Photos: Baby Boy Ultrasound at 37 weeks

With Lydia and Lainey, we never had an ultrasound this late in the pregnancy.
As Lisa said in the doctor's office, "It kind of feels like we are cheating" by getting to see him sooner.
Well, since we're going to be meeting this little guy sooner than later, I'd like to let you cheat as well.

Oh, and for those of you inquisitive types, he was estimated to be weighing 8lbs at this point and somewhere in the 39 week range - so he looks to be big and healthy.

Click on any image to see the larger size.

Update: For some reason, this post has been getting a bunch of views lately. For those of you who somehow found your way here - "Welcome!"  If you'd leave a comment as to what you were searching for that led you here, that would help ease my curiosity a bit. If you were looking for adorable pictures of my little boy at 37 weeks, then I guess you came to the right place. God is good and Marshall is still healthy and growing like a weed.   :)

Photos of Our Baby Boy

He isn't due to arrive until March of next year, but here are the photos from yesterday's ultrasound. The doctor's said everything looks perfect, and he is measuring about 5 days larger than average.

It's truly amazing the level of detail you can now see in the images. We looked at both legs, arms, hands and feet. We were able to count his fingers, see both nostrils and checked the compartments of his heart. We also verified that he is receiving good blood flow from the umbilical cord and that his stomach, kidneys and lungs are all exactly as they should be. Absolutely amazing.

Click on any of the images for a larger view. 

Our Baby's footprint is 3.74cm long.

This profile view shows us his nose, mouth, hand and knee.

In this profile view, he had pulled his legs over his head and was holding onto them with his hands.

In this 3D image, our boy is laying on his left side, with both his hands under his head. (I sleep this way too.)

Hears a 3D view of our little boys face.

Labor of Love - TuesdayTunes

This song has been playing in my head and on my iPod for weeks now.
The following lyrics have really caused me to dwell on the incredible reality of the Incarnation:

"But the baby in her womb, He was the maker of the moon
He was the Author of the faith that could make the mountains move"

Lyrics for "Labor of Love" from "Behold the Lamb of God" by Andrew Peterson:

It was not a silent night
There was blood on the ground
You could hear a woman cry
In the alleyways that night
On the streets of David's town

And the stable was not clean
And the cobblestones were cold
And little Mary full of grace
With the tears upon her face
Had no mother's hand to hold

It was a labor of pain
It was a cold sky above
But for the girl on the ground in the dark
With every beat of her beautiful heart
It was a labor of love

Noble Joseph at her side
Callused hands and weary eyes
There were no midwives to be found
In the streets of David's town
In the middle of the night

So he held her and he prayed
Shafts of moonlight on his face
But the baby in her womb
He was the maker of the moon
He was the Author of the faith
That could make the mountains move

It was a labor of pain
It was a cold sky above
But for the girl on the ground in the dark
With every beat of her beautiful heart
It was a labor of love
For little Mary full of grace
With the tears upon her face
It was a labor of love

Conception to Birth Visualized

This new research out of Yale University is absolutely incredible.
The complexity of the human body is absolutely breathtaking.
The developmental/growth process of it is unfathomable.

"...so perfectly organized a structure, it was hard not to attribute Divinity to it..."

"So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them." (Genesis 1:27)

(HT: Justin Taylor)

The Introduction - Baby #2

Adelaine Ruth Walker
Our second daughter was born on Monday, October 4, 2010 @ 2:18PM.
She weighed 8lbs 4oz and was 21.5in long.
She has quite a bit of hair and is absolutely perfect.
Mother and daughter are doing great!

Click here for some photos of Adelaine, or watch this slideshow:

Great Expectations

Over the course of the last week, I have been eagerly awaiting the arrival of our second child. As we moved closer to our due date (Sunday, 26SEP10), I became more and more excited. These thoughts echoed in my head and were reiterated by myself and others verbally time and time again.

Today could be the day…
Any moment now. ..
It could happen at any time…

Now, here we are 4 days after the due date and little has changed. We still have no new baby to show off to the world. We are still waiting with great expectation the arrival of this child. Our family and friends are excited to meet him/her. Coworkers keep asking about the status and are shocked when I show up at work every day.

I know that this baby will come sooner than later, at a time when I am not expecting it.
I know that this event will change everything in our family (again).
I know that there are a lot of people praying for us and praying for the little one’s arrival, and we appreciate those prayers.

But we would rather have the baby here with us now.
This has prompted me to think a lot about Christ’s impending return.

He will come when we are not expecting it. (1 Corinthians 15:51-52)
He will change everything (again). (Revelation 21:1)
There are lots of people praying for His arrival. Come Lord Jesus! (Revelation 22:20)

Do I live with the eager expectation of Christ’s arrival?
Do I share this excitement with friends, family and coworkers?

Tragically, the answer is all too often a resounding “No!”, but I am challenged by this thought. I pray that I might begin to live for Christ with the same anticipation of His return that I have for my baby’s arrival.

Come quickly, Lord Jesus! (Revelation 3:11)

Oh, and baby, if you want to arrive soon, that would be great too!

Official Walker Baby #2 Results

Here are the results of the Official Walker Baby #2 Poll.
If you still want to take a guess, you can do so here.
(Anything submitted after the baby is born will not count.)

Official Internet Poll - Walker Baby #2

Ultrasound #2 - (Baby #2)

Click on any photo to see larger version.

Baby Announcement #2

This is what was happening at our kitchen table exactly 4 weeks ago at this exact minute:


Here's the 8 week ultrasound photos.

The Introduction 2.0

Anticipated Arrival Date: 26SEP10

At this point, Lisa has felt a bit more queasy than when she was pregnant with Lydia. She hasn't been physically sick, but she has felt more nauseous and tired than she was during her first pregnancy.

I'm pretty much thrilled and am looking ofrward to this part of the journey again. I'm sure it will be quite a bit different, as we have Lydia to take care of this time around.

One Giant Leap

Last night I was sitting in the white chair in our living room and Lydia crawled over to me and pulled herself up to a standing position, hanging on to the seat with one hand. She cruised to the end of the chair and then paused, with one hand barely touching the arm of the chair. At the time, Lisa was sitting at the end of the couch playing around on the laptop, unaware of what was going on. I said Lisa's name to get her attention and Lydia looked back at me over her shoulder.

I was afraid that my attempts to get Lisa's attention might have distracted Lydia from her previous thought. However, in a few short moments, Lydia let go of the arm of the chair and proceeded to walk, unassisted and unencouraged, from my chair to the edge of the couch, a distance of about 3 feet. She arrived at her destination safely and without incident and we all celebrated with clapping and cheering.

This is, to the best of my knowledge, the first time that Lydia has walked from one place to another with someone encouraging her to do so. Look out world, here she comes!

Lydia Leigh's First Year

I put the following video together to celebrate Lydia's first birthday.
I am very happy with how it turned out.

Lydia Leigh's First Year from Jeremy Walker on Vimeo.

Learning Lessons Over the Miles

This past Saturday, Lisa, Lydia and I ran a 5k to help raise funds to build an elementary school in Haiti (www.growinghopeforhaiti.org). Actually, Lydia rode a 5k in her stroller, which I pushed the 3.1 miles. She was tired and crying just prior to the start of the race, but I decided to give it a try anyway. We ran toward the sun for the first mile and Lydia continued crying the entire way. When we finally turned the corner and the sun was out of her face, Lydia promptly fell asleep for the remainder of the race. It was about at this point of the race that the gentle downhill turned into a ever-increasing uphill run. Every time I though we might have reached the plateau I was greeted with another hill. Notice how great I look in the wonderful snapshot of Lydia and I crossing the finish line.

Here are some observations from my race:
Not all 5ks are created equal.
My first ever 5k was a totally flat course, based in a floodplain. The 5k we ran in the Spring had a large hill in the middle of the race, but then we turned around and had a nice downhill run for the majority of the back half of the race. The course this past weekend was downhill the first mile and then basically uphill the remaining 2 miles, with a brutally steep hill the last few hundred yards to the finish line.

You run differently when pushing a stroller.
This is obvious at a glance but becomes a harsh reality once you begin the race. As you attack hills, you find your arms tiring of the effort to keep the stroller far enough in front of you to allow you to drive your legs with power over the hill. This expense of energy takes a toll after several hills and your legs get tired much more quickly.

You breathe differently when pushing a stroller.
Being slightly bent over hinders your ability to grab a complete breath, especially when you are working your way up a hill. The downhill stretches become a respite where you can let gravity pull the stroller for you and you can stretch your arms out and relax your posture. These are the moments where you have to capitalize on catching as much oxygen as possible.

Your child's attitude/demeanor can and will alter your pace throughout the race.
I started the race a little quicker than I normally would, because I was hoping that Lydia would stop crying and fall asleep. Once I saw the turn away from the sun my pace quickened even more. For this particular race, this meant that my pace over the first mile was significantly faster than I would have run on my own or if she was happy at the time. While this mile was mostly downhill anyway, I burned a lot more energy and effort to cover it quicker than I would have otherwise. This led me to essentially starting the climb on the back two-thirds of the race slightly out of breath and with a higher heart rate than I would normally have liked.

I am not as young as I once was.
I ran my first 5k after 6 weeks of dedicated training. I ran the same flat 5k a year later having trained consistently for a month and then we had Lydia and I didn't run for 4 weeks leading up to race day. The 5k earlier this year and had run a couple of times in the month leading up to the race, but I wasn't consistent at all and wouldn't dare call it training of any sort. This was also my first 5k pushing Lydia, who at the time weighed in around 15 pounds. I had not trained or run at all leading up to this race and it really beat me up. Lydia was heavier (25 pounds) I was more out of shape and the course was harder than any I have run to date. My legs are about 90% today and it is the first day that standing up from a sitting position doesn't hurt.

---

Lessons Learned & Goals:
I want to run another 5k after training consistently for it.
I want to reduce my course time.
I want to own the course and not have it mock me.
I want to be able to walk normally without pain within 2 days of the race.
I should heed my wife's warnings and walk some of the course if I have not trained.
Enduring to finish comes at a steep cost when you aren't prepared for the race.

Molars Mean Misery

The past few night have been a bit restless, as Lydia has been waking up numerous times in the night crying and sitting up in bed. Usually, she will lay back down and fall back asleep fairly quickly, but that has not been the case these past few evenings. While I haven't had to stay up for more than 10 or 15 minutes with her at a time, it is still disrupting my sleep and making me a bit more tired than usual during the day.

Based on her restless nights, constant drooling and her overall melancholy mood, it appears that Lydia is working on getting her first molar. While she was a bit fussy and drooled everywhere during the rest of her teething adventures, she was never as clingy or so often upset as she has been these past few days. I suppose it makes sense that the molars coming in would bother her more, due to their size and basically flat-topped shape. I'm sure the sharp, smaller edges of the previous teeth made the process quicker and less painful for her.

So we have an absolutely adorable 11 month old at home who is happy one minute and incredibly sad the next.

Aside from giving her ice cubes, cold water, teething rings, Tylenol and Baby Orajel, does anyone have any ideas on what we might be able to do to help this teething process be less painful for her?

Reducing Our Debt, One Diaper at a Time

My wife and I live fairly frugal lives, which is helping us in our attack on eliminating our debt. So far we have paid off our car debt 3 years early and are working towards getting rid of our student loan debt in the next 2 years. (If you want some good advice on how to get out from under your mountain of debt, I'd recommend dropping by DaveRamsey.com for starters.)

Obviously, trying to get out of debt and having our first child at the same time would probably not be the ideal way to go about things, but here we are pressing on and living on the cheap as much as possible. With a little mouth to feed and small body to clothe, some things are just plain expensive. Recently, Lisa has begun making some of the baby food at home, which has saved us a bunch of money.

One other way we try to save money is when we purchase diapers. When Lydia came home from the hospital, we tried using cloth diapers for a couple of weeks. While we were fairly pleased with this endeavor, we quickly realized that this method of diapering was not very travel friendly. I mean, what do you do with all the diapers when you are out of state for a week? So we switched to disposable diapers for our Christmas trip to Michigan and decided on our way home that the cloth diapers had to go.

Since that time, we have been purchasing disposable diapers and have been enjoying their convenience and wicking ability. We primarily have been purchasing the "Up and Up" Target brand disposables and have been really pleased with them. They were cheap, strong, absorbent and didn't leak very often for us at all.

A month ago, Lisa and I were at Walmart buying some baby food and other various necessities and we needed some diapers, so we grabbed a pack of the "Parent's Choice" Walmart brand disposables and tossed them into the cart. This is a mistake that will not ever be repeated in our house. Since I noticed last night that our stack of these diapers is almost gone, I am celebrating this fact today by informing you all of the nightmare you are signing up for if you ever purchase "Parent's Choice" diapers for your little one.

To say that these diapers do not fit well is kind of an understatement. It would be a bad thing if they were tight around the legs and loose around the waist or vice versa. The reality extends much farther than that. In fact, these diapers are lose in the legs and do not fit around the waist well at all. This dastardly combination inevitably leads to having huge problems keeping all of your sweet baby's "presents" wrapped and under cover.

In addition to any smelly mess that might come from this powerful tag-team of inability to contain anything solid is the diaper's seeming refusal to hold much more than a few ounces of liquid in its "absorbent" fabric construction. This soggy development will undoubtedly lead to numerous opportunities to see how fast you can not only change your baby's entire outfit but also the crib sheet as well. I understand that a baby might overwhelm a diaper from time to time and I won't hold the rare failure to retain against any brand of diaper. However, when you have to change your child's outfit every other time you have to change a diaper, it can begin to seem like a pattern. And when you have to change your little girl's crib sheets twice in a day because her cheap little diaper wouldn't keep her rear end dry let alone the rest of her outfit and crib safe from the moisture, then you will find yourself feeling something akin to how I felt yesterday afternoon.

I do not want to be unclear in this at all. I know that I am not buying the highest quality of diaper for my child to scoot around on and some of you might try to shame me for it. Talk to me in 6 years when my kid is doing fine in school and we are debt free and able to go on some really fun vacations - at that point I am sure Lydia will forgive me for wrapping her tush in cheap diapers.

A cheap diaper does not need to be a poorly designed diaper. Whoever thought that the idea of having the Velcro tab come already attached to the back of the diaper has either never actually changed a diaper when a child is screaming or just plain hates parents. There is no good reason for why the diaper is designed in such a way. It causes you to first open up the diaper in its entirety and then attempt to unlatch the Velcro so that it won't be stuck under the baby's rear end when you slide the diaper up under them. I found that most of the time these best laid plans fall short of flawless execution and I end up having to go hunting for the Velcro tab that is now attached to the back of the diaper somewhere behind my little girl. It also seems that the tab lengths can vary a bit from diaper to diaper, which really makes it hard to get used to the insanity of the design and packaging.

So, the moral of this long tale is this: Buying cheap diapers is fine, but don't buy "Parent's Choice" diapers from Walmart. Unlike some people, I do not believe Walmart is the devil or anything like that. However, I do believe that whoever designed the "Parent's Choice" diapers for Walmart may very well indeed be the spawn of Satan or one of his minions.

Thankfully, we are almost finished using these little white misshapen nightmares. I'm looking forward to getting back to using the "Up and Up" Target brand diapers almost as much as I was looking forward to using the disposable diapers over the cloth diapers.

It's okay for us to be cheap and save money and work on reducing our debt. In fact, that's a great thing to be trying to do, especially in the current economy. However, I beg you to learn from our mistake: Do not use the "Parent's Choice" diapers from Walmart. It's not worth your time, frustration and numerous laundry loads that will result from attempting to use this diaper for what it will supposedly do. If you need a cheap, solid, practical disposable diaper, I'd recommend using the "Up and Up" Target brand.

Blessed by Family

I am blessed.
I come from a large family of 9 children and have two parents who have remained committed to one another for over 30 years.

I am blessed.
I married a wonderful woman who has one sibling and two parents who have remained committed to one another for over 30 years.

I am blessed.
My wife and I now have a beautiful daughter and pray that God allows us over 30 years to remain committed to each other.

I am blessed.
I enjoy time spent with all of Lisa's large extended family and she enjoys being with my large extended family.

I am blessed.
God has called me into His family and I am destined to spend eternity with Him.

I am blessed.
God has given me a local church body to serve in and has allowed me to do so for over 8 years in various capacities.

I am blessed.
God has placed a large group of Christians in my life to challenge me and encourage me.

I am blessed.
God has blessed me with a family of my own, two families through marriage, a relationship with Him, a local church family and a Christian peer family.

I am blessed.

Lydia's Links

Here is the link to all of the uploaded photos of Lydia.

Here is the link to all of the uploaded videos of Lydia.


Baby Lydia Gets Checked Out

The Introduction

Lydia Leigh Walker
Born on Monday, November 10th at 7:07pm.
She weighed 8 pounds 9 ounces and was 22 inches long.

More photos of Lydia Leigh Walker

Lydia Leigh's Photo Galleries

2009
February
January

2008
Birth through year end
Ultrasound photos