Welcome Gray

Our little baby Gray has finally arrived.

Officially born Oct. 3rd at 3:30pm, Cecilia Gray weighed in at 8lbs 2oz and was 20 inches long.

There is a little brother who is absolutely in love with her.

And a big sister who doesn’t quite know what to think.

Here is our three little kiddos.

Now let’s see Gray herself.

And of course we have to bring back our little bear to compare sizes as we grow each month.  Here is our official first day home.

So far she is a sleepy little thing.  Although she does like to be awake around midnight.  Somehow need to get that adjusted to a little bit earlier in the evening.

Due Date

My due date is here.  I’m still pregnant.

Here is a look back on my previous pregnancies.

At least the next post you see should actually have new baby pictures in it!!

Still Here

Just checking in to say we are still here, and still no baby.

Absolutely nothing else is getting done as we wait.

4 Weeks to Go

We have been super busy trying to get ready for the baby.  Which for my husband means finishing up our remodel projects we started months ago.  And now as the time gets nearer it means going through all our old baby toys, baby clothes, baby swings, car seats, etc and getting everything ready for the arrival of baby #3.

We have officially gotten Oliver moved into his new “big boy” bedroom.  It’s almost all complete, except for the bare walls.  Which lets’ be honest, they probably won’t be tackled until after the baby arrives.  This means the nursery is the sorting place for all the baby stuff.  Yesterday the kids joined me as I went through everything.  I just had to share these pictures of them watching me.  Oliver actually requested I grab the camera to take a picture of the two of them.

Lately Oliver has been concerned about being a big brother to the new baby and wanting to be a good helper.  In the process he has taken an interest into Bella and wanting to hold her hand, make sure she is happy and that she likes him.  He will still sometimes steal her toys, but in general he wants to make sure she has something to play with.

Bella has meet this new found interest in her with mixed emotions.  Sometimes she will give him smiles and loves the attention.

Other times she will get fussy, especially when he is in her face too much, or holding her hand for too long.

As for me…..I’m miserable.  You can stop reading now if you don’t want to hear about the joys of pregnancy.

I pretty much don’t sleep more than 5 hours anymore, which isn’t even good sleep, but constantly tossing and turning sleep.  For the most part my kids are actually sleeping, it’s just me being in pain keeping me up.  This morning was no different and I have been awake since 3am.  Which means I have to nap each day in order to function.

I didn’t want to buy a bunch of new maternity clothes, and I didn’t really get around to making/modifying many.  So between the lack of maternity clothes and this hot muggy weather, I’m just not comfortable in anything.  I can’t wait for cooler weather, as I think this part of my problem might actually have a solution.

I can’t stand for very long or my feet and ankles start immediately swelling and getting painful.  My back can also be in pain when I stand, and is especially painful if I have to lift/carry Bella multiple times in a short time span.

I can’t walk for a very long distance or I start having contractions, plus the swelling problem.

I can’t sit for very long or my left thigh starts going numb, my back can still hurt while sitting, and I also have this little problem called pregnancy hemorrhoids.

I can’t lay down on my back because I can’t breathe.

I can’t lay on my stomach obviously.

I can’t lay on my side for very long or my hips start giving me tremendous amounts of pain.  I also have pretty bad heartburn that is around all the time and even worse if lying down.  It’s actually the hip pain and heartburn which keeps me up most of the night.

So that pretty much sums up my life right now.  There is absolutly no position that I can be in that doesn’t give me pain.  Plus with my 40 pound handicap child and my overactive 3 year old that is constantly asking me to play with him, I’m so so so so very ready to be done with this pregnancy.  Except of course I really don’t want the baby to come this early.  So I guess I’ll suffer through for a few more weeks and then start praying for the baby to come.

Main Floor Bella’s Room–Week 11

We finally got Bella moved downstairs into her new room this past weekend.

Her bed currently resides in the middle of the room, as we still need to finish installing all the door trim and baseboards.

I did get her curtains made and we actually got them hung up.

After we finish the baseboards and trim, we still have a lot of work that needs to be done in the bathroom before it’s usable.  It’s currently a construction storage spot.  I did get a closet system ordered, so that also needs to be installed once it arrives.

 

And since Bella got moved downstairs, we have started converting her old room into Oliver’s new bedroom.

So far we have gotten his new ceiling fan installed and one coat of gray paint up on the walls.  He is very excited to move into his new room and has given us 4 days to get it complete.  Going off of past experience, I’m thinking that might not happen.  We already had a little snafu with the blue bed we painted not really working well with the new mattress set we bought.  We are currently brainstorming ideas on how to make it work.

As we already mentioned it looks like it’s going to be a lot of work to get everything finished up before this baby arrives.

First Day of School

The kids both went to school today.  I have a two hour block of time all to myself.  Or at least for another month or two until the baby arrives.  My to-do list is a mile long, but it’s amazing how short of time 2 hours really is.  In other words you really can’t get too much done in that chunk of time.

Bella’s first day was technically last Thursday.  She went to school and had a little bit of a rude awakening that she would be having to go back and work on her therapies again.  Friday was her heart surgery which went great.  Amazingly it was an outpatient procedure, so even though it was one long day at the hospital, it was only one day.  She came home with a band aid on her leg, covering the tiniest little hole (looks like she got poked in the leg).  And that’s it, you couldn’t even tell that she had any type of surgery at all.

Bella is in First Grade this year.

Oliver started 3 year old Preschool this year.  He gets to attend a brand new district preschool building that was just completed last month.  He is actually in the same program Bella was in when she went to preschool.  It’s an integrated program between typically developing peers and special needs students.  When Bella attended she was obviously special needs, and Oliver has been enrolled as a typical developing peer.  Currently his class size is really small, so he should have a great learning experience this fall.

He wanted to do his own poses for the camera.

His first real day of preschool was today.  So I’m anxious to hear how he liked it!

I’ll leave you with a final pose from both of them.  Oliver insisted that since Bella was in her wheelchair he couldn’t just stand next to her, he needed to be in his bike.  Bella seemed to think it was funny.

Main Floor Bella’s Room–Weeks 9 & 10

I haven’t even bothered to get out our good camera to take pictures of the progress yet.  So I thought I would post some snapshots from our phones on what has been going on these past couple of weeks.

The walls got painted and the ceiling fan got installed.  While we were waiting for carpet to be installed we used the bedroom as a painting spot.  First up was a big boy bed for Oliver.  We promised him a blue bed.  He decided he wanted to help again, so he put on dad’s flip flops and helped me roll on the primer.

He took his job very seriously.

You may notice in the photo above I chopped off my hair.  Here is a recent image from a concert Jesse and I went to (sorry for the dark image).

The carpet in Bella’s bedroom did in fact finally come in after being backordered a couple of times.  A certain younger brother seems to think this new room is his to take all his toys into.  Also worth mentioning is the color on the walls.  I went with a “dusty coral” color and my final hope is to have a vintage girls bedroom for Bella.  While Jesse was painting the walls, he mentioned multiple times he did not like the color.  When Oliver got up from his nap and first saw the bedroom painted he claimed “Ohhh……I don’t like it”.

Although now that the carpet is in, drapes are hung and Bella’s bed has been moved into there, he told me yesterday she had a fancy room.  He also cracks me up because most of the time I wear “workout” type clothing.  Or anything remotely comfortable with my ever expanding belly.  If I do happen to dress up, fix my hair, and actually wear make-up he never fails to tell me I look pretty or beautiful.  And then usually ask me “Where are you going?”

Other big things happening this week, the fact that school finally starts tomorrow.  These last 5 weeks have been a little difficult with both kids home all day long, but I somehow made it through.  Oliver gets to start his brand new preschool and is pretty excited about it.  Here is part of the new playground setup at school.

And lastly Bella is having minor heart surgery this Friday.  She has a small PDA hole that never closed up, so they are going in with a cardiac catheter to close it up.  It’s supposed to be an outpatient surgery, so hopefully it all goes smoothly.

And I’m just hanging on myself as this pregnancy nears its end and makes life pretty uncomfortable.  Sleep has been my enemy of late.  In fact most nights I can only get about 4-5 hours.  As you can tell it makes getting things done around here pretty difficult, as in our progress is at a crawl stage.  But with less than two months to go, we do have a few things that need to get done before the new baby arrives.