Today a princess was born! Not with royal blood but equally celebrated
MaryAnne was born via c-section at 12:04 pm at Fair Oaks Hospital, November 13th. She weighed in at 9 lbs 11 oz and 22 3/4 inches long! She is long and lean like her brother Jackson but looks a whole lot like her brother Owen at birth! She has light brown hair and fair skin. We are so smitten. She was so worth the wait.
I will attempt to get on soon to tell more about leading up to her birth and more about her but for now here are some photos.
Hi! Hope you are all doing well! Our project time the past few weeks (ummm, more like early Oct but I am way behind!) have been spent prepping the baby’s room. Pardon the coloring on the pictures. I can’t seem to get myself in to take pictures when the lighting is right. And the camera is being held hostage in the car lest we forget it when rushing to the hospital.
This girl, I tell ya, she is not one bit anxious to see her room despite our best efforts to make it ready for her.
When I was in Texas I found fabrics I loved for a great price and my sister-in-law’s mother agreed to make a bumper for us! While I was in the fabric shop I grabbed a few extra 1/4 yds of fabrics that were coordinating and I just couldn’t resist. If you happen to be in the Dallas/Ft Worth area check out Cabbage Rose Quilting Shop in Ft. Worth. At most fabric shops my problem is not loving any of the offerings but in this place you will find way too many choices!! I leaned towards vintage-looking prints with florals.
My friend lent me her old Pottery Barn crib. We called PBkids and they sent us a special kit to make it a fixed side crib! I highly recommend doing this if you have a crib you want to use but it’s drop-side. Easy, peasy fix and it’s free! Owen gnawed on the sides of his crib…so while it is slightly dangerous to reuse as a crib it converts into a full bed headboard and baseboard. So someday that will be sanded down and used in his room when he’s older.
The letters for her name I got from my friend Jennifer at 163 Design Company. I covered them with fabrics samples that I got to compliment the bedding. She made them exactly how I wanted them, got them to me super quickly and her prices are awesome! Shameless plug! I paid for them so don’t think I am bragging on her because I am doing her a favor. I just really love her stuff! I have a few of her things around the house. Her monograms make great gifts!!
I found this chair on Craigslist. It was the big splurge of the room but a good deal nonetheless. The robin egg blue linen cover was filthy. I did a couple of rounds of Oxy soak and it is much improved but after a couple of weeks of seeing it au natural I think I have decided to keep it this way. The little duck pillow was sent to Jackson when he was at MD Anderson by my friend Annie. She had it made out of the little robe her kids wore when they were little and I took care of them. I can’t wait to send it back to her when she has a grandbaby someday…(someday, those teenage girls better not see this as encouragement to have a baby now!!)
For the paint color we pulled the pale blue green from the bedding. We used a darker shade on the paint chip for the backs of the book shelves. I am having a hard time finding the paint chip or the link on Home Depot but we used Behr Premium Plus and I believe the name of the wall color was Country Mist and the background on the shelves is the next shade darker on the chip.
Curtains. I was hunting through my box of curtains and found these sweet, lace curtains. I had to wrack my brain to figure out where they had come from but I remembered that my friend Annie had given them to me years ago when she no longer needed them for her little girls room and they were neutral enough to try in one of my apartments. I never used them then for some reason but they are perfect in the babies room.
Shelves. I shopped the house for things that I could use in baby girls room. These pictures were taken a couple of weeks ago and I can already see that I have fussed with the shelves a bit more and things have moved and more has been simplified.
The walls. I used embroidery hoops from Michael’s to make inexpensive art with the pieces of coordinating fabrics from the bedding. I picked up this picture at HomeGoods almost a year ago. It’s been residing in the laundry room until now. When I saw it it reminded me of what I would hope to instill in a little girl should we ever be blessed with one (and myself). I love the wind blowing through her hair, making it wild and messy. I love her determination and confidence and of course her shoes like the ones I wore when I was a girl.
The changing table ($5 at garage sale) is being used as closet storage and we plan to use a changing pad on the bed since the room is so snug. The headboard for the bed was from our neighbors in Bern…when they packed out for another FS tour they underestimated their weight and started tossing stuff. I spruced it up with Annie Sloan’s Chalk Paint. I found a free headboard in Switzerland and also used chalk paint on that as well although I didn’t take pictures of either of these.
For lighting I wanted something sweet and feminine. Everywhere I looked light was over $100 and while it was cute I didn’t think we would use them long term. I had bought this $6 bird cage originally as decor for the room but with the room being so small we didn’t need any more stuff. So, Seth sawed off the top and we used a cheap Home Depot lighting kit to make the bird cage into a light.
So there you have it…or most of it at least. Now come, baby, come! We are so excited to meet you!
This year we went trunk-or-treating with some friends at their church. Before we headed out we snapped a few pictures of Peter Pan and Superman (who were not shy to pose I might add).
It’s a rainy, dreary day here. The house is perfectly quiet except for the hum of the computer. Not even the washing machine is buzzing this morning. The boys are off to school after a wet drop off and I am sitting down to catch up here a bit! Owen is one month into preschool and LOVING it! He has gone to bible study with me as well as Sunday School, etc. so we weren’t worried but there is definitely a whole different rhythm to school! So far he bounds out of the car and is eager to get into school. He chatters the whole way home and spares no detail. He is learning new things so quickly I feel a bit guilty for not having tried to teach him more sooner. This week he asked me to teach him to write his name…and he did. Jackson just had such different interests at this age.
According to his teachers Owen has made some little buddies, one in particular that we hear about often. His name is Noah and his family happens to live in our neighborhood. We met them at a neighborhood picnic last week and learned that the boys were born on the same day, just after the huge Snowmagedon storm. And when put together these boys certainly act like they are two peas in a pod (or maybe two monkeys in a tree…peas in a pod sounds way too passive). As we drove away from the picnic I told the boys that we always pray for them when they start school that God would give them a special friend and it has been so apparent with both of them that friends were picked especially for them!
Owen’s class is the caterpillar class and they recently learned a song about The Fuzzy Caterpillar…he’s a little goofy in front of the camera but you get the idea.
The best news is school wipes him out! He is ready after his busy morning to settle into a great nap most days!
Owen is looking so big these days and very eager to become a big brother. He is my sidekick on non-school days so I imagine it will be an interesting adjustment for all. He and Jackson are enjoying play time together and while the battles are intense the times of peaceful playing are nice to observe! I can’t wait to see the dynamics when sister comes.
