Mamaw, Jude and big brother Asher.
Yesterday morning Judah (Jude) Kristopher made a remarkable entry into this world. It was full of stress and uncertainty, but by God's grace, he and his momma are healthy and recovering well. Jude was 8 pounds & 9 ounces. he was 19-3/4 inches long. He was born at 6:32 via emergency C-section. The Psalmist reminds us in Psalm 139:13-16...
"For you formed my inward parts;you knitted me together in my mother's womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works;my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you,when I was being made in secret,intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance;in your book were written, every one of them,the days that were formed for me,when as yet there were none of them."
Thank you for your prayers and encouragement. Praise God for His graciousness and blessing.
kris
p.s. Pictures will be up ASAP
I don't like waiting. It's no fun. But instead of going on and on about being almost 41 weeks pregnant, I will spend my time a little more constructively.
My little Asher is growing up so fast and I have been meaning to record some of the things he is saying now. Not that you care, but I think we all know by now this is the closest thing to a baby book the poor kid has. So bear with me. According to the ticker to the right, he is 1 year, 5 months, almost 3 weeks. Here is what I can immediately recall of his vocabulary:
First, my favorite: "ottawa" which means "other one." He calls his other lovey (besides Dumbo) ottawa. If he sees a plane, he points up and then looks at us and says "ottawa?" meaning we need to wait until we see one more. When we put one shoe on, he hands us the other and says "ottawa." You get the idea :) Sometimes he drops the "wa" and says "otta" and then whatever he wants or sees another one of.
Animals:
--dog, cat, lion, bird, snake, and monkey are all called the sound that they make. I try to get him to actually say the name, but he feels the sound is sufficient.
--tuh-tah (turtle), buh(bunny rabbit)
Food:
--cracker, yogurt(go-guh), milk (meh), apple(a-pah), banana (ba-ba), pancakes(pah-cah), cookie(cah-cah), chicken (chi-chi-chi), water(wa-wa), ice cream (i-cah)
People:
--Mamaw (meh-mah), Poppy (pa-pa), Micah (bike-ah), Nay-Nay(Aunt Renae), Saige (sah-ge), Tye(said with a very sweet southern drawl, baby (buh-buh), Grandpa (pah-ca)
Things: (all with their various pronunciations ranging from "very clear" to "only we know what he means"
--bible, book, guitar, pick, car, ball, blocks(pops), shoes, socks, shorts, shirt, diaper, wipes, bath, towel, soap (pope), help (his favorite word that I hear no less than 89 times a day--sounds like "op"), God, door, "Little Bird" (his favorite song that he wants to listen to 89 times a day), pillow, shower(sha-sha), rain, this, that, yes (dah!),
--he "counts" but will only say "one" never 2 or 3 or any other number. He just points to whatever he is counting and says "one" over and over again.
--he can answer the first 3 questions of the Children's Catechism:
Q:Who made you?
A:God (Gah)
Q:What else did God make?
A:All things (Ah tas)
Q:Why did God make you and all things?
A:For His glory (go-gah is all he says--so glory and yogurt are the same thing.)
Ok, that's all I can think of for now. I love, love, love watching him acquire these new verbal skills. It is so fascinating to me how he is learning a whole language with very little direct instruction. I love how babies and toddlers never think "I don't know how to say that so I'm not even going to try." If the word is too hard, they just call it soemthing until they are able to say it correctly. No fear of being wrong...must be nice :)
Also, I just remembered...I took him to the dr. last week and he weighed 27 lbs. Other notable stats: He is in a size 6W shoe and he wears 18-24 month clothing with the occasional 2T thrown in.
So I went to the dr. yesterday for my 40 week appt. No change from last week. So the deal is if I don't go into labor on my own by next Tuesday, I will probably have a c-section on Wednesday (which, incidently, is my dad's birthday.)
Thankfully, I am not too uncomfortable. I think since he has dropped, breathing and sleeping have gotten easier. And I have more room in my stomach so I'm still enjoying food :) So other than being really big, I'm feeling pretty good.
My preference is to not have a repeat c-section, but since the main goal is a healthy baby coming out safely, I'm not going to get too worked up about how that ends up happening.
A good pb&j sandwich.
Cool new-to-Asher shoes from Jackson (and a free "gun show").
Playing guitar.
Listening to Elizabeth Mitchell on iTunes.
Some good dumbo-lovin'.
Does it get much better? I think not.
Little Judah Kristopher...already so different from his big brother. One can't wait for developed lungs to make his entrance, the other may come out ready to say his first words.
I don't get it.
But I just host the knitting-together party--I don't call the shots. So I'm trying to be patient...not my strong suit, but I gotta learn somehow, right?
A guest post by Kris Rives
I love this smile!
Here's my 38 week shot. Lovely. I was going for a wistful, forlorn look.
Here is one of Asher thoroughly enjoying some chicken nuggets. The enjoyment is mainly derived from the tiny bit of ketchup I allow him to dip the nuggets in. 
OK--enough random pictures for one day :)
So apparently Asher turned 5 since he's been at Mamaw's! She took him to get another haircut from the same lady that gave him his first one. Oh my goodness...why did it make him older???
(They keep emailing me adorable pictures of the little man that I feel compelled to post immediately.)
That's how many we have right now. A bit much at first glance, but allow me to justify the excessiveness.
We have a single Combi stroller that accomodates our infant carrier. I love Combi because they are super lightweight and they fold up very nicely. They are a little hard to maneuver if you are on the taller side, but that is the only drawback.
Then we have a Chicco umbrella stroller that is easier to haul around than the Combi, especially once Asher outgrew the infant carrier (a sad day indeed as I had to wake him up if he fell asleep in the car as opposed to just popping the carrier into the stroller and him never being the wiser.)
Next we have a Jeep jogging stroller. It is a single, but I love it because it handles really nicely and has built-in speakers and a jack for the ipod or a CD walkman. We won't be getting a double jogger because the only thing more ridiculous than 5 strollers is 6 strollers. We'll just alternate who gets to go on walks.
Up next is a Maclaren double umbrella stroller that we were given. I love Maclarens and I love even more that we were given this high dollar item (thanks again, Kelli!) But you can't use an infant seat in it. It will be great when Jude is older, but I really wanted something that would allow me to leave him in his seat when we arrive at our destination.
This leads me to the fifth and final stroller, the Combi double stroller that we just bought from Craig's List. (Craig's List is definitely the way to go for items like this. A $300 stroller just isn't in the budget, so finding a used one for less than half price is great. And then when you get Mamaw and Poppy to help out, it makes it even better!) I have been stalking that site daily trying to find one. I finally found one, talked the poor lady down about $50, and went and picked it up today. I do love to wheel and deal, I must say.
And the thing is, I don't want to get rid of any of the single strollers yet. Not until we are through with the "having babies" portion of our lives. What if we reach a point where we are back to just one kid that needs to be strolled. Then we will be in need of the singles again and I'll be glad I retained the option.
Baby gear! It has a way of taking over, doesn't it?
said my camera!
I was distraught yesterday. DISTRAUGHT I tell you. I thought our camera was lost, never to be found again. I searched high and low and could not find it anywhere. I was convinced some scumbag broke into our car and took it, along with the roughly 800pictures that were on the memory card. (A brief aside: Never let your memory card have that many pictures on it! It's a tragedy waiting to happen.)
But last night, Kris continued the search and thankfully found it hiding in the filing cabinet. All was right with the world again.
Kris then dumped all the pictures on to the computer and then burned them to a DVD. And I learned a very vaulable lesson...just because you have a 2GB memory card does not mean that 2GB worth of pictures need to be on it.
In other news, I go to the doctor for my 38 week check-up today. I know I still have 2 weeks until D-Day, but I am praying he decides to make an appearnace a little early. I'll keep you posted.
Update: No major progress to report...apparently Judah K doesn't feel like he has anywhere to be so he'll just enjoy the present accommodations as long as he can.
I realize that my lack of blogging may make some wonder if there is any baby news to report. So I thought I would pop in and let everyone know that Jude is still incubating and seems to be in no hurry to go anywhere...which is good...don't get me wrong. We are all about full-term babies here. I just can't imagine that there is that much more room left in there for him. Surely he is reaching capacity, right?
I've been awake since the 5:40 a.m. bathroom break. It is now 6:40 a.m.
I've been reading blogs and taking assinine quizzes.
I've eaten half a box of vanilla wafers.
I just googled "early signs of labor" to see if there is a vanilla wafer connection. I'm sure if I would have clicked on enough "o"'s I would have found one.
I am 37 weeks today and the bag is packed!!! I'm sure I have left something out, but I think I have the basics covered.
Although I'm pretty sure that, by packing the bag, I have just ensured that he will not come before 41 weeks. If I didn't pack it, he probably would have come tomorrow. But I was warned that people might not take pity on me this time and bring me everything I need. So here's to 4 more weeks of pregnant bliss.
Come on, Baby Jude! Now that I am relatively certain that your lungs work and you have toenails, I am fine with you appearing just a little early!
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