How Did I Get So Lucky?!

16 Weeks!!

Here’s what Alpha Mom says about this week:

Your Baby:

• Is a little over four inches long and weighs a little over 2.5 ounces. The chocolate bunny that I swiped from my toddler’s Easter basket weighed 3.5 ounces. But considering I shared it with my fetus, I am a good mom AND a responsible eater.
• Has fingernails and toenails, all of which will be flesh-tearing talons by the time the baby is born. For serious, pack a teensy nail file in your hospital bag if you’d rather your baby’s first pictures NOT include giant face scratches.
• Is covered with fine, downy hair called lanugo. THIS will mostly fall out by birth, so rest assured you will not deliver a giant razor-taloned gorilla baby, or something.

You:

• Are leaving the more miserable symptoms behind in the dust, more or less. My gag reflex and appetite remained extremely sensitive until about week 16 last time, and the same held true this time around.
• Can feel your rock-hard uterus about three inches below your belly button (especially when you lie on your back). As your baby grows your uterus will continue to inch upwards out of your pelvis. Translation: YOU WON’T HAVE TO PEE SO MUCH.
• May be having very vivid but bizarre dreams. Some will be obviously pregnancy-related (the usual ones involve breastfeeding something other than a human baby or putting an animal or your baby in the oven or microwave to “cook” awhile longer), and others will be just plain weird or upsetting, like your childhood nightmares. They should be interpreted as nothing more than dreams stemming from nerves, hormones and your constant thoughts about the future. (In other words, you aren’t really going to give birth to a turtle with a full set of human teeth.)

 

I’m SO happy to be 16 weeks!!  They say that starting at 16 weeks you can tell the sex of your baby, and since I have a sonogram scheduled for Tuesday afternoon, this makes me so happy and anxious to see if we’ll be able to find out!  I have to keep reminding myself that the point of this appointment is NOT to find out what we’re having, but to meet with the high risk Doctor and have him check everything out on the baby to make sure that whatever we are having is healthy!  BUT, I’m glad that I have something to look forward to because normally I would absolutely dread this appointment. 

So, back to the gender (it is consuming my mind, if you can’t tell), I just want to document that we have been thinking PINK ever since the very beginning of this pregnancy.  Me, Alan, and Ryder have all been convinced that this is a girl.  But of course, Alan flipped on us this week and is now adamant that it’s a boy, suddenly his instinct has changed.  Either one is totally fine with us…it will be so awesome for Ryder to have a brother so close in age to be best buds with.  And on the other hand, it would be so cute and fun to have one of each.  So whatever it is, we will be perfectly content, we just want to KNOW!  So stay tuned…(if we do find out, we won’t be able to post the news until later that evening, just an FYI!).

Tonight, we ate cinnamon rolls and chocolate ice cream for dinner…I’m serious!  And it felt so good!  I’m only confessing because I feel like I need to excuse my huge belly in this pic:

If You Shake It More Than Twice…

***warning: this post is a little more information than I would normally share…but I can’t resist***

Back when I was in my 3rd month of pregnancy with Ryder, I was sitting at the table filling out my Pregnancy Journal, and it asked me to write a message to my baby.  Of course, I thought long and hard and spoke from the heart “I love you already”.  Short and sweet, but summed up all of my thoughts about this unborn baby.  Then it asked for Dads message, so I yelled into the living room “Baby, if you could tell our baby anything right now, what would you say?”  He didn’t have to think long or hard before responding “If you shake it more than twice you’re playing with it!”  I laughed, and wrote it down.  Typical Alan, being silly.  He didn’t even know for sure if we were having a boy or a girl, but I thought it would be funny for his son/daughter to see this wayyyyy down the road.

Little did I know, that wayyyy down the road would end up being our 1 yr old child, running around naked after going potty in the evenings, shouting his Daddy’s words of wisdom “SHAKE IT MORE DAN TWICE, YOU PAYIN WIFF IT!!”

And to make it even better, he refers to “it” has his “MONSTER”!  So anything that comes out of his mouth relating to his man parts is just hysterical.  When he has a shirt on and no pants he’ll look down and say “where’s da monsta???” Then lift his shirt “OH, dere he isss!”  And if he’s telling you the correct way to go potty he’ll say “point, aim, shoot da monsta!!”  After bath he instructs me how to care for it “No lotion on da monsta!” And he always has to add in “Mommy don’t have a monsta!”  Thank goodness.

There’s always something to laugh at around here!

A Fun Visit

Over the weekend we had a special visit with some old friends, it was SO nice to be able to hang out and catch up.  Johnny & Jennifer were in our wedding and have always been great friends of ours…although in the last few years we haven’t been the best at keeping in touch.  But we vowed to change that (right guys??!!) so hopefully this visit was the first of many to come in the near future! 

They have 2 little girls, Justice & Jenna (Justice is Alan’s Goddaughter) and they are the sweetest/funniest/sassiest little things, we were entertained just watching the 3 kids play!

Here they are eating dinner at the princess table:

Being Silly:

 

Being Sweet:

 

And attacking Alan!

 

We had so much fun, can’t wait to do it again soon :)

15 Weeks!

Here’s what AlphaMom has to say about this week:

Your Baby:

• Is as big as a…wait for it…beefsteak tomato! Doesn’t that sound deliciously substantial? Am resisting urge to go pinch some produce as I type this.
• Has started “breathing” amniotic fluid in through its nose and respiratory tract, giving those lungs some very early practice for the real thing. (Late in the third trimester, you can actually watch the fetal breathing on an ultrasound, and lo, it is very cool.)
• Can sense light and pressure from outside of the womb, so if you want to get a jump start on annoying the crap out of your kid, shine a flashlight on your stomach or chase it around with the doppler wand every night. Or gently caress your belly while singing lullabies in a variety of foreign language and mediating on the Zen-ness of it all. You know, whatever your personal parenting style goes for.

You:

• May be experiencing some of the weirder symptoms of pregnancy, many of which can start early in the second trimester. Including! For example!
• Sinus congestion! Runny nose! Stuffed-up nose! So much freaking mucus, and not in the places where you would ASSUME mucus would be involved. It’s called rhinitis of pregnancy and once again, they just blame it on “hormones.” Get yourself a humidifier or vaporizer, inhale steam in a fogged-up bathroom or try those saline nasal drops. Ask your doctor before taking any decongestant or medicated nasal spray.
• Bleeding gums! A side effect of all that extra blood you’ve got coursing through your system. (Nosebleeds are common too.)
• Skin pigmentation! The linea nigra, or that darkish line that runs down the center of your belly, sometimes shows up as soon as you start showing, sometimes much later. Moles, freckles and birthmarks can spread and/or darken. You might notice some melasma, or “mask of pregnancy” across your face, particularly if you spend a lot of time in the sun or have a naturally olive or darker complexion. A lot — but not all — of these changes will fade after you give birth. When in doubt, slather up on the sunscreen to increase your odds that they’ll be temporary.
• Forgetfulness! Pregnancy brain! Gestational amnesia! Whatever you want to call it, you probably know what I’m talking about. In the past week alone, I’ve 1) run a load of laundry without any detergent, 2) made coffee without a filter, 3) tossed a Ziploc of frozen chicken to defrost in the sink but forgot to actually seal the bag, and 4) stared at my husband for three full minutes while trying to remember his name.

 

That last part makes me laugh because I can TOTALLY relate to the pregnancy brain issues.  I feel so forgetful these days and I remember going through this with Ryder too!  Things are so crazy at work right now too, so by the time I get home I feel like I have no brain capacity left.  Luckily home is easy so I don’t have to think too hard :)

I’m at that stage right now where most of my symptoms have gone away for the moment.  The heartburn has come back, but that’s about it.  So I’m enjoying these next few weeks, watching my belly grow bigger and BIGGER, and preparing myself for all the aches and pains to come!

Nope!

All of the “don’t wanna’s” and “ain’t gonna’s” have turned into a simple “Nope!”.  Today when we got home he did not want to get out of the car to come inside.  I ran inside and got my camera to document this stubbornness. 

 

 

Happy New Year!

Happy 2011 everyone! Guess I should start the first post of the New Year off with some updates!

First of all, Ryder is all better, thank goodness.  He has been fever free since Friday, and is completely back to his old self.  He went on a retreat to Yaya’s house yesterday and was so excited when I got there to pick him up today because he got to show me his brand new train table.  This was Ryder’s BIG Christmas present from my Mom, but we’re keeping it at her house since there is more space in his room at her house. 

 

I put all my Christmas money and gift certificates together…plus asked Alan & my Mom to go in on the rest as my early Birthday present and bought myself…

A new camera!!  I’m so excited about it, but now I just have to figure out how it works.  I’ve been following Ryder around all day snapping pictures of him, and the dogs too!

 

 

 

Ryder got so many awesome presents for Christmas that we put some to the side and have waited to open them.  This weekend we opened 2 big ones… a race track from Nana & Poppy:

 

And a house from Aunt Jess & Uncle Dwayne…this is why Ryder has marker all over his face in the bathtub pics above!

This house has kept our family pretty busy!  You know how much we like to color :)  So by the end of the first night, here is what our house looks like :

 

Alan worked so hard on the roof that he went through a whole marker, and then had to switch to a crayon and this is all that was left of it when he was done:

We take our coloring seriously around here!

In some serious potty news…Ryder pooped on the potty for the first time over the Christmas break!  I was very shocked and even more proud of him!  So he has now peed once and pooped once…just for the record :) 

So as you can see, we’ve been busy already in the New Year!