4D sono this morning.....

We went back for another sonogram this morning and Baby Christopher still didn't want to cooperate but we did get a few more pics. As you can see from the 1st one, the fuzzy stuff right below the word "hair" is, in fact, hair. Courtney, the sonographer, said look he does have some hair, then corrected herself by saying, he actually has a good bit of hair. Which I think is funny, just because he will probably come here having more hair than Ally Harper did at a year old!!! Also upon measuring him, he is now weighing in at 4lb.1 ounce, so in 2 weeks he has gained 2 ounces shy of a pound, so at this rate, we will be having an 8 and 1/2 pounder come mid October! So excited about that, considering Brooklyn and Ally only weighed 6lb. and 5lb11oz. I won't know what to do with a baby that doesn't come home in preemie clothes :)

Every 2 weeks from here on out.....

Had a doctor's appointment this morning and all checked out good. I went to the Madison Baptist clinic instead of the Hospital clinic downtown and the wait was MUCH better, and a lot less noisy, but my only complaint is that they have an "analog" scale instead of digital and as we all know it's not as precise. So I don't know if I gained just 4 pounds since my last visit or was it like 3.8 or 4.9????? All I know is that the nurse so pushed the weight over til it somewhat balanced and that was it :( So that's not reason enough to wait an extra hour in the waiting room but they could invest in a new set of scales :) As for Baby Christopher, still measuring a little big, but nothing of concern. Heart rate and Blood pressure steady and now we are on the down hill. Go back every 2 weeks now and next visit we are going to schedule the c-section date. Will be somewhere between Oct. 18th and Nov. 1st, if Christopher doesn't decide to come earlier on his on. Chris and I are thinking Thursday or Friday, so he can be available at the hospital the entire time. So maybe October 22??? Brooklyn's bday is the 10th, my grandfather's was the 25th, dad's is the 30th and of course there's Halloween, so I really would like for Christopher to come somewhere amongst these dates just not on these days, except for my papaw's birthday, that would be cool. Anyways, stay tuned for more info and also scheduled for another 4D sono on this Friday. Maybe Christopher will cooperate a little better this time. Until then----

The morning after!

So she slept all night in the "big girl bed" and woke around 7:15. I heard some movement over the monitor so I gave her a few minutes before going into her room, but when I did, she was still sitting in the bed. I snapped this picture before she had a chance to get up.

the "BIG GIRL BED!"

Laid up in the crib box while daddy was hard at work.

Christopher's crib

Ally Harper's "big girl bed"

So this is how today went.......
I laid Ally Harper down for her nap around 11:45, which is around her normal naptime. Well she decided she wasn't going to sleep, so I went into her room to check on her and she was fine. So I left her in there and continued on with cleaning house. About 10 minutes later she was still awake and Chris asked if I wanted him to go get her and I said no, even if she's not sleeping, at least she is resting in the bed. I gave her a few minutes and then decided to go see if she needed to have her diaper changed. She did, so I did, then told her nappy time and left out again. Usually this solves the problem. Meanwhile, I went to shower. When I got out and got dressed I came back into the den and asked Chris if she ever went to sleep and he said I don't know I quit listening. So I went to check on her. When I peeked through the door, she wasn't in her crib!! And her room had stuff all over the floor. I found her hiding behind her dresser! She had climbed out of her crib for the 1st time and had been having a good time shut up in her room :) I went to get Chris to tell him and he immediately decided that it was time to convert her crib into a toddler bed. Sooooo, he got to putting together Baby Christopher crib and then converted Ally's crib while she was in another room. Mind you, they have matching cribs, so when all was done and we let Ally see her new "big girl bed" she didn't know what to think about it. Instead, she took her pillow, blanket and bunny and threw it over into the new crib! But after making a pretty big deal about the "big girl bed" I think she finally got the idea. Okay, fast forward to tonight. We went out to eat- to celebrate the "big girl bed" (or was it because Mommy wanted Sushi???) anywho, after getting home, Chris got her bathed and then usually after bathtime, she tells everyone good night and then get "blue blanket" and a cup of milk and climbs into my lap to drink her milk. Well tonight I decided to just go ahead and let her take the cup with her to bed and skip the rocking. Even though I will MISS this time of the day SOOOO much, it is probably for the best since the new baby is on his way and I also am starting to have a hard time rocking her with the big belly. So we told her good night and laid her down in the "big girl bed". When Brooklyn realized that I didn't rock her, she said "well throw it all at her at once, why don't you?" Poor little baby. Well after about 10 minutes, I decided I wanted to go check on her. Not sure if she would still be in the toddler bed, or up wandering around the room or even have found her way in Baby Christopher's bed. But to my surprise when I went in she was still in the "big girl bed"!! I couldn't tell if she was awake or not, so I walked over to the bed and leaned down really close to her and she looked up at me and said "bye bye!" I guess that was my cue. I think she was trying to tell me "leave me alone woman, I am trying to go to sleep!" So we will see how well the night goes, along with the morning when she wakes up. I will update more tomorrow and attach pictures.

Baby Christopher's 4D ultrasound

We went this morning to have our 4D sono done and even though Christopher didn't cooperate as much as we would have liked, we did get a few good shots. We will go back in a couple of weeks to try again. As for how big he is, he weighed 3 lbs. 3 ounces and is measuring 2 weeks ahead of due date :O

Measuring 28 weeks....

Had another doctor's visit today. Everything is still going great, or should I say "growing" great. Christopher is measuring 28 weeks and I am 27 weeks 4 days, so he's right on schedule. Blood pressure was good and weight gain was better than I expected :) I did have to drink the "kool aid" this morning for my sugar test and luckily that all came out good too. I am scheduled to have a 4D ultrasound next Friday, so we are excited about "seeing" Christopher for the 1st time. Will post pics as soon as I get them.

Ally Harper and Christopher's room is coming together too

Ally's room getting it's new paint job. Thanks again to Aunt Jennifer.

After the paint job.

Thanks to Granny for the drapes.

Bucket wall hangings I painted and added flowers and butterflies.

I've got all the bedding made for the cribs, but just haven't gotten it all on the beds yet. Check back soon.

Redecorating Brooklyn's room

BEFOREDURING (thanks to Jennifer for helping us paint)

Can't you see me climbing around on furniture 6 months pregnant!
Moving furniture around to satisfy the pregnant boss. Also thanks to Doug for helping out, which he really didn't have a choice. He was passing thru town that night headed back home to Nashville and needed a place to stay. So, of course, we offered up Brooklyn's bed as usual (which she hates :( but this time there was a catch. In order to sleep in the bed you had to help assemble the bed!!! See I played that well. didn't I??

AFTER

(thanks for Granny for the curtains and the dust ruffle)

Check out the lamp I found at Goodwill for $3!!!!!

Brooklyn comes home this evening and I can't wait for her to see the new and improved room. Hope she likes it.

a girl and her horse....

While cleaning out the girls bedrooms, I found Brooklyn's old cowboy hat. Now Ally Harper thinks in order to ride her horse she has to wear the hat too. How cute??? Thought Granny and Pawpaw would like these.

new nursery items????

After searching online for the perfect rug for the new nursery I think I have finally found one. It's the item in the center of the collage. With the cow, duck, sheep and pig. I think the colors are perfect and it's not too girly or too boyish. I also found the cute boxes that I can use as storage along with a matching blanket and wall frames. So what do you think????

More party pics of Ally Harper

(Click on collage to enlarge)

Ally Harper's 2nd birthday

(click collage to enlarge)

We had a great turn out at Ally's party. Since I couldn't handle any more drama after the cake, it was a good thing the party went well. With about 40 people in attendance including 14 kids I never saw a tear shed, so I consider that a SUCCESS! Thanks to everyone who came and shared the day with Ally Harper. I think she had a great time. So was in turbo mode running from thing to thing at Jump Zone. Poor Chris, all I have to say is I'm glad I am pregnant so I didn't have to chase that wild child around for 2 hours!

One of my favorite moments of the party....

Some of the smaller kids had to have help reaching the top of the inflatables, so Chris and Jason Lowe were assisting. Jason was at the top of this particular one, and Chris would pass the kids up to him and then they would turn the corner and come down a slide on the back side and then finish the obstacle course on their own. Well you couldn't see the back side of the slide or anything, so I went around and held the camera up high to get a photo. Well, was I in for a surprise.

Here is Chris passing Ally up to Jason for her turn.

Here is what I could see from the back side. She was really high up there. And then it was time for the slide.... or so I thought.
I held the camera over the edge and snapped a picture. As you can see, it was virtually a vertical slide, a free fall for the little ones. I laughed so hard, because it didn't faze the kids. They continued to take their turns. I went to ask Chris did he know what was on the other side of the inflatable and he said "yeah a slide". I then had to inform him it was less a slide and more a drop off. It was sooo funny. Look at the blur of Ally Harper :) But needless to say, she had a great time.

Cake dilemma.....

Okay, so last year Brooklyn and I made Ally Harper's birthday cakes and really had a great time doing it, but since this year we would be in Destin for the entire week before the party I decided to have Walmart do the job for me. I thought about having Cakes and Candles or other bakeries but I wasn't sure what time Saturday evening we would be getting home, and I knew Walmart would leave the cake out for pick up at whatever time, so they got the job. I placed the order 2 weeks in advanced and asked for a 12:00 pickup Sunday (the party was at 1:30), but later decided to pick up Saturday night at 7 in case I needed a little more cushion time --in case something went wrong :( Well I guess I jinxed myself. Here were the instructions I gave the bakery. I ordered a full sheet cake with a green top and yellow trim, "HAPPY 2nd BIRTHDAY ALLY HARPER" written in all caps and in white frosting. This was suppose to resemble the Sesame Street street sign. Then I also asked that they put five 3" circles across the cake in the following colors: red, yellow, green, blue and turquiose. I was planning to use the circles as the faces of several characters by adding eyes, noses, mouths, etc. Well, Saturday evening came and Brooklyn & I rode back to town after a long trip home from Destin to pick up the cake. I go to the bakery counter and there is my cake waiting for me. I thought, now that's service, just like the Superslueths "any time any place, Walmart is on the case", then I looked at the cake .............


What the......??? Who is Harper???? And where are my WHITE letters? And did a 4 year old write this?
And have they ever heard of centering and spacing? And where is my turquoise circle?
I was in shock!!!! Now what??? I decided since Walmart is not as reliable as Darby, Pooh and Tigger and the bakery was closed already that Brooklyn and I would have to be on the case instead. So off to the cake aisle. We bought more icing to fixing some problems and to finish the character faces ourselves. As we were shopping, Brooklyn noticed another cake that came from the bakery that had been left on the cake aisle. It had Happy Birthday Tammy written on it, so I guess someone else was unsatisfied with their cake and just left it there and opted to make their own! Finally we went to find a manager to complain. I managed to get $10 knocked off the price, which to me was not enough considering the additional supplies I had to purchase to fix their mistakes and the time I would have to spend doing it, but I had to have a cake and I didn't have enough time to start from scratch nor did I feel like it. Did I say that we had just got home from vacation and I had a summer head cold :( So I paid the price and came home and got to work. I thought it may be an easy fix. I could just lift the writing off with a tooth pick and rewrite it myself. Well of course it couldn't be that easy. Since the top of the cake had been airbrushed green, when I lifted the lettering the green came off too, so I was left with just white frosting scattering across the thing. So I had to mix up some green frosting and try to blend it in. Well that didn't work out very well either, so Brooklyn and I stood over the cake for a while brainstorming. She even got a notepad and drew out a few designs. I finally decided to go ahead and finish the character faces, which I was satisfied with, and then moved on to the bigger problem. The huge green square in the center of the cake. Finally we decided to make a BIG Cookie Monster face. After mixing up turqouise frosting several times, we had a Cookie Monster complete with googly eyes and with Brooklyn's idea of crumbling up cookies in his mouth, he actually turned out really cute.

My last problem was I didn't have enough space to write Happy Birthday so I decided to just include an "A" and the number "2", since her day was being brought to you by the letter A and the number 2.

All in all I was pretty satisfied with the outcome, but I did have to stay up until midnight dealing with it. But in the long run, it tasted good, looked cute and the rest of the party went off without a hitch. So Happy Birthday Ally Harper, we love you VERY MUCH!!!

Eat More Chikin!!!

While at Northpark today, Chic-fil-a was having some sort of promotion and they had about 8 cows in center court dancing. Ally Harper decided after watching a couple of minutes that she would take part in the dancing. She was so funny. She thought the cows were there for only her to enjoy and when another kid would come up she would get right in front of them in order for the cow to dance with her. And when one of the cows would go take a break, she would go "corral it back to the herd". She had everyone cracking up.

A day in the park.

Believe it or not, it was like 83 degrees a couple of days ago, so we went to the park to play. While there it began to sprinkle but a little rain didn't scare us away. We stayed and played for a long while.

New nursery project

So tonight I decided to paint something to go above baby Christopher's bed. I used his bedding fabric as a pattern. Still debating whether or not to add his name across the top???? Now time to get one painted from Ally Harper's side of the room and then one for Brooklyn.