Family Pictures

We went to the Picture People today and had a really nice family photo session - our first ever. Grace was a champ and did a really great job. She is really photogenic and LOVES having her picture taken...she did many of these poses all on her own!  I loved almost all the pictures they took (a first for me) and we got an awesome deal on the disc so I can share them with you. Family, if you want me to order you pictures, just email me the name of the photo and the size(s) you want and I'll place an order this weekend.

Hope you enjoy all these sweet pictures of our girl!

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Grace's Nana & Papa are visiting and they graciously agreed to come along and help us corral her while we navigated through what could have been a very long shoot. We thought it would be cute to get a picture of the 3 of them - it turned out great!

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We also had them take a few maternity shots since the heat is going to prevent us from doing the big session outside like we had originally planned. I think these turned out cute. :)

Family photo - belly in view.  :)

Grace kissing the baby

I made David do this one for me...I love the "kissy belly" shots.  :)

I can hardly believe the next time we have our photos taken we'll be a family of 4!

32 Weeks

We'll actually be 33 weeks tomorrow, but it has been a CRAZY week and I'm just now getting these pictures loaded onto the computer.  Things are going great with the baby and we couldn't be more thrilled. We had our ultrasound on Monday and the specialist gave us the all clear to stop having ultrasounds unless something else comes up - woohoo! We still may have to have one at 38/39 weeks to determine position, but this baby is placenta back instead of placenta front and I can often times feel the baby's position myself so I'm sure the Doctor could tell. He also said that he didn't see any reason to change my due date even though the baby is measuring big. Another blessing! He said all the organs looked beautiful, especially the heart which was also great to hear. We took Grace with us to the appointment and she cried most of the time. We couldn't really figure out why, but at least the next time she gets to see her little brother or sister it will be in person, without someone putting a scary wand over my belly.

Before I dive into baby pictures, I have to post a picture of my big girl. I found this super cute smocked dress at a consignment sale this spring and I couldn't wait to get her in it. She LOVED wearing it and didn't want to take it off all day. She was playing with Scotty after lunch (you can see the animal crackers in her hands) and she just looked so pretty I had to snap a few shots. I wish it hadn't been 95 degrees, I would have loved to do a mini shoot outside, perhaps another day. Anyway, here's my favorite...isn't she stunning? :)

Now onto the baby pictures. We didn't have a very long ultrasound this time since they were mainly taking measurements, but we did get a few good pictures of our little bean...

Profile

Face & hands

Finally, here are some belly shots. When I look in the mirror, every single time, I say "whoa - that's a big belly." I don't remember thinking that with Grace, but I FEEL huge with this kid. I posted a picture of me at 32 weeks with Grace (in the red shirt below) for comparison, I am much, much bigger this time around. It's fine with me except that I've had to buy a few more pieces of clothing since I was probably this size when I delivered and I still have quite a few weeks to go. Oh well, it's all worth it and I can't wait to have the payoff of having my beautiful child in my arms!

25 Weeks!

I can hardly believe we are already 25 weeks into this pregnancy.  I said to David the other day we have 15 more weeks to go and it kinda woke us both up.  He has said it's funny that with Grace there was SO much to do before the baby came...classes, reading, painting, shopping, etc and this baby is just gonna come.  I said we still had some prep work to do, but since we did everything gender neutral and we already have most of what we need there isn't much to do.  Most of what we need to buy and what we need to do is more for Grace than for the baby, go figure.  :)

It did encourage me to get moving though.  When we cleaned out the attic a few months ago I had sorted out all the gender neutral newborn layette, bottles, burp cloths, etc. and put everything in a big bin in the closet.  My stepmom generously offered to buy the dresser we need (which will eventually become Grace's but for now it will house all the baby's stuff) so we went to IKEA yesterday and bought it.  Last night I pulled out that bin and started washing the clothes.  Wow, it was so surreal to have this big belly and look at those tiny, tiny clothes that my sweet big girl used to fit in.  It's getting exciting!  Oh and speaking of big bellies...here I am at 25 weeks.

On Monday we had our follow up appointment with the perinatal specialists.  They said everything looks great and even though the baby had rotated positions and was forward facing, we still didn't get any great pictures.  I blame the tech this time, lol.  We did get this cute profile picture of our precious bean...

Baby Bilbo 24 1/2 weeks

The Doctor said they did want to continue to monitor us monthly which we are more than fine with.  It will be nice to get to see the baby a few more times in utero before he/she joins us in person.  We have decided to switch practices and go back to the Specialists we saw with Grace.  Their office is over by David's work so we can make midday appointments which should make it easier to get child care for Grace and David won't have to miss as much work.  Plus we were generally in and out in less than an hour with them and these last 2 appointments have taken forever.  We'll see if they agree we should continue to be seen monthly when we go in 3 weeks.  We'll keep you posted!

20 Weeks!

We were 20 weeks on St. Patrick's Day.  David & I were both sick that night and Friday, so it was Sunday before we finally got some pictures.  I can't believe it's been 20 weeks already and we are half way to meeting our new addition.  I am feeling him/her move all the time and I love it...especially when I am holding Grace and I feel the baby move.  Something about feeling Grace & this new precious life at the same time that just blows me away.  The baby particularly moves when I'm giving Grace her bottle at night.  I didn't feel too connected to the baby early in the pregnancy, but those days are over.  I think I just needed the baby's movements to make the pregnancy "feel" real.  :)  Yesterday David was able to feel the baby move for the first time.  As much as I love to feel the baby move, I equally LOVE to see Daddy's face as he rests his hand on my belly and feels his precious child for the first time...

Anyway, here are some belly shots we took yesterday.

For comparison purposes, here I am at 20 weeks with Grace.

Here is the baby at 20 weeks too!  These are the pictures from the ultrasound last week.  We didn't get a ton of great pictures because the baby still wasn't facing sideways or forward, but the tech got us a two really cute ones.

Baby smiled at us!  :)

Oh and Happy St. Patrick's Day!  Here's a flashback to last year and one of my favorite pictures of Grace & I.

Around the House

My summer allergies are in full swing, so Grace and I have been staying in lately. We have fun playing together and she's getting more and more mobile every day. Here's a few pics from yesterday.

Sweet girlI love this face she makes - it cracks me up!Whatcha got there Mom?Playing with ScottyHe's done playing but too lazy to get up and move. Silly cat.

In 2 weeks Grace & I are going to attempt the trip to WV solo again and we'll fly David up later so I can spend some QT with my Grandma (and the rest of my family of course!). I have all kinds of plans to make the 650 miles go by...we'll see if any of them really pan out. One I'm now sure of is the DVD player. We have David's folks DVD player and I'm going to take advantage of it. Deborah recommended the Preschool Prep DVDs she used with Erin, so we invested in a used set on Amazon and I'm gonna let Grace watch TV for the first time. To make sure this little trick would work, I put in the meet the colors DVD on Sunday to see if she would "glue" to the TV...

I'm not surprised. She is ALWAYS trying to get a view of the magic box that always goes black when she finds it. LOL. I just hope 8 hours into our drive it's as interesting as it was this time. And I'll be sure to have earphones in one ear so I can listen to something other than the color names repeated over and over for 3 1/2 minutes each and not go crazy.

Anyway, I hope ya'll had a wonderful 4th. We so enjoyed having David home. It's so nice to have so much QT as a family and of course we enjoyed hanging out with our Dreher family, (even Alli who's back from STL). Paul & Bethany are expecting their first, a boy, a week before Grace's birthday...here's the first belly pictures I've taken.

Maternity Shots & Baby Update

Yesterday Bethany went with us to Oregon Park to take some maternity shots of us. My beloved husband was wonderful and let me pose us however I wanted to get the pictures I was hoping for of this special time in our lives. Here are a few of my favorites and the most recent belly shots at 38 weeks.

I really, really love this pictureThis one just makes me smile and I had to share it in color since that tree is so beautiful!And here's some shots of this massive belly...

As for a baby update - I want to the Doctor today and things are moving right along! I started to soften last week and things are progressing. We have 2 weeks to go until our due date and today she said I am dilated to a 1 (slow and steady, right?) and the baby has shifted to a full downward facing position which is fantastic! I have been having real contractions for the last 3 days which is also great news so hopefully next Monday we'll see even more progress. My mom gets here next Tuesday, so as far as we're concerned, anytime after that this little one can make his/her entrance. :)