3rd Trimester

I am currently 28 weeks pregnant which places me in the 3rd trimester.

CRAZY!

By the way, what is the deal with the differing opinions on when the 3rd trimester starts? I've read everything from 25 to 28 weeks, so I just decided to go with the latest one so I wouldn't feel like I was cheating. ;)

I feel like I'm constantly running into things belly first. I'm not used to my belly sticking out so far, and it's kind of an odd parallax which throws off my depth perception. I feel like I should be able to fit/squeeze through tight spaces and I just can't. We have double doors into the closet and master bathroom in our bedroom, and usually I just open one and have no problem coming and going. In the past two weeks I've learned that I now need to open both doors because I'm not squeezing through one too easily anymore. ;)

I'm afraid Henry is quite the feisty little fella, (can't imagine where in the world he got that from, ha!). He gets very defensive if I rest anything on my belly... my hands, my phone, a book, husband's hands, and will literally kick whatever it is OFF my belly. The other day I had on some non-maternity tights that I just rolled below my belly, and they were starting to annoy me so I pulled them up for a few minutes where the waist band was right across my belly button, and he went BALLISTIC. It was like he was punching/kicking with both hands and feet all at the same time, all right at the waist band. I rolled the waist band back down and he was fine. Apparently little man has a little bit of a temper.

I've gained a grand total of 11 pounds so far, which I have to admit seems kind of low to me. Given how easily I can gain weight while not pregnant, I was really scared I was going to pack on the pounds while pregnant. I think the lower weight gain has to do with the fact that I'm still not very hungry most of the time, anything that's really greasy or overly salty still makes me sick, and I don't feel like I can eat as much as I used to be able to pre-pregnancy when there wasn't a now 2+ pound baby pushing on my stomach. However, when I do get hungry I must have food pronto. I've gone from someone who rarely ate breakfast, to it being my favorite meal of the day. We've never had so much breakfast food in our house in the 5 years we've been married as we do lately. My breakfast loving husband is in heaven. ;)

My belly button is still an innie, but it feels like it is stretched to the max. I think one of my more common complaints in the past couple of weeks is that my belly button hurts. haha. When I had my laparoscopy last year the doctor made one incision in my belly button and two lower on my abdomen. Since the incision healed I've never really been able to see the scar that's inside my belly button, but it's very easy to see now. It looks kind of odd.

I do not have any new stretch marks as of yet, but I feel they're coming very soon. I say new because I do have a few on my hips and right around my belly button from puberty. My skin on my belly all looks really thin now though and I can just feel the stretch marks coming soon.

We are going to be using our current tv stand as Henry's dresser,

Best picture I could find of the tv stand/dresser now in the nursery, this picture is from last fall. I feel like our living room looks absolutely nothing like this now, I really need to take some more current pictures!

so we were on the lookout for a new tv stand to replace it for a couple of months now. I finally found one at Pottery Barn that I really liked, but wasn't really thrilled with the price.

Pottery Barn Leena Media Console

Thankfully a couple of weeks ago they put it on sale! The sale combined with a 20% off coupon I had and free shipping made it a few hundred dollars cheaper, and less expensive than anything we'd been able to find locally. It's being delivered today and I'm so excited! If I ever get around to finish decorating our Christmas tree I'll try to remember to take some pictures of the living room for y'all.

We moved the former tv stand dresser into Henry's room last night and I couldn't believe how much more finished it made the room to feel just to have one piece of furniture added to it. Now we have all the furniture in place for his room, I'm working on his bedskirt currently, and I've started ordering little decorative stuff here and there. My friend Renee is working on a quilt for him, and it's soo incredibly awesome I can't take it! She is such a talented quilt maker and makes the most gorgeous quilts. You can see some of her projects at her quilting website here.

I'm so happy with how well the nursery is all coming together!!! I can't wait to share it with y'all, but we'll probably wait until everything is all finished, right now it looks kind of crazy.

On Monday we attempted to take some pictures of ourselves for Christmas cards. I say attempted because it did not go quite as well as I had hoped. I had originally planned for our friend Allison to take some pictures for us, (you can see a couple she took of us last year in this post), but I couldn't decide if I wanted to have them taken in November and use them for Christmas cards or just wait until January and have maternity pictures taken when my belly was a little bigger.

Well, I waited too long to decide and suddenly it was time to order Christmas cards and we still hadn't had any professionally done. I thought maybe with my camera, my new remote for the camera, and a tripod we might be able to get some good shots, but I was obviously over-estimating my picture-taking abilities! ha! I'll share some of the Christmas card reject photos with y'all later this week and you can see what I'm talking about. For now, here's one of the belly...

I'm not a fan of how my shirt looks in this picture, i.e. like it's stretched to the max, (which it basically is). So it didn't make the cut for the cards.

I think that's about all to report for the bump update. I had a doctor's appointment yesterday and Henry was measuring right on track with a heartbeat of 150 beats per minute. From now on I have to see the doctor every 2 weeks! This week we also met his pediatrician, (loved her!), and toured the hospital where I'm going to give birth. I can't believe that we're close enough to be doing all of that! We're also registered for tons of childbirth classes in January and pre-registered for hospital admission. :)

I hope you all had a GREAT Thanksgiving last week, can you believe tomorrow is December?! I just know the next month is going to fly by!

Jennifer

So Spoiled

Our cat Miss Kitty, (aka Fatty Patty, Patsy and a variety of other nicknames), pretty much always sleeps with us, especially when it gets cold outside. She normally sleeps curled up on a blanket at the foot of the bed on my side because my legs are shorter and I don't kick her in the middle of the night.

However, sometime in the past couple of weeks she developed a new habit of wanting to sleep smack in the middle of the bed...

She starts out at the foot of the bed like normal, but sometime in the night she migrates up towards us. The past few mornings I've awoken to her about shoulder level on me, up against me, with her head resting on a pillow.

SPOILED. ROTTEN.

And, I've got to say, two people, one big ol' pregnant belly, a body pillow, and a rather round cat in a queen size bed is getting a little snug.

Do you see much room left for me on that other side of the body pillow? Didn't think so.

Someone is going to have a rude awakening come February, when she discovers she is not in fact the center of our universe...

Jennifer

99 Days and Randomness

Wow, it's been a long time since I posted last! I have so many new followers, (hello everyone!), thanks mostly to pintrest. But now I feel like I have to write something really good/interesting every time I post since it's not just people I know in real life who are reading this anymore. Too much pressure! ;)

My "little" brother, (he's 6'4" I'm 5'5", it's kind of odd to call him "little", but he's the youngest, so I still go with it), told me I need to post more recipes for y'all since that's what brought you here to begin with, but honestly my almost 26 week pregnant self is seriously slacking on the cooking front lately. He's a pretty amazing cook and photographer, so I should make him write up recipes for y'all and guest post! ;)

Last night I did make Hawaiian CrockPot Chicken, that I found on pintrest. I saw it a few weeks ago and thought it sounded pretty good and simple, and this week Target.com has a coupon for $1.50 off two Archer Farms condiments, which included the BBQ sauce needed to make the dish, so I figured why not. *They actually also have a coupon for $1 off a bag of Tyson frozen chicken breasts that you could use in this too, but I already had some chicken in the freezer.* Food that's cheap and easy sounds right up my alley!

Hawaiian CrockPot Chicken with Rice

We thought it was pretty good, but kind of felt like it was missing something. It almost tasted like a sweet and sour dish, so it might be good with a green bell pepper and a touch of soy sauce, (I'd hesitate to add too much since it already uses an entire bottle of BBQ sauce and you can't control the salt in that). We have quite a bit leftover since it's just the two of us, and decided it would be good to use the leftovers to make sandwiches on King's Hawaiian rolls, kind of sloppy joe/BBQ sandwich style with a twist. ;)

I keep seeing Christmas decor in the stores, and a few of my Facebook friends have already posted pictures of their decor, and I love it! I usually have our Christmas decor up by mid November, (2 years ago I actually put up our tree on Halloween, but that was due to extenuating circumstances). But this year I'm really not quite ready for it. I think I'm a little in denial about it actually being the middle of November! I never even got all my fall decor out! I made a new wreath for our front door...

and put out some stuff for the mantle, but never really arranged it. It's just been kind of pathetically lined up looking very unfinished and unbalanced for the past month or so. It drives me crazy every time I look at the mantle, I've just been too lazy to hit up Hobby Lobby to get the stuff needed to fix it.

Maybe by this weekend I'll be ready to start pulling out all the Christmas decor. I'm thinking we're just doing one tree in the living room this year, and calling it quits, (I actually have 3 trees total). Here are a couple of pictures of the living room and dining room last year:

Our living room - Christmas 2010. Pretty sure I was watching "Bringing Up Baby", haha

Our dining room Christmas 2010

I loved our tree in the dining room last year, but I'm thinking by the time Christmas is over and it's time to pack everything away, I'll be too pregnant to want to deal with taking down multiple trees and all our decorations. Once again, LAZY! ;)

This week marks one year since I had two surgeries in one day to remove some scar tissue and a giant polyp that were contributing to us not being able to get pregnant. Thankfully, both surgeries went off without a hitch, and even though it was still 6 more months of fertility treatments until we were able to get pregnant with Henry, I know it wouldn't have happened at all if I hadn't had those surgeries. It just amazes me what a difference a year makes! Last year at this time I was really questioning if we were ever going to be able to have a child, and as of today I only have 99 days until my due date! Double digits!!! So exciting!! I cannot believe we're almost to the 3rd trimester.

Here I am last week at 25 Weeks and 1 Day - excuse the weird lighting, I'm not a fan of this time change!

We're so excited to be getting closer to meeting our precious baby boy, but I'm beginning to feel like there's SO much still to do/buy! When we first found out we were having a boy we bought lots of stuff within a weekend, (crib, recliner for the nursery, mobile, clothes...), so I tried to slow the buying down a little for a while so we wouldn't be hemorrhaging money, especially with Christmas coming up. But I'm getting antsy to finish up the nursery especially.

Speaking of buying for baby, zulily is the absolute most dangerous thing ever! I mean right when I wake up every morning there's an email waiting in my inbox full of all sorts of precious baby things at great prices! I think we'd be in ever more trouble if we were having a girl though, it seems like the girl stuff on zulily outnumbers the boy stuff 4 to 1. If you're not a member you can go here to join. The first thing I bought from zulily was some fuzzi bunz cloth diapers, so that wasn't super exciting when it came in the mail, (ok, honestly I was really excited about it, but I'm kind of odd), but this adorable outfit came in a couple of weeks ago and I could hardly contain my excitement.

I mean, how adorable is that?! I can't take it. I have a serious weakness for smocked outfits, I would honestly buy every single one if I could. Also, please excuse the mess in the crib behind the outfit, I was just taking a quick shot to send to my Momma while I was sorting through clothes and using the crib as a discard pile of sorts. All the mess has been cleaned up now. ;)

I know I'm a little late to the party, but I finally got my Erin Condren life planner in the mail last week, and can I just tell y'all how in love I am with it?! I've been reading rave reviews about them since this summer at least, but couldn't come to terms with the price tag. When plum district ran a deal last month for a $50 giftcard for $25, I finally bit the bullet and I'm so, so glad I did!! This thing seriously surpassed all my expectations! I always had a planner throughout high school and college, and have actually kind of missed having one the past few years. As helpful as iPhone calendars are, they just don't hold a candle to a good ol' fashioned paper and ink planner to me. I'm so impressed with the planner, I've been thinking about ordering some notepads or stationery from them too, pretty much I want to buy it all, it's all so fun!

Anndd... this post is why I really should post more often so y'all don't have to deal with such a great big list of random ramblings!

Jennifer