Back to her old ways...

After a small hiatus from her normal pregnancy sleeping habits, I'm sad to report that Stephanie is once again snoring. This time she's returned to snoring with a vengeance! If it were an Olympic sport, she would absolutely get the gold.

Of course this means that I've got to find another place to close my eyes or risk zero sleep. Instead of sleeping on the floor in the office and the now ultra clean brand new carpet, I've opted for the much easier couch. There is less set up and take down so its the smarter choice. Alas, it all seems to be part of this wacky game of pregnancy so far, and I don't mind the exodus.

Our dogs don't seem to mind the new situation either as they've taken up residence on my pillows at night. I blame them of course, for the whole sordid affair!

On a different note...

Harrison is kicking Steph seemingly all the time now. I suppose he's starting to run out of room in there. And we still have a couple of months left. I simply can't begin to imagine how Steph is handling this pregnancy thing. Let me just say for the record that I'm glad I was born a man. With all my idiosyncrasies I'd never get any sleep. My wife, on the other hand, soldiers on like a real trooper!

On yet another note...

The house is coming along. However we've seem to hit a snag, and I blame my decision to teach summer school. Its only about 5 hours a day, but this summer school thing is the pits. My kids are great and hard working, but I get home and I'm exhausted. I simply don't want to do anything and with my chronic laziness in full affect, that is a formula for disaster! We have so much laundry piled up and the dishes are just getting out of control. The garage needs to be organized stat and don't even get me started on the "garden area" in our back yard. There is a weed that literally stands taller than I do. At this point its a pride thing and I want to see just how tall this sucker will get. Steph seems embarrassed by the overwhelming growth, but I'm fascinated! Grow little weed, grow!!!

We're rocking at 32 weeks... I think. Harrison will be here before long and then it gets easier, right?

My first baby shower!

So my friends are smart and they planned my baby shower for a time that I was still mobile and at a time when the Texas heat was not daily reaching 100! Three of my gals--Traci, Summer and Morgan put together a great party at the Into My Garden Tea Room in Plano. We had tea, of course, soup, quiche, pasta salad, chicken salad--and a delicious cake to top it all of! And the best part--Kristy came into town from Tennessee to celebrate with us. Little Harrison was showered with cute outfits and ultimately with his under-the-sea themed play gym (I have a feeling that Bella--my morkie--will be equally interested in this apparatus). It was great fun and definitely needed to be limited to a girls-only event...we had much more opportunity to talk about all the weird and strange stuff that comes with pregnancy. I'm so grateful for my friends; we are all learning and figuring this mommy thing out together!

The rest of the weekend was great too! Kristy and I received a very sweet present from my super fantastic husband--a hotel room (two Queen beds since I still have that pregnancy snoring syndrome) all our own so we could spend some quality girl time together. In his own way, perhaps Mark was giving himself a gift--his own bed, his own home and the absences of all the girl gab that ensued. Smart husband. Well, we definitely spent that time catching up and catching the sights. We spent some tourist time at the 6th Floor Museum learning all about JFK before Kristy had to head out of town. And yes, apparently my snoring is not as 'meek and mild' as I thought it was...but I look forward to that magical day when all these weird symptoms stop (apparently this occurs practically right after you have the baby).

All in all, we're still doing great. We're at 7 3/4 months right now and coming up on that home stretch. Harrison is kicking and moving more often now or maybe he's just getting huge and every little move is more apparent. My feet are a funny sight most days--little puffy sausages wrapped in shoes. I'm still waiting for that 'lustrous hair and nail' growth that everyone raves about; that actually seems like a great symptom! Why can't I have that one?! I don't have any particular cravings, although I would never turn down any sweets and avocados look good on all sandwiches at this point. Maybe I should take that last comment back...sweet tea is an absolute joy! Sorry Harrison, you may be a little adhd...but we figured with both Mark and myself, you'd probably be that way anyways. Speaking of the little guy, his kicks are now actually making my belly visually jump! Mark got a big surprise the other day when he put his head to my belly to hear him move...and he got kicked in the face! That's my boy! What have we gotten ourselves into?!

We have another appointment in about a week and we'll keep you all posted.

Love, Steph

Getting there!

Steph and I have continued remodeling just about everything in the house. To date we've updated the following:

• New Hot Water Heater
• New Stove/Oven
• New Mounted Microwave
• New Paint in all rooms
• New light fixtures throughout the entire house.
• 3 New Ceiling Fans
• New Sink
• New Disposal
• New kitchen faucets
• New fence (That was a beating as it was built in the middle of July. Thanks for the help Ralph!)
• A fixed AC Unit (fingers crossed it doesn't break any time soon)
• New inner workings of 3 toilets
• New closet shelves in two rooms
• New shelving in the laundry room
• New Laundry room French Doors
• New eco-friendly Back Door (Thanks Kevin! That was a whipping.)
• Most recently, and with the extremely generous gift by Ralph and Anita, we have brand new carpet! It makes the house smell brand new and it looks amazing!

What we have left:

• Finish the guest and half bathroom. We're taking off the wallpaper and retexturing/painting the walls. (Probably the worst thing ever in the history of remodeling). This needs to be done before Harrison is born as the guest bathroom will be his!!!
• Retile the master and guest bath tubs/showers as well as the kitchen backsplash.
• Possibly paint the cabinets. At the very least we will put handles on them.
• Do something about the countertops in the kitchen.

We've got a lot to do, but we've gotten a lot done. The house looks great though. Steph repainted the banister recently and it looks a lot better than it did. I scrubbed the tile floor in the kitchen. It was gross how dirty it was! We can think our dogs for that.

Thanks to our parents for the continued help. Most of the financial backing is from their pocketbooks and we are forever grateful for their support.

Maybe one of these days we can people over and show off some of the work we've done!

Harrison Update

We've been to the doctor twice since the last post so we wanted to send out an update to let everyone know what's going on.

Everything seems to be going well. Harrison is growing normally and is somewhere between 3 and 3.5 pounds. Steph seems to be having a hard time understanding how something so huge can fit into her belly. I usually just show her my ultra lean, ripped torso and explain that the organs don't need that much room, that the baby is taking up much of the space.

Interestingly, we've gotten a video and a picture of the sonogram in which we've been able to see a very clear image of Harrison's little face. We've seen his mouth opening and closing as well as his fist. He threw up the traditional A&M "gig 'em" sign which obviously disappointed me, though this was quickly changed to a Texas Tech "Guns Up" sign and that of course made me smile a bit more.

Steph is doing great. The third trimester has hit her a bit and she's found herself a little on the tired side. Otherwise there aren't too many things to complain about. Although, I'm sure Steph might not agree with that statement.

I've included a picture we captured from a video at 28 weeks. Currently we're at almost 31 weeks, but you get the picture (no pun intended).

Mark

PS: We are very aware that Harrison's picture looks a bit like Skeletor. Thanks

13 weeks to go!

We're now 6 & 3/4 months pregnant!
All in all, it seems to go by pretty quickly and I can't believe I'm going to do this, but here it is...the first official belly picture!

Everything has been going great for us so far. Harrison is moving around more than ever but I haven't figured out his patterns yet. I think he still has enough space to not always bump me, but I know that window of time is about to close. We're officially in the 3rd trimester and his growth is supposed to get pretty rapid over these last few weeks. We'll find out in about a week how he's doing and how big he is at our next appointment. According to all the books, he should be somewhere around 2 lbs. and ready for some major growth spurts.

I could tell we entered the 3rd trimester by some very significant changes. All of a sudden, my blood sugar went wacky--I was feeling dizzy at work every day right around the same time. Come to find out, I need to eat 5 small meals a day instead of the normal 3 to keep all my levels in check. All that rapid growth means Harrison needs more food from me, so now I just have to snack every few hours (easier said than done). Also, that infamous belly button pop has started to happen. I still have an 'innie' but now you can see a belly button bump through all my shirts. The foot swelling thing is still happening but now it runs on a schedule. When I'm working all day or out and about running errands, I'll come home to find my feet like puffy sausages, only to slowly go back to a state of normal after a few hours of relaxing.

I still cannot believe we are so close to the end...or should I say beginning for Harrison. It's a little scary to think about, so I try not to dwell on that coming day. I just know that God has us in his hands and we're along for the ride. May it be a sweet journey of a quick delivery and a blessed epidural!

Harrison Update...

Before everything went haywire in our house, we had our six month sonogram.

It was a short sonogram but the doctor had a chance to point some interesting things out. He said everything looked great and normal which is a major blessing. We saw Harrison's hand opening and closing. We have a picture of the top of his head. He's got his fist directly in front of his forehead as though he's thinking hard. I would upload it, but its at home and I'm at work. Didn't plan this very well!

We got see a very clear image of his foot and leg and the heartbeat was pounding away.

All in all, it was a great visit. Next month, Steph gets to do the glucose test. From what I understand it's a lot like drinking extremely concentrated Tang. If it's good enough for the astronauts, it's good enough for my son.

We'll keep you updated!

When it rains... everything gets hot and rusty!

So, miracle of miracles, our hot water heater is putting massive amounts of rust into our hot water. What a blessing that is. It looks like we've been able to turn water to wine, though it tastes like crap. $912 dollars later we've purchased an energy saver 40 gallon bohemoth. Install is this Saturday between 9 and 11. Until then its lukewarm showers.

I'd do the install myself but... I'm not that talented.

The other super awesome blessing is the AC unit is no longer functioning properly. A copper pipe was bent and collapsed on itself by the builder 16 years ago. It's caused our AC unit to work 3 times harder than it has to. Luckily we got a nice guy to fix it and he'll be out at 8 on Saturday morning to remedy the problem. If this works, then we're good to go. If the quick fix doesn't hold like we want it to then we have $6000 leaving our pockets to get a completely new unit.

On top of all of this we're trying to finish the remodeling in two bathrooms, finish sealing the wood on the new fence, and get the baby's room ready to go. Ah the thrills of being a home owner.

And as a final note: please don't tell us that it only gets harder or that this is the trend of buying homes... I, for one, don't care to hear it. We know.

I guess the best thing to do is remind myself of James 1:2-3 : Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance.

We're all loaded up on perseverence, thanks.