Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas and Baby Dedication!

Wow, I guess when you become a parent you stop the avid blogging! :)

Nahum continues to be the complete JOY of our lives and we are SOOOO incredibly thankful for him. God is still providing for us financially so that I can stay home and raise and care for our boy. Praise Him for that!

For Halloween, Nahum dressed as Linus from the Peanuts cartoon. That was the only "costume" that Daddy approved of since he's really too young to understand what's going on. He was still pretty cute though.


Thanksgiving was certainly a test of endurance for all of us. We had extended familiy from all sides in town so that made for a 3-day Thanksgiving extraveganza! Poor baby boy didn't really get the rest he needed to recooperate, but he survived. Nahum got to meet his newest cousin, Nathan Jackson who was born about 6 months after him, to Chris and Suzanne Jackson.



He also got to meet his Uncle Samuel and Aunt Meg and Great-Grandma Pat for the fist time, at the Estes Thanksgiving meal in Visalia.






Christmas was SUCH a blessing this year.




We enjoyed a Christmas Eve candle light service at Steven's Dad's church and then we got to open presents with my imediate family that night. Christmas day was spent in Reedley with the Estes'. All of Steven's siblings and their families were together this year and I know that is special to my in-laws and to all of us. The Barker kids REALLY loved being around Nahum and he loved spending time with his cousins!


The day-after Christmas, we were blessed to have Nahum's baby dedication at Grace Community Church with Papa. All the Estes Barker's were there as well as my mom's family. Our dear friends Megan and Paul Hemphill and Leslie and Eric Rata were able to join us for this blessing too and we are SO happy they were there!





Here are all the original Estes siblings and their spouses. Samuel and Meg, Beth and Bryan Barker, Steven and me, and Peter and Katie will be married this coming June 2011!

Raspberries & Coos

Man, I don't update this blog enough. I should, and I know I could use the excuse that I'm a new mommy, but honestly it's cause I update on FB so much that I forget about the blog!

So, Nahum turned 5 months last week! YIKES!!! I'm SO excited by all the new things he is doing these days. He can blow raspberries and babble and coo a lot more. He loves squeeling with glee! I just love it! He LOVES playing with his Daddy and I am SO thankful for that too.

Here are some recent pictures of him...
Here are all the Estes grandkids!

Here is Nahum at our Great Aunt Floretta and Ray White's wedding in September.

Here is Nahum with his Great Grandpa Clayton.

Here is Steven's parents with Nahum.

Update

Well, I intended to post new things as Nahum got older and now I realize I just do that on Facebook, so here's some things that you may have missed.

Nahum met some of his friends for the first time:
Nahum and Charlie are 3 weeks apart. (Nahum is older)
Nahum and Samara are 3 months apart. (Samara is older)
And Nahum and Freddy are 6 weeks apart. (Nahum is older)

Nahum also got to meet all his Barker cousins too!

And we went for a visit to Bass Lake for Daddy's birthday, so Nahum got to meet his Great-Great Aunts: Linda and Dorothy & Great-Great Uncles Bill and Mark too!

Here's a picture of out little family on Steven's birthday. Nahum turned 3 months old the same day!

First Father's Day

Yesterday was Steven's very first Father's Day! We went to the early service at church, I made an ice cream cake and we went to my family's house for a BBQ and spent the day relaxing.

Nahum is 6 weeks old now and has continued to do SO much changing! We just love watching him make new faces and he is even starting to smile more often. It just fills my heart with joy everytime I get to spend time with him!

We're excited to welcome our family from LA and from Texas this next week. There will be many more pictures to come~

1 Month Old!

Nahum had his 1 month birthday a couple of days ago and I can't believe how much he has changed and is STILL changing!

I have been breastfeeding exclusively and he is just turning into this delightfully chubby boy and I am so pleased and thankful. We weighed him last night at Kaiser and he weighs at least 9 pounds now!

He has been struggling with some digestive issues. We're not sure what the exact problem is, but he just cries and makes painful faces right before he "relieves" himself and then he's fine. It just breaks my heart to see him in such pain though. I have cut out dairy products from my diet for a week now to see if that helps him digest any easier and to be honest, I haven't seen any real improvement. I will keep with it for about another week and then re-evaluate that decision. I gotta say, I really miss eating ice cream now that the weather is warming up! But to be a mother is to sacrifice, so I'll gladly do that for him.

Here are some pictures from this last month. You can really see the change in him.

He's HERE!!!

Nahum Levi Estes was born early at 37 weeks and 2 days on Thursday, May 6, 2010. He weighs 5 pounds, 10 oz and is 19" long! Not much baby fat, so they are monitoring his body temp to make sure he's ok. We're both doing well and happy to have him here!

More to come~

36 weeks and counting...

Today I am 36 weeks pregnant and worked my very last day of work! YAY! I can now sleep past 5am and get some much-needed chores done around the house before Nahum comes!

We had a doctors appointment yesterday at Kaiser. The fetal heart monitor reading was good. They did have to "buzz" him to get more movement but it worked and it was fine. Our nurse practitioner measured my uterus and did some kind of vaginal/rectal test for a bacteria that could be there. I'm pretty sure it's not anything to worry about otherwise they would have notified me by now.

My blood pressure was higher than they liked to see so she's going to have me come in for the fetal heart monitor 2 times a week now until delivery instead of just 1. That's ok with me because I want to make sure there isn't any pressure on Nahum's heart.

I have been having more and more contractions throughout the day; especially yesterday and today. There have been a few times it was painful or felt like stretching or sharp pain for a few seconds. So, I think my body is still just getting ready. I should start keeping better track of how long the contractions are and how far apart they are. I guess I just keep thinking that when REAL labor starts, it will feel MUCH more painful and then I'll know the difference. That may not be accurate or very responsible of me, but I really don't have any other experience to go off of.

Nahum continues to move in rolling movements and lately I've felt him stretching (like w/ a yawning movement) towards my bladder and that is making things more uncomfortable.

The last several times I've gotten to take a nap during the afternoons; I'm sleeping VERY soundly. So much so that I wake up drooling and in the same position (which is good for me 'cause I usually switch sides a lot.) I am also waking up not remembering what day it is or how long I've been asleep. So, my best quality sleep is during the afternoons. At night it's spent tossing, turning and getting up to use the bathroom or straighten out a leg cramp (which are also more frequent now.)
!!
My co-workers threw me a surprise baby shower on Monday and that was so nice. I honestly thought they were going to forget about me and that I'd have my last day of work and that would be it, but they did a great job! We got a couple more cute outfits, a home-made blanket, some full-sized Johnson & Johnson bath products and a REALLY big Target gift card! AND my co-worker made a Hungry Caterpillar cake too! We felt very blessed by them all.

I have one more baby shower this Sunday afternoon for the ladies I grew up with in Sanger and some of Steven's and Debby's close friends from Reedley. I haven't seen many of these women in years so it will be SO nice to catch up! I'm really looking forward to it!

34 Week Ultrasound

Well, we're coming right along now. At 34 weeks and 3 days we had another ultrasound and although the doctor wasn't actually there, the tech still got all the good shots of measurements that she needed.

According to his measurments, the doctor estimated his weight to be 5 pounds 2 oz!!! He's really getting big now and running out of room in my belly! Doc also said that he would recommend delivery by 41 weeks unless of course I go into labor naturally sooner than that.

So, in this picture, you can see his head to the right and follow his profile to the bridge of his nose and mouth and then you can see his tummy and I think his hand at the bottom left.

He's still moving a lot these days, which is good news that he's active and means that, even with a 2 vessel cord, he's getting enough blood-flow to move around.

I will now be going in to Kaiser every week for doctors appointments in addition to the fetal heart monitor for 20-30 min each time. I guess I'm glad about that. I keep hearing stories about pregnant women around the same time-frame as me having their babies early or other women who have had their babies around this time and it doesn't sit well with me. At only 34 weeks, he is NOT done "cook'n" yet and if I'll be monitored every week, then it makes me feel better that they would catch something if it arises.

Thanks for your continued prayers for us. I'm down to only 8 days left before my maternity leave starts and I can't WAIT!!!

!!!CoNgRaTuLaTiOnS!!!

Congratulations to our brother Peter and his new FIANCE Katie Hughes!!! Peter proposed to Katie on their 3 year anniversary last week. He took her for a ride in Sam's plane and had the kids at Great Western school out in the yard holding letters that spelled "Will you marry me?" Katie was surprised and VERY happy! She said "YES!"


We're SO excited to have Katie as part of our family and look forward to their wedding day!

Nahum

We were inspired to take some pictures of a verse in the Bible that we hope will a source of joy and encouragement to us as well as our son. Nahum 1:7. We'll be framing these and hanging them in his room.

~Showers of Blessings~

Saturday, March 27th was our "family" baby shower given by one of my best friends, Hannah. She and her mom and friend Jenn did SUCH a fabulous job with the Very Hungry Caterpillar theme! I mean the details were just amazing and EVERYBODY loved it!!!

My friend Megan was such a big help to me too. She drove me to the shower, wrote down all my gifts for me and organized it all so it made writing my thank-you's a LOT easier! I just love her.~

I really did miss some of my family who wasn't able to be there with us; my Schletewitz girls in TX and my two sister-in-laws from Southern CA and my nieces too. Peter's gf Katie was there and that was really special though.

We got some great gifts for Nahum: a Graco swing, the changing table that matches our crib, lots of great clothes, some stuffed animals and my FAVORITE gifts were the crib bedding and quilt that Aunt Kathy made for us. I mean she did an INCREDIBLE job and we just couldn't wait to put it in Nahum's crib!

Steven put the changing table together and helped me unload all the gifts the next day. We even organized all Nahum's clothes into size and hung them up in the closet. It's beginning to look more like a little person is going to live in there. SO exciting!

30 week ultrasound

Well, we saw his hair! Weird actually because, of course, I don't know WHAT I'm looking at, but the tech showed me that it was illuminated white on the screen and looked like it was floating in the fluid, so that made more sense.

His Right kidney is back into the 'normal' range now. It's measuring a 6 now and if it was a 7 it would be considered at risk, so we're IN THE NORMAL RANGE!!! Praise God!

All other measurements were normal too and he weighs 3 pounds and 5 oz now! They couldn't tell how long he was 'cause he was all bunched up. We got some pictures, but it was really hard to get a good shot of his face/profile because his arms were both up next to his head, like he was boxing or something!

They want to do 1 more ultrasound in 4 weeks and then they will wait until after he's born and do an ultrasound directly on him.

In 2 weeks they want me to go to my doctor and have them do the fetal heart monitor for 20-30 min. I guess they strap on some device to my tummy and just listen to his heart beat for that time frame.

Other than that, we're all good! Thanks for your continued prayers for baby Nahum!

30 weeks & my Birthday!

Here I am 30 weeks pregnant and in Pismo Beach for my birthday weekend! More pictures to come!

29 Weeks!

Today marks the 29th week of pregnancy for me! Yay! 11 more to go~

We had our doctors appointment yesterday and that went very well. I have gained 20 pounds now and hope to not gain much more than that. We'll see though...I have been enjoying ice cream just about everyday now.

I had some tests done at the lab to check for a possible vaginal infection and that came back negative, which is good! The Boy was positioned like he was sitting in my lap: head up by my belly button and sitting on my bladder. He gave the NP a good punch when I was lying down on the table and she was pushing around. I'm glad he's an active baby. It makes me remember that he's there and that's a comfort to me.

We scheduled all the rest of my doctors appointments until delivery and that is exciting! After the next one, I'll go in every-other week. They gave us an envelope with his birth certificate and social security information. I guess we can have it pre-filled out and just bring it with us to the hospital when I deliver and they will finish it for us. That's nice!

This week (with the assistance of our AWESOME friend Michelle) we finished painting Nahum's room, we had new carpet and a new pad put in yesterday (thanks to All American Flooring.) AND - Steven surprised me and put the crib together too! Here are some pictures.



It really seems REAL now that the room is starting to come together. Our main decorating colors are brown, tan and blue and the crib is an Espresso color. My fabulous Aunt Kathy is making our crib bumpers and bed skirt and my Nanni (grandma) is making the window covering out of the same material. I think I'd like to accent with owl decor. But I haven't quite figured out exactly what that's going to look like yet. I'm open to suggestions if anyone has any.

This weekend we're going to Pismo Beach with the Hemphill's for my birthday and next week we have another ultrasound appointment with Dr. Turocy so there are lots of things to look forward to!