Baby Girl

I haven’t done a lot of updating about my pregnancy here and several have asked, so here we go.

The pregnancy is going great. I had my 34 week check-up yesterday and ‘Baby Girl’, as she’s come to be known, is doing great. Both yesterday and at my 32 week checkup the Dr. and Nurse Practitioner were surprised at how low she is already. The Nurse Practitioner told me yesterday that she was already below my pelvic bone and had ‘dropped’. That doesn’t necessarily indicate anything about when I’ll deliver but I don’t remember that happening so early with my other 2 pregnancies. I can definitely feel pressure when I stand, after sitting for a while. Sleeping is becoming a little more of a challenge but still doable. My chief complaint has been sciatica, which as I understand it is basically a pinched nerve in my lower back that radiates down my right leg. It aches more as the day progresses and is definitely most prevalent on days when I spend more time on my feet. It’s more annoying than anything; it hasn’t slowed me down too much.

We have successfully finished cleaning out Baby Girls room. The room that is to be hers, was the 4th bedroom that has been a catch-all since we moved in the house. It housed all the nursery furniture so we had that going for us, but it also had lots of other ‘stuff’ too. Including all Lance’s photo equipment (lights, backdrops, stands, etc.), a file cabinet and stacks of photographs and paintings. It’s taken several weekends to get it all clean, but we have finally got it done. All that remains to be done is assembling the crib, which I hope Lance can get done this week, and moving out the file cabinet. The file cabinet was too big for Lance to move on his own, so we’ll tackle that the next time we have an unassuming male visitor to our house. No hurry though, it’s not in the way of anything we need to do there.

I’m looking forward to decorating, that will be the fun part. I ordered the bedding this weekend and it should be here later this week. I have a cross-stitch that hung in mine and Alice’s bedroom that my grandmother made, which will be hung in Baby Girls room. I also hope to have a print that hung in my friend Julie’s room as a baby, that her Mom has offered to let me hang in the room. So although it may not all match her bedding exactly and look like the room in the catalog, there will be some very special things adorning Baby Girls walls.

We’ve also been blessed with bags full of clothes. Most of the clothes are from a coworker, who has a daughter that will be almost exactly 1 year younger than our Baby Girl. As well as a few hand-me-downs from our niece who will be 4 this year. And we’ve held on to most of our baby gear from the boys (highchair, swing, bath tub, booster seats, etc.). Some of it is really worn and needs replacing, but most of it, after a good cleaning, still has enough life left in it for Baby Girl.

The boys are both very excited. Riley includes ‘our baby’ and Momma in his prayers every night. No one has told him (at least not that we’re aware) that childbirth is painful, but every night he prays for Momma to be OK when the baby comes out and for the baby to come real soon. Owen hugs me now and his head is right at my belly and he always says he’s giving his sister a hug too. A couple times he’s even ‘tickled’ his sister through my belly and wondered if she was moving around and squirming as a result. They’ve both felt the baby move a couple times which did not impress them as much as I expected. I guess each time it happened and I called them to come feel my belly, I was interrupting a game of army or football. They are still boys after all.

I’m still working and hope to work as close to the due date as possible. Any time I take before hand will take away time I get after the baby arrives, so I want to save as much as I possibly can. The date is quickly approaching and our anticipation is building. We are excited and so thankful for the blessing of this new little one.

(And because I know someone will ask, we do not know her name yet.)

Christmas Vacation

We've had a wonderful Christmas and New Year. I pray each of you have too. I'm only sad that it's coming to an end. I can't believe it went by so fast, but I've enjoyed having the time off with my 3 guys.

Christmas was a lot of fun for both boys. Their 'biggie' this year from Santa was an iPod iTouch. They love them and have played games and listened to music and videos each day since. Lance and I gave them a telescope from us. They've enjoyed that too. It was almost a full week after Christmas before we had clear skies we could look at, but it was really cool when we finally had a clear shot of the moon last night. Of course there were lots of other gifts too - nerf guns (I think we own one of every gun nerf makes now!), sketch pads, books, star wars action figures, a batman cape, x-box games, a Peyton Manning fathead for the boys bedroom (which I must say is very cool) and believe it or not I could keep going and going. They got so many cool things. Between Santa, Mom and Dad, grandparents and all our other family, my boys were no doubt completely spoiled. We tried more this year than we have in the past to really focus on the reason for this season. I hope all the presents didn't interfere with that lesson.

And since we didn't have quite enough toys in our house, we celebrated Owen's birthday today at Pump It Up. You may remember his birthday is on Christmas day, but we had his party today. Lance and I gave him a Nintendo DS, which he loves (maybe even more than his iTouch). He received several games and plenty of other toys too. Mainly though, I think he just enjoyed jumping and playing with all his friends and cousins at the party. We had a really cool SpongeBob cake made (I promise I'll post pictures soon) and Owen was very proud of his cake. It was almost completely gone when we left, which is exactly how we wanted it to be. I didn't want to bring any home.

Aside from all the present opening and toy playing, we've managed to make some progress in cleaning out closets and making room for our Baby Girl. There is still more work to be done, but we've made a good start. Lance also enjoyed an overnight trip with my Dad to South Georgia to camp and bring back a load of firewood. He's been outside off and on since then splitting a few logs here and there. He brought back a trailer full of oak, definately enough to last us a while. And we've enjoyed sleeping late, eating big breakfasts and hanging out at home relaxing together. It doesn't get much better than that.

I'm not really looking forward to returning to work on Monday and I know the boys are looking forward to going back to school on Tuesday. But ready or not, I'm afraid it's coming our way.