Family Time

So the week of having family around has finally arrived. My cousins Lynda, Laura, and Lynda's boyfriend Kyran arrived early Wednesday morning to Jacksonville. Mom made the trip down to pick them up as I was currently in the doctors office getting a check up. Will also made it home on Wed. but his arrival wasn't until late hat afternoon.
Jeff had been up for 8 hours when we made the trek to the doctors office only to find out that we had to sit there for an hour and wait on the glucose mixture to get into my system. The visit went fine and found out that Christopher is a little taller that expected. He should only be about 15 inches but is already measuring around 19. While I'm excited that he is healthy and growing at an awesome rate, its a little disconcerting that he is so long. Only 12 weeks left to go!

After getting home from the doctors office Jeff and I took a well needed nap. I left him to sleep and went to meet up with my mom and cousins before going to see Will off the plane. I must admit it was a little overpowering to see the solders march into the hanger even if there was only about 30 of them that came home that day.

It's Been How Long?

OK, OK, OK! I know its been almost a month since I last posted something on here so I better get everyone updated. Jeff has only two weeks left until he is cut loose from his training period, Christopher is getting bigger by the day (sometimes I wonder how he can stretch out as far as he does without tearing my stomach in half), Belle is still her normal psychotic self, and we have made a few changes in the past month.

Jeff and I finally went and picked out the border and paint to fix up Christopher's room. It's so adorable I wish we had it up so I could take a picture and show you. Unfortunately it doesn't arrive until our anniversary, which is just a few days away! We have finished the painting though so when his border does arrive we can put it up before I make my trek to the big O-H-I-O!

The plans have finally come together for the trip and the two baby showers. Jeff's mom (Mimi) mailed down an extra invitation for the party at her house and its absolutely perfect. Kim did a great job on the design and my favorite, the poem! The party in New Lex is going to be the week after and I cant wait to get started on the cake I have planed to bake.

We have added another pet to our family, very unexpectedly! We came home about a week ago and found that in the bottom of one of my plants out front we have a tree frog that now calls my plant container home. We decided to name him Herbie, a very unusual name for a frog. Jeff wanted to call him Kermit but I thought it was too typical. Belle on the other hand has taken a page from Jeff's dads feeding ideas for cats. She loves Cheerios and every time she sees Jeff grab the box from the pantry she follows him around until he gives in and gives her some. At least we know she's lowering her cholesterol in the process.

We've also made a few purchases in the past month to start preparing for family to visit. My cousins will be here next week and Jeff's mom will be here soon as well so we were very excited about our savvy buys. We found a lady on Craig's list who was very eager to get a sleeper sofa out of her spare room and we couldn't believe how great of shape it was in and she only wanted $150 for it. The other purchase was a little bit bigger of a buy but it will last us for a long while. I saw this table at the store and absolutely fell in love with it so it found its way home with us as well.

So over the past month a lot of changes have been made and we are one month closer to seeing our peanut. My next check up is Wednesday and its they day I have to fast and they do a complete check up of my heart and so forth. Lets keep our fingers crossed, hope to see y'all soon!

A little bit of shopping

Carter's was having their huge summertime sale this
weekend and mom and I decided to go out and see what they had on sale. I don't think we had any idea how much stuff we were going to walk out of there with. Christopher's closet was pretty much full before but now it is almost bursting. I hope we find a dresser soon to put in his room so I can move some of the older ages of clothes out of his closet into the dresser. As far as getting clothes for Christopher were pretty much set for the first 3 months of his life but the further out we go the less we have.

While we were at Carters we found this adorable bath outfit and I couldn't pass it up. It has a robe, bath towel, and comfy slippers for when Christopher gets out of the tub. I cant wait to see how he'll look in it.

Jeff has been having a pretty busy week, we had horrible storms this week that brought tornado's, hail, and lots of headaches for most of the emergency crews around town. The storms knocked out power to over 17,000 customers and we were about one mile from having the tornado hit our place (luck was on our side that day)! Other than that and the fact that he caught a cold from his PTO officer he's getting through his PTO phase pretty easily. Keep him in your thoughts next week because he has his "midterm evaluation" all week long.

Belly Art

I've been feeling a little down in the dumps lately. I feel like I'm never getting enough sleep anymore because Christopher is only happy if I'm laying on my left side (and you can only be comfortable in one spot for so long). Not to mention the fact that the battle of stretch marks is being lost on my part, with my allergy to fragrances I cant wear any lotions without breaking out into a thousand red blotchy patches. So Jeff finally indulged my one demand that I wanted to paint my baby belly so Christopher could "see" our artwork. I got the idea one day while I was at the doctors office and I was reading one of the magazines that were on the table. I must say it was an interesting 30 to 40 minutes watching Jeff trace his hand on my stomach and his shamrock is a little off but it made my day to see the drawing and feel Christopher kicking up a storm while we were cracking up and trying to keep the colors in the lines without making a mess.

Kicking Frenzy

For the first time last night Jeff was able to feel Christopher kicking and moving. To me it felt more like water aerobics but then again I was able to feel it about a month ago. I must say it is an interesting feeling and seeing a little foot stretch out my stomach area is somewhat creepy but amazing at the same time.

We've also been trying to decide what kind of dog we would like to get when Christopher gets older and we actually have a yard to let it run free in. We went looking at pictures online and came across this picture that we just had to share because it was adorable. The puppy is a Shar Pei, cute as a pup but then gets ugly as it gets older!

Our Cinematic Adventure

Jeff and I decided today to finally go see the new Indiana Jones movie. I must say I was quite surprised to see so many parents bring their children to watch a movie of an adventure they were not old enough to remember. The movie itself was excellent and we cant wait to see if there might be another in the future years!

Fun at the beach and an Upset kitty

We finaly broke the news to Belle that she was having a baby brother and I must say that she was not to happy. I'm pretty sure she fainted on the spot and threw a temper tantrum all day.

On another note Jeff and I have been enjoying the blistering hot weather down here. We've broke 100 degrees several days this week and with the humidity its been close to 110. Hello Ocean! We've been out there a few times since the weather has been so hot but then again its SOOOO HOT that its almost miserable.

Christopher Patrick Cotter

Its official we are having a baby boy. Say hello to Christopher! Jeff kept up the thought of it being a little girl all the way up until they scanned from below and we noticed our little one is not shy about what he has to offer, AT ALL!

After seeing that we were having a little boy we went in to speak to Dr. McIntosh and discovered I'm still not drinking enough water. I guess with summer here I should be drinking twice as much as normal. She told us the the anatomy scan came back great and she couldn't see anything wrong with our peanut. She also told me that our plans for travel this summer to Ohio my be cut out depending on how the baby and I do up until then. Lets keep our fingers crossed. Hope all is well up home, Love ya's!