It's Official...Collin James Greer

So after months of indecision, we're happy to annouce that Baby Greer #2 will officially be named Collin James Greer.  Collin is in honor of the Collins portion of Matt's family, and James is in honor of both my grandfathers - Jimmy Ward and Jim Hamilton.  Both names are derivatives of James.  Max is learning how to say his little brother's name.  It mostly comes out as Coll-Coll or Coyin (the L is still hard for him).  We're about 9 weeks away from my due date, and I know it will come so fast.  We can't wait to meet little Collin and have our family complete. 

We've got a really busy next couple of months coming up.  Matt has a couple of trips planned to Atlanta and Louisville for work, so Oma and Aunt Em are coming to stay for those weeks that he's gone.  Nicola and Thomas are coming to visit from Germany the 2nd weekend in April and we are so excited to see them and let Max meet his German family for the first time!  We'll also celebrate Max's and Oma's birthdays that weekend.  A couple of weeks after that is Easter, then only a few weeks until Collin is here!  We started our busy weeks off with a visit from Aunt Gwen, Mariah, Erica, Maddie and Rivers.  Matt and I got a (very small) taste of having more than 1 toddler to take care of when we watched the 3 kids last night.  Here are some pics and a video of the fun they had.

Max and Maddie hanging out on the body pillow...after taking turns jumping on it.

Max decided to have some alone time reading so he climbed up on the pillows and bean bag and covered his face with his book.  Rivers tried everything he could to get Max's attention...with no luck.

Almost all three smiling!

I'm not sure which boy hit Maddie, but this was the beginning of the end of our photo session.

Drumroll please.....

…And the name is…


We don’t know! You may all be very surprised to hear this, especially since we’ve practically told everybody it would be Mason, but Mason is no longer in the running. Sorry everybody! We just decided it’s a little too popular right now and we don’t want him to be one of 3-4 other children with the same name in his class. Not to mention the Kardashian baby is Mason, and we just don’t like that connection! So hopefully no one has bought or made anything with the name Mason or the MTG initials yet.

Even though a few months ago I said it wouldn’t happen, we’re leaning heavily towards Collin for the first name. Middle name is still being decided. We hope to have a firm name for you soon. Fingers crossed!

Lots of changes in the Greer household the past few weeks, trying to make room for Baby. Jiggs made Max a new platform bed (will post pictures as soon as I get the bedding for it!). Max’s bedroom will remain a nursery, and Max has moved into the space formerly known as the guest bedroom on the queen sized bed. Last weekend we let Max sleep in his “big boy bed” for the first time. We were terrified that he would be upset about it, or love it so much that he stayed up and played all night. And I’m not sure why we even worried! Our robot baby had no problems at all getting used to the bigger space. In fact, we think he’s been going to sleep faster – either because he has more room to spread out, or he doesn’t have the animals on his bumper pads to talk to! Either way, we’ll take it! Even with a fairly bad cold the last week or so he’s been sleeping like a champ. This morning I came in to find him laying under the 2 pillows at the top of the bed…not sure how that happened. And I am convinced that one day we’ll walk in there in the morning to find him curled up in a corner of the bedroom in the floor…once he figures out how to climb out of the bed anyway.

We still have a lot to do to get ready for #2, but at least that big hurdle is out of the way. We’ve done some rearranging with the bonus room furniture and downstairs living room to make extra room for double the amount of toys/clothes/books, etc that we know will soon take over. We still have to move all of Max’s clothes over to his new bedroom (as soon as we figure out where we’re going to put it!) and bring down all the little baby clothes, but at least we have a few months for that still!

I’m posting this from a computer other than my laptop, so I don’t have many pictures to share this time – except this one. Max got a surprise Christmas present all the way from Germany yesterday and here is the picture of him opening it! He was so excited to unwrap another present…I think he went into withdrawal after having so much fun with it at Christmas. Thank you so much Nicola and Thomas for sending the gift (and the chocolate, especially) all the way to Nashville! Max loves his toy motorcycle – and baby #2 loves the chocolate! :)

Happy 2011!

Happy New Year!  We are so looking forward to welcoming Max's little brother into our family in 2011.  That's right - we're having another BOY!  I know everybody secretly (and not-so-secretly) wished for a little girl, but we are so happy to have 2 boys....and a little relieved, since we already have everything we need for a boy. 

Now the big question is...what will we name him?  That's still a work in progress...we know the middle name will be Taylor or Collins.  For the first name, we're tossing around a few...Mason, Wyatt, Owen, Noah, Evan...these are all options and in no particular order.  We realized that we picked Max's name exactly 1 month after we found out he was a boy...so I've given Matt until Jan 16 to pick a name or I'm revoking his naming privileges. :)

We've had such a great time the past 6 weeks celebrating the Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year holidays with all of our family and friends.  I'm in the middle of posting a whole batch of pictures from the last month to the shutterfly site, so check those out soon.  I've posted some of them below. 

First snow for Max to play in this winter...he loves it!

One of his favorite pasttimes now...playing in his crib.  Too bad he's about to lose it in a couple of weeks.....

New wagon!

We loved our White Christmas!

With Cousin Luke at the Colbert Christmas

Max had a blast at Uncle Ken & Aunt Gina's being thrown onto the huge beanbags. 

One of about a thousand pictures of Max opening presents...click the shutterfly link to see the rest.

The aftermath of Christmas at Oma & Jiggs'

Christmas at Granne's - Somebody wasn't happy that we wouldn't let him hold a lit candle...

Cooking with Oma!

Christmas at Nana's

And Baby Makes Four

I'm pretty sure unless you've been under a rock for the last few weeks, you already know the big news.  But since I've not posted anything in a while, I'll officially annouce to the blogosphere that there is a new little Greer on the way.  Max will become a big brother on or around May 16!  We're so excited!! 

I tell people a lot that I feel like I've been pregnant for 6 months already.  We started thinking about having baby #2 sometime in May.  I decided to quit taking birth control that month, even though we knew we wanted to wait until July or August to officially "try".  We really wanted Max to be able to celebrate his 2nd birthday before the baby was born, so we figured August would be a good month to start.  And August was all it took!  Apparently God was in agreement that Max needs a sibling sooner rather than later! :)

Now we're 12, almost 13 weeks along, and time seems to be dragging.  I'm hoping with the holidays coming up then having to start making room in the house for baby after Christmas, the rest of the time will go by fast.  We will definitely find out whether it's a boy or a girl - I think it will be December 16th when we have the ultrasound.  I'm feeling pretty good...I was pretty nauseus at first, but that seems to be fading.  Mostly I have a lot of food aversions, and MAJOR smell aversions.  I'm hoping those also fade pretty soon.  I think Matt is tired of having to change all the dirty diapers!!

Max is growing and changing every day.  His favorite thing to do right now is play in the leaves outside.  It's getting cold really quickly here, so I hope we get to have some fall time for him to enjoy before the super cold winter starts.  He's adding to his vocabulary every day...Ms. Wanda tells us he says a lot of words for her, but he seems to forget them when he gets home.  The video below shows some of his words.  I still feel like one day he'll just start talking in full sentences...I'm pretty sure he already believes he IS talking in full sentences...we just can't always understand them!

The last 6 weeks or so have been super busy!  Aunt Em came to visit for about 10 days at the beginning of October to keep Max while Ms. Wanda was on vacation.  She wasn't wrapped around Max's little finger AT ALL by the time she left. :)

 While Aunt Em was here, we got to go visit Mariah, Maddie, and Rivers in Louisville.  Unfortunately Mike had to work, but we were so glad to get to spend some time with the rest of them.  Max enjoyed having other little ones to play with, but we learned that he definitely will need to learn to share his toys once his little brother or sister gets here!

 We tried to get a picture of them all sitting on the couch, looking at the camera.  This was as close as we got...at least they were all looking the same way, whether or not it was at the camera!

A few weeks ago we visited the local pumpkin patch. Max had a great time picking up every pumpkin, throwing a few down, and going on a hayride to see the cows.

A couple of weeks ago we went to Vardaman for my 10-year reunion. Max got to try out his new tricycle. We're pretty sure Jiggs has had some practice on it himself.....

While we were in Vardaman, we took the opportunity to have Max's fall pictures made out at the Edmondson's cabin.  Once we get the rights to share those pictures, I'll add them here.  Here are a couple we took before the official photo session began.

 Finally, here are a couple of Max doing his favorite - playing in the leaves.  He'll be so disappointed once they've all fallen and there are no more to play in!

So that's been our fall so far!  Hope you're all having a great one as well!  Love, the Greers...all FOUR of us!