6 weeks old

Our "little" August will be 6 weeks on Sunday!
He weighs over 13lbs and is over 24 inches long!

Here are some fun pics of him...

This little bear was one of Andy's favorites when he was a baby and now August loves it

August gives us the best smiles all the time now! Here he is working on a great one for his dad. He also loves to talk a ton and moves his hands galore telling us all sorts of things.

Herehe is just kicking it the way he loves to be... with no clothes on, hanging out with us, propped up and listening to music

He is so much fun but he has a major personality. We have our hands full and are loving every minute of it! Except for the no sleep part :)

Here is just some of what we have been up to over the past few weeks:

August's Aunt Lindsey and grandparents from Iowa all came to see him when he was two weeks old

This was his first fishing adventure with dad. He seemed to love the rocking motion that Andy had going with his casting.

This was his first time to church. We went to go see Gabriella's dedication (the cute little girl in the pic). The minute the pastor started talking August cried and fussed until the pastor was done and then he just calmed right down and was fine. That has been the case each time we have gone thus far.

This past week the leaves where at their peak for fall colors so we took August on his first trip. We went with my parents to Telluride. It was so beautiful and August did great in the car!

Here he is on his first gondola ride. He wanted to eat pretty much the whole way up.

This week we had Andy's Grandparents visiting. August loved napping on his Great Grandma and we where so happy to see them.

Things have been real busy and full of fun!

Week 1-2

Here are some more pics from his 1st and second week of life. 
He loves trying to eat his daddy's nose. He is also wearing his awesome onesie that the Dow's gave him!
Here is our little Obie Juan after his first bath!
This is August and me on our first outing. It was wonderful to get out of the house finally!
Here he is in all his awesomeness. 
he is a total stud. what can I say he takes after his dad.

I will put up more pics soon...

Week one of August's Life

August, whose full name is Augustine Andrew McKinley, was born August 30th at 6:10pm. He weighed 8lbs13oz and was 22 inches long. He is amazing and I am completely in love with being his mom!

This is what I woke up to the next morning. Perfection in my opinion. 

Here is my little guy and I snuggling on his first day in this world.
One of the best things to do in the world... sleep with my little guy snuggling me.
Here are my to guys! They are BFFs and love to spend time together. Andy took to parenting as if he has been doing this forever. He is a natural to say the least.
Here is our little guy at the end of week one. He is hanging out in his little lamb chair staring at us. 
This first week of our life with August was one of the best weeks of our lives!

August Andrew McKinley has arrived!!!

The last couple weeks of my pregnancy seamed to last forever! I felt and looked as huge as a house as you can see from the photo below. At my 39 week appointment I was measuring as if I was 44 weeks pregnant! I was ready to go into labor and could not wait to get our little guy out!

The night of the 29th I had a back ache that kept me up all night. The next morning my midwife came over and decided that she did not want me to get to tired before I even went into labor so I was to take a nap and then we where going to start doing some natural things to induce labor. 

None of that ended up being necessary. An hour into my nap I was woken up by contractions. They began at 5 minutes apart. 15 minutes later they where 3 minutes apart and my back was killing me! 3 hours into it my contractions were lasting around 90 seconds with a 30 second break. That turned into continuous contractions with out a break. At that point it was time to push. Pushing was great! It took away from the back pain and it let me know just how close I was to having my little one in my arms! 

Below is a picture of where I spent most of my time laboring. This picture also shows the general position my amazing husband took through the whole labor- leaning over the tub rubbing my back. To say the least he was amazing. I could not imagine making it through all the back pain and through labor without him! 

After 4 hours of labor and little under 20 minutes of that being pushing August was born!
Above it a picture of August in his first few seconds of life. Also in this picture is our wonderful midwife Joy. Below is a picture of the other two midwives that attended August's birth- Carol and Stephanie.
Here is August in all his glory! He is in the middle of getting his newborn checkup. 
Over all the labor and birth was AMAZING! I am still in awe of how blessed we where and are. 

39 Weeks and counting...

Here is our 39th week update:

We have moved into our new place!!!! It has been a mad dash to get everything set up before baby comes but we have pretty much unpacked everything which feels wonderful!

We have also been busy getting our place ready for our home birth and our lives ready for our little one's arrival. We, as of yesterday, got the birth tub set up and we officially have all the supplies we need. I have been cooking A TON stocking our fridge and freezer so I wont have to cook for a couple weeks after baby is born. I am still working despite the fact that the guys at the office are now completely uncomfortable with me being there. For some reason, they think that they are going to personally have to help me if I go into labor.

Andy is loving working. He is also trying to help me as much as possible and is daily wondering just when am I going to go into labor.

I am wondering this as well. I have been having "early labor" symptoms for weeks and am ready to get the real thing going! I am huge, uncomfortable, and excited to finally hold my little guy! 

Our next post will hopefully be pictures of our little dude. For now here are some pics of my enormous belly!

Here I am barefoot and 9 months pregnant cooking away in my pretty apron

I love it!

Here is the big belly!

one month later...

Well we have had a crazy month...

It has been rather warm here- averaging in the mid 90's so, of course, we have been having lots of pool parties

Andy partying in the kid pool with puppies and popsicles 

(dressed like a complete dork on purpose)

Harper being a bathing beauty 

We have had an amazing time with our friends Rocky and Jill, Nick, Curt and Jen, , and Nicole, Alex and Harper all visiting us at different times in July! We have been missing our friends and this definitely helped! 

I was also given an amazing baby shower here! It was so much fun getting to spend time with everyone there and little guy received a lot of great things!

These are the WONDERFUL ladies that threw me the shower

Some of my friends and I at the shower

I also celebrated my 25th birthday. Andy and I took a lot of time for ourselves that weekend seeing as that may be some of the last alone time we get for a little while :) We also celebrated with family and friends. It was a great birthday!

Lastly, baby has keeping up with his amazing growth pattern! I am now at 36 weeks but am measuring at 39 weeks! Needless to say he might be a big boy! 

Me at 33 weeks

Me at 35 weeks on my 25th birthday!

As busy as July was August is going to definitely outdo it. We are currently busy with packing for our move into our own place on the 6^th! Then we will be getting ready for the arrival of our little one sometime in the next few weeks!!! As Andy would say- GET PUMPED!!!!!!!!

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A couple weeks ago we went back to Iowa to visit the fam and to have a baby shower! It was an amazing time as always (despite the car issues)! My parents, Andy and I began our trip in two cars as we headed to Denver on the first part of our trip. Half way there my Jeep decided it did not want to go any farther and died in the parking lot of a jeep dealership in Salida. The rest of the trip the four of us traveled in my mom's car. Sitting in a back seat for 15 hours while pregnant was not an enjoyable experience! We where so grateful my parents where going with us or we would have been stranded and would have missed all the fun of Iowa! 

Our first day there Bob cooked for us. Unfortunately what was to be a BBQ outside turned into a torrential downpour. Bob was our hero as he continued to grill despite being drenched.  Between him and Sue we had an incredible meal- it was a great start to an Iowa vacation!

The next day we spent the afternoon having a cute overload. We first went to see Lindsey's new babies: 3 baby bunnies! We got to feed them, love them, and hold them- it was amazing. 
We then got to finally meet Padfoot! He was so cute, so much fun, and full of drool!
Later that night we went over to Skip's for a McKinley family get together! Andy found a toad!

After eating and games they surprised us by bringing out Dave's karaoke machine! Grandma and Grandpa started the night with a Sunny and Cher duet! It was phenomenal!
Andy, Matt, and Lindsey serenaded us with a song from Little Mermaid

Then the wigs where brought out- Skip, Andy, Matt, and Ed did a nice rendition of the Beatles.

The family continued singing, dancing and laughing, putting on quite the performance. 

Our final day there was spent at my first ever baby shower and hanging out w/ friends and fam

Grandma, Kathy, Sue and anyone else who contributed did a wonderful job! I was amazing at how many woman came, but sense it was a McKinley party I should have known. They know how to do it right! I had so much fun and they gave us so many great things!
As Andy and I went through the presents after the shower he modeled some of his favorites.

(the bib says I Love My Daddy)

This trip was amazing and WAY to short. It was so interesting visiting Iowa for the second time sense finding out we are pregnant. The first time we went we had just found out the day before and where still in shock the whole time we where there. This time we got to enjoy the fact that we are bringing a baby into the greatest family anyone could ask for! 

Oh and the theme of OB Juan continued the whole trip- the gifts said "For Obediah Juan", Aunt Cathy prayed for "little Obi" and even the notes in books given to us used the name... Thanks to Alli and Andy I think our son is officially nicknamed OB Juan. 

On our way back we spent the night in Denver and we had the chance to see a couple friends!!! First, we stopped off in Jax- it was great seeing everyone, but it made me miss the fun! We then went Leela's and Andy got to see Curt and I got to see... HARVEST! She just so happened to be in Denver so I got to spend the evening catching up with her and Suz. It was like getting an early christmas present. 

We then headed home, picked up my car, and it died again at a shop here in Durango. It was quite the vacation! My car is all better now and I think I am finally recovered from the horrible car ride and the whirlwind trip!

3RD TRIMESTER!!!!!

Well hello there! As of 6/5 I am in my 3rd trimester! We took these pictures at 28 weeks...
Here is Spear checking out the belly- he is still unsure of what to do think of it.

Baby and my belly are constantly getting bigger!!! At our 28 week checkup my belly had grown 8in in a month! It will be very interesting to see just how big I get with 12 more weeks to go!

Life Update

I am just constantly amazed at how God is ever working in our lives. We are continuously having great and wonderful things happening here (no not all of it has been easy with the stress of figuring out $, jobs, life, but we definitely are blessed!) The company Andy was doing landscaping for was just not getting the amount of jobs they where used to and had to let him go, but amazingly that opened up the opportunity for him to get his dream job. He now works at his favorite fly fishing shop getting to talk about fishing and music all day and tie flies for them at night. He is loving life! We also believe we finally found a place to rent down here which we will be able to move into in August! 

I am now at 27 weeks- one week away from being in my 3rd trimester and about 13 weeks away from baby being born!!! This is my belly on May 5th- Andy thought it would be fun to decorate it. I can not believe how big it is there and how much it has grown since! Our little guy is moving around A TON now practicing all his sweet dance/skateboarding/ninja moves. He is definitely going to have skills! As great as his growing is it has been killing my back. It was getting so bad I could not walk, but a visit to my local massage therapist, who is AMAZING, helped and my back is finally much better- I am not is so much pain! Now if I could just get him to not live on the right side of my stomach and move more towards the center :) 

This weekend we where SO excited to have some of our good friends come down to visit!!!! Alli and Dane stayed with us the whole time while Jason and Mark stopped in for an overnight visit. It was the best thing getting to see our friends from Denver and, of course with them, we had non stop fun and laughs! We spent the weekend doing a lot of cooking, bouldering, exploring Durango's fine garage sales and thrift stores, and just catching up and goofing around.  Above they are showing off some really nice poses/ tattoos. Bellow it is a picture of me and the guys. They where trying to look pregnant also- they failed :) 

Andy and I are excited to be learning more and more about sustainable living/gardening/etc.

We spent today planting stuff outside and getting our Peet Pots ready for planting- we are behind timing wise, but non the less excited to see what happens. 

Overall, it has been a great few weeks!