Shower and Nursery

I had my baby shower this weekend. My friend Jocelyn generously had it at her house. My friend Jenifer, my sister Lisa, and my cousin Paula were the other hostesses. I can't express just how much I appreciate all that all of them did for me. They put a lot of hard work into it and I appreciate it so much! My shower was beautiful, the food was yummy, and I had a great time! Shane and I feel so blessed to have so many generous, kind friends who are helping us get ready for this little guy! We really were amazed by people's generosity!

We have been working on setting up our nursery. Shane painted it light green, installed some trim, painted the ceiling, painted the closet doors (we have horrid closet doors throughout the house), and just generally redid the room. Of course he refinished the floors all through the house several weeks ago with his best friend.

Shane, Autumn, and I put together his crib last weekend...she is so excited about her baby brother!

After the shower yesterday, Shane and I have been able to get the nursery a lot more put together! My mom made INCREDIBLE bedding, curtains, cushions for our rocker, and a lamp! She has decided she is also going to make a diaper stacker. Shane and I spent our afternoon putting together the stuff that we got at the shower that required assembly. I have to say it's crazy having a baby swing in the living room (not to mention the bassinet in my bedroom)!! I can't believe we're finally here...that we're really planning on bringing a baby boy into this house to live in just a few short months!! I'll get some pictures online once I finish getting things more organized in there.

New Belly Pic

Here is the latest belly pic. It was taken last week at 28 weeks, 6 days (or around 7 months).

What's in a Name?

We named our baby boy this weekend. His name is Dillon Chas. The middle name has special significance to us. My father in law's middle name was Charles, my mother in law's father's middle name was Charles. My father and grandfather's middle names were Carrol (a form of Charles). Shane had a good friend in high school who was later murdered named Chaz. Chas is a form of Charles, by the way. So we feel the middle name we chose honors 5 men who meant a lot to us but are not here to share in the joy of our new son. The first name means "son of the sea". It is the Irish spelling as befitting both of our ancestry (and our Scottish last name) and the extra bonus is my (step)dad's favorite musician is Bob Dylan. My sister especially likes the meaning of his first name because she calls him "Turtle"! We've kind of gone crazy on the "turtle" theme. The nursery bedding will be pond themed with turtles and frogs. My mom is making the bedding. It will have 70s type materials in green, turqouise and brown. I think it will be super cute! I'll post pics of it when she finishes it. Everything seems to be coming together and we're very excited to meet Dillon in around 3 months!!

New Belly Pic

Here is a new belly pic. It's already several weeks old but this is me at 23 weeks, 6 days pregnant (around 6 months). I'm 26 now! It's amazing to me how fast parts of this pregnancy are going!!

And the verdict is......

BOY!

We had our "big" ultrasound on Friday and we found out most importantly that our baby has all his parts and is perfectly healthy. Secondly, we learned that he's a BOY! He has a cute button nose just like Autumn which Shane proclaimed the "LastName" Nose!! (His/our last name of course!) He is a very handsome guy already. I bought the cutest little sleeper that is blue with navy designs of guitars, drumsets, and music notes on it! Now Autumn has a couple "rockstar" shirts, Daddy has his guitar shirt (not to mention a few band ones), and baby boy has a "rockstar" sleeper! I guess I need to get something! Shane says a shirt that says, "This Mom Rocks!" We're on cloud nine right now! I will post ultrasound pics and maybe even a pic of the sleeper later.

I really intended to get this post up last week but you know what they say about the best laid plans. I had a great Mother's Day and birthday (May 12) last week. My sweet husband and daughter showered me with gifts and cards (even one from the baby!). I got my hair cut on Mother's Day (check out the pic following). We made dinner at my mom's with the whole family and had a good time. On Monday morning, Shane and I went to an OB appointment. We heard the heartbeat which was right at the rate it should be. It was funny because the nurse started looking for it with the doppler and I indicated the area the baby usually hangs out in and sure enough, that's exactly where she found the heartbeat! Another exciting development is that Shane and my mom got to feel the baby a little bit from the outside on Mother's Day. The movement is still light so it's hard to feel but Shane indicated the baby moved every time I felt it move! I feel the baby move quite a bit now. It's still not consistent but it's pretty frequent and we can usually get him/her to move by rubbing or poking my belly! This week is the last week I'll refer to the baby as him/her or "it"! We made our appointment for the "big" ultrasound on the 23rd. We will find out the gender that afternoon. I'll try to get the word out to everyone as quickly as we can. My big sister is coming to town that day and is coming to the appointment (we're both really excited about this!) and then it will be a busy family weekend. I'm still in disbelief most of the time about all of this but we're over halfway there now! Here is my latest "belly pic" at 19 weeks, 5 days on Mother's Day (and my new haircut and new earrings from Shane)!

My Little Produce

Since this is my first baby, I tend to read a lot about it. I read pregnancy magazines, pregnancy books, and pregnancy websites. I even receive an email every week that tells me about the week of pregnancy I'm in. And since I've been at this trying to have a baby thing for so long, I even have some nifty things at home to inform me. When we hadn't been "trying" for very long and hadn't even conceived our first baby, I began to get discouraged (silly me). Shane bought me a gift to cheer me up...a poster that shows a lifesize (though not anatomically correct) picture of the embryo/fetus every 4 weeks. After losing the first and then the second baby, this poster was relegated to a dark corner under our bookshelves. I drug it out when it became evident this baby was sticking around for a while. One of Autumn's favorite things to do when she is at our house on the weekend is to see how big the baby is. So we look up the closest week on the poster and hold it up for her to see. She has a fascination with the size of the hands though. She always says so that would make his/her (depending on her mood) hands this big (holding up her fingers to demonstrate...or designating only a part of her finger as the size)?? And we have to evaluate proportionately how big we think it's hands (and sometimes feet) are.

We also give her size comparisons. The email I mentioned earlier often compares the size of the baby to a fruit or vegetable. So we might tell Autumn the baby is the size of an apple this week or last week the baby was as heavy as a turnip (except she's never had turnip so I had to try to explain that to her!). This week the email said my baby measures about 5.5 inches from head to rear which is about the size of a bell pepper. I don't eat bell peppers much. But the last one I had was decidedly smaller than 5.5 inches. I even got my ruler out to look at it. That's a rather large bell pepper. So my friend (who affectionately refers to baby as "Creature") and I have a new nickname for the baby. The Genetically Altered Bell Pepper!