Welcome, Eight Months. Good to see you, again.

29 Weeks

I can’t believe that I am now eight months pregnant.  I knew the time was going to go by really fast, but eight months, already?!  That was much faster than I anticipated.  It has been a great eight months, although challenging at times.  I’m starting to feel the pregnancy aches and pains that I don’t remember experiencing with Bryson until much later.   But maybe I just blocked it out and told myself these didn’t start until the last month.  Either way, they’re here to stay.  Sometimes I feel like I’m 847 years old when I stand up if I’ve been sitting for a long time.  It feels like my back gets pinched in multiple locations, and I can’t quite stand up straight until I stretch it out.  Sounds fun, doesn’t it?  I will say it hasn’t been like this the entire time.  For the most part, I’m pretty comfortable.  I know lots of ladies that have had it much worse than me, so I’ll stop complaining…for now.  J 

My last doctor’s check-up was last Wednesday, and it was a success.  I went for a check-up and the gestational diabetes test.  All went well, and I don’t have diabetes, which is fabulous.  I did get the great opportunity to savor that orange drink they give you.  I had remembered that it was pretty gross from the last time, but I think somehow it got worse.  I thought last time it wasn’t utterly disguising until the last half of the drink.  This time it was that gross the instant I took the first drink.  I drank it on the way to the doctor, since it has to be in your system an hour before the test.  At certain times, I almost gagged it was so bad.  I guess Kylie was NOT a fan of this.  Luckily it stayed down for the doc to complete the test.  I would have been one unhappy camper if I lost it and had to drink it again.  Whew…glad that’s over!

The rest of the appointment went well.  Kylie’s heartbeat was a strong 159.  She was moving and kicking all over the place.  Probably from all that sugar in the delicious orange concoction.  Her movements always look and feel so much stronger when I’m lying on my back (which you’re not supposed to do, but you have to at the doctor).  So when I’m lying there, I can see all her movements and feel every little thing she does.  It’s amazing. 

I’m still growing larger by the minute.  I have officially gained 22 pounds to date.  The range that I’m suppose to gain is 25-30 pounds, and I still have two full months to go.  I’m afraid to say that I’m going to surpass that estimate, and probably pretty quickly.  Two and half of those pounds are Kylie.  That’s her estimated weight, according to the baby website I read.  In case you’re wondering, that’s about the size of a butternut squash.  Yep, I’m sure that clears it up for you.  Not.  It also states she is approximately 15 inches long, can possibly distinguish my voice from Mike’s, can see light from my belly and is now growing eyelashes.  Very cool stuff going on in there.

Now that we have decided on the theme for Kylie’s room (owls and forest animals), we were ready to paint.  We agreed on yellow and figured we would get something not too bright but not too pastel.  You know, just right.  Mike picked out the paint color in about 5 minutes.  It’s called Pure Joy, which we thought was fitting.  It looked a little brighter than we first pictured but thought it would be tamer once it was dry.  We were clearly wrong.  My parents came over to help paint the room, which is what they did with Bryson’s room as well.  They are practically experts, because they have painted every room in their house numerous times.  They definitely know what they’re doing.  My dad did the trim areas (doesn’t even need the blue tape, which I find insane), and Sandi and I did the rolling.  I, of course, still need the blue tape even with the trim areas already painted.  Apparently I didn’t get my Dad’s genes when it comes to staying in the lines.  So now that the paint has dried, we realize it’s much brighter than we thought it would be.  I absolutely love it.  It looks like sunshine in there, even at night!  Every time Bryson walks past her room, he looks in and says “Wow!”.  It’s so funny.  Mike does the same thing.  He’s not quite use to the brightness yet.  It will sink in.  It’s awesome.  Pictures to come soon.

Bedding confirmed!

Here I am at 27 Weeks

Mike and I have been debating for several months on how we are going to decorate Kylie’s room.  Will it be yellow, or pink, or purple?  Will there be animals, shapes, random designs?  You know, the standard nursery questions.  We have finally agreed on one, which is actually the very first one Mike ever showed me at Babies R Us.  It’s mainly pink and yellow and it has owls, squirrels and other forests friends on it.  It is super cute.  I also love the fact that Bryson’s room is in forest friends, too, just in an equally cute boy style.  We are fairly certain that we are going to paint her room yellow.  The brightness of the yellow depends on a few factors, but I’m all for painting it as bright as the sun (or at least as bright as Mike will agree to).  When I was in high school, my bedroom was an extremely bright yellow.  That may sound scary to a lot of people, but it was awesome.  It’s impossible to wake up in a grumpy mood with that color all around.  I think Kylie will feel the same way.

We picked out Kylie’s nursery furniture about a month ago.  It’s a dark espresso color, and it’s beautiful.  However, the goons at BRU said we can’t order it until all the pieces are available at their distribution center.  Of course, we like the same style that everyone else likes, so it’s on backorder until the end of time.  We’re hoping it comes in before Kylie goes to college.  Fingers crossed!

Our next upcoming adventure is our shower next month.  I am really excited. To prepare for this, Mike and I registered this weekend.   I remember being very excited to register for Bryson, but then once we started, I almost had a meltdown due to baby gadget overload.  There’s just way too much to take in for a first time parent.  They should put some kind of disclaimer on the registration information that insists all first time parents must be accompanied by an experienced parent.  Seriously, it’s for your own good.  So this time, we didn’t need supervision to make it through.  We know what we need, so we were on a mission!  It was a huge success, and I’m pretty sure we had record speed.  I also got dinner at Carrabba’s out of our trip, so I felt like a winner on many accounts.  Shopping and dinner…what more could a girl ask for? 

Random Pictures ~ Just Because

I realize pictures can sometimes be more fun than reading...so here you go!

Fun times with Daddy!



Mommy, is this the pan you were looking for?




Aspen is not a pony, but I'm still going to try to ride her.

 

Success!



Car Seat Fun - Picture Time

I realized I had a bunch of funny pictures of Bryson in his car seat lately, so I figured I would share them. I pick Bryson up from daycare, and he always makes me laugh on the ride home.  He's starting to say sentences (in his own language I have yet to learn), and so we carry on the silliest conversations.  He probably gets mad at me when I answer him.  He's probably thinking "Ummm, that's not even close to what I just asked you, Mommy!".  But anyway, we have fun regardless.  Enjoy the pics!


This makes me laugh every time I look at it.




I have no idea why he sits like this.





Peek a boo!



Before...



...after




He covers himself up for snuggle time.  Once the blanket is on, he's out in about 3 minutes.



Seven Months Strong

The pregnancy has been going well.  I'm 25 weeks along, and it's crazy to think that in two more weeks, I will enter the third trimester.  This pregnancy has gone sooo much faster, which is a bit scary - in a good way, of course.  Kylie is one strong girl.  She likes to be really still (maybe she’s sleeping) and then suddenly go crazy with these Chuck Norris kicks that are so strong they startle me at times.  I literally jumped during one of these surprise attacks last week.  I can feel her moving around and adjusting her positions, which is incredible to feel.  It's nice to be able to feel her without having to be kicked every time. 

I went to the doctor last week for my monthly check-up.  All went well, and she has a very healthy heart beat of 156.  Last time it was in the 160s, so I suppose she had simmered down a bit.  The baby website says she is the length of an ear of corn and a little over a pound.  It’s strange to see how big my belly is and to know she only counts for ONE pound of that.  To date, I have gained 13 pounds.  I suppose I’m still on track.  Of course, the last time I did really well until I hit about this point.  Then the pounds started pouring on, and I ended up gaining a whooping 40 pounds!  Yikes!  Hopefully I can keep this one in check.  But then again, I’ve continuously heard you get bigger faster the second time.  So if I gain as much this time, I blame science. 

We went to the beach last week and had an amazing time!  I considered getting some of those maternity swimsuits so people didn’t have to blatantly stare at my massive belly, but that only lasted about .07 seconds.  I then figured I didn’t care what people thought or had to look at, and I refused to give in to the muumuu swimsuit.  So I wore my bikinis with pregnant pride!  I think that Kylie enjoyed our time floating in the ocean.  She may not have been able to tell a difference, since she may have the ocean effect going on already, but I like to think she enjoyed herself.  Although when the huge waves would smash into my belly, I’m guessing she wasn’t a big fan of that.  But she was a trooper.  The car ride even went well.  We didn’t have to stop every 30 minutes to go to the bathroom, which I expected may happen.  I didn’t get car sick until about the last hour each way which again was better than expected.

As a rule of thumb, when you go to the beach, you have to eat large quantities of seafood.  As another rule of thumb, when you’re pregnant, you’re not allowed to eat very much seafood.  I’m usually very cautious about what I eat, except apparently not when I’m on vacation.  I ate seafood every day I was there.  Around Wednesday, I realized my mistake and immediately felt terrible that I was feeding Kylie all kinds of mercury and whatever else is bad in seafood.  But then come dinner time, what do I order?  Seafood.  Yes, I had a bad mommy week when it came to my dining.  But it was soooo good.  Luckily, when I went to the doctor, one of the first things she asked me was if I ate a lot of seafood.  I looked down and nodded yes.  She then laughed at me and reassured me that it was totally acceptable to eat a week’s worth of seafood and to just not eat any more the rest of the month.  Deal!  So my guilt is no longer present thanks to my understanding doctor.  Thank you, Dr. S.!

Goodbye TN, Hello FL!

Our visit to sunny Florida couldn’t have gone any better!  From the mostly peaceful car rides, to the weather, to the food, you name it, it was awesome.  But I’ll fill in all the gaps, starting with the car rides.  Mike and I were equally worried at how Bryson would do in the car for 8 hours.  His usual tolerance for car rides maxs out around 45 minutes to an hour, so now you can understand our fear.  We decided to leave at 4 am so Bryson would have about 3 good hours of sleep left in him.  We had the car packed and ready the night before, so all we had to do was wake him up, change him, and load him in the car.  This worked exactly how we planned.  He stayed up for about 45 minutes, and then eventually fell asleep.   On the way there, we only stopped 3 times (breakfast, snack, and potty break), so we made really good time.  We brought along Toy Story to keep Bryson occupied if needed.  We didn’t think he would watch it, but he would at least look at it occasionally.  We were wrong…he watched the entire thing – TWICE!  There were several times at the beginning where he was actually laughing.  We have a hit!

We arrived around 1:00, but our check-in time wasn’t until 4:00.  Luckily, our room was already ready and the fabulous staff let us in when we got there.  We immediately got our swimsuits on and headed to the beach.  When we first set Bryson in the sand, he wasn’t sure what he was suppose to do.  He just stared at it for the longest time.  He would pick one foot up, stare at it for a minute, then set it back down very slowly.  I wonder if he thought the sand was going to remove his foot since it would get buried in the sand when the waves washed over his feet.  Maybe he was just checking to make sure it was still there.  I don’t know. It was cute though.  Mike took him in the ocean and would let the waves splash on him, which he loved as long as he didn’t get splashed in the face.  Once that happened, it was pretty much over for a good 30 minutes.  Back to the sand!  I don’t blame him. That salt water burns like crazy.  Bryson had a blast playing in the sand.  I was amazed at how long he would sit there playing in it.  As long as he had this shovel, he wasn’t going to move.  Well, he wasn’t going to move on his terms.  At one point, a massive wave came in and actually picked up Bryson and carried him a few feet down the sand.  He didn’t topple over, and he was definitely not a fan of the forced move, but somehow he managed to keep his shovel.  However, somewhere out there a child has a blue rake thanks to that wave.  Sorry, Bryson!

The best part about where we stayed was that our patio, which was a great size, opened up right onto the pool deck.  The pool deck then led right out to the wooden walkway to the beach.  So our usual game plan was to go to the beach, play in the ocean and sand, rinse off, then play in the pool.  It’s hard to tell which one Bryson liked better.  He really enjoyed both.  Toward the end of the week, he was learning how to kick his feet to get him moving.  He has become quite the water baby. 

Since we were with Mike’s parents and Uncle Tim and Aunt Ann, Bryson had a ton of people to play with.  He had so much fun running from person to person to play with.  Each night we would all go out to dinner together, and he would have the best time.  Uncle Tim was quite the master of putting toys on his head, especially the dinosaur, and Bryson would squeal every time he did it.  I’m sure these two put on quite the show for the rest of the restaurant, because they had us laughing for the longest time.  We were sitting outside overlooking the beautiful bay area in Destin, so we got to see all the boats coming in to the docks.  At one point, there was an air show with lots of planes.  Bryson would point at every plane he saw, which was a lot.  He did that when we were at the beach and pool too with the planes that fly the advertisement banners. 

Mike and I had a really great time as well.  His mom would play with Bryson in the sand while we played in the ocean.  I felt like a 10 year old out there.  I would squeal and giggle when a big wave would come, so I probably sounded like a 10 year old too, but it was so much fun.  I had the best play time!  We were able to go out two nights with just us and enjoy some time together, which is hard to come by sometimes.  We went to a hibachi place the first night, which was a huge dud, but the second night, we went to a place called Captain Dave’s.  It was on the beach, and the food was amazing.  It definitely made up for that hibachi place. We also got to see fireworks, which was fun.  We went to the pool one night and swam in the dark.  Good times all around!

The last night we were there, we went to the Crab Trap, which is also on the beach.  The waiting area opens up to a sand playground.  Because we all know how easy to clean off sand is, Bryson didn’t get to go on the playground, but it was a neat feature regardless.  The inside had all the windows opened, so you got the ocean breeze while you ate.  It was really nice.  Since the fun had to come to an end eventually, we had to pack up and head out.  We left on Saturday morning at 6:45, went to breakfast, and hit the road.  This trip was a little longer, because we had to pick up Aspen from the boarding place.  Bryson could definitely tell there was a time expansion, because right about the time we should have been home, he started getting a big hostile.  But it was nothing a little Toy Story and milk couldn’t fix.  We were so grateful for those two things in the car and for Bryson’s good behavior.  We probably would have all lost our sanity if he was angry the entire time.  But that didn’t happen, and we came back relaxed and happy to be home.  We’ll see you next year, Florida! 

Where are my feet?!