We are READY!

Today is the day we officially become parents. To say its wild knowing that fact would be an understatement! For the last week every time someone asks me when the baby will be here and I can say, "Wednesday" (with certainty), I think about what that means...

After 5 years of being just the two of us, we are ready to welcome the love, joy and sheer craziness that comes with kiddos. We know there will be ups and downs, but as we have said for awhile now, we are ready to be ready! Ready for sleepless nights (hello, remember Bob's preparation watching the Olympics???), dirty diapers, big decisions, Saturday soccer games (yes, I know this will be awhile), family vacations, less time for ourselves, but most of all, sharing our lives with a little one.

Wish us luck - baby will be here in about 2 hours :) More updates to come - stay tuned...

Just add baby...

At long last (and after many requests)... pictures of the nursery! And since you waited so long, I am posting a lot of them :) Still a few finishing touches to add (a couple pieces of art, maybe an initial once we name her, a homemade pillow on the glider to match her bedding, etc.), but we are ready to bring our daughter home on Wednesday :)

Pictures of the nursery BEFORE...

The nursery is actually connected to our room (walk through a
hallway with our closets and bathroom and into the nursery)...

Deciding on a paint color... moving away from the lovely light green that
covers the top floor of our house.

Furniture pick up (Bob's little truck is EXCELLENT for some things)...

Thanks for helping, Tyler!

Painting in progress...

Assembling furniture, hanging curtains and picking a Fantasy Football team... the life of a new dad :)

Good thing we have such an excellent helper...

For those of you that don't know, getting the dresser into the nursery was not the easiest task. After Bob and Tyler schemed for about an hour (unpacking, measuring, turning, etc. before finally deciding that this dresser was NOT going to make it up the easy way), Bob started thinking of ways he was going to get the dang thing upstairs. With four tall, strong boys in town for our shower about a month after the initial moving attempt, Bob's plan was set into motion... Repackage the dresser, remove the windows from the back part of our bedroom, have two men simultaneously hoist said dresser up two ladders to two others waiting in our bedroom and VOILA! Man I am glad I married an engineer :)

One happy guy :)

And now the AFTER photos... LOTS of pink - this baby better show up as expected or we will have one pink loving boy (at least for a little while). 

Every little girl needs a chandelier :)
(BTW, Kenai TOTALLY thinks that giraffe on the rocker should be his...)

Very fitting that first completely finished room in our house is the bedroom for our little miss. Spoiled and stubborn from the start ;) Can't wait to meet her on Wednesday!

The countdown is ON!

We had an appointment with the doc today and found out that our stubborn little miss will be joining us on WEDNESDAY, September 26th (a birthday buddy for our friend, Stacy :)) Despite a few BIG moves last night, she is still sitting in my belly, checking out the world right side up.

We can't wait to meet her in less than a week! Stay tuned for more updates (and PHOTOS!)...

Flip That Baby!

As I alluded to in an earlier post, our little miss has decided to be a bit defiant. For awhile I have suspected that her head is wedged nicely in between my ribcage, but the doc felt my belly at an appointment about a month ago and noted that she was head down. Last week, when we went for our regular check up, the doc felt around and again thought she was positioned perfectly, with her head down. We did an ultrasound to confirm since the doc was a bit suspicious of the hard spot between my ribcage and sure enough, she is sitting up in my belly - NOT the way she should be at this point. Most babies flip by the 36th week and if they don't, they typically stay breech.

The doctor presented two options... 1) schedule a C-section for sometime between the 39th and 40th week or 2) try something called a version to flip her from the outside -- a procedure with a 50/50 success rate. The doc talked through the process, which involves a lot of pushing and maneuvering of my belly, and the potential risks, the biggest being that the baby may not tolerate it and we would have to do an emergency C-section immediately.

Bob and I discussed the options and thought a LOT about what we wanted to do. In the end, we decided that we would try the version and if it didn't work, be a-OK with a scheduled C-section, the best (and essentially only - at least with my doctor's office) next step for me and the baby. The appointment was scheduled for this morning so we left our house with our bags packed (just in case).

We checked in at the hospital and got set up in a room where the doctor hooked me up to a machine that monitored the baby's heart rate. The ultrasound folks were a bit behind so we waited for them to arrive, reading magazines and relaxing (although I will say, labor and delivery triage is not the most relaxing place in the world -- talk about an unnecessary preview for labor!) Once the ultrasound folks arrived things moved very quickly. They confirmed the baby was still breech -- "frank breech" to be exact, which is the most common breech position (65 - 70% of breech babies are frank). Essentially it means that her butt is shoved into my pelvis and her legs are extended straight out (feet near her ears).

The doctor tried to flip her one direction (head over the back) and twice more the other direction. She got her about halfway around at one point (mostly her head), but could not get her butt to move after repeated attempts to lift her bum out of my pelvis. So, despite the doc's best efforts, our little one has decided to prove her stubbornness before she even arrives -- remaining just the way we started -- sitting pretty, right side up in my belly. 

She tolerated the whole process quite well -- no elevated or dropped heart rate -- so now we schedule a C-section. They typically schedule for between 39 and 40 weeks and I will be 39 weeks on Sunday. We have another appointment with the doctor on Thursday where we will confirm our little one's birthday! Stay tuned for more on that front and thanks for the well wishes today! Punky Brewster remains PUNKY!

Nicknames...

While our daughter may still remain nameless (a short list of three ain't bad!), she has already earned herself several nicknames that I feel like we should acknowledge, and take note of, since I am hoping that NEITHER of the names included directly below remain after she actually joins us on the outside world...

"Full Of" -- While we were in Bend for Labor Day weekend, Robie and the girls were really trying to get us to give in and share the baby's name. We have talked openly about her middle name, Grace, and so as we continued to deflect possible first name options, the girls teased that her name was Mary or Hail Mary... I jokingly said, lets just call her "full of" and thus formed a new nickname! Being married to Bob, I had to continue the joke noting that she wasn't "full of $#@*," reserving that name for her dad :)

"Punky" or "Punky Brewster" -- Last week at our regular doctor visit we found out that our little one is breech. She simply didn't want to flip around and is "sitting pretty" as Ali said. We were given two options -- schedule a C-section or come in this week to try to flip her and if that doesn't work, schedule a C-section. More on that in the next blog post (coming shortly), but she has rightfully earned herself the name Punky!

We also call her "the little miss" and "baby K" -- she will likely always be the little miss, but once we choose a name for her, baby K will likely be off the books. We can't wait to meet our little one -- and finally know her name for ourselves!

One last adventure...

 

We love camping - always have and always will - so as we planned our summer, we knew that a weekend of lake camping with dad, Robie and the girls in Prineville was a must! As summer unfolded, the best weekend for a trip to Central Oregon was Labor Day -- four weeks before the little miss was scheduled to arrive and of course, Maddie's annual trek to the lake to celebrate her birthday :)

We made our way to Bend on Friday, gathered up all of the camping gear Saturday morning, headed to Prineville and loaded the boat (a couple times!) to begin our adventure. The camp spot was perfect -- water on both sides, a great spot for tents, meals, hanging out and swimming!

A dog's dreamland... no leashes, no being left alone at home... Kenai was in HEAVEN (Rio and Winston tolerated him, which is about all we can ask for).

Thanks for being such excellent hosts! The camping meals this duo whips up would make any chef proud!!! The baby back ribs have become a camping tradition :)

Bob and I had one goal for the weekend... get Kenai (our water dog???) to become a swimmer. Who knew that teaching a lab to love the water would be such a challenge. Don't get me wrong, he has become a fan of the water (a slow process, but he likes it now) -- splashing in it, chasing other dogs in it, peeing in it (yes our dog is known for squatting and peeing as soon as he gets into the water - awesome!), etc., but swimming has been a bit of a challenge. Every once in awhile he will lose track of where he is and swim, but it is VERY rare and he never does it on purpose. Labor Day weekend goal #1 - make Kenai Michael Phelps!

We thought that us, in the water, would motivate our pup to take the plunge (pun fully intended)! Little did we know, gunshots would actually make our pup a water dog ;) Sunday night (yes after a full day without swimming for Kenai!), Bob and Chase's boyfriend, Anthony, decided to shoot a couple of handguns with a piece of wood in the water as a target. Kenai's natural (?) hunting instinct kicked in and he WANTED those logs out of the water! The boys took a break from shooting and sure enough, there Kenai went to retrieve the targets. After that, he was hooked! He still doesn't dive in gracefully - his entrance to the water is pretty funny to watch actually - but he swims nonetheless. In fact, he swims in Prineville and in Seattle, which has made walks at Green Lake even tougher now -- all he wants to do is swim!

Three dogs swimming - that means Kenai is one of them :) Yay!!!

Three layers of doggie ;) Talk about spoiled pups!

As I mentioned, Labor Day weekend is also a time to celebrate the youngest in our fam... Miss Maddie! She has had lake birthday celebrations since the fam moved to Bend many moons ago and we were so happy to take part in this VERY special one -- her 21st! Chasie wanted to make Maddie a necklace out of airplane booze bottles (the little mini ones), similar to what we made for her in Las Vegas almost 2 years ago. We picked up the booze, and a few other 21-er necessities, in Bend before heading to Prineville and made Maddie a "21 Fun" bucket complete with a dizzy bat, a koozie, glow necklaces for the big night out and her beautifully crafted necklace. Very fun!

The almost 21 year old being crowned with her necklace!

The weekend was just perfect - lots of sun, good food, laughs and of course water sports (for those of us that weren't 9 months pregnant!) Bob "retired" from wake boarding a couple of years ago after realizing that wake boarding typically equals a dislocated shoulder after every attempt to try anything beyond standing on the board behind the boat, but he is now working on his water skiing skills. Not too shabby for his 4th or 5th time behind the boat!

And as for me... I enjoyed every minute of our last adventure before baby. Some thought I was crazy to go camping 9 months pregnant, but it really was fun! Dad had several sleeping options for me to choose from (very cute how concerned he was about my sleep on the lake!) and I must say it wasn't much worse than sleeping at home. So glad we went camping and enjoyed a lake weekend before the baby arrives -- next summer... camping with an almost one year old. Sign me up!

And just to prove that I was actually there -- photo evidence of the big ol' belly on the lake! (Hoping no one loses their lunch!)

Spoiled...

The last weekend of August was a BIGGIE for us! Not only did we get to celebrate five years of marriage (woah!) surrounded by many of our family and friends, we also celebrated Baby K at a shower in honor of the little miss! The party truly was a group effort and we are so thankful to everyone that made it possible. It was so great to gather friends and family together to prepare for the arrival of Baby K (who for all you that have been asking, remains nameless - our short list of three names will be headed to the hospital with us where we will meet our daughter and choose the name that suits her best :))

August 25, 2007...

August 25, 2012... what a difference five years make!

Such a cute idea - everyone (including folks that couldn't attend the party) filled out baby stats...
lots of early October, mid-8 pound baby predictions!
Thanks John and Sommer for such a great way to commemorate the little miss
(and for the GORGEOUS flowers throughout the party) :)

Beautiful poolside setting for the party on an AMAZING Seattle day!

Lots of helpers to open gifts :)

Bob really got into the fun ;)

Our gracious hosts - thanks for welcoming everyone into your home Uncle Jim and Debbie Jean :)

Dad manned the BBQ (of course!) - look at all that yummy salmon!

Even college friends got in on the fun! Ali handled invites like a champ (with a teeny baby of her own!) and Becko made SUPER cute frames with baby pictures. Thanks, ladies!



The Kehrlis put together a great bar and brought a YUMMY cake (perfect for my MAJOR sweet tooth!) Thanks Catherine for picking such a delicious treat.



Aspiring chef Maddie posing with the AWESOME table of food -
thanks Robie, Debra, Maddie and Chasie for the delicious food!



Two of three great-grandparents in attendance enjoying the sun!
(Bob's Grandma joined us to celebrate her 7th great grandchild too -
no photo evidence of that at the moment...)

Our new niece, Patrice, was a MAJOR highlight (as were all of the nieces and nephews) -
thanks for making the trek John & Sommer and Bill & Rhiana!

Such a fun way to prepare for our little girl - thanks everyone!

And if that wasn't enough celebrating... Earlier in August my awesome co-workers hosted an amazing lunchtime baby shower. We have one spoiled little girl already :)