He's here!

This is going to be kind of a short and sweet post since I'm still in the hospital, but I'm in a "shout it from the rooftops" type of mood today! You'll need to excuse the typing and photos since both were done by iPhone!

Tyler Andrew was born on Thursday 5/16 at 2:20pm via (planned repeat) c-section. He was 6 lbs 15 oz and 19.5 inches. Tyler is healthy & eating well already. It amazes me how much Tyler looks like Julianna when she was born, and has the same mellow temperament too. 

I'm doing well and recovering as expected. I've had to take pain meds, but that's pretty normal, and helping me to get around and get stronger. I can totally handle this recovery, it's a piece of cake compared to 9 months of being pregnant! Ha! 

Julianna has come to the hospital everyday and so far loves interacting with her baby brother. She is 'done' after about an hour, so she leaves with grandma & grandpa to go back home. It's very overwhelming to her I can only imagine. We need to do this at her pace. 

There are no words to express how in love I am with my little boy and how much he completes our family of four; making it perfect. Brian and I are so blessed to have our beautiful family. Life is amazing. This was all meant to be. 

Here are some quick pictures from the last 2 days. Enjoy and I'll be taking some real pictures along with a larger post on his birth & our experience this week. 

Pretty pink flowers and other things...

Happy Mother's Day...

Today is our 6th Wedding anniversary too! I can't believe Brian and I have been married for 6 wonderful years already, and I can't believe we've been together for 12 years come this November. Time flies! 

Julianna's birthday is in 2 weeks... and our baby will be born this Thursday. May is, without a doubt, always going to be our busiest month of the year!

On Thursday, I posted some pictures of a park by us that has beautiful pink flowering trees. I went there twice that week. The first time I went, the flowers weren't in bloom completely and didn't get the "bright" pink pictures I was hoping for. I went back a 2nd time and managed to get some better shots of the trees, Julianna, and my best friend's dog as well!

This is Lucy - Julianna loves Lucy & always talks about going to visit her! 

OK folks- that's it for now.

Next time I report back, we will have one NEW family member! 

Wish me luck on Thursday....

Getting ready for the baby ....

It's amazing how much goes into preparing for the baby to make his entrance into this world.

• Setting up the crib (Julianna's old crib) 
• Swapping rooms so the kids can have the bigger room (1 bed & 1 crib wouldn't fit in J's old room) 
• Painting the kid's room 
• Arranging everything so it kind of sort of fits ok (small rooms in our small house!!) 
• Buying all the new stuff the boy needs - I forgot just how much $$ this stuff costs! Bottles, clothes, sleepers, new monitor, diapers, sit & stand stroller, infant car seat, Beco carrier, misc. things like swaddle-me's and blankets, etc.... etc... and so on. 
• Digging through all of Julianna's old stuff to try and find something/anything that is not pink that the boy can use. Not much there. That's why we pretty much had to start from scratch again. Oh well. 
• Moving stuff to and from the attic. Rearranging the attic & basement - storing things that aren't needed in order to save space. 
• Sold some stuff on Craiglist we won't be using again. 
• While I'm out on Maternity leave, we'll be using my dining room/office into a "sort-of" nursery for 16 weeks... we're going to set up the cradle in there so he won't disrupt Julianna at night time while she sleeps. (Family dining room by day, baby nursery by night! haha!) 
• The paperwork. Ohhhh the paperwork. I am buried in paperwork every day it seems for my job, disability, medical stuff, choices to make before he's born, choices to make after, birth certificate, pre-registration of everything ... etc. It has to be done in this day & age, I understand it, but it can certainly stress a tired, achy, pregnant 42 year old girl out! haha! 
• {Edit 5/10} - I forgot to add this one in - I spent 2 days making food. I made a bunch of "Make-ahead-meals" and divided them up, and froze them in disposable foil containers. This way we can just take out what we want for dinner once the baby is born and not have to worry about making dinner most nights. We have enough for at least 2-3 weeks of straight dinners! Yay me for planning ahead! I almost went into labor making all the food and was quite cranky by the end of the day (bless my husband!), but I got 'er done! 

Have I mentioned I am starting to have massive anxieties about giving birth? I had this the first time too. I don't care how you give birth, there is nothing that is 100% guaranteed in this world... and that scares me a bit. Funny because it's the birth, recovery, etc that scares me. The thought of taking home a 2nd baby and taking care of him, doesn't scare me or bother me at all. I can totally handle that and have zero fears about it.
I do however trust modern medicine 100% and know all the decisions we make/made around this child coming into the world are the right choices for us.
I have a week left now, and I would be lying if I said I was going to miss being pregnant. There is nothing, repeat, nothing about this pregnancy that I will miss. Bring on the boy! By this time next week, our son will be here and let the good times roll!

And to end this off... here are some pictures I took recently at a local park. I don't know the names of these pretty trees, but they bloom every year right around this time, and I try to make it there to get some photos of them. They are not dogwoods or fruit trees... couldn't find them online (and didn't look that hard either!)

Happy May and our new toy.

Brian and I have lived in a lake community for 9 years now. Every year, when summer rolled around, we would say to each other, "We should buy a boat". We love the lake and all the activities it has to offer, how beautiful it is & how much fun it is during the warmer months here. We never bought any floating things because we had hoped to move out of this area for several years now, however it's become crystal clear that we will be here for a while due to the horrendous housing market in our area.

So, because of this crappy housing market, we decided to pull the trigger this past winter. We started boat shopping & researching late summer of last year. Originally we thought we would just buy something used, and then it slowly turned into "Let's buy something new since we'll be keeping this for a long time! Let's get what we really want!".  We 'test-drove' a new Harris Flote-bote (pontoon) last August and loved it. That's what made us decide to go new and get what we want with the options we want. Hey why not?! You only live once right?

We actually test-drove a boat (sounds kinda silly saying test drive!) but liked the next model up, which last year was priced too high for us. We checked out a few other pontoon boats out there, but always came back to liking Harris. Well. Brian stopped into the dealership over the winter and the "higher" Harris model was marked down drastically as a 2012 leftover. It was meant to be. We got a great deal and bought it. Who buys a boat in December?! So there it sat all winter, shrink-wrapped and covered in snow. We shopped around for a marina to dock our boat for this season and found a really amazing marina by our house that has dock-hands that help you leave/enter your slip, tie up, cover your boat, and anything else you need help with. It's a fantastic service they offer!

Spring couldn't get here fast enough. We finally were able to launch on our maiden voyage last weekend.... Brian and I were so giddy like little kids! My mother watched Julianna for the first time out and then we took Julianna with us the next day. She loved it.

Let me just tell you. BEST. DECISION. EVER.
And for those of you wondering. Yep, the baby will be out there with us this summer as well!
It's going to be a great summer!

We still have to name it... it's no-name for now. 

 relaxing .... very relaxing. 

Captain Daddy (as Julianna calls him!) 

As much as it pains me to put this picture out there... I guess I want to document our first weekend, so I need to put a picture of Julianna and I for the record. 9 months pregnant! 

Daddy teaching Julianna that safety comes first. 

She must wear her life jacket always. Luckily she loves it! 

The kid loves being out on the boat ride! 

Anchored for lunch... high fiving Daddy! 

This little visitor hopped on while we were eating lunch. I got the feeling it wasn't her first rodeo. She was going to steal our food when we turned away no doubt! haha! 

Julianna screamed "Daddy there's a duck on the boat!" - she thought it was the funniest thing ever. 

Low bridge... tops down.