Pregnancy: Week 29

We've made it to 29 weeks and we're doing great! Look at how big my belly is getting! 

I got the results of my glucose test and my anemia screening last week - passed with flying colors!

I also started talking to the midwife about the birth plan. I am hoping to have a complete physiological birth, meaning no pain medications! I am delivering in hospital, so I have the option of medication, but a midwife will be delivering the baby so will hopefully be more supportive of letting my labor take its natural course and not putting me on a time limits. Of course this is all "planning" and since this is my first I'm trying to remind myself that I have no idea what I'm getting myself into and prepare for things not going exactly as I dreamed.

I seriously have been craving any and all fruits I can get my hands on. Plums, peaches, pears, grapes, melons, berries ANYTHING! I had to hold myself back at the grocery store going through the produce aisle - there is only so much fruit you can physically eat before it goes bad and my eyes were definitely bigger than my stomach as I walked through.  Out of all the fruit I want to eat - nothing compares to the juicy deliciousness of WATERMELON! 

My baby will either LOVE watermelon when she grows up or hate it. :)

((I totally forgot I wrote that I first felt her hiccups back during week 27 as well... she's definitely had quite a few episodes of hiccuping this past week though so its been at the top of the list of pregnancy feelings for week 29))

Husband's Birthday!

My man turned the ripe old age of 26 yesterday. He's definitely out of the "early twenties" phase of his life and getting closer and closer to 30... and I'm only 6 months behind!

He had a very grown up birthday day. We both worked all day - I didn't get off work until 7 :( so we didn't do anything crazy. I surprised him by having his car cleaned and detailed this past weekend for his birthday, and only had a small present for him to open the day of. We just had a quiet dinner at home, with a special dessert and watched a movie together in his man cave - which does happen to be one of his favorite activities. : ) Birthdays just aren't the same when they fall in the middle of the week, but we enjoyed our night at home together just the same. 

I was looking through my computer to try and find the earliest birthday picture I had of Mark and I celebrating a birthday of his - I couldn't find many! - but I found so many of us from high school and couldn't believe how young we look. 

I have been a part of Mark's birthday celebrations for the last 10 years. The first birthday celebration I went to was a surprise pool party his parents threw for his 16th birthday. I couldn't find any pictures of then - it was before smart phones and Instagram :) but I did find this one from 5 years ago when he turned 21.

We had been "together" for a year at this birthday. I am so thankful for all of the many birthdays I've been a part of. What a privilege to see Mark grow from a 16 year old boy that I had big crush on to the man that is now 26, who I am madly in love with.

I am praying that God allows me many more decades of birthdays to celebrate with him!

Goodbye 5:30am

I'm probably going against the norm by talking about saying good bye to 5:30 am wake up calls... I mean, aren't most of the moms/housewives/women in general in the blogosphere often talking about their goals of waking up earlier in order to be more productive? And here I am shouting adios from the rooftops to waking up that early and doing a little happy dance while I wave goodbye! 

Since last September I've had to be up this early 3x a week in order to be at work to get my first patient of the day started at 6:45. But our summer schedule starts this Monday, which means we open just a little bit later since kids don't need to get their appointments in before going to school. I mean, our earliest is still 7:30, but you wouldn't believe what a difference 45 minutes makes when you're talking about dragging yourself out of bed in the morning! There is just something about that alarm going off before 6am that makes you feel like its entirely too early to be waking up. Especially when your husbands alarm isn't going to go off until 7. I know many people, for many different occupations, wake up this early or earlier for 5 or more days a week, but I'm going to share a little secret with you - I am just NOT a morning person. I've always wanted to be, but for some reason my bed is the most comfortable and I feel the most tired right as my alarm is going off.

I'm always excited when this time of the year rolls around at work and it means I get to sleep just a bit longer, but this year is even more special because today was actually my last day EVER of waking up that early in order to get to work. When the school year starts back up this fall and all of my coworkers reset their alarms for 0 dark 30 - I'll be waking up to the sounds of a tiny human needing me. I know, I know, it will be much earlier than 5:30, and will be an "alarm" that goes off multiple times a night instead of just once in the morning, but I'm okay with that. I'm sure I'll be tired. Probably way more tired than I am now. But I'll be home... in my bed... in my pajama's... not required to cheerfully greet grumpy coworkers and sleepy teenagers... and have a baby in my arms.

So as I go to bed tonight and happily change the time setting on my alarm, I have just one sweet song to sing...

So long, farewell
Auf Wiedersehen, adieu
Adieu, adieu
To you and you and you!

Ps.

I am planning to go back to work after I have the baby, but will only be working a limited, afternoon, part time schedule. I am still working on the details of the position with my supervisor, but I am excited about the way God is working this out in our favor and I am excited to share with you what our plans are as soon as we have it all figured out!

Pregnancy: Week 27 + Beginnings of a Nursery!

This is my last week of the 2nd Trimester! Holy Cow the last 3 months have flown by! Seriously, I'll be honest, January to March seemed to drag on as I waited for the glorious day that I would be able to eat without emptying my stomach into the nearest receptacle shortly after. But as soon as I started feeling better, the days started moving and suddenly its the middle of June and theres only 3 months left until Baby is here!!!

I had my glucose test yesterday but I don't get the results for another day or so. I've been feeling really good so I think everything should be fine, and then I have another check up next week to check baby's heart beat and start checking position! 

We also started on the nursery this past weekend:

This is pretty much our before well, our before after we took down the full size guest bed that we had in there. The crib pieces you see leaning up against the wall are part of the crib that I slept in when I was a baby. We were hoping to be able to put it back together to use for our little girl, but unfortunately not all of the pieces were there. 

Just a a shot of the other wall. We are leaving the room painted this teal beach color and we are planning to accent it with grey and pink chevron curtains/bedding/etc.

 This is the crib that we ended up getting. Mark's parents actually purchased this for us as a gift. Even though I was attached to the idea of using and repainting my old crib, and was very sad when we decided we couldn't make it work safely, I really do love this new crib! I have been searching Pinterest and Etsy pretty much every day to try and find the bedding that I want. I can't decide if I want it to be gray or pink!

In fact... I think I'll go look on Etsy some more right now. :)

Pregnancy: Week 25 & 26

I've been wanting to take some pictures next to my moms chalkboard for a while now to document my first pregnancy, unfortunately I was a little late actually starting it - 25 weeks in and I'm just now doing it! Ugh... it would've been fun to see me go from no belly to belly, but better late than never. And I've still got 15ish weeks left to photograph my growing baby! 

I forgot to post last weeks so I'm doing them both together today. :)

I was able to run 1 mile today with Piper for National Running Day! I could've gone for the second mile but it was pretty hot since we didn't go out until about 10:30 this morning. I'm gaining weight a little more steadily now so I want to make sure it is healthy weight :) and since I'm planning a natural birth I almost feel like I need to "train" for it. I want my body to be healthy and in good shape to endue the labor.

Our little lady is getting stronger and stronger every day - Mark is able to feel her kicks now, although she tends to shy away when he first puts his hand on my belly and it takes her a while to get used to his touch and start moving again. 

Some fun pregnancy symptoms I'm experiencing include bathroom wake up calls 3-4x a night and heartburn! I even keep some Tums at a drawer at work. :) 

Mark and I took a childbirth preparation class the month of May. For a few hours every Tuesday night we would go and watch birth videos, learn relaxation techniques and learn about what it means to be "dilated" and "effaced". It was fun! Of course I've been around babies and pregnancies my whole life - having 4 younger siblings, many younger cousins and having close relationships with ladies at church - so this information didn't come as a complete surprise to me, but it was fun to go and experience the class together as a couple. Mark's sister, who is due in July, also took the class with her husband so we enjoyed being there with them every week as well.

We've also started on the nursery, so hopefully I can start posting pictures of that soon!

Baby Stroller!

Mark and I have been contemplating baby strollers for weeks! There are so many to choose from and range from anywhere from $100 to upwards of $700! Obviously we had a limit, and it was well below $700, but we wanted something nice that will last us for more than just our little girl. We started to look at "travel systems" - strollers that come with the carseats for a bit of a discount and had  finally settled on a Graco model that was pretty middle of the road - nice and durable but not outrageously expensive. We were going to get it from Babies R Us, but figured we'd get it in a month or two - I mean, there wasn't any rush to have stroller just sitting around the house if we at least had it picked out.

Well it just so happens I was searching on craigslist for a jogging stroller yesterday - I have to be honest, I'm a terrible thrifter. I pretty much never go to thrift stores and rarely search craigslist. I know I'm probably missing out on many hidden treasures, but every time I try to "thrift" I just never seem to be able to find what I'm looking for. Maybe I just don't know where to look or how to search for things... but it actually did work out for me yesterday! Like I said, I was looking for a jogging stroller when I saw a post for the exact Graco stroller Mark and I wanted to get! She was also selling a car seat and 2 bases.

The total system in the store - brand new - that comes with stroller, carseat and base was $369.99. The stroller by itself brand new is $249.99. We decided we didn't want the carseat the lady from craigslist was selling because it was a little beat up and stained, but we ended up getting the stroller for $150, and 2 carseat bases for $25 each. (which retail in the store for a little over $50 each!). We were pretty happy!

And this is why we loved this stroller so much:

Thats pretty cool right?

We got our gently used one home, cleaned it up and disinfected it and now it is ready to go! Loving that we were able to save some money on our top choice for a stroller. Now all we need is to buy the car seat, which we are planning on purchasing off of Amazon and using our amazon points to get a pretty good discount on that! 

2 Year Anniversary Beach Day

Mark and I celebrated our 2nd Anniversary this past May 12th. With everything thats going on in our lives right now - house projects and preparing for baby we didn't quite get to turn our anniversary into a little babymoon/getaway like we were thinking about back in March. But we didn't need to, we enjoyed a beautiful day together down at the beach with our pup instead.

Our anniversary fell on a Monday, so we both decided to take the day off and spend the whole day together. 

We stopped at our favorite little local sandwich shop/bakery/dairy farm - Bergey's Breadbasket - for lunch. They have picnic tables outside so we were able to take Piper with us while we ate.

After lunch we headed to the beach where we spent the rest of the afternoon. 

Piper couldn't wait to see where we were at when we got to the beach...

Since it was a Monday, the beach wasn't too crowded. We found a nice open spot to set up our little camp and enjoy the warm sun and the ocean air.

My love and our first "baby". 

There are few things better than spending the day with your toes in the sand, sun on your skin and your love by your side. (And your sweet pup.)

After we spent some time just relaxing, we couldn't resist seeing what Piper would do when she got to the water - and Piper had pretty much exhausted all of her patience with us just sitting around when there was so much to do and see! I would apologize for all of the pictures we took, but she's just so cute and we had so much fun playing with her in the water, I had to post them all!

  

 I had to get in for a little bit too - but not too deep because the water was freezing!

Yay for the Baby Bump ;)

I ended up purchasing a maternity swim suit just before Memorial Day, because even though my normal suit fit me fine here - I knew it wasn't going to last very long! 

Our sweet girl didn't like laying in the sand after she got all wet, which makes no sense since she loves to get wet and dirty, but we let her have the beach blanket anyways. 

After the beach we came home, got cleaned up and exchanged a couple gifts. Spending the day in the sun feels amazing, but it tends to put you in a pretty drowsy, chill state of mind, so we just decided to keep with our laid back Anniversary theme and went to one of our favorite pizza shops for dinner and then got some ice cream for dessert. 

The day was perfect. Incredibly relaxing and focused just on spending time together without any distractions. I could never have imagined this beautiful love that God has allowed me to enjoy with this man. Here's to 2 whole years of marriage, many many more years, and a house full of babies to come.