Kayla Marie

We finally welcomed our little one on Tuesday Dec. 3, one week later than expected. She was born at 9:28 am and weighed 7 lbs 4 oz and was 19 1/2 in. long.
We are so thankful for how the Lord worked through our experience and through the timing of her birth. As I mentioned in my last post we were looking at inducing on Wednesday, Dec. 4th because she  was overdue. This was the absolute last thing I wanted. We had an appointment Monday morning, Dec. 3 and it did not look like my body was anywhere close to ready to have a baby, so we finalized plans for the induction and we were sent home. I was pretty disappointed at this point but the only thing I could do was give it to the Lord and wait. Josh and I decided to go on one last date so we could get our minds off all that had been going on. We had to stop at the grocery store on the way and I started to feel different but not really sure why. We then went to dinner where I realized I was having slight contractions - I timed them but they weren't regular at all, but I told Josh I was pretty sure we were going to be going to the hospital that night. Sure enough, at around 9:30 my contractions were fairly regular, around 7 min apart and started getting closer together. We drove to the hospital around 1 am and I was monitored for about 30 min.  We ended up having to walk around for about an hour before we were finally admitted around 3:30. Kayla was then born at 9:28. In the week between my due date and her birthday I was trying to figure out what the Lord was doing with the timing and why was she late? It was ruining all our plans! Saturday night I finally realized that it really doesn't matter, our plans can change and the Lord sees the bigger picture that I am just now starting to see.

I can now look at all the ways He had a hand in Kayla's birth.

1. I had been praying during my whole pregnancy that I wouldn't have to be induced and that Kayla would come on her own, during this last week, knowing I was getting closer to being induced I began to think this wasn't going to happen, but he brought her into the world one day before we were scheduled to be induced.

2. The weather forecast for our area called for a pretty bad snow storm Tuesday night and Wednesday. We were supposed to go to the hospital - a 30 min drive - Tuesday night and again Wednesday for the induction. We were concerned about having to be out in such bad weather, but again she was born the morning before the storm hit so we didn't even have to worry about driving at all in the snow.

3. My sister came out here last week to see the baby and had to leave Monday morning so she missed everything, we were really disappointed about this, however, the Lord provided a plane ticket for $50 - in December, right before Christmas, for her to come back the day after Josh's paternity leave ends to see Kayla and help with Ryan, and then 5 days later Josh's Christmas leave begins, so I won't have to be by myself with the kiddos until after New Years! This is a huge praise since I'm beginning to see how difficult it might be.

I have definitely learned through this whole process that even though my plans might seem like the best scenario, the Lord sees the bigger picture and he has a greater plan for all of us that we might not be able to see.

Ok! So now for some pictures, this might make this post quite long, but I know the pictures are what everyone really wants to see!

Ryan getting know his baby sister

He loves holding her and giving her hugs and kisses

Waiting on Little Girl

40 weeks pregnant

Well...our baby girl is officially late! She was due yesterday and so now we are just waiting on the Lord's timing for her arrival. Since Ryan was a day early I wasn't expecting her to be late but here we are - still waiting. We have an induction date set for next Wednesday but we are hoping she comes before then. We are using this time to finish getting the house cleaned and ready and we are trying to enjoy our last few days with just Ryan.

We finally have the nursery finished and have all of the little details in place - I love the fact that we got to do a girly nursery. It was a lot of fun and definitely different than doing a boys nursery. With the shape of the room it was hard to get a good overall picture but I tried to get lots of angles to show the different parts. We went with a simple theme of pink and grey/cream with a few of ballerina touches here and there.

Her crib and rocking chair where we will be spending lots of time!

Rocking chair with her beautiful baby blanket made by Grandma Cheryl and her pillow was made by Aunt Steph

My sister made this art for her walls

Changing table and dresser

This little dress was one of the dresses I wore when I was a baby

No post would be complete without a few pics of Ryan! I just love our little boy and he is becoming such a fun little guy!

He figured out where I kept the cereal and decided he could get his own snack! We found a new place to store the cereal out of reach since picking up cereal from all over the floor is difficult while pregnant!

Climbing is one of his favorite activities! 

Giving his teddy bear a hug

This is what I came in to when he woke up from his nap - this boy loves to read!

He was showing me what he was reading 

Right before I took this picture he tried to feed his bear some corn on the cob 

Reading with daddy - I love that he loves to read! He will sit on our laps for as long as he can and read his books over and over! He is definitely my child!

Lately...

I can’t believe September is already half over. We had such a busy summer but I am thankful that things are slowing down and Fall is approaching. I love this season! The cool weather, my pumpkin spice candle and looking forward to the holiday season.

 It’s been awhile since I updated about what we are doing. Josh started back into school at the beginning of August and is currently taking 2 classes towards his masters. So far he has kept a 4.0! At the end of October, he will be ¾ of the way through his program so we are hoping he will be done sometime next year – he’s planning on taking a break for November-December to have time with the new baby!

Speaking of baby - I am now 30 weeks pregnant, so we are in the third trimester and only 10 or so weeks away from meeting our little girl! We are slowly but surely getting the nursery put together and it’s been fun to look and plan for a little girl.

This picture was taken 2 weeks ago at 28 weeks - around the beginning of the third trimester

Ryan has been learning so much in the past few months as well. We have been working on baby sign language with him to help him learn to communicate. So far he is signing “please,” “thank-you,” “all done,” and “eat.” This is helping with screaming and whining when he is hungry or wants something. He is also beginning to say some words “mama” and “dada” are his two main words right now but he tries to imitate us when we make animal sounds or point to the cats. He is definitely a busy boy, but I am so thankful that he enjoys playing alone at times too. Sometimes he just sits down and looks at books for 5 or so minutes or spends time concentrating on a particular toy. I love watching him learn about how things work!

We were able to find one of the fun grocery carts at the grocery store and Ryan loved it! I also enjoyed it since it kept him entertained! 

Ryan has discovered that this bouncy seat (for baby sister) is more fun than his own chair. He likes to lounge and hang out when he needs a break - its a good thing its made for up to 25 lbs!

Lately, Ryan has been wanting to help with lots of things. One of those things is cooking dinner, he wants to stir the things on the stove - so instead of him stirring hot food I gave him his own pot and spoon and he stirred to his hearts content

He also loves to help dust. He gets his own duster and pretty much dusts the floor and some other easy to reach things but likes to do what Mommy does.

Ryan's first time eating a Peanut butter and jelly sandwhich. He practically tried to shove the whole thing in his mouth at one time - I think he liked it! He ate the whole thing

Family photo op over Labor Day

Its a girl!!...and other happenings

So the news is out - we found out last week the Lord is blessing us with a baby girl! As of last week she weighed in at 14 ounces and was healthy in every way. We are so excited to be able to experience having a girl. I was honestly thinking our baby was going to be a boy. It wasn't really a feeling or differences in pregnancy, I just assumed we would have a boy since we already have one. It took me a few days for it to really sink it that our baby was a she - I tend to say "he" when talking about our babies before we know! Josh was more convinced it was a girl though and he was right! So now we are thinking about nursery ideas and clothes, she will be a winter baby so thats quite a bit different from Ryan, who was born during the hottest summer on record! 

21 Weeks 

I thought I could do multiple posts for all the things we have had going on, or I could do one post and hopefully get everything in without making it too long! We have had a busy summer and although I've written about most of it, the last month or so has still been really busy!

Josh and I celebrated our second anniversary on Ryan's 1st birthday, but we hadn't had a chance to go out and celebrate, just the two of us. So last week, when my mom came to visit for a couple of days we took the opportunity to go on a date! We just went to dinner, but it was so nice to spend some time just the two of us, we are always grateful for those moments!

Dressed up for our date night

The beautiful dessert the waiter brought us for our anniversary!

Last week, Ryan and I also got to go home for what will probably be our last vacation before baby girl arrives! I wanted to have a chance to celebrate his birthday with family and although we missed Josh, who wasn't able to go, we enjoyed having a small birthday party for him. Josh did get to participate in the birthday party through skype so he got to see Ryan open his presents and eat his birthday cake.

We had a great time on our little vacation and Ryan and I flew home Wednesday night and. I'm thinking 12 months is possibly one of the more difficult ages to fly with. On all of our previous trips, he has done great, he sleeps during the whole flight. This time, he did not! He was tired but wanted to move all over the place. By the time he finally fell asleep we only had about 20 minutes before we landed. He was so tired though he slept through the entire process of everyone getting off the plane.

I am always terrible at keeping up with picture taking but I managed to get a few while we were on our trip.

Playing at grandmas

At the pool

Helping mommy pack

Camping

This past weekend, we had the opportunity to go camping with a group of families from our church. This was Ryan’s first camping trip and our first trip in about two years. We really enjoyed getting out in the mountains and enjoying fellowship with others and getting to know some new faces.

 We settled at a campsite in the mountains and it was beautiful! We could see the mountains and the lakes over the ridge from where we were camping and there were trees all around. We spent Saturday morning at the lake and although the water was ice cold it was a beautiful day for the lake and we even enjoyed dipping our feet in the water.

We weren’t quite sure how it would go with Ryan but he seemed to love it! He LOVED the tent and was all over the place walking and crawling over the air mattress and the sleeping bags.  He also loved playing in the dirt and with the sticks and rocks he could find. I so love watching him explore new things and figuring out what he likes and what he doesn’t like. We also learned he loves watermelon and probably would have eaten as much as we would have given him!

Playing in the dirt

Exploring the tent and loving it!