Our growing family

Well, it's starting to seem more and more real each day.  In a matter of days we will be a family of 4!!!  I'm excited and nervous.  How will I handle two boys?  I know some days will be stressful, loud, obnoxious, and I will be wondering how on earth I will survive until thier daddy gets home.  But I know it will all be worth it.  I wouldn't trade it for anything being able to be here with my kids each day!  It's a sacrifce for us, but it's something I felt like I was born to do...be a mama, wife, housekeeper, cook, but most importanly watch my boys grow each day :)  These past two years with Charlie have been amazing.  He is the light of my life and alot of time I feel like a failure, but it only inspires me to be better.  Try harder...pray for more patience!!  I have a growing respect for my parents each day...raising 4 girls couldn't have been easy. To be perfectly honest I think 2 boys will be the max for this little green family!  I know it couldn't have been easy, but they did a great job!!  I hope to follow in thier footsteps and raise boys that turn out half a good, caring, kind, genrous and me & Chess and our siblings!  I feel like we are a pretty good crew of kids...we can't take the credit tho...it was the ones who raised us :)  so I wanna give a big shout out to our wonderful parents! We couldn't be the family we are with the families we came from!

On that note...see the post below for the most beautiful song I'm stealing from Amanda's post!  It explains it all...what life is all about!

So...today was a special day for Charlie and I.  The last full day of just the two of us.  We will have visitor and daddy for the weekend and then Monday he will have a baby brother to share me with!  So...for a special treat we made a huge mess!!  We pulled out the finger paints (washable of course) and I laid on teh bedroom floor and let him paint my baby bump!!

I must say...the biggest mess was the tub after we both bathed off!!!  Well, the next post will have Aiden pics...so stay tuned! 

Matthew West - Safe and Sound

2 weeks to go!

Actually just a little less than that!! Our csection is officially scheduled for Mon, Jan 17th at 2:30 pm.  I can't wait to meet little Aiden and see how Charlie does as a big brother!  I'm also pretty ready to not be pregnant anymore!!! I'm so tired, sore, and uncomfortable most of the night and day.  It's rough chasing after a toddler while being preggo for sure!  Aiden is still healthy and doing fine according to my dr checkups and I am not dialted at all as of yesterday afternoon!

Chess is on his last overnight trip hopefully until the baby comes.  He was hoping to not have to leave at all in Jan, but you know how things go.  He is currently stuck on the side of the road in Illinois with a dead battery (poor guy).  I know it's rough on him traveling so much, so I'm sure this was the last thing he needed after a long day!  Say a little prayer for a safe easy trip home tomorrow!

Charlie is doing good.  He is in his terrible 2s for sure!! Some days I wonder how I will make it with two, but I'm really cracking down on Charlie and trying to get him listening.  He is doing great about sleeping in his own bed all night (praise the Lord).  That is wonderful!!  Too bad, I'm not sleeping so great as of late :( Ah well...such is life!

Well, we had a good holiday, it was strange not being in Louisiana, but we enjoyed all our visitors and Charlie really racked up.  Now, I'm having fun picking army men and such up for every corner of the house (Thanks Aunt Donna ;) )

I've been really bad about taking pic lately.  In fact, I didn't take a single Christmas or Santa pic (bad mommy!)  I'll try to do better and post some pics on the next update.

Mama's Hungry

Here are a few playing around pics my friend Hollie took of me to document the pregnancy.  I'm 33 weeks along in them.

More to come, but these are the ones she sent me so far!  My friend Carley is working on getting the stain out of the purple shirt for me and editing them up a bit :)  Thanks girly!!

Not too much to report, Charlie and I have been hanging around the house a good bit. I've been cleaning and organizing (I guess nesting).  We are going to try to get Chess to take us to the Christmas Villiage at the Agricenter in Memphis this weekend.  They have a  live nativity, live reindeer, santa, lights, rides, etc.  The only bad thing is my camera is in the shop getting a "tune up" so I'll have to depend on our phones for any good pics!!

I got on the waiting list for MDO (moms day out) program at a local church that starts in Jan.  It would be Tues and Thurs 9-2.  Charlie was with me and he was very disappointed he didn't get to stay that day!!! It would be awesome if we made the list and he loved it!!! It would give him something to do during the week and me some time with Aiden.  I was suprised, he actually CRIED that he couldn't stay!!!!  He's also doing better with sleeping.  I've been a bad momma and have been getting in bed with him most nights so we all get a good nights sleep.  Chess decided it needed to end before Aiden's arrival so he took over.  Usually, when Chess firmly tells him to stay in bed and tucks him in, he won't bother us the rest of the night.  In fact 2 nights this week, we didn't even hear from him once!!!  That is going to be a huge blessing when I'm up feeding Aiden every 3 hours, not to mention it's nice now, since I"m already having trouble getting a good nights sleep!  NOW...if we could just get the kitty kat out of the bed ;)

I got back to the dr. Monday and then back two weeks from then for my 36 week "check" and an ultrasound...I'll update more then.

Charlie and I are paitently waiting for all of our Christmas visitors to come up!! Mom, Dad, Tracy, Kim and Matt are coming up week after next for a few days.  Chess's dad and stepmom are coming up for Christmas eve and day.  Ms. Kendra and Gene are coming up the week between Christmas and New Years!! It should be fun, we miss everyone so much!!

32 weeks down...7 weeks to go!

I went to the dr this week and everything is looking good.  Baby's heartrate was 135 and he said that was normal.  My belly was growing good, which means little Aiden is growing good too!!  He is a very active little booger.  Much more active than I remember Charlie being, but I could have forgotten.  It's fun to just sit there and watch my belly do flip flops.  I go back to the dr. in two weeks and as of now, we are still planning to do a csection at 39 weeks - sometime around Jan 17th.

Chess, Charlie, and I got all our Christmas stuff out and put up Thanksgiving day after we ate lunch.  We (I) just couldn't wait...

As you can see, my little helper was very willing to help decorate the tree :)  we've been to see Santa twice and while he likes the idea of Santa, you can forget about him going anywhere near him or his lap LOL.  We even have a blowup santa in his room and he likes us to blow santa up, but he makes us turn him off before he will go in his room HAHA silly boy!

The most wonderful time of the year!

It's getting to be that time again.  I can't belive it!  Charlie doesn't remember much from Christmas last year so I am reminding him about Santa, Christmas Trees, and little baby Jesus!  He's catching on pretty quick.  Yesterday we were headed out to the mall to get some pictures made and I knew Santa would be there so I asked him a few times if he wanted to go see Santa and sit in his lap and he said he did.  He was very excited and said that he would tell Santa what he wanted for Christmas and let Santa hold him.  Well, when we actually walked in he froze up!  He got very scared and held on to me very tight.  So...mom had to sit next to Santa and hold Charlie...Oh well, better pic than last year.

2009

 2010

sorry the image is so bad, I took a pic of the pic with my cell phone because my scanner is broken.  The pictures went pretty good at Portrait Innovations too.  I just can never decide which ones to order...I like so many!

I can't belive how soon we will have another little one around here.  I am 31 weeks and we will be meeting baby Aiden in about 8 weeks or so!!  Here is a recent belly pic.  I'm looking pretty rough, just a warning!

He is a pretty active little guy.  Every night when I'm laying in bed, he really gets to kicking LOL.  Sounds like he will follow in the footsteps of his big brother -- he already loves keeping mommy awake!!  I'm having trouble getting a good night sleep, it's so hard to get comfortable!!!

I'm doing good on my new medicine.  I thought it was making me feel less tired and maybe it is, but this last week, the tired hit back full force!! It may be becasue of the above mentioned difficult sleeping...

The moms group is giving me a baby shower on December 8th!! I don't need a whole lot this time around, but it's still  a very nice gesture!! I'm sure I will get things I didn't even realized I needed again!  I did make a registry at Babies R Us and realized some things I did need!  I also found a few cuties that I didn't need, but couldn't resist ;)

Chess, Charlie, and I will be spending our first Thanksgiving away from home (Baton Rouge) this year :(  Chess is going to be on-call all week/weekend and I'm just not up for making teh trip myself this late in the pregnancy.  Not to mention, I"m sure chess doesn't wanna sit here all alone Thanksgiving Day!!  We have some friends that will be around too so we are going to thier house and will cook there!! Chess is going to try is hand at frying us a turkey!! Hope we all survive LOL  I"m going to make greenbean casserole, sweet potato casserole, pecan pie, and homemade ice cream.  I've helped mom cook over the years and feel pretty confident I won't mess those up...we will let you all know how it turns out!

Last time we were in BR charlie made his first football game (Parkview Baptist with Gran & Pops) and he also tailgated at LSU for the (LSU Vs ULL- MOnroe game)  I will leave you with some pics...he had a blast!

Trick or Treat

While Charlie enjoyed trick or treat this year, he didn't quite understand what all was going on.  He was actually sick running a fever all weekend :( and missed trick or treat in our neighborhood Sat night.  He did however enjoy helping daddy answer the door for all the trick or treaters and pass out candy! (he also ate a bit himself)  He liked seeing all the kids dressed up and thought it was cool that they were all coming to visit him for a minute!  Sunday night we got all dressed up and took him up to the church for trunk or treat...he was pretty confused by this and not really into it so we passed out candy and then stopped in another neighborhood on the way home where we spotted some trick or treaters.  He liked it better, but we only managed to hit a few houses.  I'm glad he got to go, but feel like he will do much better next year!

and here are a few of us carving out our pumpkin a few days before...now this was my first time to carve a pumpkin myself start to finish and I think it turned out pretty good!

In other news, I'm feeling pretty good.  I actually don't feel as tired as I did since taking the new medicine.  I guess that is a good thing.  I haven't taken a nap all week ;)

Charlie is growing and learning...he surprises me daily!  Today he was looking for something and he told me "It's in Aiden's room"  I didn't even know he knew that was Aidens room LOL.  We are going to work on some Thanksgiving cards for the family.  Look for them in the mail!!

Love and kisses from us all!