Baby Watch 2013

Well it seems as though everyone is on baby watch now. Miss Emmalynn isn't due till April 17 (8 days away!!!) but everyone, myself included, is getting impatient! I can not wait to have my sweet little girl in my arms. I can not believe that we are so close. I feel like it was just yesterday that I saw those 2 pink lines and my life was forever altered. I have been so blessed with a healthy pregnancy. I wouldn't call it easy but I definitely can not and will not complain. Josh and I have been working double time to get the house ready for out of town family and guests. The nursery has slowly come together. I still need to hang a few things and find a rug but we are so excited about how it turned out. We've had to make changes here and there but it is exactly what I wanted. I'm slightly jealous, haha.

At my last doctor's appointment, my fluid levels were a little low. Still in the normal range and the doctor wasn't to worried about it. Just said we would monitor it and see where we are at my next appointment. I go back Thursday and I'm hoping everything is the same or we've progressed even farther. She has dropped even lower than the time before and everything seems great except I'm not dilating.  Several people have told me that they did not dilate until after contractions had began and they were already in the hospital. I'm hoping there will be some kind of change come Thursday. We'll see!

Please keep Josh and I in your prayers as we get ready to start this new chapter in our lives. We are both very excited but at the same time, scared out of our minds. This past weekend I couldn't help but think, "This may be our last weekend without a baby". It makes my heart race when I think about it. I'm going to be a Mommy. Josh and I created a life and we are going to be parents.

I will try and keep everyone posted and updated as the countdown continues. I appologize for lacking in the blog update but as you can tell, we've been pretty busy. Who knows, maybe the next time I update, it will include pictures of our beautiful Emmalynn.

Nursery and other ramblings.

It's hard to believe we've only been in our house going on 3 weeks. We officially moved in on President's Day (Feb 18, 2013) and have been going non-stop ever since. Its starting to come together and not be as overwhelming as it was. I made sure that the master bedroom was not cluttered and was as unpacked as it could be so that we would have somewhere in the house that we could rest. Master bathroom? Yea, that's another story. Haha. But everything is coming together and I couldn't be happier! We've even made our first house payment! We are official :)

I wasn't about to post a picture of our actual account, haha.



I'm starting to get worn out a lot quicker now than in the beginning of the pregnancy. Unfortunately, its making it harder to get anything accomplished at the house. After working 7-8 hours and going to class, all I want to do when I make it home is sit down and relax. Josh has been so amazing through it all. I feel horrible at times that I'm not contributing more than I am. He is working so hard to make sure that this house is our home. I am so blessed to have him in my life. We have come so far in our relationship and I can't help but fall more in love with him everyday.

Awe :)

But enough of the mushy stuff, haha. Yesterday was officially the 34 week mark leaving us with roughly 6 weeks till we meet Miss Emmalynn. I'm starting to get nervous and antsy. I've always been good with kids and Josh calls me a baby magnet because we can't go into a restaurant without a baby making faces and playing with me from across the room, but its different now that its MY baby. I don't want to screw this up. I want to make sure she has the best possibly life and has all her needs met. It's a scary thought that I am going to be in charge of not only my own life but another little person's life too. I pray that I will be the best mother I know how to be.  

Josh and I started working on the nursery last night. The plan was to go in, tape off,  and then measure some things but not to really start painting till tonight. Well....We got carried away. We ended up painting the first coat of pink as well. I mainly wanted to see if it was the color I had in my head and I am happy to say that once it started drying, it was! I took a few pictures but I don't want to give too much away just yet. I have a few ideas and hopefully it works out! I have looked on Pinterest and Google for weeks for ideas and inspiration and compiled several things that I liked. In the end, it was a cake that I got the most inspiration from, haha. I know right? A pregnant lady getting her inspiration for the nursery from a cake. 

Is this cake not adorable?!

Inspiration. All the different patterns blended, love this!

This is also inspiration. Love the pink and black together. 

The pink has been bought. 2 gallons of it to be exact :)

Playing in her room.

Its PINK!



Hopefully I can achieve what I have pictured in my head. Sometimes things are always better in your thoughts than in real life, haha. Oh and Josh's mom is being super awesome and making the bedding for us. I just can't justify spending $300+ on bedding. Its ridiculous the amount of money people pay for things like that. Emmalynn isn't even going to be in her crib in the beginning nor is she going to be in there that long after (or so I'm told). Crib bedding is either way expensive and/or looks really cheap. I wanted something special and something that would pop in the room but I'm not willing to fork over a lot of cash. When it came to the nursery, we didn't want something too "baby" either. I wanted something more that she could grow into and we could possibly just change furniture and decorations rather than have to paint the entire room over as she got older. Hopefully she likes pink just as much as her Mommy does :)

This is what I found and fell in LOVE with.

We are doing a hot pink instead of the light pink.

I'm sure you are all bored out of your minds now so I will leave you with a few things I ran across while playing on the Internet.



This one made me tear up a little. Silly hormones.

And yes, I have started to get stretch marks. Not too bad though.

A friend actually said this one to me the other day, made me laugh.



Official Homeowners!

On a total un baby/maternity related topic, WE ARE OFFICIALLY IN OUR HOME NOW!!! Yay Us!! Josh and I spent our first night there last night. Still feels odd, more like we are just visiting somewhere than it being "ours" but we'll get over that :) We had some able bodied friends come over yesterday and help do all the heavy lifting and such and we re-paid everyone with beer and pizza (I had a coke). Our bedroom is set up and almost complete. The rest of the house is another story but we'll get there. Its taken us so long to get to this point I just want to stop and enjoy it some.

Miles is adjusting just as well as I thought he would. He went through and marked his territory and laid down. He is so lazy. Poor Ella was slightly traumatized from the trip from the apartment to the house that once we got to the house, she was nervous and scared. I felt so bad for her. Showed them both where their food was and the litter box and she finally found a safe haven under our bed. I'm sure the smell of it and everything made her feel better. We usually shut our door at night and not let the cats in but because of everything going on we didn't want to shut her away so soon so we left the door open and had two heaters in bed with us most of the night. As soon as we turned the lights off she came out from under the bed and was on top of us in no time. All four pounds of her is almost like a tickle when she walks across you. I wish I could say the same about all 30 pounds of Miles. He feels like a small car digging into you, haha.

But waking up in our place was such a great feeling. Josh and I could not stop smiling. We have worked so hard to get to this point and I'm so happy that we can bring Emmalynn into such an awesome house where she will have room to grow and play. As we get more things unpacked, I will take some pictures and post so you can see all the hard work we've accomplished.

Maternity Photos :)

I received a free photo session with a local photographer here in Chattanooga and thought it would be a great idea. Free session, all I have to do is pay for prints of anything I like. No big deal. Well, Josh couldn't go with me so I asked my brother in law to take a few shots of the both of us this past weekend. A few shots turned into hundreds of shots. We took pictures all day and had a blast. Even froze some to get a good shot and boy did we get some GREAT shots. James has some true talent when it comes to taking pictures. Its hard to pick just one picture as a favorite so I have included several for your viewing pleasure :)

Ready to pop!

I didn't think I wanted any naked belly shots, but I love this one!!

Is this not just too cute?!

I love the way he looks at me.

One of the favorites of the day. Love the sun behind me.

Our sweet miracle, the product of our love <3

She is going to have him wrapped around his finger.

Cute little shoes!

Our family is growing by 2 feet!

Hopefully at some point I will get the proofs from my other photo session. I wasn't too happy with how my appointment was rescheduled so many times (once after I drove all the way to Soddy basically) and I didn't even get the full hour that was promised. But alas, free is free and you can't complain. The worst that happens, I don't buy anything and I get to enjoy the amazing shots my brother took :) Now to just figure out which ones to frame! 

Just an Update :)

It's been awhile since I've been able to post but we have had a really busy life as of late. We FINALLY closed on the house! Yay!!! We have literally been trying to close and move in since October of last year. It has been such a long and excruciating process but it is all done and now we can call it home, almost. We closed on January 28th and basically started renovations as soon as we could. We have been painting like mad men and Josh has even been doing some demolition in the basement where there had been a water leak. All are hard work is paying off though, we move in on Monday! And I can not wait.

In other news, baby Emmalynn is doing great. She is constantly moving and kicking and she LOVES music. I think she dances when she likes a song that is on. She is typically more active when I'm singing at church but I went and watched Josh play with the Monday Night Big Band and I have never felt her move the way she moved that night. She apparently either likes Jazz music or live instruments. It was so amazing watching her move the way she was. I don't think I will ever get tired of feeling her inside me (and yes, she has causes some slight pain at times).  We attempted to have a 3D/4D ultrasound last week and Miss Priss is sitting breech so it was difficult but she didn't help any either. She wanted to play with her feet the entire time, haha. We would watch her grab her foot and cover her face the entire time. She was sucking on her toes, haha. It was sweet but Mommy and Daddy would have loved to have gotten better pictures since we did have to pay for them. But I will settle for healthy and happy baby any day :)

These were some of the better pictures from our visit. You can see her chunky cheeks :)



And this is me at 30 weeks. All belly!

Josh and I also had the chance to visit some friends in Murfreesboro one weekend. It was nice to get away for awhile and forget about everything that was going on (we were still in the process of buying the house). We went to Nashville and protested at the capital for gun rights. It was the first time I had ever been to a protest and it was actually very interesting. So many people fighting for what they think is right. Now I don't care what your point of view is on the issue but I do believe that no matter the side, you should use your voice. Speak out and let your leaders know how you feel. Otherwise, we are just going to sit back and get ran over.

Our First Protest





After the protest, we decided to do a little sight seeing and walk around the capital. Being pregnant, it was time for a potty break so we decided to try and go inside The Capital. We went to the main door and they had it blocked off for another protest and had a sign sending us to the other side so we walked around. Went inside and the place was huge and so pretty. Eddie and myself set off to find the restrooms and eventually found some on the 2nd floor. The girls split off from the boys and as we finished in the restroom we did some sight seeing inside the Capital. Even got to see the chamber from the observation deck. Such a cool place. I'd love to go back and get an actual tour as we were kicked out of the place pretty quick. While we were looking around, all the girls recieved phone calls from their significant others instructing us to get out. They had been stopped by a state trooper and informed that the Capital was closed and we were trespassing. Oops!! When we got to the exit that we came in, I could see the guys standing outside with the trooper. When I stepped outside, the trooper had their driver's license and was calling in numbers. I was so scared! Luckily, he was just "signing them in" and making sure they weren't wanted for anything. He actually found it funny that we found our way in. We told him the door was unlocked and we just walked in, we didn't break in by any means. He said he wasn't concerned about us stealing as we were all caught on camera but that we needed to come back during normal business hours next time. It made for a great day! I have never laughed so hard in my life.

The Chamber from the Observation Deck.

I didn't want to take a straight out photo so I was pretending to text, haha.

Well these are just a few of our updates as of lately. I will try to do better about updating the blog more as we get moved in and settled. Its just difficult right now with trying to juggle school, work and moving into a fixer-upper. Hopefully things will settle down soon before Miss Emmalynn gets here :) Only 9 more weeks!!

Baby Names....OMG!!

Who would have thought a baby name would be so hard to come up with? I sure didn't. I've named several baby dolls over the years and a few pets here and there so I thought it would be fun and easy. Wrong! There is so much to think about when naming your child. It's their name for the rest of their life and could result in teasing in school or even having eight other classmates with the same name (ex. Josh and Nikki). I know it's only one of the big decisions that I will make with our baby but it's been difficult. I want something original and different without being off the wall. I want her to be her own person and have her own name.

It's also hard when family gets involved. Especially the older family members who are set in their ways. Everyone wants you to use a family name, something to pass down. And to be honest, we had several family names on our list. I would love to use a family, nothing wrong with that unless your name is Ralph or Roofus which in my case, this are legit family names that were brought to the table.

So when we found out we were pregnant, I started a list on my phone. I would hear a name and like it and write it down. I had family names that I also wrote down and names that I have just always loved. I figured there was no real rush as it would be almost 20 weeks before we found out if baby was a boy or girl anyway so we had time. I kept this list and would periodically pull it out when Josh and I were driving or doing something that we could talk.  We would go down the list and slowly take off names that we were no longer feeling. We did this all the way up to finding out the gender. At that point, we had more boy names than girl names and had actually picked out the name we would use for a little boy. We didn't have a girl name yet, haha. Go figure.

Well now we are in week 26 and have figured out our sweet baby girl's name. So many people have been inquiring about names and after the Roofus debacle, we started keeping our mouths shut. Sorry if that's rude. It's just easier to not hurt anyone's feelings.  I have been dying to let people know too. We've had her first name picked out for awhile, it was the middle name that threw us for a loop. So many great options. We just couldn't make up our mind. The first name was kind of mine so with the middle name, I let Josh take charge. In the end, we worked together but we both love our choice and can't wait to meet her.

So if you are planning on monogramming anything (like I am) you can now put your orders in. Because I'm finally going to tell you what you came here to read. Our sweet baby girl's name is.....

That's right ladies and gentlemen, Sweet E stands for Emmalynn. We've known for awhile now that we wanted that to be her first name. We just couldn't decide on a middle name. We had several great options and it just made it so much harder to choose. We had family names and just names but in the end Josh liked having the middle initial "N". He said it will make for cool jerseys later, ENV. Get it? Envy?! Hahaha. I love my husband. I also love that he is planning out jerseys. She may be in a skirt cheering if he doesn't watch it ;) 

Yes, Nichole is my middle name. We discussed if it would be weird naming her after me or if it was conceded (mind you Nichole was Josh's idea) but in the end, we name boys after their fathers and grandfather's all the time. What's wrong with passing down a mother's name? So now the cat is out of the bag. Our baby is no longer nameless, she is our sweet Emmalynn.