family

And we have two baby girls!!!!! We were in utter shock as we surely thought we’d be having a boy/girl set or two boys- so when our little ones came out they gave us quite the surprise!

I’m now over 35 weeks pregnant with twins and less than two weeks away from being full term for twins (about 37 weeks)!!! I’m so happy to be so close. I cannot express how incredibly grateful I am to have made it this far with our preterm labor scare at 29 weeks. Thank you all for your sweet comments, thoughts and prayers.

Before the babies come, I thought I’d share with you some of our maternity photos, taken by the lovely April with April Cole Photography. These were taken when I was 30 weeks and I (as have the babies) have since grown quite a bit bigger- hard to believe I know! Since we were rather limited with my mobility, April was nice enough to come out to our house and shoot the photos right there on our property!

Here are some of my favorites:

And don’t you know that the turkeys had to stick themselves into the photos?! They seriously won’t leave us alone when they are loose (it’s quite annoying) and flew up onto the porch to check out what everyone was doing! Haha!

We are thrilled with the photos and so glad to have them to remember this pregnancy and special time in our lives. If you live in the Triangle area in North Carolina or anywhere within the vicinity of Saxapahaw, please consider April for your future photo shoots. We had such a great time!

It won’t be long now until the babies are here, so if you don’t see a post from me for a bit, you’ll know why 🙂  We are excited to find out their genders and see their little faces for the first time- it’s been a long wait for these precious little ones!

We are on vacation at Hilton Head Island this week with family, so please excuse the break for a bit with no posts. I’ll be back next week to keep you updated on what’s happening at the Roost!

Hope you are having a great summer,

After working on our baby registries and having my first baby shower over the weekend we have been thinking a lot about what items are essential to have before our little ones arrive! Just entering the baby stores with a sea of baby “must-haves” and dozens of choices for each thing is incredibly overwhelming and can be downright stressful. We were extremely blessed to receive a good variety of gifts as well as all of the major and important items on our registry!

Onesies with chicks- how perfect!

good friends at my first baby shower

eating brunch on the back veranda at the shower

 I don’t think I will want my house transforming into a babyland zone of toys, walkers, swings, play things, and whatever other baby contraptions cluttering every room! We just simply don’t have the space for that to be honest.

So, we are really trying to simplify our wish list for the twins and register for the essentials. Of course, our essential list may differ from yours, and there are many items that we’d still like to have that perhaps we don’t need, but we are trying our best not to overdo it on baby gear. To me, this stuff takes up precious space and distracts us from working and playing with our babies in other ways that are beneficial for building their minds and muscles–not to mention the expense of all these extra things!

Below is a list of items we plan to NOT register for and go without (unless donated/gifted to us to try):

– changing table 
we will use a dresser with a changing pad–that way the dresser can stay in their room and be useful

–  swing
Nice to have, but not necessary.

– Pack n’ Play
This just takes up room when they can just as easily play on the floor. If we need to be moving around or doing housework, we can put them in the sling or carrier with us. The only exception is we may have to get a portable crib for two, which could double as a play-yard.

– diaper pail 
We plan to cloth diaper the babies for a variety of reasons (saving $$ is one), but even if you use disposable diapers you can just use a trash can perhaps located in the garage or on the back porch. We will be using wet bags for cloth diapers.

– full sized high chairs
 We plan to use portable high chair seats (Chicco 360 booster seat) that clip-on to the dinner table-a HUGE space saver!

– toys 
We aren’t registering for or buying many toys ourselves- I’m sure they will have plenty loaned or given to them!

– expensive newborn clothes 
Again, I’m sure the twins will receive plenty of darling outfits as gifts, so we won’t waste our money.

– different types of strollers 
We will just be getting ONE all-purpose, high quality double jogging stroller- if needed, we can buy cheapie umbrella strollers later on. We were so blessed to receive the stroller we wanted at our shower!

–  walker or bouncy seat
Again, nice to have but not necessary. It’s important for babies to lie on their tummies to play on the floor to strengthen and exercise important muscles. However, we did receive a nice bouncer as a shower gift so we will certainly try it out and keep it if it turns out to be really useful.

– bassinet 
 They will just use their cribs- plus, our room is located right next to the nursery with a door that connects or adjoins to the room for easy access.

– bottle sterilizer

– wipes warmer
umm……..just one of those things we don’t really need 🙂

-any type of baby videos or other technology

– a bumbo seat
They only use this for a few months anyway before they are sitting up on their own.

The one exception is that we are registering for a large sized portable crib so that we can travel with the babies and have something that we can easily take with us for them to sleep and play in. After getting home with all our gifts from the shower we have been setting up the nursery- it is SO exciting and fun! I will admit though it’s certainly overwhelming the amount of stuff that comes with these tiny babies. We are already running into not having enough space for things–especially in the kitchen. We didn’t think about extra storage  and cabinet space for the booster seats, bottles, sippy cups, toddler plates, snack bowls, baby food storage containers, baby spoons, and bibs.

I’m sure there will be even more items that we can add to this list after our babies are already here and we find we aren’t using a product as much as we thought we would.

What baby gear items did you find unnecessary?