Coming Down the Home Stretch!

Over the past several months, we have been very busy as you can imagine. The pregnancy seems to be moving along smoothly at this point. We finished all of our ultrasounds for the Fifth Disease and that all came out fine. Through all of those pictures though they found out that this boy has big kidneys just like Austin did and after another ultrasound 2 weeks ago, they decided he will have to see the pediatric urologist. We are very relieved as things could have been a lot worse. They also discovered that he has the potential to be a big one. He weighed in at 5 pounds 10 ounces at 33 weeks. The doctor continues to believe that he should just fall right out like Austin did. I am not so sure about that at this point!

Austin found out that he was getting a little brother about 2-3 months ago. At first he just wanted to take the baby out but now is better about being gentle. He is very excited when talking about everything he will be able to do to help. We have not settled on a name just yet but he has come up with some interesting choices.

We went for "vacation" in August and it is in quotes because it was mom's education trip for work at Myrtle Beach. Having the seminars broadcast into the hotel room made things very convenient! Austin and dad went to the water park at the resort or went out for a while letting mom "watch" a seminar or two every day. Austin had a blast at the water park going down the slides and just playing around. There was a lot of wind so we did not spend much time on the beach. He also played his first 9 holes of par 3 golf with Dad one morning. Evidently he is pretty darn good. We just have to work on the putting. To end the week, we headed back to Raleigh for the Wiggles concert on Friday night. Yes, that's right! The Wiggles! He had a great time dancing, singing and actually getting to shake hands with a couple of the guys. It was more entertaining than Elmo!

At school, Austin has moved up to a Pre-K class even though he will not be old enough for kindergarten next year. His teacher is pretty hard core but he seems to be responding well. He is getting better at writing his letters and wants to cut up everything. He also is getting better at picking up on other kid's bad habits.

Today is Austin's 4th Birthday. It is funny how it seems he just yesterday started to talk. (Now at times we wish we could shut him up!) We went to Chuck E Cheese's for dinner and let him play some games. He got a new scooter and a PeeDee the pirate picture for his room. We will be having his birthday party in another week due to the football game this weekend. (By the way, he loves ECU football and will sit and watch an entire game!) He is very excited to have his friends over. It will be a sports theme and Dad has plans of painting the yard for lots of games. We will get pictures next time!

If everything goes as planned, we may get induced at 38 weeks so our next post may include the big revealing of the newest Renn family member. We will definitely let you know when anything interesting happens!

Never A Dull Moment

Since we first announced the pregnancy, there has been some minor drama. Sickness continued on a daily basis with some days being better than others. The fatigue has been extreme and to the point that if there is no afternoon nap, things are much slower than normal. At 16 weeks we went for a regular check-up and took the information provided by Austin's daycare earlier that week about a child having Fifth Disease. After talking to the doctor, he decided it would be best to check that and several other things just to be sure that the sickness was only from the pregnancy. After waiting 4 days, the call came at 9:15 one night from the doctor. There was good and bad news. The good news was that they now understood what was causing the extreme fatigue and sickness. The bad news was that it was definitely the Parvovirus or Fifth Disease. After freaking out completely, we have educated ourselves and are thankful it occurred at this point in the pregnancy. The only complication of this disease is that if the baby contracts the illness there is a 6-10% chance of it developing anemia and not making it to delivery. Due to this, we went to have a Level 2 Ultrasound back on May 28th. Things looked good then. We now have been doing weekly ultrasounds and will have to continue for a total of 10 weeks. Today, we had our 6th in the series and went back to the specialist. So far, so good. They told us somewhere along the way that by 24 weeks we should be out of the woods. Only 2 weeks left.

Through all of these trips, we have gotten quite a picture album on the little munchkin. We found out that it is indeed another boy and it has been confirmed on several occasions. We both were very happy with the news, especially since we already have most everything we need! By the way, we still have not told Austin and are waiting a few more weeks. He has not even asked why mommy is getting so fat yet! The sickness slowed down by about 20 weeks and now the nausea is only there in the morning for the most part.

Austin has had several new adventures over the past several months. He is very excited about his new swingset. It was a neighborhood project just to get the thing together. He went to his first Durham Bulls baseball game of the season. He now understands and will actually watch the game. He also went to the driving range for the first time. He did very well hitting the ball but does not understand why you have to come home. He will be moving up to the 4 year old class at school next week and we are fully prepared for several weeks of horrible behavior since he deals with change so well.

We will keep you up to date but are hoping everything is downhill from here!!

Here We Go Again!

We should probably begin by apologizing to all of those people we have either lied to or just ignored over the past several months. Yes, as all of the dreams and "feelings" have revealed, we are going to have another baby! The official due date is November 1st, however the mother in this situation is hoping to cut a deal for the little joker to arrive around October 20th. Austin does not know of the situation yet and we have chosen not to tell him until we know if it will be a boy or girl. There has been "all day sickness" just as before but it may actually be worse this time around. Austin continues to remind me through his tears that "Only babies and Oscar the cat get sick like that." Whenever we ask him if he would like a brother or sister, he always opts for a sister but continues to insist her name would be Andrew! We will have just a few things to sort out later!

Austin continues to grow every day. We still can't believe some of the things they are learning at 3 1/2. We probably couldn't write our names until we were in school. His favorite sport is golf but baseball is climbing the list fast. Shane is coaching an 11-12 year old Little League team and Austin likes to pretend he is playing "baseball with the kids." I don't know if he will ever weigh over 36 pounds if he does not learn to sit still for more than 30 seconds.

Otherwise, our life continues without much excitement! I think we have enough to keep us entertained for quite a while.

A New Year

Once again, a new year has come upon us. There is a lot that has gone on since our last posting. Thanksgiving was very relaxing for us. We spent the day at home and ate with some neighbors making the holiday very low key and nice. Christmas was a little more hectic but fun just the same. This was the first year we stayed home and the first year Austin really "got" it. We left food for the reindeer and cookies for Santa. The anticipation was exciting but nothing compares to seeing his face on Christmas morning when he finally realized that he really got the train he asked for. We of course spent time with family as we always do. This was the first Christmas without my Grandmother and that was a little tough at times. Just like always, Austin can pull you through anything! Now we just have too many toys at our house. We also spent New Year's at home with neighbors. A bowling tournament on the Wii was the big highlight. Probably only because I won! Imagine that, Shane was not at his best I guess!

Austin is getting so big. He has grown so much in just the past couple of months that his shirts are getting too short. He is becoming the real nerd at school. They are doing name recognition and he can recognize all of the names of the kids in his class. We just discovered tonight that he can spell some of the shorter names. He knows his letters and is learning what letter starts some words. His favorite toys right now are his laptop, letter writer, and many puzzles. He also loves a shaving kit that he got for Christmas. Sports are still everything. His golf game is progressing I guess you could say. The club makes contact with the ball more often than it once did. I am sure it has something to do with the new Nike hat though. This makes him just that much more like Dad. He went to his first Hockey game of the season and had a great time yelling along with everyone else. He is becoming very creative. In one of the pictures below, there are a ton of little Dixie cups all over the floor. When I asked what he was doing, he informed me that the cups were having a party and that I should just leave them alone. Where do they get this stuff?

Our first snow was 2 weekends ago. We were very excited of course! For those of you up north I realize 1-2 inches is really nothing! Austin thought it was great and had to wear his boots out just to play a little while. Until next time, hope you are all having a wonderful New Year!

Halloween

We are not doing as well as we had hoped with updating, but here is the latest! We have had a pretty eventful month. We went on a trip to Vegas with our neighbors for a surprise 60th birthday party. Despite many attempts by the guys to ruin the surprise, the guest of honor was totally shocked that we all showed up out there. Even though Shane was not successful in gambling, we had a great time. Somehow, the girls always find a beautiful man no matter where we go (see the picture below). Also of note: I think that we should be entitled to $200 of the $2 million the FBI took from David Copperfield since that is what we spent to see his show. (It was amazing though!)

Austin has been having lots of fun as well. Halloween turned out to be fun as we walked way too far through our neighborhood. We had some confusion over what he wanted to be. We had agreed on a pirate but he continued to tell everyone at school that he was going to be Spiderman. Without too much protest he collected way too much candy. Dad has been teaching the Beavis and Butthead look as you can see from one of the pictures. Luckily he has not caught on to the voice yet! He had his first trip to Bullwinkle's in October. We were going to the State Fair but it started to rain. We opted for the crazy Chuck E Cheese look a like. He had a blast since we were one of 5 families there. They have games and a big climbing thing with a slide. Last, Austin has mastered his bike (with training wheels of course). We will try to get some pictures for next time.

ECU has been on a roll with this football season. We have tailgated before every game. Austin has enjoyed hanging out and trying to convince someone to give him a beer. His favorite part so far has been hanging out with Mr. Rob. Yes, we think Mr. Rob has enjoyed it too!!

Until next time. . .

More pictures

As I was creating the first post, I realized finally that there were too many pictures. Here are a few others from various occasions.

We have finally arrived. . .

We have been saying since Austin was born that we needed to create a blog to keep everyone up-to-date on our escapades. Three years later, here we are. Better late than never I guess. We are hoping to update things every couple of weeks because Austin is growing so fast!

For those of you who are really out of the loop, we just celebrated Austin's 3rd birthday last Tuesday. Saturday we had a little party at the house with some of his friends from daycare and family. It turned out to be a great success! We did a Cars the movie theme with little cars and road play mats, coloring of the characters from the movie, a bean bag toss, a pinata and of course bubbles. All of the kids and even the adults seemed to have a great time. We got him a Gator (for those of you without kids, this is a Power Wheels type thing) and he desperately needs driving lessons. No damage yet!

Just a quick overview of where we stand at this point in our lives. I work at Holly Springs Medical Center as a Physician Assistant and Shane is still working at Wyeth in Sanford. Austin goes to the local daycare/preschool which is about 1 mile from my office. Everything is very convenient.

This summer was interesting for us. We went to Myrtle Beach as we always do for a short weekend getaway. Then the week of July 4th we ventured up to Philadelphia for a "family" vacation. We took Austin to Sesame Place. Yes, there is such a place and it is Sesame Street and Elmo from start to finish. He enjoyed eating breakfast with the characters, riding some rides, playing in the water park, and having his picture taken with all of the characters. It was really a lot of fun but we are a little Elmoed out! We went to a couple of museums, the Camden aquarium, and tried to see the Philadelphia fireworks but were rained out. After returning home a day early because of the weather, we went to the water park in Greensboro to end the week.

If you have not seen us in a while, Austin is getting big fast and has truly developed a personality that is definitely a mix of us both. (I know, kind of scary!) He loves to sing and dance especially while playing the guitar. He can make anything into a guitar: spatula, wrapping paper, shovel, etc. We tried soccer over the summer which went surprisingly well. He loves sports of any kind. Shane is trying to turn him into the next Tiger Woods and bought him a set of little golf clubs for his birthday. He also loves pretending. Especially when he is making and serving food or lemonade.

Well, that is a long first posting but we will keep things up-to-date better with shorter blurbs from now on. We would love to hear from everyone!