28 Weeks

L'il Miss Hadley,

You have been growing like crazy the past couple of months! Since 21 weeks you:

-started tasting the foods I eat (21)
-have eyebrows, eyelashes, and hopefully hair on your head (22)
-started perceiving light and dark (22)
-developed a sense of touch and can feel pain (22)
-have some fat deposits to fill out your skin (23)
-your face has almost fully developed (24) (I had a dream and got to see your face, you did not have my nose! I'm hoping that is prophetic)
-been able to recognize my voice (24)
-formed capillaries and air sacs in your lungs (25)
-have open nostrils (25)
-developed your vocal chords (25)
-opened your eyes (26)
-gone from being measured "crown to rump" to "head to toe" (27)
-started to get in position for birth (28)
-started blinking, coughing, hiccuping, sucking, and taking practice breaths (28)
-your sleep cycle now includes REM sleep so you may even be dreaming (28)
-grown to a whopping (estimated) 2.5 pounds and 16 inches (28)

With all that growing, I would think you'd be exhausted. But, you are proving otherwise! You have started taking to a "party routine" sometime around 2am. You have several nights in a row where I wake up to you doing the Snoopy Dance. Then, for a few nights, you give me a reprieve (either that, or I'm so tired from the previous nights' parties that I sleep right through them)!
You also throw a dance party or two around lunch time. Each time I go up to your GiGi's office to let her see/feel your antics, you stop. I've even sat at her desk for half an hour waiting for you to move, and you won't. You'll quickly learn that all good things come from GiGi! She says she'll woo you with cookies like she does Tucker and Brinkley. I have no doubt that she will be your favorite in no time!

I am convinced that you are going to love to eat carbs, fruits, and veggies. I've eaten two (small) watermelons in the past two weeks and quite literally, I look like I swallowed one whole!

We started swimming 5 or 6 days a week. This is quite possibly my favorite time of the day. I CRAVE getting in the pool more than I crave foods! I can normally feel where you are and pick on you a little bit, but while I'm swimming, I can't find you. Beating gravity has been amazing!
Your Daddy and I are taking turns reading to you almost every night. So far, you seem most into Dr. Seuss. During last night's reading of Green Eggs and Ham, you were going crazy! I think that may be your favorite one so far.



The furniture for your room came in this week and Daddy got it put in your room. I sat on the floor and had him move the furniture 100 times to try it out different ways. I'm amazed that there are so many things a little person can need! Your room is a bit cramped, but when we get all the decor and special touches finished, we hope it feels more cozy and less cramped! We're getting very excited to meet you!

2 And Counting

Happy 2nd Anniversary to my sweet hubs! I'm so blessed that even though you know me better than anyone, you still chose to marry me! Here's to many more!

Felices

Happy (belated) Birthday to my fabulous husband! Joe celebrated his 31st birthday last Saturday. I came home from work Friday, gave Joe his birthday gift, and took him to dinner at Cullen's. The food was great, and we love the atmosphere. After dinner we went to HEB to get groceries! Great way to end a birthday date eh?

Saturday we prepared to have my parents and Joe's uncle over for dinner. Dad brought BBQ and we provided sides and dessert. We had a nice time celebrating together and then with our family.

Even though my post is late, I still wanted to make sure to recognize another year of life for this sweet guy the Lord has blessed my life with! I'm pretty sure 31 is going to be your best year yet.

Hooding in the Hood

Joe and I took a little break to "get away" from it all back in mid May. My sweet friend, Dinah was graduating from Baylor with her Masters in Social Work, so we went to town to celebrate with her, spend a weekend away, and get to see old friends.

We drove to Waco on Friday and attended Dinah's hooding ceremony Friday afternoon. It was a nice ceremony where family and friends got to truly spend time celebrating with the graduates on their accomplishment. After the ceremony, we went and checked in to our B&B out in Lacy Lakeview of all places! It was really nice and our room had this tub that was a direct gift from God! OH MY! I could stretch out head to toe in this thing and practically swim in it. It was GLORIOUS. Joe and I "hit the town" on Friday night and went to dinner and shopped around town. Saturday we skipped the actualy graduation service and were able to enjoy a nice breakfast with some of the other guests at the B&B. We went over to Baylor and searched for Baylor onesies, had lunch at a new bakery in town, went to the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame (random), Spice, Sironia, and walked on campus before meeting our friends the Tetens for dinner at Cathay House. It was a great time to catch up with Kelly and Josh since the last time I saw Kel was at our wedding, and the time before that was when she had Patriot 3 years ago and we stopped in to see her. Kelly and Josh are expecting their second a few weeks after us. They are having a little girl too. We're hoping Baby Girl Tetens and Hadley can be Baylor roomies!

Sunday we went to church at my old church. I LOVE going back there to worship and fellowship. I have so many great memories of the people there, it just feels like home. After church, we finally got to meet up with Dinah to visit. It was great to get to hear her stories and her plans, but also such a poignant reminder of how much my life has changed. My world does not revolve around class schedules, text book prices, student life, and all of those wonderful/awful things any more. Life is more about work and bills. Sad but true. I would love to turn back time and tell myself to enjoy college more and be more patient with it, live it up...it was gone in the blink of an eye!

Waco changes every time I go, but it always feels a bit like coming home. It was a great weekend and we had a good time just being out and about together doing a lot of nothing.

Preparation

As you can imagine, most of our "free time" has been eaten up with baby prep things.

We have:
Cleaned out the study to make room for Hadley
Held two garage sales to get rid of all of our stuff
Picked out bedding
Made arrangements to have our furniture pulled out of layaway
Painted Hadley's room
Made some more kid friendly adjustments to our house with a new TV cabinet and TV
Registered
Put the stroller/car seat together
Bought LOTS of cute clothes (on sale)!!!
Made Hadley a hairbow holder
Re-organized the kitchen to make way for bottles and such

We still need to:
Survive the next 13 or so weeks
Go to our childbirth class (luckily it is just one Saturday)
Get closets cleaned and re-organized
Register with the hospital
I need to legally change my name. After two years of marriage, I have yet to go stand in line and turn in all the paperwork I filled out back in fall of 2008. Yep, I'm a winner.
Once the name is changed, switch over all my medical records and get it together so we don't have two names on a birth certificate

The Name Game

Joe and I had been thinking long and hard about baby names before knowing if CP was going to be a girl or a boy. Boy names had stumped us from the beginning, but we had narrowed down to three. Girl names, we had narrowed down to two before we even got pregnant. When I was in high school, I worked at a daycare in the baby room. One of the little girl's name was Ellisyn. I fell in love with the name, and she was my favorite in the "class." Ellisyn went to the top of my baby name list and stayed there for 10 years. Then, when Joe and I were looking for wedding stationary, I saw the name Hadley Tate on some cards in the store. I fell in love with the name immediately. As friends and family members were having babies and choosing names, Joe and I talked a lot about baby names. I'd told him from the get go what names I liked for a girl and he liked them both as well. So, we decided if CP was a girl, she would either be Ellisyn Grace or Hadley Tate. Beyond that, we didn't want to narrow down to one boy's name or one girl's name.

When I saw CP on the screen during our ultrasound, I just knew that we had to go with the name Ellisyn. After our appointment, we went out to run a couple of errands and then went to dinner at Carraba's. While running errands, Joe told me that when he saw CP, he knew she was a Hadley. So, we discussed over dinner and doodled the names on paper to see what we liked best. By 20 minutes into dinner, we had decided to morph the two into Hadley Grace. And, if I were completely honest, I'd admit to you that our waiter that night helped us decide on Hadley as well. Plus, we got a free dessert. But, that is neither here nor there! CP had a name! We called our parents and let them know that Cocoa Puff had become Hadley Grace.
We've known Hadley as Hadley for about 6 weeks now, and it is so strange to think we ever called her something different. The days of calling the baby Cocoa Puff seem like a life time ago!

Here are some name "facts;"
Hadley means (Old English) "from the heatherfield" ---not a great meaning, but we loved the name
Hadley is currently not on any of the most popular name lists (that we have found), although we do run across people who claim to know a Hadley from time to time. I think it will increase in popularity over the next 5 years.
Grace means grace. Pure and simple.... Grace is on several lists as being one of the top 100 girl names.

Tutus, Hairbows, and Tights, OH MY!

We had our anatomy ultrasound on April 22. I had been attending a conference here in town and felt pretty bad about missing the afternoon session, but hey, when they want to look at your baby, they want to look at your baby! Plus, we (read I) was so crazy excited that I couldn't wait until the next appointment three weeks out. Since I was right downtown, my Mom came by and picked me up from the conference. We jumped on the HOV lane and headed south to meet Joe for our appointment with Dr. Ellis. Dr. Nisbet, our OB refers all of her clients to Dr. Ellis for the anatomy ultrasounds, he is a specialist in fetal development and fetal abnormalities. I knew we were in good hands, but there is something concerning about seeing such a specialized doctor. So, I did what any red blooded American would do...I Googled him. Thanks to Google, I found out all about him and even discovered he was a Baylor Grad. Sic 'Em!

Our appointment was at 3:00, but we had to wait for a very long time to be called back. Any of you who know me (even slightly) know that patience is NOT my strong suit. When Mom and Joe started getting impatient, I knew we'd been waiting for a long time! They finally called us back about 4:20. The room was really neat, complete with a flat screen tv on the wall so we could all see what Cocoa Puff was doing during the scan. As soon as the nurse put the doppler on me, I saw legs and a tush flash on the screen...we knew right away that CP was a girl. No question! Then, the little stinker rolled into a ball and was perfectly happy staying that way. The nurse squished around trying to get her to move, no luck. I had to stretch all the way forward and try to get her to move, no luck. They gave me chocolate, I did jumping jacks, stretches, and all kinds of crazy twists and turns to get her to move. No luck. We did realize pretty quickly that we have one stubborn girl on our hands. Let's go ahead now and have a moment of silence for Joe for all that he will endure with two stubborn women in his house.
Finally, baby girl moved and allowed the nurse to get the measurements she needed of the spine, the legs, the head, etc...We were in there for well over an hour while Dr. Ellis reviewed the scans in his office. He came in and met with us and was WONDERFUL! He spent quite awhile showing us multiple indicators that we have a healthy girl that measured in right on target at 20 weeks. Dr. E even pointed out bones in the fingers that were developing that indicate Downsyndrome is very unlikely. He was very encouraging and told us it was nice to end his day on a positive note as he had delivered a lot of bad news to parents earlier that afternoon. Needless to say, we were thrilled to know we are having a girl and that everything looked good!
I was especially thankful that we got to see the baby's gender BEFORE she had her bout of stubborness. It made the scan much more fun getting to call CP, "she."

Catch Up

I can't believe with all of the fun and exciting things going on that I have not blogged in over a month. The intention has been there, but the motivation and follow through has been lacking. Instead of posting one ginormous post, I'll catch up on the past several weeks in some smaller, more organized posts over the next couple of days.

Stay Tuned!