August 15 - A Good Day for a Birthday???

Well me and Miss Emily are entering the home stretch of this pregnancy. As of today, I am 37 weeks and officially full term even though pregnancies are technically measured out 40 weeks. I am going to the doctor weekly and everything continues to look good. I went on Thursday of this week and we have made no progress as of yet and we went ahead and scheduled the c-section for Monday August 15 at 8:00 AM. Seems like a great day for a birthday to me! But then again at this point just about any day seems like a great day for a birthday to me. I guess Miss Emily will be the one to decide if the 15th is going to be her birthday or if she would like to come and see us sooner.

We have continued to get ready for her arrival. My mom came down and surprised me for my birthday the weekend of the 17th. We spent a few days shopping for a few little things that I needed for Emily. Nick also got all of our baby items out of the attic and Mom and I washed clothes and put together bouncey seats, swings, etc. After that weekend I felt like we were in great shape as far as being ready for Emily's arrival. Then we had a little excitement this week that motivated me to get some bags packed just in case. I had regular contractions for a few hours one evening. But my trip to the doctor for my regularly scheduled appointment confirmed what I had already figured out...that it was just false labor. I like to think of it as God's way of reminding me and Nick that we need to be ready whenever. So now we are ready, ready with bags packed and everything.

And to close with an interesting side note--Nick pointed out last night that the next tropical storm is to be named Emily. The depression that is in the Atlantic right now that looks to be most likely named Emily is tracking towards the Caribbean and Cuba right now and then who knows. Nick said if it tracks into the gulf, develops into a hurricane and causes destruction maybe we should consider changing Emily's name. I laughed and said as long as it took us to decide on Emily, we are sticking with it, hurricane or not! So we're just waiting here on Hurricane Emily :) We are ready for her to disrupt our lives. We just hope it's only the Emily I'm carrying or that if there is a hurricane Emily that it either stays away from here or that the two Emily's don't decide to arrive at the same time! Oh well. Out of our control but a pretty interesting coincidence don't you think?

We go next Thursday for our 37 week appointment and what will probably be our last ultrasound. I will be sure to post another update including any ultrasound pics that we are able to get next week.

Kate Has an Announcement...

In case you need a translator for Kate's video, she is trying to tell you that her baby sister's name is Emily! We have finally decided after changing our minds several times, debating over different names and living with Emily for a little while to make sure it feels right. As with Kate's names, we really wanted to try to use family names if we could agree on one. Emily is after Nonna, my Mom, who is actually Emma Lee. She was named Emma after her maternal grandmother and Lee was after her Dad, Leo, who was often called Lee.

Kate has been referring to her baby sister as Sissy for a while now but pretty recently has been able to tell us that her name is "Emma-me". The video clip at the end where she is banging the spoon she had spontaneously broken out in an "Emma-me" chant that night that was pretty funny.

Of course now that Kate is comfortably in her big girl bed, we have been able to get the nursery set up with her old furniture. Here are some pictures of the nursery in progress. It's in pretty good shape, just a couple more pictures on the wall are needed and it will be done. Next we'll need to start getting clothes, swings, bouncey seats, etc out of the attic. We're really getting ready for our newest little girl! I had an appointment with the doctor this week and there's not much to report which is a good thing. We should be a little over 5 weeks from a scheduled c-section date but we haven't scheduled anything definite yet. We'll have an ultrasound in about 3 weeks and then maybe we'll start to firm things up with the scheduled date. Of course Miss Emily could decide she needs to meet all of us on her own schedule too so we'll see!

The name just went up today

BIG GIRL @ 20 Months!

Kate was 20 months old on July 2. The big news around here for the last week has been Kate's transition from her crib to her big girl bed. The new bed was delivered on Friday June 24th and she slept in it for the first time that night. She did half way fall out of the bed (her bed has a trundle that we pulled out and she caught herself with her hands on the trundle and her legs were still in the bed) that night but handled it well. We haven't had any other problems at all since then. Kate's done great with her naps and bedtime! I guess she could sense she needed to make room for little sister. We left the crib in her room the first couple of nights as a "just in case" but moved it out last Sunday since she had done so great the first couple of nights. We wanted it to be out of sight and mind. I'm sure we're still due for some interesting nights in the future but the first week and a half has been perfect!

Big girl so proud of her new bed! This was the day it was delivered.

A few before pictures of Kate's room

And these are after. I still have a good bit of work to do. As you can see there are no decorations and I am going to get a few more things (a bookcase and a chair or little table and chair set). Her bedside table will eventually go beside the bed too once we stop using the trundle on a regular basis for fall prevention. I hope to have the room totally finished before little sister arrives. We'll see if I'm successful on that front.

We also want to wish everyone a Happy 4th of July!! We've had a great long weekend, spending time with family yesterday and looking forward to time with some good friends today!