Shower Week

We have been blessed with 4 showers already. It all started last week Wednesday. My department at work (all the other school psychologists and diagnosticians) held a shower for me after our staff meeting on 1/21. It was hosted by a friend of mine, Michelle, that went to grad school with me. We had a great time, played a few games, ate cake, and opened presents.

Michelle, Hannah, and I

Then on Saturday 1/24 my friends Karin and Hannah through a shower for me at our house. Hannah and I went to grad school and work together and I met Karin my fist year working in AISD. She is a teacher.

Karin, Hannah, and I

Everyone had a good time visiting over food and playing games. I learned that I need to brush up on my nursery rhymes but I'm pretty good at baby word scramble.

Opening presents. There was also a mother's blessing at this shower. More on that later.

On Sunday, we had a couple's shower that was hosted by James' sister Christie.

The baby food game - yes I made James taste it but he still couldn't figure most of the out. I guess he needs practice.

We are so blessed to have so many wonderful people supporting us and we become parents and we are very thankful for everything that everyone has done for us. Jillian is already loved by so many people!

Changing Table

The changing table is complete and it looks great! Grandpa did a great job as always! We now officially have all the furniture we need in Jillian's room. Now we just have to wait until she arrives.



The changing table started out like this and then we realized mom and dad overestimated on the designing and it was very tall, even for how tall we are. You don't really want to be reaching up to change your baby all the time. Grandpa saved the day again and did some redesigning.

He cut off some of the height and changed the top shelf into a huge drawer.

Then he got it all stained to match the rest of the furniture in the room

Here is the finished product already covered in a lot of stuff. I'm working on organizing her room this weekend. We had 3 showers within a week and it is taking time to sort through everything and figure out where it all goes. More on that later.

Nursery Additions

Well we got up all the wall decorations! The "dream" flowers turned out even better than I imagined. Grandpa did a really good job - I really don't know how he does it! Thanks, Grandpa!


I knew I collected all of these Dreamscicles for a reason when I was younger. They look great in Jillian's room. I'm very excited to have all of this done - it is one less thing for me to worry about. I do have to say James was great during all this decorating and put up with my nonsense. I think we have learned one thing for sure through the whole process - we should not try to hang shelves together - it is just not worth it. He does much better by himself. That's all for now!

Jillian's Room

We started working on Jillian's room over the Christmas break and it is coming along nicely!

Mommy taping off the room

Daddy painting

Bandit has been watching us very closely. He is very confused and curious about what is going on and why we are spending so much time in this room that he didn't even know existed because it has been closed off all of this time.

He is trying to get all of the attention that he can to figure out what we are doing

Uncle Chris came over to help daddy with the chair rail


Daddy finishing it up

Mommy got her name up on the wall

And this is all the furniture we have at this point. Grandpa is working on building the changing table. Soon I will have the flowers to add to the wall. I apparently had a very vivid pregnancy dream about finding these wooden flowers at Hobby Lobby. Of course, then I had that in my mind for what I wanted for the nursery. Needless to say, I never found them again, which is why I'm assuming that I dreamt them. Luckily daddy is a good artist and grandpa can build pretty much anything out of wood. Together they designed the flowers and they are also in the process of being made.

Baby Update

We went for our 32 week ultrasound on Thursday because it was James' birthday and he said that he wanted to see his little girl on his birthday. Everything looks good and Jillian is a healthy, growing little girl. She already weighs 5 pounds, 1 ounce and I'm told she can gain anywhere from a half a pound to 3/4 of a pound from here on out. Sounds like we grow them big! She is measuring 2 weeks ahead of schedule right now so we will have to wait and see if she actually waits until March to make her appearance. I'm guessing not.

Here are the latest pictures


This one is a profile shot and she is looking up at her hands. I think she had just gotten through rubbing her eyes when they took this shot. She was very sleepy. It looks like she's going to have the Henke nose - lucky her. I told her that mommy has it and she is still pretty but daddy pointed out that mommy is not only pretty, she is beautiful!

She's looking straight at the camera on this one. Good girl - she needs to learn to smile for the camera - she'll be seeing lots of those!

That's all for now - I hope this works! I'll update soon on the progress on the nursery - it is coming along nicely.