4 Month Update

We went for Riley's 4 month doctors appointment yesterday. She is 4 months 9 days old, 15 pounds 2 ounces and 26 inches long. The doctor said she looks great! Riley now rolls over, grabs onto toys, can sorta laugh (still sounds kinda like a little grunt), squeals and yells, and is teething like crazy! She had discovered her toes and wants nothing more than to get them into her mouth! She also loves listening to her daddy play guitar.

We got the go-ahead to start her on rice cereal. She didn't really know what to think of it, but got quite a bit down! She was a MESS! She also gets to start having a little bit of water in a sippy cup. I'm hoping that she can figure out how to use a sippy cup since she still hasn't used a bottle! She was sleeping 6-8 hours a night, but for some reason has gone back to waking up about 2 times a night. We are trying to figure out how to get her back to that 6-8 hour a night because I am exhausted by the 2 night time feedings!

In 2 weeks, we head up to Chicago. Kirk's coming for just a few days and then coming back to take the junior highers on their mission trip to Chattanooga. I'll stay up in Chicago the week he is gone. We're excited to see friends and family and I'm thrilled not to have to be home alone with Riley for the week he's gone.

Here are a couple pictures from Riley's first rice cereal experience!

Pictures

Our friend Lisa Potter took some adorable pictures of Riley this past weekend. There are so many cute pictures! Here are some of our favorites!

Sweet Home Chicago

(Please ignore my spelling errors! Spell check isn't working and I'm a terrible speller! Don't judge...i have other skills!)

We just got back from almost 2 weeks in Chicagoland. It was an almost perfect visit. The highlight was definitely my sister Stacy's wedding. It was so fun to celebrate her and Brett. I'm so excited to have Brett as my new brother-in-law. He's a perfect addition to our family! Kirk officiated the ceremony which made it extra special. The ceremony was sweet and beautiful and the reception was a great party.

We got to see so many of our friends and family over the 12 days and it was fun to introduce Riley to everyone. She was such a trooper! She was totally off her schedule and didn't get good naps. It was really sweet to see her meet her Aunts, Great Aunts and Uncles and her Grumme (we call my grandma Umme and since she's Riley's Great Umme - her name is Grumme!) for the first time.

While we were there, Riley celebrated her 3 month birthday and also began chewing on everything! We think she's starting to teeth because she's always putting her hands, clothes, blankets, etc in her mouth an drooling all over the place! She slept 7-8 hours every night we were there (unfortunately- that hasn't continued since coming back. The first night home, she slept 5 hours and last night she woke up every 2 and a half hours...punk!).

I think our stomachs are still recovering from all the food! Between my mom's cooking, my grandma's cooking and hitting all of our favorite restaurants - it was basically one big food crawl! I think we are both still full!

All in all, it was wonderful. It was a little hard to come back here. It was so nice to have so much help with Riley and be able to go out with friends and be close to family. We also have come back to 95-99 degree heat here! Kirk's busy summer of youth events is about to start and I'm trying to be ok with being alone with Riley while he's gone a lot! Especially because he's taking the youth to Logan, WV - one of my favorite places! I want to go so bad, but a 3 month old and a week of YouthWorks don't really mix.

Below are 2 pictures of our trip. More to come - assuming people email me the ones they took! We didn't take any pictures ourselves! oops!

Brett, Stacy, Me, Kirk
Carrie and Christy

@ Stacy and Brett's Rehearsal Dinner

4 generations! My mom, me, Umme and Riley!

just a few of my favorites...

38 Weeks...

It's been a busy couple of weeks. Most importantly, we passed the 37 week mark which means the baby is considered full term and now is welcome to come at any time! I'm still 2 weeks away from my actual due date (Feb. 22), so we may still have a little while to wait. Kirk had a huge youth fundraiser last Saturday and that was the last major youth event we were hoping to make it through before the baby comes, so now we are just waiting on her to decide she's ready.

2 Sundays ago, the church threw us a wonderful baby shower. It was fun to celebrate with them and they have been so supportive and excited for us. People were so generous and we were able to get pretty much everything we needed for her. They played a game where we gave them a sentence that contained all the letters of Baby Tate's name and they were supposed to guess what the name was. No one guessed! We wouldn't have told them anyways, but it was funny that no one got it. It's not a weird name either! I promise! :o) It's driving people CRAZY that we aren't telling the name, but I'm so glad we're keeping it a secret. It's fun to keep it between us and not have to hear any opinions about it! :o)

Kirk's parents and grandparents came up for that weekend so they could come to the shower. It was fun to have them here and of course we made a trip to the baby store at the outlet mall and stocked up on some more clothes for her. They also helped us finish up the nursery. We assembled a bookshelf, hung shelves and hung up the quilt my friend Katie made us. We still have the final few things to put away (not sure where to put everything!) but her room is ready for her. There's a picture posted below for you to see!

I'm feeling very uncomfortable and am pretty much exhausted. I pushed it a little to hard this past weekend helping with the youth event and am still paying the price for it. I have a bad hip already and it's been killing me! I also have heartburn and I get it no matter what I eat. She also hasn't dropped down yet, so my poor ribs are still taking a beating. BUT - it's all good! It's totally worth it and it's much easier to stay positive about it all when the end is in sight. Plus, I still love feeling her move around so it's totally worth the rib pain!

We see the doctor again on Thursday. I'm not having any contractions or anything so it should be just another uneventful check up. The nurses who teach our baby class at the hospital said the next full moon is February 18 and they said that they see a lot of women go into labor on the full moon. We'll see!

Here are a few pictures...

Here I am at 38 weeks ... I feel huge! :o)

Here is the nursery. Once she comes and we tell her name, I'm going to ask my friend Becky to paint cute letters of her name to go on the wall between the shelves and the quilt.

Here is a new member of our family...our awesome new camera! We have wanted one FOREVER and a bunch of people from church went in together and got us it for our baby shower! I'm excited to learn about all the neat stuff it can do!

36 Weeks...

Here's a picture of me at 36 weeks. Notice the nice new shirt Kirk bought me that covers my whole stomach! Since I'm still trying to wear my normal (non-maternity) shirts, most of them are too short and I have to keep tugging them down. This one is nice and long! :o)

We go back to the doctor tomorrow morning since we have to go every week now. It feels like we are there a lot! It's pretty uneventful when we go, but I like getting to check on her every week. Her head is still facing down and they are guessing she's between 5 1/2 and 6 pounds so hopefully she'll stay in that position and not get too much bigger! :o)

The church is throwing us a baby shower on Sunday and Kirk's parents are grandparents are coming up for the weekend so they can go to it. It's so nice of the church to do that for us and we're looking forward to it. Once that's over, we'll be able to set up the final things and be able just to wait for her to decide to come out!

We've been taking a class at the hospital and it's been really good. I feel smarter and better prepared. The nurses who are teaching it are great and it's only us and another couple so it's easy to ask all of our questions. Some of the videos they have showed us are a little traumatizing, but oh well!

Things are going well! We're so thankful for such an uneventful pregnancy. We're just hoping and praying that she is healthy and for as easy as a delivery as possible!

33 Week Picture

Here's a picture...I'm 33 weeks. I'm starting to show enough where people touch my belly. Not so much a fan of that! :o) Her kicks and movements are getting more painful as she gets bigger. She really likes to move at night while I'm trying to sleep. Baby Girl is already keeping me up!

30 Weeks

As of today, I am 30 weeks and 1 day pregnant! Something about hitting the 30 week mark makes it feel like the baby is coming soon! The past couple days have been a little rough with some major back pain. I've spent a lot of time on the couch with my legs propped up on pillows trying to stay still. Thankfully, it's starting to feel a little better. Here's a picture of my baby belly at 30 weeks...

One of my friends does this little survey on the bottom of each of her blog posts. Since I don't have too much to update you on, I figure it'd be an good thing to do this post.


How far along: 30 weeks, 1 day
Maternity Clothes: I always have to wear maternity pants, I can still fit into some of my normal shirts. I'm pretty close to not being able to zip up my jackets and fleeces.
Sleep: I am pretty tired all the time. Thanks to finally getting a body pillow (one of those really long pillows) I haven't been having as much hip pain from sleeping. I wake up a lot to flip to my other side, but am sleeping fairly well. I am having some crazy dreams though!
Best Moment of the Week: When she started to move when she heard Kirk's voice. (Non-pregnancy related best moment of the week...Kirk taking me to see Harry Potter (finally!) and to PF Changs for dinner!)
Movement: She's starting to be a little forceful with her kicking. There's been a couple that have hurt! I love when she's moving and get nervous when I don't feel her moving around. (I know that she's napping and not supposed to move 24 hours a day - but I still get nervous!)
Cravings: Not too many. I did go to Target to return something and came home with chips and salsa, so I guess that'd be one.
Gender: Girl (unless we get a major surprise when she's born)
Labor Signs: None, thankfully. We are SO not ready and 30 weeks is too early!
Belly Button: Still an innie
What I miss: Diet Coke and regular coffee.
What I'm looking forward to: I can't wait to meet her and see what she looks like!
Weekly Wisdom: Sometimes it's better not to read too much about labor and details of it. Also people like to share horror stories about labor/babies.
Milestones: I feel like hitting 30 weeks is a big milestone! Only about 2 months left!

More Baby Shower Pictures

More baby shower pictures...

My sister Christy, my Umme and sister Carrie

Cindy and my sister Stacy

Anne (we grew up next door to each other), her mom Gail and Gail Salvatori

My Aunt Laura

My cousin Donna and my Aunt Nancy

Danielle and Sherri

Deb Ague, Jess Franco, Becky Ague, Katie Pittman and Meghan Odsliv

FCCC Friends...Christina, Erica, Carrie, Madeline and Beth

Erin and Jen

Sweet Home Chicago

A week ago, we got back from our 10 day trip back home to Chicagoland. It was a wonderful visit! We drove (a 15 1/2 hour car ride at 6 1/2 months pregnant...not the most comfortable day of my life!) and it was a long ride. The first couple days of the trip were spent visiting family and friends and indulging in some of the home cooking and restaurants we missed! It was great just to have time to hang out with people. We stayed at our friends, Jonathan and Christina Jackson's house, which was really fun and it was so nice of them to let us crash there for the week!

Once Wednesday hit, the week got really busy! Wednesday afternoon we met up with our friends Jen and Adrian to go see Lion King downtown Chicago. It was a rude reminder of Chicago traffic as it took us 3 and a half hours to go about 40 miles. We were getting a little worried that we'd miss the show! But we made it with about 10 minutes to spare. Lion King was awesome! It was so good! It was also great to hang out with Jen and Adrian. We both miss them a lot and I'm so glad we got to see them.

Thursday was Thanksgiving and we spent the day at my mom's house. There was TONS of great food (of course) and my sister Carrie, Kirk and I kept our tradition of watching the dog show and White Christmas on Thanksgiving day. We also celebrated my youngest sister Christy's 21st birthday.

Friday we had Thanksgiving with my Dad at Jill's house. It was a fun afternoon. I think our baby likes Thanksgiving food because she was moving around like crazy!

Saturday was a really fun day. Our friends Matt and Sarah got married! It was a beautiful wedding! The ceremony was really sweet and the reception was fun and a great party! There were tons of people we knew there so it was fun to see everyone and celebrate Matt and Sarah. I've know both of them since about 4th grade and we all went through youth group together. We took a picture of all the old youth group people that were at the wedding.

Matt, Kate, Me, Sarah, Erin, Lauren. Ben, Kelly & Sherri

Sunday was our baby shower. My mom, aunts, grandma and sisters hosted it. It was so special to have so many friends and family together. The decorations were so pretty (we kept them to use in the baby's room) and the food was delicious! People were so generous and so excited for us. It was so nice to see so many people after being gone for 6 months. Here are some pictures from the shower.

The sweet quilt Katie made

The cute mobile my sister Christy made

**see the next blog post for more shower pictures...I'm having some formatting issues! :o) ***

We left to come back to North Carolina really early Monday morning. It was a looonnnngggg drive back. We had no extra room in the car because of all the baby gifts as well as our Christmas presents. It was hard to leave Illinois and I would have loved to have some more time there. It was strange to realize that the next time we're back there, we'll have a 3 month old baby! (We're going back in May for my sister Stacy's wedding).

Since we've been back, I've been fighting a cold that I can't seem to get rid of. I'm also hoping to really start working on the nursery this next week. I'd like to get everything from the showers put away and start figuring out what we still need and getting it all set up. I think we're going to come back from Christmas and realize we only have about 7 weeks until our due date and I don't want to be scrambling at the end!

We went to the doctor last Tuesday and everything looks good still. The nurse was using the wand thing to hear the heartbeat and baby girl kept kicking it off! It took her 4 tries to get the heartbeat recorded since the baby wouldn't cooperate! Apparently she's feisty! :o) Since we are now in the third trimester, we start going to the doctor every two weeks now! That's a sign that we're getting close to the end!

25 Week Picture

Here's me at 25 Weeks. You can see that we now have a crib! Some of our friends gave us a crib, changing table/dresser, stroller and swing. The baby's room is starting to fill up! It's exciting to have baby stuff in the room finally! It's motivated me a little bit to start working on the room. I think that'll be a nice project to fill up those weeks in between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

We leave Thursday for South Carolina. It should be a great weekend and we get to see a lot of Kirk's friends and family and have our first baby shower! I'm so excited! Then we'll be home for 4 days before heading to Chicago. By the time we get back from there it'll be December! Time is flying by!

22 Weeks

Here's the first picture, I'm about 22 weeks. I actually don't even look as pregnant as I do in the picture...I have to put my hands like that and stick my belly out a little to even make it look like that. Oh well! According the to update I get emailed every week, Baby Tate is the size of a papaya, weighs about a pound, and is about 7-8 inches look. She is also starting to be able to hear our voices. I can feel her moving around, but no strong kicks or jabs yet.