Our Newest "M"

Welcome Miles Moses!

March 11th at 3:56 am

7 pounds 11 ounces

20.5 inches

We praise God that you have arrived, safe and healthy! We took these pictures while at the hospital, many more to come in the future!

This is the only picture we have with eyes open so far!

We were able to come home Saturday evening and everyone is doing swell :). Thank you to all who have called, e-mailed, and visited. We have enjoyed celebrating our new family member!

Mommy's Lucky Charm

My friend Cody is so talented! When Mason was a baby she made him an awesome quilt, bibs, burp rags, and the cutest onesies with little appliques. She now has her own "shop" on Etsy and I'm pretty sure she is famous as her St. Patrick's design has been featured on a "green" website since the felt is made from recycled plastic pop bottles. So cool! We photographed Mason wearing her shirt, so here he is as "Mommy's Lucky Charm" :).

He even let me take a few extra pictures just for fun!

You may remember a similar picture from last year...

I think he's thankful he got to wear pants this year :).

So if you're ever in need of an awesome handmade project, definitely visit Cody!

http://www.etsy.com/shop/codysboutique

Baby Love

We're already so in love with this baby we've been blessed with!

It's a bit difficult to sit like this when pregnant. Loose hips help, though. Extra belly weight does not :).

Since we haven't completely decided on a girl's name, we tried spelling out different names on my belly.... just in case we're wrong on our feeling that it's a boy. If baby moved, causing the blocks to fall off, we counted it as a "veto" against that name.

And I love my husband for agreeing to take these pictures in our "studio"... also known as the office/baby equipment room/downstairs playroom :).

These pictures were taken at exactly two weeks until the due date, approximately the same time we took pictures while pregnant with Mason. You can definitely see I'm much "lower" this time!

More Nesting News

Have I mentioned how extremely totally hugely thankful I am for all the help on our home improvement projects? The fact that I can contribute very little makes me even more appreciative.

I can't even begin to count the hours that my husband, parents, in-laws, and friends have volunteered to help us move, paint, tile, sand stuff, install new sinks/toilets/bathtub, drywall, and more!

Basically I try to keep the workers well fed and hydrated and stick to what I'm good at.... ORGANIZING!

I really really like to organize (although you may not know it by some areas of my life/house right now). I'm not a freak about it or anything, I just like to do it. Maybe it's the teacher in me. And I'm sure there are people that are REALLY super crazy organized. I don't think I will ever be one of "those" people. I just don't get too extreme in any one area. Both Dustin and I are pretty balanced/practical people.

I decided getting these tubs for $3.50 each was a good investment... for my sanity :).

I really don't have a problem with parts of the house being torn apart for construction, it's not that big of deal to me. It's just part of the process, and it doesn't stay that way forever. I do like having other parts that have order, though. Which is why I'm focusing my energy on organizing the basement. It's been fun!

Please tell me it's normal to accumulate this much stuff for your kid in just 2 years!?

With the installation of a new closet organization system in the main floor closet and sorting all of Mason's clothes into plastic tubs, I'm just a pretty happy lady these days. Organization rocks. It's my relaxation. Who knows, maybe one day I will be one of "those" people. After all, I do have a pretty awesome name picked out if I do ever start up an organization business :).

Mason's into climbing. Only minor injuries so far...

The look of excitement combined with shock that I'm not yelling at him to sit down, perhaps?

I find it amusing that during the coldest part of the year Mason has decided to go on a sock strike.

I'm glad God made each of us unique. After all, there's not time to do everything. Now if I could just find someone who absolutely loves to clean... :).

Nesting News

So some people have been asking if we're ready for Baby #2.

Well, with 5 weeks remaining we decided it would be a good idea to start this...

What better time to redo the largest room in the house? This room is affectionately known as the "Red Green" room. It is the only room in the entire house that has not been touched since we moved in. Over the course of the last 2+ years it has been our exercise room, spare room, then our main bedroom. We recently decided it will be the baby's room and have the extra queen bed in it as well.

So goodbye swirly glossy textured ceiling and lime green walls! The former residents must have had an obsession with red and green. When we moved in Mason's room had green carpet and a red wall (with an awesome Spiderman web painted on it). The living room was also green!

After the first coat of drywall.

Redoing the "Red Green" room meant relocating all the furniture previously housed there. Mason has actually not seemed to care that his playroom gained a few extra pieces of furniture. He's spending much more time in his room these days anyway... jumping on and off his big boy bed repeatedly. For only being in the 20th percentile for weight, he can make an amazingly loud sound doing this :). Today he incurred his first injury from his jumping routine, a jammed big toe that has him limping a bit. Makes it easier for me to keep up with him!

Mason's playroom now housing an extra chair/ottoman, Daddy's stretch machine, rug from his nursery... and most recently, our washer and dryer.

So the other project is...

redoing the main bathroom floor!

I'm so excited for this room to be tiled. It will match all the tile we (meaning Dustin and my Dad) layed on the main floor. Part of the process involves installation of a new toilet and shelving in the laundry closet, woo hoo!

All this construction leaves the former "spare room" as our gathering place.

It has made a wonderful jungle gym for Mason as so many pieces of furniture have been moved there that he can go around the whole room without touching the floor. Right now we have our king bed, extra queen bed, dresser, and all of the nursery furniture in there.

So are we ready? I'd say pretty close :).

35 weeks pregnant.

Baby is doing well, doesn't seem to mind the chaos at all. I, on the other hand, am compensating by going super crazy with nesting and organization projects and trying to control everything else possible :).

Good thing we won't need the crib right at first.

I do believe that regardless of when Baby comes we'll probably never feel like we were completely ready... and that is okay. When Mason was born we thought we were ready and I can now confidently say we were not. We had no idea the challenges and the joys that would lie ahead.

But after 2 years of being parents, I can honestly say they have been 2 of the most incredible years of our lives and I can't wait to begin the journey again with another child! And at least this time we're starting our projects before the baby is born!

A Birth Story

It's the birthday eve of my baby boy! Two years ago on this day at this time I was just going into labor... so this is Mason's pregnancy/birth story.

Two weeks prior to Mason arriving. We got our new camera just in time to snap a few belly shots!

I really did enjoy being pregnant. I had minimal morning sickness and no complications of note. I had been running and was able to continue until the 7 month mark, at which point the protruding belly became a balance issue. I was able to continue working full time right up until the very end. It was as smooth as I could have hoped for. So skipping to the end.... at 6 days past due.

I had mentally prepared myself from the beginning to go past my due date, so as the days passed I really wasn't too concerned and knew it would happen... eventually. I just didn't want him getting too fat in the meantime. On Monday, January 19th, I went to the doctor as scheduled and showed no progress, nothing.

I remember my Mom coming out to the house to visit that afternoon, we decided to hang pictures in the nursery. She told me that if the frames were hung, the baby would "know" it's room was officially ready and decide to come...

Our house had been decorated by Grammy Barbi and Aunt Laura while we were in the hospital!

About that time I began not feeling well, just "yucky". Around 8pm I began having contractions, which were pretty unmistakable as I hadn't had anything at all up until this point. From the beginning they were about 5 minutes apart. We placed a call in to Dr. Danny (Dustin's brother) for his opinion. We were told to try and get some rest until things started progressing. Dustin took this as his opportunity to go to bed. I paced pretty much every room in the house throughout the night while contractions remained at 3-5 minutes apart, but not necessarily increasing in strength. Somewhere in there Dustin woke up to check on me :). Around 7am I talked with my doctor over the phone and she suggested that I go somewhere and walk for a while or head to the hospital. At this point I knew I was waaaay past just walking, so we opted to head to the hospital.

At the initial check around 8am (12 hours after first labor signs) I was 3 cm dilated, and they told me I'd have my baby by that afternoon. Suddenly things became very real. However after getting situated things had actually slowed considerably and I really began to doubt their prediction. They broke my water and I began walking the halls and it got very intense very quickly. I remember holding onto the railing at the end of a dead end hallway and wondering if I would make it back to the room. I did in fact make it back and was at 6 cm. At 1:59pm on Tuesday, January 20th, Mason Michael was born. I will never forget looking into Mason's eyes for the first time. What a miracle and gift from God! It was incredibly emotional and overwhelming, and in some ways I don't even want to try and put words to it. So that is Mason's birth story, and our lives have never been the same since!

Dustin would be 28 in a month, I was 24.... I feel like I look so young!

The day we brought Mason home, January 22nd, was so warm that Dustin was wearing shorts!

Losing it!

Does anyone else ever feel like some days you are just losing it? Feel free to insert whatever you'd like for "it"... your mind, your belongings, your bladder (for my fellow pregnant ladies). Anyway in the past two days we've lost a fair amount of items: Mason's monkey backpack, his winter coat, a shoe at the museum...

And unfortunately I can't even blame any of these things on him yet. Fortunately all items were recovered by the end of the day.

But it's times like these when I, as an adult, am reminded of how much patience I will most definitely need through the child-rearing years. After all, if I can't even keep it all together how much more can I expect from a two-year-old?

And I have a feeling it will happen a lot. For example, I drop things a lot... after accidentally dropping and breaking a salt shaker Dustin stated, "and this is why we just can't have nice things." I have locked my keys in my car on more than one occasion. I have gotten stains on my favorite shirts and even lost objects of sentimental importance. All this has become even more amusing to me through the years because it seems the harder I try to avoid occurrences like this, the more often they happen. And generally I like to be very prepared for every possible circumstance. I admit I love my lists and I always pack too much when traveling.

So I just want to warn my future self to be prepared for this to occur more than a million times with kids throughout the years... I just know it will happen. And when it does, it won't be the end of the world and hopefully I won't make it feel like that to my kids. After all, it's my fault it's in their genes right? :) And hopefully I'll have the patience to say "That's okay, accidents happen. Let's clean it up. Mommy drops things too."