baby boy's nursery

i originally composed this blog post weeks ago.  it's one of the posts that i prepped in advance before noah arrived, and i had it scheduled to post on his due date.  however, in a moment of shear stupidity i accidentally deleted it last week instead of posting it because i was distracted and sleep deprived.  (why the blogger platform doesn’t have a trash/recycle that you can pull accidentally-deleted posts out of is beyond my comprehension.)  you bet there were tears and some choice words because i spent a great deal of time on this post describing everything in the nursery and our process of putting the nursery together.  accidents like that happen, but they are especially annoying when you’re only a few days postpartum and in an emotional hormonal fog.

my brain is too far gone to possibly try to remember what i originally wrote or to recreate the post.  i did have the photos saved, but you’ll have to trust me that the original wording was much better than this quickly-recreated version . . .

the room in our house that became baby boy's nursery was originally our spare bedroom.  it was a spare bedroom for years, and then during the pandemic we turned it into a home gym.  when it came time to start preparing a nursery it was the only location we had in our tiny house, and the gym equipment was moved into the space that we use as our home office.

we started working on this room early in the spring, and were glad we did before we got busy with dance recital season and the hot summer.  we gave the ceiling a fresh cost of white paint and we painted the room a soft gray.  it’s actually the same color that we painted our home office years ago.

we loved how the white furniture looked against the grey walls.  we accented with pops of color and an animal/adventure theme.

we were happy that we were able to transform this room without spending much money at all.  we bought a lot of things on sale and repurposed what we could from home.

we bought the crib from target, the floating shelves and the bookshelf changing table combo from ikea, the bins and lamp from home sense, the rug and side table from at home, and the curtains from boscovs.

the dresser is something that we bought years ago from lowe's, and the picture frames were from around the house.

a friend gifted us the crib mattress since his children outgrew it, and the crib mobile was a gift from our baby shower.

the glider recliner is actually the very first baby purchase we made and we bought it before i was even pregnant.  it's so comfortable and we got it from home goods.  the laundry baskets came from home goods as well.

we decorated the shelves with my childhood kermit the frog, trinkets from around the house, momentos from our disney world trip, an ultrasound photo, and the letter board from our baby shower.

ryan did a ton of work on the tiny closet too.  he pulled out the old clothes hanging bar, painted the closet white, and built a custom-fit closet organizer to maximize storage space.

overall, we're really happy with the way the nursery turned out.  we know it will change over time, but i'm glad we have it documented how it looked when baby boy arrived.

love, laurie

9 months

yesterday i shared the progression of my growing belly from 1 month pregnant to 9 months pregnant.  when we took each of those photos, we also took a photo of me holding something in front of my belly to represent that month.  i've added these photos to my baby photo album at home along with the others to look back on . . . 

1 month (december 2021) = christmas candy canes

2 months (january 2022) = baby's first ultrasound at 8 weeks

3 months (february 2022) = buying the very first baby clothes

4 months (march 2022) = a lucky clover for saint patrick's day

5 months (april 2022) = ben & jerry's "half baked" ice cream to mark the 20 weeks halfway point

6 months (may 2022) = my mother's day card and gift from ryan

7 months (june 2022) = announcing baby boy's gender at our trip to walt disney world

8 months (july 2022) = our baby shower invitation

9 months (august 2022) = two big shells and one little shell from our getaway to ocean grove

love, laurie

my growing belly

it's really wild what happens over the course of 40 weeks of pregnancy.  it's seriously a crazy process.

i'm so glad that we took photos along the way to compare the progression of my belly from month-to-month.  i've printed these out and put them in a photo album at home, but i thought it'd be fun to share them here too.

ryan took a photo of me in the same spot in our kitchen, wearing the same clothes, every 4 weeks to mark 1 month pregnant through 9 months pregnant.  the difference in the photos is crazy!

love, laurie

maternity photos in an endless field of sunflowers

during my pregnancy, we never got around to taking official maternity photos.  on the friday before baby boy arrived, we took a drive out to brown hill farms after work to admire their endless fields of sunflowers and take some photos of our own.  we took our phone and tripod and were amazed at how great some of the photos turned out.

walking through acres and acres of sunflowers was nothing short of magical.  it was so peaceful and i'm so glad that we decided to do it on friday because the last day that the sunflower fields were open to the public was saturday, and then baby boy arrived on sunday night!  talk about timing, somehow we just knew to go do this with about 48 hours to spare!

we took a ton of photos.  some turned out better than others.  here are a few of them.  of course i intended to share these photos before baby boy was born, but we never got to that point!

i'm so grateful that we have these photos to look back on to remember this special time in our lives.  

you were allowed to cut your own sunflowers to purchase, so we took home three: two large mommy and daddy sunflowers, and one small baby sunflower.  on our way out, ryan looked down and found a four-leaf clover as we were leaving . . . talk about signs.

love, laurie

happy due date!

today is august 30th which is a pretty special day in our house . . . it was the day ryan and i started dating back in 2004 and it was also my due date this year!  

we didn’t know if baby boy would come before, on, or after my due date.  since he came a little early at 38 weeks 5 days, i thought it would be nice to share some photos from the hospital today in honor of his due date!

love, laurie

he's here!

we're thrilled to announce that baby houser is here!  

introducing . . . noah jeffrey houser!

born: sunday, august 21, 2022

10:58pm

6 lbs. 15 oz.

20.5 inches

. . .

wow!  where do i even start?  everything has been such a blur and i feel like i've been living in some type of time warp for the past week.  i can't believe that i'm even typing this post right now.  it brings a tear to my eye to announce that we welcomed our little bundle of joy to the world last sunday late at night. 

of course we had no idea when our little peanut was going to be born so i started preparing some blog posts about two weeks ago just in case.  i'm glad i did, because i had no idea when i went to bed last saturday night that i would wake up in the middle of the night to find out that my water broke.  since then, everything has whirled past at a dizzying pace.  the blog has been running on auto pilot for the past week and i'm just now getting a chance to sit down and open up my laptop for the very first time in over a week to say that baby boy is here!  it's a week late, but here's his birth announcement on this little blog of mine.

my brain is spinning and my mind keeps wandering back to the night of his birth and our time in the labor/delivery room.  it was such a wild experience that nothing could have prepared me for, even though we took the classes, read the books, watched the videos, and talked to the people.  in the end it was our own experience and those moments are ones i will hold on to forever in my memory and in my heart.

the past week has been filled with ups and downs, and all of the emotions.  i'm trying my best to hold it together and i'm beyond grateful for ryan who is so incredible.  words cannot even begin to describe how amazing he has been.  we're also so grateful to have four supportive parents who are now proud grandparents and who have been helping out so much.

i can't wait to share so many photos of noah along with many photos that i have from before he was born that i still need to share.  i'll do my best to keep things somewhat in order.

love, laurie

a few more snapshots from our baby shower

i shared photos from our baby shower last week and then realized that ryan's mom had a bunch of photos on her camera from the shower when we were opening presents.  we were so grateful that our family/friends were able to come celebrate with us, and so blessed by how they spoiled us and baby with such generous gifts.  

here are several more photos from last weekend's baby shower!

love, laurie