39 Weeks and Counting...

This week we went out and took a few cute pictures of us as a pregnant couple. We had so much fun walking around campus, finding the perfect poses, and playing like the young married couple we are. :) These are my two favorites:

the sweet husband hold

side view of all three of us :)

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Patiently Waiting

This Sunday marked the beginning of our 39th week of pregnancy, and we both feel like we're quite ready to meet sweet EJ! So far, the past 2 weeks have been the hardest pregnancy weeks for me (Granted, I have also had a very easy pregnancy, so that's not saying much on the hardness-scale.) due to contractions, muscle pains, and other aches associated with my body preparing for EJ's appearance. In fact, for the past week I've had the mindset that labor was directly upon me. In fact, every night last week from Sat-Wed, I really did expect to go into labor during the night because of the way my body felt and because of all the storm action (there were so many good, baby-pushing storms, that I just knew my body wouldn't hold out). Haha!

By the time last Wednesday rolled around, I just knew we were gonna have EJ because the last of the big storms was pushing through that night (and because I was SOO READY). So I worked hard around the house all day, made a huge dinner, cleaned the kitchen, and then did aquaerobics that evening. While in the pool, I started having some semi-painful contractions, so I thought I'd better get home and inform my sweet husband that EJ was coming. Well, let's just say that I had 6-8 hours of "false" labor because the contractions never got stronger (although they were 40-60 seconds long and 3-5 minutes apart). So, by Thursday morning, EJ was still inside my uterus, contractions had stopped, and I was quite disillusioned about everything. :(

It took me quite a few days to really be okay with patiently waiting on the Lord's timing. I had been preparing MY house and MY nursery and MY mind and MY world.. MY everything, that I had not even considered how having this baby would affect other people as well. Through a few divine appointments, we were able to help out two friends in need last week in ways that we would not have been able to if EJ had come earlier in the week. This made me realize, that God's timing is not completely tied up with just me, and I was thankful that He had waited to bring EJ. I also realized that having EJ would greatly affect the lives of other people like my mom (who plans to stay with us a while after EJ is born), our midwife and doulas, people that Hugh works with, etc. All of these people and their own little worlds will be at the least slightly impacted by our sweet baby's birth.

I finally realized how selfish I was being in expecting EJ to come just as soon as I was ready. I'm so thankful that the Lord revealed my sinful heart to me and has called me to trust in and wait for His perfect timing with complete patience. Here are a few verses that have counseled my heart in turning away from my selfish expectations.

"Seek the LORD while he may be found; call upon him while he is near; let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; let him return to the LORD, that he may have compassion on him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts." Isaiah 55: 6-9

For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you,when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them." Psalm 139: 13-16

"But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law." Galations 5:22-23

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Cheap Curls for the Soon-to-be Mama

A few weeks ago, I decided to get a perm in order to make post-partum hair-care simple... Because we're not fans of spending big bucks at salons though (we both cut our own hair at home for the most part), Hugh was slightly blown away at how much the average perm costs (they don't ring in around here for any less than $65). So he suggested that I look into one of the cosmetology schools in our area.

Normally, I probably would have been slightly nervous to get something as serious and chemically-harsh done at a cosmetology school, but I was feeling oh-so-desperate since my straight hair was at an awkward growing-out length which required a 15-20 minute style daily to look decent. :( So I called the newer cosmetology school, and they said that they would do a perm for $30 (that's less than half price!!). When I asked how soon they could schedule me, the receptionist said that I could name the time that very day and they could do it... So I threw any concerns I had to the wind and told her that I'd be there in an hour.

To make a long story short, I was not initially impressed with the "supervising" teacher who said that they couldn't roll the bottom layers of my hair (from the top of my ears down) since it was too short to fit on the big rollers. I had a very sweet student rolling my hair though, and she eventually convinced the teacher to let her roll it on smaller rollers after I expressed concern that my super-straight hair would look quite strange below super-curly hair, even if the teacher did "blend it in really good." :) Anyway, she ended up rolling all of my layers, and 4 hours later, I was quite pleased with how the perm turned out. Now, obviously a perm shouldn't really take more than 1.5-2 hours to complete on short hair, but the student who rolled my hair was a little slow still, so with my discounted price came a slightly longer time commitment. That's something I'm willing to do though to save money, and I was quite impressed with how well the student did. :) My overall experience was positive, and I would definitely do it again!

Here's a pic of the new curls and the growing bump at 37.5 weeks:

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Hard Working Husband

So my sweet husband is finishing his Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering this fall. The plan is to try to have the majority of his dissertation written before the baby comes and then to defend it after we're adjusted to life with baby. Unfortunately, I'm 36 weeks pregnant this week, so his time is ticking... and let me just say that he has been working SO hard to try and get it done on top of his 20 hour a week research job.

Here he is working into the night hours...

And did I mention all of the honey-do's that he's also been completing?? For instance, this weekend alone he moved all of the living room furniture so that I could thoroughly vacuum, installed our toilet sprayer, washed and dried almost all of the laundry (since it's getting harder for me to do now, he washes and all I have to do is fold), and cleaned the bathroom!!!

The toilet sprayer was one of the most exciting accomplishments to me because it means that we're now set up to handle poopy cloth diapers! Sprayer kits are available online, but I recently read that you could save a lot of money if you went to Lowe's and got the parts and then did it yourself... So of course I chose that option.

Thankfully, the Lowe's in our town had a master plumber who helped me devise a system that could attach into our existing toilet line without harming it (so that when we leave our apartment, we won't have damaged the toilet). He also made the system more leak-resistant by giving us a shut-off valve on the sprayer's direct line. He was concerned that otherwise the sprayer would begin leaking since it wasn't made to hold so much water pressure continually. I'm pretty sure that we didn't end up saving much money since we added on the shut-off valve and a few more parts to make it work, but we both feel great having the valve, and the sprayer works like a dream! (The valve also allows us to adjust the water pressure going to the sprayer for times where we don't want a full-on jet stream.)

Anyway, the man at Lowe's was nice enough to put everything together for me so that we wouldn't get the parts jumbled up at home, but Hugh still had to tape and glue each individual joint together and install it to the existing line... all of which he did quite well! So now we're ready to cloth diaper!!

Hugh the Handyman's Hard Work

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