You named her what? and other reactions we've had to baby girl's name.

Oh my goodness I knew revealing the gender would bring on the name questions and comments, but I just can't believe the number of people who have a comment on what we should name our baby girl. Mr. A and are non-traditional we don't like to be ordinary and we want our little girl's name to stand out. Here's just a few of the comments I've heard:

1. don't name your daughter after family members unless you want to curse her with their problems

2. you should give her a name that means something to you and Mr. A (edit I really liked this one and we did)

3. don't name her something off the wall or hard to spell

4. you should give her a plain name so she'll fit in once she gets to school age

5. and my personal favorite just don't name her something stupid!

So without further ado our baby girl's name is going to be

Carys Kaylenn

Carys is pronounced : (kaw-riss) and is the welsh word for love. Mr. A picked out this name because he has a Welsh background and wanted to honor that.

Kaylenn is pronounced Kay Lynn but spelled the way it is because it is a hybrid of my mother's middle name Kay and my mother in law's middle name Glenn.

So there you have it our little girl officially has a name. When we told our family the name they instantly fell in love with it but in telling other people we've noticed that we get a mixed reaction some people like it and some people think we're crazy. But we love her name and in the end we're the only two that matter.


Later Alligators..

Mrs. A

finally some house updates

so it's been almost 6 months since we moved into our cute little house and we've been slow getting updates done but we finally do have the living room sort of how we want it and remember that table shopping excursion we had so many months ago well we finally went back and bought the one we liked best. Yay for our house starting to look like grown ups live there instead of two broke college kids.



here's the living room the day we moved in.




fireplace after we painted it white and flanked it with our two large bookcases; if you look closely at the one on the left you can see Baby Girl A's toy collection already started. We still need a screen and fireplace tools but hey we're all about baby steps. Oh and sidenote for all the pregnancy police that glass has sparkling grape juice in it which has been my replacement for wine.

and the new dining room table and Finnegan says hi :)

We did opt to paint our trim white and we're finished in the living room and hallway but still have a ways to go. More pictures to come soon and of course now that we know little miss is on the way we have a nursery to work on :)

Later Alligators.....

Mrs. A







and the verdict is.....

Our extended Anniversary weekend was a blast :)

we started out at the OKC Baron's game on Tuesday night this outing was a surprise planned by my sweet man. The  best part we had seats right on the ice :)

Then we headed out Wednesday afternoon to the ultrasound that we had oh so much fun at staring at our sweet baby, then the hard part came since we weren't telling family until Friday we had to keep our news to ourselves.

Finally Friday came and we were able to tell the world :) we chose to do a cake with the middle tinted the color of our sweet kiddo.

we let the grandmother's to be cut into the cake :)

we had asked our family member's to wear the color of the gender they thought little Baby A was, and the blue way outnumbered the pink.  Surprisingly enough both Grandmothers got it right :)

our baby GIRL will be gracing us with her presence in March. Mr. A and I although surprised as we both thought we were having a boy are over the moon excited to meet our little lady!!

The tinted cake after we devoured it :)

The next day this mommy had a blast shopping at our local craft fair and came home with this adorable little outfit for our Little Lady.



Why yes that is a green tutu  Baby A wouldn't be Baby A if her first outfit didn't have some green in it since it is her mommy's favorite color :)

Saturday evening we had a fellowship outing with our Sunday school class and I wore my pink proudly :)



Mrs. G and I are ecstatic we're both having Baby Girls and just a few months apart. I love this pic of me and my bestie ;)

Later Aligators....

Mrs. A



National Pregnancy & Infant Loss Awareness Day

Did you know that October 15 is National Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day? Many people aren't aware that this day has been designated a national day of remembrance for miscarriage, stillbirth, and infant loss.
The resolution to declare October 15 a remembrance day passed the United States House of Representatives on September 28, 2006. It was the result of tireless efforts by a group of miscarriage awareness activists led by Robyn Bear, who had six first-trimester miscarriages in the span of 1997 through 1999.
In honor of Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day, Bear suggests on her website that grieving parents and those supporting them light a candle at 7 p.m. in their respective time zones to create a wave of light around the world in memory of babies lost to miscarriage and infant loss.



These aren't my candles I will photograph them this evening for the women I am supporting including Leah Marie @ Marital Bless, Katie @ Loves of Life, Ashley Paige @ I Love You More Than Carrots, Melanie @, Country Roads, Megan @ In This Wonderful Life and any others I may have forgotten, or who may have been silent about their losses. These women and their strength constantly amaze and inspire me. I encourage you to also light candles this evening for any in your own lives who have gone through such loss and post them on your blogs as a sign of support for all those remembering their losses. To the ladies I am supporting we will never forget your angels.


Love and Strength to you all,

Mrs. A

Baby A Stats

I haven't done one of these before so I figured why not :)

How far along? 18 Weeks today

Baby's size? Our baby is the size of a sweet potato.

Weight Gain? 2 pounds.

Maternity clothes? started wearing maternity pants this week but still mostly in my regular shirts

Stretch marks? so far so lucky not to have any

Sleep? Sleep is good. 

Foods I am loving? mac and cheese

Foods I am hating? Nothing at the moment which is such a blessing

Best moment this week? feeling flutters

Movement? I've felt my first flutters can't wait til it's more

Symptoms? mostly just a few headaches and backaches

Gender? cannot wait to find out! in 7DAYS!

What I'm looking forward to? finding out the gender next week 

Weekly Wisdom: I think it's important to remember every baby is different and you shouldn't be alarmed when every woman in the world is telling you they've already felt their baby's move and they aren't as far along as you are.

Milestones: Gender Ultra-Sound next week

Emotions: I'm a rollercoaster!

Changing our vocabulary and 30 days of prayer

Mr. A and received two challenges for the month of October one during Sunday morning services, and one during our Sunday night small group study. The first was issued from our pastor to our whole church and that was to commit to 30 days of praying for one hour a day. My first initial thought was pray for an hour! Are you kidding me I get distracted during prayer time at church how am I ever going to pray for an hour?! So during invitation I prayed hard for God to give me the desire to do this and I decided I was just going to give it a go yesterday and not beat myself up if I couldn't do it. You know what I didn't pray for an hour I prayed for nearly two.

 I learned that praying can be praising and singing hymns, it can be cleaning or doing manual labor all the while carrying on a conversation with God, and of course it can be reading and praying scripture over those you love. In our series at church we've been doing a lot with prayer and why it's so difficult for so many of us to commit to and it's because in my pastor's words we have "professionalized prayer". I learned that when I let go of what I thought prayer looked like and to embrace what prayer meant to me it became a lot easier. While I'm not sure I'll get an hour of prayer time in every day I'm sure going to try for 30 days. So today marks day two of our 30 days of prayer challenge and if anyone wants to join me please feel free to do so. In fact leave a comment so we can support each other!

Our next challenge came from our Bible study leaders on Sunday night and it really struck a chord with me. We're going through Gary Smalley's From Anger to Intimacy study and one of the things we talked about was changing our thinking about situations instead of believing when you get hurt that the person meant to hurt you which is often not the case we should turn to God and ask what am I to learn from this. We also talked about how often we are guilty of bemoaning simple tasks that are really blessings. We learned to replace the words "have to" with "get to".

So this morning while lying in my extra comfy bed instead of laying there whining "I have to get up, I have to go to work" I instead thought how fortunate am I that I get to get up at 6AM to go to a steady full time job that so many have been praying for and it made dragging myself out of bed a little bit easier. On the way to work I kept thinking man I have to drive to work with crazy people today and then I caught myself and changed it to thinking how fortunate am I that I get to drive to work instead of take a bus or walk and how fortunate is my family to have two vehicles completely paid for. So I encourage you if just for one day anytime you catch yourself saying the words "have to" replace them with "get to" I guarantee you by the end of the day you will be so thankful for the blessings you've been given.

Later Alligators.