24 week update

Well, we have passed the 24 week mark and had a check-up with the doctor earlier last week. We continue to get great reports on Lauren and Chandler. The doctor is very happy with her progress and said she is right on track with everything they look for. He told her to keep doing what she's doing and that's always good to hear. We go back again in early January, where Lauren will have a glucose test performed to check for the possibility of gestational diabetes. We pray for continued good reports and that baby Chandler will be perfectly healthy. 


Over the past few weeks, not a lot has been going on, but yesterday started a busy couple of weeks for us.  Lauren flew out yesterday on a last-minute work trip to Los Angeles for the week. She returns early Friday morning, then we jump in the car and head to Atlanta for the weekend. From there, we head to MS for a week and then I will leave on Christmas Day heading over to Abu Dhabi for the third consecutive year. After dropping me off at the airport in Jackson, Lauren will pick up Claire & Jeremy and drive up to Memphis Christmas afternoon to visit family and spend the night there. Finally, Lauren and Glenna, who has so graciously offered to ride back with Lauren on the long drive to Miami, will depart Memphis on Sunday and take their time making it back down here. So, the next few weeks are going to be pretty busy with a lot of traveling, but we are definitely looking forward to seeing all of our family and friends in each location. 


We've also been updating our registry's at Target and Buy Buy Baby the past few weeks. Who knew there were so many options when looking at car seats and strollers. WOW! Thanks to all of Lauren's friends and family who offered advice and feedback on what they have done. We finally made a decision after going back to Buy Buy Baby this past weekend and getting a good demonstration of several models from one of the store associates, which was a big help in making a decision. 


Here are a few pictures of Lauren's 24 week belly. We hope to see as many of you as we can on our travels the next few weeks. If we don't get to see you, we wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Chandler Lee Harris

As with most every unborn child, the biggest questions we have received (and their respective answers) are as follows.  I'm sure there will be more down the road but the big 3 are...

1. When are you due? April 1, 2011 (not an April Fool's joke)

2. What is the gender? Male

3. What are you going to name him? Chandler Lee Harris

Finding the right name is a tough, stressful task.  There are numerous books, websites, apps (yes, we have at least 2), personal suggestions, etc. that provide endless lists of names to consider based on origin, popularity, spellings, meanings...you name it, there is a baby name list.  With all the possibilities, we were able to narrow it down to a few select preferred names and then by process of elimination, we landed on the name Chandler Lee Harris.  Chandler is a name that we both just really liked.  We were aiming for traditional yet uncommon and we think we have found that in Chandler.  Lee is a family name on Lauren's side (Thomas side to be specific) that we knew we wanted to use/incorporate somehow.  

Since we are not good at keeping secrets, we wanted to put the name out there for the world to see.  Plus, there are just too many things Aunt Claire is eager to monogram before April 1st!

On another note, it has also been a few weeks since we have posted a picture.  It seems that in the past week and a half or so Lauren has started to show more.  The pictures apparently do not do justice to the actual belly size (which Lauren doesn't mind) but here is Week 22 & 3 days.  We will be visiting family in Georgia for a few days and then heading home to MS for Christmas and hope we can visit with as many people as possible so you can make your own conclusion. 

   

Baby Registry Take 1

Lauren and I are spending the entire week in Columbia, SC for the Thanksgiving holidays. For the past month or so, we have been planning to use the first few days of this week here to start our baby registry. It's just been too busy for us this fall to go on the weekends in Miami, plus our desire not to fight the overcrowding of stores there.

So, yesterday we ventured out to Buy Buy Baby with Glenna to start our registry experience. Buy Buy Baby is a newer chain of baby stores by the same people who own the Bed Bath & Beyond stores. Several of our friends with little one's have recommended this store over Babies R Us due to their selection, helpfulness and a better return policy. Plus, they are pretty generous in accepting coupons for their store and the Bed Bath & Beyond coupons. We will also register somewhere like Target for those who do not have a Buy Buy Baby near them, but this is where we started yesterday.

Lauren and I have joked that we have no clue all of the things we need to register for.

There are the obvious things (car seat, stroller, furniture) but there are also things I never thought of until yesterday, like a wipe warmer (I know they didn't have these when I was a baby, but apparently now it's a "must have" item for the nursery) and many other things. Also, baby monitors are now much more "high tech" as there are now video monitors instead of just the audio monitors. Who knew!

We received a full store tour of all the different departments with the staff pointing out all the various things we could possibly need. It was a little overwhelming but was definitely a good start for us as we begin to pick out all the things we need/want for the nursery. I think we were there for nearly 3 hours and registered for close to 40 items. We also have a list of things to research over the next few weeks. Go check it out on the Buy Buy Baby website.

Several people have asked if we have a theme for the nursery and we have decided to use a beach/ocean theme. Since we are currently in a rental house, we aren't sure how much decorating we will be able to do, but we are going for colors along the lines of aqua, light blue, white/off white, etc...anything that has a beach feel to it.

Now comes the interactive part of the blog, where we need your help. All of our friends and family who have found our blog, please leave us a comment with any must have items or things you found helpful. Or if there are things we should avoid or really do not need, fill us in. A few have already sent us suggestions via facebook or email, but we welcome all of you to share your thoughts. It will definitely be most helpful to us!

We wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving and hope to see you soon.

Run Baby Run!

As many of you may know (or for those that don't) Lauren ran her first two half-marathon's last year in Miami, joining Andy & Glenna with the Footworks training program. Well, with the soon to be grandparents moving to South Carolina this past summer, Lauren was able to convince me to join the training program in preparation for the ING Miami Half Marathon in late January, 2011. Obviously we found out in late summer that Lauren was pregnant, so we talked with two of her doctors and both told us it was perfectly safe and healthy for Lauren to continue running. She just needed to stay hydrated and not over-exert herself. With Footworks, they offer many different training programs and pace groups. Last year, Lauren ran the 2/1 group (run 2 minutes, walk 1 minute) and was planning to increase to the 3/1 group this year. Well, with the pregnancy, we decided to stay with the 2/1 group and it has been going well so far. The 1 minute walk breaks in between really help and Lauren has been doing great (and I'm faring pretty well myself). During the week, we run on Tuesday and Thursday evenings after work and the distance is about 3.8 miles. These are our mid-week "fun runs" and just helps you keep some momentum going until the weekend. Every Saturday morning, we get up early (I mean sometimes we are up before 5:00 a.m.) for our long-distance training runs. Each week, we add distance and this past Saturday, we ran 8 miles. In the coming weeks we will continue to build on our progress in preparation for the Half-Marathon (which is 13.1 miles).

All of this correlates into the title of today's post...Run Baby Run. You see, as Lauren continues to run, so is little boy Harris and we've received a few gifts recently that will help him quickly join in this family experience when he's born. We wanted to share them with you.

These little running shoes were given to us by our good friend, Jordan Wilson, who also is in our running group. Jordan and I went to grad school together and she has remained one of our close friends here in Miami. Thanks Jordan for getting Squirt ready to run!

Our second gift was a running stroller from Brett & Lisa Koch. Brett & Lisa work with me at IMG and weren't using this stroller. We were glad to take it off their hands and help them clear some garage space. So, while Squirt won't be able to run for a few years, he will be able to go with us thanks to this great stroller. It folds up pretty compact and the larger wheels help make it easier for pushing when running. Now we just need to put some air in the tires and we are ready to run. Thanks Brett & Lisa!

Lauren has set a goal to finish the half-marathon this coming January. We don't care about the pace, time, or anything else, but what a great accomplishment it will be for her to finish the race as she approaches the beginning of her 8 month mark! I'm glad she got me involved this year because I think it sets a great foundation for us to continue to stay active once our little boy arrives.

As we have just passed the 20 week mark in the pregnancy, we have a few new pictures of Lauren for you to check out. She's slowly starting to develop a little bump, as you can see below. It's funny though, because I feel like I have noticed her bump more this week in the normal course of our day than I do in these pictures. Not sure how that works, but if I get a chance to sneak in a picture where I can see it more, I will capture the moment for ya'll! Until next time, here are a few 20 week pictures of Lauren, Squirt and dog Parker.

Baby H is a BOY!!!

This has been an informative week for the Harris'. On Wednesday of this past week, we went to the doctor (again) and found out that Baby H is a boy - no mistaking it. But to spare the unborn kid some future embarrassment - we will not disclose the picture for the world to see. However, we do have pictures to share with you on how the little squirt is progressing. Now the hard part - figuring out a name that this child will have to live with forever & ever! No pressure...

These two pictures are the first we got that looked like an actual baby. These were on 9/13/10. Our fun-fact from that visit is that the white you see is bone.

In this picture, his body continues to develop and the pictures get cooler b/c we can actually make out legs, arms, ribs, his brain, etc. This is a snap shot from the 10/27/10 visit where we found out we are having a boy.

Now the question most folks ask is whether or not I (Lauren) am showing and most don't believe us when we say not really. To keep track of the week-by-week progression, we have started taking pictures of my belly.

Week 16 - not much to show...

Week 18 - starting to show a bit but relatively speaking, no one who really looks at me can tell that I'm pregnant. But apparently my Mom was the same way and I'm happy to have her genes! In addition to not showing much, I'm also feeling pretty normal, with the exception of extra bathroom breaks and new eating habits. I find myself eating more frequently, but smaller portions as I get full pretty quickly. And drinking lots of water!

We'll try to be more frequent bloggers as things continue to progress with Baby H. Our big accomplishment this weekend was cleaning out our guest bedroom closet so we can start putting away things that we get for the baby. We took two loads of boxes to our storage unit and now we're ready to stock the room with fun baby things. At the rate Claire keeps sending us stuff, it probably won't be long before we have this closet filled again (love you, Claire!). We plan on really starting to shop for the essentials (strollers, crib, carseat, and all the other fun stuff) when we go to South Carolina in a few weeks for Thanksgiving. We will spend a week there and get plenty of help from Claire, Jenny, Glenna & Andy picking out things we like. Then I'm sure we will get even more help a few weeks later when we spend a week in Mississippi for Christmas with the Harris clan.

Trying to figure this out

So, it looks like the blog fairy came along and decided that we need a blog. How nice of that fairy!

As you all probably know by now, Lauren is pregnant (13 weeks this past Friday) with "Squirt" and she is due on April 1, 2011...no this is not an April Fools joke; that would be way too cruel to a lot of people. The funny part of that date, however, is it's right at the end of my (Josh) biggest event of the year here in Miami, the Sony Ericsson Open. We'll just have to see how that all works out as the time gets closer.

Not only are we excited about Squirt, but we are also happy we could keep this news a total surprise to all of our friends and family...especially the Grandparents to be. Their reactions were just what we were going for...shock & awe as Lauren likes to say. Obviously in a good way, but with the number of hints, suggestions and even going as far to carry a cardboard baby around the world for a year, we really wanted to surprise everyone.

So far, all of the doctor visits have been great and we are truly blessed in that regard. We continue to pray everyday for health and happiness for Lauren and Squirt.

Not much else to report right now, but we will do our best to keep this updated over the next few months. Stay tuned!

Baby Harris's First Present!

Just wanted to share with everyone Squirt's (thats baby Harris) first gift. Of course it's Mississippi State stuff. Squirt's Aunt Claire sent this present so that boy or girl Squirt will be ready to cheer on the MSU Bulldogs!