Carter Hudson Ford

Baby Carter Hudson Ford is here! He arrived 10 days early and via emergency C-section because he had turned since my last appontment and became breech! He was 6 pounds 12 ounces and 20 inches long. We are all doing well and excited to have this new baby in our family! I will post more details and pictures later!

A hard night's sleep

As soon as we found out that we were expecting our second, we knew that we wanted to transition Mason to a toddler bed well before the baby's arrival. We knew that Mason would be going through enough changes at that time and probably be feeling jealous, and we didn't want having to give the baby his crib to add to the problems.

David found this really cute Sponge Bob bed that came with a table, stools and toy organizer. He set it up for Mason in December. It wasn't until January that we started trying to transition him, though.

I was nervous about it, but Mason has done really well! He has never liked going down for bed, so it is not unusual for him to cry a little bit and now that he has more freedom, he'll even bang on the door, but I think that there has been only one time that I came in later and found him anywhere but his bed.

A good thing about him being in his bed is that lately, instead of crying, he just plays around in his room before going to sleep, especially in the daytime when it is light.

I know these are a lot of pictures, but I just had to include all of them because I think they are so cute! He loves to read and almost always requests that he have a book in bed with him. These other toys, though, are things that he'll get out of bed after I've left the room and decide that he needs to help him go to sleep.

Every time I look in on him while he's sleeping, I feel so much love and gratitude for my precious little Mason!

This picture is especially representative of his night time routine. He always has to have his drinks in the exact same spot at the top of his pillow.

My baby bump

Well, there have been a couple of requests for me to post pictures of me and my 'baby bump'...so here they are!
This coming Monday will mark my 37th week and I will be officially full term! Last week, I was feeling lots of cramping, but I wasn't sure if they were contractions. For a couple of days, especially in the afternoon and evenings, I just wanted to lie down 'cuz it was so uncomfortable. I was getting hopeful that maybe I was starting labor. But now I feel perfectly fine (which is a good thing, too I guess), no signs of major contractions.

Here I am at 35 weeks.

And here I am at 36.5 weeks (yes, I am counting the half weeks...hopefully I won't have to count all of the way up to 40...but I'm sure just voicing that wish jinxes me).

My visiting teachers gave me a baby shower last week. I decided to wear the same shirt that I wore at the shower I had for Mason. Unfortunately, I just realized that all of the pictures that I have from both showers, I am sitting down, so you can't really see my stomach that well...but it's still fun to see the two side by side.

Mason's shower

Levi was almost 8 months old at this time, and I remember that I thought it was so sweet that he wanted me to hold him, and that he fell asleep in my arms! Here I am with my sisters Diana, Katie, and nephew Levi. Cindy was so sad that she couldn't come, and I was sad that she couldn't be there.

Here I am with my mom, and David's mom, still at Mason's shower.

At the shower that I had last week, I wish that I would have posed for at least one picture, I don't know what I was thinking. I did not get one picture of me looking at the camera. I thought this picture would be fun to post 'cuz it has Mason, Levi, and I in it...just like in the picture above...just 22 months later!

The boys were really good about helping with opening all of Mason's little brother's new things. It was so thoughtful of both Grandmas, and also some people in the ward to think to give Mason a gift as well!

Mason was really excited to see that his little brother got a basketball piggy bank!

Scientific Research Results

Thanks to everyone who participated in David's research study! We really appreciate the responses that we got.
For anyone interested, the study was to see if the gene that determines if you are right or left handed is linked to the gene that determines if your right or left thumb goes on top when you are clasping your hands. The results of his study showed that the genes were not linked. If your left thumb was on top, you have at least one dominant gene, if your right thumb was on top, then you have two recessive genes. Both right handed and left handed people showed about the same percentage of people having the dominant and recessive genes, showing that the two traits are not linked. :)

Furnace and pipes

I have been meaning to post this for the last couple weeks...but life has been pretty crazy. So, even though it is not current news, I am going to talk about it like it is...mainly so I can brag about how awesome my husband is!

A couple of weeks ago, David had a Wednesday off, so we were anticipating a nice day at home. He had two classes that were going to be starting the following Monday, so we were hoping to enjoy the day. When I got up, I thought that it was kind of cold, especially in the kitchen, so when I checked the thermostat and saw that it was still at 63 degrees, I wasn't too surprised. David had just fixed our neighbor's furnace, the pilot light kept going out on it, so I wasn't very worried either. Well, when David went down to the crawl space to check it out, it turned out to be a problem with the gas valve. Usually when there is something that needs fixing, David can figure it out, but he didn't want to mess with it and risk an explosion. When he was down looking at the furnace, David also noticed that some pipes were leaking. Great.

So...the next day we reluctantly called a professional for an esitmate. The first estimate was 1400 dollars! This company also provided an estimate for our plumbing problems-1200 dollars. That was wonderful news to hear. Yeah, so we got a second opinion. The second place said they could fix the furnace for 500 dollars, can you guess which company we went with?

Luckily, David knows how to fix plumbing. Since we had the estimate from the other company, he knew what was wrong, and was able to buy all of the parts to fix it for under a hundred dollars. It pays to know how fix things! He had to work on Saturday, so he didn't get started on the plumbing until around 3 pm. He worked really hard, but still ended up having to finish it on Sunday morning. I was sent to Home Depot 3 different times on Saturday night, all for the same part. :( The first one was not my fault, David told a worker there what he wanted and he gave us the wrong piece. When I went to return it, I got it wrong again, so I had to go back a third time to get the right one.

I am so lucky to have married such a stud that knows how to fix things!

The top picture above is the finished product, and the second one is what our kitchen looked like while the work was in progress.