Christmas Time is Here...

Well,  it's feeling more and more like Christmas around our house.

We have been playing the Charlie Brown Christmas Soundtrack a lot... 

It started when we were on our way home from Louisiana at Thanksgiving. What great background music for conversation! 

Maggie is such a good traveler, and Jonathan is such a good driver!

Then I listened to it while making our Thanksgiving meal here in Louisville. 

We didn't have a turkey for our little Louisville Thanksgiving,

 but we did have lots of leftovers!

Last Monday when I got home from work Jonathan surprised me by having a tree in the stand, the ornaments out of storage,  and a pot of red beans and rice on the stove. With the christmas music going we ate a candle light dinner together, decorated the tree, and then wrapped presents! It was a great way to spend a Monday evening. 

The tree... ready for ornaments.

Jonathan and me (and a little tree) after the decorating was complete

Last Friday we went to the doctor again for my monthly visit. Everything looked good... again! Then we spent the afternoon Christmas shopping together. We have already made some good Christmas memories this year. To top it off, Old Navy had maternity clothes on sale for 40% off! So I had to get a few things for myself. And I got them just in time too! This baby has grown over the past few weeks! We have started taking pictures now that my belly is starting to expand a bit. 

11/30/07

Today

12/12/07

"Hi little baby!"

We made it!

Well, we made it.... through the first trimester, that is. I could not help but breath a huge sigh of relief and pray an extra long prayer of thanksgiving yesterday. The Lord has truly blessed us with a relatively uneventful first trimester. And to end things on a great note we had an ultrasound on Friday! The baby is about 7 cm from crown to rump. S/he is about 5 days ahead of schedule as far as size is concerned, but my due date is still June 11th. (Jonathan and I were glad of this since it is neat to tell people that the baby is due on our 3rd anniversary!) I really could not believe the changes that have occurred since our last ultrasound. The baby has all of its major body parts and organs. Now there is just an awful lot of growing ahead of us... for both baby and mom! I took a friends advice and drank a little caffeine before the ultrasound. It must have done the trick because the baby was moving around so much! S/he waved to us several times, and we even witnessed a little thumb sucking! Despite all the movement, the ultrasound tech described our little bean as "very cooperative". Now we just need to keep that up for the next 20 yrs or so....wish us luck!

3D
Waving "Hi"
Profile
Feet

Because we reached this milestone this weekend, I am starting to let myself get even more excited about the baby. For the first time I really went looking at all the baby gear we will need to buy. Whoa! I thought, well, we will just need a crib, rocker, and high chair, maybe a few toys....spoken like a true first time mom huh. If you want to make a lot of money, just get into the baby business. I mean how can a person 1/8th my size require so much equipment just to...lets say... have a diaper change? You've got the changing table, changing pad, pad cover, extra pad covers (I have learned that you need multiples of all cloth items), powder, boudreaux's, wipes, a cute diaper holder, a diaper genie, and oh.. yeah don't forget about the diapers. And this list is just for home diapering. Diapering away from home is a whole other ordeal (and product list) in and of itself. My goodness! Jonathan and I saw an article that said something like a baby will cost $30,000 in its first year of life. We thought... Nah... no way... not our kid! Well, the last of those three exclamations may still be true, but we now see that it would indeed be very easy to spend an exuberant amount of money on a new little person.



Well, all that said. We had a very good weekend, and we are ready for the next trimester!