It's A Boy....Gavin Thomas Stevens!!!!

Gavin Thomas Stevens
Hello family and friends, my name is Gavin Thomas!!!!
I was born at 2:03 A.M. on February 23, 2008!
I weigh 7lbs. 5oz. and am 20.5 in. long!!

It all started when my Mommy went to her appointment Friday at 3:40 and begged her Doctor to bring me into this world. They gave her her wish and within a half an hour they had my Mommy hooked up to start the process of brining me out.

Despite my comfortable conditions inside my Mommy, I had no choice. Around 1:45 the Doctor came in to check on my Mommy and I. He knew something I didn't at that time but within 20 minutes I was out and on the warming table screaming and crying.

I had no idea how much nicer it was on the outside. Mommy instantly gave me some food. I didn't even have to ask. I got to stay with my Mommy and Daddy for a short while until I needed to go get cleaned up and to let my Mommy get some rest. After all, she waited a long 9 months to see me.

The next day proved to be even better, I hope this is how every day will be. I found out that I was not the only kid in this family. I had a big older brother named Jayden!
Who in my books is the best big brother any little brother could ever wish for. He sure does love me, don't you think!?!?!

Just when I thought the excitement couldn't get any higher I met the rest of my family!!
This is my Papa Joe!!


And this is my Grandma Barb!!


This is my Nana Becky!!


Here is my Grandpa John!!


And my Grandma Deb!!


And here is the rest of my family!!
from top my Aunt Mandy, Aunt Heather & one of my big cousins Ethan, Aunt Becky, cousin Hanna, another big cousin Taylor, her little brother but another big cousin to me Collin, Aunt Kimmie, and my soon to be newest Uncle Nate!!



I even hear I have an Aunt who lives all the way near New York City who will be traveling all the way to here just to see little young me!!! I truly must be loved to have such a wonderful family!!

And last but not least, here is my ever so proud and loving DaddyI will return for more pictures and comments as I am going to my new home this morning!!!
Bye Bye!!

Here we go...

I'm giving in. I've given a lot of thought to this whole caster oil idea, and Jordan's comment pretty much set me into action. I picked up a bottle today, and I'll be mixing my cocktail in a little bit. Approximately 2 ounces of caster oil mixed with orange juice.
We'll see what happens.
Jayden and I will also be having Mexican for lunch, so I'll either be on my way to having a baby...or just really really uncomfortable for the rest of the day.
Besides that, I'll walk as much as possible today. If I sit for any period of time my back gets so sore that I can hardly stand. But, if I stand all day and do a lot of walking my ankles look like they've got elephantiasis by the end of the day.
If none of this works then I'm just going to have to work up some tears at the doctor's office so they don't send me home tomorrow. I did get my first stretch marks ever on my tummy, so at this point I think I can work up some legitimate tears.

Maybe it's a good thing?

I seem to be stuck playing the waiting game, so I've been killing time in pretty unproductive ways. Today, I thought for fun I'd look up the babies' new astrology sign. I don't put a lot into astrology, but I do think it's fun. My mom is big on the compatibility between the signs, and this whole time we've been planning on the baby being an Aquarius. As Jayden is a Virgo, we were expecting the two to have a rather dramatic relationship because supposedly they would love each other, but there would a lot of fighting. But now, the baby has moved into the Pisces sign, which for a sibling match up is the "perfect couple."
Here is the little write up from Tarot.com :
This sibling combination is the "perfect couple". Though they come from opposite sides of the zodiac wheel, these two will have an easy time finding balance and harmony in all that they do. Virgo has a firm grip on reality, while Pisces likes to live in the world of imagination. It will be easy to see, even in early childhood, how these two will cross-pollinate their ideas and help one another to become well-rounded. Both are sensitive and kindly by nature, and even Virgo's criticism will roll off Pisces often-oblivious back. Pisces' creativity will entrance Virgo, and they'll work together to make their dreams come true. Of course, there will be fights now and then, but you won't have a hard time resolving them. A firm reminder to "play nice" might be all these two need. They're likely to continue playing well into their adult lives, too, much to their -- and your -- delight.
There you go, another pointless blog post. My camera is packed up, so this is why my blog is temporarily going away from cute family photos to this.

Still pregnant.

I'll go back to get checked on Friday, and if my body hasn't done anything significant then I'll have to go BACK next Monday or Tuesday for an ultrasound to make sure baby is happy. Basically, the doctor didn't seem in any big hurry to get this baby out. He keeps commenting that I'm measuring small, so he must think that the baby has room to grow or something. I measured small with Jayden, and I went a week and a half early and he was 7 pound 7 ounces...so the longer I'm pregnant, the bigger my fear of a really big baby with an epidural free birth.
Any natural inducement ideas would be gladly welcomed. I've been eating spicy food and trying acupressure, and I did one sit up (I resorted to toe touches because my back is too sore for a real sit up). Being a believer in Murphy's Law, I've also spent hours walking around busy stores thinking my water would break if I kept putting myself in a public place, as well as going to the doctor without all of my bags packed. Maybe it doesn't work if you actually try to plan by it.

Well, here's hoping I don't make it to Friday.

Any time now baby....

10:44 AM by Anonymous 2 Comments
Well, it's February 18th. The due date.

I'm still pregnant.

Baby can come out any time now...



My will power to not eat an entire box of Ho Hos is dwindling more and more each day, I'm thinking once I can officially start saying "I'm 10 months pregnant" ALL will power will be out the door. I have my 40 week appointment today at 4pm, so send some labor vibes this way and hope that they'll just keep me!

ps.

Don't forget to enter a guess on our online baby pool!
<~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Only 11 days until my due date!

Pregnancy

As of tomorrow, I will be 38 weeks pregnant, I think it's about time for a pregnancy post. I get asked how I'm feeling multiple times a day. Frankly, I feel huge. And sore. Bloated. Tired. And I'll probably tell you as much, because as wonderful of an experience as pregnancy is, it's still pretty uncomfortable.

But obviously, the goods still out weigh the bads in many other regards. Jayden, for example. Even though it's a bit more work and a bit harder on my body, it's a lot of fun to be pregnant with a toddler. So far, Jayden is the best big brother a pregnant belly could have. Every day he comes up and hugs my belly, talking softly to it, "I love you baby" "Hi baby! Hiiiiiiiii" with big hugs and kisses. And once, a frantic (in a silly acting sort of way) "Get it out! Get it out!" when I explained that it was a little leg in there that was doing the kicking. Jayden is getting very eager for the new baby, and maybe slightly annoyed with us because we're making him wait so long. Once, my mom was over working on the room while I prepared to go to the grocery store. She asked Jayden "Is mommy going to get a new baby from the hospital?" Jayden replied "No, mama go to store." She tried to clarify, "Yes, mommy is going to the store now, but she'll go to the hospital when she gets the new baby." Once again, "No, mama go to store." When I came home with all of the groceries I took them into the kitchen, and Jayden ran frantically looking around and through the bags "Mama! Baby? Where baby?" It was cute, and you probably had to be there, but I thought I'd share the story so we'd always remember when we come back to read these blogs.

And really, even though I've complained, I've had a really great pregnancy. No big scares, uneventful doctor appointments, basically no worries. The doctor has told me that I'm measuring small, but I'm measuring the same that I measured with Jayden, and he was 7 pounds 7 ounces, so I'm not worried. This baby is active, but not nearly as active as Jayden was. The heartbeat has never been below 150, which makes people say it's a girl, but Jayden's heartbeat was always fairly fast also. I was doing really good with weight gain, until I hit week 20. Then I think I rewarded myself for my good behavior a bit too much. Cravings haven't been crazy with this one, no big bowls of sauerkraut like I had with Jayden. Towards the beginning it was jalepeno poppers, and chili, and lately it's been Mexican. So...spicy food I guess.

Well, there's a bit of an update. It's more of a point of reference for me, so I can see a little bit of what I really felt like rather than what I've made myself remember.
Hopefully we'll be bringing home the new addition within the next two weeks, I'd really rather not go past my due date.
And here, the token pregnancy picture. It's so hard to get a decent picture, but then again, I'm 9 months pregnant, how photogenic am I supposed to be?

That's all. I doubt I'll post again before the baby gets here, so wish us luck, and check back for pictures from the hospital!

Nursery Update

10:10 AM by Anonymous 4 Comments
Thanks Stone for keeping on top of us about the nursery. I've been meaning to post pictures for ages, but more and more keeps getting accomplished in the room on almost a daily basis, so I keep putting off taking a picture. Plus, when there's more that gets accomplished, theres usually more of a mess of tools, paint cans, etc.
As with every other room, I can't publish pictures of the nearly finished room without publishing pictures of where it started. For some reason, I don't have a lot of pictures of this room. I think because it was SO disgusting, I probably never really felt the need to take pictures of it to show it off. So, you won't see pictures of the horrible shag carpet, or nasty buckets of water that were permanently stationed in the corner of the room to catch the rainwater, or a really good picture of the flaky painted woodwork that would have made any lead abatement inspector shiver. But I'm sure you all can get a pretty good idea of what we started with.

This is a shot of the closet. The closets in the babies room and Jayden's room are really great closets, but they started out completely disgusting. The roof leaked above both, causing huge holes in the ceiling and the plaster to turn to dust at the touch. The built in drawers were thankfully empty, but they had been duct taped shut to keep out the draft. I still can't get the duct tape residue off because it was so old, so if anyone has any suggestions besides completely sanding them down and varnishing them, let me know.

The best aspect of this room is the three windows that face the street. Jayden loves watching out of them for daddy to get home, and I'm sure the new baby will love them just as much. As you can see, the windows themselves were rotted. The woodwork was a flaky mess with tons of staples, nails, plastic, and window treatment hardware all over the place. Nasty.


This is a view of the other window in the room. Obviously after we had done some work on the place. I'm pretty sure this picture was just taken in the last couple of months, considering the room is empty. It was our storage room for the first year or so of us living in the house.

This is the opposite wall with the closet door. We had taken out the wall sconces, and still had to patch the holes along with all of the other cracks all over the room.
You can't really see all of the nails, but I took this picture to signify the hundreds of nails we had to pull up from the floor that were left from the many layers of flooring we took up.

Yay! Paint! I like vibrate colors for children's rooms. It gives little babies something to look at. This color is much more pleasing in person. This picture is the day that I started on the floor. For Jayden's room I painted the pine floor, and we love it. It's cheap, durable, and it works great with train sets.

It was pretty beat up and messy, I bleached it twice before painting. Then I primered twice, and painted twice.

And Jayden helped the entire time. He has been such a great help with the babies room.


And the room today. To us, is practically finished. To other people, maybe not. Everything is painted except the woodwork around the single window and the doors. We still need the light fixture... and the furniture. Heather was nice enough to give us a rocking chair that looks perfect in the room. Besides stripping paint, plastering, sanding, and painting my mom's contribution was the window treatments for the room (with four fairly large windows, Josh and I wouldn't have been able to afford anything nearly as nice). Joe and Barb have ordered the crib. And we'll fill in the rest of the gaps when we find out if it's a boy or girl (choosing a gender neutral color is about as far as I'll go) and when we get our tax return.

You can't get a good picture of these windows because of the lighting, but I'm sure you can tell they look lots better.

Like I said, I had a hard time cleaning up the dresser. But it still looks lots better. And it's clean.

The rocking chair. As you can see, this window still needs a bit of work. But we're almost there!


This is the crib, isn't it pretty? I like straight lines and darker woods, so it's pretty perfect.

This is the changing table we're hoping to get. It's made by the same manufacturer and it's the same finish, so hopefully it will look good. As far as changing tables go, this one looks like it could function as a regular piece of furniture someday.

That's all for the nursery. I'll do a follow up pregnancy post shortly, I have to make myself presentable first so I can show off my ginourmousness.