Well, since our week was a little weird last week, I didn’t get to actually plan anything for Valentine’s Day, so it was pretty low key. 🙂

We spent the day with my mom and dad who helped me with Nathan (I honestly don’t know how we would have done last week without them!!), came home and Jon had roses for me and made me chocolate covered strawberries. So sweet. The medicine they have me on to stop my contractions makes my ankles swell terribly, so we spent our evening icing my ankles and keeping them propped up while we ate our strawberries and watched the Olympics. That, my friends, is the definition of romance! 😉

Jon painted baby brother’s room this weekend, we got the sheets on and a few loads of little person laundry done and I feel MUCH better that at least the “big stuff” is done for this little guy’s arrival!! He officially has clothes and a room – sweet boy. I have been going in his room quite a bit lately. I get so overwhelmed sometimes at what an answer to prayer this baby is. 

Yesterday, we had another ultrasound and a doctor’s appointment. Little man is estimated at 6 pounds, 8 ounces (pretty big for being only 35 weeks along!!), he’s head down and that little head is already measuring 37 weeks. BIG boy!! I haven’t started dilating, so my doctor said that I don’t have to be on bed rest necessarily anymore, I just need to take it semi-easy. Which is easier to do when I’m still having quite a few contractions throughout the day (usually the 2+ hours right before I take my meds) and my ankles keep swelling every time I stand up. 😉

Since there is the chance that he could come anytime, we decided we should go ahead and do a family date night last night. Nathan has been a trooper through all of this but yesterday we could just tell that he was needing some intentional time that wasn’t involving getting stuff done for the baby or doctor’s visits. Sweet boy. He soaked in dinner last night.

We let him stay up a little bit late and watch the Olympics last night. I could not stop laughing at him – he is definitely the cutest little bobsledder I’ve ever seen!! 😉 I absolutely ADORE his imagination!  One of the things I prayed for the most in a future husband was a man who loved to play with his kids and I am so thankful I have that in Jon. Nathan can rope him into playing pretty much anything and it just makes me that much more in love with my Jon. 🙂

Today, I’ve been taking it easy while attempting to get a few more things done around the house in between keeping my feet up. Nathan has been my “firefighter helper guy” all day and I very much appreciate him making sure my surroundings weren’t on fire and my pulse was good. 😉 Ha!

Baby brothers make good mountains, it would seem. And mamas keeping their feet up have the perfect legs for airplane runways. 😉 It’s been a good day.

Right now is one of those times where I can look back on the last few days and I just know that God had His hand in everything that happened.

On Tuesday night, the sweet Lunch Bunch totally surprised me with a baby shower when I thought we were just having a girls night hangout. SO fun – they were far too generous and we had a fantastic time just talking and laughing. We left there about 9:30 and when I got to my car, it wouldn’t start.

I was so frustrated. Nathan was already in bed and I was way across town, so my parents were so kind to come try and help me jump it. We tried about 25 times to jump it and it wouldn’t even try to turn over. My car is only about 1.5 years old, so it was still covered under warranty, but so annoying at that time of night. We ended up leaving my car there and Mom and Dad took me home.

I slept terribly that night. First thing Wednesday morning, we called the dealer and the roadside assistance and a few minutes later, I drove Nathan and the little girl I watch a few days a week back across town in Jon’s truck to meet the tow truck with my keys. Wednesday was a rough day. We had a big potty training accident with the little girl, I was already overly tired and stressed because of the car and talking to the dealer. So when we got into a little fender bender on our way home (in Jon’s truck), I just couldn’t stop crying.

We were all fine – the kids didn’t even realize we were in an accident we were going so slow and Jon’s truck didn’t even have a dent on it – but I was so upset. I called the doctor and they reassured me that baby brother was fine, I just needed to keep doing kick counts. My mom came over and helped distract me until Jon got home and they went and picked up my car which was done by then. Looking back, I’m so thankful that I was in the truck – my car sits a lot lower and it’s not made of cement, like Jon’s truck seems to be made of. 😉

About 5:30 that night, I started noticing that I’d been having a few more Braxton Hicks contractions than I normally had been having. Three hours later, I called the doctor because they were coming every 7ish minutes and were getting painful. Amazingly, my doctor was on call (I don’t think that ever happens!) and he had me try taking some Tylenol, laying down and drinking a lot of water. They didn’t stop, if anything, they just regulated more. When I called our doctor back at 9:30, he told us to come meet him at triage and get checked out. I just knew they were going to say it was all in my head and to go home, so even though Jon wanted to pack a bag, I told him I doubted we would need one. Mom and Dad came over and stayed with Nathan (so thankful for my parents and siblings this week!).

We got to triage, I got hooked up to the monitors and by then, I was having consistent contractions every 2-4 minutes. They gave me an oral medicine to see if that slowed or stopped them and it didn’t do anything, so we got admitted and I got started on an IV of magnesium to see if that stopped the contractions. They gave me a huge dose at first which made me feel so weird – my whole body just felt incredibly heavy but I didn’t get sick like the nurses warned, so that was a blessing.

Love the wallpaper my sweet boy made for me! 🙂

My contractions finally started to slow the next morning after a sleepless night. We were so thankful. And I’m so thankful that my doctor was the one on call. By 1:30 in the afternoon yesterday, my reflexes were pretty much nonexistent, so they took me off the magnesium and thankfully, my contractions didn’t speed back up and stayed irregular. After watching me for the afternoon, they decided to send me home with a prescription for an oral medication that will hopefully keep the contractions away – at least for a few more days.

So, I’m out of the hospital now, I’m taking my meds, keeping an eye on baby brother’s kick counts and I have to lay low for a few days – at least until we get to 36 weeks, which is next Saturday. I’m so excited to meet my boy but I don’t want him to come just yet!! Whatever happens, I know God has a wonderful plan for this baby and I can trust in that.

Thank you SO so much for your prayers and sweet messages and comments over these last couple of days!! I teared up so much in the hospital reading all of them – such a blessing to know that this little one is so prayed for!!

So glad to be back with this precious boy and excited/very freaked out (ha!) to see what the next few weeks hold for us! God is good. SO thankful for that.

I swear I’m not purposefully avoiding this blog. I’ve been writing as much as I can every time I get the chance, so between that, playing with my crazy boy, fighting sleep and feeding my chocolate milk and strawberry cravings (not together), I’ve been keeping pretty busy over here. 🙂

A few things we’ve been up to:

Love these last few days of me with my only boy. 🙂 I’m starting to get very sentimental/emotional about EVERYTHING (“this is the last tube of toothpaste we’ll buy until after baby brother is here!”) but nothing makes me tear up faster than sweet snuggles with my boy.

We finally got to have a birthday party for my dear sister-to-be Nicole!! After having to postpone it twice, we had a fantastic time at the Clue themed party – now you get to guess who everyone was. 😉

On Saturday, it was such a pretty day and we’d had snow a few times last week, so we took Nathan up to the back side of the mountain to do some sledding. He LOVED it.

We were so excited that Uncle Bryant came with us!!

Here’s what I did. 😉

The boys all built a snowman at the bottom of the hill. So adorable.

When we got home, we took a super hot shower and sadly the “snuggly jammies” Nathan wanted to wear were in the dryer and nothing else would apparently work in the meantime, so he opted to eat in the nearly-nude. There really is nothing better than pizza and movie nights in the living room. Especially when they are followed up with leftover birthday cake. 😉

We watched Planes for the first time and it was absolutely adorable. Nathan loved it so much that he had to draw his own Dusty the Airplane after the movie was over (jammies were done by then). 😉

Monday we had a little Valentine’s thing with the Lunch Bunch (we’re missing a few kids here thanks to moves and naps). Such fun. We love our little friends.

And today we had more fun when Evie and Gracie and their sweet mama came to play this morning! It’s been so beautiful that the kids spent most of the time outside digging in the dirt. Which I’m convinced is the main reason to be a kid. 😉 These two were just so fun to watch play today – it’s so weird that he’s getting big enough to play with friends without needing me around to constantly supervise. It was so nice to just sit in the sun and talk with Eryn while the kids entertained themselves.

We took another picture of me (FINALLY, right??! I told Jon that if we don’t get on this, this poor child is going to have zero documentation of being on the inside!). Here I am at 34 weeks – I already weigh more than I did when I delivered Nathan…I’m telling myself it’s because baby brother appears to have chubbier cheeks than Nathan did. 😉 This picture was taken at 11:30PM, so please don’t look too closely at my very tired and nearly makeup-less face.

I’m getting so anxious to meet this little guy. The countdown has officially started and so have the lists of everything that needs to get done before he comes. The last of our two-week appointments is this coming Monday and then we switch to weekly. It just makes everything so much more real.

SO, with that, Moms of more than one – what are some things I should be prepared for with this baby coming???

Well, we thought we were out of the woods when Nathan started acting pretty normal again by Wednesday – he just didn’t have much of an appetite still. But Thursday night Jon came down with the bug and Friday night we got woken up to Nathan throwing up again.

Oy.

I’m SO ready for spring!!

Today, Nathan is actually back to eating his normal horse-like proportions and things seem to be working better intestinally. 😉 Thank You Lord! We are praying that was the end of it!

So, we’ve had another weekend of just laying low and doing lots and lots of laundry.

Sunday morning, Nathan woke up and we had a quiet morning at home watching movies. I looked over at one point while they were watching a police movie and found this. SO cute. Sick or not, he still has to dress the part. 😉

Jon and I got a project partway done. Just need to find some small clocks to go under the pictures! I’m going to have them stopped on the times that the boys were born and then stop the one under our picture at the time we got married. Love those sweet babies up there – I can’t wait to find out the details about baby brother. Next month, friends! SO so close!!

Since Nathan was still kind of germy we decided to be kind to our sweet friends and not go play with all their toys at a Super Bowl party. We were very bummed to miss out on the fun. My brother Bryant and his fiancee Nicole braved the germs and came to watch it with us which was very fun. 🙂 I don’t really care that much about the NFL but I do like football. It was fun to eat all kinds of heartburn inducing foods and laugh at the commercials.

Moms of two or more out there – question for you! I’ve got pretty much everything from Nathan’s babyhood that I’m slowly unpacking. What was helpful with #2 that you didn’t have with #1??

Have a great evening!

We had a good week followed by a weekend full of a stomach bug, so we’re still hunkering down in the house in our jammies.

Last week we had a crazy, crazy day before Cubbies which turned into this little bean getting dinner at Starbucks. I kept telling myself their breakfast sandwiches had to be SEMI-healthy, right??

It was healthier before his Auntie Cayce made us Frappucinos. 😉

Saturday morning we ran a bunch of errands and that afternoon, Nathan started acting really lethargic. He would pick himself up for a few minutes and try to play and then I’d find him on the couch again. And he kept complaining about his tummy.

This was right before dinner which is typically known as “Run Out the Rest of My Superhuman Energy” time in our house. I looked over and Nathan had climbed in Jon’s lap and fallen asleep. So, I was obviously on the verge of taking him to the emergency room because I’m fairly certain this has NEVER happened before.

He started throwing up right at bedtime, I started throwing up in the middle of the night and we were both pretty much useless yesterday. Poor Jon spent the entire day doing laundry and cooking and cleaning and taking care of us. I’m doing much better today – just a little queasy. Both Nathan and I slept until 9:30, so I’m sure that helped. He’s still not quite back to his normal self but I’m hoping we will get there soon. Especially since he’s been in a Barney-watching mood lately. Oh my.

Hope y’all had a better weekend!!

Guys.

I got completely and totally spoiled rotten this weekend. I’m honestly still in shock over some of the wonderful things my amazing family did for me!!

We started on Thursday night with a card that a certain little boy couldn’t wait to give me. 🙂

LOVE. It’s my most favorite birthday card I’ve ever received. I absolutely ADORE that he drew our family on the envelope and gave me lipstick and a squiggle baby in my tummy. And he wrote “Mom” all by himself!!

Friday was my actual birthday. I woke up to baby brother kicking my hard in the ribs right before my other two boys came walking in singing happy birthday. Nathan had to present his card to me again (so cute) and we hurried up and got ready and joined Uncle Bryant and Uncle Caleb for a birthday breakfast. Then we met our dear Lunch Bunch friends for CFA and the first milkshake of the day (hey, you only turn 29 once!!). 😉 Loved seeing those dear friends!!

After rest time and some more hurrying around, we got ourselves all 1950s-dressed-up and headed to my parents’ house for a party!!

SO MUCH FUN. Love my precious family so much!!

The boys in character. 😉

All the girls. 🙂 🙂

Love the table decorations!!

I got so many wonderful gifts – seriously. Spoiled. Rotten. And they even made my current favorite – chocolate milkshakes!!

 We spent Saturday playing at the park in the morning while Jon played flag football with some friends and then my sweet mama took me out for a wonderful kid-free lunch. SO fun. We don’t get to do that very often and it was very needed!!

And then yesterday we got to peek in on this little man:

Oh how I cannot wait to kiss his precious little face!! My arms have honestly been aching just to hold that sweetness. At one point during the ultrasound he was wiggling around and he stuck his thumb in his mouth and curled his little fingers over his tiny button nose. It was so precious. I about died. 🙂 And such a blessing – he’s growing so well (he’s 4lbs and 2oz – 67th percentile already!! Apparently we are good at making big boys!!) that my doctor is feeling way more comfortable about the placenta issue. Thank you Lord! We are so blessed. 🙂

We came home and during Nathan’s rest time decided to try and figure out how we were going to arrange car seats in the car come about eight weeks. Jon disappeared in the house to get baby brother’s seat and came out with it like this:

Ha!!

It was a fantastic birthday weekend!! What did you guys do with your long weekend??

We started the weekend off right by taking this big boy to Krispy Kreme to celebrate the end of babyhood with him finally giving up his paci and making it for over two weeks without a Pull-Up. There’s really nothing like a “frinkled” donut when it comes to celebrating.

Jon went to play football with some of his friends on Saturday and so Nathan and I ran a few errands and got some “tarmel racchiatos”. 😉 LOVE our January mug from my amazing sister and very generous friends who have given us gift cards!! 🙂

Tuesday, Gammy took us bowling and out to lunch. 🙂 Such a wonderfully fun day!! I absolutely love this picture of them. 🙂

Cayce showed him the hand cooler-offer-thing and he thought it was about the neatest thing ever. He kept telling us he needed to go “warm up” his hands.

Someone was extra animated that day. 😉 Ha!

 

He rode his bike down to our neighbor’s house yesterday. We were quite the sight with him weaving everywhere on his bike, me hugely pregnant trying to keep him from crashing while still holding onto the hand of the little girl I watch a few days a week. But the weather was SO beautiful I couldn’t resist!!

I honestly promise that I’m not trying to skimp on here, it’s just I have been totally lacking in motivation for anything other than sleeping a lot, eating every few hours, craving more sleep and fighting a lot of heartburn and ligament pain.

So basically, I’m in my third trimester. 😉

Nathan has been alternating between being the sweetest helper and the grouchiest, clingiest, not obedient at all kid in the state. I feel like there’s a good dose of post-Christmas-break letdown and some weird intuition thing going on for him – I think he knows, deep down, that things are going to be changing and changing soon.

I’m trying my best to give him lots of attention and soak up every second of our last few weeks of it being just the two of us but I’m also trying to help him see that he’s very capable when it comes to doing a lot by himself because I know I’ll need my big boy to be a big helper in a few weeks.

And some BIG NEWS – Nathan is officially 1) out of Pull-Ups completely and 2) he finally gave up his baba (aka pacifier)!!

We started potty training the end of last January and he’s only had a handful of accidents in the last 8+ months. Nighttime was a different story, though. He would soak his Pull-Up every night. We tried a couple of things and then just decided that he would let us know when he was cognitive enough to go through the night without it. Well, Christmas morning, he woke up dry and SO excited about it and he’s only had one accident since then. 😉 We’ve officially switched to sleeping in undies and someone has bragged to every family member, friend and grocery store worker we’ve seen since then.

And the pacifier – we have tried multiple times to break him of his baba but it was a horrible, awful mess and each time I would be in tears, he would be sobbing for hours and it was just terrible and so not worth it. He was VERY attached to that thing! We did banish it just to the bedroom and just to his bed. We bought a very cool prize and would show it to him fairly often and remind him that if he gave up his baba, he could play with it. And this week, he came in and told us he was ready.

He has done SO well. No crying, no real sadness. He’s asked for it a few times but we just remind him that he gave it up and he’s fine with it. He’s been going to bed well and he even took a nap today without it! I’m so proud of him.

The first night he gave it up, Jon kept talking about how big he was, how he was so proud of him, how he wasn’t a baby anymore and nothing that he did was related to being a baby anymore… just on and on. By the time he was done, I was about ready to go in there and swaddle my boy again just to see if that would somehow turn back the clock! 🙁 I honestly hate how quickly time is flying past. Poor baby brother is going to bear the brunt of Nathan getting so old so fast – I’m never going to set this baby down.

Me and my biggest boy!! He came in the other day and said, “Mama, I’ll always be your baby. Have I ever let you down?” Ha! Someone’s been getting a lot of snuggles and hearing a lot of how he needs to just stop growing up so fast.

There’s a new Ninja Turtle fad at my house and Nathan has gotten very into drawing them. So cute. He’ll make up the most complex plot line stories about these guys and it’s so fun for my writer’s heart to hear! The TV show is still a little too big for Nathan, so making up our own fun is even better. 😉

We ran in Starbucks to get our free espresso drink this last weekend and there was a group of people all sitting there, working and talking and Nathan just hopped into the empty seat and joined them. I’m really worried about this anti-social kid of mine.

First night of NO PACIFIER! He’s been getting SO chapped from the cold so we’ve been greasing up his face with lanolin every night – poor kid doesn’t need a nightlight thanks to the shine from his face.

Playing with his prize! We played with this all day yesterday and it was the first thing we grabbed this morning. 🙂

Now it’s off to nap. Um, I mean write. Write. Must write.

This morning has been one of those rude awakening kind of mornings. Jon went back to work, we went back to our regularly scheduled routines, I had to be up before 7:30 and someone under four feet tall kept insisting that he needed to eat today while I moaned in the fetal position from the bed. 😉

I’m so thankful that my horrible cold is over, my nose, eyes and other facial features are back to their usual color and size and my morning nausea has quieted back down. Because, honestly, if I’d woken up this morning like I did on December 30th, I would have just called it quits right then and there.

We had a wonderful break! We have all loved being home these few weeks. We got a lot done around the house, we hung out just the three of us for a bunch of it and there was a big chorus of “I’m going to miss you tomorrow” “I’m going to REALLY miss you tomorrow” “I am going to REALLY REALLY miss you tomorrow” between me and Nathan to Jon yesterday as we prepared to re-enter reality.

This kid just makes me laugh. He put his hat on himself and it’s pretty obvious that he’s already trendier than either me or Jon.

He also is apparently in a growth spurt because neither Jon or myself have gotten an entire meal or snack or ourselves in a few weeks. That’s Jon’s milkshake he was chugging down. And “I’m hungry” has become like the end of a sentence around here. “Good morning, Mama. I’m hungry.” “I can’t find my blue marker and I’m hungry.” “Frogs are really gross looking. I’m hungry.”

My beloved sister gave us the January espresso mug from Starbucks which means that every day this month, we get to take it in and get a free grande espresso drink of our choice. We sing her praises every day. 🙂 This little guy has perfected his new favorite of Mom’s drinks and went in and ordered one from Cayce yesterday. “I need a decaf, tarmel racchiato wif a straw and ice.” My favorite part is the “need”.

One of our projects this break – the baby’s room! We have a LONG way to go in getting it all clean and painted and ready but the playroom is no longer a playroom and we’re all getting used to toys being out of there. It’s actually been a very easy transition but I wanted it to happen way before March so it wasn’t a horrible struggle getting everything in it’s place right at the end. Can’t wait to get in there and decorate!!

Yesterday we were lounging on the bed in our jammies and Nathan laid his cheek against my tummy to “listen” for his baby brother. He was just laying there, talking to the baby when he got a good swift kick in the face. Nathan thought it was hilarious. Ha! Such a precious moment!

Well. Time to get back to our regular routine. I guess that means I need to come up with something for dinner here pretty soon. 😉

What did you guys do over Christmas break??

It’s been very quiet on here!! I’ve been soaking in time with the family, time with my grandmother who came in town and time with dear friends. We’ve been busy!! Too busy, apparently, because the past few days I’ve been feeling a little run down and then today I woke up with a killer cold. Yuck. Praying it doesn’t last long!

I love looking back at our year!! 2013 was full of big accomplishments for our little bean and so many surprises!

We started in Disney World the beginning of January. 🙂

Someone took off his last diaper and put on his first pair of big boy underwear in January as well.

In March, Nathan skied for the first time and LOVED it.

He also learned how to get on and off his swings all by himself.

We soaked up the last few days with dear friends before they moved.

And we soaked in the warmer weather!

We built our very first garden and put the finishing touches on first. 😉

And we got our biggest surprise of the year after two years of trying, three failed IUIs and during the middle of our summer off. 🙂

This sweet face turned three. THREE.

We swam. And swam. And swam some more. We fell in love with jumping off the diving board and learned to swim without floaties.

We lived at the library this summer and found LOTS of new favorites!

We added a new sister-in-law to be!!

And we started our very first year of Awanas.

Then we added our second sister-in-law to be!!

Mama kept on growing and growing and growing. 🙂

 Someone had too much fun in his Halloween costume.

We fell in love with this sweet face.

And we found out baby boy #2 was joining our family in 2014. 🙂

We hung out with the California family in Flagstaff for Thanksgiving.

And did our traditional Christmas pajama party with the Mangum side.

As we bring 2013 to a close, I’m just so overcome with all the blessings we have been given this year! We started coming off the hardest year we’d ever faced and are ending this year looking forward to what is shaping up to be the best and biggest year we’ve had in a while. God has been so good – I can’t wait to see what amazing things He has planned for us in 2014!!

I have been and will continue to be praying for you this coming year. I’m praying that you and your dear ones are filled to full of the love of Jesus and that we all just learn more and more about the love of our Savior this year.

Love to you,

Jon, Erynn and Nathan 🙂