Pregnancy #2 - 38 Weeks

One more week to the scheduled c-section. Part of me - the part that is ready to be done being pregnant and hold my little girl - almost hopes she comes early. The other practical part hopes she holds off till the scheduled c-section date so that we will have help with Owen while we're still in the hospital. Robbie's parents get here the Saturday before the delivery date, so she can feel free to come two days early but that's it. :)

I do feel good that her room is all finished. See other blog on that one. I've been on maternity leave for a little over 2 weeks now. I have been able to get a lot done in between all the resting I'm supposed to be doing - cleaning, packing for the hospital, buying last minute items, organizing, and general nesting. I'm even already set for Mother's Day stuff - ready to be mailed right on time.

The baby probably weighs a little under 7 pounds and likely measures a bit over 19 1/2 inches. I can't wait to see what she looks like. Adorable of course. :) Owen was the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. It will be interesting to see the differences between Abby and Owen. Looking forward to meeting her.

Pregnancy #2 - 38 Weeks

Picture coming soon.

Pregnancy #1 - 37 Weeks

Pregnancy #1 - 38 Weeks

Owen - 21 Months Old

Owen turned 21 months last Thursday. It's amazing the changes we continue to see just in a month's time. The time just flies by. Two years ago at this time we were at our lovely baby shower for him in Austin. Now he's closing in on 2 years and we're about to add a sister. By our blog for 22 months we'll have had Abby for a few weeks - it will be interesting to see what Owen stories we have then! We're pretty sure that he's going to call the baby "Abby's Room" for a while at first. If you ask him what's in mama's belly, he'll say "baby sister." And if you ask him what her name is he'll say "Abby's Room." I guess decorating and getting that room ready made an impression.

His class had hand-foot-mouth disease this month. Owen oddly got some bumps on his hands, but no where else and no fever. So our doctor did not think he had it - thank goodness! Unfortunately he's also teething at the moment. All 4 canines and possible a back molar. So during the hand-foot-mouth time it was a little tough to tell if any "symptoms" he was having had to do with teething or getting the virus. He's finally had one of the canines pop through (giving him 13 teeth total so far). Just waiting on the rest at this point.

He's starting to be more interested in TV which we try to limit. His favorite show continues to be Elmo (just the Elmo's World part of Sesame Street). But now he loves to watch the movie Cars and has added the Bob the Builder show to his list of requests (he calls it Bob, bob, bob, der, der). He has also started singing a lot. He has his favorite songs (The Wheels on the Bus which he calls the school bus song, and EIO which he calls the tractor song, and the Alphabet song which he calls "ABC"). He only hits the main words. For example in the school bus song, when we get to the "all around the town" part he sings "all" and "town."

Our little man is getting pretty bossy. He loves to tell his little friends at school to "walk away." This can mean anything from, move so I can see the book to get away from my toys. He'll grab us by the hands and tell us to "get up" so that we can go "run around." He is learning the concepts of "mine" and "my turn." He'll share turns sort of. For example, if I ask if he wants to close the garage door (push the button) he'll say "Mama's turn" but as soon as I reach for the button he says "my turn" or "Owen's turn" and then he gets to go. So other people's turns last about 2 seconds.

He has created a whole list of stalling techniques that he runs through regularly. Robbie currently does his bedtime, and Owen will ask to "Mama, kiss" multiple times cause he knows I'm a sucker for any attention (he's still such a Daddy's boy that I'll take anything I can get). We also suspect that he can poo on command to stall bedtime. Robbie's had evenings where he's changed Owen's diaper 3 times before getting him down. At meal time, if he's not interested in what we're feeding him he'd rather get down. But he knows he has to wait until we're all done with dinner. So he'll ask to "clean up" which is the last thing we do before getting him out of his chair. You know he's desparte when he's requesting diaper changes and hand/face washing.

We continue to be impressed by his language skills. He's putting together some decently complicated 5-7 word sentences. All time spent with him is running commentary - stream-of-consciousness. He's really got his shapes down - circle, square, rectangle, triangle, star, oval, and recently added his new favorite of octagon. He knows stop signs are octagons (loves to point them out) but will identify most any random octagon that he sees (not that there's tons of that shape out there).

Owen continues to be our little ham. He loves to make people laugh. If you ask him what you do when you're happy, he does this hilarious little fake laugh. He's also started "smiling" for the camera (see all the pics below). He also loves to tell us "Owen funny" when he thinks he's being very funny. We actually do find it pretty funny. :)

Happy Easter!!!

Happy Easter everybody! Owen's second Easter and we had a lot of fun. :)

On Friday Owen's daycare class had some festivities. An egg hunt and a special snacks time. I was able to go. It was raining, so the egg hunt had to be indoors. I discovered that Owen was more intersted in exploring what was inside the egg than collecting the eggs. Still, I managed to help him scoop up about 10 eggs or so.

Saturday we attended the El Dorado Hills community Easter egg hunt with our friends the Tribbles and Ariel's sister and her family. We also saw our friends the Carillos there (another family from our lamaze class).

There was a magician - which Owen didn't really understand. Then we took pictures with the Easter Bunny. Owen would give Mr. Bunny a high-five, but forget allowing the bunny any closer than that. What made this cuter is that after we left the bunny we asked if he enjoyed meeting him, and Owen said, "yup," and then wanted to go back and look at him.

The egg hunt was chaos of course. Owen only got two eggs because he kept opening them to see what was inside first. But after the egg hunt part was done, another area had Hershey's kisses to find. He really enjoyed that - got tons.

We went to our church service Saturday evening where we bumped into and then sat with several other friends and their kids. Then Robbie, Owen, and I went to a nice sushi dinner afterwards. No I did not eat any raw fish. And yes, this is a non-traditional Easter dinner. :)

Today to celebrate Easter, Owen got his Easter basket. He was thrilled that the Easter Bunny had brought him this great basket of candy (we hardly ever give him candy). He also enjoyed opening cards and presents from us and his grandparents. Then he had a great time doing an egg hunt in our living room for little chocolate eggs. As soon as he saw them he knew exactly what to do - finding each one and putting it in his basket. He enjoyed it so much, we repeated it again in the playroom upstairs by request later on.

We also got him to say "Happy Easter" to both sets of grandparents when we called. Too cute. We had a wonderful Easter this year! We hope you also had a wonderful Easter!!!

More pics... http://picasaweb.google.com/rgehbauer/Easter2009

Abby's Room Fi nished

We've finally finished getting Abby's room set up! For Abby's room, while we're using the multi-primary-color gingham printed bedding that was Owen's baby set, we're going more girly with it. I never think I'm going to go super-girly and then I go overboard girly (like our wedding). :) I guess I'm a girly-girl after all.

Owen's original nursery decor was all blues and animals. Abby's room is a pale pink with a hand-stensiled border of daisies using the primary colors from the bedding set. We bought another set of furniture (the crib eventually converts to a toddler bed and then a full sized bed when needed) but this time in white vs. the natural wood in Owen's room.

It's been so fun choosing and putting together the themes for both the kids rooms. This is the only time when owning a house that I feel one can legitimately go a little crazy with the themes and have fun with it. Next room to tackle is the kids bathroom - an ocean theme! More stensils! Probably won't get to it until after Abby is born. We'll see...

Owen's Room Makeover

Well we finally finished decorating Owen's room this past January and now have pictures to back it up.

We decided to leave Owen in his current furnitre so he'd keep something familiar around him when the baby arrives (the crib converts first to a toddler bed and then to a full sized bed later). We are using the bedding from Owen's crib set for Abby's room. So we've changed Owen's bedding/decor from the primary/colors and animals into a cowboy themed room. It now has tan walls with red and navy stensils on the walls and uses a cute cowboy bedding set and lots of our various Texas-style wall hangings that we already owned.

While my parents were here over Christmas they helped us paint the base colors on the walls in both kids rooms. After that we had to paint the star stensils (yes made from scratch) in the room and get all the various wall hangings up and move the furntiture around a bit.

We love how it's turned out. Owen seems to love it too. Every time he goes in he talks about "stars" and "cowboys" and "cactus." Seems to be a hit!

Owen's Original Baby Room

Owen's original room was all primary colors with animals.

Owen's New Room

Owen's new decor is now a cowboy/Texas theme. Don't want him to forget his roots! :)