WHAT A WEEK: BABY'S GENDER & CONCERT IN CHICAGO

Last Saturday night, I looked at Samuel and said, "It's been a really big week."

And it was. We found out the gender of baby #2 and went to a long-awaited concert in Chicago!

20 WEEK ANATOMY SCAN
I'll start with the baby gender because, oh my!!!!!!





Ready for it....

IT'S  A  GIRL!

Surprise!! surprise!! surprise!!! We were so shocked and thrilled to find out that baby number two is a little girl!

We were both kind of thinking it was another boy, to be honest, just because this pregnancy hasn't been drastically different from my first pregnancy. But this is the second time I have been completely wrong on predicting the gender. I was so confident that Charlie was a girl. I'm 0 and 2 on that!

The ultrasound technician started out checking the heartbeat and trying to wake the baby up. :) I told her I had been feeling a lot of movement, but mostly at night. Just a few minutes later, the baby woke up and stayed moving around the entire time (very unlike big brother's anatomy scan. he stayed rolled into a ball the whole time and didn't even let us finish the whole checklist at that appointment!). Then the nurse said, "It's looking like a girl!" and I said, "What! Are you serious?"And sure enough, she could see very clearly that it was a GIRL. Samuel and I were thrilled by this happy news!

All of her measurements and photos during the scan looked great. We are so thankful for her health thus far. Her heart rate is now around 144 bpm.

Crazy enough, I did have a dream that it was girl a few months ago! My dream was that we had arrived home from the hospital with a baby girl and I could remember NOTHING about the delivery or even being at the hospital. So I guess you could say, I had a gender prediction dream! But let's hope that last part doesn't happen in real life.

Over the course of the day we found out, we called and texted family and shared our gender reveal photos above with them. Our family was just as surprised (and happy) as we were! I had several close friends who guessed girl, but most of our immediate family was also thinking it would be a boy. But it goes without saying that everyone, especially Samuel and I, was over the moon thrilled to hear that we are having a little girl. We are so thankful for her precious life and cannot wait to meet our new baby girl sometime near the end of February.

BEN RECTOR CONCERT
Samuel and I also went to a really special concert in Chicago last week!

For my birthday back in August, my wonderful + amazing + sweet + thoughtful + husband got me surprise tickets to see Ben Rector in Chicago!! The concert was at the Chicago Theatre and we were pumped. It was our first time going to Chicago alone, too, soo we were really up for an adventure!

We only live 25 miles from Chicago according to the map, buuuuttttt it definitely takes over an hour to get there. Always. It took us about an hour and a half to get to the concert venue, but thankfully we left about 2 hours prior to the concert start time.

The show was so good, y'all. He sang all my favorite songs from the new album and there were a lot of really special surprises in it too. And we loved being inside the Chicago Theatre! It's so beautiful.

October is off to a really fun start. We have family coming in next weekend and Halloween right around the corner (one of my personal favorites, as you may or may not know).

In the mean time, I'll just be sitting here letting it sink in that we are having a baby G I R L.
I can't believe it.

Emily

FALL GARLAND CRAFT

I loved planning our first fall painting project for Charlie recently. He is super into painting right now, which makes momma so happy! After looking around online for a template to print out like I was wanting, I just decided to make my own.

YOU'LL NEED

- Printer paper (2)
- White cardstock/construction paper (2)
- Sharpie
- Pencil
- Scissors
- Fall paint colors (we did orange, green, and yellow for the pumpkins, and red, brown, and yellow for the leaves)
- Paint brush
- Baby wipes (so necessary with a toddler!!)
- Twine/String
- Hole Punch (not pictured)





CREATE YOUR OWN COLORING PAGE
First step is to get started on what you want to be painted! This was so simple and completely however I wanted it to be. I wanted him to paint pumpkins and leaves, so I started by drawing some examples of each in various shapes and sizes on regular printer paper. Then I picked 3 of the best ones to keep. Some other ideas that we may do later this fall are: Candy corn, acorns, piece of pumpkin pie, a cute little turkey, or a football. You could even do Halloween items like: a bat, friendly ghost, black cat, or a jack-o-lantern -- seriously, anything your heart desires here.

Next I cut the templates out and I traced multiple of each onto one full sheet of thick white cardstock with a sharpie to create my own coloring page for my little guy to paint.

I thought it would be a lot easier to let him paint the entire paper before the shapes were cut out. He is starting to really understand filling the shape in with color, but coloring in the lines is not his ability yet. So this was perfect for a 2-year-old to be able to fill in each shape with paint and me to cut them out after they dried.

 

Once the pages dry, cut out each image. I like the look of leaving the black sharpie edges as an outline. Look at some of these pumpkins and leaves that are totally filled in with paint!!!! I was super impressed that he did that. 

The last thing you have to do is decide how to order them on your garland, hole punch each shape, and string them up. Yay for this beautiful fall craft done by your little one!

If you do this with your kids, be sure to send me pictures. :)
Emily