Preparations

I've had some serious nesting urges lately. I'm really wanting to get all the baby clothes out, washed, sorted, etc... however, we're waiting until the dresser from my grandparents house gets here. That should be this weekend, thankfully. We finally figured out where we are going to put this little girl's stuff. We knew that she would be sleeping with us for at least the first year (we co-sleep for those who didn't already know that) so we weren't worried about where we would put *her* we have just been wondering where we were going to put all her *stuff*. LOL We finally decided - after some wise wisdom from my mother - to put a dresser in the corner of the schoolroom/craft room/storage room. The kids and I are in there a lot and it will be convenient to have her clothes and diapers in a room other than one of the kids rooms. We're also planning on putting the glider rocker in there so that Jeff & I can rock her at night and I can nurse without disturbing the kids or while "teaching" during the daytime. Hopefully it will work out well.

So, I haven't done much in the way of preparing for this baby. Well, except for doing a lot of shopping. :-) I have found THE perfect outfit for bringing her home in....

The pants are knitted wool longies (we're praying she doesn't have a wool allergy!) that will go over her cloth diapers. I'm determined to bring home a cloth diapered baby! Whether she stays that way for the next couple of weeks is yet to be determined, but the plan is to start her in cloth and keep her there. Anyway, I had these pants done specifically for this purpose and I happened to find this hat in the same yarn on another website. And while my mom and I were browsing the clothes the other day I found this cute shirt that matches perfectly! We'll probably put a long sleeved tshirt underneath the shirt since it will be March when she is born. And to go with the whole ensemble.....

...these cute little booties that I made! They are definately not perfect. And they are SOOOOO tiny. Chances are great that they will only fit her for one day (if they even fit her then). My feet were huge when I was born - well, they still are - so I'm anticipating that she will not have small feet. LOL Hopefully they'll go on her for at least the ride home. :-)

So, that's about as far as we've gotten in the at home preparations. We start our birthing classes this Saturday, I've interviewed and decided on a WONDERFUL doula, I've scheduled my maternity photo shoot with my friend for the first week in February, and my baby shower is planned for the 1st Sunday in February. I feel like things are moving forward and that the next 8 weeks are going to FLY by! I'm starting to get very excited to meet this little one!

First swimming lesson

Cooper has been asking to "go in the pool" just like Kaelyn for about the past 6 months. We've told him over and over again that when he turned three he could finally take swimming lessons. Well, the time has come. Last night Cooper started his very first swimming lesson. Of course, he just thought that he was in a giant bathtub. He loved every second of it, except when anyone got his face wet or mentioned putting his face anywhere NEAR the water. Now we just have to work on him actually listening to his teacher. Who knows when that will actually happen. He is three afterall.

A special necklace

Some people are hesitant and suspect of online discussion boards. But I've been part of a couple (one adoption, one attachment parenting) boards for... well, since we started the adoption process for Kaelyn. One of the boards I'm on (the parenting one) has a forum for expecting moms. I've never really ventured into that forum for obvious reasons, but once I found out we were expecting, they were the very first people I told. I needed advice, comfort and congratulations and needed to get those things before we felt comfortable telling our "in real life" friends and families. A couple weeks later a group of us on that board formed a February/March Due Date Club within the pregnancy forum. There are about 20 of us and we've gotten pretty close over the past 7 months. We've shared things that we probably wouldn't share with anyone else, gotten lots of advice, talked about lots of "what ifs" and most importantly we comforted each other when one of the moms in our group suddenly was diagnosed with lung cancer and died a couple weeks later. She left behind 9 children and obviously lost the one she was carrying. We really feel as though we have bonded although most of us have never met each other in person.

Several months ago one of the ladies mentioned that she wanted to put together a beaded "birthing necklace". We all thought that was an awesome idea and we quickly decided that we ALL wanted one and that we wanted it to be something special for our little club. So, we all went and picked out beads, sent them to one person, who then divided them up and sent one of each bead to each person in the group. Along with each of these beads the original person sending them sent along a verse or a quote or some words of encouragement to help us get through our labors and deliveries. The purpose of these necklaces are for us to wear them during our births and to remind us all of the people who are out there praying for us while we go through this life changing event. The words are for us to read while we labor, or to have read to us as words of comfort when we need them.

I finally put together my birthing necklace last night. I love it. It means so much to me to know that each of these beautiful women will be praying for me and thinking of me during this birth. To know that I not only have my "real life" family and friends supporting me, but I have people all over the country who are supporting me too means a lot.

And the bead that means the most to me... the small pearl bead toward the top of the necklace. In memory of Mary who is now a beautiful angel in heaven and will never again experience this amazing event of giving birth to a beautiful baby.

Happy New Year!

Update on Cooper: since I haven't posted since the Christmas post I thought I would do a quick update on Cooper's illness. I would say that Wednesday was the first day that he was finally feeling better. Up until Tuesday he didn't eat more than yogurt and oatmeal (and that was only on occasion) and he hardly said a word to anyone until Tuesday night either. We kept him pretty doped up on Tylenol and Motrin up until Wednesday morning. Thankfully, we are pretty much back to normal and doing fine now! We're pretty sure that he had hand, foot and mouth as that was going around my brother and SIL's church and we were there the Sunday before he came down with this, so we're assuming that's where he picked it up and what is was. We'll never know for sure, but whatever it was, I hope he never gets it again! Anyway, on to the New Year's post...

Happy 2010 everyone! We brought in the New Year in such a very unexciting way last night. :) We let Kaelyn stay up late and we watched Pirates of the Carribean (the first one) with her. She was SO excited to watch it and although it scared her a little bit her words were, "I LOVED it. When can I watch it again?" Of course, we told her probably not any time soon since she is not allowed to watch it at all when Cooper is awake and its such a long movie that watching it when he is napping is probably out of the question too. Anyway, I'm sure she'll see it again soon enough. It was kind of fun though. We drank and toasted some sparkling cider, then Kaelyn went to bed and I made the horrible mistake of staying up until 2am. No idea why I did that.

Today, however, we had a great day. Kaelyn slept in until around 9, Cooper got up at 7:30, but allowed us to stay in bed (with him in between us watching TV) until after 8. We got up and watched the Rose Parade and played with trains. Jeff went to my brother's house to help him with some things and then came home just in time to have some fun family time. Well, I guess technically it was "girl time" and "boy time" but it was fun nonetheless. Jeff took Cooper to Jack In The Box because that's where he wanted to go and I took Kaelyn out to coffee and then we went to Michael's to get some beading stuff. Kaelyn and I came home and worked on our beading project (we made a necklace for her birthmom) and then we all sat down and vegged while Cooper finished his nap. When Cooper woke up we all loaded in the car and went to Toys R Us for Cooper to spend his birthday money on trains. I've never seen a child SO excited to go spend his money. But he talked the entire way to the store about which trains he wanted and what he was going to do when he got to the store and how we could order the trains he wanted on the 'puter if the store didn't have them. It was really cute. We accomplished our goal and came home with two new Thomas trains (Henry & James). We all (ok, Jeff, Kaelyn and Cooper) spent the entire rest of the evening until bedtime playing with the huge train setup we have going on in our family room. They all had so much fun going around and around and around. It was really fun to watch them. And then everyone went to be and here I am! It was a good start to what I pray will be a good year!

So, Happy New Year to each and every one of you! I hope its is wonderful for you!

Christmas 2009

Well, its been another eventful Christmas here at our house. Not quite the "eventful" that I thoguht it would be, but eventful nonetheless. Celebration started on Christmas Eve with some time opening presents at my parents house. Kaelyn got what we call the holy grail for 8 year old girls - an American Girl doll. It was the ONLY thing on her Christmas wish list this year. Thankfully she has a grandma who can deliver. :) Since opening this present I can actually count on one hand how many times this doll has actually come out of the box - and each of those times was to carefully comb her hair, occasionally change her clothes and to just stare in awe at the beauty that is an American Girl.

After Christmas at my parents house we went to the Christmas Eve service at our church. After being perfectly normal all day long, Cooper came down with a fever at the service and quickly fell asleep while listening to the quiet carols. As you can tell from the picture below he didn't feel better after his little nap at church. But, despite the illness, here is the yearly picture in front of the tree in their matching jammies.

We woke up Christmas morning to a still sick little boy. Thankfully he slept in a little bit and we were able to rest up for what became a long day. My mom and grandparents came over for a very quiet and relaxing day at our house. The kids opened their presents and the rest of us grazed on food all day long. Around lunchtime I noticed that Cooper had a couple blistery type things on his tongue. No wonder he hadn't wanted to eat anything all day! We called the nurse hotline - without getting any answers - then we called his doctor (who I hated bothering on Christmas day) without many answers there either. The general consensus was that no matter what he actually had it wasn't going to be treatable with antibiotics and would probably just need to run its course, so we just needed to make him as comfortable as possible.

Needless to say, the rest of the day (and ALL of today) was spent like this......

By the end of the day, the entire inside of his mouth was COVERED with blisters. He ran a fever all day (even with a constant stream of Motrin and Tylenol) and hardly slept at all last night. We are suspecting either Herpangina (http://www.drgreene.com/21_1113.html) or Hand, Foot and Mouth. We are leaning more towards the first one although we saw a few little dots on his hands tonight when Jeff was reading some stories to him. We'll see what the next few days bring. Another friend suggested it might be the first initial outbreak of what causes canker sores, as that can be a horrible outbreak to begin with. But who knows really. If its still bad by Monday (which I sure HOPE it isn't) we'll take a trip into the drs office.

As for how Kaelyn spent her Christmas.... she spent it playing her new Leapfrog Didj. I was really shocked at how much she loves this thing. It was a last minute purchase on my part as I found a really good deal on it. But man oh man, does she love that thing! I'm glad I went with the more educational video gaming system. :-)