1 Month!

Happy One Month Birthday Riley! It has been a crazy, wonderful, challenging, exhausting, exciting month. Riley is up to 8 lbs 14 ounces and doing great! She is getting her days and nights straightened out which has meant more sleep for mom and dad! She is getting bigger and cuter every day! I'm feeling better as I continue to heal from the c-section and a bout of mastitis. There has been a few rough days for me and a couple late night phone calls to the doctor and some extra doctor appointments, but I'm doing better now. Kirk is such a great dad. He is so good with Riley and so helpful. Riley loves him and I think we have a daddy's girl on our hands! This month has gone by in a big blur! Days feel long, nights feel longer, yet the month has gone by so quickly! We've had great visits with family and Riley has loved meeting all her grandparents and looks forward to continuing to be spoiled by them! I will post pictures soon. We have a new camera and a new computer. Between my sleep deprivation and lack of technological skills, I can't figure out how to get the pictures from the camera to the computer, so once I figure that out I'll get them posted on here. I will try and post more often. Until then, Happy One Month B-day Riley! WE LOVE YOU!

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!

Weekend

Kirk's parents came to visit this weekend. This was the first time we've seen them since we told them we were pregnant so some baby stuff was definitely on the to do list for the weekend. We spent a good amount of time at the baby stores at the outlet mall looking at all the cute clothes. We discovered that Kirk is going to be way more of a sucker for buying cute baby clothes than I am! He was really sweet about it...he only would buy stuff with soft fabrics b/c he didn't want anything to be uncomfortable on her. We got a few really cute things but tried not to go overboard since we have showers still and a few more months before we need clothes! Kirk's mom and dad also bought us the crib mattress as a shower gift, so it's nice to have that. We don't have a crib yet, but are getting one soon. Some of Kirk's close friends are being super generous and giving us a bunch of their old baby stuff, the crib being one of those things. We also got a 2 packages of diapers. I guess it's good to stock up early on those! We had a great time with them and I definitely wore myself out!

We also got our Christmas gift from his parents early. A new couch! We feel like grown ups because it's literally the only piece of furniture in our living and dining rooms that isn't from IKEA! Not that I don't love IKEA, but I feel like we have a real piece of furniture now! Our other couch is a 2 seater, so it's nice to have a couch you can actually lay down on.

I'm still feeling pretty good. I did manage to somehow hurt my back while putting groceries away today. I think I just pulled a muscle in my lower back, so I'm currently enjoying a pain that starts in my lower back and goes all the way down my right hip and down my leg a little. I'm not sure if those muscles actually connect to my hurt back muscle - but somehow the pain made its way down there. I'm hoping that the pain eases up sooner than later.

We are going to South Carolina November 11-13 to see Kirk's family and have our first baby shower. We are both really excited about the weekend. Kirk's brother and sister in law will be there so we get to see them and our 2 nieces as well, which will be great! We haven't been able to see them in a while!

We're less than a month away from our trip to Chicago. I can't wait! I'm counting down the days!

This week will be 23 weeks...only 17 weeks left to go, if she comes on her due date! Which if any of you knew my grandpa and grandma...she probably will be born on time, it's in her genes! :o)