Just never know...

Had another doctor's appointment yesterday. 3cm dilated and 70% effaced, head's down there, so I guess it could be any time now. Just have to play the waiting game. I feel tired this morning and crampy, kind of like i'm about to get my period. Of course, that could be the result of the examination yesterday. It's hard not knowing when this is going to happen. I have a weird feeling it may be today, but I could be way off too. Only time will tell I guess. I'll try to keep this updated if something does happen.

To my firstborn

Since these are the last few days I will have with just my little girl, I wanted to do a tribute to her, to my first born. Here's a little montage of pictures of her young life, just to show her off. She's grown fast and I cherish all the memories I have with her. I hope the times we spent together are meaningful to her as well, but I know she won't remember them very clearly as time goes on. She's a sweet little girl, so full of life and energy, always with a smile on her face. She's gotten extra cuddly lately, which I love, because she never used to do much of that. Maybe she's more aware of the upcoming changes than I realize. I have learned so much from her, how to be a mother, what to do right and what to do wrong. She's taught me how to be young again, how to imagine and create. It makes me a bit sad to realize this season with just my little girl is coming to an end, but I know we will still have great adventures ahead. I want to make sure that I spend time with just her every once in awhile so she still knows how precious she is and how much I love her. Here's to you, sweet pea! And thanks for being such a wonderful first child!

Waiting...

So today is my official due date. No baby yet, and no big signs that he's on his way really soon. I did have a few pretty intense braxton hix contractions last night, but I think it was from doing too much and from being on my feet too much. (Kaylin really keeps me busy!) After laying down and going to bed, I didn't have any more. They did make me realize though, that this is going to happen very soon and it's actually real! I'm going to have another baby! Sometimes I get a little scared. I've heard that going from one to two kids is pretty intense, and Kaylin is so busy and energetic all the time, that i'm afraid it's going to be pretty tough to meet the demands of two. I guess i'll just have to take it day by day and we'll all just have to adjust. Thank goodness for having two sets of grandparents around and a wonderful, supportive husband!

My goal for today is to finally pack for the hospital and finish a load of laundry, along with a few other things that have been awaiting my attention. My parents have the day off today, though, so hopefully I can get some stuff accomplished.

I'll try to keep everyone updated as things start to progress...

Due date

So my official due date is October 13th, not what I put on my blog for the countdown, which is set for the 17th. That means just 5 days! The reason I put the later date is because I used the day I ovulated, not the date of my last period, so I think it may be more accurate. The doctors use the period date, so they're saying the 13th; we'll see. I think it will be later. Plus, in the first few ultrasounds I had, he measured closer to the 17th, 18th. And if he's anything like Kaylin was, he'll be late anyway.

But the countdown will begin Monday, the 13th, so i'll just be laying low, waiting to see what will happen. And i'll keep the blog updated, too. As of last Friday, my last doctor's appointment, I was about 2 cm, not completely soft or thinned, but getting there, and his head hadn't completely dropped yet. My doctor said she didn't think he would be coming early, and I don't mind because I still have lots to get done! Here we go...

Belly and baby

Here's a belly shot from back in August.

This is the most recent of my belly shots. It was from about a week ago, so I'm about 37 weeks here. And yep, I really carry out front, nice and round. Most people that stop me first comment that I must be due any day (and I was getting that almost two months ago) or they ask if I'm having twins. Makes you feel really good. :)

Here's my baby shower--high tea in Davis. Nice and relaxing and low-key.

Kaylin enjoying tea as a princess. She wasn't actually at the shower, Tim watched her so we could enjoy some quiet. She does love having tea though, and would have really liked it.

Back again

Well, it's been a long time again. Feeling pretty busy, although I guess by most standards I'm really not that busy. Tim, Kaylin, and I have been living with my parents for about a month and a half now, which has its ups and downs. Our parents have been very generous but we're looking forward to having our own space again. (As I'm sure they are too.)

Work on the house began in the middle of September (we finally closed Sep. 9th, after many complications) and has been moving along steadily. Although, with the way things look, we'll probably be here at my parents when the baby is born. The house has been gutted, so until we have the new flooring and paint in, we don't want to be living there. We've already accepted the fact that we won't have a kitchen for a while after we've moved in, but we have a makeshift one in the garage for the time being. Tim and his dad put in a fridge, oven and sink out there, even some cabinets and countertop, so that will have to work for awhile. It'll be interesting to have a newborn and a toddler in the mix once we move in. We have lots of help though, so that's good.
I'll post some pics later on of the house in it's current state.

And because life seems so upside down and busy right now, the thought of having a baby in two weeks is just unbelievable! We haven't done much to prepare, and that's starting to scare me a bit! We don't have a name or even a nursery and Tim and I hardly see each other, so we haven't had much time to talk about the impending birth and arrival of our son, much less time to get things done for him. I've gotten a few things for him (diapers, onesies, etc.) in the last week, but it's still very unorganized and just sitting in bags out in the car. I haven't packed for the hospital, aghh! Very different from the first time around! I don't know what we'll do if he comes early. I definitely need the two weeks to get things more under control. At least i've been healthy and feeling good. With Kaylin I remember being tired all the time at this point, and unable to move around very easily. (Although that could've been around the time that I was already a week late.)

On the topic of the baby's name, we have been mulling around a few names, and seem to be down to two that we like more than any of the others we have talked about. Maybe you all can give us your opinions...I've been having a hard time with it, though because I don't completely love either of them, and it's hard to picture either of them as my son's name. Maybe we'll just have to see what fits when he's born. Anyway, the names are Dylan and Logan. My mom and Tim lean toward Dylan, and I go back and forth between the two.

Okay, I need to sign off now to get started on dinner, but i'll try to be better about updating this, especially as it gets closer to my due date. I also wanted to put some belly pics on here, so we'll see.

Hello again

So I know it's been a very long time since I've posted anything, and who knows if anyone actually still checks my blog, but I'm finally on here again with some pictures of what we've been up to around here. We finally got our laptop repaired and back so I was able to update and put all our backlogged pictures on it and add some here.

Here are a few pictures of Kaylin turning two that I wasn't able to add to her previous birthday post. This was on her actual birthday when just the grandparents and Aunt Cori came over to celebrate, it wasn't the big party. Tim's sister Cori made her cake (dairy and egg free!) and unlike her first birthday when she didn't want to have anything to do with her cake, this time she couldn't wait to dig in! She even blew out her candle all by herself!

Yum!

Here's Kaylin during her big party, making her classic "cheese" face for the camera.

Mom and Kaylin

The weekend after Kaylin's birthday, we went camping at Big Sur with some high school friends. It was fun and great seeing everyone again, but unfortunately Kaylin was pretty sick (she was a trooper though), it was cold and we never actually saw the sun. And I didn't get a lot of pictures because we were a little occupied with Kaylin.

Gotta love my sister's face here.

4th of July. We spent the day relaxing and enjoying Tim having a day off. We went to a local park with my parents where the city of Davis does their fireworks.

Kaylin enjoying some bubbles.

Waiting for the fireworks.

And enjoying some popsicles. Kaylin did okay with the fireworks. She was a little scared and cried at first because they were "a bit loud," as she later put it, but as soon as she was hiding with dad under the blanket, she was okay. (She later claimed that she liked the fireworks and thought they were fun--she kept talking about them for several days.)

Okay so I should do a whole seperate post on our current house buying situation, because it is quite different from my last post and it's a long and complicated story. I'll try to give the short version. So this is a picture of the house we our currently in escrow with. It's not the house that I posted about back in June that we made a bid on and that was accepted. We decided to back out of that offer because we realized that it was just going to be too much for our budget and we weren't comfortable with what the payments were going to be, especially since we wanted to do some updates to it. We kept looking and found this house a few weeks later. The asking price was lower, it was bigger, and didn't have the same odd situation that the other one did with dealing with a judge. This one is a foreclosure too, has a bit more work involved (Tim really liked that part--wants to put a lot of sweat equity into it), is in almost the same neighborhood, and just seemed like a better deal. So after a lot of thinking about it, going back and forth, we decided to put an offer in. We hoped the process would move quickly because we have to be out of our rental on the 17th of this month.

We first made the offer towards the beginning of July; we didn't hear ANYTHING from anyone for a week, which was very frustrating. But the interesting part was (and the great part for us) was that they ended up lowering the asking price $30,000 after we had already put an offer on it. Obviously their left hand didn't know what the right was up to. So, we amended our offer and finally a few days later received confirmation that our offer was on the way to the bank. About a week after that we got an email fowarded from our realtor stating that there were multiple offers on the house and that we needed to send in our best offer. We decided not to change our offer (much to the chagrin of our realtor). They said they were going to make their decision quickly, and after not hearing anything for almost a week, we started looking into rentals because we were getting so frustrated (and nervous) about how long the bank was taking in the whole process. We told our realtor that we were going to walk away if we didn't hear anything by Tuesday, the 29th of July. In the meantime we had almost completely set up a short-term rental in Davis. We figured we weren't going to hear anything and that they must have chosen one of the other offers, so we needed to prepare for finding other housing. Two days later our realtor called and told us the bank had accepted our offer and sent a counteroffer that we needed to look over and sign if we wanted to still go ahead with everything. We almost decided to walk away because we were frustrated and we knew that housing prices are still going down and that we could maybe get an even better deal in a few months. But we decided that it would be better for us just to move once (because of the baby coming) and that we can't live in the "what if," wondering if something better is around the corner. We got a good deal, and I think we will be able to make a good profit on it when the market goes back up.

So, that brings us to today. We've signed the papers, sent them back to the bank, and have waited another week to still hear nothing about the house. Our close of escrow date is the 28th of this month but we can't get started on anything--like the inspection--until we get the signed contract back from the bank. Frustrating!! We already have to move into my parents for two weeks because the bank took so long. So hopefully we'll hear something tomorrow or by early next week, or we're going to have to start thinking about walking away again. It's been so hard being in this unknown, inbetween state for so long! It's really forcing us to trust that God has this all worked out and knows what's going to happen. I know that He's going to take care of us and provide for our needs, but it's definetly easy to forget that and to want to do everything ourselves. So we'll keep waiting and trusting...

On a completely different note, Tim and I enjoyed a night out to ourselves a few weekends ago when we saw John Mayer in concert. He had bought the tickets for me for mother's day because he knows how much I like John Mayer. The concert was great; John Mayer is a great entertainer, wonderful to hear live, and amazing on the guitar! Thanks, hun! I had such a great night!

A shot of John Mayer

My sister Caroyln was in town from Colorado with her two girls a few weekends ago. It was a brief visit, but it was great to see them and spend some time together. Kaylin adores her older cousin and is finally old enough to play with and get to know her other cousin who is only 5 months older than her. So it was sweet to see them interacting and having fun. (I also added this picture to show a belly shot, since it's been sooo long since I've had one on here. I think I am about 28 weeks here.)

The young cousins at Fairytale town in Sac enjoying snow cones.

Kaylin going down her favorite slide in Fairytale town.

So that gets everyone up to date on the lives of the Browns. Right now we're just busy starting to pack and preparing to move. Unfortunately I can't do too much since I'm getting too big, so we're trying to tackle it little by little. Not too much else going on, but we feel busy enough. I'm feeling fine and can't really complain about anything. I'm blessed to have an uneventful pregnancy. The baby boy is healthy and very active, especially doing lots of somersaults and turns--I constantly see my stomach moving and shifting around. I'm trying to enjoy this time before I get too big. The time is moving fast, but still seems a long way off. I know it (he) will be here before I know it. Okay, it's getting late and I could probably write more, but I should get to bed. Hope all my readers are doing well! And thanks for reading through this loooooooooong post!