a little behind...

so i've been a little busy the past few days and feel bad that it's taken me this long to post, but...

davis is here!

after 36 hours of laboring at home (from wednesday morning to thursday afternoon), we finally made it to the hospital and davis was born at 10:30 pm on thursday.
(with no epidural and only some IV pain meds once they had to give me pitocin to go from 9 to 10 cm--it was exactly what i wanted. i spent tons of time on the birthing ball and loved that they gave me lots of options for labor.)

he was 8 lbs 1 oz, 19 1/2 inches long and absolutely perfect in every way--even with his 15 cm head :)
our two days at the hospital were great--learned a lot, davis got checked out and was declared absolutely perfect, and we got to spend more time getting to know our beautiful little boy.
and then we came home to a house full of family and lots of friends who have come to visit and help us--we cannot express our thanks to everyone who has called, visited, sent us warm wishes or supported us in some way through this process!
he is the sweetest boy with the best expressions--we have loved his alert times :)
and the little grins we've already caught.

as well as the sweetest sleeping expressions... he's definitely a relaxed baby.
i'm sure there's a lot more we could say, but i now have a little guy waiting for me to feed him...

so, from our newest little pumpkin--
and everyone at our house (yes, we made it to our church trunk or treat tonight--call me crazy, but i needed to get out!)
happy halloween!

(and pepper, too)

big weekend

well, much to our surprise (and everyone else's) we made it to (and through) this past weekend. i had spa appointments scheduled for friday--and i was determined to make it at least until then. happily, i was able to enjoy a half hour prenatal massage (so relaxing!) and a pedicure--always a nice indulgence.

so then we got to saturday, where we had plans to go to ecu's homecoming game. thanks to my brother and sister-in-law and their tickets they purchased with parking pass, we were able to park just outside of the stadium and avoid a long walk that would have exhausted me early on. that was a good thing, since our tickets were in the upper deck--and about 5 rows from the top of the upper deck. we took the elevator up there, but there were no elevators to our seats! so up we went (and justin made sure i didn't have to make too many trips--i think we managed to keep it to 3 or 4 times.)

we just ordered and got a new camera that includes the panoramic feature, so we had lots of fun playing with that from the top of the stadium--as you can tell!
and as the sun set (one of my favorite ways to watch a game in dowdy ficklen) it was even prettier from up top.
love love love sunflare (not so crazy about 38 week-pregnancy double chins, but still a good picture)
and since my brother and sister-in-law were there, we met up for a nice family photo on the 50 yard line.
we ended up winning--37 to 10 over marshall--and it was a great game to go to. beautiful weather, a gorgeous sunset, and homecoming festivities all around. i'm so glad we were able to make it to one game this year, since we missed out the year before.

i even made it through sunday, with our church's fall festival and about five hours of face-painting. i love face-painting and have the best time with it. my friend becky at church used to do the fancy face painting at busch gardens, and she has taught us many tricks with sponging, shading and all sorts of cool designs.

i only planned to work a few days this week and have succeeded with that--i'm now officially on my maternity leave. it feels weird to have everything finished up and very few responsibilities until davis gets here. honestly, there are still a couple of things that i could do (and will try to do) but i also plan to enjoy it as much as possible. so in order to get to this point, i had to spend a couple of days working hard to get all my paperwork and planning done. monday was easy for that--it was a gross afternoon with rain and storms coming through, but it led to this gorgeous rainbow just outside our neighborhood. it was actually a double rainbow, but the second one isn't showing up here...
the sunset was pretty awesome, too
an attempt to get the rainbow through the panoramic feature...
and finally--davis's first halloween costume.
i was planning on using fabric paint at first, but i ended up liking the orange shirt a little too much for it to become permanently pumpkinfied. so i just used a foam sheet :)

we're hoping davis will be here any day now. i've had some serious contractions today (that i've been reassured are real ones, not braxton hicks) but made no progress. so we're still hanging in there--as is he. we'll share the big news as soon as he's here!

doing some catching up

first, let's start with some cute pictures of pepper dog being lazy around the house.

justin said a good caption for this one would be, "but there's nothing on tv." she does this a lot right now--laying around on the couch with him as he relaxes.

and sometimes, she just can't get close enough :)
now, on to more baby celebrations! we had our baby shower at church here weekend before last, and i've got a few photos to share of the decorations. someone else took photos of us opening presents, so i'll have to wait until i get a hold of those.
the rubber ducks were so cute!
and this cake--oh, so delicious.

all of the food was good, actually! there was an apple dip that i will have to find the recipe and share it, because it's too amazing not to share. remind me to do that later :)
and the adorable diaper cake and other gifts. thank you so much to everyone who helped plan the shower and came out that afternoon--we had the best time!
this past weekend, we stayed busy by going to the band competition where my brother's band was performing. i snapped a picture of him as he was checking everything out on the field--he's lost a good amount of weight this year and it was really noticeable to me from that distance.
here's his band on the field during the competition--they did an awesome job!
we watched the rest of the bands in their class and then left to get some dinner, coming back for the larger bands at the end. justin and i had planned ahead and bought two chair frames that made the stands much more bearable. thank goodness! we stayed through the awards ceremony, where we watched alan's band place in the top 3 in most of the categories, with a 2nd place finish in their class. good work, guys!

and now, the baby update. we're in the last month of pregnancy--in case you couldn't tell.
at my appointment last week, i asked for a general guess of how big davis was measuring. my doctor (who hadn't really seen me for a couple of months since i had appointments with other dr's in the practice) started feeling and measuring, and she guessed that he was probably already weighing around 7 lbs. better yet, my stomach was measuring about 2 or 3 weeks ahead of where it should be! so she said we could get a growth ultrasound for this week, just to see how big this guy is going to be.

we went back today and learned that our "little" boy is actually quite big. he's already weighing about 7 1/2 lbs and could easily be 9 lbs if he goes full-term. (all of this goes with the disclaimer that they could be off by a pound either way--this is all estimation.) at 37 weeks, they measured a 40 week belly on him and a 42 week head. goodness!

and that big ol' noggin? has hair!
long hair on the back of his head, according to the ultrasound tech. "possible mullet," she said. i said to justin, "that'd be his west virginia side." (kidding, of course.)

but the big thing is that he seems pretty content to stay inside for right now, so we're going on with our week and making plans for the weekend. i think we may finally get a chance to go to an ecu game--homecoming!, and our church's annual fall festival is on sunday, which i love and really don't want to miss. so i'm honestly okay with him taking another week. now next week.... well, that's another story!

a month from due date

so hard to believe that he's predicted to be here in a month (and realistically could be here earlier than that!)

we had an awesome weekend doing maternity pictures on saturday and taking care of some last minute errands. this coming saturday will be filled with our birthing class, so it was nice to get some things finished since we'll be busy all this weekend. my last baby shower is sunday afternoon, and we'll have family coming in for that, too, so that'll essentially be our weekend.

so sunday, i left from church and drove to meet my dear friend ashley and her little girl cameron for lunch. we decided a one-on-one visit would be better than her coming all the way for a shower, and it was such a pleasure catching up with her!
(can you believe she had a baby six weeks ago? she looked fabulous)
and here's her adorable little rabbit, as ashley calls her.

then last night, we headed out to the fair. i love this time of year and the cool fall temperatures that are finally here. we couldn't really ride any rides (nor did we want to pay that much money for the tickets) but we did enjoy the craft displays...
and the farm animals!
i always like visiting them and seeing the names and farms they come from.
(and the baby goats were so cute!)
if my fingers hadn't been coated with cinnamon and sugar, i would've taken a picture of the funnel cake that i got. but obviously, you're dealing with a 9-month pregnant woman and fried dough. thought it was so good (and davis enjoyed it immensely), i regretted it later on. too much sugar and grease--but oh, it was worth it in the moment.

and finally, an updated belly shot just because so many people commented how pregnant i looked today. and from the side, yes, there's no doubt.
just when you thought it couldn't get any bigger.... it does.

davis's nursery tour

we are pretty much done with the nursery, so justin wanted to do a video to share with our friends and family members who are a little further off.



and while we're on videos, i shared this on facebook earlier in the week but forgot to put it up here. remember back during my disney posts where we got filmed by a crew at hollywood studios? well, i've been following the disney parks blog since we got back (partially just to see when the video would be posted) and this week--it finally showed up on the blog's one year anniversary!




pretty cool, huh?

my fall photography

i've finally gotten around to posting a few shots from each of my fall sessions. this isn't all of them, but i just wanted to include a variety of my maternity, senior and family shoots to show y'all what i've been up to. i'm pretty much done, give or take a quick session every now and then. there's only so much i can do at this point! hopefully i'll have some shots from my own maternity session that i did today to show you how much davis--and my belly--has grown. (edited to add--i included the couple of photos that were done today in the header, so that's just a tease of what's to come!)

so here we go, starting with glenn and jessica in downtown washington...





megan and joel, who are about a week and a half behind us with little isaac :)





miss katie--a fabulous 2011 senior in downtown greenville--so photogenic!





a great session with ashley and her family--at another favorite spot of mine.



will, a 2010 senior who was just starting college when we got around to doing his pictures :) will, i grabbed most of the serious-faced ones--but i still think these are great!



and then michelle, another 2011 senior whom i've had the pleasure of photographing since she was in the 7th grade.

(doesn't she look like a young jennifer grey in this one? that's all i could see once i edited it.)


so sorry for not getting these up sooner! i love my clients and so enjoy getting to capture them at the various stages in their lives :)