered that my other shoes had become too tight. Lucky me, I had my Crocs. Some people don't like Crocs because they don't come in half sizes, but if you just go up the half size, your pregnant feet will thank you later.

Duplicates

Now what do you do about duplicates from your showers? Stuff like books, I went ahead and exchanged them.Although I was puzzled for a bit about having two of some things. Well, not anymore! After leaving the house twice without a diaper bag I quickly put together a make shift diaper bag to keep in the trunk of my car. I just happened to have an extra diaper bag, changing pad, and nursing cover. After adding diapers and wipes I was set on a spare bag. I would not be caught venturing out again without one. Yea for duplicates!

Boppy

If you get a Boppy pillow for nursing make sure you keep the bag it comes in. The packaging was so nice with the handles on it and a zipper, I just thought it was a shame to throw it away. I kept it for no particular reason, but now I've already used it for when we travel. I am able to put the Boppy in the bag and throw it in the car and not worry about it getting dirty.

 So there you have it, the smartest things nobody told me.

From birth to 4 weeks

It's almost been a month (4 weeks ) since  we have welcomed our new addition into our family.

I went into the hospital at 6:30 am to be induced. We got started around 7 am and less than twelve hours later we had a beautiful baby boy!

Three days later we were on our way home.

And life hasn't been the same since. In a good way.

I almost feel like time has stopped for me. The month of September has flown by, but I am still stuck thinking it's the end of August. I've spent the whole month doing almost the same thing every day, and I couldn't be happier. I love being a mommy and staying home with our little guy.


At the beginning Blake mostly did this:

Or he would be eating, which we are not posting a picture of that.

We are getting closer to the point where Blake is not constantly feeding or sleeping. He is slowly learning how to stay awake and play a little bit. Yesterday we had a friend come over for a play date, which honestly he did more feeding than playing, but we managed a few pictures for the occasion.

 I can't believe a month has gone by already. I've always heard people say that "time goes by fast", or "they sure grow up quickly." Isn't that the truth? Time has flown by, but we are looking forward to the weeks/months/years ahead.

Our furbaby

Before things get terribly exciting around here with our new little one coming (any day now) I decided to dedicate one more post to our fur baby Swarley before she is dethroned by little brother.

Our kitty Swarley is a special kind of kitty. She came and found us and has been a very pleasant additional companion. She is playful, curious, sometimes cuddly, and loves blankets. Her love of blankets has been a bit of a concern lately since babies tend to get a lot of blankets. So to help protect the blankets of the unborn, both grandmothers have sewn Swarley her very own blankets.

 I think it will take Swarley some adjusting to having a new baby around the house, but she will probably be okay.

Here she is (unknowingly) cuddling her little brother.

Swarley is a nice kitty, but deep down inside there is a killer in there. One of her favorite activities at our new house is playing inside our 3 car garage. She'll spend an hour or two in there at a time. I think she finds bugs to track and she enjoys laying on top of our cars. Recently she came to the door and cried for me to come (I was thinking I had locked her out). She was not locked out. She came to show me what she had caught. She had caught and killed a teeny tiny frog and brought it to the door mat for me. I petted her and told her good kitty and immediately got a paper towel and threw the frog in the dumpster in the garage.

Swarley loves her daddy and likes to help him whenever possible. In this picture she is supervising him putting up the Lion King Decals in the nursery. Actually, I'm pretty sure she was thinking those stickers would sure be fun to play with and tear up with her claws.

Swarley, you won't be forgotten. Be patient with mommy and daddy as we adjust to adding our newest addition to the family.

Church Shower

Last Sunday we had an amazing shower at our church. My connection group, sister, sister-in-law, and niece helped put it together.

It was a good night/bedtime story theme. We had some amazing cookies shaped and decorated like books, yummy blue punch, as well as cupcakes, fruit, and vegetables.

Not only was the food amazing, but we got some really sweet gifts for our little one. He will be well dressed, well read, and have lots of blankets.

The shower was a lot of fun, and a bit of work getting through all of the gifts. This week I've been busy getting things settled, washed, and organized.

Here's all of the little boy clothes washed and hanging in the closet.

 Our little boy will be ready for football season!

I also managed to put together this little swing. 

And since I'm posting pictures, here's the one I took for 35 weeks pregnant.

Yep, 35 weeks and still so much to do. I hope little boy can stay in for a bit longer so mommy can get everything done.

Domesticity

Yesterday, I did two domestic things I've never done before. Get ready for story time.

Five months ago I took a sewing class. By completing and paying for the sewing class, I became the owner of a brand new BL9 Baby Lock sewing machine. Now, five months later, I finally take the machine out of the box to sew something.

This project became quite the process. The main cause of this being a "process" is that I learned to sew in my sewing class on a totally different (nicer, more expensive) machine. I think the hardest part of sewing is wrestling with the sewing machine, or maybe I'll call it getting acquainted with the sewing machine. I spent 3 hours Tuesday and another hour yesterday "getting acquainted" with my machine.

I had to learn how to thread this machine, thread the bobbin, and load the bobbin in the correct place. I finally got all of that under control, so then I started practicing on scrap material. Good thing I practiced, because then I discovered that I needed to adjust the tension on the machine as well.

When I finally got everything rolling I was ready to start my project. Since this was my first project outside of sewing class where I would be unsupervised I decided to do something very small and simple. I sewed a valance for the window in our bathroom.

Our old bathroom didn't have a window and the one at this house has a  small window and a valance that they had left. Since our bathroom matches and coordinates with an OU theme and colors, and the window is so small, I decided this would be a safe and satisfying project to under take.

Yea! Now the curtains match the bathroom! Such a small project, yet I am very pleased with the results.

 


 Honestly, I am probably not naturally inclined to learn how to sew. It requires skills that I lack or just have not fine tuned: exactness, attention to detail, and PATIENCE! However, I am still going to tinker around with it and see if I get any better. I'm glad that our first child is going to be a boy. I need much more practice before I start sewing little girl things.

For now sewing will be a good thing to spend time on since I will be staying home with baby boy. Most of my family cannot imagine me not working/not having a job. I have had a job doing something since I was 15 years old. My mom asks me what am I going to do being at home all day. Well, I found the answer: sewing! It sure takes up a lot of time.

When the possibility of living out of state was still up in the air we were a little bit anxious about having to live in  small town where we didn't know anyone. I told my husband that it would be okay, we would just get really good at our hobbies. Since we ended up staying in Oklahoma, I'm not so sure how good I will actually get at sewing, we'll just wait and see.

Now I told you I did two domestic things yesterday that I've never done before. The first one is the unsupervised sewing project. The second project took place in the kitchen, since I am much more familiar and experienced in that arena.

I had some old bananas that I didn't get around to eating so I made some banana bread. I've never made it before and it turned out quite tasty. Thanks for the recipe Ariel.

 
 I usually don't eat or buy bananas so that could be why I've never made banana bread before. Now I'm anxiously awaiting for the next time I can make some banana bread. Guess I better go buy some bananas.

Today has been filled with domesticity as well, nothing new or too exciting: laundry and cleaning. I finally unpacked and washed two boxes of our crystal and wine glasses. Those have not been a high priority, but now I actually have room for all of them in our cabinets.

Whew! It's been a busy couple of days. Reading and writing about it all makes me want to take a nap!

32 Weeks

Hopefully, being 32 weeks means I have less than ten weeks left! In my last post I mentioned that I was probably going to experience some discomfort soon. Well, that has happened. Although I probably brought it upon myself.

Last Monday and Tuesday I decided to get back into a daily walking routine, since I kind of let that go while moving into our house and going to work shops in June. Going for a walk two days in a row wasn't a bad idea. The bad idea was to go for a walk and then go to the mall after my doctor's appointment and walk all over the mall for more than an hour.

 By the end of the day the outer edge of my right foot was hurting. I was practically limping during my last stop at the grocery store. Taking up walking again was okay, it's just that my body had not yet experienced walking around so much with all this extra weight. (Remember in the last post, I mentioned that at 30 weeks I had finally passed the heaviest weight I have ever been, since I have been over weight before in the past). For the next two days I was confined to sitting activities, which is not fun for me.

After waiting a whole week, this week I walked today and on Wednesday. I have not done two days in a row yet, I'm not ready to be out of commission again.

 For now hurting my foot has been my biggest annoyance. I am still doing fairly well. I sleep through the night,I'm still able to wear my rings, and luckily this summer seems to have been more mild than last summer.

Speaking of summer, here is something I was hoping to side step during my pregnancy that is obviously smack dab in the middle of the summer: the maternity swim suit.

Initially, I had just planned on not stepping into the pool at all this summer. Sounds like a pretty good plan when you don't have a pool huh? Well, my in-laws had a pool put in this spring and we went to see them two weekends ago. So, I didn't want to be the only one not in the pool...so I went for a swim...but not in a maternity swim suit. Thanks again to being formerly over weight I had a nice size 12 tankini lying around in my swim suit wardrobe. It fit pretty well, I'm not sure I would push trying to wear it again until after the pregnancy thing is over, but it got the job done.

Here's to making it through less than ten weeks without needing to get into the pool again.

Over due...

...for a blog post! Actually, I'm not over due. I am happily 30 weeks pregnant. Since the last post I have passed a glucose test and I am just now 10 pounds over the heaviest I've ever weighed before in my life! This might be the only time that being formerly overweight has its perks. I'm not a doctor by any means, but I have a theory that I am feeling less discomfort than most pregnant women perhaps because my body has weighed this much before and adding these extra pounds is not completely foreign to me. However, I have ten weeks to go and I am expecting some discomfort in the future! June has been a busy month thus far. June first was our last "work" day at school as teachers and my staff threw me a very lovely baby shower. My friend Ashley even gave me a tub of gravy mix, since that's what I've been craving. On June 2nd my hubby graduated from pharmacy school and we had a nice little party to celebrate. The following week I immediately began two weeks of professional development training. Which brings us to today. This is my first official week off since school has been out. Now I can sit back and relax. Or not. I can finally finish unpacking our house and getting things more organized. Now we have a baby's room to get ready and decorating to do. So off I go. Hopefully I won't let time get away from me before I update this again.

We got one!

We started the month of May with the news that our offer was accepted on a house! However, hubby feels like sharing pictures and talking about it is premature, but I just can't help it. So, provided that inspection goes smoothly and everything goes through with our lender, we will be closing on May 29th! My last day of school with my students is May 31st and I have June 1st to clean out my classroom. Then Bob will be graduating on June 2nd. Right now it looks like we may move after his graduation. We'll just wait and see how that works out. Now for the forbidden picture:

There's more where that came from, but I must refrain for now.

20 Weeks -Halfway there

This week I am twenty weeks pregnant. So far this has been the most that I have looked and felt pregnant (naturally right?). All of the sudden my pregnant tummy seems to be more pronounced and bending down to get things has been easier. I suppose there is more of this to come?

Pregnancy has been really interesting. Once I got past 12-14 weeks I started feeling normal again and not so tired and wiped out. I've been feeling pretty good for the past six weeks. In the mornings when I get to school I am rather hyper. This is without any caffeine whatsoever.

I've also started eating two breakfasts, but after talking to people it sounds like I am eating a normal sized breakfast now. Pre- pregnancy I would just eat a fiber one bar and that would hold me until lunch. Now I am eating my fiber one bar in the car on the way to work. Then, when I get to work I get my classroom ready and then I eat a bowl of cereal. It's quite convenient since I keep bowls in my classroom and the cafeteria has milk.

People ask if I have had any cravings. I do, but it's not like any typical cravings I imagined having like pickles, watermelon, eating something salty or sweet. Whenever it's time to eat I often think gravy sounds good. G-R-A-V-Y yum yum! I'm fine eating whatever, but gravy always sounds even better, no matter what.

When we go out to eat and my husband tries to tell me to pick where to go, I just tell him you pick, because not matter what this baby is always going to pick gravy. Anything I eat will taste good, but the baby wants gravy.

Here I am twenty weeks pregnant, plus our fur baby, Swarley.



We went to the doctor this week for the twenty week ultra sound and came back with these pictures.

a foot... a face shot... and a profile



Our photo of the gender is being with held at this time. Most of our family is clued in, but we are waiting to tell the internet for now.

oh baby!

If you haven't heard the great news yet, we are having a baby!

Baby Kennedy will be making their debut at the end of August or early September.
Hopefully, I will be done with labor by Labor Day :)

The process has been very exciting for me so far. On my birthday I got to see our baby on an ultra sound. On Valentine's Day I got hear the heartbeat at my regular OB appointment, and on leap day, February 29th, I had another ultra sound.



Yesterday after my monthly OB appointment we made another appointment for an ultra sound on April 10th. Hopefully, this is when they will be able to tell us if baby Kennedy is a boy or a girl.

Today I am 16 weeks and I am feeling good.
One of these days when I have a significant baby bump, belly picks will be in order on here. Right now I can conceal my condition, but as I understand that won't last for much longer.

Happy Valentine's Day

Six years ago I met my husband at church the Sunday before Valentine's Day, February 12, 2006. That was our very first encounter.

After five years of marriage, I'm still very much in love and head over heels for my hubby.

So far we've celebrated by going out to dinner at Outback Steakhouse on Saturday night, which inspired us to cook steaks at home tonight. Yum!

Usually we don't make a big deal of this holiday, but this year we've used it as an excuse to spoil each other.

Bob got me a kindle fire! It is so amazing. I got it on Saturday, so I've already had time to play with it and borrow a book on it from the public library.



After being shown up by him on the gift :o) I agreed to let him spend some extra money on buying a tool box/organizer for the garage.

However, I like to give gifts that I have picked out. So, today I picked up some tahini from the store (he's been looking all over the place for this to make hummus)and I also bought him some specialty beers for him to enjoy.

We love each other every day of the year, but it's okay to have an excuse to spoil each other I guess.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Happy Birthday Hubby!

Happy birthday to my wonderful hubby!

Thus far we have already celebrated with dinner at Genghis Grill last night, Pho Lien Hoa with Pharmacy friends today, and Sara Sara cupcakes for dessert.

My birthday is also next Wednesday. It's been fun being married to my almost birthday twinkie. It usually calls for almost a week of celebrations. We will most likely eat dinner with both our families and finish next weekend out with a Super Bowl party.

Happy birthdays to us!