Taylor - May 2009

Wow, the last 20 days have been amazing with our new addition, Taylor!!! She has been a wonderful baby and watching her each day (and night!) is such a joy. Alan and I are learning how to change diapers, swaddle a newborn, clean spit up, and all kinds of other things we have never done before :-) We're pretty comfortable with it now and could change diapers in the dark if we had to!

Taylor has had 2 doctor's appts so far and at her 1 week checkup she was 7lbs, up from her birth weight of 6lbs 10oz. At her 2 week checkup she was at 7lbs 4oz and 20 inches long. She eats CONSTANTLY and is fattening up pretty quickly and getting kissable chubby cheeks.

Here are a few pictures of the past few weeks . . . Enjoy!

Introducing...Our Daughter, Taylor!!!

I'm (Alan) home for a quick second so I thought I'd post a few pictures of Miss Taylor Grace for everyone's enjoyment. Taylor and Anna are doing great, and we will probably be in the hospital until Thursday. Expect plenty of more pictures in the coming weeks! Thank you to everyone for the phone calls, text messages, e-mails, and facebook posts!

Big Ol' Belly and Painting Fun

So . . . yeah . . . my belly is big now. I'm at 33 weeks and now that I know I'm only going to 37, I couldn't imagine going all the way to 40! Sometimes I don't feel that big, but then Alan reminds me by saying, "Dern, you lookin' pregnant TODAY!" He's so sweet. Minus the constant uncomfortable-ness, being pregnant isn't so bad. I haven't been too sick and I'm very grateful for that.

My belly button is like a sneaky little thing these days. It's always trying to poke itself out and be seen by the world. I've kind of given up on hiding it - what's the point?

My dad and Alan are painting the nursery this weekend and it is looking great so far. It's a pale tan color (??) with white trim everywhere. We wanted to do something plain so that we could dress up the room with other things and also not have to paint it again if baby #2 is a boy. Thanks Daddy and Alan!!!

Anna's Update and More Ultrasound Pictures

Ok, it's Anna again. Alan commandeered my blog a few months ago and just would NOT let me post for the past 6 months no matter how much I begged him. kidding :-) Anyways, I actually have a few moments where I'm not working or sleeping and decided I wanted to share some of the pictures from our ultrasound from Thursday (3/26).




Taylor Grace (the name we've chosen for our little squirt) is quite the flexible little monkey inside my belly. On Thursday she was in the breach position and once we saw the pictures it made sense to me what the kicks and lumps inside me actually were compared to the body parts we saw on the u/s. She is completely folded in half right now with her legs up next to her head. In some of the pictures her knee is smooshing in her nose and her feet are above her head! The position she was in made it a little tough to get some face shots, but we could definitely make out her little sweet face in a few, along with some floating umbilical cord as well! Some of the squiggly lines around the bottom of her face are the cord and these pictures, while amazing, are sometimes quite freaky!

So we're down to a little over 5 weeks before Taylor's planned appearance. We have a scheduled c-section date of May 5th, pending the results of an amniocentesis on May 4th. If her lungs aren't developed on the 4th, then we'll just wait a week for the birth. I cannot believe how fast time is flying by. It seems like forever ago that we found out we were expecting, but the last few months of me growing and the arrival getting closer have just flown by so fast!

Getting Ready

We've been trying to get the house prepared for the impending arrival, and recently got our nursery furniture. Here are a few pictures of the current state of the nursery. We will be painting and hanging curtains in the next few weeks, then will be hanging other decorations and making some other changes afterward, but we thought we'd share some pictures of how it looks right now.

Ultrasound Pictures

As I promised, here are a few pictures from Anna's ultrasound on Monday. We were told that the baby is now about 2.5 pounds and is looking very healthy, which we were obviously very happy to hear. Anna is feeling pretty good, and it's probably in my best interest to not say how much she weighs. Enjoy the pictures!

These are all 3D ultrasound pictures, and while I think they're kind of scary because the fluid shows up as well as the baby, it's really cool to see her mouth, nose, and the rest of her face. Also, it's good to see, according to the first picture, that she's already nice and southern. Only about 2 more months until she arrives, y'all!

Second Ultrasound (coming soon)

Anna had another ultrasound yesterday, but we didn't get a disk with the pictures on it. We were given some printed-out pictures, but I haven't had a chance to scan them and upload them, but I will try to in the next day or so. In the meantime, I thought I would share a picture of Anna practicing using a baby gift. Needless to say, the subject who she chose to practice with was not too happy, and I had to come to the rescue before Anna had her face scratched off.