Staying Busy!

Lots has been going on around here lately!! I apologize that I have become such a slacker with this blog. It is so easy to just pictures on Facebook and call it a day, I haven't been posting on here much.
The biggest news is we are expecting Baby 3.0 September 25th!! We have decided this time that we will find out the sex AND tell people. The first time, Lars, we didn't find out at all; second time, Stina, Karl and I knew, but we didn't tell anyone; so this time figured it was only fair to find out and tell:):) I'm sure that most of you will be very happy with this choice!
For those of you who are thinking "Didn't they just have a baby?", YES! Our kids are all going to be really close together! Lars and Stina are 15.5 months apart and Stina and baby 3.0 will be 14 months apart!!

Lars is now a big 2 year old!! Not that anyone ever thought of him as small:)! His birthday was Easter Sunday, April 4th. We had a Veggie Tales birthday party for him on Saturday. While he was very excited to see "Bob", his cake, I think we probably should have had a CARS birthday! The mostly got cars and he has been playing with them constantly since he opened them!
He is a great big brother! He loves for Stina to sit in his lap and watch videos with him. If we go anywhere in the car, he always wants to make sure that she is in there too! He loves to play with Cars, trains, the water table and now Easter eggs:):) He is a joy and delight to be around!!

Stina is now 8 months old! I can't believe how the time flies!! She is so fun and happy!!! She has just started clapping and waving bye-bye! She also says, "Da-da" now! :) She seems like she really wants to crawl, but hasn't quite got the hang of it. She loves to put anything in her mouth! She has 2 teeth on the bottom and is working on more!! She just adores Lars. I hope they always care for each other like they do now!!:)

Baby Scherm 2.0

As you can see here Baby #2 is in the crock pot and will be arriving somewhere around July 28th! This sonogram was done 1/19, the baby was 13 weeks old.
We are so excited that God has decided to bless us with another baby! He truely is amazing! We didn't decide the timing with Lars, we would have liked for him to come much earlier. With Lars 2.0 (as we affectionately call him/her) we weren't even thinking about another baby yet. We know that God's plan is so much greater than ours!
Lars LOVES playing with other kids. After he gets over the initial shock of having to share his dad and mom, I'm sure he is going to love being a big brother!

Welcoming more friends!

Today we had a baby shower for Melissa McGee. She is expecting her little boy to be here (hopefully, no later than) August 21st! She is the last one in this photo (taken at Lars' baby shower) to have her baby and we are all ready to meet the little guy!
Here she is with Luke and Lars. They are trying to encourage him to come out and play!

We had a great time at the shower! It's harder to get together with all your friends once everyone has kids, so we cherish the moments together even more. It's also much more difficult to get things done when the babies need to eat and be held, so I have to give Karl credit for making most of the food for the shower! We never could have done it without him!!

animal tested and approved

While I'm not a big fan of products being tested on animals, I just couldn't resist testing the new hotsling out on Garfunkel. He insists on being held like a baby all the time, so it was easy to get him into it. I'm just glad that the baby won't weigh 15 lbs. when it is born like Garfunkel!!!

Garfunkel loved it so I think it's a winner for baby products!

Baby's Room is Ready

Karl and Simon are putting the finishing touches on the room in this first picture!
Karl did an amazing job on the room! He is so creative and talented! He did all the painting and hung all the moulding (crown, chair rail and boxes) himself!
Let's hope the baby likes the room, cause I think it will be green and brown for a long time:)!










Now we just have to wait for the baby to get here. We had a doctor's appointment yesterday. Everything is looking good. The heart rate was great (between 116-150, in a 20 minute span). The baby is head down and the baby is moving around ALL the time!! No real contractions yet though so it won't be any time too soon.

Baby Pics

I was diagnosed with Gestational Diabetes January 21st (good timing, after my birthday so I still got to have cake:). The down side is that I have had to cut out all refined sugar. The upside is we got to have another sonogram to see Baby Scherm. The baby is already almost 6 lbs.!!

The first picture is a front picture of the baby's face (a little skeleton looking). The second picture is a profile picture. You can see the baby's little hand over the mouth. We may have a thumb sucker on our hands, the baby had their hand over their mouth in the 20 week picture too!!

The baby is doing great! I now have to go to the doctor twice a week until the baby is born. This is also due to the gestational diabetes. Once a week for a doctor's visit and non-stress test (the baby's heart rate and my potential contractions are monitored for 20 minutes). The second visit is for a biophysical ultrasound and baby monitoring. So far only a few Braxton-Hicks, but nothing serious or painful.

Also, because of the gestational diabetes, I'm scheduled to be induced on April 4th, my Grandpa DeGarmo's birthday! It would be really cool to have the baby that day! Especially if it's a boy cause he will be named after Grandpa!

Thank you all for your prayers! Pray that Baby Scherm continues to do well. Pray that I will go into labor on my own, so I don't have to be induced (I'm a little nervous about that).

Baby Shower

I'm not sure where to start to thank everyone for the enormous blessings that were poured out on us this weekend!

Katie and Julie gave us the most beautiful baby shower! I had such a great time and walked away dumbfounded by the presence of God.

I must first tell you, Karl and I moved here to Northern Virginia just over 5 years ago. About 3 months after moving here, I remember crying and telling Karl how hard the move had been for me, not because of location or job, but because I really need girlfriends and I hadn't met any girls. If I had known what God had in store for me I wouldn't have believed it! Through church, bible study, work and neighbors, I have been truely blessed to have more girlfriends than I can count! And not just casual friendships, girls that I can share my heart with over coffee or a great meal (cause you know I love good food:)!!

THANK YOU FROM THE BOTTOM OF MY HEART!!!

I could never have imagined the blessings!

A couple special guests at my shower, who traveled a long way to be there:) Carrie-college friend, traveled from NJ, Heather-college friend, traveled from NC, and Jilanna- childhood friend, traveled from FL!

The six girls in the last picture are all expecting with 4 of us due in April! From Left to Right: Tracey-30 weeks, Erica-20 weeks, me-32 weeks, Kristen-32 weeks, Melissa-13 weeks, Denise-32 weeks.

Best of Luck to you all!!

Room is coming right along

The bottom molding is done now. Only the chair rail and crown molding to go:)

Karl is doing an awesome job!! It looks even better in person!

Dr.'s Appointment

I had a a doctor's appointment today and it went really well. I got to hear the heartbeat again, which was funny cause the baby wouldn't stop moving! The doctor kept getting a little sound and then it would move away. She did finally get it and it was beating at 140 beats per minutes!

The 1st ultrasound we had the baby was asleep and they couldn't wake it up, now it won't be still! I haven't felt the baby move yet, but hopefully it will happen soon:).

First Trimester

Life truely is a miracle! It still amazes me that we are really having a baby. Doctors said we probably wouldn't be able to conceive on our own. I guess they don't know God has a good sense of humor and likes to do things on His own time!!

I must say people warned me about the nausea, gas, cravings, frequent urination and constant tiredness, but not about the crazy dreams!! That has been the biggest surprise.

As you can see from the picture the baby already has arms, legs, fingers & toes. The craziest is you can see the little brain in there, really looks like a brain:) The baby must have gotten that from Karl since it is big enough to fill the skull already. The sound of the heart was like a little train chugging along. And the little guy (or girl) waved at us. That was really cool!

I am just crossing over into the second trimester and I feel so much better! It's amazing how much better a trimester can make you feel. I'm sure Karl is excited too, now we don't have to eat at Chick-fil-A every single day! Although driving 2 hours for a Sonic shake is sounding do-able:)

I haven't gained any weight yet (lost about 7lbs.). I'm told it is coming very soon, the pounds that is. I haven't totally gotten my appetite back so hopefully I will only gain baby weight!

We will try to update this often, so if you are interested in Baby Scherm's progress you can check back!

Baby Scherm-11 weeks

Pregnancy Dreams

The weirdest dream I had was a couple weeks ago. You must know what lead to this dream: I was reading, before I went to bed, about toxoplasmosis. It's a disease that some cats have. It doesn't harm the cat or adults, but it can cause brain damage in a fetus. I read cats get it from eating mice.

In my dream there was a mouse running on the ceililng in our bedroom (which Karl said was impossible, so I had to remind him it was a crazy pregnant dream). I was sleeping on my side and then all of a sudden the mouse goes flying through the air and lands on my hip! I was so scared that he was going to bite me and then I was going to get toxoplasmosis. I was trying to scream for Karl to help me, but I couldn't get any sound out so I was basically hyperventilating. Then I wake up because Karl is tapping me on the hip:) Apparently I was screaming and hyperventilating for real (not just in my dream) and I woke him up!!!

Announcing the polyp

We thought that we had come up with a great way to tell our parents about Baby Scherm. We had heart charms engraved with "Grandma" and "Gramee", to give our moms. We had our first ultrasound picture with us, which we planned to give to the dads.

We went to Texas the week before Labor Day (I had my 10 year class reunion Sept 1st & 2nd). Karl's parents picked us up from the airport and we were staying with them for a couple days before going to Longview. We gave Karl's mom the box with the Grandma charm and his dad a doo-rag with the ultrasound picture wrapped in it. Karl's mom open the charm and didn't realize what it meant, seeing as she already has 2 grandsons. Dad opened the doo-rag and the picture fell on the floor. When Karl put it in front of him he didn't know what it was.

Finally we had to just tell them, We are having a baby, that is a picture of it and the charm is for her because she will be our baby's grandma!! Of course they were SO excited and couldn't wait to tell people.

Next Karl's grandma came over. We just had the ultrasound picture sitting on the counter in front of her. Karl's mom asked her if she knew what it was. She asked who had cancer cause it looked like someone had a polyp in there colonoscopy. Technology sure has changed since she had a baby!

Since our grand scheme didn't go over so well the first time, we decided to give my parents a "New Grandparents" card with the ultrasound in it. Mom opened her charm first, but she didn't have her glasses on to read Gramee. Then dad opened the card and he knew it wasn't a polyp! After putting her glasses on she LOVED the charm and wore it for the rest of the weekend! They too were VERY excited. I thought I was going to have the hide the phone from mom, so she didn't tell Granny before we got the chance to.

Then we began to tell friends. I can't tell you how welcome the news was to everyone who heard it. Several of my girlfriends cried, while a couple others spilled the beans that they were also pregnant! Two of my very closest friends are pregnant and we are all due within a couple days of each other, Dre & Kristen.

Thank you all so much for sharing in this joy!!