New Hat

We got one of the hats in that Elizabeth and I decided to buy for Evan. It is a cute little bear hat that will be fantastic for pictures. We really wanted an idea of what it would look like on, but unfortunately it obviously would not fit on either of our heads. However, it was a perfect fit for Lily. After a little struggling, I got it on her.

I don’t think she liked it very much.

Video Monitor

We just got one – is a Motorola we found online and go a great deal!

I tested it out with Lily today….she was not a fan.

Luckily, for fussy babies (or poodles), it comes with a built in “talk back” feature and 5 musical tracks to soothe and calm down.

We are checking off the last things we need to get together before Evan is here!

Winter Wonderland

It snowed here today – the roads are covered and people re rushing to the store for bread and milk. We had family over today to celebrate the end of the semester. It was so much fun – and not to mention the great food that everyone brought.

Eric, Wes and I decided to throw the football a couple times before lunch. I brought the FlipMino out and decided to test it out in natural light. I havent been ultra pleased with the indoor low light video quality, but I was impressed with how it did outdoors. The video quality is great and it handles motion just fine. In other words – I give the FlipMino a thumbs up – go get one for Christmas – they are only $100!

Enjoy our video presentation: Gridiron Glory (double click video for fullscreen)

Gridiron Glory – HD from OurLifeBlog.Net on Vimeo.

Update: Mobile

I just wanted to post a quick update – the bird mobile is coming along! I found the birds – have them painted, and should have the mobile assembled for this weekend’s shower! Yes!

Diapers – what to do?

Elizabeth and I have had a long battle about diapers. What is the dilemma?

She wants to use cloth.

I say there is a 0% chance I will be washing out cloth diapers, and there is no way I could impose this upon family.

She says that regular diapers have many disadvantages and she is right! I was mostly concerned with these two:

1. Not environmentally sustainable to produce: Many resources (plastics, pulp, petrol, chemicals, etc) are used up to produce disposable diapers.
2. Not environment-friendly: They take a long time to degrade (or at all) and fill up/pollute landfills with human wastes unnecessarily

My initial primary concern was degradation – how long does it actually take for one disposable diaper to degrade?

Environmental experts say that it can take up to 500 years for a disposable diaper to degrade in a landfill!

The average baby uses diapers for 2-3 years, using approximately 8-10,000 diapers.

If you do the math, you have just potentially generated around 5 million years worth of degradation.

I say this, because this bothered me, but I didn’t know what to do about it. Elizabeth and I are both working parents, both going to school full time – and neither of us have the time to worry with cloth diapers.

We found a happy medium.

gDiapers!

The system consists of an outer shell (similar to a diaper wrap) that comes in multiple colors, an absorbent flushable insert, and a nylon snap-in liner. They are 100% biodegradable, and degrade in 100-150 days! Amazing! They aren’t much more expensive than regular diapers, and if you purchase them on Amazon.com using the AmazonMom program, they are virtually the same price! The insert can either be flushed, composted, or thrown away. Options – I like that.

We are still planning to have some regular diapers to bring with us when we go to church, or bring littleE over to family. I hate imposing on others.

Anyway, check out this quick video on the decomposition of gDiapers!

You can learn more about them online @ www.gdiapers.com

Evan has a room!

Well – there isn’t much to see in this room yet, but it exists!!  I’m so ready to get things in there and get it ready for him!  We painted the room as we were painting the whole house, so that part is done.  The room doesn’t necessarily have a theme, but we are incorporating birds in flight in different aspects of the room.  Alex is making a mobile that will hang from the ceiling – I can’t wait to see it!  The color for the walls is called Fresh Basin – we are accenting with chocolate brown and white.  Here is a swatch of all three colors together…I absolutely love the color on the walls – it looks so great in the room.  All the trim is white and the furniture will be white.  Alex refinished a dresser that belonged to his great grandmother that we will be using in the room.  We will put a changing pad on top and use it as a changing table also.  I ordered two other pieces of furniture this morning and I am super excited about them.  I finally bought Evan’s crib!  We have had it picked out for a while but were waiting to order it until we moved.  To make things even better, I got it from Amazon and was able to use American Express Reward Points to get a sweet deal!  Here is a picture -

It should be delivered next week!  Yayyy!!  I can’t wait to see it in the room.  I also ordered our rocker and ottoman for the room this morning.  It is the look I was wanting but didn’t think I would be able to find for a reasonable price.  I actually found it at walmart.com and I’m very excited about it.  Of course, here is a picture!

So as you can see, things are beginning to come together to form a nursery for this sweet little guy.  The only other piece of furniture that we are planning for the room is a cubed storage unit from Target.  It has 9 cubes that you can use fabric bins in for storage.  We will post pictures as we work and begin to watch this room take shape!

Bump Gets a Sweet Ride – Week 17

This week we received our City Mini stroller! I was so excited because this thing is just plain…cool. You can collapse the whole thing with one hand and carry it like a brief case. It only weighs like 7 lbs., so it is very lightweight. This is exciting because Elizabeth will have no trouble handling the stroller if I am not there with her. We picked the olive green color – aside from being gender neutral, I think it was the best color around – for either a boy or a girl. It looks even better in person and I have already given Lily a ride around the living room to test it out. She enjoyed it! Below are a few photos I took with my phone after I got it set up.

Recently a new craving has developed: Smores. Smores you say? Yes, smores.

She found out for the first time that they could be made in a microwave and you should have seen her excitement. We have made them a few times since, and every now and then when I go in to the kitchen, I see the marshmallows or the graham crackers out. Hints. Pregnant women are not subtle.

Peaches are still number one though (see THIS post), and we got some good news on those this week. A couple weeks ago I went out on a “peach-run” and came back with a slightly different jar. Apparently Dole (the peach company), switched the jar to a green lid (over the blue lid), and increased the peach size while decreasing the peach quantity. This was not a popular change at my house. I went back this week on another peach-run to find that the blue lid peaches were back in stock. Elizabeth was overjoyed and requested that I go back to the store and “stock up,” as she called it, just in case it was a fluke.

Below is Week 17 heartbeat – it looks like we are holding strong at 160 a minute!
Baby – 17 Weeks – Heartbeat

Here are a few photos of Elizabeth for Week 17. As you can see there is a big difference this week…amazing!

Birthday Week

So this is Birthday week. E turned 25 Tuesday – Eric (twin) and I turn 25 Monday. We are all celebrating this Saturday – it should be amazing. E has had a really stressful week – her classes are all wrapping up and it seems like she is working 20 hour days. It has been all I can do to try and relieve stress this week and bring calm to the household. To give you an update on whats been going on in our life, I will start with the wedding Saturday. Elizabeth and I photograph lots of weddings and Saturday she felt awful. The wedding was in Georgia and we got there 2 hours early (accidental). We drove around – went to Gap (no maternity clothes) – cruised around town until our start time. Afterwards Elizabeth had one thing on her mind – one – pizza. She had already borrowed my phone to scout out the closest pizza place. We ate pizza in a pizza hut parking lot at around 10:30 that night. So funny.

When scouring The Bump this week (pregnancy site / message boards), Elizabeth found a diaper bag / purse that she loved. It was by a company named Timi and Leslie. I had never seen or heard of this brand before, but I loved them. They are very functional, stylish, and don’t make you look like you are carrying around a diaper bag. I bought her the Hannah bag in Pewter. The bag comes with an insulated bottle tote – clutch – and lots of room and storage. She was super excited and we can’t wait for it to get here.

I am still looking for that cool “dad” diaper bag. I am thinking of a backpack – I love messenger bags, but when you put too much in them, they blow up and look crazy and are hard to carry. I am open to ideas!?!

I wanted to post a few things that are overdue.

#1. The pregnancy test. I know – these aren’t the coolest photos to look at, but hey – its part of it!

#2. Our first Ultrasound photo. I will never forget seeing this. It is the only photo of baby I have right now!!

Now – for Week 13, I have a few things! Let me start by posting the heartbeat. It is WAY stronger now – check it out by playing and/or downloading it using the player below:
Baby – 13 Weeks – Heartbeat

Something new for week 13 – MATERNITY JEANS! Yes – we received a shipment in this week and Elizabeth has begun wearing maternity jeans on a daily basis. Right now it is for comfort more than anything. She told me that regular jeans fit fine – but feel tight by the end of the day.

Finally, here is a photo of E and her tiny bump at week 13. It is barely there, but it is growing every day!

Our next appointment is Wednesday August 25. We may get to find out the sex that day, so we are really, really excited for that appointment!

Elizabeth is STILL in class tonight and should be there until late, so Eric is coming over. We are going to make a Pizza and watch Burn Notice. Guys Night.

Babies “R” Us, Pancakes, etc.

Week 12 has been great so far. We started by taking a trip to Babies-R-Us on Saturday in Knoxville. Let me describe this experience for you.

I am a man who has NEVER been to Babies-R-Us. In fact, this is the type of place I would generally steer very clear of. But – things are different now. Knowing that I have a baby on the way makes this all different. I was actually excited to go with Elizabeth and do a little pre-shopping. She has done so much research, so she was able to show me everything she has been reading about, and we could check it all out together. All of the staff there were so pleasant. They were all very happy and helpful. At one point, two female workers observed me cluelessly trying to operate a Fischer Price Electronic Swing (which has 4 different swing modes), and came over to assist me. They were very funny and helped me out.

We saw a few things that we really liked. I love Chicco products. They look so much more “classy” than most of the other brands. I think we have decided on the Chicco Keyfit 30 Car Seat. This thing is just plain cool looking and felt very good in my hands. Color hasnt been determined, but we are leaning towards the orange.

We also found a stroller we loved. It is the City Mini stroller. The awesome thing about this stroller is that you can literally pull the handle in the middle of it and the whole thing folds right up. With one hand, Elizabeth was able to fold up the stroller. We think we are going to go with the green one – we are thinking the green stroller and orange car seat will look nice together – we may change this going forward. The stroller doesnt have a lot of storage for a diaper bag, so we are going to have to get a smaller diaper bag to go with this, if we buy this stroller.

Tonight we also did a heartbeat check. I found it this time right away. It still sounds really fast – further solidifying Elizabeth’s stance that it is a girl. For the record, Dad is now saying he thinks the same thing. I just wanted to put that in writing for later (no changing later, hahaha!).

As usual, I have uploaded the heartbeat. Click the link below to here or download Week 12 Baby heartbeat!

Baby – 12 Weeks – Heartbeat

Also, Elizabeth is due to post soon. She is planning a post putting up some things that should have been up earlier (aka – pregnancy test, ultrasound photo, etc.).

Speaking of Elizabeth – tonight was a really good/funny night for us. We first found out about a new potential living situation/opportunity that could be really great for us. Hopefully there will be great news to report soon.

Elizabeth was feeling ill tonight and didn’t go to class. When she came home I was going to make dinner for her. She said she wanted a grilled cheese sandwich and tomato soup…and cookies…and cantaloupe. I went to the store and bought all the necessary ingredients and came home to start making her dinner. She then says in the sweetest voice, “You know what else sounds really good? We don’t have to have it tonight, but is sounds sooooo good….Pancakes!” So – I made them all. She had a full bowl of tomato soup, a grilled cheese sandwich, two smaller pancakes, some cantaloupe, and chocolate chip cookies and ate almost everything. This is the first time this has happened. I was so happy to see her really eat…it seems like she hasn’t really eaten much since she has been pregnant, so this was just another confirmation that everything is going right!