Some of Jackson's new things

It's driving me crazy that I can't do any work on the nursery. For now we're keeping Alexa in the back bedroom. Once the baby is out of the co-sleeper we'll be moving him into Alexa's crib, Alexa into a toddler bed, and switching the nursery to the bigger front bedroom. For now, since Jackson won't go right into the crib I prefer to keep Alexa in it. It just bugs me because I've been bitten by the nesting bug. Instead of decorating I've taken up shopping. The 1st picture is a picture of the onesie stickers for his monthly photos. I love looking back on Alexa's and think it will make an adorable collage once I get my act together. I love the colors in his stickers. I've always been a big fan of bright colors on babies and kids. The 2nd picture is of his new handmade hat I ordered from etsy to match his snowsuit. Not a bad match if I do say so myself. The 3rd picture is of an outfit I bought from Carters. It's his very first "Mommy" outfit. Right now I have my friend Cindy finding an embroidery design with his name and monogram so she can embroider a white gown for him to wear in the hospital. I'm going to order a white knotted hat to match it. Who says boys can't accessorize?!

Playing catch up....again.

I don't know if I'll ever be good with keeping things up to date here. There are many times that I want to sit down and update but then I remember how much catching up I have to do first and I put it off again. I guess it doesn't help that December is THE busiest month of the year around here.

PREGNANCY UPDATES!!

On December 6th I woke up and got ready for my 29 week appointment and glucose test with the midwives. I was feeling very proud of myself as I chugged down the nasty orange drink with plenty of time to spare. I hate being late to appointments (but usually am). Alexa and I pulled up with 5 minutes to spare. Go me! As I walked up to the door I noticed the lights were out. Had I written down my appointment time wrong? Did I miss a call from them trying to reschedule me for a different day? No. Turns out being pregnant has just turned my brain to mush. This was a Tuesday. The midwives don't open until noon. Here I was reading the sign on the door at 10:50am. Ugh!! I checked my phone calendar again. Sure enough my appointment was scheduled for Wednesday December 7th! This normally wouldn't have been a problem had I not just downed the entire yucky bottle of sugar...the one I was supposed to drink on Wednesday morning! I called the midwives and they just suggested I come in a bit early tomorrow for my appointment and drink another bottle. Ok. Sounds fair.

Wednesday December 7th I woke up and got the kids ready for school. As I walked by the dining room table I saw 3 peppermint patties sitting on the table. Not the best breakfast but it would definitely hold me over until I got back from the school. Mmmmmm. Minty. No sooner did I swallow that I remembered today was my glucose test and I was to have nothing to eat after midnight. Ugh x 2! When I got home I canceled and rescheduled the appointment for December 13th at 6pm.

Tuesday night at 6pm I finally had my glucose test. No drama. No forgetting. And I passed with an 82. That night I also scheduled the rest of my ob appointments. Starting at 30 weeks they like appointments every 2 weeks. Am I really that far along?

December 30th- 32 week appointment
BP-Good
Weight-Stayed the same
Instructed to schedule a growth scan with perinatology
I was in and out in no more then 10 minutes. I can't wait for my appointments with Becka again. She's amazing and I miss chatting with her!

January 5th- Growth Scan and other drama
5am I wake up on the couch. I must've fallen asleep watching Tori & Dean. I sat up and rubbed my eyes for awhile trying to wake up a bit. Suddenly I noticed that my pants were wet. Had I peed myself? Had I broken my water? I frantically felt around on the couch and blankets to see if they were wet. Dry as a bone. Then I headed upstairs to wake up Burt. Surprisingly he woke up very quickly. He told me to smell my pants to see if it smelled like pee. I know! Yuck! But at least if I knew I had peed myself I could stop my heart from pounding out of my chest. It didn't smell like pee. Uh oh! I put in a call to the midwives. It took a bit of phone tag but I finally heard back from Misty. She instructed me to put a pad on and call back in an hour to let her know whether or not it was wet. I did and tried to lay in bed to catch a few more zzz's. Finally about 10 minutes before my alarm was set to wake up, check and call them back I felt myself drifting off. I did a quick check and I was dry. Thank God!!!

10:45-growth scan
Pretty short and sweet. Little man is getting quite big now. They estimated him to be 6lbs 4 oz. I find that to be nuts and so do the midwives. They calmed my fears a bit when they told me that ultrasounds at this gestational age can be up to 1 lb off. The tech took her measurements and checked my fluid level and then explored a bit. We got to see his little ear and even a bunch of hair on the back of his head. It was amazing. He is now head down with his arms and legs facing the right side of my body. His face was turned toward my back so we didn't get any looks at his face and his legs were closed pretty tight so we couldn't get another look at his package. It's always so comforting to watch his little heart beating on the screen. I'm getting so excited now to see him. Now that it's January I can say next month we'll have a newborn! Only 6 weeks and 3 days until my due date. Insane!!

Jackson McCabe???

Tomorrow I will officially be 29 weeks along. It's hard to imagine that in 11 weeks or less we will have a new little one around here. I feel like it still hasn't hit me. I mean I'm going thru the motions...picking out a new car seat, researching baby books, planning the layout of the new nursery, but I still can't actually believe that I'm going to be cuddling a newborn again very shortly. I've been struggling a lot lately with what to name this munchkin. All of the other kids had names very early on and we never struggled as much as we are with this one. A couple weeks ago I posted on facebook asking for name suggestions. I got a pretty overwhelming list of names. Some crazy and completely not our taste and others that hit the "Hmmmmm I might like that" button. This sparked a pretty in depth talk with Burt over what this little guy's name should be. Up until that point we would just randomly throw a name out there and one of us would either say "Yea, that sounds ok" or "Noooooooooo". We briefly tried out Shane. I tried referring to him by name for almost a week but by the end of the week I just couldn't picture us having a Shane so it was tossed. After the talk we both had a pretty decent sized name list.

MY LIST
Jacob
Joseph
Kyle
Joshua
Logan
Colton
Colin
Jackson
Landon
Ryan
Owen
Noah
Domenick
Shane

BURT'S LIST
Jayden
Logan
Noah
Carter
Colin
Jackson
Nolan
Mason
Evan
Owen
Joel
Kyle
Joseph

For now the winner is Jackson. We both really like that name and all the nicknames that go along with it. Jack, Jax, and if we go with a J name like Joseph as a middle name we could also call him JJ. We're going to stick with it for awhile and see if it really sticks. We both feel like it's really growing on us. Abby and Nathan aren't really big fans of it. Luckily for us they don't have to be in "love" with it like Burt and I do. They'll have their chance at the name game one day when I'm ready to be a grandmom. For now we go with Jackson Joseph McCabe.

Thanksgiving 2011

Our countdown to Thanksgiving turkey has been completely plucked!

My handsome helper setting the table

Our thankful leaves

Thanksgiving this year was one of the most peaceful yet. I don't know what made it especially peaceful but everyone had a really nice day. As the day usually starts Abby and Nathan helped me prepare the turkey. Tom, as we so lovingly name him every year, was in the oven by 9:15. Then I had Abby peeling sweet potatoes and Nathan opening our new silverware and setting the table. All the while Alexa wandered around aimlessly making messes. The boys played video games off and on throughout the day. Abby took a nap on the couch and I relaxed and enjoyed a hot shower. What more could I ask for? Dinner was ready around 5:15. This year we added a new tradition to the mix and took turns reading what each one of us was thankful for from the leaves we had been filling out each night throughout the month of November. It was a great reminder of what Thanksgiving is really supposed to be about. The leaves provided us with things to talk and laugh about and even slowed down our eating so that we could really enjoy everything, including each others company.

November 7th- 25 weeks

Another midwives appointment under my belt and everything is well. My blood pressure was perfect at 112/80. My weight, in my book, is great. I filled them in on everything the perinatologists told me at my last ultrasound and we talked about my upcoming colposcopy. And yes, it is that time again...time for the glucose test. I was given my yummy orange flat soda and the directions to follow for my next appointment. We had a quick listen to baby boy McCabe's heartbeat and we were on our way!

Picture Catch Up

BUBBLES!

Still very obsessed with her toes

A little fun at the park on voting day

Alexa refuses to be fed. She, apparently, has decided she's a big girl now.

Our daughter needs no toys for Christmas. Just a few empty boxes & containers!

October 31st- Halloween

So again here I go with back tracking my posts. I swear I think about updating here all the time and just never take the 5 or 10 minutes to do so. I think in part it has to do with the half a keyboard I have to work with here. I'm missing letters "a" "s" "x" and the backspace key. All very important considering one of my main topics here is a little someone named Alexa.

So onto way more interesting things...Halloween started off with a bang. Literally! I had planned to head out trick or treating around 5:45 so we'd have plenty of time to meet up with our friend Linda and her rugrats. Around 4:45 I got a call from Burt. "I just got in an accident. I hit a lady's car. I totally zoned out and started to go on a red light." My 1st thoughts were for this lady (I already knew Burt was okay). She had an 8 or 9 year old child in the car. They called the police and the woman's car was towed. She said that they felt fine and all was well. I then started worrying about the inevitable phone call Burt had to make to his boss to let him know the work truck was involved in an accident. It went as I expected. Now all I had to do was wait for Burt to come home. So we waited...and waited..and waited. Finally around 6:00 he was backing into the driveway and we were on our way. The kids made out like bandits as usual. Alexa loved running from house to house. She'd do 1 house to the big kids 3 houses. By time she was 3 houses behind I'd pick her up and we'd catch up to everyone else. By the 2nd house she had the hang of this trick or treating stuff. She'd reach right into the bowls of candy and help herself. I couldn't get her to say thank you buy she did a whole lot of waving and saying "Bye Bye!" By 7:45 everyone was wiped and we piled into the car to head home. At home the big kids dove into their candy. Abby's OCD kicked in and she actually organized her candy by name. Alexa helped herself to a lolly and yelled anytime anyone came close to taking it away. Boy was this year different from last and next year will again be totally different. I can't even imagine that we'll also have an 8 month old along for the fun!