pictures of Baby #2

Bright and early on Tuesday morning we went and finally got to take a peek at our son! River came along. It was cute & sounded like he said baby and brother once .. but trust me, he has no idea whats going on.

So first things first, here is our son:



The sonographer tried so hard to get good pictures, but as she said herself, the poor guy is JAMMED completely against the wall of the uterus. So he is definitely squished in there. Poor guy.



The second they turned the 4D on we immediately thought he looked just like River. But the more we saw him the more we werent sure. Its just hard to tell which features are squished and everything. Also, the ambilical cord is right next to his mouth (making it look like something was in his mouth or like his lips were mis-shaped.) And like River, his hand was in the way.



And of course, he moves ALL-THE-TIME. Except for while we are at the doctor! :)

But gosh, he is already adorable to me! 



That nose and those lips! I die. Seriously, Im thankful we only have 20 days to go because I couldnt wait much longer to meet him!



Here are some pictures of River right around the same time to compare them to:







The sonographer guessed that he weights right around 6lbs 2 oz. (which is the 50th percentile) And Im measuring right on track. I only have 1 appointment left and then its go time!

I would describe how I feel as: ready. ready to meet him. ready to pop, ready to not be pregnant. ready to hold a newborn. ready to be in the hospital. ready to hopefully one day have my body back. ready to introduce River to him. ready to see Freeland as a new dad all over again. just ready love & squeeze him.


THIS MORNING: Freeland & River left for their "guys weekend". I cried like a baby. Ive never been apart from River like this. And for 100 different reasons I wasnt ready to be apart from Freeland right now either. Dont get me wrong, it was amazing to lay down for a nap without a monitor next to me for the first time in 15 months. But I miss my boys.

today is the day

Freeland has worked so hard and prepared a ton and the day has finally arrived!

He is currently taking Step 2 of his boards!

(the first part was last May right after River was born)



River & I gave him a few little surprises last night to say congratulations & thanks for all his hard work, being so disciplined, and somehow finding a perfect balance to make lots of time for us as well. Quite the accomplishment if you ask me.



One of the surprises was an iDad card. See, Freeland has been drooling over an iPad for a while now so we made him a card that looked like an iPad but instead had sweet little messages under the "apps"



(idea originally found here)  He loved it.

although, it was funny because when he pulled out the envelope that said "iDad" (made to look like an iPad case) he almost jumped out of his pants because for .0005 seconds he thought it was in fact an iPad! I dont know if that was a mean joke or if it just means that we did a good job making the card!?



I will personally be so happy when these are over. So I know he will too because he's the one who has had to sit in front of books, lectures, videos, etc for hours & hours studying the last year. I cant imagine. And tonight we will celebrate by eating lots of pizza & relaxing! Living the dream!

THEN tomorrow morning, Freeland is jumping on a plane and heading to Texas for a dear friends wedding!

DID I MENTION HE IS TAKING RIVER??? AND I AM STAYING HERE??? (seeing as baby #2 will be here in 20 days we felt it best that I not fly.. and especially to a place where the weather is 100+ degrees! :)  So Freeland decided he wanted to take River with him. Alone. On a 3+ hour flight. Im not sure if its the sweetest thing ever or the craziest thing ever! But we felt like it was important for River to get time with the family in Texas. And Freeland loved the idea of giving me a few days to sleep. Kind of like a baby-moon that people take .. but a mommy-moon?! Thats a stretch. I know.

Then he gets back Sunday and heads to Warren, OH for a rotation there. Crazy times people. I love it.

PS: we had our sonogram yesterday! I'll scan the pictures and upload them ASAP. He's a cutie I tell ya!

bump bump bump

look at me .. not waiting another 2 months to post an update on the bump!

Here are some updated pictures. Im ending my 36th week and pretty much at 37 weeks now.

Officially we have 3 weeks and 2 days (or 23 days!) left to go!



The braxton hicks contractions have started. They arent too crazy or intense at this point. I feel like the baby is dropping but I might be making that up in my head just to make myself feel better. I still cant breath very well so maybe he hasnt moved at all!  Some days I feel like I have barely any room left to eat and other days I feel like I cant stop eating. In the end I feel like Im just ready to not be pregnant anymore! :)



Taking iron seems to have helped. I still have days where Im exhausted but overall I think its better. Oh & I dont think I ever mentioned, but with this pregnancy I can finally keep down my prenatal vitamins! With River, I couldnt stomach them.. the entire 9 months. So thats exciting. However, I do have to take them at night (same with the Iron) or I feel nauseous.



We have our last sonogram tomorrow morning! I cannot wait. It feels like its been forever since we have seen him. Even though it was the same amount of time with River (actually its been a shorter amount of time!) it feels like a much longer stretch that we have been waiting to get a little peek him! I'll definitely post the pictures once we have them. I cant wait to see if they resemble each other or not! I also cant wait to see how much they guess that he weighs.



And as far as a name goes, its probably no surprise that we still dont have one. On Fathers Day I told Freeland one of his gifts could be that he gets to choose the name. He figured out pretty quickly that Im happy to hand "the gift of naming the baby" over to him because I have zero ideas and cant think of anything. But still, it was nice of me right?? I may live to regret it. Freeland has some pretty unique names that he likes. But we'll see what happens! I'll write more about that later!



I think I should have been better at cleaning off our mirror before I took all these pictures. But oh well.

I feel like I can barely walk. Its been the biggest blessing having Freeland home to help with River .. just practically carrying him around or up the stairs helps a lot! We'll see what happens when he leaves next week! Yikes! Im also running out of clothes that fit & getting to where I wear the same thing all the time. But, really I do that whether Im pregnant or not so I dont have an excuse. All our families flights up here have officially been booked! Well, most, at least the ones who are able to make it are booked. Their all taking turns coming so we have help! I cant wait!!

okay .. 23 days! Bring it.

The Erie Zoo

well, we did it. We bought our first membership somewhere as a family.

We're now proud owners of a season pass at the zoo.

I officially feel like a parent.

But its SO worth it. River LOVES the zoo. And its ex-spen-sive if we want to do it more than a few times this summer so it was definitely worth getting the pass. I actually never realized how much there was to do at the zoo here. (I just kept comparing it to the Waco Zoo which is AWESOME so I kinda missed the great things the Erie Zoo has to offer too) But they have lots of "adventure" areas for kids, a train, activities, etc.

Here are LOTS of pictures of River enjoying the zoo. (not so many pictures of the actual zoo! sorry. next time I'll work on that)






yes, we are those parents that forgot to put shoes on our child before we went to the zoo. thankfully he had socks on. 

Also, please note: his zipper is down too. We-are-nailing-it!










he loved the giraffe.


but he REALLY loved when Freeland made the animal noises the most.








the polar bear.


playing with the train table inside one of the kids areas




checkin out more lizards and reptiles


the train


looking at the penguins






checkin out the monkeys

The other nice thing about a season pass is that we can go for just 30 minutes to an hour and not feel guilty leaving or that we didn't see the entire zoo! Love it.  Im pretty sure once Baby #2 is here River is going to get LOTS of trips to the zoo! :)

tantrums

randomly 2 weeks ago I closed the dishwasher after I finished the dishes and not .0000001 seconds later River was SCREAMING. As if he just fell down the stairs or something (not that we know what that cry sounds like?! maybe we do)

and that was the day my son started throwing tantrums.

All because he wasnt done playing with the dishes.



And now its escalated into getting frustrated when: his drink in his sippy cup is gone, you put him in his car seat, you tell him he gets to take a bath but stop first to take off his diaper, you close the trash can so he cant throw his toys in it, you take him upstairs in the middle of when he was playing .. and the list goes on.

I can seriously remember sitting in his room when he was a baby thinking there was no way that he would ever be capable of acting like this. (and by 'like this' I mean a normal child!) And obviously I was just a tired, delirious, first time mom.

I have the video to prove that my once "perfect" child is now a toddler. Ive sent it to my family so they could see what THEIR grandson was doing. (of course they all responded by letting me know I never did that .. :)

The video is funny though. While Im trying to offer River more of his drink that he ran out of (which we didnt actually have more. what was I thinking?) Freeland is telling him to think about all the things in life he has to be thankful for!

We're embracing it. And thankfully for now they are small and short lived. And Im actually thankful IF they were going to start it started now & not after baby #2 gets here.. otherwise I would have thought he was just responding to all the change. Instead I just think he is a toddler who knows what he wants and just has to learn how to express it or express that he is frustrated.

However, he has learned to give kisses now so he's making up for the sporadic tantrums pretty quickly:


nothing like slobbery open mouth kisses from your kids.

daddys day

Fathers Day was great. Freeland is in the middle of studying for boards (which are next week!) so we tried to balance enjoying the day with him also feeling productive studying.



I woke up early and grabbed him breakfast (with strawberry milk! chello!) Food is not his love language .. as I have learned by trial & error .. so that was about all I did food wise for him. :)

Then we went to church, came home put River down for a nap, (happy fathers day - he actually took a good nap!) and Freeland studied. Once River was up Freeland finally got to open his gifts. (he had to wait because I had yet to wrap them!)

River drew him his first picture ever. With crayons and everything.



After all that we decided to go out to the peninsula to cook out & enjoy the amazing weather.  (instead of going to the Strawberry Fest like we originally planned on doing) And we of course made a pit stop at Sarah's for milkshakes and ice cream on the way home.

I'd say it turned out to be a great day celebrating & reminding Freeland what a great Dad/husband he is. Both our little boys a lucky to have him as their father.

Dads Life

They played this at church this morning.

Im pretty sure I saw it last year but its SO worth watching again.



Letting the little guy nap while Freeland studies (and I finish up the last second fathers day gifts! woops!) then we're out to enjoy the day as a family. 

Happy Fathers Day!

Family of 3

As most of you probably know (or as my mother family reminds me all the time)  Freeland & I dont really have ANY pictures of the 3 of us all together. (Which Im sure is the case with most families) And its something that I really, really, really wanted before we had our next baby. Not only to capture River at this age, which I knew I would regret if I didnt, but also just to capture our life at the moment.

Insert, Rachel Lusky, who had a spring photo giveaway that we entered... and somehow by the grace of God we WON! It was the biggest blessing ever! Seriously! Im so thankful! Because these probably wouldn't have been able to happen right now if we hadn't.

So after weeks of waiting for the cherry blossoms to come out & then trying to coordinate it around the rain stopping for 5 seconds & Freeland being out of town we were finally able to run out one afternoon and take pictures. It was seriously crazy (because of us .. not her! she was of course available whenever!)

And of course our son .. who is normally the happiest child in the world chose this to be the grumpiest day of his life! Normally, we don't have to work to get him to smile for pictures or anything.. and in the chance we do all it takes is his dad goofing around. But this day, we were just trying anything & everything to keep him from fussing. The boy was not happy.

But you wouldnt know it in the pictures! She did a great job. (ps: since then every time we have gone back to the park he does the same thing where he is not happy. Im not sure if its just the park or what it is!? strange)

Here are some Rachel posted on her blog. I will of course be posting a gazillion more in the weeks to come! But I thought I would start with these! Enjoy:





I have to pause and point out his loafers that he is wearing! ADORABLE! Freeland picked those out & he looks just like his daddy when he wears them!





















she also did a few maternity pictures for us:















this was Rachel's little step stool thing she uses.. and of course when we put River on it he FINALLY decided it was okay to smile & be himself:



please note the skinny jeans that Freeland picked out for him! I DIE!



and we had to get some with him and his "ball" since its ALL . HE . TALKS . ABOUT .









Thank you again SO much Rachel! We love the pictures!!!!!!! And Im so thankful to have them!

Check out her website & blog to see more of her pictures .. she does weddings, engagement photos, families, newborns, etc!