Sunday, March 23, 2008

Cooper's Baby Shower and Easter



It's been a really fun (and tiring) weekend! We started out on Friday night having my niece, Eva, spend the night. She is almost 3 years old and is such a little ham. I know everyone thinks their family is the best, but she really is so well behaved and a lot of fun to be around. We spent the evening playing games and wearing ourselves out. Eva invented the "flashlight" game with Uncle Bryan's LED headlamp. We spent about 30 or 40 minutes in complete darkness in the house so Eva could get full use out of the flashlights. :) I showed her how to put the flashlight up to her mouth and make her cheeks glow. I loved doing that as a kid. Bryan and I got a little practice reading stories for bedtime. It was really fun and funny. We tried out different methods: I read a page, you read a page, I read a word, you read a word, etc. The every other word method was least successful. Kinda hard to understand what was going on! :) We read Tikki Tikki Tembo and Guess How Much I Love You. Lots of fun.

I had Saturday off of work. Yay! I love having Saturdays off. It is such a treat. I only have two other Saturdays off before the baby arrives and I will be spending those at breastfeeding and child birthing classes. I can't believe it is getting so close. We are definitely starting to feel the crunch and have scheduled two work weekends for the upstairs remodel project. We really aren't that far away from finishing the bedroom but we have a good bit of work left on the closet and bath. I'm excited to see it finished. I hope we can do it before he gets here!

I took a two hour nap in the afternoon and then headed over to Heather's house to hang out with her and Joy while they were getting ready for my baby shower. The girls came up with a robot/futuristic theme and it was adorable. I now want to decorate his toddler room in robots! The shower was so fun. I was really looking forward to it and it was everything I had hoped and more. I couldn't help but think about all of the women that were there (and a few that weren't) and realizing how much Bryan and I are loved by them. A wedding or baby shower is a way that we express support in our culture. We are telling the person or couple, "we are here for you, we care about you, we are excited for you". And, of course, "here's a present for you!" But, seriously, I guess I am all emotional because I'm pregnant, but I love these women and I know that they love me. They love my unborn baby. They support us unconditionally. It's a wonderful feeling to know that we are loved by so many people.

Joy drove all the way from Virginia to come to the shower- thanks Joy! I love you. It was so nice to hang out and it always seems kinda like she never left Atlanta. I miss her tons. I also got quite a surprise when I walked into the condo and saw my friend from high school, Jeni. She lives in Louisiana and so I was really shocked to see her! The girls didn't tell me she was coming- I'm glad- it was fun to be surprised. We all spent the evening eating, talking and opening gifts. Jennifer made this amazing robot cake.
How cute is that? I got TONS of stuff for the little one. Jumperoo, stroller, bouncer, boppy, monitor, mobile, clothes, books, pacifiers, bottles, toys, play yard, gift cards, etc! Thanks everybody! We love our things and Daddy didn't even get upset at the sight of the nursery already filling up! He's not a fan of clutter and mess so this baby with all of its "things" is going to be an adjustment. :) So far, so good. We woke up Sunday and I showed him all of our new goodies. We couldn't resist testing out our fancy Sony monitor from Aunt Emily. It works great and we each took turns pretending to be the baby in the other room. Very funny. I also had to break out the mobile and stick it on the crib. Actually, I wasn't able to figure out how to attach it but Bryan came to the rescue and it looks so cute! Now all we need is a cute little baby to put in there. Thank you everyone for making my shower special! I'll post more pics of everyone as people send them to me. My camera didn't get used much that night! I was too busy talking!

We spent Easter Sunday at my Mom and Bill's in Fayetteville. It was a beautiful day and the kids were all running around like crazy- hopped up on chocolate bunnies and jellybeans. We had a fun egg hunt around the lake and ate ourselves silly on ham, mashed potatoes, macaroni, and various sweets. Yum!
Cooper got an Easter basket even though he is still in utero. You know his Granny couldn't leave him out!

Thursday, March 20, 2008

Auntie Em! It's a twister!

This past weekend we had some crazy weather here in Atlanta. I came home friday night to a home with no electricity due to the tornado that tore through Atlanta and our neighborhood, East Atlanta. We really didn't know what was going on until the next day. It's amazing what escapes you when there's no connection to the outside world. Our house and our street went relatively unharmed. We had a little debris scattered in the yard and a small, dead tree came down in our backyard. No big deal, especially compared to what happened in the rest of the area. Our neighborhood has a ton of huge, old trees and lots of them were lost in the storm. There were SO many houses with trees fallen through the roofs. Crazy! Amazingly, there were no fatalities here. Saturday brought more storms and the biggest hail I have ever seen in my life! It was incredibly loud as it hit the house. Thankfully our cars survived with not so much as a ding! Here's the hail that accumulated in the yard in a matter of minutes. So bizarre!

My Mom and I spent the entire weekend (and then some) working on the baby's bedding. We picked out some really cute fabric a few months ago and got to work designing the bedding from scratch. We had no idea what we were in for when we decided to sew this set ourselves! My Mom is a very experienced seamstress and this was even a challenge for her. However, it was worth the effort because it turned out so adorable! I'm sure my Mom will think so when she gets to see it on the crib. For now, I think she's still recovering from 30+ hours of sewing her grandchild's bed set. Now we know why some of the crib sets on the internet are priced so high ($400 and up)! Here's a little sneak peek.
I can't wait to decorate the rest of the room. I've been thinking of trying to enlarge pages of vintage children's books for art for the wall. A little trip to Kinko's and some cute frames and walla! Baby art!

My first baby shower is this weekend and I am so excited! It's an all girls party that is being given by my good friends Heather, Kelly and Jennifer. I am also excited to give each of them this:
It's a secret but I'll share after this weekend.

Have a great week and thanks for stopping by!

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Getting ready for junior

It's all about the nesting. This baby is moving at the pace of a freight train and I gotta get his stuff ready! Nah, actually it isn't quite that fast but I am definitely trying to get things together for him. Two weekends ago my Momma offered to come up and paint the boy's room. Of course I said yes! His room is what use to be our office (always a disaster) and we had to clear it out before we could begin painting. Here's the disaster area before we moved everything out.

In my house-keeping defense, a lot of that clutter is actually Cooper's new baby things. I admit the ofice is normally messy, but not quite this bad. Eeek!


One major issue is that we need to finish our upstairs remodel before we can move our bedroom up there and subsequently the office to our current bedroom. So, currently our dining room is a bit of a temporary storage unit- ugh! The house seems so cluttery and small when it isn't picked up and neat. Can't wait to get everything put in its new place. Anyway, Mom worked her little behind off and did a beautiful job on the walls. She even perfectly patched all the nail holes. Bryan came home towards the finish line and rolled the final coat while Mom edged. Here's my little contractors working diligently. This pregnancy thing is starting to pay off...




The walls are a nice steely, pale blue. I love how it turned out. I'd post a pic but it doesn't look like much with nothing in there. I picked up the crib that weekend also. Bryan is a mechanical genius (I'm so lucky to have a capable husband) and put that sucker together in about 30 minutes- despite the directions being written by someone who had clearly never put this crib together before. It looks beautiful in his room and I love peeking in there and imagining his little sleepy self laying in that crib. Here's my man doing the manly job:



I am still waiting on two dressers and the glider/ottoman to come in. I am hoping they will be here by next weekend so I'll finally have a place to put all of the clothes I keep buying. Also, I have my first baby shower on the 22nd. Yay! I am so excited. It's at my friend Heather's house and it is all-girls. Can't wait to sit and chat and ooh and aah over cute baby things. Joy- can't wait to see you!

Here's a belly update. Actually, this was about 3 weeks ago so I am even bigger now. This belly is outta control!