1st Week

Well it is about time that I update this because the last blog is about waiting on Kaolin and now she is almost 3 1/2 months old now! Everyone tells you that time will go by faster when you have children and how true I have found that to be!! Anyways these are some pictures of her first week. Her birth was not what we pictured but now looking back we learned so much and grew much closer as a family and I know that that is how Heavenly Father had planned for us. I really truly believe that through the trials in our life come the greatest blessings! She swallowed some mucus when she was born and was not breathing at first and very blue. Our OB nurse Patty Willis was so quick to resuscitate her and two pediatricians, ER doctor, a nurse anesthetist, and another OB nurse were all quick to show up to be there for our little girl. Looking back now I cant believe how many people were there for us in such a short time. The Lord truly blessed us by surrounding us with such great people. She was transferred to St. Louis Childrens hospital soon after just in case she would get worse but all she did was progress. We spent four days at Childrens and then we transferred back to Centralia hospital for five days to finish up antibiotics. Then we were able to go home finally!!!!! Since then she has been such a happy healthy beautiful little girl that has blessed our lives in more ways than we can imagine!

Didnt take long for Kaolin to wrap herself right around Daddy's little finger haha

Striking a pose so cute

I love her little foot with those long toes

She used to make this pucker face all the time so cute

Kaolin definatly has Daddy hooked

Sound little sleeper

Mommy and Kaolin with her little IV in her head

First Family Picture

What a beautiful little baby

Adorable with her little IV and that is an O2 sensor on her hand that is why it is red

This is her adorable decoration for the IV shield how cute!

Kaolin Update

Well no baby yet darn it! O well she is just going to be stubborn I guess but I thought I would just update everyone on the progress so far. I am fully effaced now and have been dilated to a 2 all week. I have also been having contractions all week but nothing stays regular! So we will see if she hopefully decides to come today or tomorrow on her own but if not the doctor wants to induce me on Monday. I can't believe that we are going to be parents, it really has started to hit me this week. The thought makes me nervous and really excited all at the same time!

Kaolin and House Update

Well no pictures this time but just an update on Kaolin and the house. We went to the doctor today and she said that my cervix is thinning out a little more than last week and I'm not dialated yet so Kaolin probably wont come this week darn it. O well it is worth the wait, I only have 9 more days til the actual due date so we dont have too long anyway.

So I have posted some pictures on the house remodel before, that has been going on since we got married a year and a half ago. We finally have interior doors and all of the rooms have baseboards and the kitchen will be finished this week. These projects are now getting done so that the house is ready to bring home Kaolin! I am so so so excited!! It is amazing how big of a difference trim and finishing touches changes the feel of the house! I will post the pictures hopefully at the end of the week when everything is done and then Kaolin will here soon after that!!

Getting Ready for Kaolin

Wow it has been a long time since I updated this blog! O well, when Breann came home a few weeks ago I had Kaolin's first baby shower in Salem and we got a lot of great stuff and I will have to post those pictures later. But anyways, while Breann was home my mom, grandma, Breann, and of course little Hunter all came over and cleaned my house from top to bottom and helped get Kaolin's room ready! It was absolutely awesome to have so much help and we had a great time together! I am so excited to have the nursery ready now and everything is starting to get organized so that makes me so much more calm and excited all at the same time!

This is just a picture of a dresser that Mitch bought over a year ago at a estate sale and was in pretty bad condition. So I'm excited that the furniture guy finally finished redoing it and that we have more drawers for our clothes! We have needed it for a while.

This is also in our room but I had to post this picture because this is Kaolin's bassinet. She will be sleeping here for the first few months until she is big enough to sleep in her crib in her own room. Then we will move the pad to the bottom and it will be her playpen.

This is Kaolin's closet. So exciting I know but it feels good to have it cleaned out and just have her stuff in it now. We moved out all of our clothes since I took this picture and all of those totes are stored under the crib so it has even more room for her things now. It was just our catch all storage before. I cleaned out a bunch of stuff we didn't need it felt so good. Thank goodness for that nesting instinct!!

Kaolin's armoire great for all the storage of diapers, blankets, toys, and a bunch of my sewing stuff. O well I guess she couldn't have the whole room to herself haha.

This is the start of her little library thanks to my grandma who is starting to clean out her first grade room. She will be retiring after next year which will be her 50th year of teaching!! That is a long time to accumlate a lot of teaching tools so Kaolin is definately benefiting from that accumulation. I dont mind at all because my mom, another teacher, raised us to love books. So I'm looking foward to seeing Kaolin enjoy these books as much as I did when I was a child.

Hopfully we will get a glider before Kaolin gets here but if not this will rock her to sleep just the same I'm sure. Then the quilt on the wall was made by great aunt and is just so adorable. I thought it looked perfect there and matches the colors in the nursery perfect.

I love this crib! It took forever to decide on which one I wanted but I'm so glad we picked this one it is beautiful and very sturdy. And it was pretty easy to assemble. Breann and I put it together in about 30 minutes, not bad at all. I need to get and post the pictures of Hunter enjoying it first, he had so much fun.

Toy bag filled with all the lotion, powder, and diaper rash stuff.

Breann and Hunter playing with the talking goat grandma Waggoner got him.

The dresser Breann and I found at the House of Plunder in Iuka. I know it is a funny name but they do have some nice stuff every once in a while. All it needed was a little cleaning and it looked brand new. What an awesome find and we saved a lot of money I really liked that part. This is also going to be the changing table just have to get the changing pad and this piece is done.

Little Hunter man! Isnt he so cute with his one piece of hair standing up. While we were all cleaning and organizing he kept himself pretty busy by playing with the wheels on the Dyson, stroller, basically any wheel in the house. Who needs toys when when there are wheels around right Hunter! He is going to be some kind of engineer or something, he is just so fascinated with anything he can turn. Such a cute little man.

Breann cleaning the dresser.

Cleaning again. After we were done the dresser looked brand new!!

Baby Kaolin at 24 weeks 5 days

Here is our little girl, Kaolin. I went in for just a regular doctor's visit on Tuesday and the doctor couldn't find Kaolin's heartbeat with the little machine she uses normally. Of course I was pretty scared and was going through everything I had done that month worrying about if I had done something wrong. So the doctor had me get an ultrasound to check on the baby's heartbeat and if everything else was ok. As soon as the ultrasound started the little heartbeat was right there and was 150 beats/min which is where it has been so far. So she is just fine and healthy but the doctor said that she must have been laying in the wrong position and was hard to read the heartbeat. Anyway, after the little scare I ended up getting to have the new 4D ultrasound. It was amazing how clear the picture is!! I could see all of her little features and you can really tell what she looks like from this picture.

What a cute little nose! That is the first thing everyone says when they see the picture. And I'm not sure or not but she looks like she has a little bit of hair already. I didn't have any hair till I was two or three years old and Mitch came out with a full head of hair so she got something from her daddy. What a cute little girl she is!!

This is not as clear as the other picture of course but if you can tell her little mouth is open in this picture. She must be laughing at how she scared mommy for the first time. I am so glad that everything is fine and that she is a very active and healthy baby and that we were able to get a get picture of her but hopefully next visit she is in a good position in the first place to find that little heartbeat.

Kitchen

Well I guess with all this rain keeping us out of the field I needed a project to keep me busy. So one day I decided to work on my kitchen, this is a project that I have wanted to start ever since we moved in. So far it is going just fine hopefully it will look much better when i'm done!

These are before pictures of the kitchen. Love that paneling, it isn't really that bad but it just made the room so much darker.

Then these are not quite after but gettting there. I used drywall mud and drywall tape to fill in all of the grooves in the paneling so the surface is smooth. I just finished putting the second coat of mud on over the taped layer so that we dont see the tape after the paint is done. It has been quite a job but it is much easier for me than ripping out all of the paneling and redrywalling. That would have taken me a lot longer. I love how it looks so far and cant wait for it to be done and my house wont be such a mess!!

Almost 25 weeks along in this picture. Cant really see but I'm definately showing now I'll have to post better pictures of the belly.

BABY GIRL!!

Yesterday Mitch and I found out that we are expecting a little girl!! We both kinda thought that it was a boy so I wish that the hospital would have let us take pictures or video in the ultrasound room so that we could have seen our faces. Mitch was almost white, a little scared, haha and I was ecstatic! The baby is growing exactly how she should, healthy, quite a little mover (it took a pretty long time to do the ultrasound because she kept moving), and the scary part is she likes to get her picture taken apparently because we had a lot of pictures where she was looking straight at the camera. If the energy and the love of cameras continues after she is born then I think we are going to have us a high maintenance little girl. lol That might have been why Mitch was so white at first. hehe Mitch and I and our families are just so excited that she is healthy and can't wait til we get to hold her in a few months!

I had picked out a boy name and Mitch picked out our girl name so that was already decided and wasn't very hard for us to do honestly. Her name is Kaolin (pronounced kay lynn) Madison Marie Lewis. The name is spelled that way for a reason we didn't try to spell it different just as a side note. Some of you know that Mitch collects Indian artifacts and Kaolin is a type of rock (our favorite material) that some artifacts are made out of. And before anyone makes fun of us naming a child after a type of rock, to his defense it is a very beautiful material that is usually bright orange and yellow which are my favorite colors. And after I thought about it I'm named after a stream so I can't be mad about naming our child after a rock. haha

Nice side view.

Posing for the camera with her hand curled under her chin funny.

Staring at the camera.

The first little footprint and yes she has all ten toes and ten fingers! I couldn't believe we could see everything so clear when we were looking at the ultrasound. It is definitely a lot clearer when we were watching than it looks in the pictures.