Pro Newborn Pics!

We got a few of her pictures back!! Britney is an AMAZING photographer!

Aaaaand we're back!

Ok, first of all I know the blog looks terrible but I wanted to get a post up and quit trying to fix it :)

Well as everyone knows, little Azalea is here and is going to be one month old on Wednesday! Time FLIES! Jordan heads back to work tomorrow (nooo!) and it'll be just me and Azzie during the days until I go back to work on 12/6 (but I'm in denial about that for now).

Azzie was 9lbs 10oz at her last doc appt and 23 inches long! She's a little piglet and is such a happy little girl- yes we know how lucky we are! Most of the time I don't even realize when she wakes up at night for a while because she doesn't cry, she just lays in her crib looking around and making little happy noises until I wake up and feed her. We've taken a lot of little trips to see family over the last month and a few little trips to the prairie preserve and the forest preserve in Geneva to really take advantage of the gorgeous fall weather, so here is a giant photo montage of the last month :)

A couple of photos right after she was born:

The doggies love her, the pug is her constant protector:

Trip to Ithaca and Uncle Johns Cider Mill:

Uncle Jon holding her, she just stared at him the whole time:

Azzie and her Great Grandma:
A day trip to the forest preserve in Geneva:

Grandpa Rod holding Azzie:
And Grandma JoAnne!
Grandpa Rod corrupting her already.....

2nd cousin Hannah holding her:
Leighanna, Linda, and Jacob Bongard holding her


Funny face :)

Fast asleep in her Moby wrap:

And some more funny:

We will have pro newborn pics up soon, our lovely friends Britney and Jarrod took some when we went to Rockford to visit last week. I can't wait to see them because I know they will look amazing!

The big 3-0

Sunday marked the start of my 30th week of pregnancy....

Ohhhh my gosh. Scary!

Time is flying by now and I'm starting to get into panic mode trying to get everything figured out and ready for little Azzies arrival. The nursery accent wall was painted last week, so we were finally able to start moving things in there and placing them, but there is still a LOT to do! Last weekend Jordan and our friend Jarrod worked on screenprinting the Lorax characters- which turned out fabulously! I cannot wait to get everything done, it's going to look just awesome!

Here's a peek at the star of the room, Mr. Lorax himself!

Last week I had my last monthly appointment and now I'm on to bi-weekly appointments with my midwife. Everything went great last week, my blood pressure looked good, I found out my blood glucose levels that they took at last appointment and they were great, and Azzies heart rate was nice and strong in the upper 130s. The midwife felt her position and to my relief, she is head down- I hope she stays that way!

Her movements have just gotten so crazy,I feel her wiggling around all day, but when she's really active (mid morning and in the evenings usually), I can see her knees poking out of my stomach as she stretches out and excercises! I always thought that this kind of movement would scare the crap out of me, but now that I'm so used to her being there, it's just funny :)

And finally, 30 weeks, 2 days:

24 Weeks!

I realized today that it's been way too long since I updated this!! Azzie turned 24 weeks yesterday! She's getting quite big and strong- Jordan can even feel her kicks now! These are the pics I've taken since I've last updated:

The ribbon is a travelling ribbon that the girls in my online Due Date Club (everyone is due in Sept/Oct) are doing, we send it to one person at a time and take a picture with it. This little ribbon is going around the US, Canada, the UK, and Australia! I'm jealous!

We went camping over Memorial day weekend and I was suprisingly comfortable- the air mattress was a life saver- even with 2 fussy little dogs :) The boys went swimming and I went floating on my little raft. It was quite relaxing.

Here's Bosco in the camping chair he stole when nobody was looking and other camping pics:

Overall, I've been feeling great! I'm soooo glad it's finally summer and I can go float in the pool in my spare time. We are heading up to Minnesota this weekend to go visit my extended family for my Cousins graduation party- I haven't been up there in about 9 years so it's about time! I'm very excited to see everyone again. The 8 hour drive will be less than awesome, but oh well :)

I promise to update sooner next time!

Alecia

Azzies Nursery

This weekend we made the obligatory pre-parenthood trip to Ikea for the Nursery. We of course promised ourselves we wouldn't buy anything quite yet (of course we did), but were just planning. We are planning on doing a Lorax (Dr. Suess) themed nursery. It has always been my favorite Suess book and I think it's one of the most important lessons for a child to learn.

Luckily we have all sorts of crafty people that are able to help us with this project. My Father is making the toy box, which will look like the well in the book. Also, our friends Jared and Brittany do screen printing and are able to help us get the characters printed for the room. We found an amazing deal on a grass green shag rug, and had to scoop it up right then. Everything else we took pictures of to put together a mock up of how we want the nursery to look. Jordan is quite skilled with photoshop and put this together last night.

The dresser and changing area will be on the opposite wall. We've got our work cut out for us, but we can't wait to make it happen!

Our Little Azalea....

Is a WILD WOMAN already! She would not stop moving and kicking when the tech was trying to measure everything, but as soon as we go to look for the boy or girl parts- BAM she falls asleep with her legs crossed. We're in for a handful :)

BUT after me moving around a bit, she finally woke up, and we got this lovely shot that confirmed what I had suspected for a while now:

Her full name is Azalea ( a-ZAYL-yah) Loriann (after my mother) Alton. We will call her Azzie for short. If you're not familiar, Azalea is a flower:

...And there is also an adorable Louis Armstrong song about a girl named Azalea (has a long intro but stick with it- it's so cute, Jordan has already determined it to be the father-daughter dance song at her wedding :) ):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLt18wjcfkI

She's gotten SO BIG since we saw her last 2 months ago, you can really see her facial features now, and of course her awesome dance moves. She's going to be a dancer like her mama was, she's already practicing :) )

Most importantly, everything looked perfect. We're so grateful to have made it this far with no problems! Jordan keeps telling me not to wish the summer away but it's hard when A) I will be a whale this summer and B) We will get to meet Azzie in the Fall!

Baby and The Beasts

This weekend we decided to start getting the dogs used to the idea of a baby being in the house. We've been doing some research on dog training in preparation for a new baby and the common theme is to get a baby doll and get the dogs used to it being in the infant seats and with us holding it.

They are good boys, we are not worried about them eating the baby, it's more a problem with them being TOO excited about the little one and either licking its face off or getting jealous of us holding it instead of them. Oatie is used to being held like a baby on the couch- it's how he gets his belly rubs in:

Bosco is still very much the baby of the family and cries/talks to us/whacks us with his paw when his brother is getting attention instead of him, so we need to make sure he's used to us holding a baby so that he doesn't whack baby when he gets jealous.

So far, they are both doing rather well! They are curious of this weirdly animated and slightly creepy thing in the tiny seat, but they haven't tried to play tug with it, so that's encouraging :)

In other news- Our gender ultrasound is on Thursday! We can't wait!

Wiggly Baby

I had an appointment with my new Midwife, Hillary, today, she's an amazing and extremely experienced Certified Nursing Midwife who started her own very successful Midwifery (did you know that's pronounced "midwhiffery"? Funny eh?) Center here in IL and recently sold it to her partners to start a new solo venture. She's extremely flexible with my work schedule and she's just generally fabulous- I'm so happy to be in her care. My previous OB was nice, but she actually went through my last appointment thinking that I was 4 weeks further along until I corrected her- not exactly the standard of service that I am looking for!

We listened to the baby, who is doing wonderfully, and heard him/her whooshing around in there, verifying my comment about it being a very wiggly baby! I have been feeling flutters for a couple of weeks now and recently I have started to feel itty bitty kicks- it feels like popcorn popping :)

The BEST news of the day is the scheduling of our gender determination ultrasound! Only FIFTEEN days left to get your vote in! May 6th we will find out for sure- we are so extremely excited!

Have a good night everyone!
A

Thank Goodness....

Little one, you're lucky to have Jordan as a Daddy- who would go to Taco Bell for us when all that will do for dinner is a bean burrito and chips and cheese? Who would come all the way upstairs just to get a pillow for Mommy when mommas too comfy to get out of bed for it? Who would rub Mommas shoulder when I've slept on it wrong yet again because I USED to only sleep on my belly? I'm not sure, but your Daddy sure does do a good job.


Your brothers are starting to get the hint as well, your Pug brother has started to lay on my belly and will lick you if I let him. I think he knows you're in there now ;) Bosco is still a bit of a baby and doesn't quite get it, but he'll get the idea sooner or later. I hear that Pugs are especially fond of babies, and are good protectors, so he'll take good care of you and make sure that Bosco doesn't lick your little face off. You can dress them up and dole out payback sooner or later, like Momma did with Julie the Pomeranian.

Have a good Wednesday everyone!

-Alecia

And so it begins...

I'm very lucky to have a wonderful childrens consignment shop right next door to my house. I went there today to check it out, promising myself that I wouldn't buy anything yet- HA!

The onesies were on sale for .50 cents each! I couldn't help myself :D

Of course we don't know the gender quite yet (almost there!) but it doesn't really matter to me anyway since I really prefer greens and yellows and earth tones anyway. I don't mind blue too much but I just don't like pink!

Oatie tried to steal the clothes as soon as I laid them out to photograph- I think he thinks they are puppy clothes and he is protesting :) Bosco just wanted to be in the picture like usual, so you can see him budging in there, hehe.

Happy weekend!

Flutters

Easter weekend was very nice, we went over to Rockford to spend Sunday with Jordans family and had a nice meal. Though with Sunday also came the inevitable sinus headaches that come with the change in weather. Usually I cope with these by taking large doses of Advil Sinus, buuuuut I can't exactly do that this year, so I used my Neti Pot and my icepacks. I ended up with such a huge headache that it woke me up in the middle of the night on Monday morning to go throw up- BUT there was a silver lining to this- apparently the baby does not like when I puke, and immediately after I laid back down everytime (I was puking at hourly intervals for several hours until I got the headache under control) I felt some distinctive flutters low in my abdomen, a bit like a goldfish swimming around. After the second time it happened, I knew it was the little one voicing his/her protest. Puking wasn't so bad after I realized this :)





I'm definately starting to show now, it's pretty obvious when I wear dresses, and I do most of the time now since it's nice out and they are like PJ's to me :) Here is a picture I took on Friday at the request of my good friend Charlaine in Phoenix- this would be at the beginning of week 15:

Talk to you later!

A

Gettin' A Little Easier....

Aside from a few isolated incidents (I'm talkin' to you, yesterdays lunch), my morning sickness has passed for the most part- THANK GOD! It's much easier getting to work in the morning without wondering if you are going to throw up on the person walking in front of you :P

I had another OB appointment yesterday (seems like I'm at a doctors office every week!) and everything went well. We checked the heartbeat, which was still nice and strong, and they said everything looked right on target. My blood pressure was a tad high, but they think it was just because I had walked to the office and told me to avoid stress just in case (hahaha).

The weather is finally turning beautiful here in Chicago, and we're loving it! The dogs are especially happy about the weather because it means that they can play their favorite outside game- frisbee! I've never seen two little dogs get as excited as they do (especially Oatie, who can't even SEE his frisbee or hear the word without squealing in excitement) when it's frisbee time. I can't wait till we get to take a toddler out to play with them! This is a pic of the happy, exhaused boys after a rousing game with Dad:

It's quite surreal to look at the date and realize that in 6 months- we'll have a newborn! There's so, so much to get done but we have already been SO lucky to have recieved a lot of very nice baby items from recent mommas that don't need them anymore. The cats will certainly think that the nice, comfy infant seat is the perfect lounging chair- they've got another thing coming! :)

Anyhoo, I should probably get back to actual work now ;)

Love, Alecia

Baby's SECOND Picture :)

Well, I had the Nuchal Translucency screening today, which is an early screening for Downs Syndrome and Trisomy 18/13. Our results came back EXCELLENT with a 1/>10,000 chance for Downs/Trisomy, compared to a normal 1/880 risk for my age. Also, baby is measuring big, so they bumped up the due date to 9/24!

Jordan could not come since he's all the way in Aurora, but the baby was waving HI and had a wicked case of the hiccups while we were looking at him/her! The tech said that I was in for it once I can feel the kicks in a couple of weeks because of the frequency and strength of the kicks the baby was giving me- the kid has spunk!

And here we go- the second photo- MUCH bigger than before, the tech said that baby was about the size of a lime.

Welcome!

Hello Everyone!

Welcome to our family blog! My intentions for this blog are simple, to keep our far-flung friends and family updated on our newest adventure- first time parenthood! I promised a few faraway friends that I would start a blog as soon as I was in my 2nd trimester, and well, it's a little early still (a week and a half away!) but I am keeping my promise!


First things first, a little about the members of our family:

Jordan is my wonderful husband. He works for the Hartford Insurance Company as a Commercial Claims adjuster and does very well there. He is a very gifted writer and also enjoys playing video games and guitar in his spare time.

I myself work at Marcus & Millichap in downtown Chicago, it's a commercial real estate investment brokerage firm, but I basically just babysit a bunch of grown men all day (I'm the office manager ;) ). I love to ride bikes when it's warm, garden, and cook.

This is Fezerton Pinkybottom and Mila Marie. They are pretty much inseperable, so I will describe them together. Fez (The black cat) spends most of his day sleeping in a chair. He's a big boy. We rescued Fezzy from the mean streets of Phoenix when he was just a starving baby kitten, and now he lives the good life. He will be turning 4 this year. Fezzy got a little lonely, so we got another kitten, Mila, in 2008 after moving to Chicago. They love eachother immeasurably and cuddle all the time. Mila enjoys sitting in the windowsill and observing the birds during the day. She's an excellent watchcat ;)

Oatmeal Spunkmeyer, AKA "Oatie" joined the Alton family in April of 2008. He made his momma fall in love with him when he was just a wee pup at a Farmers Market in Phoenix. He's a little cuddlebug and he loves curling up next to people and getting petted. Oatie loves playing with his beloved frisbee, so much that we can't let him see it when we are not going outside to play, because he will just cry until he gets it.

Bosco Pantsman is the lastest addition to the animal kingdom that is our home, he's a Boston Terrier pup and will be turning one year old this summer. He's a rowdy little man, but also a total sweetheart. He loves to play with his brother and terrorize the cats. He gets VERY jealous when he feels his brother is getting more attention than him :)

This is the newest addition to the Alton household! Baby Alton is currently almost 11 weeks old in Mommas belly. Little Alton has not been so nice to Momma over the past couple of months, but I forgive him/her ;) We should know whether baby Alton is a little boy or girl by the end of April- we can't wait! The little one is due on September 26th, and we are VERY excited to have a little Fall baby. Most that know us know that we are just a little partial to the Fall season ;)

Well, that's the Altons in a nutshell! Stay posted for updates on Baby Alton as we get them!

Love,

Alecia, Jordan, and the Zoo