The Waiting Game

The waiting game is on.  I could go into labor in a matter of hours, or it could be days or even weeks away.  What a strange feeling!  I've been having some contractions in the last couple of weeks, but nothing consistent at all.  I can't get over how crazy it is to now be in this "any day now" phase.  It is really, really exciting!

 We are so ready.  We have accomplished every single thing on our to-do list.  Plus some.  Our calendar is completely clear, since we weren't sure when he'd come.  So basically we just get home from work and stare at each other :).  Last night we played games and watched a movie.  But there is really nothing that can distract us from the excitement and anticipation.  Neither of us are sleeping well.  Beckett-- we are SO ready for you to come.  Please come soon!!!  I honestly don't think your dad will survive another week of waiting for you.

I had been nesting in a big way, but now there is really nothing left to be done.  The nursery is ready.  All the baby stuff is washed.  His tiny, precious clothes are hung in the closet or arranged neatly in the dresser.  My car is clean and has the car seat installed.  The house is spotless.  The pantry and refrigerator/freezer are stocked with everything we'll need for a couple of weeks following his arrival.  The garage "guest house" is ready for my mom (and maybe dad, too) to come stay for awhile.  We've switched out our summer clothes for winter ones (are we going to have a winter this year?).  Our Christmas lights are up.  We picked out and decorated our tree, and all of our gifts have been purchased, wrapped, and placed neatly underneath it. 

We even squeezed in a couple nights at a nearby bed & breakfast as a last getaway.  I'm not sure there is anything at all left to do!  Kolby has even been nesting.  In addition to happily helping me with the long list of things to do, he raked and bagged up the leaves in the yard, installed new smoke detectors in every room in the house, and makes sure the kitchen is clean every night before going to bed. 

So now, we wait!

Thanksgiving

I am completely overwhelmed by all that we have to be thankful for this year. One thing in particular stands out (literally), but that one thing has brought on so many others as well.

 It’s hard to feel more loved than when you are pregnant. Mostly, I feel it in the way Kolby looks at me.  Or how he tells me how great of a job I’m doing carrying our son. But I also feel it in the way our family and friends light up at milestones along the way—starting to show, feeling the baby move, finding out the gender, starting to waddle. Lately I’ve felt it in the outpouring of love and generosity at our baby showers.  We are so thankful to have such wonderful friends and family. That is true every year. But this year, it all seems so magnified.

This season in our life is just so sweet. I tell Kolby almost every day how I don’t think I could possibly be any happier than I am right now. 

I absolutely love being pregnant. Carrying Beckett has been the biggest privilege of my life.

As ready as I am to meet our sweet boy, I’m honestly not ready to be done being pregnant. I’m soaking up every minute I have left!

There are a few things I want to document to help me always remember what this experience has been like.

Feeling Beckett move around in my belly has been the most amazing part of this process. He’s my little buddy. I take him everywhere I go. I always know when he’s awake, when he’s asleep, when he has the hiccups, and when he just can’t get comfortable. 

A lot of people ask me if there is anything in particular that he responds to. Yes—two things. He loves Reese’s Pieces and Kolby. He sure takes after his mama! Every now and then he’ll respond to other random stuff, but the only things that make him move around like crazy every.single.time are when I eat a handful of Reese’s or when he hears the sound of his daddy’s voice. Pretty soon after I really started feeling him move, we were at church and he was sound asleep and then Kolby read a passage of scripture over the microphone and Beckett immediately went berserk. It was the first time he recognized and responded to Kolby’s voice. I thought it might have been a fluke, but it has happened literally every single time since then when Kolby speaks loud enough or near enough to my belly to be heard. Kolby has a very distinctive voice, and it makes me so happy to know that Beckett recognizes it and will be comforted by it when he enters this crazy world. 

This guy is a mover and a shaker. He is INCREDIBLY active, and it brings me so much comfort to feel him all the time and never worry that something may not be OK. It’s rare for five minutes to pass without him letting me know that he’s just fine. What a considerate baby! Almost all of his movements can be seen and felt from the outside. Although this has freaked out more than a few people, it has allowed Kolby to be really connected to him. 

Beckett’s absolute favorite thing to do is to try to shove his foot out my side. This kid has some long, strong legs! From about 30 weeks on, the most common movement by far has been for a hard knob to poke out on my right side. And I don’t mean the side of my belly… I mean the side of my body, along my shirt seam. I have no idea how he gets his foot that far over, especially since our doctor always feels his other foot at the top of my belly. Who knows what he’s up to in there! I feel a lot of different movements but I can’t really ever tell what is what (hands, elbows, bum, etc.), except for those hard little feet pressing on my ribs and side. I can’t wait for him to be here and to watch his movements to see what I’ve been feeling this whole time. 

It’s been amazing what smooth sailing this pregnancy has been. We are so thankful. Who would have thought it would be this easy after hearing all of the gloom and doom regarding the implications of my endometriosis/PCOS?!? God has sustained this pregnancy in a mighty way. He has given us such peace, and we will carry it into not only labor & delivery but also into raising this little guy. We know nothing is in our hands and we rejoice in knowing everything is in His.

***

To keep the streak alive, here is our 38 weeks picture:

 Our due date is a week and a half away! There is no way to know when he’ll come, but our doctor guesses that he’ll come around his due date, if not a few days before. We’re ready for him whenever he decides he’s ready for us!

***

A couple other random things I'll add to this scatter-brained post....

I now have an iPhone and as you can imagine, I am loving Instagram. My username is EMILYK20 if you want to follow me; I imagine I’ll be a lot faster at posting pictures of Beckett there than here when he arrives! I’m not on Facebook, so I’m hoping Instagram can serve as an easy way to stay connected with those of you who use it as well.

Congratulations to those of you who bet that I'd weigh more than Kolby by the time the baby comes! It happened. Not sure exactly when, but it happened. I would pretend to be surprised that I somehow have gained nearly 50 pounds during pregnancy, but at Thanksgiving dinner I had firsts, seconds, six rolls and two slices of chocolate pie. And that's despite a seven pound baby sharing space in my belly. But I'm feeling great, still very active, still swimming twice a week, and my doctor still has not said a single word about how much I've gained... so I will continue to enjoy eating for two!

I don't think I've mentioned this on here before, but Kolby and I wrote a children's book for Beckett. It's his story. The title is We've Been Waiting for You. One of Kolby's previous students is illustrating it for us, and she has been passing along sketches these past few weeks. It'll probably be awhile before it's finished and we are able to have it printed and bound, but I am so excited about it!

Living Room/Kitchen Remodel

Well, it's November and our small remodel project that started back in June is now complete.  Needless to say, it took quite awhile to rope our contractor into tying up some loose ends.  But it's finished now and we're really happy with it!

Below are some pictures, although I'll apologize in advance for the poor quality.  My camera is packed in our hospital bag so I took these on my phone.  Pictures of what our living room and kitchen used to look like  can be found here.

Here are some highlights of what we did:
opened up the wall between the living room and kitchen to allow better flow
added a bar
replaced tile in kitchen area with hardwood to match the rest of the house
painted walls an oatmeal color (used to be green or dark taupe)
redecorated living room with a lot of color

We are so pleased with how everything turned out, and it makes our house seem 10x bigger.  It's so nice to have a more open space, especially when we have a lot of people over.  And there is a lot more natural light in the living room now, plus the brighter colors make a huge difference in the way it feels.

View from the front door:

Same view but rotated a little further to the right (we planned to sell our old couch but decided to keep it as extra seating):

Speaking of front doors, we got a new one (and it actually latches!):

 View from the front corner of the living room, looking toward the entryway and kitchen (the openings in the wall on the right are new):

 Dining area, including the new bar:

 Another view:

 Here's the kitchen, with the upper cabinet above the stove removed:

Hooray for a much more functional house!

Beckett's Room

We finally finished the nursery!

I am so happy with how it turned out.  I think it's perfect for our little guy.

 Vintage-style baseball cards above the changing table/dresser:

Photo wall above the bookcase--we'll sub in his newborn pictures:

 His custom closet, thanks to Kolby's dad's mad carpentry skills:

We owe a lot of THANK YOUs for all the help in bringing this room together!
 

-My mom gave up a whole weekend to come help me organize our entire house (literally) to make room for a baby.  By the end of the weekend, all of our closets were totally cleaned out and organized and the guest room was completely empty, giving us a clean slate for the nursery.  I discovered that my love language is when someone pulls into my driveway ready to put in three days of work and pops the hatch of their SUV to reveal cleaning supplies, the entire storage bin aisle at Wal-Mart, and an electronic label-maker.  I seriously have the best mom in the world.  

 

-Kolby’s mom painted our nursery.  She came over one Saturday with a ladder and paint supplies in hand, and she and Kolby knocked it out quick.  It turned out great!

 

-Kolby’s dad deserves a gold star for turning my vision for using wood boards to make white stripes on the accent wall into a reality.  He put so much work into cutting and prepping the boards so they would look and fit just right.  I think they look so great!  He also did some carpentry work in the closet to make the shelving more functional for a baby.  Kolby's sister helped, too.

 

Now I guess we just wait for Beckett to get here and enjoy it!



Fatherhood

***Written on Father's Day 2012***

 

Dear beloved,

You have the best father in the world and you haven’t even met him yet.  I think about that a lot.  If you only knew the love he has for you already!

Your dad is truly one of a kind.  It’ll be awhile before you can understand that, but rest assured that you’ll know it one day, and it will have been true all along.  He is a treasure, and we are both blessed to have him.

We don’t know yet what you will look like, but I hope your dad passes on to you his big green eyes, tall frame, good health, and iron stomach.  And we don’t know yet what your personality will be, but I hope you get his tender heart, gentle disposition, unselfish spirit, and incredible sense of humor.

One thing is for sure—you’ll need to love baseball.  It’s OK if you don’t love it at first.  I didn’t either.  But give it time, and it will grow on you.  The Texas Rangers are our team.  Watching the Rangers play is your dad and I’s special thing.  But he’s waited his whole life to have you to take to games.  Your lifetime will be full of going to Rangers' games, you can rest assured of that.  I pray that you enjoy that time with him as much as he’ll enjoy it with you.

There are two other things your dad will surely teach you to love.  The first is reading.  Your dad is an avid reader, and it’s a big part of what makes him so smart.  His favorite place on earth (other than the Ballpark) is the library.  I have no doubt that he will take you there often.  Every day if you’ll let him.  I pray that you will develop your attention span very early so that you can enjoy hearing your dad read you stories.  He does the best voices, as you’ll soon discover. 

Your dad will also surely teach you to love the mornings.  Your mom is not a morning person.  But boy your dad sure is.  I just know that you two will be morning buddies.  Whether it’s cooking breakfast, taking Maya on a walk, watching cartoons, or discussing the box score from last night’s Rangers game… the mornings will be your special time together.  I pray that you wake up as eager to spend time with him as he’ll be to spend time with you.

There really isn’t much else you need to know about your dad; his actions will tell you everything.  He’s not the closed off type.  He loves you fiercely, and not a day of your life will pass without him making you aware of that. 

You are one lucky kid,

Mom

Update

I figured it was time for an update about some things going on around here!

Our pregnancy is still going great.  One month to go!  I’m still feeling great, and we get more and more excited every day about meeting our baby boy!

Here’s our 34 weeks picture (two weeks ago).  I’m getting a bit huge.

For those of you participating in the wager over whether I’ll surpass Kolby’s weight before giving birth—the verdict is still out but I have to say the scales are tipping (literally) in the direction of YES.  We weighed in for the first time in awhile last night and the scale showed the exact same weight for us both, even out to a decimal place!  Yikes.  But technically I haven't passed his weight, and he said he's going to try to outgain me in these last few weeks (good luck!).  We'll see how that goes...

I thought I’d share about my work arrangement with regard to the baby.  I’m planning to take 11-12 weeks of maternity (FMLA) leave.  Most of it will be unpaid, but can you really put a price on snuggling with a newborn?!? :)  Hopefully I’ll be able to work up until I go into labor (likely working from home quite a bit toward the end) so that I’ll have the full time with Baby B here rather than using up any days before he comes.  Kolby will take 1-2 weeks off.  The timing worked out perfectly because Kolby will only return to work for a very short time before he is off for two weeks for Christmas break.  I know we will be so grateful to have such an extended amount of time home together as a new family!

When I go back to work, I’ll be going back only part time.  I can’t tell you how amazing it is to write that!  This is something we have wanted for our family all along and had been praying would work out.  I’ve worked really hard over the last 3 years to prove that I was worth keeping on part time, but it’s the kind of thing that you don’t know if it’ll work out until you ask and you can’t ask until you’re pregnant.  I am grateful beyond words that my company is accommodating my request.  I’ll work three days a week—Mondays and Wednesdays at the office and Fridays from home.

I am so excited about this schedule for our new family!  I’ll get to be home with Beckett a lot, which makes my heart so happy.  Kolby gets home from work around 4:30pm, so we’ll have a lot of good time all together during the week, plus weekends.  And of course, Kolby has the summers off as well as school holidays.  Sure we’ll have to make (big) adjustments to our finances, but we’re happy to give up a whole lot to avoid either of us working more.   We are so thankful to have a schedule that allows for so much time together!

As far as childcare, a friend from church will be a part-time nanny for Beckett—taking care of him at our house on days that I work.  Kolby’s mom is also going to help us a few days a month.  I’ll be sad to be apart from him, but we’re blessed to get to leave him in such good care!

In other news, we’ve completed all of our baby classes—including four childbirth class sessions, a breastfeeding class, an infant care class, and an infant/child CPR class.  I guess that means we’re as ready as we’ll ever be! :)  After the CPR class we stopped by the labor & delivery ward to see where it was and the lady behind the desk asked if we were checking in.  Ha!

We've done a lot of fun things over the past few weeks, including baby showers, trips to Wimberley and Waco, and dinners with friends and family.  We also hosted our annual pumpkin carving contest, but this year it got too big to host at our house so we moved to the church.  Kolby won the contest with this 10% cute/90% creepy entry:

Right now we’re just doing everything we can to soak up this last bit of time before the baby comes.  Sure, we are BEYOND excited to welcome him into our family, but I’m trying to treasure these last moments before the big change… last moments of being a family of two, having tons of time to spend together as a couple with no real responsibilities... and selfishly, the last moments of being the center of attention.  I know good and well that having a super cute baby in tow when we go visit family and friends means that it won’t be about us anymore :).