It’s been a little less than a month since I last posted… I hope to normally never have such a gap in my blogging but this time I think we have an excuse and his name is Oliver. That’s right, he FINALLY decided to make his appearance on Wed. Aug. 10th (making his birthday 8-10-11, kinda cool!). After a long, hard labor (that story will hopefully come later) he arrived at 11:36 pm and weighed 6lbs 8oz and was 19″ long. We were so surprised to see that he came out with his daddy’s red hair & fair skin. I say we were surprised b/c we were sure he’d end up the darker more dominate features that every other family member seems to have. But he is his daddy’s boy, even in looks and I love it:) The red hair and fair skin is one of the reasons we decided on Oliver, doesn’t Oliver Tucker just sound so Irish? We’ve loved that name for a long time, it reminds me of the hundreds of rows of olive trees i lived around in South Lebanon and well as Psalm 128 where it talks about your children being Olive Shoots around your table. The name Edward is after my dad, it is his middle name as well, so that’s pretty special too.

Since his birth 3 weeks ago, we have just fallen in love with this little boy. It is amazing to me how I feel that i know him so well and I can’t even have a conversation with him. The times where only his mama can console him are just so special to me. But I also love to see Matt with him. Until Oliver was born, Matt had never changed one diaper and didn’t have much experience with kids at all. It just blesses me to look over and see him reading Babywise or taking care of our son like a pro. He is the best dad already and I love him even more for it.

I will share some of the images I shot while we were at the hospital when i get a chance to upload them, but for now here is a video we put together of Oli’s first week in the world. Oliver also had his first photoshoot when he was just a week old. To see those image click here. Jenna with Red White and Green Photography is the best!

 
I also go back to work this past weekend by shooting some portraits of a precious little girl named Harper. Stay tuned for a sneak peek of that session coming up maybe even this afternoon…

I’m now officially 4 days overdue. It is crazy how about a week before the due date time slows down quite a bit, then stops on the due date and at this point I’m convinced we are going backwards. I am trying to maintain a balance of continuing to be physically active and resting/relaxing but I’m not sure there is anything left to clean in my house! Because we have a natural birth plan, the plan is to go to 42 weeks before an induction. We’re praying that I’ll labor naturally before this- please pray with us! So until our little guy comes along, here are some pics of his little room. The shot on the left what we affectionately call Palmer puppy (Palmer is our dog’s name), and we think this guy looks like our real Palmer and adds a quirky element the room.

So when it came to a theme we really didn’t want to go with anything specific. I want the room to be easily transition-able to a girls room if we have a girl after this one… I found the art over the crib here and i loved the earthy feel, so that is the direction we went in. B/c we love to travel, particularly overseas, I thought a loose world theme would be appropriate. We have some random animals throughout the room that you’d find in many different parts of the world, including our Palmer puppy and the camel pillow on the glider… Ok, I’ll stop explaining and let you see for yourself:).

The bookshelves on the left are actually rain gutters made by my oh so talented husband & the toy box below was mine when i was a little girl.

On Thanksgiving Day 2010, we announced to our family that what we were thankful for was the baby in my belly. That’s the day I found out I was preggo and here is the development of the belly since then:

-32 Weeks-

This is one of our maternity photos taken by the amazing Rachel at Millie Holloman Photography.

The question I get all the time is, ‘how has your pregnancy been?’. And understandably so as I am really bumping these days. I’ll be 34 weeks this Thursday, and it seems that time is going by faster and faster. I thought it’d be nice if i did a pregnancy post so everyone out there knows how i am doing and so i can remember this time for myself b/c from what i hear i will forget most of this when the sleepless nights set in. So here we go:

First Trimester- Yikes…. Like most, i was sick the majority of my first 15 weeks. I ate yogurt all the time b/c it was cold and sour and seemed to make the nausea subside for at least a bit. I always say that if i have things my way the 2nd time around (2nd baby), I’d prefer to go through first trimester in the warmer months. The combination of the freezing, gloomy days and the sickness was not good for me. But things went by fast; and towards the end of the sickness, I was starting to feel those little baby thumps which helped put things into perspective.

2nd Trimester- This was a dream besides a few minor issues. It seemed that i regained my energy within a week, and i was busy painting the baby’s room and getting prepared. We found out we were having  BOY. The radiologist said baby’s hands were placed on it’s private parts which is always a sign of the gender. That was a fun way to find out. A couple weeks after I entered into 2nd trimester, i was having the worst heartburn of my entire life. I mean, this was more than a burn, it was more like HOT LAVA pouring through my chest. I was getting to the point where it was preventing me from eating so my midwife decided to help me out with a prescription that has since saved my life.

3rd Trimester- At this point I was beginning to feel our little guy move all the time, which i love. Matt loves it too. I had my gestational diabetes test and thought it would be no big deal until i failed. And then i failed the 2nd more intensive test. It took me a while to even believe i had gestational diabetes, and i was struggling with thoughts that i did something wrong in my pregnancy/diet to make it happen. But i slowly started believing all the nurses who told me that this had nothing to do with my actions, more how my body responds to pregnancy. I now take my blood sugar 4 times a day and it is surprisingly not too bad. I don’t mind the whole finger-pricking thing, and my sugars are normal 99% of the time. This has made me more aware of what I am eating which can only be good for my body and the baby. Thankfully, my OB office does not induce at 40 weeks b/c of gestational diabetes unless the patient is on insulin, which i am not, so that was a huge sigh of relief. Matt and I are now in a 5-week natural childbirth class, and we love it! It has been so fun preparing for childbirth together and being around other couples that are due the same time as us. One of our homework assignments is for Matt to give me massages a couple times every week, and I don’t mind that at all.

We are mostly prepared for this baby to arrive. More emotionally than physically since I still have 2 more showers coming up and haven’t gotten all the necessities just yet. But we are SO excited about meeting our little boy. As far as a name, we have decided not to decide on a name until he is born. Not confusing at all. We do have names narrowed down, but we want to meet him first before we make the final decision.