Merry Christmas!

We hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas! We definitely did! It was very busy with 2 kids this year...but also very fun. We wanted to share a few pics from our various Christmas celebrations...ENJOY!

Here is John Henry...just chilling on Mommy's lap on Christmas Eve...

Kenny was so excited about the bike that Santa brought him...He rode it right through the kitchen that morning!!

The boys wore matching jammies over to Mama & Papa's house Christmas morning for breakfast...

And one more pic of John Henry...wearing his adorable Christmas outfit...doesn't he look so handsome??

Pictures!!!

We are all finally home!!! Here are a couple of pics that we wanted to share with everyone....


Here is the BIG BROTHER!
We had just gotten our call that we could come up to the hospital.
We were so excited!




Here is a picture of John Henry...sleeping peacefully.
Hopefully he continues to sleep this good!!




And here is a super-close up!
Such a cutie-pie!!




And...a picture of Kenny & John together!
This was the first time Kenny held John...



Thanks for everyone's well-wishes!
We'll update more soon!

If you haven't heard already.....

Christine usually does the updating on here but she is not home right now because she had the baby on Thursday. John Henry Poling was born at 10:38 pm on 12-04-2008. He is a very healthy 9 lbs 2.7 oz and was 22 1/2 in long (the longest the pediatrician has ever seen!) Christine is doing very well and will be home Sunday and I am sure will update soon. The big brother is cautiously happy right now. I am doing fine just tired of driving back and forth to hospital. More news to come along with pictures!!!!

2 cm????

Just wanted to update everyone on Christine's progress. She had a regular check-up & is already 2cm dilated!!! She has been having some issues lately with swelling & high blood pressure...so the doctor is having her come back on Friday for more testing...nothing super-serious, but something the doctor would like to keep a closer eye on. Once the results come back from that, the doctor said we may be scheduling an induction. This is not really a big surprise...this is exactly how things were going at this point with her pregnancy with Kenny. Looks like we will be meeting John real soon! We'll keep you updated as things happen!

Update on John Henry

We haven't really updated anyone on the baby lately & thought we would give a little status-report. Christine had been warned a couple weeks ago that he was measuring a little big, so her doctor scheduled an ultrasound to double-check. Well...today was the big ultrasound. They are estimating that he is about 4lbs, 9oz at this point...which puts him at the 77th percentile for his gestational age. It doesn't come completely as a surprise...Kenny was 2 weeks early & still weighed in at 8lbs,13oz. He & Christine have also been followed pretty closely thorough-out the pregnancy & so far everything is progressing just as it should. We are getting excited about his arrival & can't wait to meet him. Ken just finished painting his room. We'll post pictures of the room soon! Next thing you know...we'll be posting pictures of John Henry himself! We hope everyone is doing good & can't wait to share our good news soon (but not too soon)!

Branson

We wanted to share some photos from our recent trip to Branson. We had lots of fun & did all sorts of things.

The first day we went to Silver Dollar City.
Here is a picture of the 3 of us...


Another pic from Silver Dollar City.
Kenny enjoyed all the rides...


The next day we rode on the Branson Scenic Railway.
It took us for a ride thru the Ozark mountains.
Here is a picture of Ken & Kenny...


On our last day we rode the Ducks.
A picture of Kenny waiting to ride...

Christine (& John) & Kenny had lots of fun...


Our last stop before heading home...go-carts.
A pic of Ken & Kenny going too fast...

Summer Fun

We thought we'd share some fun pics of Kenny over the summer. We had lots of fun doing all sorts of things!

This one is from when we went to see Diego, Live at the Fox Theatre. Kenny had lots of fun & couldn't believe that we got to see Diego in-person!


Ken took Kenny up to Walgreens one night & they came home with this giant sucker. FYI...he still hasn't finished it yet :)


This one is from when Kenny's friend Emily came over for a visit. They had lots of fun swimming, playing in the bounce house & playing on the swing-set!


Kenny got a new pair of swimming goggles from Grandma Zangraft & loves to wear them in the bathtub.


This one is from when we went to see Disney on Ice. Kenny is wearing his Incredibles mask. Since going to see the Incredibles at Disney on Ice, Kenny has decided that he will be one of the Incredibles for Halloween...I'm sure we'll have lots of pics from Halloween to share :)


Hope you enjoyed the pics. Nothing else extra-special to report. Baby-John seems to be doing good. We have had all good reports at each doctor's appt. Only 3 more months to go! Yikes!

Drumroll Please!

Our big ultrasound was today. It appears that Kenny was right...IT'S A BOY!! By all the measurements that the tech took, he is completely healthy & growing just like he should. He was not shy at all & was proud to show us that he was a boy:) We have decided on a first name--JOHN--after Christine's father. We still haven't decided on a middle name though. We'd love your input. Please feel free to leave suggestions under comments below. We haven't shared the news with Kenny just yet. We want to tell him together & have to wait until we are all actually at the same place at the same time. We'll probably share the news with him later tonight.

We have offically made it past the half-way mark & can't believe that we will become a family of 5 (can't forget our first born--Sergio) in about 4 months! Thanks again for all of your support & prayers!

BIG NEWS!

Many of you may already know this....but we are finally ready to tell the whole world! WE ARE PREGNANT! It has been a very long road to get here & we could not have done it without many of your prayers. So...down to the facts that everyone will probably want to know...Christine is currently 13.5 weeks pregnant & is due 12/17/08. We shared the news with Kenny a couple weeks ago. He is convinced that it will be a boy & he will have BLUE hair & we will name him Freddy! We have tried telling him that it may be a girl & he just won't hear it. We're giving up on that battle for now. If we end up with a boy, he will be happy. If it's a girl, we'll have to convince him how great it will be to have a sister. We'd love to get your thoughts about the sex of the baby--answer our survey to the left! We don't have a scanner, so I did my best to take a pic of the most recent ultrasound with our camera.

Christine has a lot going on...blood clotting disorder, thyroid problems & even more (way too much to go into here). So, we probably won't feel completely relieved until we are holding our precious little one in our arms. But...the good news is we have made it out of the 1st trimester!

It's been way too long...

Life has been pretty crazy for us...haven't had a lot of time to update lately! The weatherman was predicting a perfect holiday weekend, so we had lots of plans that centered around the outdoors. Unfortunately, the weatherman was COMPLETELY WRONG! So, we decided to take Kenny on Metrolink down to Union Station. He had lots of fun riding the Metrolink. It's the closest thing to a train he has riden on...and he LOVES trains. Here's a pic of Kenny feeding the fish at Union Station.

We also took him inside for a little fun. I'm not quite sure what it's called...but they had these trampolines for the kids to bounce on. They put Kenny in a harness, which keeps him safe...but it also let him bounce really high. Kenny said he got to jump 'really high like Superman!'. I've posted a short video clip below for you to see. I can't figure out how to get it facing in the right direction...so just turn your neck a bit while you watch it:)

Like I already said, life has been chaotic the last few months. I'm going to work really hard to try & update more often...promise!

Gotta get out of here!

We have had quite a couple of days!

On Friday, we got quite a bit of snow & Kenny didn't have school. We had lots of fun throwing snowballs at each other!

Then on Saturday morning at around 3:30am, Kenny woke up with a fever...he did not feel well at all. We took him to the doctor & found out that he had Strep-Throat...YUCK! We thought he was doing better, but he couldn't manage to keep his fever down...so Mommy & Kenny took one more day off of school on Monday.

By late Monday morning Kenny was going stir crazy...his fever had stayed down on it's own...so we just had to get out of the house!

Remember how I told you we had just had a bunch of snow on Friday...well, by Monday it was 70+ degrees! Welcome to St. Louis:) So we decided to go the zoo for a couple of hours. I've posted a couple of pics below that Kenny took himself at the zoo. Santa brought him a camera for Christmas. He is quite the little photographer. Enjoy!


Polar Bear


Prairie Dogs

Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

THIS ONE IS A VIDEO...click on the play icon to play short video clip!!

Who would have guessed it was as cold as 6 degrees less than a week ago?? We enjoyed a nice warm-up in the weather today...50+ degrees! Kenny has really mastered his tricycle. Just about 6 months ago, he could barely use the pedals...but now he is a pro! He has a lot of fun going down this hill by our house...the faster the better!

Howdy Partner!

Kenny & Sergio had fun dressing up like cowboys!
You can just see the joy in Sergio's face!