Baby Shower for the Little Man

I just had my baby shower on Tuesday night and it was such an encouraging and fun time! I definitely came away feeling loved and very uplifted. It was a great time to have the shower...just inside the four week mark...making me feel like I can make it through the final push. I am so blessed to have wonderful friends, new and old, that inspire me, make me laugh, challenge me, and encourage me all in their own unique ways. Life is definitely rich with such great friends. I am so so grateful for them all.

So, Lindsay, Jai, and Kristen put on the shower and it was AWESOME! Jai, of course, kicked booty on all of the crazy fun decorations and the food was super tasty and the games fun! They thought of all of the things that I love and hold dear to my heart from a food standpoint: Prosecco (yes, I had a glass and LOVED it!), chocolate covered strawberries, cheese (Brie being the highlight of course) and crackers, fruit parfait, and tons more. If only I didn't have a baby taking up most of my belly space....I would have eaten twice as much! We did some fun games and one on the more meaningful side where everyone wrote down one quality that they feel I have that they would hope the little guy would also possess and one quality from a man in their life that they would hope that the little guy would have as well. It was very very encouraging to hear all of the hopes for our little guy, and I pray that our little man is blessed with many of those qualities.

We ended up with so many generous gifts too. The little boy is going to be super stylin' in all of his new clothes. Here are some pictures from the event!

My wonderful friends and family!!!!!








So many fun gifts from generous friends!

Lucy sitting in the pile...it looks even cuter now!

A New Room For Baby Brother

Alright, here is the unveiling of the little guy's nursery! I, and mostly Pat, were excited to be able to keep the same paint color and all of the furniture while transforming it into a little boy's room.

Jai, once again, helped me pick out the big components in the nursery like this vintage (or rusty junk if you are Pat) metal book shelf.

It was fun to shop around all of the antique stores looking for little things to add to the room. My "found" things include the ray gun mounted under the wooden shelf, the metal locker I am using as a diaper holder on the changing table, most of the things on the shelf and on the book case, the super awesome fan from Jai, and the three plant holders 2 of which are old metal bunt pans and the third larger one is an old metal colander! There is a bit of a space/robot theme along with a rust theme. :) My mom graciously made the awesome bed skirt for the new babes like she did for Lucia and I promptly messed it up by changing a portion that I had asked her to do in the first place. Poor mom....I do feel bad about that. She is never going to want to sew for me again.

I ended up making the crib sheet, mobile (out of an old film real and paper airplanes from maps), curtains, changing pad cover, pillow, and a few other little things for the room like the table topper. Oh, and I almost forgot the crochet blanket. That thing doesn't look spectacular at all but it took forever to make. Whew, I had no idea it would take so many hours. I think it may have even taken longer than the quilt that I made for Lucia's bed though much less labor intensive and not as hard on the back. I took a crochet class with Jai a while back and this is my first finished product. Hopefully more to come.

36 Weeks!!!

I am now 36 weeks along and just had my dr. appointment. I'll be seeing the doctor every week now until the little guy arrives which makes it all seem so much closer. I cannot believe that we get to meet our son in about 4 weeks! Though the days drag by most of the time, I know that it will still go by relatively quickly (I can say that on my good days:). Anyway, the doctor did do an exam today and I am just at 1cm dilated and a tiny bit effaced. That definitely means that the little guy will be kicking it in there for a while still. That is all good news though. This time around I am not threatening to start running marathons when I hit full term next week. I figure I should be cool with him growing as much as he needs to before he pops out.

We've been prepping Lucia's little toddler head as much as possible for the baby arrival by telling her that Dr. Henderson is going to help take the baby out of mommy's belly so that we can bring him home in the car seat and he can sleep in his crib. She seems to be catching on that he won't live in my belly forever. :)

In other news, I am off to my baby shower in a few hours and am super excited to see all of my lovely friends!

A New Room For Lucia

We finished Lucia's big kid room a month or so back, but here are some pictures of the finished product!

This is the finished quilt that I made along with the throw pillow. I would guess that I cut over 450 squares for the quilt. The final product has about 350...some were tossed because I didn't like the color or pattern. Anyway, I estimate that 80 hours of love went into the making of my very first quilt. Hopefully there will be more to come because I actually had a lot of fun. I cut all of the pieces, sewed the top, made the binding, tied it, and pieced it all together. The awesome bird paintings were done by Tracie. She has serious skills!



I added the trim to the curtains and the lampshade. I LOVE me some fringe people! Pat jokes that I must roll around in ball fringe on some days at home.

And my favorite little vanity found at a vintage show months back with my sister-in-law, Jai. She put up with a MILLION questions when I was trying to decorate Lucy's room. She has the best decor taste EVER!!!!!!! If only I could steal a part of her brain...I would take good care of it.

35 Week Dr. Apt

I am now 35 weeks and 2 days...and yes I am definitely counting those two days! Each day is hard work at this point. :) I had a doctor's appointment this morning. There is nothing earth shattering to report though I did learn that when the baby "drops" on your second pregnancy is not an indicator of when the baby will arrive. I suppose that is good news as I don't really want the little guy to arrive early and not have a chance to develop as much as he can in the safety of my belly. My uncomfortable pregnant self, however, could go for a bit of an early arrival. :) I really don't remember being quite this uncomfortable with Lucia but perhaps I just forgot. I have been having so much trouble sleeping at night that last night I even got up and walked around the house a bit, looked at some paperwork, and had a bite of cereal at 3-something in the morning. Hopefully that was just a particularily bad night and sleep will come a bit easier tonight...

The nursery is nearly ready to go with the exception of one item on the wall. Once it is done, I will post some pictures because it is pretty fun it there! I am just wrapping up little last minute things at this point. I tested our new baby monitor (thanks Murphy's!) and my pump to make sure it still works. I washed all of the baby clothes that we have so far. My shower is this coming Tuesday...yippee! After that, I will make the final run to Babies R Us, pack our bags, and then it will really be just waiting around. Ah, the waiting is agony! I suppose we could use this time to pick his name. :)

July Trip to Cannon Beach

Here is another catch up post. We took a trip to Cannon Beach this July with our good friends Chris and Kristen and their super cutie son Hayden. It was just a quick weekend get away, but it was SO nice! I think that Kristen and I spend at least half the time thinking of the next 10 vacations to take together! :) Anyway, it was absolutely beautiful at the beach which is certainly not a guarentee around here. We were able to walk around the town, go out for dinner, and spend a lot of great time on the beach. Lucy loved the sand only after being totally freaked out by it. She is a funny one. Once she figured out it wasn't going to burn her flesh off and eat her bones, she dug right in. Here are some of the pictures. Chris took some really awesome ones. He has mad skills!

This group of pictures are all from Chris. I LOVE them!
Lucy stole Hayden's car for some joy riding




The two cuties



These ones are clearly my pictures....haha
Haystack and beach walking
The happy couple!
A million attempts to get a smile and Lucy looking at the camera. This is as close as we got. :)
Lucy attacking Pat's face...payback for all of the tickle attacks from Dad
Lucy being very unsure of this wet sand stuff getting her feet oh-so dirty!

Lucy Singing

Here is yet another super old post that I never got around to actually posting. The video was taken by Lindsey when she was up in early July. Lucy loves to sing. Even now, she requests specific songs in the car and I am not talking about kids songs. She will ask for Sufjan, Jonsi, The Weepies, and Coldplay. It is pretty cute. Then she asks me to turn up the music.

Visit with Aunt Zee-Zee

Here is a post that I started months back. It was from mid July when Lindsey came for a visit. Lindsey came up for a visit and we had such a great time with her. Lucia was thrilled with every moment and loved being around Lindsey. She is quite sad that she is gone. Here are some of the highlights from the trip.

Our trip to visit Grandma Shirley!

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Lucia trying on her tutu from Tracie and Kaitlyn along with every piece of jewelery that Lindsey brought with her

The kid LOVES sticks!

Lucy with her new baby sized Dora blanket from Lindsey


Water park fun!

35 Weeks!

Ok, I have been terrible at blog posts recently but I am going to make another effort to stay relatively on top of this thing! I don't want to miss capturing all of the important moments with our soon to arrive son! Life will be full of lots of joy when he arrives and I don't want to forget a thing. So, to do a tiny bit of catch up...

I am now 35 weeks pregnant...whew! I have had tons of Braxton Hicks contractions this go around and much more intense than I ever had with Lucia. He is so low down at this point (dropped at 33.5 weeks) that it is even uncomfortable to sit upright all of the way and bending down is a real chore. All in all though, I feel pretty good. I am so grateful that I don't have any pregnancy complications and am just trucking along to the 40 week goal! The little man moves a ton these days which I love of course. It is pretty amazing to feel his little feet in there. In other news, we are still trying to decide on a name! We did this with Lucia too. It is just such a big decision!

Lucia is as cute as ever of course and is excited to meet her little brother. She shares toys with him/my belly often which is pretty cute. I am totally in love with her little voice and the crazy funny things that she says. Here are a few:

1. She is now potty trained but when she was learning, Pat took her to the restroom one evening when they were out at a restaurant. She went "potty" and then he told her that he also needed to go potty. Of course, she needed to stay right there with him. Observing the process, she said..."Daddy, you a sprinkler!". Possibly my favorite quote to date!
2. She found a tiny terry cloth ball that I think was once a bunny tail. She carried it around and, as far as we know completely on her own, named said ball "stinky little pine tree". She is quite attached to it. In fact, we were walking around Ballard a few weeks back, she took a decent fall skinning up her knees and, before she had recovered, she said "oh no! stinky little pine tree!" because she had dropped it during the fall.

I'll have to think of some more quoteables to add to the list.

We went camping with the Murphy/Anderson families back at the end of July. I'll leave you with some cute cousin pictures. More pics to come!