Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! We have so much to be thankful for this year!

Family, Friends, a healthy beautiful little girl, a little boy on the way and much more.

We have finally given the baby a name! His name will be Collin Andrew Barry, so we can finally stop referring to him as "the baby".

Collin's room looks so cute, Chris painted it and we have put together his crib and we dragged some of the stuff out of the attic to see what we have and what we still need. We still have to decorate a little more, hang the curtains and hang stuff on the walls, etc.

Here are some of the before, during and after pictures.

Before

  During

Notice the beer in the picture!

 Me choosing between 2 different shades of blue

After

Since Collin now has Kaitlyn's old furniture she got to get new big girl furniture. Her new big girl bed and furniture came in so Chris and I spent the day yesterday organizing her room and cleaning out her closet (what torture that was). We are still waiting on her new bedding so we have not taken pictures of her room yet. She had to sleep in Collin's room on Tuesday night because we had Stanley Steemer come clean the carpet in her room and it was still wet that night so we couldn't move her bed back in there.

When we were baby proofing Collin's room Chris found a child proof doorknob cover (so kids can't open doors they are not supposed to open) and put it on his door just joking around. We tried using this wonderful device one time when Kaitlyn was younger and I was in her room with her patting her back to get her to go to sleep, when I got ready to tip toe out of the room undetected, I couldn't even let myself out of the room which lead to frustration and some choice words, so needless to say we don't use it anymore. When Chris tried to take it off of Collin's door it wouldn't come off we just left it on there for now.

When we setup Kaitlyn's bed in Collin's room that night we realized that Kaitlyn wouldn't be able to open the door that night because of the doorknob cover and, therefore; would have to stay in bed, something she seems incapable of doing most nights :-). We had a good laugh about that before we put her to bed and warned her about the doorknob cover so that she would know why the door wouldn't open. So at about at 9:30 that night I am sitting at the dining room table working on my computer and I hear Kaitlyn on that monitor in the kitchen moving around in Collin's room, then I hear her picking up the monitor and putting her mouth right up to the monitor and saying in a very deep voice "I have to go to the bathroom". Chris went and opened the door for her so she could go to the bathroom.

Later that night, about 3:00 AM, Chris and I are sleeping and we could hear Kaitlyn over the monitor in our bedroom, picking up the monitor yet again and in a raspy sleepy voice she says "Mommy and Daddy I want Emma to sleep with me". We couldn't help but laugh, it was so funny that she suddenly has decided that since she can't open the door she would use the monitor as her own personal walkie talkie to communicate with us.

The next morning as soon as the sun came up, we heard Kaitlyn go over and pick up the monitor put it up to her mouth and say "Mommy and Daddy it's time to wake up!"

She is so funny and keeps us laughing with all the crazy things she does.

Here is another Kaitlyn story for your entertainment...

Since staying in bed at night has been a challenge for her lately I made a deal with her. If she stays in bed 20 for nights, not consecutively of course because that would be nothing short of a miracle; I will get her a "Fur Real Pet" or as Kaitlyn likes to call it a "Real Fur Pet". We are now on night 12 so and this has been going on since mid October so by Christmas she should have her "Real Fur Pet" :-). Every morning when she wakes up she gets to put a sticker on her High School Musical calendar if she stays in bed all night to track her progress. It seems like a combination of the "big girl bed" and Emma (our Cavalier King Charles Spaniel) are contributing to her success lately. Since getting her big girl bed Kaitlyn now wants Emma to sleep with her every night. Emma helps keep Kaitlyn in bed because if Kaitlyn starts moving around too much Emma will get up and leave; however, if we put Emma in the bed with Kaitlyn before Kaitlyn is asleep she torments poor Emma and we hear her yelp and have to go to her rescue. Our new tactic has been to tell Kaitlyn that we will bring Emma in before we go to bed. This seems to work out better for both because Emma doesn't get tormented and Kaitlyn falls asleep faster because she is not up tormenting the poor dog :-). We will see how long this strategy works.

It got so bad at one point I called the pediatrician's office they gave me some print outs on tips to help with "bedtime resistance". I find most of them pretty comical, as if we had not tried these and everything else under the sun prior to calling them.

Here are a few of my favorites:

Establish a rule that your child can't leave the bedroom at night.

(Does that actually work for anyone and did they really think we had not tried that?)

Close the door if your child is leaving the bedroom.

(Does the child they are referring to not know how to turn doorknobs because ours sure does!)

Despite all of our bedtime challenges, we fell so fortunate to be blessed with such a sweet little girl! I will close for now with some fall pictures of our little angel taken at her school.

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

Family Pictures

It's that time again. We took our annual family pictures two weekends ago and these will be our last pictures as a family of 3!

We were in Austin that weekend for Amy & John's wedding and we drove back on Sunday and took pictures that evening. We got home at around 3 pm on Sunday quickly changed clothes and then headed out the door to drive to Kingwood for pictures. Kaitlyn of course fell asleep about 15 minutes before we arrived in Kingwood and that was the only nap she had that day. Needless to say she was a little wild, which actually worked out okay because Mackenzie was able to get some great shots in between Kaitlyn's wild antics. You can see the wildness coming out in some of the pictures though; especially the one where she was supposed to hug Chris but it turned into more of a death grip on him than a hug and the one where she is throwing her head back doing her evil laugh. Mackenzie said that at least you can tell Kaitlyn has a personality from the pictures. :-)

It's a...

BOY!

We had our 20 week ultrasound on Friday, October 23rd. The tech asked us if we wanted to know the sex and we of course said yes. It was the first thing she saw when she started the ultrasound and she said "It's a Boy!"

His heart rate was 136 bpm which the tech said was great. We also got some great profile pictures of him and a great picture of his foot.

The tech looked at my cervix via the ultrasound and said that my placenta is lying right on top of my cervix and this is called placenta previa. She said there is a possibility that it could move when my uterus stretches as I get further along.

On Tuesday, October 27th, we had our appointment with Dr. Jurney. She said that although she doesn't think that I have a "complete" previa, meaning that it is covering the entire cervix, she said that it is covering more than 50% of my cervix and is on the back wall of my uterus, and therefore unlikely to move. She said to prepare myself to have a c-section and that since they can't let me go into labor that I would most likely have the baby via c-section at 36-37 weeks. We also got to hear the baby's heartbeat again and it was 139 bpm. Our next appointment is on November 24th and I will have another ultrasound then to determine if the placenta has moved or if I will definitely need a c-section.

On another note...Kaitlyn has decided that she wants to name her baby brother Adam. She got the name from the "Snow Buddies" movie that she loves to watch. The little boy in the movie is named Adam. We have tried to explain to her that we have some other names that we are considering but she is bound and determined to name him Adam.

On Monday I walked into her school to pick her up and Miss Tanya at the front desk said "I heard you're having a baby boy and naming him Adam". I told her "Well you got the first part right". She then told me that Kaitlyn had been telling all the teachers that she is having a baby brother and his name is going to be Adam. At the dinner table on Tuesday night she was talking out loud to her baby brother and she said "Mommy and Daddy said I can't name you Adam so I think I am just going to call you (long pause while she is thinking)... ADAM!" So Kaitlyn remains unconvinced that his name will be anything other than Adam.

Chris has been hard at work this week cleaning out the guest bedroom and moving everything into storage so we now have a clean empty room just waiting for the crib. We are planning on buying Kaitlyn new furniture for her room so once we have that we will just move her crib etc. into the baby's room.

And last but not least....here is my latest belly picture. This was taken at 19 weeks.