Two and a half Months

It's been a couple of months since I posted. A busy, fun couple of months :) So I sit now, with Kara sleeping on my shoulder, to update. 
Thursday she will be 10 weeks old. Sooo hard to believe!! It's funny because it feels like forever since I was pregnant. I'm getting closer to feeling back to my pre-pregnant self. But then I still can't believe I have a baby of my very own. Maybe when she starts calling me Mommy it will start hitting home more, but it'll still take a while to really sink in.

Well, like I said, Kara is 10 weeks old this week. She had her first Christmas here in Fort Worth and she seemed to enjoy it :) She met so many people and was such a good baby! At two and a half months, she can hold her head up real good, likes to stand and jump, has started to smile and laugh, has gotten really good at spitting up and likes to talk to you while she plays on her back. I think she's getting cuter, but some may say I'm biased :) She isn't fond of naps, but doesn't mind sleeping on my chest (it's the easiest way to get her to sleep during the day, next to carrying her around in the sling). She has gotten easier to go to sleep at night though....thank goodness!!

Anyway, here's some recent pictures of her. Enjoy!

Kara Elizabeth is here!

It has been a busy, tiring and baby-filled last couple of weeks......Kara Elizabeth was born on 11/10 at 5:43 pm and came into the world at 5 lb 9 oz and 18 inches long.
To catch everyone up, here are some pictures from the last couple of weeks:

The first three are the morning of Kara's birth. 

I woke up at 3 am with my water breaking and knew it was the day I was going to have a baby :)  We had plans to get pregnancy pictures taken just two days later, on Saturday, but that didn't get to happen so we snapped just a very few pictures right before we walked out to go to the hospital.

Fast-forward about 10 hours and we pick back up later that evening....

Right after she was born.....I loved this moment!

This is Kara getting her first bath

And here is Daddy shielding Kara's eyes from the really bright lights....I think Daddy is in love all over again!

Kara's serious face :)

Now the next few are after she came home.....

Sleeping beauty :)

I added some bright things for Miss Kara to check out while hangin' out in her bassinet.  She seems to really like the pink butterfly!



Here is Daddy and Kara.  He really likes just chillin' with Kara!

And here is Daddy with feeding duty.  I am actually breastfeeding but Miss Kara doesn't like to stay awake long enough to get all she needs to eat, so we are now bottle feeding while I pump.  Although I'm looking forward to getting to breastfeed again once she gets a little bigger and once she can stay awake long enough, this way Daddy and Grandma get to feed her also.

Well that is all for now.  I'll post more soon!

Baby Wearing

I decided I wanted a baby wrap carrier after reading about them but they can be fairly expensive to buy one.  So I set out in the wide world of information and found a great tutorial on the web for this Mei Tai.  It seems like a well made design.  We’ll see how it turns out in real life, but those who have used the style and tutorial speak highly of it.  I made the carrier so that you could wear it reversible. Here’s the colorful side….

And here’s the plain (more dad-like) side.  There is the solid piece that keeps the baby in place and then there is a hood attached to the top that has the ties to secure it so it stays put while you are walking around.  You can use it to put over baby’s head if she is sleeping, or if it’s too sunny or drizzly, etc. 

Here’s a couple of pictures of me wearing a stuffed cow.  Just to see how it works/looks.  You can actually put newborns up to several years old in here and can wear the child either on your front or on your back (newborns would be front only though).  Anyway, I’m pleased with the way it turned out and about the only thing I may change is making the straps a little bit shorter.

Baby Lanier's New Room

So I know some of you are wondering what exactly the baby’s room looks like right now.  Well it is definitely still in a state of “coming togetherness” but there is progress to be seen.  Here’s an around the room view of its’ current state.

This first one is the entrance to the room along with the closet.  I decided I had to hang at least one thing up for pictures, so since I had already determined this piece would be going beside the closet, I went ahead and hung it up.  I remember having this in my room as a child and my Mom gave it to me not long ago, knowing I liked it.  It makes me smile still  :)

This next picture is just showing the inside of the closet. I’ve organized the many clothes I’ve already acquired into boxes according to sizes. I figure that will make it easier to change them out as the time comes. We’d like to eventually put in some permanent shelves in the closet to make more efficient use of space to store stuff but that is second to the other stuff which really needs to get done before she is born.

Panning over, this is the window in the room. It takes a large portion of the wall that it is on. The curtains are obviously temporary until I get the real ones made. I’ve just got to go find material that I like. In three weeks, I plan to start working part-time (and can’t wait!!) so I’m hoping I’ll have some more time during the day to do things like this.

Here is where the bed is planned to be, along with the rocking chair.  I’m looking for a small table to sit beside the chair that I can put a lamp on and other small stuff.  I also plan to find a place for books beside the chair also.  The mirror sitting behind the chair I plan to put on the small wall to the right of the yellow curtains and off to the left of the chair.  I figured baby girl will have fun looking at herself when she gets tall enough to stand in her crib.

This final wall is where the changing table/dresser will go.  We’ll be moving it in sometime in the next week or two.  Most of the stuff sitting there will either be going in or on top of the table.  And you can see the doorway off to the very right hand side, which is where we started our tour.

This is a mural that my friend Marianna is painting for me.  It is actually a collage and I just LOVE it!  It isn’t finished quite yet but when it is completed, I plan to put it above the changing table.  I’m so lucky to have talented friends and family!

That concludes the baby room tour for now! I’ll post an update once I’ve made some more decent progress on the room.

Baby Movement!

Baby Lanier was being particularly active last night!  We'd been trying over the last week or so to get video of her movements without much luck.  Last night paid off!

2 Months To Go!!

It’s been a little while since I’ve posted an update. My dear sister Alicia decided to point that out to me this past weekend so I figured I had put it off long enough – it was time to get to posting!

So technically, we are 9 weeks away from a new birthday in the family. I’m definitely starting to get bigger and notice.

Changes I’ve noticed in the last couple of weeks:
• I definitely cannot see my feet – in fact shaving my legs and tying my shoes are becoming rather difficult tasks
• My belly gets in the way when I try to wash dishes now
• When I squat or kneel down, there’s not quite enough room for my belly (and baby girl usually lets me know with a stiff kick!)
• Getting comfy at night is now getting difficult
• She’s apparently a night owl (she always seems super active when I wake up during the night – which in turn means I don’t always get to go back to sleep like I so wish I could!)
• I can actually feel different body parts – head, legs, back – which is just really weird and cool at the same time
• I feel pregnant all the time – I know this sounds weird. But before about 30 weeks there were times in the day when I got wrapped up in what I was doing and since my figure didn’t get in my way or distract me, I would almost forget I was pregnant. Now, between the flutters, kicks and protruding belly, there is always some sort of reminder.

So what is going on in baby-world these days? Well, she is getting close to her birth length. In fact my handy dandy phone app says she could be up to 19 inches long! She’s also becoming quite the chunker, weighing in somewhere between 3 and 4 pounds. Wow! Her big job in the next few weeks is to pack on the pounds. She is accumulating fat under her skin to keep her nice and cozy warm when she is born.

Anyway, that is about it as far as how we’re doing. We started our every two week appointments last week (it was every month) and so far, the nurses still say everything is looking great. I’ve been so extremely blessed to have such an easy pregnancy (thank you God!!) and with only 9 weeks left, I hope to keep it that way!

Now I’ll leave with a few pictures over the last few weeks…..

25 weeks 1 day (August 15)



29 weeks 2 days(September 13)



31 weeks 1 day (September 26) –
These are taken in the newly painted baby’s room. The pictures didn’t come out too well, but you can at least see the color we chose. Oddly, the pictures looked fine on the camera when we took them….

24 Week Update

Here we are at 24 weeks – almost 6 months along. Things are still going great! I'm starting to truly show so that people I haven't actually told are asking if I'm pregnant. Baby girl is growing like crazy too…. I can tell in that her kicks are getting stronger seemingly every day. The kicks, jabs and rolls span from side to side and from my hips up to my ribs, so she is definitely getting bigger. Mark and I have found it quite intriguing to sit and watch my belly until it moves :)

This week in Baby-ville
Your baby is about eight and a half inches long (crown to rump) and weighs one and a half pounds, gaining steadily at a rate of six ounces per week. Much of that weight comes from accumulating baby fat, as well as from growing organs, bones, and muscle. Those little ears of hers are getting sharper and can hear very loud sounds, from a yapping dog to a jackhammer. Also by now, that fabulous face is almost fully formed, complete with eyelashes, eyebrows, and hair. Is your baby a brunette, a blonde, or a redhead? Actually, right now her locks are white since there's no pigment yet.

Also, last time I promised a sonogram picture of Miss Baby Lanier so here she is! This is a profile picture of her face so you can see her head on the right side with her little nose and mouth and forehead and then her chest is over to the left and you can actually see her spine on the bottom. Pretty darn cool if you ask me!

This week in Mama-ville
We haven't kept up as well as we were with pictures of me (partly due to much time by me spent in Buffalo, NY). Here's a very recent couple of pictures of me though. And for those who wonder if I'm showing yet, well, I think the pictures speak for themselves. Do I hear a resounding "yes"?

23 weeks 3 days (August 2)

As for the house preparations, they are coming along. The baby's room is getting close to being cleared out and the office/spare room is becoming more like what it will be. Still a long ways to go but progress is being made. In fact, in the extensive cleanup, Mark found some MRE's from his Navy days (yes it's been a while) and decided to "explore" one of them to see if they were still good after 20 years…yikes!! His take on it… "it tastes old". I'm just going to trust him on that one! As for the baby room, I still haven't totally figured out how I want the room to look, although I've been gathering ideas.

In addition to figuring out what we want the room to look like, we've been researching all the things you need for a new baby: car seats, strollers – those are the biggies since we have to have those to come home from the hospital – but there are still plenty more other things like playpens and highchairs and swings and other stuff. And oh the options you have! Almost overwhelming! We went window shopping yesterday and in addition to a lot of looking, we had fun test driving strollers. In fact I think Mark may have enjoyed it more than me, figuring out how they all worked and what all "features" there were for each.

Well that's where we are this week. More to come!

Angela.