Maternity Portraits by 211

Last week we had our maternity shoot with 211 Photography. It's the first of 5 sessions we'll do with him over the next year. There were so many great ones that it was hard to pick our favs! Here are a few samples:

Maternity Pictures by my amazing hubby!

My awesome hubby took me out to our neighborhood park this weekend to take a few maternity pictures. They say that 32-34 weeks is the best time and seeing as I'm days away from the 34 mark, it seemed like a good time!

Dave did a really nice job with our new lens. I thought they turned out pretty cute! Of course, Thumper makes every picture cute!

I think it's so neat that someday we'll be able to sit down with him and explain to him that he was inside mommy's belly.

It's amazing to see how much bigger I have gotten-- I've almost forgotten how small I was before I was pregnant. It's all for a good cause though right? :)

You can see more of the pictures on our Picasa site-- the link is off to the right under Bookmarks -or- you can just click on the Our Family picture on the right.

A New Toy?

Been awhile since I posted a "video of the week." Here's a cute one of Sequoia discovering one of Thumper's new toys (his bouncer):

Minor Scare

I've been lucky to this point in that I've had absolutely no signs of puffiness or swelling. Being 33 weeks, this is rather lucky I hear. After standing at a work meeting Weds for almost an hour (I got there late and surprisingly, no one offered me their seat), I had some sudden swelling. My shins were hurting like they did when I was a gymnast (shin splints) and my calves and ankles were seriously the size of grapefruits. I immediately elevated them and Dave massaged them. But after over 12 hours of elevation, the swelling still hadn't gone down a ton. I called the doctor the next day and they had me get my blood pressure checked. It had gone up to 126. This is considered normal for most, but with my pregnancy BPs typically falling in the low 110s, the doc wanted me to go on bed rest for the remainder of the day. [Their concern is preeclampsia]. I went home from work early and spent the rest of the day in bed. [Boring!]. Swelling went down quite a bit and seems to remain at a tolerable level when I've got my feet elevated. After running a few errands yesterday, the shin splints and swelling returned. So I'm to take it very easy until I go back to the doctor this coming Friday.

Ugh! Please pray that this is not the early signs of preeclampsia!

On a happier note, Thumper is doing great (even if mom is battling swelling, fatigue and sciatic nerve pain). He's still super active although his kicks and jabs are now more rolls and waves. Less room will do that I suppose. Here's a fun video of him:

Roadshow!

This is the 3rd year that MercyMe has hosted the Rock and Worship Roadshow in Colorado and we've attended all of them! This years featured some of our favorite bands: the Afters, Matt Maher, Jars of Clay, and MercyMe. Being 33 weeks pregnant wasn't going to stop us!

Colorado Springs has the closest Culvers to us and there happens to be one right next store to the World Arena, so naturally we had to go there for our pre-show dinner! It's my parents tradition to go there every Sunday (back in MN) and it was neat that we got to enjoy it "together" even if that meant via iPhone pictures 1000 miles away!

We really enjoyed the Afters and Matt Maher, but I had to leave the arena and do laps around the concourse during Thousand Foot Krutch (and probably should've during Lecrae too). They were just too loud and hard-core for this mom-to-be! Dave ended up walking out after a few songs when he could no longer make out a word they were saying from all the ringing in his ears. Perhaps we are just a bit too old for those types of bands?! Just so no one worries, I had a sweater and two coats draped over my tummy to muffle any possible high decibal sounds getting to baby (but this is a Christian concert we're talking about, not Metallica or anything). :)

MercyMe ended the night with an excellent set (as always!). They are great worship leaders. We had a great time even if we didn't make it home and to bed til after midnight. Ah, who needs to be on time for work on a Monday anyway?!

Baby Shower!

My friends Cat, Rachel, and Charity threw me such a perfect baby shower this past weekend. They took the rockets theme of our nursery and really ran with it! There were star and moon filled trays of delicious gourmet food, there were moon pies for dessert and cute little cupcakes that said "Beth is over the moon excited!"

Rebecca hand-made this cute bunny and rocket blankie!

Rachel made a really cute three layer diaper cake with a rocket on-top and Charity even hand-sewed fabric banners to go with all the streamers and balloons!

We played the "name game" where I scored a fantastic 1 out of 15 (I got my name right!). Cat won with over 7 correct I believe.

After opening a ton of gifts (all of my friends were overly generous and thoughtful for our little boy!), the ladies all made pages for a baby book for us. I really can't wait to see the final result! It was such a great idea and I will really appreciate only having to pop pictures in when time becomes a serious delicacy!

I had such a wonderful time and I'm so thankful to have such great friends!

How much farther?

Not going to lie, walking was much easier 8 months ago. Especially long distances. Our weather has been so nice (mid 60s and sunny) and we just couldn't pass up the opportunity to take the girls out for a nice stroll.

We started at the dog park at Chatfield SP (the one by our house) and walked all the way to Aspen Grove along the Platte River. Dave had himself convinced (from the hundreds of times he's biked this route) that it was only 3/4 of a mile or so. That seemed like a good half way point for my bladder, so we committed to that.

Two miles later (and one very uncomfortable Beth!), we made it to the restrooms. Not only were there 100's of walkers, bikers, etc out today; we happened to run into our friends Sarah and Alex JUST as we made it to restrooms. Seconds later, Dave's running buddy (and my coworker), Chris showed up! What are the odds?

After chatting with them for awhile (a nice break!), we made the 2 mile trek back to our car. We made it just in time as the sun went down. It was a fun walk even though I may have over done it just a bit. Not many more of these left where I'm carrying and not pushing baby!

Super Bowl XLV Champs!

After waiting nearly half my life for the Packers to make it back to the Super Bowl, both Dave and I were roaring and ready to cheer on Green Bay in this years Super Bowl.

Since it's a given that Thumper will be a Green Bay fan at least until he's old enough to rebel against us, I opted to decorate one of my maternity shirts with "Cheesehead on Board" (over using face paints on my tummy...). It turned out really well and I give credit to our little boy for the win! It was a nail biter and definitely raised my blood pressure, but it was a great game. Dave even did his famous happy dance! And best of all, the stress and excitement didn't send me into labor. Phew...

Fun Scan - Video

Here's a low-quality version of our Fun Scan. I couldn't make it great quality without exceeding file size constraints, so if you want to see it in high quality, email me and I'll send you a link to download the file. Hopefully you can still get the just of it.

Note: it's a 20 minute video!

Enjoy!

Fun Scan!

Yesterday we had our 3D/4D Fun Scan. It's a 30 minute ultrasound all in 3D (the 4D is time). We got quite a few good pictures and a nice video out of it. The quality of our pictures aren't as good as they could be because of the location of my placenta (tummy-side), but you can still see his features well! Here are a few of our favorite snapshots:

I think that's a smile there! In front of his mouth is the cord. At one point, he held on to the cord!

I love this one with his left hand to his mouth. I should also mention that she measured his feet because we were curious how big they were. Hard to believe, but they measure 7 cm (about 2.8 inches) already!

He was having fun with us-- he kept sticking his tongue out at us! Our tech kept chuckling; she doesn't normally get to see a baby do that as much as our boy did!

And one of him sucking his thumb... again with his left hand.

We think he's quite the cutie!

Baby Shoe Update - 28 weeks

Well we are into the 3rd trimester already (!!) and getting closer to seeing baby every day! I'm currently 28 1/2 weeks (37 weeks is full term; due date of 4/19/11 is 40 weeks). While we had a wee-little-scare earlier this week that sent us in for a NST, everything is looking great with baby.

Today was my follow-up ultrasound and I was ruled "cleared" of the previa issue from two months ago. Baby is still a boy and he's measuring 3 lbs 2 oz (that's the 70th percentile). So he's a chubby little guy with a rapidly decreasing amount of space to play in.

I'm enjoying all of his kicks and jabs-- he's going to have strong legs I think! Dave thinks he's got his nose and mouth. What do you think? (picture below is Dave at birth)

Playful Sequoia

[Warning: the following is what happens when Dave's working til midnight, the chores are done, and the DVR is out]

I decided to pull the camera out to snap a few photos of Sequoia. She loves to initiate play when you get on the ground with her and tonight was no different. The following sequence of pictures takes place over the span of about a half hour. Tonight's session spanned 5 toys. I'm not sure the rationale she uses for selecting toys, but she will spend several minutes with her head in the toy bin selecting each and every one of them. Her attention span isn't the greatest, but she sure loves to show off!

The line of up of tonight's toys of choice

Gymnastics!

Tonight, we went to a Denver University Gymnastics meet. It was against one of the best teams in the country (Georgia) as well as BYU and USAFA. Our friends (and now neighbors!) Brian and Miranda joined us.

I always find it hard when 4 events are going simultaneously, but we still had a lot of fun. Alicia Sacromone was the star in attendance (former Olympian; you may remember her as "team captain" in Beijing).

Can't say we ate very healthy tonight-- nachos, pizza, popcorn, pretzels and cheese. So of course we had to top it off with some Coldstone!

Georgia of course won and BYU took 2nd. Denver struggled on beam and floor and landed in third.

Rockets everywhere!

My parents spent an insane amount of time making decorations for baby Shoe's nursery. They took our rocket crib set and made a set of 3 wall art hangings-- one of which says "Moon and stars up in the sky with rocket ships that go so high!" My mom hand stitched each and every detail of these. Amazing!

My mom and dad took an old lamp and turned it into a really fun rocket lamp! They made a wood model rocket and hand painted it to match the nursery rockets and mounted it with a wooden moon and stars to the base of the lamp. It's so cute!

Finally, my mom took a electronic mobile from Babies'r'us (ironically, one that has a star/moon projector on it!) and removed the mobile items and replaced them with handmade rockets, moons, stars, and clouds. I know she spent an insane amount of time hand making each of these hanging items. The final product is PERFECT! The mobile itself is so nice in that it has many types of sounds, a night time projector of stars and moons, and even has a remote so we can turn it on/off without waking baby.

These items totally make the nursery and we're so thankful of all my parents effort to make it extra special for baby Shoe! We're not quite done yet, but it's definitely starting to look and feel more like a babies' room! We're excited!