Lucy Katherine

She's here!!

Lucy Katherine Mason
5 lbs 12 oz
17.5 in
Born 6:34pm
12.26.12

Thank you for all your prayers! We felt them for sure. The dr tried several times to flip her and she just wouldn't budge (def most painful thing of my life) so we stayed at the hospital and had a c section. It all went really well. Lucy came out crying hard and even though she's pretty little she's doing great!! We couldn't feel more blessed! Marks whole family was already here for Christmas and my parents made it here tonight. Praise God from whom all blessings flow!

please pray for our baby girl!!

Well it looks like our sweet baby girl will be coming into this world in the next few days!!! So crazy. 

Friday I went to the dr (and praise the Lord somehow Mark got to come too!) and it was quite eventful. The normal checkup went fine. all levels and measurements were good and on track. Then we talked about how Reese was breech and we did a version with her and at my last appt we found out that this baby was breech too. 

So, we did another ultrasound today and sure enough she is still breech. We scheduled a Version (when the dr filps the baby externally) for today!! Wednesday (Dec 26th) at noon. Please oh please join us in praying that she will flip.

So, Friday when the ultrasound lady starting doing all her measurements during the ultrasound she kept noticing our sweet girl was measuring a little small. She checked my due date (Jan 16th) and then my gestational age (36 weeks 2 days) and then said the baby was consistently measuring at 33 weeks. ? about 4lbs 11oz. She visited with the dr and he wanted me to do a non-stress test - which again came out normal and the babys heartrate and contractions looked good and normal. He said I should come back in on Monday to do another non-stress test, just to stay monitoring her (which I already did and it looked great!)

but then came the big news... he said he had visited with a perinatologist and they agreed that babies that are this small on the charts at this point in my pregnancy have several risks and there are a lot of un-knowns but that the best option is to get the baby out at 37 weeks. (mostly to avoid a still birth). They don't really know why she is so small - could be she is just genetically small, could be she isn't getting enough blood flow, could be about a million things. 

We're praying that she is just a sweet little girl. That her lungs are developed. That she won't have to stay in the NICU even though she'll be three weeks early. That she will be strong. That our hearts will be strong. that we will be ready to add another girl to our family - when we thought it would be at least three or four more weeks. lots of things to pray for. mostly just that she will be healthy and that the drs will have wisdom and that our mighty God would hold her in His hands and continue to form her 'fearfully and wonderfully'.

So... if the version goes well and she flips then they'll keep me in the hospital and induce me TODAY!! If the version doesn't work then we'll do a c-section Thursday morning. Cannot believe we'll be holding our sweet girl in a few days. can't wait to kiss her sweet face.

Lord, this is in your hands and in your plan. Give me strength. I'm scared.

thank you so so so much for your prayers.

merry christmas.

thanksgiving in Branson

We were unbelievably blessed at Christmas to be able to go to Branson and be with my family for 5 days! Mark was working nights last month and just happened to have those days off (we left the morning of thanksgiving as soon as he got off and drove all day to be there). My brother drove from Nashville and we had the best time being together as a family. Here's our trip in pictures:

R is very into musical instruments these days so naturally I broke out my flute from 7th grade and she thought it was pretty much the greatest thing ever :) 

probably she was super excited about the 7 layer jello on her plate.

one night we had a campfire in the backyard and roasted smores. yum!

she loves her pajoe!!

 first smore. what a mess!

I got to meet my dear friend, Kristen's, sweet new baby girl, Arden. What a doll baby!

Sic em bears! Reese is getting so good at doing a sic em! {on another note... why does no one in Iowa know what that means?? We may or may not have gotten license plates that say Sic Em and no one gets it. So sad. can't change how proud we are of Baylor though!}

and of course we cheered for the LSU tigers with Gigi too.

headed to Silver Dollar City
(see the post below for lots more family photos by my super talented brother)

R is STILL talking about all the christmas lights, seeing Santa and riding on the train. Love this tradition of taking her here every Thanksgiving/Christmas :) 

 in the words of  reesieboo "lets decoration the tree!"

such a special time with family! love them more than words.

family photos

{by eric staples photography}

my super talented brother. 

here's his website:

 http://ericstaples.net

truly, he's amazing and so famous :)

bff's

{just for the record... I learned from Shelbi that if I sign in under Mark's name then I can post more pictures :) I will also be using photobucket when that runs out :) thanks for all your comments!!}

The weekend before Thanksgiving Reese and I took a road trip down to Columbia to play with our friends - the Snyders. It just melts my heart to watch the way Reese loves Sam and truly considers him her very best friend!! (even though we hadn't seen them in 5 months or something) they didn't even skip a beat. She was so so so excited to play with him and do everything with him. What a treat. We had a blast just doing everyday things with our friends! and it was fun to be back in Columbia, see lots of fun people and go to small group and church at the Crossing. Wish we could go back to play once a month! It was just so good for my heart. Here are lots of pictures of these little besties :)

mealtimes were so much more fun with friends!

  

reese thinks this is just about the best thing in the world to sit next to Sam in the car.

Santa!!! A little improvement from last year, maybe??

 Candy canes from Santa's elf

a little Jesus Calling devo time before bed :)

donut date before we had to head home.

We love you Sam, Kara and Charles!!! Thanks for letting us bombard your house and play! See you soon dear friends!

i need blog help...

apparently our blog is now full. I'm sure it's because I post way too many pictures. but lets face it, that's not going to change. so what do I do?? Anyone? Do I open a flikr account or something and somehow upload pictures there and then does it link to your blog somehow?? how do I figure out how to do this? would LOVE your advice :) thanks!

favorites about our 2.5 yr old

a few of my favorite things about reeser right now:

things she says a lot:
"hold you"
"i need to tell you something"
"you're my best friend!"
"its so nice to meet you" and "im so glad you're here!"-to her animals
"two more minutes?" and if she is asking for a really really long time she'll hold up five fingers and say "this many minutes? a lot of minutes??" :)
"that's a good idea!"
"that be really fun!"
"I'm just 'tending" (pretending)
"daddy is soooo silly!" she says this about a thousand times a day when she talks about him!

she's sooooo into playing make believe and it is just about the cutest thing ever! i love to just watch her and listen to the things she makes up. her imagination is awesome. She loves to pretend to take her animals to gymnastics and she teaches them how to walk on the beam and do forward rolls :). and the latest thing is to pretend we're at the zoo and she'll pick one stuffed animal that gets to come with her and we walk around to every room to see a different animal. usually the real highlight is the baby rhinos :) and its usually their birthday too. (adapted from curious george book about the zoo) oh and she also likes to pretend we're at school. she'll put her stuffed animal on her back and say its her backpack (copying daniel tiger I'm pretty sure) and she calls me teacher mommy and she acts all quiet and shy and like a sweet little student. its hilarious. she waits for me to tell her what we're doing next and then will sweetly move to the next thing. haha. so curious what she will be like in actual school :) what a sweet girl.

today she pretended that we had a puppy named Kretchin :) and it has gone everywhere with us! and she laughs and talks to it and chases it. and we even took him on a walk outside already (and its 8:30am).

loves to tell stories to each other. usually she just wants me to tell her a story about princess reese but sometimes she will tell me one and it is just about the greatest thing in the world. she'll always start with "once upon a time" and usually continue with 'there was a daddy and a mommy and a little girl named reese' :) and most of the time they go to gymnastics and walk on the balance beam

she has just learned how to take her clothes off by herself and this has made getting dressed even more of a challenge in the morning! ugh.

she really seriously seems to love gymnastics and talks about it allllllll the time. probably the most excited she gets about anywhere we go ever. and last week she finally learned how to do a forward roll all by herself. she is so proud too!

Still loves to read books and go to the library. We do this at least once a week and she loves to check out new books and "reads" them by herself. its adorable. i LOVE this about her. it makes me kinda sad that its getting hard for her to sit in my lap and me read her a book with my huge belly ha! but it sure doesn't stop us!

still loves to play doctor! she'll randomly say, "mommy, you not feeling so good? you need a check up?" and then she'll give an entire checkup (including checking your heartbeat and your breathing on your back) she does this to all of her animals all the time too.

has just started getting excited about babies and being a big sister. She loves to feel the baby in my tummy and says "shes kicking!!!" so excitedly (even when she's not). She talks about all the things she will teach the baby all the time and loves to mention that the baby is doing things with her throughout the day. like if we're going to the store she'll say "baby come too?" and she hugs and kisses my tummy a lot now too :) its so sweet. I'm so excited for her to be a big sister! I think she'll be awesome. i'm a little afraid of how it will go when she has to share her old "dds" (blankets) but hopefully we can work this out!

she loves to color/draw/paint. she's getting so much better at sort of coloring in the lines and can trace things I draw really really well. she can draw a circle with a smiley (or sad) face all by herself. and she always always asks me to draw a "picture of our house and her outside riding her bike with curly hair"

shes obsessed with orange juice and cheese.

thats all i can think of right now but i'm sure i'll come back and update in the next few days as I think of more.

love you more than words little silly reesieboo!

happy halloween

Our little cupcake.

Halloween 2012

My amazing mother-in-law made Reese's cupcake costume from a picture I sent her off of pinterest :) She's so talented. Reeser saw a cupcake costume at Old Navy in September and decided she wanted it and Lisa offered to make one so I gladly took her up on it. It turned out soooo cute and I need to take a picture of it and post it on pinterest too! I think it's even cuter than the picture I saw! It was really big on R when we got it in the mail (probably due to my terrible measurements of a squirmy dancing 2 year old) so I did break out the sewing machine and make a few adjustments to get it to fit but I surely can't take any credit. and R LOVED the fact that "honey made it for me!?!" 

So our church, Valley, has a HUGE pumpkin party the weekend before Halloween where there were tons and tons of games and candy and games and crafts and ice cream and a show and I think they said 6,000 people over three nights. it was INSANE! but we had fun too. R was just concerned about getting the candy. and a little overwhelmed by all the people and costumes. and I was totally consumed with making sure nothing had peanuts. and Mark was actually sick and had just finished a very very long week of working. we were quite a crew. ha

our cute friend, Jacen. R wouldn't stand next to our other friend Judah to take a picture but she hasn't stopped talking about his costume, a rocket :) so cute!! 

 .......

 If you didn't see on facebook or twitter- apparently Des Moines is quite unique when it comes to trick-or-treating. no, they don't do it on actual Halloween. Instead, the entire city trick-or-treats the night before Halloween and calls it Beggars Night. I sort of thought this was just a made up thing that a couple of people at the hospital had told Mark, but come to find out this is just what they do. and always have. people laughed when i said i'd never heard of it. I tried my best not to say to their faces that it was super weird and why not just wait another day? It's like eating your turkey the day before thanksgiving. I just kept asking WHY in the world do they do this?? I'm sure I could find out if I just googled it. or maybe I should ask Siri. before next halloween, I'll get to the bottom of this. oh yeah, and the kids have to tell a joke before they can get candy, too.

anyway... we did conform to our city and went out on tuesday night up and down our little street. R was too cute! and she may or may not have had to use the potty at one of our neighbors houses haha - what are neighbors for?? and then that same sweet neighbor gave us some fresh pears from a pear tree. after hitting up all the houses and heading back to ours my silly reesieboo starting throwing a fit about wanting to eat.... no not the m&ms, not the suckers, but yes... she starting crying and stomping about wanting to eat the pear! ha. "I want to eat the whole thing mommy!!! not at home, right now!!!" I couldn't stop laughing. As soon as we got home she really did eat the whole thing! What a healthy, goofy little thing. Then she had a tiny sucker and that was about it. I think she's candied out after our week of potty training (which is still going great, btw). The evening was fun (and freezing). The next night, actual halloween, was super weird to me... but I think maybe churches had parties or something? maybe next year we'll have friends to invite over on the actual day and we can have our own party? here's to a fun Halloween 2012. now onto thanksgiving and christmas!! yay.

big girl potty

well.... we did it. Reese is "potty trained/training" :) so proud of her!

I knew Mark was on call all day at the hospital this past weekend and we had no plans so.... we decided to go for it with potty training! Reeser is exactly 2 1/2 and has been telling me when she needed to go potty and a lot of times would ask to pretend to go on the big potty. and I learned recently that during my bible study and during MOPS she always tells her teachers she needs to go on the big potty and they try (i'm convinced she just wants an excuse to wash her hands there bc they have a cool step stool ha!) regardless... we thought maybe she was ready and I wanted to do it before the baby comes, etc. 

So.... I talked it up with R for about a week. That Friday was going to be our special day. She was saying bye bye to her diapers. She got to pick out a new cup and some special juice (capri sun). We got out her Dora panties. She was super excited! I was not. I just feel like no diapers = a lot more work for the mommy - anyone else? anyway.... the whole weekend went GREAT! We did the all out boot camp 'potty training in a day' method (which took more than a day). She still hasn't had any huge accidents but definitely has some little ones before she runs to the potty.

We started out like this: 

 

haha! I definitely let her watch too many shows on the disneyjunior app and pbs app on the ipad but hey, whatever works! I was just terrified of ruining our new carpet so I got so creative and we did EVERYTHING on the wood floor for 2 days haha. I have been so bored and so stir crazy... but it worked and was so worth it!

oh yeah... so the first time she wouldn't go in the little potty when I was watching her but I knew she had to go so I moved the potty into her little play house tent and she tinkled in the potty as soon as I moved it in there! ha. sweet little modest mouse. so cute! and hilarious. It's still in there (and this is day four) but we move it out sometimes too.

potty training in 2012:

another friend of hers was working on potty training last week too and we ran into them at target and he was getting to pick out a new toy for going poopy on the potty. so... we grabbed this idea and apparently it worked because she had absolutely NO trouble with this one. I thought it would be months before she figured this one out but its been so easy! I still can barely believe it. So then I had to follow through and took her to target (in her big girl panties) on day 3 to pick out a toy. worst idea ever. She did great potty wise at the store - even went on the big potty at the store! but finding a toy that she thinks is her idea to pick out and is less than $10 turns out to be impossible. since when are all toys $19. gah lee. even stupid plastic ones. and barbies. and animals. but then she saw the "cars and nater" paint and color set and she was sold. too funny.

and every time she would go in the potty she got two candy corns and got to pick another hot air balloon sticker for the window. here she is posing by them on day #2 :) We're both soooo proud! Almost every time we would call and facetime with daddy at the hospital and she was always so proud to tell him and he was too cute encouraging her as well. and she also kept taking all her animals to the potty and would say "you can do it bear! you go potty?? oohhh I'm so proud of you! you get a new toy!!!" hahaha

Here we are now on day four. We've been to several different stores and after a day or two of her being scared of the big potties and how loud they were when you flush - she has now gone several times while we've been out and about. Every time she has to go she says "I'm going poopy!" with the silliest look on her face. She usually only needs to go tinkle and isn't actually going right then but it's pretty funny. Oh another funny thing is that when Mark came home from work Saturday he asked R what she did today and she said "I said, "byebye diapers!!!" and im wearing my big girl panties!!" :)

can't believe my little munchkin is getting to be such a big girl! so proud of you reesieboo! 

weekend

Two weekends ago we had the most beautiful weekend! Dr. Mason was OFF for the whole weekend AND it was the most beautiful weather. We had so much fun spending most of our time outside playing. R LOVED jumping in the leaves....

and for the first time she got really brave and learned how to sort of drive her barbie jeep. she would "drive" it (without using the steering wheel ha!) about 5 inches and then say she and her baby were at church or target or gymnastics or the shoe store (haha) and then they would walk around and go back to the jeep and go to the next store. too cute. 

while we were playing mark did this:

too bad I don't have a before picture but we could barely fit one car in there and now we can fit TWO! hooray. just in time for the cold weather! way to go hubs. 

and we painted pumpkins...

and i'm now 29 weeks... {well 28 in this picture} 

sweet baby girl is growing and moving and seems to be doing great! so thankful.