Our Maternity Photoshoot

Okay, I know this is random, but Andrea and I have been talking about this lately and I realized I never posted Marc's & my maternity photoshoot on this thang. I still have not even ordered these pictures! I really want to order at least an 8 x 10to frame in our house but haven't had a chance to really sit down and figure it all out. I'm so behind on printing and enlarging pictures from these last few months! We just ordered Mason's 3-month pics and are about to have his 6-month pics done... pictures everywhere!! So, here are some of my faves from our belly pics my mom took just THREE days before Mason was born (which exlains why I haven't done a blog post of these pics yet... why post pics of the belly after Mason is here when I could post pics of the real thing?? :) )! The timing could not have worked out any more perfectly. So these are true shots of the size of my tummy with Mason in it down to the last couple of days. Please let me know which ones are your faves. Thanks for your input! :)

BY THE WAY... My mom is a wonderful photographer and has done many types of photoshoots. Let me know if you or a friend need a maternity photoshoot and I will give you her contact information. She did Mason's newborn pictures as well, which I LOVE!

Mason Thomas Celebrates his First Half Birthday!

Wow, I cannot believe our baby boy is now 6 months old!!! He is definitely not a newborn little baby anymore. He is this fun little person we have living with us now! :) Of course it makes us sad that we're already folding and putting away the little newborn onesies that it seems like he wore yesterday, but I'm also getting excited for the future and watching our son grow. I'm just so thankful that we have a healthy, strong six-month old on our hands. We had his 6-month check-up yesterday and got a wonderful report from Dr. Hain. Yes, many people make comments about Mason's size, but we are not worried at all! So for all of you wondering if I feed and take care of my son, YES, I feed him all the time and do what all the other mommies do who have chubby babies! The doctors says he is very healthy and exactly where he should be in his development and milestones. Mason weighed in a whopping 12 lbs, 12 oz., just one pound less that what Marc weighed when he was born. Thank you. I am not even kidding! And, Mason is 27 inches long. That puts him in the 3rd-5th percentile for weight and 80th - 90th percentile for height. We will have a basketball-player of a son someday! :) Mason decided he would put on a show for all the ladies in the office of Maryland Farms Pediatrics... While they were weighing him, he refused to put his head down on the scale on just relax. He had to flex his tummy muscles so that he could lift his head up and look at his feet! It was hilarious. They said they had never seen a baby do that on the scale. He has been doing that since before his 3-month pics where he wouldn't just relax and lay against a pillow for his panel pose, like normal 3-month olds! He would lift his head up and stare at his feet. I try to tell him all the time he can just relax and go night-night cuz he's a little baby and can do that, but he can't just lay back and miss one second of what is going on around him! :) Love it.

What Mason is doing now:

1. sleeping a straight 9 hours at night
He has been since 8 weeks old! We are so blessed! He would sleep up to 12 hours, but Dr. Hain told us to get him up after 8 or 9 hours, feed him, and then put him back down again. She wanted him to get one more feeding in each day to try to put a little bit of weight on him, but wasn't too concerned about it.

2. taking 3 naps throughout the day
This just happened this week! He barely wanted to take one up to this point!

3. rolling over.. and over, and over, and over
We can't put him down for one second and walk away because he would be across the room! He moves all over his crib. He is in a completely different position when we go in to check on him!

4. reaching and holding
He grabs hair and faces ALL the time! I mean, it doesn't feel very good either! He also can hold rattles, books, his bottle, whatever he can get his hands on!

5. cooing and "talking"
He's been doing this since 3 months old. He "talks" all day long! He just babbles on and on. The ladies in the church nursery cannot get over this! They say that from the moment we leave him in there to when we pick him up he is babbling non-stop! It hasn't turned into the "da-da, ga-ga, ma-ma, etc." yet (a typical 6-month milestone), but the Dr. says it should probably be soon! The best is when Marc teaches him his Bible verses. Marc will rattle off the longest verse ever, and then Mason will babble on and on like he really is saying it! It's hilarious.

6. laughing
Oh my gosh, this is the best! Mason completely cracks up all the time in those deep, belly laughs. His favorite is this new thing I do when I act like I'm drinking his bottle and make chugging noises. He thinks it is the funniest thing he has ever seen. And then I act like I'm done drinking and am all tired and he thinks that is just as funny. His favorite time to laugh is at 10 pm at night when he is completely exhausted. He gets this second wind and just wants to stay up and laugh all night! He thinks his Mommy is pretty funny. :)

7. eating rice cereal & baby food... again!
We started cereal at 4 months and baby food (one veggie a week) at 5 months, but they were hurting his tummy so we stopped. We'll start them again this week now that he's 6 months. We've tried carrots and squash before, so I'll probably start again with those. He LOVES to eat anything we put in his mouth! He looked a little confused with his first bite of carrots, but quickly warmed up to them. He now screams in between bites and grabs the spoon from us like he just wants to feed himself.

8. drinking water from a cup
He will start this this week. Should be interesting!! I know he will love it.

9. playing in his Exersaucer
Okay, I know what you other mommies are thinking... That's something a baby can do starting at 4 months old... Well, Mason just now got big enough to sit up in it without toppling over! The boy is so skinny that he wouldn't fill in the little seat area enough for me to feel comfortable enough to leave him in it alone. I usually put him in it about 30 minutes a day while I'm in his room folding laundry, sorting through his clothes, etc. Then he is bored and over it. But, for the time he is in it he is squealing away and playing with all the cool little gadgets on it. I LOVE whoever invented this thang!!

10. reaching for us
Marc has been waiting for this day for a long time! When Marc or me go up to Mason to pick him up or to talk to him, he'll put his little arms up in the air like he's reaching for us! It may just be a coincidence, but for a new Mommy & Daddy to see their baby do this for the first time, there are no words!!

11. watching everything!
This is also something he has been doing for a while, but lately everyone makes comments about how he is one of the most observant babies they have ever seen. Every single thing I do throughout the day, there is a little pair of sweet eyes watching! He also loves to stare at all of our home decor. Thank you. When I am holding him on the couch, he is staring at the decorations on our fireplace mantle and at the red wall in our dining room. In his nursery, he is staring at the polka dots and paintings on the wall, and of course his very busy crib bedding. at church, he loves the people around him and the chandeliers. At Life Group, he sits right in the middle of us all in his Bumbo and listens to the entire discussion. There is just too much to take in!

What is Mason not yet doing (but it's okay!)?

1. Pooping often
Yup, he still poops just about once every couple of days! And that's A LOT for our son! Before introducing cereal & baby food, he would go about 9 days between poops! Dr. Hain called him" Every 9 Mason." Perfectly fine, she says. Some breastfeed babies don't poop a lot, and Mason is one of them! Makes it easier for those of us on diaper-changing duty, though. :)

2. sitting up in the tripod position
Another typical 6-month milestone. He will sit up for one second, but then fall right on over. No worries, though!

3. crawling
I don't think many 6-month olds do this anyway and I'm glad Mason isn't showing signs of crawling yet! That would make it even more sad for Marc and me! Dr. Hain does say to get ready to safety-proof our home VERY SOON!

4. baby sign language
We have been teaching him this since the second we brought him home from the hospital. I pretty much use baby sign language all day long when I am with him. The signs we've been focusing on: I love you, go sleepy, Momma, Daddy, Jesus, milk (or eat). There has been several times where it looks like Mason is doing the sign for "I love you" but who knows if that's really what he's doing. We would like to think it is! :) He has done it to me twice right after I do it to him, so maybe he really is doing it on purpose!

And what what is Mason's favorite thing in the entire world to do???

READ!!! Most of you know, there is not a Mason unless there is a book. Everywhere he is, there is a book within reach. At home whenever he is sitting in one of his one million little seats, he is reading a book. In his swing, he is holding a book open right in front of his face to where you can't even see his face! At church, we keep him busy during the service by showing him a book. His fave books are I Love You Stinky Face, Find the Monkey (which we lost in Destin... or maybe at someone's house???), Guess How Much I Love You, The Purple Elephant Book, Baby Signs, and Look, Look! (thank you, Dolly's Imagination Library!).

So, all of this to say, Marc and I ARE SO BLESSED by this little life God has placed in our home! It is still like a dream to us to have a 6-month old little boy sleeping in that room next to us every night. Time is flying by so quickly, just like everyone warned, so we are trying our best to make the most out of every single second with Mason. I would not trade being a stay-at-home mommy for the universe, no matter how broke Marc and I are right now! :) Just being able to love on my sweet boy all day long and not missing one moment of all of these things he does is worth every tear it took to bring him into this world. I'm so excited to see what these next 6 months bring of watching Mason grow into the little wonderful man he is going to be!

We love Patrick & Gemma!

We got to spend some time with one of Marc's best friends from Lipscomb this past week that we don't get to see very often. Maybe that's cuz he lives across the ocean! Patrick is a missionary in Glasgow, Scotland and has lived over there since around '04/'05. He married the beautiful Gemma (a Glasgow native) in the fall of 2005 so Patrick has made his home over there a little more permanent since then. :) He attended our church, Harpeth Hills, before leaving for Scotland and we now HHCC is their sponsor congregation, so we're blessed to have Patrick and Gemma come visit to give us updates on their mission work about once a year. Patrick is usually so busy that we don't get to really spend much one-on-one time with him, but this time we got lucky! He and Gemma came to our Life Group meeting hosted at our house last Sunday night and then Wednesday we had a little "reunion" dinner at O'Charley's with our group of Lipscomb friends... Marc's Gamma Xi brothers and their wives, along with Andrea and her husband, Cory. I have been friends with these people since the summer of '99, when I first really started hanging out with Andrea's friends from Lipscomb, and the summer Marc and I were introduced. Also, Jana was in town visiting in between her travel nursing assigments. She just finished a few months in Alaska, and now she's on to NYC!! It just worked out that we could all get together this night to visit with Patrick and Gemma one more time before they went back to Scotland. I wish we could do this more often, but I'm definitely thankful for the time we do get to spend with our wonderful friends! I love you all!

At our Life Group meeting... Eatin' Sara Whitfield's wonderful Chicken & Wild Rice Soup and deli sandwiches! Yum!

Patrick & Gemma Sullivan
Andrea, Mason & me, Gemma, and Beth Jent... Mason thinks he's the star of this photograph!

The boys at O'Charley's... Cory, Brian holding his little one Ty, Johnathan, Patrick, Marc & Mason, and Ricky... Marc's Gamma Xi bros & Cory
Mason with his Auntie Brooke & Uncle Johnathan... He is the happiest to be with them! Okay, I just had to put all of these of Ty Petty & Mason. We're trying to get them to smile for the pic, but Mason is too busy staring at the side of Ty's face trying to figure him out!


Our long-lost friends, Patrick & Jana, meeting Mason for the very first time! We had to gather everyone up from Alaska and Scotland to come meet our son! Mason has friends all over the world!! :)

I don't know...

Mason & Ricky