Update on Mari!

So I am now officially nine months pregnant and I as of last week I was dilated to 1 cm and 40-50% effaced. I don't think she will be here before the 22nd of November though. I am getting very uncomfortable, but it is very worth it! I am going back to the doctor this Wednesday (Halloween), and I don't expect any change, but will update just the same.

Happy (early) Halloween!

Above are our Jack-O-Lanterns and below is our adorable green tickle monster. I guess it is really a dinosaur costume, but he thinks he is a tickle monster. He roars when we say it and then tries to tickle us.

He still doesn't really like things on his head and as you can see he pulled it off. This costume is a size 3T (T is for toddler). He wears 2T pants still as he is so slim, but he can wear 2T and 3T shirts depending on the style and who manufactures it (some brands run larger than others). So he is still larger than average as far as height, but not as far as weight. He is 36" and 27 lbs. His head circumference is only 2 inches smaller than mine and when I bought him socks this weekend I had to leave the toddler section and go to the big boy section as he wears 8.5 or 9 in shoes! I can't believe how big he is these days. He still is talking up a storm and is speaking better than most kids his age. A woman at church couldn't believe how well he knew all his colors (this was a month ago) and that he wasn't two yet. She said, well he is a boy so he'll slow down soon. She is a retired teacher. I just thought it was an odd thing to say. I can't help but wonder if it was a personal or professional opinon? I am nervous about when he has to start school! He is going "Trunk or Treating" at church Wednesday, so I will try and take pictures and update then.

Three feet of fun!

Last Friday at the Chili Festival in Tupelo.

Congrats to my Mom!

Two Fridays ago, my mom was sworn in as a United States Citizen. Jake and I could not attend the ceremony in Oxford, but we baked her a cake and surprised her at the Coffee House with it that night!

Yes, I am nesting....

This is the space between the entrance door to the room and the closet door. We left a space to hang her birth sampler on. Look on my Mom's blog for a picture of it!

This is the wall opposite the windows (Jake's birth sampler is on the wall between the windows). The door is the entrance to the room (not the closet). His bed is on the wall to the left of this picture (with the white letters above it as you can see in the earlier pictures). Below are close ups of the wall art.

I made the flowers today and we hung them tonight. The bee hive I made for Jake about this time two years ago, and this go around all I did was iron on the letters spelling his name. My mom made the bees for Jake about this time two years ago as well. All in all, I am quite pleased with the room!

I have a doctors appointment tomorrow and hope to have the down stairs setup for pictures sometime tomorrow as well- so check back for an update soon!

'A' I'm adorable...

We thought this was just too cute to not share, despite the fact that he was not wearing much in the way of clothes! He has been recovering from a cold of some sort that resulted in a double ear infection, while he was running fever I didn't put too much on him in the way of clothing. He is much better now, but James and I are now sick. The mirror is one that James' mom gave us, it was waiting to be hung on our freshly painted walls. Jake can't resist his reflection. If there is a mirror, he will find it!

We've finally got 'our' bedroom back!

After the paint dried and James put all the furniture back, Jake and I were allowed back in. Jake was way more excited about this than we expected, as you can see from the little dance he did! We put our bed frame in the attic and just put the mattresses on the floor so that Jake could come crawl into our bed in the middle of the night. If both James and I get out of bed before he wakes up, we can put the pillows on the side and not really worry about him falling out of the bed (it won't hurt him if he does). This was also done in anticipation of the late stages of pregnancy and recovery from childbirth/ c-section as it was very difficult to climb in and out of our big tall bed the last few months of my pregnancy with Jake and I couldn't do it at all for the first month after my c-section (we slept in his room for the first month). It is nice to be back in our room!

Progress on this house done over the weekend.

I took this picture when James was half way through so that everyone could see how atrocious the red color was and what a nice change the green made.

We put Mari's crib next to my side of the bed (next to the door to our bathroom). The portable crib is downstairs so that I don't have to carry her upstairs every time she fall asleep. It also has a changing table attachment so it will be nice to have all of that downstairs. Everything has been getting a make-over so that it is not quite Jake's anymore. This is the same crib that we used with Jake (it is sage green) that my parents got us. The crib skirt is the same one that we made to match the curtains in Jake's room, I think it and the white crib sheets are the only things that didn't change. I took the bees and the blue flower off Jake's mobile and let him play with them and re-crafted these butterflies (the were part of a princess wand) to put on the mobile. They were very tough to stitch as the material is very stiff (it's luminescent). My mom made the crib organizer, bumper and baby quilt. I bought the letters a few months ago when I bought all the material to redo the crib, and we waited to hang them after we painted. The butterflies are part of eight that I made over the past week to decorate her wall space with (Jake has bees).

The previous owners of the house left all the left over paint in one of the closets downstairs, so we were able to touch up his walls and then start hanging his letters and bee decorations from his own room (we thought if we waited and did it at the same time as we hung Mari's he wouldn't feel left out).

Here he is showing off his reorganized room and closet. We still have to hang a second shelf/ hanging bar above this one, but there is no hurry.

Here you can see where we have started hanging the wall art.

Buffalo Park

We took Jake to the Tupelo Buffalo Park as a sort of last hurrah for just the three of us before we become a family of four. I should have tried to do something earlier, but the weather has been so hot. As is, it was hard on me to walk around in the 85 degree weather, even with taking frequent breaks. Maybe early this spring when the weather is nicer and Mari is old enough for me to be comfortable with it, we can take them to the Memphis Zoo. Jake went last year in October, but I think he would enjoy it so much more this year.