david.shantel.beckahm.harper: September 2012

A Vacay before there are 4!

This past weekend I decided to plan a little getaway for David, Beckahm and I to just go and play and have some time together with each other, all three of us together at the same time, because unfortunately for now, that rarely happens. David and I are both working full time right now, but have arranged our time schedules so that no matter what one of us is at home with Beckahm so he isn't constantly in daycare. As hard as it is sometimes to meet each other at the door to say hi and bye with a list of what needs to be done for Beckahm, and off to work we go, it's what puts both of our minds at ease right now. So this little vacation was much needed for all three of us I think :). I'm still a stressed out nut case when it comes to thinking about how Beckahm is going to react to a new baby joining our family, so in a way, it was something I wanted to be able to do with just him and have it be all about him. The whole weekend was and turned out to be a complete success! And of course on the plus side for B, we got to stay with his Auntie all weekend too which made it even better! On Saturday, Sept. 15th we got to play at Hogle Zoo all day which was the funnest thing ever. It was Beckahm's first time seeing most of these animals in real life and he could not get enough of it! I loved watching him point to all of the animals and make all of the animal noises. He could've stayed there all day if I would've let him. I think his favorites were a toss up between the monkeys and the giraffes. The next day we went to the Living Planet Aquarium and got to see all sorts of snakes, fish, penguins and sharks-- he definitely liked this part too, but not near as much as the zoo. Later on we got all of the family together and had some family pictures taken (this is a first for us haha) Then we met up at Buffalo Wild Wings had some dinner and headed back to Aunt Kristen's house. The next day we lounged around, watched lots of cartoons and even got a little shopping in too before we had to head back home. It was such a fun weekend and so great to be able to get together with all of the family--it most definitely does not happen enough!

He was obsessed with his Auntie's glasses...

Ready for a day at the zoo!

Meeting the fire fighter dog

Just watching the chickens peck around

Monkeys!!!

He was so intrigued by this huge gorilla!

Lovin it!

He's a juvenile gorilla haha

Not sure what to think about the nest

Taking advantage of the free grilled cheeses, his fav!

Making sure his auntie can see the polar bear

Just playin a little jungle music

Everyone at the zoo

He was loving all of this attention I can promise you that :)

The boys at the zoo

At the penguin exhibit in the Aquarium

Canoe anyone?

He was so loving this day and I was eating it all up!

He had a pretty good hold of my hair at this point and was attacking my face lol

Love my boys xoxo

Making sure his auntie got plenty of love too :)

Loving the giraffes!

Me and my beautiful sissy pants

It was the tiniest thing I ever decided to put my whole life into. -Terri Guillemets

On July 18th, 2012, David, Beckahm and I all got the chance to meet little girl for the first time on the big screen! Beckahm sat up on the table with me and stared at the screen in either astonishment or confusion as we watched this little baby move around in my tummy :). Even if he had no idea what was really going on, I'm still so happy he got to experience this rush of excitement with us! When I was watching the screen it brought back so many wonderful memories that I had of B when he was still growing in my belly...It's just one of those feelings you can't ever justify putting into words because it's never enough. If I could choose to watch my babies on the big screen each and every day I would! She was so different than Beckahm was during the ultra sound. Beckahm kept facing the light and was moving all over the place, arms and legs constantly moving around, while baby girl kept her hands really close to her face (if not sucking her thumb at the time) and stayed curled up for the most part trying to hide her face from the camera lol. She seems a lot more calm than B that's for sure..but guess we'll really find out here in a couple of months if that assumption will be right! Once we got the print out of the Ultra Sound pictures Beckahm wouldn't let them go and ran around with them everywhere just stopping every now and then to take a look. I have the best feeling about him being a big brother and my worries subside a little more each time I see him around a baby or even when he's reading his books about babies or sees them on tv. He constantly has to point out the babies to mama everywhere we go..along with him scoping out where the babies are, he also has to yell baby, baby so he knows I can see them too, then continues on to say waaa waaa...because that's what the baby says duh :). Whenever we pick him up from the gym daycare and there were babies there the ladies always let us know how Beckahm stayed right by them the whole time and couldn't stop hugging and kissing on them. He's quite the little lover boy when it comes to anything baby--good sign for a nervous mama!

On another note, this naming process, although I thought it would be easier this time around, is just as much if not more difficult than it was with Beckahm. Sometimes I wonder if my husband will ever accept the fact that I'll probably never want to choose a completely common name for our kids...it's just not in me haha. One thing that was different when choosing a girl name was the fact that I had an entire list (literally of like 30 names) that I liked, whereas with boy names it was maybe 5 that I kinda liked. So this time around I thought it would be easy to just write the list down for both of us and we could look at it separately and number our favorites...This could've worked out if we had even the slightest same taste in names...A literal example of this...my #1 name was David's #25.....that DIFFERENT! Believe it or not though, this naming extravaganza has been narrowed down to 3 very different names...1 of which David is actually kind of fond of which helps, but it's still not my #1. Part of me wants to just say the names were thinking of, but then I might feel obligated to stick with them and since this decision changes on a daily basis I don't think I'll say anything for now. Soooo who knows...there may be a Top 3 Names post in the future...Or even better maybe just a top name that actually gets chosen before baby girl even gets here...but highly unlikely ;). I cannot even begin to describe how excited we all are to meet this new baby and see all of her different unique features that she'll get from each of us. We always joke with each other that she's going to look like a little mini David since Beckahm has turned out to be a total mini me. It's always so exciting to me to see new babies and try to decide which trait came from where. I am always getting questions from random people asking where Beckahm got this or that...mostly his reddish blonde hair since I have mine dyed dark and his dad is clearly all dark so because it has gotten a little old I decided to take some comparison pictures and I can just show these crazies when they ask haha. I'm so glad I did it though it's always fun looking at old pictures and seeing what traits our little boy has of us. Babies. babies. babies..it's all that's on my mind lately!

Daddy and B--those EYES!!!! AH I die! Love love love them!

Mama and B

Beckahm's First Splash Pad Adventure

This is another old post I started, but forgot to finish...St. George has been ridiculously hot this summer and it took everything we had to even want to go outside because of the heat, but this splash pad in the middle of the town made it all worth it. Beckahm wasn't so sure about all of the fountains of water at first, or even the carousel, but once he warmed up to everything he never wanted to leave! This was the start of many fun summer days, most of which were spent here at this splash pad :).