Yes, we are STILL Waiting!!

Wow, time slips by when you are losing sleep, recovery from a cold and trying to organize a house that was torn apart to install carpet. Plus I am totally enjoying that I don't have to do anything if I don't want to, so when I go to the store I take an extra 45 mins to wander around looking at anything and everything...thank goodness for Super Target.

So to answer the question, have we had the baby yet? No, we haven't but are trying everything to get him to come. Tomorrow is Travis's 29th birthday and my hope is that Jackson will come then, but it's any one's guess. I'm still not showing any "signs" of pre-labor to the Dr but I have had some contractions but there just not consistent enough to get excited about.

Our house looks great though! Travis has all the trim for Jackson's room cut and in place, just needs to be nailed in place tomorrow. Here's some pics....
Jackson's room before the new paint & Carpet

New paint, new carpet, new trim and new outlet plates. When all the furniture is moved in I will post the Finished Product.

Travis hanging out, waiting for baby
New carpet in our room. This is from the bedroom door where there is a little sitting area before you step down into our room. The white spots on the wall are from some railings that we took out on Sunday. The room looks a lot bigger with out them, plus they were ugly! Travis has to touch up the paint on the trim and wall.
And baby makes no room. This is our pak-n-play which has a bassinet in the top of it and a changing table. It is a whole heck of a lot bigger than I thought it would be. This view is from the sitting area.

Pak-n-play to the left, looking back towards the sitting area. The bedroom door is around the corner to the right. Don't really care for the burnt orange recliner, but it is sooo comfortable. Used to be Travis's Papa's from the 70's and is still in great shape. Good thing orange is coming back, I guess.

The office has the same color carpet as our bedroom. You can see we still have stuff to put away.

Travis tiled this hallway back in May. I think he did an awesome job.

Another monsoon we had a few weeks ago. This is our front walk. Can you tell a geologist lives here? Look at the rock garden on the right.
The rain pouring off of the back patio cover.
Crissy getting respite from the humidity in the pool at 9:30 pm.

Prayers needed for the sick

Well my sneezes from Tuesday turned into a full blown head cold with a severe sore throat late Tuesday night. Why is it that you always feel worse at night? So yesterday I called in sick, (HA! HA!) and just laid around all day long, because that is all the energy I had to do. When your body already aches from being 9 months pregnant and you get a cold, it ends up feeling more like the flu.

Then Travis, who never gets sick, came home last night as white as a sheet. He has the stomach flu!! He slept in the other room so he wouldn't share his germs with me, but judging from the past, I usually ALWAYS get whatever he brings home.

Oh and to top it off, I started having contractions last night that were coming exactly 30 mins apart, lasting 30 seconds. This only went of for about 3 hours, but I was thinking in my head...NO, this can't be happening right now, we are BOTH extremely sick!! But just as quickly as they started, then they quickly stopped. Going to call the Dr today to make sure that is normal.

If you are the praying type I sure would appreciate a few for Travis and I, were both still feeling pretty yucky this morning. Thanks!

1st Day on the Job

Well today is my 1st OFFICIAL day as a "Domestic Engineer" aka...house wife, but I hate the latter so I'll stick with the D.E., thank you very much.

My day started off early by getting up and wandering around the house, making lists of things that I would like to get done before the "labor day" event of the summer. Then I went to my Dr's appt (we are on a weekly basis now) only to find out that NOTHING is happening. He checked me and said that the baby hasn't even dropped yet, which I beg to differ, because I swear I can breath a whole heck of a lot better and I feel as if I can eat more too with out getting stuffed so fast. Maybe he just moved south a little and didn't actually "drop". It was kind of disappointing to hear that things aren't moving along, but that may not mean anything either. I have been having contractions, though they are sporadic and too few & short to count, needless to say they are happening. In other great news...I am getting a cold! Must be from the freezing cold temps we are now keeping the house at. I refuse to endure the humidity any longer and want to be comfortable these last few weeks, so Travis has agreed to shell out the extra $$ and let the A/C be set at 75, all I can say is, Praise God!! We thought about taking the window unit out of the shed (yes, Travis has A/C in his ridiculously HUGE building he calls a shed (9' x 15'), plus 2 lofts to boot....let's just put it this way, we could convert it into a pool house if need be) but if we take it out then there will be a huge hole in the side making it easy for rain and birds to go right on in. So, since I'm due in only a few weeks, we will just cool the entire house, instead of just the bedroom. In the long run it does make more sense.

Other big news!! Copper recently got sick and decided to do it in the babies room so....We are getting new carpet and it will be installed next Monday!! We wanted to wait until after Christmas, but when Travis tiled the hallway in May, he saw how gross it was under the carpet and just couldn't imagine bringing home a new baby to such grossness (I bet the carpet is about 10 years old). I said that it would be fine and we could wait till January, but after cleaning up Copper's mess...we decided that sooner would be better. Thank goodness we only have carpet in the bedrooms, so it won't be too bad. Except we have to move everything out in to the living & dining rooms, which will suck but be worth it in the end. I'll post some before and after pics later.

Well I better scoot, I have a birthday lunch to go to and then off to the grocery store. This schedule it crazy....wink, wink!

My new job

Today marks the beginning of a new season of life for us, well for me anyway. I am no longer working!?? I'm really nervous about it and excited too. Our house needs a lot of deep cleaning and I need to start labor, so for the next few weeks I will be cleaning from top to bottom.

Well, what else is going on? Travis is still working on Jackson's room. The walls and ceiling are painted, as well as the trim. We are now waiting on the new carpet! After Travis tore out the gross carpet in our hallway to lay tile, we thought it would be best to have the carpet installed before the baby and our family came to visit. It will be a pain for a few days, since we have to move everything out of the bedrooms, but worth it in the end.

I am 36 weeks now and feeling extremely uncomfortable. Everyday I just can't imagine feeling more uncomfortable than I am and then the next day I wake up and it's worse than the day before. I just keep focusing on the finish line and getting to hold Jackson for the 1st time, oh what sweet relief that will be!!

I will be able to update this more too, since I am now what Travis likes to call me "A lady of leisure."

Have a good long weekend!

Um, could you carry this for a few minutes?

So the big news is yesterday, Monday, August 7, we had another ultrasound done by the Doc and Jackson is weighing in at a healthy 4lbs 5oz. With seven weeks still to go, probably shooting for a good 8lb baby, which is fine by me. I want a big healthy baby, plus I know how to say "E-P-I-D-U-R-A-L Please!!" No wonder my back has been killing me, I would just love for someone to carry my tummy around for just a few minutes, that's all, I'm not looking for all day, I would just love a few minutes here and there for someone else to carry the load and give my poor back and especially my bad hip a break. Thank goodness for swimming pools! Not only do they cool a gal off, but she can feel as light as air in it! I'm sure I look like a bobber floating around that thing in my red swimsuit, but I don't care, it's sweet relief!

OK, so here's kind of a funny story I should share with y'all. Mind you my hormones are raging and my patience level is off the charts, so for this lady to have walked away without a little lip from me is pretty much AMAZING!! So, I know that there are women out there that had horrible pregnancy's. Some who have carried 10 to 13 pound kids well past their due date. I'm sure there's even those that have had worse temperatures and climate to deal with than me. I am not going to down size your experience in any way, especially when some of those women feel as if their childbirth experience was their right of passage, the way they brought life into this world can never be compared to again. I just pray that I learn from this and when I see a pregnant girl in the store or just in passing, I will just smile at her and SHUT MY MOUTH!! Seriously! I had a lady in Albertson's notice my condition, then felt the need to walk all the way across the produce section to where I was, just so she could share her story of giving life to her son in the hottest summer on record for North Texas....summer of 1980!! I listened patiently and then thought to myself..."why do some women find it so necessary to share these horrific stories with pregnant women they see? I can't change it for them, it's not benefiting me in anyway, I didn't ask for their opinion and even if I do have a hard time in delivery it still won't compare because according to you, you had it so much worse!!" Oh and don't ever tell them that this is your first baby....that's when they really pounce! Thank goodness these incidents have been few and far between, there may have been a different outcome to our conversation.

Well I guess my first wave of sleepiness if finally going to hit (right now...11:31 pm) so I should ride it in so I can get my first 3 hours of sleep for the night. I am truly prepared for a new born, I sleep in 2-3 hour intervals and am awake for 1-1 1/2 hours in between.

Thought I'd post one more of Meagan's pictures......she's got great filters on her camera so she can make anyone look good :-)




OK, one more...

Preview of Meagan's awesome work!

OK, Meagan I hope you don't get too mad if you see this, but I just had to cheat and show off a peak of your great work! Meagan, my friend who is this AMAZING photographer, came over to our house on Saturday morning and took some maternity shots as well as some of Travis and I. She is so good....here let me explain just how good she is. You see, Travis always gets this uncomfortable stance when he gets his picture taken and we end up with these pictures where Travis has this weird smirk or a smile with a hair-lip, so after Meagan figured this out, she backed up from us and starting shooting so Travis didn't even know what she was taking photos of and in the process got some amazing expressions on his face that every other photographer has missed. She's even better with kids, can't wait to see her work with Jackson's baby pictures.




This picture was taken in our front yard. She says that she still needs to "edit" them, and that these are the "raw" Meagan...my opinion either you got the talent or you don't, and clearly these are great! Her blog is linked over on the left, if you get a chance you should take a look at it, she does great family pictures with kids too. If you live in Fort Worth you should take advantage of having her here in town. She's good and she's got a great personality!

THANK YOU MEAGAN, this was a great gift!

Just keep growing & growing & growing...

Just how far can your skin stretch? Wow, let me tell ya I am just amazed at how large my stomach has gotten and yet I still have 8 weeks left.




This next picture Travis took while we were looking at some land west of Fort Worth for him to hunt on. Kind of hard to see the country side when you have a larger gal standing in your way. Although he doesn't say much about my ever expanding waistline, his eyes say more than he could ever express. I think he is just amazed as I am that I could be stretched this far!


These next pictures are HILARIOUS! If you are from Wyoming you are familiar with the drive-thru liquor stores we have. These stores usually have a lane that you pull your car up along side the curb and someone will come out a sliding glass door to get your order. Well in the state of Texas drive-thru liquor stores are against the law, consumers are required to actually be inside the establishment to purchase. So to get around that law and still provide the convenience of a drive-thru a lot of places have come up with this idea. They just knock down some walls and create a lane that you can drive thru inside the establishment. Every time I see one it just cracks me up.


Of course it is hilarious to Texans that Wyoming allows drive-thru's but enforces a drinking and driving law. I never really looked at it that way, and now that I see it through different eyes, it does seem pretty funny. Sometimes we just got to look at things through someone else's eyes, even the idea of a drive-thru liquor store.


Have a good day!