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!

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!

South Carolina

This is a long overdue update. About 3 weeks ago, we went to South Carolina for the weekend. It was a chance to see Kirk's family and friends and also to have our first baby shower! It was especially nice to see our sister in law Rachael and our nieces Hailey and Heidi. Rachael was brave enough to make the drive from Atlanta by herself (with a 4 year old and 1 year old!) because Kirk's brother had to work.

We got there Thursday early afternoon and pretty much went straight to Kirk's favorite BBQ place. Most of Thursday and Friday were spent running errands and visiting family. The shower was Saturday afternoon. It was so nice! The room looked great and the food was good! It was a little surreal to open all this baby stuff and realize it was for us! We got some really cute stuff! I don't really have many pictures from the shower, I'll post some more if I can track them down.

One of the cutest gifts we got was a diaper cake Rachael made. It's hard to tell from the picture, but the tiers of the cake are made up of rolled up diapers and then it's decorated with all sorts of baby gear.
Here's the only other picture I have from the shower. It's of me and Kirk and our friends Rob and Lisa....