32 weeks and NESTING!

Hello Everyone!

Well, the "nesting" has begun - although, after a big baby shower, when you're 32 weeks pregnant, doesn't it just follow that you would have to spend a day organizing and putting things away? Hmmm...not really sure why it's nesting - seems like a logical thing to do. ANYWAY...I spent the day today organizing Connor's nursery. I took some pictures so you can see all the beautiful things that Connor has! This week we go to the doctor on Thursday (7/2) to have a sonogram to determine how big Connor is and make sure everything's going okay! I am EXHAUSTED now and very emotional at times! Definately can't wait until this little guy gets here! Sleeping is definately not fun since I get up about 5 times a night to go to the bathroom and spend the other hours trying to get comfortable so I can sleep at all!

This is Connor's bedroom door. The sign was made for Connor by our friend, Amanda!

Close up of the adorable sign!

This is the best part of the whole nursery! This is a rocking chair that was passed down to us from Jason's Mamaw! It is very old, as Mamaw was rocked in it when she was a baby! We LOVE it and feel so special that we will have this rocker to rock all of our babies in!

All of Connor's monkeys - I think he's got enough - don't you? :)

Connor's dresser! We are going to put up a shelf next to the diaper stacker so we can put Connor's pictures on it :)

And finally...his crib!!!! All finished and ready for him!

The inside!!

And here I am, after 7 1/2 hours of organizing his nursery - I finally showered, and did not have the energy to dress up - so here are some pictures of our 32 week old, growing, Connor...sitting in my favorite place in the whole house!!!

He is gettin' HEAVY!!!! I can't wait to find out how big he is this week!!

Next week we will hang some pictures and work on the letters for his name which we will hang after my aunt Suz comes and helps us pick the perfect spot!!

Oh...and one more picture...have I mentioned how much I LOVE my new fan in the bedroom - courtesy of my father in law and brother in law?!?!?!?! It is a HUGE relief in these summer months!

Have a great week!

xoxo

The Ratliffs

31 Weeks and Baby Shower!

Hello Everyone!

Jason and I had a VERY busy weekend and LOTS of pictures to post! My good friends in my Sunday School class threw a baby shower for me on Sunday, 6/21! It was a WONDERFUL time and I feel so fortunate to have made such wonderful friends and gained such FABULOUS family members in Tennessee in the short time that I have lived here! Jason and I were so excited about all of the generous gifts that we were given that neither of us slept Sunday night! While I was at the shower, Jason's dad and brother, Nick, came to our house and helped Jason put up baseboards in the nursery. To my GREAT surprise, they also installed a BRAND NEW CEILING FAN for me in our bedroom. For those of you who didn't know - I HATED the fan in our bedroom because we could not get the fan to stay on when the lights were not on so I made Jason remove the light bulbs from the old fan. So we had NO light in our bedroom. Being that we are so concerned with getting things ready for Connor's arrival, we did not take the time or have the money to replace the ceiling fan right now. Well, Jason's dad decided to replace it for us!!!! He bought us a BEAUTIFUL new fan with lots of lights and different light settings that I can control with a REMOTE from bed!!! That's high living, friends! Jason and I are thrilled with the new fan - oh and the baseboards are awesome too! We are so blessed to have such loving and generous family members! On to the pictures...

This is my 31 week picture...

The shower was at my friend, Jennifer Clements', house. This was a picture of the food table with the awesome diaper cake that my Aunt Suz made for me!

Here is one view of the room (I couldn't get everyone in the picture and tried to get a couple shots of various angles of the room)...here from the left we have Melena (Dr. Ladd's daughter), Dr. Ladd, Rachel, Mamaw, My mother-in-law Vickie, and the back of Jennifer :) Oh, and that's Jennifer's helper, next to Melena - her name is Maggie :)

These are the awesome goodies that Jennifer made for all of our guests!

From the left again, that's the side of my good friend, Alanna, and that's Sarah Kate in the back, Angela, and Amanda

That is Alex and her son, Parker, who will possibly be one of Connor's only male friends since all of my pregnant friends seem to be having baby girls :) and again, Melena, Dr. Ladd, and Rachel

There is Mamaw and Vickie and the side of Megan

Alanna, Crystal, Laura and Sarah Kate in the back, and Angela

Ok - let the presents begin. I could not possibly post all of the pictures because there were SOOO many gifts, but I picked just a few...so enjoy :)

This is an adorable little outfit from Mamaw...I can see the pictures now!

My nursing pillow! I feel this will be put to VERY good use, immediately upon Connor's arrival!

This is from Kendra, who I work with from the Dalton, GA office of Compass Care - so sweet of her to send us gifts! This is a plate that says "For this child we prayed" - beautiful! (Jason teared up when he saw this one!)

Cute little monkey outfit from Nana!

This is a beautiful sweater, knitted for Connor by an 88 year old woman who is friends of Jason's dad and Vickie! I LOVE knitted gifts!!!

This is a blanket made by the same sweet woman!

Part of our bedding set from Ashley and Phillip!

My friend, Amanda, made us this sign for Connor's Door! LOVE LOVE LOVE handmade gifts!

I bet none of you ever got a first bike for your baby before he was born! Dr. Ladd is amazing! She actually wrapped the ENTIRE bike! Jason was SUPER excited about this gift since riding his bike was so important to him as a child! Can't wait till his legs are long enough and we can take this on the VA Creeper Trail!!!!

This is for kneeling by the side of the tub to give little Connor a bath! Thanks to all of you, we will have a SQUEAKY CLEAN BABY for sure!!!

An adorable little monkey outfit!

Lots of goodies from my mother in law, Vickie!

An ADORABLE pair of overalls from Pat and Brittney!

Lots of goodies from my mother in law Jo!

Like I said, I didn't have time to post all of the pictures - we got a lot more stuff - but you get the gist of it! Here is a picture of my friend, Alanna, and I (she's 14 weeks pregnant)!!

And finally, here's a picture of Jo, me, and Brittany!

I'm pooped just looking back through these pictures! Jason and I hope you all have a wonderful week! No doctor's updates this week because I FINALLY get a week off! WOO HOO!

Love,

The Ratliffs

4D Ultrasound!

Today we had our 4D ultrasound! It was SOOOO amazing! Connor was very cooperative! Before you look at them, let me explain what's on his head :) I have lots of pictures of his face, but I have an anterior placenta, which means he basically uses the placenta as a pillow as it's in front of his face. So the tech had to move around and do her best to get pictures of his face sans placenta :) So- when you see his face, he does not have some weird growth on the right side toward the top - that's just the placenta :)

This first one is just a profile picture of him and his heart rate, which was 145! You can see his little fist to the left!

Ok - so, like I said, placenta looks like it's growing off of his head. But if you look closely, you can see his little nose, his eyes, and his lips. And his two little hands right under his chin - he sat this way the entire time...deep in thought!!

Here's another - same thing with the placenta. Look at the middle of the picture and you'll see his little nose and his lips right under his nose and his eyes on the sides of his nose :)

This one shows a hole on his forehead, but that's just from the way that the sonogram "sliced his image" don't worry he does not have a hole in his forehead!! Again you can see the placenta coming off his head to the upper right.

In the middle of this picture, you can see his two little legs and feet. He has them stretched out and is rubbing them together - this is really neat because he does this every night while I'm trying to go to sleep and in the middle of the night if I wake up... this is something that his daddy does every night when HE'S trying to go to sleep - very cute!

Here you can see a lot of the placenta (to the right) but to the left, you can see Connor's face - his nose and his forehead and eyes and mouth and his little arm is up by his chin...

Here is his face with the placenta to the right - no, his eye's not drooping - Jason asked the tech this - it's because he's smooshed up against the placenta that his little eye looks distorted.

Same thing here - see his hand under his chin...

Same thing here - he's got beautiful full lips!!!

Same thing - different picture :)

Same thing - extra placenta here to the right - but you can see a good shot of his little eyes, nose and mouth - his nose looks spread out too - it's because it's smooshed!

Same thing here - see his little hand at the bottom? He's got only his pointer and thumb and little finger up like he's signing "I love you" :)

Very exciting stuff, folks! And for those of you who are not so good with sonograms - I'm sorry you probably have NO CLUE what you're looking at - next time I see you, I'll explain!

The doctor's visit went well and the good news is that I don't have to go back next week! I go back the following week for my 32 week checkup and we have another ultrasound to find out how big Connor is! He's head down now and hopefully he'll stay that way for a little while!

My BP was great and somehow I lost 2 pounds and have only gained 17 pounds to date! WOO HOO!

Have a great week!

The Ratliffs

30 Weeks...The Countdown Begins!

Wow - I have made it to 30 weeks! EEKS! Only 7 more weeks until Connor is healthy enough to enter the world and 10 more till my due date of August 25, 2009!!!

Jason and I had an exciting week! I had my 4 hour GTT test on Tuesday, which was NO FUN. However, I got the call on Thursday morning that my results were negative and I was not at risk for Gestational Diabetes! What a blessing and HUGE relief! This week we have our 4D ultrasound on Tuesday and are SUPER excited to see our little man again!

On Wednesday, June 10th, our very good friends, Misty and Rob (Spangler, not Booke :) gave birth to their precious baby girl, Maelen Elizabeth! Maelen is such a miracle and so beautiful! I wanted to share a picture of Maelen with you all. Welcome to the world, Maelen! You have already blessed so many people and have, yourself, been blessed with wonderful parents! We love you!

Jason and I had some maternity pictures taken on Friday, June 12th! Since the above mentioned Misty and Rob are our trusted photographers...we had to go a different direction for the maternity shoot :) The pictures turned out great...here are a few of the best ones...

On Saturday, Jason and I spent the day getting stuff to prepare the nursery. We found curtain rods and hung our valences. We also cleaned out the nightmare of a closet in Connor's room. Although we had planned on adding a large organizer, we did not find one we liked and decided that the closet was spacious and fit as it was and only added some organizing bins that will be used for his blankets and various other things as well as his toys. Here are some pictures of his newly cleaned closet and his new valences!

I am happy to say that the only things left to do in the nursery are to add the baseboards, buy a throw rug, and paint and hang the letters of his name! Lucky for us, Jason's dad is wonderful and has EVERYTHING! He is going to lend us a miter saw and a nail gun so we can put up the baseboards. We even called him about painting the baseboards and he was able to direct us to the best wood stain and even the color to get over the phone, without having seen the room yet! As for the throw rug, Suz and I are working on that one as well as how to best and most creatively do Connor's name! Then we just have to buy our bedding and we are DONE and ready for Connor's entry into the world! Let me again say, we are so blessed to have such wonderful people in our lives and truly appreciate each and every one of you!

And finally, here are our 30 week pictures!

We hope you all have a great week and will be posting our 4D pictures SOON!

Hugs,

The Ratliffs