This week’s (late!) pregnancy blog is actually a commemorative letter to Shepherd.  My 29th week of carrying his brother was completed on Christmas day.  It was such a precious Christmas for him that I wanted to write down all the little memories before they were gone forever!

Dear Shepherd,

Yesterday was technically your third Christmas.  I say technically because even though you have been alive for three Christmases now, this was really the first Christmas that you kind of understood what was going on.  You recognized Santa (even though you don’t connect him with presents yet) and sat for a picture with him on my lap, you gleefully pointed out Christmas lights and Christmas trees, you pointed to baby Jesus in Nonnie’s nativity scene, you helped us put ornaments on the tree saying, “I do it!” with pride.  Your sweet childlike spirit was precious to watch!

This year Daddy and I couldn’t buy presents for each other or our friends and family like we wanted to because Daddy just lost his job.  But we didn’t care, we were just happy to be together and enjoy the season.  We used any extra money we had to buy you presents and had so much fun going all over the place to about six different stores and Amazon.com finding toys for you.  We were so excited to be able to get you toys that you were going to love when you didn’t even know enough to expect any gifts at all.  All I wanted for Christmas was to see your face light up when you opened a present and saw something unexpectedly exciting inside.  After we bought your presents I could barely keep myself from giving them to you on the spot because I couldn’t wait to see your excitement over them.

On Christmas Eve, it snowed!  Unfortunately you are still too young to understand what a big deal this was, but you enjoyed watching it through the window nonetheless.  That evening we went to a candle-light service and then out to Macaroni Grill with Nonnie, Pappa, and Uncle Ben.  You were excited to color with Nonnie on the paper table cloth and eat lots of bread and a few bites of chicken.  When we came home, you went to bed while Daddy and I wrapped your presents in front of the fire, drinking hot chocolate and watching A Christmas Story.  We couldn’t wait for you to open them!

When you came out Christmas morning and saw the presents, I don’t think you understood what they were, but you did understand the Lightning McQueen wrapping paper and knew they were something exciting!  As you unwrapped present after present, perfecting your paper-tearing skills, I watched your eyes light up over each Thomas the Tank Engine, Lightning McQueen and Wall-e present you discovered.  That was the best Christmas present I could’ve asked for.

Your very lack of expectation made the presents that much more amazing to you and sweet to us.  You are now the proud owner of Lightning McQueen, shirts, pajamas, socks, slippers, cups, cars and blanket.  You slept with most of those items in your crib with you last night, and this morning when you woke up the first thing you wanted to do was for me to play your new toys with you (Daddy was out braving the crowds to find some sale items for us).  As we played with Thomas, McQueen, Mater and Doc, there was no where else I would’ve rather been than right there with you and your McQueen pajamas.

So your third Christmas was actually your first magical Christmas, and I hope every future Christmas holds just as much magic and excitement for you.

Merry Christmas from our family to yours!

We tried, but not one was good of all three of us -

I hope your day was as wonderful as ours!

And a little sneak peek of Dana’s maternity session -

Last night at dinner, my husband held my hands, looked me in the eyes with a scared expression and told me he never knows when killer-rage Beth is going to come out and attack him.

Psh…What’s he talking about?

Ok maybe I’ve been experiencing a wee bit of hormonal ups and downs…  I’m trying, really I am, but sometimes a pregnant girl just can’t help getting all riled up about something insignificant!

I can’t believe how far along I am in this pregnancy.  I got an email yesterday morning that said I had 77 days to go.  Seventy-seven days!  That’s so not that many days!  I still need to register, get Shep a mattress so he can move out of the crib and into his twin bed, decorate the nursery, get Shep caught up on his immunizations, on and on.  Oh and then there’s the small item of naming our child.  Yep, definitely still haven’t crossed that one off the list.

It’s getting to that point of pregnancy where I’m slowing down, waddling more and living in sweats.  Cute sweats, but sweats.  My expanding body necessitated the purchase of a new bra this week.  So we’re in Target looking at the lingerie and Shep was in the basket gleefully declaring, “Boobies!!!  Boobies!!!  I see boobies!!”  I just sighed.  What was I going to do?  Of all the bras I tried on, the one I picked was by far the least attractive and most comfortable.  I’m kinda embarrassed of it, I didn’t even let Jake see it for the first few days after the purchase.  Seven months pregnant is glamorous folks.

I love the things that pregnancy makes you forget or fail to notice.  Last night while we were shopping for Shep’s Christmas presents, I walked right past Jake while intently searching for him.  The other day I looked down at my hands and realized I had clipped only six of my ten fingernails.  That was two days after the fact by the way…  The other night when we were sitting down to dinner, I was looking all over the house for my water cup to refill it, but couldn’t find it anywhere.  So I got a new one, filled it up and sat down to have a few sips.  Then when Jake was serving up the food, I quickly refilled my cup only to set it down on the table and see another water glass with fresh cold water in it…

Shep ’sharing’ his ball with the baby

Love my boys!

This week started with a rough weekend.  On Monday we sold my car.  And we aren’t replacing it for the foreseeable future.  The weekend before was really emotional for me.  I may have cried my weight in tears.  That’s one of the things about pregnancy hormones, it’s like you start crying and you just can’t find an off switch to the tears!  Once you start you just have to cry until you can’t cry anymore even if you want to stop.  It was probably a good release of emotion, but my eyes were so swollen!  At first I was crying for the loss of my freedom, then after a while crying because I felt guilty for being so upset when in the grand scheme of things it’s really not THAT big of a deal when compared with world hunger, poverty, and sex slavery.  At church on Sunday I was a basket case.  I don’t know about you but it’s really humbling to me to be up front, getting prayer, bawling my eyes out in front of everyone.  But I’m so glad that I did, I needed the prayer!

It was the first real ‘rubber meets the road’ moment for me as far as Jake getting laid off.  It also didn’t help that when I walked into church I was greeted by a man who said, “Look at you, you’re huuuge!”  Followed by a comment from another man who asked if I was close to my due date.

Seriously?

First of all, let’s be honest I’m not huge!  Secondly even if I was, why do people think that just because a women is pregnant that she all of a sudden will receive the word ‘huge’ as a compliment?  Not only are we emotional, uncomfortable, and watching our bodies being taken over by a huge bladder kicking ball of weight, but people decide to kick us while we’re down because they think it’s ok to tell us that we’re huge.  No sir.  I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again -  once a girl is more than five years old, she never wants to hear herself described as big, huge or any other such word ever again no matter how fitting the adjective may be.  Pregnancy especially is a time to refrain from such words, because chances are that the poor woman does feel like some kind of freak of nature beached whale.  She doesn’t need you to reinforce to her the idea that now she’s crossed some sort of line as far as body size goes from which she may or may not ever return.

So if you can’t tell from my sass, this week didn’t start off on the right foot for me.  However, Jake’s parents came in town on Tuesday and we’ve been having a great time with them.  They have also been driving me around in their rental car which has been a huge blessing!   So!  Since I believe in being positive (you know, after I vent all the negatives out in the paragraph above), I decided to make a list of the top ten reasons it’s cool to only have one car -

10.  Now we only have one car payment

9.  It makes me SO  green

8.  Our car insurance will go way down

7.  Shep is in loooove with ‘Daddy’s car’ and is always excited to ride in it

6.  We’re going to save so much money in gas

5.  I never set my car up to use my iPod or iPhone to listen to music, and this car is set up for that so I can finally start listening to exactly what I want while I drive.

4.  This car car has a sunroof and mine didn’t

3.  It makes me more grateful for what I have

2.  I get to learn patience and dependence on other people in my life

1.  It’s making me trust God more

I don’t think I need to write a top ten list of reasons why having one car sucks.  Pretty sure we all know those reasons!  I hope my car-free journey isn’t very long but if it is, I’m so grateful for all of the people in my life who have offered me rides or who are going through/have gone through the same thing and keep telling me it’s going to be ok.  And I’m also grateful that I’m not huge.  Yet.

Here’s a picture of my car taken earlier this fall through the window of the cabin in Riudoso -

I loooooove Christmas time.  Love it love it love it.  In fact my brother blames my intense Christmas enthusiasm on his current state of Christmas grinchiness.  He swears that I wore him out by celebrating Christmas too early and for too long growing up.  I’m pretty sure he’ll live to recover some Christmas spirit eventually…  In honor of the Christmas season I thought I’d share some of my favorite things about Christmas!

The kickoff of the Christmas season always starts with Christmas music for me.  Usually in about late September, early October.  I looooove Christmas music!  It just reminds me of all that is happy and nice about life. My favorite Christmas song is It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year and favorite version is by Andy Williams.  It’s my ringtone =)

My favorite Christmas album is Amy Grant Home for Christmas.  As a kid I remember Ben and I playing this  album really loud and each of us building little forts in our rooms where we could be by ourselves.  Of course after your fort is done and you’re by yourself, then you’re bored, but it was cool!  Me and Amy would hang out in my fort!

Then of course come the Christmas movies.  I love to put on White Christmas and just have it playing while I work or do things around the house.  It’s a  happy musical that you just can’t help enjoying or singing along to.  I also really love It’s a Wonderful Life because it always puts life in perspective, which we all need sometimes and especially at Christmas.

Christmas cards!!!  We got our first cards in the mail yesterday and today.  For some reason I get sooo excited to receive Christmas cards in the mail.  I love seeing everyone’s pictures!  ~SPOILER ALERT~  Here is the Christmas card I’ll be sending to my clients in the next few days -

I LOVE Christmas parties!!!  I love a party so combining two loves Christmas + Party is a winner for me!  This is my favorite Christmas picture of us taken at an ugly sweater party last year.  Cracks me up every time!

Another Christmas favorite is the Nutcracker ballet.  I haven’t been in quite some time, but my mom used to take me as a little girl.  I would always come home pretending I was Clara and dance around in my socks all across the hardwood floor with my nutcracker for days!  This began an obsession with nutcrackers that I had for some time.  My mom still has all kinds of nutcrackers amongst her Christmas decorations.

How can you not be just a little bit happier when you walk into a mall and for the first time that year, you’re greeted with Frank Sinatra crooning “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” and Christmas trees, garlands, snowflakes or lights everywhere you look?  It just makes me all warm and fuzzy inside every time!!

And doesn’t it warm your heart to see all the coat drives, canned food drives and Salvation Army volunteers collecting for people in need?  I love that Christmas is a time of giving.

I love all of the happy things about Christmas, and I love the cheesy things too!  This is Shep’s 2009 Santa photo, taken this afternoon at one of the more stressful mall visits we’ve had in a while.  But it’s all worth it because, you gotta love the cheesy annual Santa photo -

It’s so fun this year that Shep is big enough to get excited about Christmas fun.  He loves to see Christmas lights and Christmas trees, he loves to point out Santa, he looooooves to make cookies and eat the dough.  Always enjoying the childlike spirit of Christmas myself, I’m so excited to get to start reliving the magic of Christmas through the eyes of a child again.  We’re really not doing gifts this year except for Shep so it does take off some pressure.  I saw some moms today at Target who were just stressed out and scary looking.  It makes me so sad when people get caught up in the stress of the gift giving and party planning and forget to enjoy themselves.  Don’t forget what Christmas is all about!  Be blessed =)

Week twenty-six?  Seriously?  I’ve completed twenty-six weeks of pregnancy?  It’s gone by fast this time.  I have a feeling time will start feeling slower soon.  This has been an up and down week not in my pregnancy really but in my friend Tara’s.  She was due last week on Thanksgiving day with her second girl.  On Tuesday she called to see if I could come stay with her daughter Adelaide because she was having some strange pains that weren’t contractions.

I was ready!  Shep and I dropped what we were doing and raced over.  As far as I was concerned this was it – she was going to go to her doctor and he was going to be like, “Oh you’re having this baby today, let’s check you in.”  Adelaide was going to come spend the night and we were going to have a baby the next day.  I was wrong.

Thursday Tara was set to be induced.  They brought Adelaide over at 6:30 am and headed to the hospital.  Again, we were ready!  I had plans to take two 2-year olds to the mall to play and hear stories.  By myself.  Without a stroller.  In retrospect this doesn’t sound like such a great idea…  But by 9 am Randy and Tara were back at our house.  They wouldn’t induce her because she’d had a glass of water!!!  I was so disappointed for her!!!  We ended up all going to the mall and letting the kids play.  Oh poor Tara she was sooo uncomfortable, but she was being a real champ.

Shep and Adelaide.  Note her with the tiara, and him with the Cars booklet.

Today however was the day and Tatum was born just a little while ago!  We haven’t made it over to the hospital quite yet so I don’t have any pictures but I’m so happy for the Griffin family.  Whew!  What a week for them!

Now Tara is all done and I’m heading into the hardest part of pregnancy as I inch closer to my third trimester.  The other night I was sitting on the couch and as I stood up and threw out my right hip.  Yowza!  What am I, 85?  It was about 10:00 in the evening and I was waiting for Jake to get home with the pizza I was craving (I can’t help it!!!).  I had to sit perfectly still on the couch.  This was the night before Adelaide was coming over at 6:30 in the morning.  Lovely.  Fortunately, I went to bed and woke up all better, thankyoujesus.  I wasn’t too interested in taking two 2-year olds to the chiropractor…

We still don’t have a name for baby boy #2.  And I probably won’t tell you what names we’re thinking about if you ask me, because I don’t really care what you think, and you like everyone else will most likely feel compelled to tell me exactly why you don’t like them or what name we should go with instead.  If you want to name a baby, go have/adopt your own.  If your babies are 45 years old, you had your chance.  We’ll tell people once we’ve decided for sure on his name and then you’ll just have to like it because it’ll be too late!  I better have a girl after this one because I don’t know if I can come up with a third boy name, this is hard!!  My name standards are too high!

There’s something about roller-coaster hormones that bring out this, “I-don’t-care-if-what-I-say-shocks-or-offends-you-cause-it’s-just-the-way-I-feel,” thing in me.  I hear menopause does the same thing…  I’m not gonna lie, I kinda like it!  I don’t know if everyone else enjoys that side effect of my hormones.  But there is something freeing about not being quite so concerned about what you say, knowing that if you cross a line you can just blame it on the hormones.  Kinda the same way you can veto any restaurant decision in any group because you have a craving, or get a foot rub by whining about not feeling well, or sitting out of helping with unpleasant projects because your back hurts.  Right now I bet you’re sitting there either judging me or jealous of my power.  I can sense it.  But guess what – I don’t care   Listen, the way I see it, if you’ve got to give up your normal wardrobe for most of a year, have your whole body stretched out with stretch marks as sweet little reminders for the rest of your life, gain an ungodly amount of weight in a short amount of time, lose that weight afterward, endure strangers touching your body without asking while telling you that you’re never going to sleep again, why not enjoy some of the perks along the way right?

Photo of my by Jake.  Stay tuned, I’m going to give him a whole post featuring his photography of yours truly =)

I just spent way too much time preparing this post!  But I wanted to share so many photos!!  So I’ll just let them speak for themselves, it was a great day and I’m so thankful for my family!

Making macaroni with my brother at my parents’ house.  Aaaahhhh it was SO good!!!  It want more!

On to Aunt Cathy’s house

The food.  Did I take a picture of the turkey?  Of course not, why would I do something so obvious?

I am really starting to feel pregnant now.  It’s getting more uncomfortable to bend over, sit on the floor, pick Shepherd up and even to maintain good posture.  I’m trying to think of ways I can move my desktop computer over to the couch and pretend it’s a laptop because my desk chair is so uncomfortable.  My cute maternity jeans are getting tight too, which is really bad since I still have quite a bit of girth to gain if you know what I mean!  I won’t even talk about the granny panties I had to buy this week…

When I was pregnant with Shep, it never bothered me if people came up and touched the belly.  Which is surprising considering all of the other things that I managed to be crabby about.  But the past couple of days, I have been officially hit with the ‘DON’T TOUCH ME’ hormone.  If you come up and put your hands on my belly and then ask me if he’s moving, and THEN ask me if it’s ok that you’re touching me, you may be met with a dirty look.

I realize that my belly now protrudes outside of a normal physical boundary line, and that it’s out there for all to see, but just because you have to see it doesn’t mean you have to touch it!  It’s still part of my body and my body is not public property.  Feeling my baby move is a privilege!  It’s a sweet intimate thing that isn’t just out there for anyone and everyone at any time or an place.  If I want to share it with you I will, and if I don’t I won’t.  When someone just walks up and puts their hands on my belly, it feels like they are taking something from me that I should’ve been allowed to give – like if someone kissed you and you didn’t want them to.

So next time you see a pregnant woman, give her the respect of asking permission before touching her body.  She’ll thank you for it!

There’s that cranky pregnant Beth we all remember!  I knew she was in there somewhere!!  Here’s a blurry picture of me not being cranky making macoroni on Thanksgiving day =)

So I had all these great plans to get the three amazing sessions I had over the weekend all blogged by Thanksgiving, but alas Christmas card designing, editing and ordering as well as previous projects that weren’t yet complete got in the way.  So next week will be full of fun stuff, but in the mean time, don’t forget to sign up for my newsletter because early December I’ll be sending out a newsletter full of tips on how to take great pictures at Christmas, how to make those Christmas lights look spectacular and maybe my recipe for Sour Creme Cookies if you’re lucky   Click on the image below to subscribe.

Also, since I know you were dying to see a picture of my cute little boy quickly becoming a cute big boy, who am I to deny you?

Thank you so much for all of the encouraging words and verses about Jake’s layoff.  It means so much to have people in our lives that love us and pray with us!

Week twenty four started out as a great week.  I got some good work done, worked on Christmas cards for clients, booked a wedding for next year and finished up a Bible study on faith.  And then at the very end of the week, at the end of the day on Friday my faith was tested.  Amazing how that happens right?

On Friday afternoon, Jake was laid off from his job.

There’s that recession everyone keeps talking about, right?  After our initial emotions died down (and don’t worry – we had some emotions!), we’ve both really felt at peace.  We’ve been going through Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University, and like I said I just got finished with a Bible study on faith, so I feel like God has been preparing us.  Even though it’s scary, I think we’re both in a place of faith in God as our provider and consciously watching for and choosing not to live and walk in fear.

God’s timing doesn’t always seem ideal to me – losing our main source of income while expecting our second child isn’t the adventure I would choose – but I know that God has it all under control.  I’ve been really encouraged listening to Kristene Mueller the past couple of days, especially this song –

Redemption

Kristene Mueller

The darker the night
The brighter the day.
The fiercer the fight
The stronger the faith.
So I place my hope in You.

The deeper sin
The stronger the blood.
The more to forgive
The more reason to love.
So I place my trust in You.

In Your ways oh God
Redemption is so much better than perfection.
In Your ways oh God -

Over and over
You prove You’re so faithful.
Over and over
You prove Yourself a redeemer.

Over and over
You prove You’re so faithful.
Over and over
You prove Yourself a redeemer.

And to lighten the mood, here are some sneak peeks at some of the fun I got to have shooting people (with my camera, geez!) this weekend -