Belly Pictures!

I sometimes think to myself, “Tommy is so big! Was he EVER small?” Then looking at these pictures, I’ve decided, “NO!”  I mean, just look at the size of my belly!

A dear friend, Sarah, took some family photos for me before Tommy was born.  I know, I know, it’s been 3 months… I know. I’m behind.  But here’s my catch up.  These are my most favorites shots she took:

I’m sure you’re thinking, “Where’s Pete?”  Don’t worry, he’s coming. :-)

I love this next series of pictures.  She did such a great job getting him splashing in the puddles!

(Look at those cheeks!! Hilarious!)

This is where he realized his clothes are wet.  It’s a big problem.  You’ll see why later on…

More of me… I’m excited that I have a more than a few pictures to choose from.  Usually people can’t get good pictures of me, so this is very, very cool.

Wait, was that Pete?

Yup, Pete finally made it in.

Remember those wet clothes? Ya, Jack is so mad that we aren’t paying attention to his wet-clothes-fit that he starts biting his clothes.  That’s my boy!

(This is my very most favorite picture.  I was so close to sending this out as our baby announcement… “Jack is so excited to announce the arrival of his baby brother…” Something like that.)

And when that didn’t work, he just started taking them off.  We just have to capture that on camera for black mailing purposes later.

Nice work Jack.  But more importantly, nice work, Sarah.  Thank you so, so much!

Halloween in December

So, I’ve wanted to put up the pictures of Jack’s Halloween costume for a while now – have I mentioned that I’ve been behind on a lot of things besides making sure my children are fed.

Pete let Jack choose his costume and he was very excited! He looks so cute in his Toy Story soldier costume, huh?

At ease, soldier!

I might be getting coal in my stocking…

Why? Probably because I have really shirked my responsibility as a mommy-photographer.  Poor Tommy has less than half of the photos that Jack had at two months old.  For instance: we have several videos of Jack… but I’ve only been able to save a couple of Tommy.

Pathetic, right? And this is pretty much the only proof that mom and dad came to help us for two weeks. 

I really love this video, although it doesn’t do Tommy justice.  He loves to smile and talk to you.  His AGOO’s are just adorable.

 

And these are some more of my favorite pictures of little Tommy.

We love, love, love this little darling of ours!

He's Here!!

I'll put down the details sometime soon... but for now I'll just share some pictures of our sweet, cuddly, little Tommy. He was born on Saturday, the 2nd, at 3:12p. Weighing in at 8lbs 13oz and measuring 22 inches long, he is definitely a healthy baby.

We went back and forth on his name - and back and forth - finally settling on Thomas Owen.

His head was already too big for their little hats! It's sliding off as we are gazing at him...

They rounded his weight up to make it a whopping 8lbs 13 oz.

Happy daddy. And, if you notice: I'm sleeping. :-)

Tommy is feeling like sleep is a good idea, too.

Audrey was my AWESOME nurse who helped me through 12 of my 15 hours of labor. My hero. I would be very ungrateful if I didn't mention my other heros: Pete, my mom, Sarah and Sue.

Jack was so stinkin' cute with Tommy. He was very excited to see me and his "baby bruder".

Jack took advantage of the nice T.V. view from the bed.

Then Jack asked to hold Tommy. He loved to get up close and look at his face. I wonder if he thought he was looking in a mirror, cuz they look so much alike!

I love this cheesy snicker face!

My attempt at fancy photography.

And this picture pretty much sums up the weekend: exhausted but satisfied.

We LOVE you so much, Tommy!

The Baby is Coming... Hopefully Sooner Than Later!!

Tomorrow I'm officially 36 weeks along! I was measuring big so I got to go in for another ultrasound. I love ultrasounds... seeing the baby... getting him checked out and hearing that everything is looking great. He was practicing his breathing and it was amazing to watch. He also was puckering his tiny lips and playing with his adorable little hands.

The not so great news for me: he is nearly 7 pounds already. And at this point, he is gaining a 1/2 pound every week. If I go 41 weeks, I'm guaranteed to have a 10 pound baby to birth. Oh ya, and his head is measuring in the 98th percentile. Fun!

So, I'm hoping he comes early, or as close to on time as possible. I DEFINITELY do not want to go to 41 weeks. I'm planning on going for long walks for sure and I've heard about acupuncture being a good way to induce labor. I'll be looking into that some more - for sure!

And we are talking about names every day. It seems harder the second time around for some reason. My favorite at the moment is Owen. Something like Owen Henry Crossley. I think it is a good strong name and has a nice ring to it.

We are still taking suggestions, too - hint, hint. :)

One Proud Papa!

I don't remember the last time I've seen Pete's face light up the way it did when Jack brought his lego creation over to show off. I think it had to do something with the fact that it looked like a space ship from Star Wars. :-)

Good job, little buddy!

Pete's 30th Birthday

Sadly, I don't have any pictures of Pete at 30... we were a bit distracted by our car this year.

The story: we had a great dinner with Pete's parents, and afterward we headed over to the game store so Pete could pick out a gift.

That sounds like he had just turned 6 years old, but Pete was happy! :-)

Anyway, on the way back, I noticed some flashing lights near our car and sure enough! Security was at our car! Some loser decided to punch out our window and tried to snatch my work laptop, but something must have scared him off before he could get a good grip on it.

He did succeed in making quite of a mess of our car, though!

A cop came to take a report and within a couple of minutes we heard a call over his radio about another break-in just down the street.

The guy was still around breaking into cars!

Another cop came by to check things out and our cop told them to take off to see if they could catch him. It was like the beginning of a COPS episode!

But our COPS episode pretty much ended there. We don't really know what happened after that. At first we thought that we heard over the radio that they caught the guy, but... they didn't. We heard wrong.

Oh, well.

But our cop dusted my laptop for prints and that was pretty cool to watch.

Through the whole thing we felt pretty taken-care-of. The cop even helped clean out my laptop bag full of broken glass. And the mall security called someone over and he brushed most of the glass out of the car and helped Pete get rid of the rest of broken window so we could get home.

We made it home within an hour and before 10p that night we had gotten an appointment to get our car fixed the next day.

At 11a that next day, a repair man showed up at our house and replaced our window right there in our garage. That was very cool. It was so convenient and non-stressful.

All in all, things could have gone a lot worse than they did and we are VERY grateful for that!

Hopefully we can have give Pete a better birthday next year... we'll keep our fingers crossed.