Grandma's buddy

Grandma comes almost daily to see her little guy. :) He's growing so fast!

Cousins Wedding

Saturday night my cousin Matt married his beautiful fiance Mari. The wedding was really nice and we had a great time.
Here are my beautiful cousins Stephanie and Allyssa (Matt's sisters). They looked stunning!
And of course, Brian and I. We left Carter in good hands with Brian's brother Eric and his family. They took good care of him...he told us all about it. :) We sure missed him!

My craftiness

So now that I am a mom and all you moms out there seem to be so sticken crafty and creative I thought I better try my hand at the letters for Carter's room like Kathy did for Grace's room. Most of you know the extent of my creativeness is calling Jenni. :) Carter took a nice long nap this afternoon so here is how they came out. I think they will look cute in his room. Need to hang them up yet obviously.

Walks, walks, and more walks!

What have we been up to? Walking! And lots of play dates for Carter. Last week we went to walk with Jacob and Martha; Monday Beth and Jax came over for a nice long walk and today we went with Vicki and Alyssa and ran into Haley and Addison on the way! We have also taken a couple of walks with grandma (my mom) too....all is helping shed off those pregnancy pounds! We are truly loving this weather and are so excited to get out every day. I laid out for a little bit today and am a little red and loving it! I feel so pasty! Sorry...I forgot to take pictures of all and any of our play dates/walks...I even had my camera every time!

Baby Announcements

Chilling with dad

Newborn pics

Last week we had pictures taken for birth announcements for Carter by Carlia Schippers. She does my neighbors girls pics and I love them and wanted something different than the traditional Sears pics and my parents bought us a package to her so as part of the package she does newborn pics and creates announcements for us. If you go to www.carliafaye.com one of our pics is the first one that comes up. Then under galleries > children > I think one of our pics is the 13th one down and under galleries > families > ours is the last pic if you scroll down. I am waiting for her to send me the log in for the proofs so this is all I have seen so far but we LOVE them and can't wait to see the rest of them.

Belated Birthday Party

Carter decided to have mommy go into labor on grandma's birthday so we finally were able to celebrate last night. We went to dinner to Uccello's with mom and dad and Mike and Kim and then went to Mike and Kim's for cake and ice cream. The cake was from De Boer's....it was tasty! Carter was quite the guy and even bought grandma some jewelry. :)

Big boy bath

Now that all of Carter's pieces and parts fell off :) we were able to give him a bath in his tub last night. He did great and loved the warm water! Yeah no more sponge baths!

Thumb sucker??

Jenni helped Carter discover his fingers this weekend and yesterday we caught him sucking his thumb. That trait would be inherited from his daddy!

Our little sleeper

or I should say BIG sleeper. Carter is doing great and is a very content baby. He already is on the 3 hour schedule so we will pray that lasts! He loves to be swaddled in his Kiddopotamus wrap and sleeps like a champ.

Carter's Arrival

Now that we are getting settled in at home I thought I would share with everyone a few more pictures and how Carter James came into this world. As you can read in a previous post on Wednesday I was told I could no longer work. I thought I would be stuck home doing nothing for the next week but little did I know that I would go into labor the next day. On Thursday morning I woke up with some cramps, not sure if they were contractions so I tried to sleep them off. Next thing I knew my water broke. I called Brian and he headed home and then I called the doctor and they said to slowly head to the hospital. At that point my contractions were pretty far apart. We got to the hospital at 11:30 a.m. and I was dialated to a 4 and the contractions were about 5-6 minutes apart. I wanted to hold off as long as I could without an epidural so things wouldn't slow down and I made it to 4:30 p.m. and couldn't bear the pains anymore. At that point I was dialated to a 7. (Brian will tell you I was a different person after getting the epidural! :)) Things started to slow down so around 8 or 9 they gave me some pitocin to get things going again. At 10:45 p.m. I was fully dialated and ready to push. Carter was a stubborn little guy and didn't want to come out. He was also posterior and apparentely wanted to face up and see the world. The doctor tried to turn him but didn't have any luck so it was quite painful. The doctor and nurse wanted me to feel the contractions so I think I felt everything by the end! After two hours of pushing and the doctor using the vacuum to get Carter out he finally came! Because he was stuck for so long he came out limp and really scared us. They had to give him some oxygen to get him going and after a couple of minutes of praying we heard some wimpers and knew he was okay. We think he is perfect and such a good little guy. On Sunday he was a little jaundice and was down to 6 lbs. 9 oz. so we had to supplement with some formula. We went to the pediatrician yesterday and he is doing great and gaining weight. He was such a good little guy. Alrighty....enough jabbering...here are some more pictures.

Carter and daddy napping

Ready to go home
Mommy and Carter cuddling

Fresh and clean after his first bath