So Precious!

I finally GET IT!

I will check other people's blogs, and if they have kids, their posts almost always consist of just pics of their kids. I find myself thinking, "Yes, your child is pretty cute, but could you branch out a little on your subject matter!" :) Well, I may have just joined the club. It's contagious.

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Our friend, Megan Shaheen, just started a photography business and does an amazing job. So Monday night we went over to her house for a little photo shoot. Collin did sooo good. He doesn't much like being naked (I think it's because of the warmth factor) so I didn't anticipate him tolerating the naky pics for long. He lasted about an hour and half before the poor guy had HAD IT! I can't believe we got past 10 min. They had their thermostat at 70 and two space heaters on him. She had the pictures edited and ready by the next day. Here are some of our favorites....

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The men in my life. :) This may be my favorite picture. It's one of those "moment in time" type photos. I'm pretty smitten. A smitten kitten. :)

Gotta love that face! I laugh every time I see this pic!

We call this our "baby Jesus" picture :)

Look what the stork brought us!

I love the look he's giving me. It's like, "Uh, whatcha doing to me mom? I'm not so sure about this!"

So our little guy is now two weeks old. I'll be honest, the first week was HaRd! Travis was on Spring Break, and it was SOOO nice to have him home. The first night I didn't sleep at all. He just wanted to eat all the stinkin' time! Poor guy was probably starving. My milk came in the next day and life started getting easier. I think a pacifier rates right up there with the epideral on the "amazing invention" scale. He just loves to suck on something. Travis is such a good dad. He had never changed a diaper before this, but he jumped right in and was changing "stinky pants" the first day. He saw me swaddling Collin, and wanted me to teach him how to do it too. He would take Collin in the middle of the night and try to calm him for as long as he could so I could catch a few hours of sleep. He's always so willing to help and so loving. I couldn't have asked for a better husband. I have absolutely loved being a mom. It's even better than I imagined. I love staring at his face and watching all his different expressions. I love dressing him (even though he doesn't fit into anything! Even the "newborn" size clothes are big on him!) I love kissing on him and feeding him. He now will sleep a few hours at night, wake up to be fed, then go back to sleep for a few more hours, so I'm actually sleeping at night! It's been great! I have such a sweet "love-a-bug"! So, yes, I think I've officially joined the club :)

Our Little Guy

We are thrilled to announce that our little man,

Collin Kay Evans

joined our family on March 13, 2009!

Thursday morning, around 1 am, the contractions began. They waned in the afternoon, so Rachel and I took off to the mall to walk him out! It worked :) By 6:30pm they were getting stronger and closer together. We watched our favorite show, The Office, at 9pm, but Trav decided we needed to head to the hospital when he realized I spent most of the time breathing through pain while he was laughing at Dwight and Michael :) We arrived about 11pm and they admitted me. I was dialated to a 5, 100% effaced. From there, they told me it was a textbook delivery. I dilated 1cm each hour and by 5am they had me give a practice push and could see his head! So I had to hold off until the doctor could get there. I only had to push three times before I had him out and on my stomach instead of in it! :) Trav cut the cord and then quickly transitioned into the camera man!

Here I am waiting with the blessing of an epideral :) (Let's give the inventor of that a round of applause !)

Here's dad waiting it out by studying for his Physiology test the next day. (He never made it to that test :)

At two weeks past his due date he weighed in at a surprising 7lbs 14 oz. ( I thought I was having a nine pounder, at least)

My wonderful doctor, Dr. Constantine. Turns out, he was also born on a Friday the 13th. We've decided 13 will now be our lucky number.

So Precious! Unfortunately he did a number on his face with his long fingernails while in the nursery.

Thanks to everyone who came to visit us! We have such amazing friends who have become our family while we are away from home. The Shaw's and Shaheen's brought flowers, an adorable quilt, and dinners for Trav. What would we do without you guys?

Crescent gave birth to an adorable little girl on Saturday. It was fun to be in the hospital at the same time as her!

We were discharged on Sunday afternoon. It was a beautiful, sunny day in Buffalo for the drive home. We walked in the door to a Welcome Home poster, balloon, and muffins. Rachel, you are amazing!

The Happy New Family! I feel so fortunate to have a healthy baby boy and a wonderful husband who has been so supportive and loving, as always. I'm truly the luckiest.

I'm going to be pregnant FOREVER!!!!!!

Seriously, I know the title sounds melodramatic, but I really feel that way! You think waiting in line at Disneyland or the DMV feels like forever, then you wait to have a baby and NOTHING COMPARES! I have tried it all folks! Long walks, spicy food, fresh pineapple, Red Leaf Raspberry Tea, Primrose oil.... Trav's tried to help.....Last night I was feeling like giving up. Maybe if I didn't care, time would speed up, or the pressure would be off... I don't know. I was just getting depressed. So then we go back to the hospital today to have another sonogram and some tests done to see if the fluid is still OK, check his heartbeat, etc. The technician was doing a normal sonogram and then she suddenly switched to 4D and we saw this.....

My heart literally melted as I got tears in my eyes. How is this helping me to not care when he comes??? It's not!! Oh, I want him so bad! So desperate times bring desperate measures. I called Tiff on the way home to see if I could borrow her Castor oil. I really didn't want it to come to this, but I'll pretty much do anything at this point! Wish me luck!!! :)

Ta-Da!!

Sorry... no baby :( But we FiNaLLy have pics of the nursery to post!! Yea! Tiff gives me a hard time because a few months ago I was telling her that we probably wouldn't worry about decorating a nursery. I have very few creative/decorative bones in my body and absolutely NO ideas on how to make a baby room cute. Well, somehow things started snowballing and I'm so excited for how it all turned out! Of course, this was a baby room on a budget.... all the furniture is used and refinished. Trav is amazing and with no complaining (well, very little complaining :) he sanded, primed and painted just about everything in this room. What a guy! :) I'm really so grateful, because the lady at Home Depot gave me a stern scolding when she thought I would be the one using the primer I was buying. So with no further ado, here is Collin/Dallyn/Jonathan/Jesse James' room!! =)

This dresser was left in our basement by the previous owners. I wanted to throw it out when we moved in, but because of procrastination, it never got done, and now I'm so glad we kept it!

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AfTeR

We bought this rocking chair at a garage sale back in August. It was chillin' next to some porn magazines and the tatoo-covered mom who was trying to get rid of it. I felt it needed to be refinished just to get her "essence" off of it. Much to Travis's dismay, I took on the project of sanding it last week. What a pain in the patootie!! I was seriously regretting my decision three hours into sanding. Trav put a couple hours into sanding my leftovers and then two coats of stain later.....

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Middle...

AfTeR!
I love the new color and even though it was less than fun to do, I'm glad we refinished it!

The crib we found on Craig's list for $55! It's old, but actually didn't look bad at all as it was, but I wanted to refinish it to match the dresser. Trav even let me help sand and paint it too :)
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AfTeR!

I have to give a big thanks to Megan Shaheen for helping me do this. She taught me the art of "antiquing" and spent a good 8 hours of her time at my house, over the course of two days, distressing the crib and dresser. Thanks Megan!

I didn't think to take a "before" shot of the table, but this was another scratched up beauty that was left behind in the basement of our house.

The drawers also didn't look bad as they were, we just thought it would look better for them to match the room. I sanded, primed (don't judge me), and painted these bad boys. Again, not that fun, but not as bad as the chair for sure!

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AfTeR!

Ok, here is the room before we started on anything. I just called it my "dressing room". I ironed and did my hair and makeup in here. It was also kind of the junk room.

The FiNaL PRoDuCt!

Yes, I actually did sew these curtains... amazing for me I know. Even though it just means sewing rectangles in a straight line. :) I copied an idea from Pottery Barn and I'm fairly happy with them, I'm just not in love with the color of blue... but it's growing on me :)

I am, however, in love with this saying... I had to wait a whole week for it to come in the mail, and was so excited when I saw the delivery man drop it off that I ran outside to grab it and shouted Thank You to his behind as he rounded the corner! It was the finishing touch!

Here are some action shots of us taping off and painting the stripes on the walls. The Shaw's sacrificed their Saturday night and came to help us with the project. Aren't they awesome friends??!!

Gomer Fudd came to help too... :)

I gave him a kiss for his time :)

So there you have it! I honestly didn't think we would get it done before our little guy came, but I guess he wants to cook a bit longer than his due date, so we had extra time. I feel bad to think that he's probably the only one of our kids that's going to get this kind of welcome. I even started a baby book for him. I guess these are privileges that come with being first. The poor fifth child will be lucky to have pictures taken of him :)