Haircuts, Class, and a Tummy Pic...

I hope that all of you have had a nice week so far.

I wanted to ask all of you to be praying for a friend of mine, Brandi. Her blog is here. She was diagnosed with brain cancer a couple of weeks ago and she has two kiddos under 3. Please be praying for her and her family.

I managed to get my DH to take a tummy picture for me last Friday. Here is the 37 week "bump" picture. You will have to overlook the tired circles around my eyes.I am getting excited. My mom will be traveling out on Saturday and we will have a few days to hang out before the baby gets here.

The house is about as ready as it can be. If you know me at all, you know that I had to do some sort of switch-a-roo with the house to accommodate our growing little family. I need to take some pictures of the finished products. We no longer have an office/catch all room. It has been turned into the play room. Maybe I can get a picture of the room before it gets played in the morning.

Yesterday was hair cutting day in our household. I have been giving Judah minor haircuts since December, keeping his little hairs from looking too shaggy in the back and over his ears. But, I have never cut my DH's hair until last night. I think it turned out pretty good. In fact, I think I did better than the girl that cut his hair at Master Cuts last time. Here are my handsome fellows.
We enrolled Judah in a toddler-parent music class for a few weeks this summer. Today was his first class. He was pretty shy the whole time and pretty much just wanted to sit in my lap. Hopefully next week he will be a little more comfortable with the new surroundings.
After his class, we went on a mommy-son lunch date to a sandwich shop a few doors down and split a pastrami sandwich. Here we are on the way to his class. Hope you have a great day!

Speechless...

So I mentioned in my Time Flies post about this baby being an amazing answer to prayer. I also mentioned that I had so much more that I wanted to share about this. Well, I didn't want the opportunity or the time to share this to go by. So, here it is.

If you have followed my blog for any amount of time or have read many of my previous posts, you will know that we had a hard time getting pregnant with Judah.

In the first year of our marriage, I had a miscarriage. This happening completely shook my world. I always wanted to be a stay-at-home mom and I never imagined that becoming a mom would be an issue. Finding my beloved may have required waiting on God, but having to trust God about becoming a mom never even entered my head. Over the next 2 1/2 years, I had to learn to trust God with the family I always dreamed of having. I had to daily give God my anxietyabout not only the question of whether or not we would ever get pregnant again; but also, whether or not I could manage to not miscarry once I was pregnant. My DH and I prayed/pleaded with God to bless us with a child. We were/are open to adoption, but financially there was no way for that to happen without God stepping in.

In February 2009, we found out that we were expecting a baby. I had a great deal of complications my first trimester and daily feared that I had lost/was losing my precious little one. After yet more praying and pleading to God to preserve the little life that He had created, Judah was born on October 9, 2009. His name (meaning "praise") came from Leah's declaration when she names her son Judah.

My Bible verse for Judah is:

"For this child I prayed, and the LORD has granted me my petition that I made to Him." ~1 Samuel 1:27

Within six months of Judah being born, my DH and I started talking about what spacing would be good for our next child. We knew that it was in God's hands, but we still wanted to talk about it. We knew that it had taken a while for us to get pregnant with Judah and almost jokingly said that it would be great if they were anywhere close to two years apart. We began praying that God would bless our family as He saw fit and we asked for the faith to trust Him in it. We decided not to keep track of days on the calendar, as anyone who has been classified as "trying to conceive" knows gets ingrained in your head. We just wanted to enjoy the time we had been given with Judah and each other and not fret about when our next child would arrive.

Then in mid-October my DH went out of town for the weekend for his job. Judah and I went to Pei Wei for lunch and afterward I got a few waves of nausea. I thought, "Huh, that's funny; I wonder if I might be pregnant." That night my DH got home and the next morning I decided to take a pregnancy test. To my surprise a second line appeared. I ambushed my DH in the hallway with the test. (I couldn't contain myself to let him know the good news in any other way. He didn't even know I was taking a test.)

We prayed and thanked the Lord for His bestowing of another little blessing to join our family. It was some time later, maybe mid-December that Psalm 37:4 came to me.

"Delight yourself in the LORD, and He will give you the desires of your heart." ~Psalm 37:4

What struck me to be so amazing was that God had given my DH and I what we had wanted most but were too humbled by His blessing of Judah to ask for. We had asked for a child and God had given us Judah. We wanted him to have a sibling close in age but we also just wanted our family to be the size that God wanted it to be. We wanted to trust Him in what He had in store for us and not take for granted all that He had already given us. Little did we know that He would let our children be 20 1/2 months apart, just like we had hoped.

Easter 2011 - 30 weeks

Still Here...

Believe it or not, I am still here. My computer time may not be, but I am definitely still here.

Thanks to all of you for the congratulations on the news of our soon-to-be-here little one. We are getting very excited and slightly nervous about making the one to two kiddo jump. I am equipped with double strollers, a Moby wrap, a mini van, family support, and God's help; so, I know we will transition just fine.

I am 37 weeks today. We have been doing the same Neonatal Stress Tests that we had to do with Judah. So far, everything is going great. I will try to get a picture of my baby "bump" when I am not in my pj's. I haven't been as good about taking regular belly pictures this time around. I just keep forgetting.

Judah is turning into quite a big boy. He is one busy boy and I takes most of my energy just to keep up with him. Most of the pictures I take of him these days are a blur because he is constantly moving.