The Baptism of Sophia Rose (NOT the exorcism of Emily Rose)

Ah the beauty of baptism - and Nate Henderson's pictures!

More to come of our beautiful now Christian baby!

Our Little Sophia

I desperately need up upload the pictures from my camera, but until then, here are two super cute pictures of our little Sophia.

She is even more alert now! Also, I don't know how, but she gets more beautiful every day!

Little Sophie!

What we came home to on Thanksgiving:

So Fun! Tessa & Pete put the decorations up to welcome us home!

At the hospital with our WONDERFUL doctor. We will totally be using her with our next baby. We had the most wonderful delivery with great fun music playing in the background, FABULOUS nurses all around, and my fabulous husband always at my side. It couldn't have been more wonderful. Also, even after all of my protests and anger about getting an epidural, it truly made the experience a joyful one. PLUS, when I was getting stitched up at the end, Dr. Gutovitz said that if I hadn't had an epidural, she would have had to take me to the Operating Room to do the stitching. Plus, the epidural took me from 4 CM to 10 in one hour! Clearly my habit of internalizing everything, and blocking relaxation techniques worked against me in this situation.

Also, St. Joseph gave Shaw a pair of scrubs, and while Sophie was getting measured, bathed etc (in our room, a few hours after she was born - thanks to my wonderful birth plan!) the put Sophie's feet prints on his scrubs. Super cute!

Here are the flowers that the dear Peterson family sent to the hospital and Elizabeth brought back to our Apt for us. You can also see the wonderful cholcolate that Nana brought to Sophia and her parents.
Dear Nate and Nila cleaned our apartment while we were gone, and left the fabulous 21 Anniversary Blvd Beer and a bottle of Patron Tequila (which Shaw has been desiring FOREVER!)

This is the fabulous cupcake bouquet that Nila made! We received SO MANY compliments on this. Plus - it was delicious!! :)

Here are the LOVELY flowers sent by Judy and Dan. How we wish you were here!!!!!

Here is our wonderful first thanksgiving as a family. The wonderful family brought over such delicious food for us! Food and wonderful beer! Shaw made a fire in the fireplace, and set up a wonderful spread complete with candles and music while Sophie and I rested on the couch in front of the fire. It was a wonderful, quiet, peaceful Thanksgiving dinner with my family. Then we had our first night together. Such a tough night!! :)

Here is our little Sophie while she was still at the hospital. Well, in this one she is at home in my favorite onesie!

Here she is in a beautiful knitted hat sent to us by Meredith Rice. It is so cute!
Darling Shaw admiring Sophie in the hospital. He loves her so much! He can't take it when she cries even now - she easily has him wrapped around her little finger!
Here she is shortly after she was born. Literaly, VERY SHORTLY after she was born! Mom, Dad and Emily were so wonderful to wait the LONG LONG Time in the waiting room to come in an see her when she was merely an hour and a half old. Shaw had a great time updating everyone via texts and trips to the waiting room. It was just how I wanted it to go! Thanks so much for our dear family for feeding him so well during the labor, and us in the hospital and even now! Your dinners are absolutely wonderful, and it is such a weight of our shoulders. What a blessing family is!
She is already spunky!

11 Days

11 Days until our Due Date! I must keep in the front of my mind that 75% of First Time Moms (FTMs) do NOT go into labor until AFTER their due date. How sad! I am SURE the more time she spends developing inside the better (I've read the books, blogs and websites) yet how we long to meet her! I have LOVED being pregnant, and I have had such an easy time with it. I have truly been blessed in every way.....

YET WE WANT TO MEET HER! We are both terrified OF her, full of love FOR her, and spiritually perhaps unprepared for the whole parenting process. There are still many things left to decide:

• Vaccines - which to do, which to NOT do? (we are almost to a conclusion on this one)
• Cloth Diapers - we know we are going to, but what type? (I have such high plans of going to Happybottomus - the new cloth diaper store that opened up next to Whole Foods here in OP)
• Outfit to bring her home it - I haven't cleaned ANY of her MULTITUDINOUS of clothes yet, for fear she will come out a 12 lb baby already wearing 3 month old clothes. But I have to have something ready, and it must be very cute and pink. Which pretty much describes ALL of her clothes.
• Stuff to bring to the Hospital - this was another thing I was supposed to do today. However, what to pack? I know - I have the lists from the books, websites and blogs, not to mention the papers so kindly handed us by the hospital crazy people, but I mean seriously - How can you pack for something like this? How do I know what I am going to want to do/wear/have/eat (or not eat I suppose)/distract Shaw with/watch/listen to/read? Seriously people?! I've never done this before!

And yet, in the end, all we want is a safe, happy, healthy baby.

God Willing!

I never post on here...

I love Calvin and Hobbes

So I thought I would post some of my joy!

First... we need more outspoken small business people like Calvin! When the small business gets a voice, our economy will turn around. Another help would be if people started having babies again. We are at a negative birth rate in this country. A smaller and smaller tax group is supporting a larger older group. 

Have a kid. Save the country.

Our contribution is on its way around Nov. 21. Holy Cow that's soon.

...another reason it is nice we took back the house. More pro-life representatives!

More of Calvin as a budding entrepreneur...

A swift kick to Nancy Pelosi, Obama and many othes who support death and destruction in the womb.

With so much talk of sustainablity for the environment, manufacturing and the food world...

How about sustainability in the WOMB!

Finally on an entirely unrelated but sticking with our theme note.

Two artists and their homage to the late great Calvin and Hobbes comic strip.

Don't cry.

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Halloween 2010

Here are our pumpkins from this year!

Here is mine (I take no credit for it, because I copied it from online, but I still love it!):

From The Left: Elizabeth, Shaw and me:

I have more pictures of the actual carving process, but they are on Shaw's camera which is currently dead. Will get it later! :)

2 Weeks 5 Days until Due Date!

Determined

I am determined to finish things today!!!

After a crazy Monday with School (as usual) I am going to use my Tuesday to do the following:

Walk

Update the Budget

Clean our living area

Make a list of the baby things we still need

GO TO BABIES R US WITH SHAW AFTER WORK AND GET EVERYTHING WE NEED! (Luckily, Shaw knows about this one and is mentally prepared for it)

If I have time I will do some St. Ann work as well.

Maybe I'll even get in a little nap!

It is going to be a beautiful, overcast, windy day. Out on my walk I go! :)

Baby Update!

Yesterday we had another sonogram. We may have to have them every week now thanks to our perinatologist who is concerned about stillbirth. Not concerned about us specifically, but with the blood stuff he is just being very careful. Our high risk doc thinks it is overkill because we haven't had any problems with the pregnancy and I haven't had any personal problems with clotting - so we may just do fetal kick counts and do biweekly sonograms or Non-stress tests (but I haven't done enough reading about that yet). We only got two pictures out of the deal, and only one of them were any good. She is weighing 6 lbs 5 oz right now (wow!) and I am measuring 37Weeks3dayish!! I am only at 35 weeks 3 days, so that illustrates that the baby is growing very well. She is huge! Apparently there are many factors that can go into the measurements being skewed etc., but wow. She is very large! Perhaps I am eating too much sugar?

We interviewed a fantastic lady that we may be hiring to be our Doula. She is super experienced, laid back, would be a great help, and agrees with us on the important issues. It is very exciting!! Things are coming together!

I've been working on the nursery alot the past few days. It too is coming together!! Totes, totes and more totes!! :) How I love them!! I don't know if this is exactly 'nesting', but it sure is organizing!

Here are a few pictures that our dear friends Nate and Nila took of our little family! :)

Weston Red Barn Farm

Here are a few pics from our trip to the Weston Red Barn Farm with the family as well as the little charges my sister was 'in charge of' for the weekend! What a perfect day for the trip!

Looking at the Hens:

Resting after a long trip:

Beautiful Z

G was a great help with the pumpkins!!!

So many different kinds!

Hair Air Shot:

What seemed like millions of different types of pumpkins, but this was one of my favs:

What Shaw Has Been Up To!

Squash has been on his mind!! My mother always sends Shaw's way the 2% Milk from her CSA along with any random thing she finds in there. Whenever mom brings over the bag, Shaw's face lights up and his mind starts turning a mile a minute.

He has been enjoying all the fruits (and vegetables haha) of Fall. Apples, figs, sweet potatoes and squash have all graced our kitchen table of late. He does lots of research on the foods he would like to use, and then creates his own recipes. Below are a few of his creations. Unfortunately I have not been as good about pictures as I would like to be, but here is what I have this time around!

Great thanks to Nila and Nate for usually being out taste testers!!!!!

This is a squash and apple puree/soup with apple crisps.

Shaw creating the fixings for the arugula and goat cheese ravioli with the new pasta maker her won from the Kansas City Culinary Center. It was delicious!

The squash and apples before the soup:

This picture was from a while ago - the first round of squash soup with prosciutto and little shrimpies.

The final Baby shower.

This weekend, my dear friend Nila threw me a beautiful baby shower! The decorations were super cute, the food incredible, her lemon and raspberry cupcakes delicious and the company infectious. What a wonderful friend!

Here are a few of my good friends from high school, Whitney, Katie, Grace and Kat:

Here is my beautiful sister Elizabeth admiring my new fabulous diaper bag with pictures of Shaw and I flipping across the TV screen. This specific pictures just happened to land on one of my baby pics.

Here is Nila's little sister Anna (who is not so little anymore!) and myself admiring Nila's fantastic newborn diaper cake that was decorated with super cute baby toys, and built around a bottle of wonderful rose champagne. I think we will take this bottle to the hospital with us when the time comes (in 46 days~)

And a wonderful group picture in Nila's backyard complete with my better-than-a-girl-could-wish for sister-in-law Tessa holding her beautiful daughter Emma, friends from high school, and two of my beautiful sisters Emily and Elizabeth.

A wonderful time was had by all! Thank you so much to everyone - esp Nila Kay and all of her hard work, time and effort that went into this fabulous afternoon!

Cloth Diapers

Could cloth diapers be more confusing please? THERE ARE SO MANY DIFFERENT KINDS AND STYLES AND BRANDS. How can you ever decide? I must make a decision because Baby (LOL or Baby Ruth or Shaniqua) will be here in 11 short weeks. This is insane.

Just thought I'd let you all know~