February Goals - How'd I Do?

Well, to say that February was an exciting month would be an UNDERSTATEMENT!! I never dreamed that Miller would come this early, but it's a good thing that I was on top of all my goals WELL before February 18th! Yay!!!

For Me:
Read Steady Days, finish Seven, finish Shepherding a Child's Heart - YES! I can't believe I finished all of these books! Whoop whoop!!

Enjoy a pre-baby luncheon with friends and a Sunday school baby "sprinkle" - YES! I will be doing a post on this soon!

For Home:
Finish painting and hang up HOME letters in living room - YES! 

Paint the bathroom ceilings - FAIL! But did I really think I would do this? ....Nope.

Finish "styling" the Big Boy Room and take pictures! - FAIL - but I did reveal it on the blog! So that's something! 
Set up Little Brother's crib and take pictures of the room! - YES & FAIL - the crib is up and being used, but no pictures have been taken. Yet.

For Kiddos:
Wash all of Jack's 0-3mo clothes for Little Brother - YES! And it's a good thing I did!

Enjoy our last month as a family of 3 - YES! Well, HALF a month at least. :)

Oh, and March goals, in case you're wondering? Keep two kids alive, get some sleep, and thank God for the privilege.

Amen and amen.

Baby Miller has Arrived!

Happy 1 Week to Miller!!!

Here are some pictures from the hospital last week! Full birth story to follow.

Pushing the bunnons (buttons) on Mommy's bed before the baby came

Silly face!!

6lbs and 8oz

Proud parents!!

Sweet baby!

Big Brother - meet Little Brother!

Oh, I could just eat him up!

Happy to see Mommy

Best Daddy in the world!

Lawhorn - party of FOUR!!

Biiiiiig yawn

Welcome to our family, Miller!

Miller and Mimi

Miller with Aunt Nessa (or should I say Buh-nessa)

Miller with Grammy and Aunt Jess

Baby #2 - {Welcome Miller James!!!}

Well, I am so glad that I wrote this post about how I was SO READY to have the baby - he must have been listening!! :) 

On Monday, February 18th at 11:53am, we welcomed Miller James Lawhorn into the world!

He was 23 days early, but obviously, he came right on time. :) We feel so overjoyed and blessed and can't wait to share more about our precious new addition, Miller! 

Praise the Lord!!!

Evolution of the Big Boy Room

{This is my 900th POST!!! Oh my word, I can't believe I have been blogging long enough to have 900 posts. Wow!}

Let's start at the VERY beginning, yes? Here is the back bedroom when we first bought the house 4 years ago. We affectionately called this room the Rainbow Room, and planned for it to be our office.

As the office it was a mishmash of furniture, and no one really used it much. 

Then we got rid of the couch and added a full sized bed to make this an office/guest room when Jack came along. As you can see with the addition of the two computer monitors and the TV, Jason actually did use this room! The bedding was from my apartment, and we actually got new bedding before we changed this to be the Big Boy Room (BBR), but this is basically how it looked for over a year.

And NOW as the Big Boy Room!!

Navy blackout curtains, blue-gray walls (the same color as our hall bathroom), a fun new train table, my FAVORITE trellis rug, and some of Jack's furniture (crib, changing table, bookshelf) from the nursery. Now, I hesitated to even post pictures yet, because it's not "done" but who am I kidding - things are NEVER done around here!!

Now for my favorite view! The stripes wall!!!

I REALLY love how this turned out, but I almost gave up on it before even starting! We have plaster (read: textured) walls and trying to use a laser level to pencil in a straight line was IM-POSSIBLE!! Luckily my friend Casey's sister had written a blog post about painting stripes in her boys' room, and it was immensely helpful! Measure down from the ceiling and draw dots every foot or so, then connect the dots with tape. Brilliant! My mom painted everything else while I taped up the stripes. It took a while but I'm so glad I didn't throw in the towel! 

I have a really cool map that I got for Jason a few years ago, that I want to frame and put above the crib, along with a few other accents to make the space feel more finished. 

I was also planning to put shelves above both windows to corral all of Jack's stuffed animals, but for now, they live here. :)

And just to show you where we are in the nursery, here's a "right now" picture. I didn't even try to straighten up.

We moved the full size bed in here (see the awesome new bedding hiding under all that junk?), left the big chair, and got a crib that matches Jack's (thank you Miller family!!) which will go on the left wall. I plan to sleep in here at the beginning with Little Brother, nurse in the chair, and let him sleep in his big boy crib (which Jason will be assembling this weekend). 

We are going to play it by ear to see how long we will have the baby in here before moving the boys into a room together - probably 9 months-1 year, but we'll see. Then we'll have another furniture rearrangement and make this room more formally the guest room. Or maybe I will have already changed my mind by then. :)

And like I said, the BBR is not "finished" yet, but we're getting there!

Jack loves the "neeeeeew room" and has been sleeping like a champ in there! 

Baby #2 - {Thoughts In the Last Month}

This pregnancy has FLOWN by!! And then again, I feel like I've been pregnant forever (isn't that true for so many things?). We found out we were expecting a new family member on the morning we left for our Disney vacation, just 2 weeks after Jack turned 1, and a week after Jack's 1st birthday party.

It wasn't long before we found out that we would be meeting another precious boy come March! 3/13/13 sounded so far away back then! Now we are less than a month away from Little Brother's due date... And we are SO READY!

I have been having Braxton Hicks contractions pretty regularly for a month or two, but no other major issues/labor signs UNTIL this past weekend. On Saturday, we were driving around town, about 15 minutes from home, and my back started KILLING ME!! No matter how I tried to wiggle and squirm, I couldn't get comfortable - it was frustrating! So when we got home, I laid down - I could either stand or lay down, I couldn't sit in a regular seated position comfortably, and it lasted about 30 minutes. So that was Saturday.

Then on Sunday, I had what felt like period cramps, which is what it felt like when I had my first contraction with Jack - WHAT?! I wasn't even 36 weeks yet!! This lasted about 6-7 minutes then turned into the hideous back pain for a while, so I had to go lay down again. Every day since then I have had one or the other (or both), but nothing has been measurable/timeable, so we're not really concerned that he's on his way yet.

I go this Monday for my 36 week appointment and will get "checked", which is officially the worst part of the last month appointments. I will be interested to see if I have progressed at all, but other than that I would love to avoid it completely. Amen.

My doctor is out all next week, so Little Brother can either come right now or in two weeks. :) Jason and I were talking and we both can't imagine him coming in February - we feel like he is supposed to be a March baby. But of course, we will be thrilled if he comes today! Anyway, just wanted to get some of these ramblings out in a post before my pregnant mommy brain forgets it all!!

Our Mornings Lately

Most every weekday morning, Jack wakes up right before Jason leaves for work. Daddy gets him and brings him into our room, so me and my baby can snuggle! 

We say bye to Daddy and within 1 minute of him leaving, Jack says "Watch a mi-mouse?" which, of course, means he wants to watch Mickey Mouse on Mommy's phone. I don't mind this at all, because usually I can catch a few more Zzzz's while he is otherwise occupied. This lasts anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour, depending on how zonked I am and how compliant he is. :)

I have been stopping myself and just soaking in the moments the last week or so. 

It won't always be like this. Heck - it won't be like this in a month! We will have a sweet, squishy newborn to share our time with!! (And we can't wait!)

But for now, I will savor every early morning snuggle and all the alone time I'm getting with my firstborn. Because I blinked my eyes and he's not a baby anymore!

He's practically a grown man, already.

February Goals

{source}

For Me:

Read Steady Days, finish Seven, finish Shepherding a Child's Heart - I never thought I'd be the kind of person who was reading 5 books at once, but I am!

Enjoy a pre-baby luncheon with friends and a Sunday school baby "sprinkle"

For Home:

Finish painting and hang up HOME letters in living room
Paint the bathroom ceilings

Finish "styling" the Big Boy Room and take pictures!
Set up Little Brother's crib and take pictures of the room!

For Kiddos:

Wash all of Jack's 0-3mo clothes for Little Brother

Enjoy our last month as a family of 3 

Animal Sounds

Jack got a really cute game for Christmas and part of it includes doing animal sounds. One I would have never thought of (because I usually think of barnyard/house pets) is "gobble like a turkey". 

Here's Jack showing off his animal noise skills:

(Jack at 19 months - Animal Sounds)

Have I told you lately that I love this sweet boy?!?

Unexpected Snow Day

Last Saturday (February 2nd) we woke up to a chilly morning... that turned into an unexpected snow day!! Well, unexpected for me, since I never watch the weather. 

Jason was out of town for a Men's Conference, so Jack and I decided to go to Lillie Mae's (our favorite Saturday morning breakfast place) by ourselves. It started snowing a little while we were getting ready, then by the time we were getting in the car, the flakes were big!

We made and sent this video to Daddy to prove that it was snowing!

So we start on our way to Lillie Mae's and right before we got there, I made the executive decision, that it would probably be smarter to grab Hardee's and get back home. So in the time it took to go through the drive thru and get back on the road, it was getting REALLY crazy! 

As I was starting up the hill past our church (all of these places are literally within 1/2 mile of our house), the people ahead of me started to slow down or even stop, and you KNOW that if you slow down, your car is WAY more likely to start sliding. Yeesh. So the van starts sliding and I realize that there is no way I'm going to make it up the hill towards our house. It was time for another executive decision: I could go a little farther and keep trying (and risk having to walk a LONG way, by myself, pregnant, with a toddler, in the snow), or since I was right by the church, I could pull in and wait it out there. Upward basketball was going on, so there were lots of people there. I decided to pull over and slowly, carefully walk down to the church gym with Jack.

We sat in the gym and ate our breakfast and told a few people our story of being "stuck" there until it slowed down. Then the sweet Fraker family offered to take us home. We all piled in their van and Mark said he would bring my van by after they dropped me off. (SO SWEET!!) Well, sure enough, there were still a million cars pulled over on the same hill, so they offered to take me to my mom's house instead. (Crazy that I couldn't make it from church to my house which is super close, but we could make it up Signal!) 

The wonderful rescuing Frakers! They even stopped at Walmart to grab some diapers for me since I didn't have any with me and wasn't expecting to be out all day. LIFE SAVERS!!

So we spent the rest of the day at my parents' house until Jason got home from his conference. Turns out, Vanessa couldn't get her car home either, so she came over too since she was stranded with no car like us! We had a fun day just hanging out!

Whew! What a CRAAAAZY day it was. And by the time we finally made it home, there was hardly a sign that it had even snowed.

Did you have any adventures this weekend?