I know it’s only been a few weeks since we sent out VIP photos, but there are more there for you to check out.  You should be getting an email soon with the current password.  And if you aren’t getting VIP emails, but would like to, please shoot us an email (vip at lammlelounge.com) and we’ll put you on the list.

As the title of this post suggests, we’ve had a pretty crazy couple of weeks.  Harper got her first illness, which caused her to run a fever for about 30 hours, until finally breaking.  She was getting up near 102*, but the doctor was right - it eventually went back down after her body was finished fighting off whatever it was.  Of course her mother and I were freaking out as new parents do.  I’m sure the next time we won’t even bat an eyelash until it reaches at least 103*.  Yeah…right.

Then this past weekend we had a rather exciting visit from Grandpa George (my biological father, for those of you who are trying to keep your flowcharts in order), the last grandparent she needed to meet.  He got to spend a few hours with us at our condo as he passed through the area on his way back home from a whirlwind trip through northern Illinois.  We still have 4 great-grandparents for her to meet - Gene and Betty, George Zebrun Sr., and Great-grandpa Schumacher - but a lifetime of reminding her who the heck all of these people are and how they’re related to her.  The poor kid’s going to think anyone over the age of 50 is a grandparent.

Not much else to tell, other than we’re looking forward to our next visitors - Grandma Lesa, Grandpa Steve, Aunt Sara, and Cousin Bertelsen, who, by that time, we should know if it will be another girl in the family or break the mold and be a boy (everyone thinks it’s going to be a boy).  So I’m sure we’ll have more pictures in a few more weeks.  Keep checking back!

Sorry it’s been a while since we’ve updated here. Things have just been incredibly busy for the Lammle Family as of late.

But before we get into the latest going on in our life, we’d like to first say congratulations to our friends Nate and Beth Lown on the birth of their son Benjamin Reinhart Lown on April 12, 2008.

Little Ben and Harper are almost exactly 3 months apart! That should make for some fun family nights spent at backyard barbecues in the years to come.

As for us, we’ve been busy getting our house in order, mainly. We’re revamping the basement office for a super-secret project that we can’t tell you about just yet, but keep your eyes here for future news. Part of that revamp is doing some major purging of our less-than-needed clutter around the house as we get rid of clothes we don’t wear, books we don’t read, movies we don’t watch, and even a couch we stopped liking about 2 years ago. Our goal behind getting rid of this stuff is to make our house easier to care for so that we don’t spend all our free time cleaning and organizing, leaving us free to spend time with Harper and each other. It’s going to be a long road, but we both know it’s going to be worth it in the end.

Speaking of Harper, she’s doing really well lately. She’s sleeping all through the night, often at 9-10 hour stretches! Which has given us parental units time to pursue some of the things we haven’t been able to do in a while - I’m writing, reading, and watching all kinds of movies and TV shows on DVD; Andrea is reading and working on her super secret project that I spoke of earlier (shhhh…). In the meantime, Harper is growing by leaps and bounds. She’s reaching out for things now, which, once she gets hold of them, go immediately to her drooling mouth to chew on. She’s sucking on her hands like crazy and is still talking up a storm. She’s even begun to laugh every once in a while. And with all that drooling, we have to wonder if a tooth is going to be poking through those gums sometime soon. Solid foods are not far behind…

So life is good in the Lammle house at the moment. We’ve been able to enjoy some of these nice Spring days and it’s been a great couple of weeks for us. Sadly, Spring is usually over before it even really begins in Missouri, so we’ll soon be in store for 90 degree weather and oppressive humidity. Joy!

Before we say goodbye for now, here’s a picture of Harper in one of her Winnie the Pooh hats that Andrea loves so much. She is quite the cutie if we do say so ourselves…

We made another trip to Fisher this past weekend for the wedding of our good friends, Helen & Eric. It worked out well because Harper got to meet her Great Grandparents - affectionately known as Granny & Pop - as well as her Great Aunt Pam and Great Uncle Byron! Grandma Lesa and Grandpa Steve were also able to spend a little time with her while we were at the reception.

We’ve had some big things happening lately. Harper is doing just fine riding in the car now, she’s sleeping on her own in her swing, she’s doing ok riding in her stroller, she’s rolling over, babbling away at us (especially just after she wakes up from a nap), and she’s begun reaching for things. Big steps for such a little girl!

If you’re a member of our VIP club, enjoy some new pictures and videos from the last week. We’re hoping to have even more soon enough!

Andrea was messing around, taking pictures of Harper today, and happened to snap this one that I think is hilarious. So I thought I’d share it with everyone. She’s making a face we’ve all made from time to time in this life.

I’d love to know what’s going through her little brain at the moment.

A while back, our friend Piper turned us on to these great little t-shirts called “The Great Mysterio”. They’re these tiny t-shirts that come in a small bag and you have no idea what they say on the front. The idea is that The Great Mysterio will determine what your child will grow up to be by what is on the shirt. Of course the professions that your newborn might one day become include things like “Criminal Mastermind”, “Gameshow Host”, and “Professional Bowler”, so it’s not to be taken too seriously. It’s just a fun way to surprise someone when they have a kid.

What’s odd is, it seems that these shirts are often close to the mark or at least have some kind of connection with the people you give them to. For example, we bought a Mysterio shirt for our niece Lucy and her one-day profession was going to be “Big Tipper.” The thing is, her dad Drew is a restaurant manager, and her mom Leigh has been a waitress more than once in her life. So it seemed almost fitting. We then bought one for our friends The Lowns for their soon-to-be-born son. Their t-shirt said “Flamenco Dancer”, which is interesting because flamenco sounds a lot like flamingo, and the pink bird has been a sort of mascot for their marriage. Some odd things are afoot with these Mysterio t-shirts.

So what about the shirt that Piper got for Harper?

Well, check out the pics below and see for yourself what OUR little girl is going to one day be:

Yes, that’s right, she will apparently be a “Hog Calling Champion”.

We couldn’t be more proud… *sniff, sniff*

Due to popular demand, here’s a small album of photos of the whole event.

Harper’s Debut

Enjoy!

Yes, it’s me Andrea. I’m actually posting for once… and if you listen to my husband, he’ll tell you that he’s shocked to find out I’m participating in my daughter’s upbringing. Apparently, he plans on bringing her up via blog. She’s going to need internet access to know if she’s grounded or not. We’ll see how that goes.

Anyhow, enough about Rob’s snarky comments. Today we had our 3D ultrasound. If you’ve never seen one of these, they are simply amazing. It’s unbelievable that the technology is around that allows me to see my daughter in almost scary detail, when she’s just 27 weeks along.

Here you will see little Harper giving us what appears to be a smile. You can also see a foot in the picture, because apparently we all start out as major contortionists. She’s in a breech position right now, which means that her head is upward and her little butt is down. This doesn’t mean her legs are down near said butt though, as we found out. She’s bent herself into a comfy little pretzel.

We’re in the home stretch now. I’m officially in the 3rd trimester. We’re excited about getting closer and closer to meeting our little girl in person. Photos and ultrasounds can only take us so far……..(Extra periods in the ellipse are added to annoy my husband) but video does help, as we were pleasantly surprised to find out.

For now, 7 seconds of video and a ton of ultrasounds pictures will have to hold us over. The work we’re starting on the nursery this weekend should help feed our excitement and keep our minds occupied until she arrives. Look for pictures of her room to come soon………. (I wish I was kidding about annoying him, but really…I’m not.)

P.S. If you click on one of the first two images, it will take you to the entire gallery of 3D photos. (All 54 of them!)

P.P.S. I enjoy giving my husband a hard time. Especially since he gave me so much grief about being the one to write this post… I have to get my digs in when I can. And if I continue to listen to him, the reason I must get my digs in are because he’s so perfect. I would agree with him, but he’s sitting right here. I can’t give in that easily can I?

Last week, Andrea had another doctor’s appointment. Because Harper was so active last time, the doc had her do another sonagram so they could take some measurements and make sure everything else was going smoothly. We’re happy to report that everything looks great. In fact, Harper has doubled in size since the last appointment, breaking the 1lb. mark!

Here’s one of the better pictures of Harper’s profile from the latest appointment:

Compare a similar photo from the previous appointment and her size increase is pretty clear. She’s growing fast and it sounds like she’s only going to get bigger from here on out, with the doctor saying she’ll gain about 1/2 lb. every week until she’s born. Fascinating stuff, I tell ya.

Andrea began feeling Harper move inside her a few weeks ago, but finally felt her on the outside about a week ago when Harper gave her insides a particularly solid kick. I hadn’t had such luck, but I was especially bummed when the ultrasound tech felt her before I did! Thankfully this weekend I got my first little bump from some wiggling appendage inside. It was such a cool feeling.

In other news, we’re busy working on the nursery. We picked up an inexpensive, but pretty nice quality dresser from a local furniture store. We ditched the standard drawer pulls, however, and added a set of pulls in the shape of a smiling monkey that we picked up at Target long ago. It looks incredibly too cute for words. We also bought some plain white onesies at Wal-Mart over the weekend and used our computer skills and iron-on transfer paper to create a few custom designs using Calvin & Hobbes, The Muppets, and even a few Ugly Dolls (though sadly we couldn’t find a good picture of Harper’s doll, Chuckanucka). We’ll get some good pictures of these onesies and post them sometime this week.

That about sums it up for now. Things are going really well and we couldn’t be happier at the moment. Keep checking back here for updates! And thanks to all who are commenting or sending emails wishing us well. We really appreciate all the support we’re getting from everyone.

Thursday evening, Andrea and I had an ultrasound appointment and we were able to see that we’re going to be having a little girl. Luckily we had names picked out for either gender, so we’ve already started to call her Harper. The middle name is still up for grabs, but there are a few front-runners that are going neck-and-neck.

Yes, Harper is a bit of an unusual name. While we don’t remember the exact conversation where the name was brought up as a possibility, I seem to recall we were trying to think of something that wasn’t typically girly (not that there’s anything wrong with that, it’s just not our style). I think I jokingly said, “What about ‘Scout’?”, alluding to the young tomboy who is the main character in “To Kill A Mockingbird”. Scout was a bit too masculine (and I knew that when I made the joke), however, referring to the book made our train of thought jump to the female author, Harper Lee, and, well, the rest is history.

Now that we’ve explained the origin of our daughter’s unusual name, let’s just skip right to the moment you’ve all been waiting for anyway: the ultrasound pictures.

Here’s a profile of Harper. I think it’s rather self-explanatory…

This is another profile shot showing the trademark Schumacher cheeks. You should see pictures of Andrea and her brother when they’re little, they have the exact same face as little Harper.

This one’s really strange - the white arrow is pointing at one of our little girls’ eyes. See it now? Freaky, huh? From there you can kind of figure out the rest of the face (her nose is just to the right of her eye and you can almost, sorta make out her other eye).

Here’s one of her little feet. (Women love the pictures of the little feet…)

So there she is - our first glimpse at Harper. Hope everyone enjoyed this little tour through Andrea’s belly (which is slowly swelling to fit her maternity jeans) and check back again in the future for more information as it comes in!

As you all know this was the home of our wedding website. We were pretty proud of the Lammle Lounge concept and thought a website might be nice to have, so we held onto it even after the wedding was long past. However, we didn’t really have a plan for the site either, and were entirely too busy to deal with it during the school year, so it has pretty much sat here dormant since about November. Frankly, though, the main problem was that we simply didn’t have anything going on in our lives worth writing about.

Until now.

Yes, Andrea is going to have a baby! She’s about 9 1/2 weeks along, with a due date around Christmas (Dec. 28 or Jan. 3, depending upon which doctor is seeing us). Obviously we’re very excited and, frankly, scared to death, but I suppose that comes with the territory.

So far Andrea has had only minor morning sickness. She doesn’t actually get sick, but she feels sort of nauseous quite a bit. However with the horror stories we’ve been hearing from folks, things could be a lot worse. Her asthma has been acting up, which is apparently very common, but so far it’s been manageable. She’s reading every book she can get her hands on - some good, some not-so-good, some excellent - and is learning all the ins and outs of what she needs to be eating, drinking, and doing to make sure this little guy or gal is healthy. She’s already a great mom.

There will obviously be plenty more to come on this site because we plan on keeping everyone updated on how things are going. We’ll post more ultrasounds and anecdotes (jeesh…there’s a book title if I ever wanted one) as they come, but we at least wanted to get the word out officially and let everyone know to keep checking back at Lammle Lounge for regular updates.

And in other Lammle Family news, we’d like to welcome our new niece, Lucy Barrett, into the world. She was born to Drew and Leigh this evening and sounds like she’s a perfectly healthy little girl. We’ll post pictures as soon as we get them from the proud but exhausted grandparents.

Take care, keep checking back, and wish us luck!