3 hours ago
Showing posts with label 2nd Baby. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 2nd Baby. Show all posts
Last weekend was Gwen's first birthday party! As I've mentioned previously, I went back and forth on themes for a while. Having a birthday right after Christmas makes it a little tricky to me - I wanted it to be wintery and fit in with the season, but without being Christmas-y.
I finally settled on a "These Are A Few Of My Favorite Things" theme!
For those of you who are not familiar with the song, it's from The Sound Of Music, and you can read the lyrics here.
For those of you who are not familiar with the song, it's from The Sound Of Music, and you can read the lyrics here.
I tried to incorporate as many of the things from the song into her party as I could! We had:
-Brown paper packages tied up with string.
-Whiskers On Kittens, Bright Copper Kettles, and Warm Woolen Mittens candles, from Yankee Candle (which I already happened to have).
-Snowflakes "that stay on my nose and eyelashes" (actually they just hung from our chandelier and her birthday banner). I made the mosaic snowflakes with Wyatt several weeks ago.
-Sleigh bells, which I strung along with the balloons and spread onto the table for decorations.
-Schnitzel with noodles (otherwise known around here as Chicken Noodle Soup - I was just trying to think of something with noodles in it).
-Crisp Apple Strudel muffins (which I thought were going to be a disaster when the first batch flopped - thank goodness for the mason jars to make them look pretty! I just baked them straight in the jars).
-The weather even played along and we had a "silver white winter" that will eventually melt into spring!
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Overall it was a really fun and easy theme to do, and I'm really happy with the way everything turned out!
If you have any questions about any specific elements, let me know. Aside from Gwen's birthday banner, I made the rest of the decorations, invitations, etc.
We had a really nice time, and Gwen especially enjoyed her birthday cupcake! It was nice to be able to celebrate our sweet girl with our closest family and friends!
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Punch recipe here.
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Punch recipe here.
To see cake and present pictures, head on over to my photo blog.
(If you aren't a follower of my private photo blog you'll have to request an invitation here first.)
It's the Eve of Christmas today. I've been ready for Christmas for a few weeks now, but somehow it still seems to have snuck up on me. I think it's because I've been so distracted the last few weeks with getting ready not only for Christmas, but for baby.
The whole last month can be summed up in one word for me - expectancy. Will she come early like Wyatt? Will I be able to make it to that party next week, or will I be having a baby? In the back of my mind is always the thought that she could come any time.
All of my energies have been focused on getting every task that arises done as soon as possible, because if that day was the day, I wanted everything to be ready. I wanted to be prepared.
These last few days especially, as her due date has been drawing closer and closer, I've been watching for any sign that she might be coming soon - is that a contraction, or is she just pushing out the side of my belly again? Is that back pain getting worse? When will she come?
This whole month we've also been doing a Scripture advent calendar for Wyatt each night that his sweet aunt and uncle put together for him. And last night, after we read the scraps of paper, divided up the chocolate, and opened Wyatt's last advent present, I started thinking about expectancy again, but this time about the expectancy that preceded Christ's birth.
The Jews knew he was coming. For hundreds of years they read prophesies in the Scriptures about his birth. How must it have felt for Mary and Joseph to know that every prophesy, every hope and longing for His coming, was on the brink of being fulfilled through that tiny human baby (that probably stuck his arms and legs out the side of Mary's belly too)? That all those who had been watching for Him would soon see Him come, just as God said He would?
I'm not sure everyone understood then that He had come not to defeat the Romans, but to defeat something far more damaging to the people God loves - our sin. That he came to live, and then die to pay for the sin of the world, and then to rise again that we might live.
That wasn't what some of them expected, but God had His plan. Still, regardless of what they knew or didn't know about His purpose here then, to have waited for the Messiah so long and then to have Him come must have been something so special.
It's nowhere close to the same type of expectancy, but somehow waiting for our little lady to arrive has made me think about it more. I think about how excited I'll be when all these little aches and pains culminate into something that I can actually identify as labor. I think about how wonderful it'll be to see her little face after all the waiting.
And I think how thrilling it must have been, after generations of waiting, to know that the Messiah was finally here. That must have been the most amazing type of expectancy to have fulfilled for those who had been watching for Him.
It's not quite finished yet though. Jesus is coming again - not as a baby, but to catch us up with Him in the clouds, and to establish His kingdom on earth! There is plenty of controversy about how and when all the events in the end times will happen, but the bottom line is, we know He's coming back.
Are we waiting for Him now with the same kind of expectancy? Are we watching for the signs that He's coming soon? Are we making sure everything in our hearts and lives are ready for Him?
Tomorrow, as I think about the first time He came, I want to remember to watch for Him still. I want to be ready for Him, and I want to experience that full measure of joy when He finally comes again, because I was watching for Him and expecting Him all along.
Just like the waiting for anything makes it so much sweeter to receive it, for those who are waiting, and watching, and longing for His coming again, it will be a thrill beyond anything else to hear that trumpet sound and know that He is here.
To wrap it up, this song kept playing in my head as I wrote this - it's not technically a Christmas song, but it fits - because what a glorious day it will be when He comes again!
One day when Heaven was filled with His praises
One day when sin was as black as could be
Jesus came forth to be born of a virgin
Dwelt among men, my example is He.
One day they led Him up Calvary's mountain
One day they nailed Him to die on a tree
Suffering anguish, despised and rejected
Bearing our sins, my Redeemer is He.
One day the grave could conceal Him no longer
One day the stone rolled away from the door
Then He arose, over death He had conquered
Now He's ascended, my Lord evermore.
One day the trumpet will sound for His coming,
One day the skies with His glory will shine;
Wonderful day, my beloved ones bringing;
Glorious Savior, this Jesus is mine!
Living, He loved me
Dying, He saved me
Buried, He carried my sins far away
Rising, He justified freely forever
One day He's coming
Oh glorious day!
-J. Wilbur Chapman
Merry Christmas, Friends! Praying you may have the joy of knowing and waiting for Him too!
This day before Thanksgiving I'm . . .
. . . making sweet potato casserole. The best Thanksgiving dish ever. At least I kind of think so.
. . . making deviled eggs too. With paprika. Because it's just not pretty without paprika.
. . . hoping Derek and I can resist the temptation to eat aforementioned Thanksgiving Day fare before tomorrow.
. . . cleaning my messy house, or at least attempting to, because I have this thing about my house being clean on holidays.
. . . filing away the last of the photos from Wyatt's first year in a photo album - and maybe I'll get a start on his second year.
. . . starting a project for Baby Girl's room to organize the headbands I plan to buy and/or make her.
. . . thinking it might be a good day to try to watch our childbirth video with Derek as a review.
. . . forming my Black Friday game plan. Which includes buying a new vacuum since ours broke.
. . . thinking it's pretty cool that our church does a Thanksgiving Day service, and wondering if we can go tomorrow if we strategize.
. . . planning for the weekend, when we get out our Christmas decorations.
And this day before Thanksgiving I'm thinking how thankful I am that . . .
. . . sweet potatoes and eggs exist, and we are blessed to be able to afford them.
. . . I have a wonderful husband to swat away from the food.
. . . we have a roof over our heads (and over our messiness).
. . . we've been blessed with our precious son for almost two years now, and for all the memories in the photos.
. . . I have a Baby Girl to buy headbands for, and decorate a nursery for, and dream about.
. . . this pregnancy has been so healthy and uneventful so far, and that my family is healthy.
. . . my vacuum broke right before Black Friday. Could I ask for better timing? I think not!
. . . we live in a country where we are free to gather and worship God as we please.
. . . the reason we decorate for Christmas in the first place is because we're celebrating the fact that God became a baby, Who grew into a man, Who died on the cross to pay for our sins, and Who rose to life again. Who is coming again someday.
Today I'm reminded of everything I've been given, and I thank God for it. And I thank Him for who He is. Because He is good.
So I officially finished the crib bedding for baby girl! Eventually I will post pictures of the nursery so you can see it all together, but for today I'll show you all the quilt.
The finished product! It was really hard to take that second picture by the way - I had to stand on a chair and hold the camera above my head. I need to be taller I guess!
I had no idea what colors I wanted gong into the fabric store - whether I wanted to be traditional or go for an unexpected color scheme. But in the end I put all these fabrics together and loved it, so muted pinks, purples, gold, and white it was. I think it was a good way to go in the end, because with all the different shades of pink and purple, I haven't had too much trouble finding crib sheets and decor items to go with the color scheme!
I got the idea for the pattern for the quilt from a design by Hillary Lang in this book:
It was a pretty simple patten to follow - basically you start out with a base piece, cut out a bunch of squares, arrange them on the base piece, then pin them into place and sew with an appliqué stitch around all the edges. I changed it up a little bit from what the book suggested and added the borders around the edges, with the pieces overlapping onto the border.
One of the out-takes from my attempt at getting a picture of the whole quilt, but you can see the edge better in this one.
One thing I might do differently if I were to do this quilt again would be to place the pieces one at a time and sew them down before adding more squares on top. The advantage to doing it that way would be that the pieces would all lay flat - it was hard to keep all the pieces exactly in place while I was sewing, since I don't have a quilting table, so some of them ended up a little puckered.
The disadvantage to doing it that way though would be that you can't really get a full picture of the placement before you start sewing, which is why they probably suggest to arrange all the pieces from the start. And I'm happy with the way it turned out, puckers and all - it may not be perfect, but a lot of love went into it, and that's the whole point of making my baby girl a quilt myself.
When I make baby quilts I like to pick simple designs with large squares - I'm not a die-hard quilter, not yet anyway, and I need something that I can start and finish rather quickly. This quilt probably took me probably 10-15 hours all together maybe? Including cutting the pieces. I don't think that's bad for a quilt.
I did not, in fact, do the actual quilting part myself - once I had it pieced together I took the back, front, and batting over to my old neighbor, Debbie, who has a professional quilting business and a big, fancy machine to do it with, so she did that part. If I didn't have Debbie to do the fancy quilting for me, I'd probably just tack it down in several places or do simple lines instead.
I love the meander that Debbie picked by the way - see the little hearts in the stitching? It's perfect!
When I got it back I did the biding around the edges by just rolling a bit of the backing around the the front, then pinning it and sewing in place.
And that's it! I also made a crib skirt to go with it, and I'll show you all of it together once we have Mr. Wyatt transferred over to his toddler bed and I get the crib set up!
This was the second gender reveal party that we have thrown (click here to check out our first gender reveal party), and I was pretty happy with the way it went! We decided to make it a sort of end-of-summer barbecue/gender reveal party, but I still wanted to do some of the fun little gender reveal details.
We had a voting board and little tags that people could wear according to their guesses - blue ties for boys and purple bows for girls. I stuck with the blue/purple color scheme from our invitations for all my decorations, and I think it tied everything together well.
Derek and I painstakingly traced and cut out each of those ties and bows, but I have to give full props to Derek for the way he drew the lines on them - I think that detail definitely made them look finished and intentional! I didn't know my hubby was so artistic. I also made up a sheet that explained the differences between my first and second pregnancies, pretty similar to the info I posted in my Old Wive's Tale post!
It just so happened that all my cravings this time around fit in nicely with a barbecue menu, so we served some of the items that I craved during this pregnancy! I made a little card so the guests could see everything I craved and make an educated guess as to whether it was a boy or a girl.
I didn't get pictures of all of our guests (even though I tried!), but here are a few with people that I suspect won't mind being shown on the blog!
First row: My mom and sister and aunt and cousin (and me of course)!
Second row: My friend Danae and our baby bumps!
Third row: My friend, Ashley, and me!
My little guy did great, and got passed around all over the place!
My sister with my son on the left, me and him on the right:
We did a few different games, which I'm going to cover in a separate post, but here are the teams (Team Boy and Team Girl) discussing their answers for one of the group games:
For the big reveal we decided to do a scavenger hunt! I made up clues based on nursery rhymes, and the final clue led to a package that would reveal the gender. It started to sprinkle so we had to hurry through the outside clues a bit, but I think it turned out well!
1. Derek and I read the first clue.
2. Ashley's husband found one of the clues.
3. Danae's husband found the final package, and opened it . . .
And it's a girl!
We are so thrilled and excited to be expecting our first daughter!
After we revealed the gender we served blueberry and strawberry cheesecake for dessert (cheesecake was another one of my cravings)! Then we got a chance to visit with everyone and enjoy the rest of the party, which was nice.
Scott and Danae also ignored the clear instructions on our invitation to not bring presents. But we kind of ignored the clear instructions not to bring a present to their gender reveal party too, so I guess they get a pass!
Honestly, it was so sweet of them to bring us a little gift, and when I opened it, I wanted to cry. . .
Danae knows what it is to wait for a little one, and she knows what we went through to get this sweet baby, so the onesie was perfect and really touched my heart. We are so humbled and excited that God blessed us with this little (girl!) miracle!
I'll do a post tomorrow with more details on the games we did for our second gender reveal party (they aren't the same gender reveal party games that we did last time), so check back then!
. . . and spice, and everything nice!
We're having a sweet baby GIRL! We are so happy and excited!
More details on the gender reveal party to follow!
When we decided to do another gender reveal party, I originally wanted to keep it more low-key, since this is the second gender reveal party we've done. We decided to do a barbecue with close family and friends. But then we decided I needed to do invites and games again, and I realized just how many close friends and family I wanted to invite, so the whole low-key thing went out the window! What can I say? I can't help myself.
However, I still liked the idea of making it more of a end-of-summer barbecue *slash* gender reveal party. I've been wanting to do a barbecue this summer, and I thought combining the two would give it that more low-key feel that I was originally going for.
I knew, however, that I didn't want to put pressure on myself to make the invitations again like last time (I handmade gender reveal invitations for Wyatt's party), so I went on a quest for some invitations. I originally looked into making them on Shutterfly or Tiny Prints, but that was going to cost me around 40 bucks! No thank you.
I decided to do a little search on Etsy, and what should I spot but the perfect gender reveal party invitation. Seriously. Who would have thought that someone else would have decided to do a gender reveal barbecue too?
See? It's perfect.
I ordered this invitation from a shop called PuzzlePrints. It came as an image file, and then I printed it up from there.
Originally the invitation was for a first-baby gender reveal, so I contacted the owner to see if she could change it up to reflect that this was our second baby, and also to see if she could include Wyatt in the invitation (though I wasn't sure how that would work, so I gave her an out in case she couldn't fit it in). But she was able to include all the details I wanted and I think the changes she made were perfect!
The owner of PuzzlePrints (Laura) was really easy to work with. I was also surprised when I checked my e-mail shortly after ordering and already saw the completed invitation in my inbox! I'm talking within the hour. I was very impressed with how fast I got it, because it let me order the prints quicker (and the invitations were already going out late, so time was important).
I love the way it turned out! I still had to pay to have the invitations printed (since I don't have a working printer in my house), but I think the total was much more reasonable for something so personalized. It would be super-reasonable if you had your own printer!
I felt like the envelopes that came with the invitations when I printed them were a little plain , so I bought some scrapbook paper to add some pizazz. This is the finished product:
I was really happy with them! Tip: When I went to have them printed I also included a sentence on the back saying "No gifts please, just bring yourselves!", because I forgot to ask Laura to add that to the front. Because you don't want people to feel like they have to buy you something for a party like this, you know? That's what baby showers are for. Just my thoughts on the subject!
If any of you decide to order an invitation from PuzzlePrints, Laura has offered a free thank you card printable with your purchase when you mention my blog! PuzzlePrints has beautiful invitations for birthdays, Thanksgiving dinners, Christmas parties, wedding showers, wedding anniversary parties, baby showers, and of course gender reveal parties. And she takes custom orders too, so I'm sure if you are looking for something a little different she could come up with a perfect invite! Personally, I have my eye on her ugly sweater party invitations if we decide to have another one this year!
I'm so excited to have our "BaByQ" gender reveal party on Sunday! Stay tuned for the details, coming next week!
I think most of you know that Derek and I had troubles getting pregnant with Wyatt. It took 11 months before we were finally able to conceive.
Technically that leaves me one month shy of being officially considered “infertile”, but I would qualify myself as sub-fertile, and those 11 months were just as painful for me as they would have been if we’d had to wait one more month. It was hard. It hurt. I cried more times than I would care to admit.
I’ve written about our struggles, and some of the lessons I learned while we were waiting. It’s easy to see the purpose of it looking back. I learned to trust God when things don’t go my way. I learned to be content and rest in the knowledge that God knows what He’s doing. I learned that His plans are best. I learned to look for the purpose in trials, and I now have the gift of knowing a little bit about what other girls are going through who are struggling with infertility (which you can’t really appreciate until you’ve gone through it yourself).
In all my previous posts I’ve put a pretty brave face on it. And I know that all of the things I stated in those posts are true.
But when I think about the possibility of us having trouble conceiving our second baby? It still hurts. And it scares me. Because even though I have my first sweet baby and he will make the process so much easier to take the second time around? I still don’t want to go through that again.
I was talking with my mom about this subject the other day, and the words “Why me?” slipped out of my mouth. Why do I have to have fertility problems when so many people get pregnant so easily? Clearly I was having a dramatic moment.
Then my mom said something to me that I don’t think I’ll be forgetting. She gently asked me “Callie, why not you?”
She explained to me what she meant, and I had a miniature epiphany. Because she was right.
Why not me? I have a supportive husband, supportive family, sweet friends to talk with. I have resources. I have the finances to seek treatment if necessary. I have my relationship with the Lord. And I’m not one to let these trials go to waste – I’d rather use what the Lord has brought me through to encourage others.
If someone in the world had to have fertility problems, I’d say I’m an ideal candidate.
God doesn’t give us more than we can handle, and sometimes He lets us go through hard times because ultimately it will bring Him glory. With His help I can handle this again, if that’s what He gives me, and He will see me through.
Even if it’s just as hard as last time. Even if it takes longer or more to make it happen. Even if it never happens again at all.
He’s got this, and I’ve got this, and why not me?
Because come what may, He will be walking with us and I’ll be fine.
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