36 week appointment.

On Wednesday I had my 36 week appointment although I won't technically be 36 weeks till Saturday! Anywho, I am
dilated to a 2 and 50% effaced! However, Emery is still sitting very high at a -3 station! This is exactly where I was with Lincoln and it was still 4 weeks later and 16 hours of labor before he arrived! Here is hoping it will only be about 3 weeks and 8 hours of labor before we meet our little gal. One can wish can't they??

I am definitely feeling lots of pains but no real contractions yet. I have still been throwing up about every other morning. I know Cory is tired of his alarm clock consisting of me throwing up. EC still moves often and it is painful. I have decided she has some sharp elbows.

Lincoln is really beginning to understand that he will have a sister soon. We have been practicing rocking and feeding a "baby" which was actually a teddy bear.




He really got into it. So our neighbor let us borrow one of her daughters baby dolls coos and cries. Lincoln LOVES the doll. He calls her "Emmy." She rests in the crib most of the time but he will come find me and say "mommy baby up!" And he gets upset when I put her back in the crib. He wants to rock her, put her in the carrier and the swing. It may be silly but I have loved having the doll so we can pretend and prepare Lincoln the best we can. I am sure matter what the arrival of Emery will rock his world.

Only time will tell...

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Wordless Wednesday

Room Swap

Well, for several weeks we had planned that the first weekend of March would be the weekend we would move Lincoln out of the nursery to the extra bedroom and in turn get the nursery ready for Emery.  We decided that this process would go over much more smoothly if Lincoln was not around.  (Sorry, buddy).  He is so curious and right in the middle of everything that it was just not a good idea.  So, we arranged for him to spend the weekend with my parents.  So, on Thursday night I took a picture of him in his nursery for the last night.  No worries though, it was not his last night in his crib.  The crib made the move with him :)

Look at how sweet he looks in the bed! 

So, I met my parents halfway on Friday afternoon and handed him off. It was his first time to spend away from both me and Cory. We have each spent time away from him but not both of us at the same time. It was so strange not having him around.  It really is crazy how soon your forget what life was like with no children.  So, Friday evening when I returned we got started. We moved all of Lincoln's things to the guest bedroom and that was my project while Cory started painted the nursery.

Here is a picture from my phone of what Lincoln's new room and the nursery looked like before we started.

One fun thing that I had seen on pinterest that I wanted to do for Lincoln's room was to make him his own "scoreboard."  We were wanting to go with a sports theme in his new room but somehow it turned into a baseball room (Ahemm....Cory!).  So for the weeks leading up the weekend we had worked on making him the scoreboard.  Here is a picture of it in progress. 

We painted a piece of wood all white then taped it off with tape, letters and number and then painted over all of with Fenway (Red Sox) green!  Then we peeled the paint off to get the final product.

As I worked on organizing Lincoln's new room, Cory was busy painting Emery's nursery gray.  I am so pleased with the gray that we ended up with.  It is a little dark but very warm and perfect.  It is Elephant Skin by Behr.  We also took the tree from Lincoln's nursery and put it back on a white patch of wall and painted over it gray.  I think it turned out so great! 

For the weekend we were able to get Lincoln's room about 85% done.  All we lack is hanging some decorations on the wall.  We got the walls painted in the nursery but still needed to paint the ceiling and put the crib together. Here is a sneak peak of Lincoln's room and the nursery thus far.  I hope to have both room put together in the next 2 weeks and I will post completed pictures.

Thanks Papa and Gigi for keeping Lincoln while we worked ourselves to death!  

It was a huge help!

33.5 weeks

Well the end is drawing near!  I am definitely feeling "large and in charge!" My morning sickness picked back up around 30 weeks.  I am sick about 3-4 mornings a week and I feel really nauseous after that till about 9:00 a.m.  After that I feel pretty good as long as I do not get too hungry.  As for sleep, it is getting a little bit more difficult.  I wake up at least every 2 hours to go to the bathroom and usually around 3:00 or 4:00 a.m. I have about an hour of insomnia where I just lay there wide awake!  Emery Claire still moves often and at times hurts.  Sometimes I will have to stop and say "Ouch" while holding my belly.  Lincoln always stops with concern and says "Baby Owie, Mommy?" 

I had my 34 week appointment this week and everything went great.  The heartbeat was 140 bpm and my Dr. and I both agreed that my stomach has dropped a little bit making it easier for me to breathe.  She is head down which is great! I go back in two weeks that starts my weekly appointments.  I am anxious to see if I have dilated any.  At my 36 week appointment with Lincoln I was dilated to a 2 and 60% effaced.  So my hopes are high this time around; however EVERYTHING with this pregnancy has been different so I told my doctor that I will probably be a -1.  

Lincoln seems to be more understanding of Emery coming now that we have changed out their rooms and she has her own crib set up.  He often goes in there and says "baby's bed."  He has also started randomly kissing my stomach.    I am getting anxious about how he is going to handle it all.  Yikes!  We are about 70% done with the nursery and I hope to get a lot more of it done next week while I am on Spring Break. 

Well here I am in all my bigness at 33.5 weeks. 

Me at 31 weeks with Lincoln compared to 33.5 weeks with Emery. 

And me again at 35 weeks with Lincoln and 33.5 weeks with Emery. 

She will be here before we know it...

Wordless Wednesday

Family Party

The weekend after Lincoln's birthday we headed to central AR for a small family birthday party to celebrate our little guy.  We had lunch at the local Mexican restaurant since Chips and Salsa is one of Lincoln's favorites. 

We then headed to my parents for some cake and presesnts.  As well as having fun bouncing on the bounce house with his cousins.  Lincoln recieived a tricycle for his birthday.  The kids were taking turns riding around the house being pushed.  On one of Lincoln's turns he was wearing his bicycle helmet over low over his eyes while being pushed and fell asleep!  They had to catch him so he would not fall off the tricycle. 

We ended the weekend with our wonderful and fabulous friend Lindsey taking Lincoln's 2 year pictures as well as some maternity pictures.  Click here to see more on her blog.  Here is a sneak peek.

We had a fun birthday weekend for Lincoln and missed those family members that were not able to be there!

Birthday Big/Big Brother Weekend

We decided that for Lincoln's actual birthday we would forgo the party and go on a small weekend getaway.  I wanted to do a fun weekend trip just the three of us before we became a family of four so Lincoln's birthday seemed to be a good fit.  The days leading up to Lincoln's birthday Cory was out of town.  He arrived home late Friday night and early Saturday morning we headed out to Tulsa, OK.  Our first stop was lunch.  Lincoln's favorite food is a hot dog so we found a place that specializes in hot dogs.  Ha!  Smashburger was our choice.  It was excellent!  Here is Lincoln giving Cory a random hug!

Our next stop was the Oklahoma Aquarium.  Lincoln slept on the way to Tulsa, so we decided to go right after lunch which would normally be his nap time.  Lincoln smacks his lips together to indicate a fish sound so we heard this noise often as we went through the aquarium.  Lincoln was somewhat interested in the tanks of fish but he was more interested on figuring out how he could get IN there with the fish.  His favorite stop was the open top water of all the sting rays.  I think he could have stayed here forever.

Lincoln kept "chopping" his hands together asking to see an alligator!  Alligators are one of his latest interests.  There we no alligators at the aquarium so we stopped off at the gift store on our way out and bought him a 5 dollar stuff alligator. Fun story: we hung out in the foyer area before leaving so Cory could make a phone call for work.  Lincoln ran around throwing the alligator then running to get it and throwing it again.  At one point he accidentally threw it over close to a little boy who was about 5 years old.  The boy threw it back to Lincoln who in turned threw it to him again.  This turned into a game of toss and Lincoln was loving it. It was fun to see him initiate the interaction with this little boy and have so much fun.

There was a statue alligator outside that we stopped to visit before leaving.

Next we headed to the hotel for a nap (for me and Lincoln).  After our nap we headed to Hideaway Pizza for dinner.  It was a local favorite recommended to us by the front desk of our hotel.  It was quite yummy! 

After dinner our plan was to head to Chuck-E-Cheese for some playtime.  However, once we arrived there was about 200 plus people in there and did not look like much fun.  So we decided to go across the street to the mall to walk around.  While in the mall we ran across the Merry-Go-Round which was full of "neighs" to ride.  This was Lincoln's first time to ride and he LOVED it.

We ended the evening with a donut stop at Krispy Kreme before heading to the hotel and to bed.  The next morning we ate breakfast at the hotel, stopped at a few stores to shop and headed back home.  Lincoln was one worn out birthday boy!

We were so happy with how the weekend turned out.