It has been a busier than normal holiday season around the Schneider household this year and for good reason. We welcomed Nathan Dean into our lives last week and could not be happier that our family has grown by one. Big brother Cole has been awesome and really seems to love his little brother already. Nate’s stats: 8lbs 4oz and 21.5″ long. Both of our boys were long babies, but Nate has the definitive edge in birth weight… we’ll see if that holds up as he gets older. It took Cole almost 2 years to make it to the 50th percentile in weight.

Here are some photos of our time at the hospital as well as some photos of us at home. Enjoy!

Boy!

The flood of emotions was pretty strong when we found out today. Both happy and sad, but mostly happy. Cole is going to love having a little brother to play with and we’re fortunate that we already have a ton of boys clothes and toys so turkey will be all set when he arrives, but there is definitely a little part of us that wanted that all-American dream family (one boy and one girl). We’re pretty sure that this will be our last child (we ain’t no spring chickens), but who knows what the future will hold. For now we are in love with our two boys and are trying to grasp the fact that we are going to have two boys running around the house by the end of next year. Send well wishes and any extra energy you have… we’ll need it

PS. Turkey is completely healthy… 10 little fingers, ten little toes, button nose, and lots of energy (he was moving all around during the ultrasound)

PPS. Final tally for the poll was 15 votes girl, and 5 boy… most of us are bad guessers

Today is my last working day of 2009… seriously. Beginning Monday I am taking 7 weeks off to stay home with Cole and teach him about all of the manly things in the world… uh, I mean to bond with him . While this will be a vacation from my day job, I’m definitely not approaching this as a vacation overall. This is probably going to be the most important 7 weeks that I get to spend with my son and I’m going into it with eyes wide open and a list of things that I want to do with him:

• Photo-a-day posted to the blog
• Daily walks
• Visiting Mommy at work every day she’s not working from home
• Reading to him at least 4 times a week
• Working on tummy time
• Taking him out on miscellaneous shopping trips
• Try to establish a rhythm to his napping

I think this time is going to be magical and it’s going to go by in the blink of an eye so I need to soak in as much of him as I can. Look for the daily photos to begin on Monday.

Is this really the last day I’ll be working in 2009? Woo hoo!!!

True to the beautiful weather that Austin is known for, today was sunny and 75… October 31st and it felt like a springtime day… gotta love it. Not a whole lot going on at the Schneider house today. We hung out and watched some football (the Horns dominated tonight) and we put a bowl of candy out for the kiddos (too many germs for us to be putting Cole out there with them this year)… but we did dress Cole up as a puppy dog… so cute.

Today was Mel’s birthday and for the first time in almost 10 years her parents were here to celebrate with us. We didn’t do anything special, but it was nice having them here.

Happy Birthday gorgeous!

Yeah… it’s 4:30am and I’m awake… I get the late night shift for a couple of days. I’m not complaining… he’s fun to be around (when he’s not screaming and I can usually calm him down so I don’t spend too much time dealing with him yelling at me ). Here’s a little video that Melanie shot today shortly after we arrived home (I love the little bear feet!).

Hello intrepid website visitor. We’d like to introduce you to our son Cole… all 6lbs 12oz and 21.5 inches of him. We’re quite smitten

Bella turned 5 over the weekend and I can’t believe how fast the time has gone by. Soon we’ll be bringing home a new baby, but we’ll always have room in our hearts for our first fur-baby.

Then:
Probably my favorite photo of her as a pup… this was only a few days after we brought her home.

I don’t care if this one is out of focus, I love it!

She still loves her tennis balls

She’s still a bit unsure about bath time.

Now:
We got her a new toy for her birthday… Al-the-gator. Little did she know he could climb trees…

But she managed to get him down…

And show him who’s boss

Happy birthday b-girl! You’ll always be our ball of golden sunshine.

Yup… headline says it all… we’ve been slacking at updating the blog, but fear not. We will get back to posting a regular mix of photos and interesting stories soon. Just because we have been slacking in updating the blog doesn’t mean we’ve been slacking otherwise. Quite the contrary, you see. We’ve been busily working on the nursery, taking baby prep classes, and generally just trying to enjoy some us time (read renting and watching movies). Yes it’s been oppressively hot here in Austin, but we have a nice air conditioned house to work in and have been working on the nursery daily. To prove it here are some photos of the prep, painting, and crib assembly. Enjoy these for now.

This room used to be Melanie’s office and was painted lavender. Before painting the walls cream I needed to primer the wall. As you can see the blue went on much nicer (no priming necessary).

The blue looks great!

Assembling the crib.

Still assembling. We bought the crib from a friend of a friend and there were a few brackets that were installed upside down and needed to be corrected.

All done… and you get to see the contrast between the blue and cream walls.

And of course our fur baby Bella had to get in a shot (actually she was in many, but I only chose this one for the blog). I think she’s already looking forward to looking over the little one.

This is going to be a very short post. I just wanted to get something up before we travel to PA. This past weekend Kevin and Kelsey visited us and we had a really good time. We got to show Kelsey downtown, saw a ton of motorcycles at the ROT Rally, saw a sunset at the Oasis, and did some things around the house (moved furniture and painted). The time went by too quickly. The next time they come to visit Kevin will have a nephew (I know… that still sounds weird). Anyway, here are a few photos. Look for some upcoming blog entries from our trip to PA.