Pregnancy Highlights:

How Far Along: 31 weeks

Gender: Girlie girl

Maternity Clothes: Oh yeah!  But also stretching my longer torso-ed regular clothing

Weight gain: 21 pounds (OUCH)

Belly Button: Outie

Movement: She is a crazy acrobat about 4 times a day, and is pretty laid back other than those times. 

Sleep: Hit or miss!  Ron and I discovered Extra Sleepy Time Tea by Celestial Seasonings, and it seems to do the trick most of the time.  Mostly I cannot get my back comfy or my temperature straightened out on the nights that i cannot sleep.  Restless leg syndrome is NOT MY FRIEND either.  

Symptoms: Back pain is killer anytime I sit up straight or stand up for more than 10 minutes.  Luckily this doesn't seem to bother me during workouts. 

Cravings: I sure can eat!!  Anything and EVERYTHING.  Meals that I used to struggle to finish seem to disappear very quickly :)  I need to be a little bit better about not joining the clean plate club!

Best moment this week: It has just begun!  But I am pretty sure it is going to be seeing my family, and Memaw, and Charly and friends this weekend in Danville for my first baby shower!  

OH!  And the saddest part of the week has been that we took our last in the classroom childbirth class this week :(  Going to miss our Mondays!

One Reason Why I Love My Baby Daddy

Mouse Trap!

Though a picture is worth 1,000 words, this one might need 1,200 to explain :)

Before Christmas, our neighbor, Beth (all of our neighbors are female, btw) came running up to our front door to see if Ron could come over to our OTHER neighbor, Lisa's, to help them remove a mouse that was cornered on her stove top.  EWA!  Of course, the man of the block went over and took care of it.  Our immediate reaction was to scour our house for any signs of those little rodents, of which we didn't find a one.

Post Christmas, I almost threw up in my mouth when i noticed some mousey poos under the sink in our kitchen!  Again, we looked everywhere else in the house and saw no signs of the little stinkers.  Since they weren't in our food and we couldn't figure out how they were getting into the sink area, we thought we might have been imagining things, but sure enough this Friday I was completely grossed out to find more remnants of our little guests.

Saturday morning I got up to teach interval class, and when I came home, not only did Ron have everything pulled out from underneath the sink, the stove pulled from the wall and the run of the mill mouse traps set in both of those places, but he had invented this beauty!  I immediately thought back to the days when Kyle and I would play the game "Mouse Trap".... c'mon you know you played it too! :)  At least until you lost one tiny piece which meant the game was automatically OVER.

So for Ron's trap.... the mouse runs up the cardboard ramp... across the pipecleaner balance beam and onto the rotating cup of peanut butter heaven.... until the cup rotates and they are plunked into the moat of doom below.  Brilliant!!

Update:  we have caught one mouse... with the standard mouse trap.  Ron has caulked around all but one entry way we feel the boogers are coming in from, and so far, no signs of them since the death of the martyr.

Ahh! :)  Never a dull moment!

We're Growing

Week 16

Week 17

Week 20

Week 24

Week 30 (Check out Javy's cameo :) )

I have been horrible about documenting the belly's "progress," I suppose in part I don't feel very photogenic these days... the scale is mostly to blame for that.  I think we have finally reached the point where waddling is acceptable and people are a little more apt to hold the door for you... OH! and if I were the type to use the "Expectant Mothers Parking," I would feel confident doing so now.

The belly is BIG... measured the uterus today at 29 inches... which normal is between 28 & 32 at this point; yay potentially small baby!  After childbirth class last week and the discussions regarding labor (both natural and C-section) I was anxious to know how they guestimated baby size without doing another ultrasound.  The doc assured me today that given my birth weight and how my uterus is currently measuring, there is no need right now to worry about birthing a whopper!  Whew!

Things to look forward to in the coming weeks:

• Doctor appointments every 2 weeks
• Baby shower in Danville next weekend (Cannot wait!)
• Finishing the nursery
• Preggy photos (my Christmas gift from Ron) mid-February
• Baby shower in Charlottesville (Cannot wait!)
• Baby shower with the college girlies (Cannot wait!)
• Breastfeeding class!  Whoop whoop! 
• Oh yeah!  My b-day is in there somewhere too... my last one without being a mama and my last one in my 30's.... where has the time gone?  

So many exciting things to look forward to! XOXO (Can you tell I have been watching wayyyy too much Gossip Girl?)

Nursery Updates

Ron was a rockstar this weekend while I was home for my bestie, Charly's baby shower.  He not only painted the nursery, but painted it with STRIPES!  The manager for the building of our house said it was the most professional looking job that he had seen :)

Next steps:  putting up crown molding and a chair rail.  Ron actually went out yesterday to get the materials for this... let's hope that it goes just as smoothly as the painting!

In other news, THE CRIB ARRIVED!! :)  It is just perfect and I cannot wait to fill it up with pink sheets and paisley bumpers!

Where Baby Al will rest her little head :) (Check out the paint job in the background!)

I am trying to figure out how I can use the striped material (see below) for just a little cover to go over the top of the window without making the room look too crazy with patterns.  The colors just match so perfectly!

Al's Bedding

The stripes need a home in the nursery!

So much fun!!

Daycare Found!

As soon as we started to tell people that we were expecting, we received the response... "have you found a daycare yet?"  Well of course not!  This had not even crossed my mind.  We had so many other obstacles to tackle first.  I remember several of my working mama friends going through their daycare searches and being stressed to the max, but at the time I was completely unable to empathize.  There are so many considerations when finding daycare... but mostly it is the fine balance between cost and comfort.  Ron and I visited a handful of daycares, at all of which we had the same experience of walking in and touring the facility without so much as a greeting from the staff.  Ummm... yeah... that's not going to work for me.  A home daycare sounds wonderful, as Kyle and I had the most amazing experience being raised in one by our Memaw and Papa... a relationship that was more like that of having an extra set of grandparents than a babysitter, but what is the likelihood of finding a spot like that... in addition, with home daycare you have to worry about when the provider is sick, or going on vacation etc. etc. do Ron and I have the ability to stay home for those circumstances?

Just about the time when I began to start feeling a bit stressed about this, Tiffany Jenkins, my former boss and good friend, offered to take me to the daycare where she and several of CFA Institute moms take or have taken their children.  A week after the holidays we went to visit this daycare and I immediately felt a huge weight lifted.... they had a key code just to get into the facility!!  LOVE! LOVE!!  The children at the facility were full of smiles and activity and not once did I see a cellular devise in the hands of the staff.  Children were separated based on development stages... so those that couldn't crawl were in a separate room from the mobile children, etc. etc.  The facility was clean, everyone was happy and pleasant, and most of all, Tiffany's two kids survived the experience :)

Yesterday Ron made his assessment and we signed papers and wrote a check!  I couldn't be happier (unless it was free!) :)

Yayyyy... we are one step closer to being ready for you little Al! :)

You Might be an Adult When

You get super ridiculously excited about the arrival of this:

OUR First Piece of Furniture

Ron and I ordered our table the day we closed on the house and it finally arrived last night! :)  It's beautiful and we cannot wait to host many friend and family meals here!  He did have to send one chair back because one of the legs was about 1/2 an inch too short... how does that happen??  But all in all we couldn't be more pleased!

Another big arrival yesterday was my big baby splurge... the B.O.B.!

This is the Caddy of strollers and I am hoping that Al, Javier and I will take many a jog with it between the months of April and June to get mom back in shape!!  I forced encouraged Ron to push it around in the living room last night (shh... it was his first time pushing a stroller), and he was a natural!

Happy Hump Day, Ya'll!! :)

Time Flies

I cannot believe how quickly the time has flown by.  I remember thinking in August about how far away the holidays were... speculating about how large I would be when I saw my Grandma, Aunts, Uncles and Cousins again for the first time since our big news... and now that has come and gone.

Christmas has always been near and dear to my heart.  Every year since I was born (and one -1 year when I was in the womb... mom has a funny story about the drive to NY while being 7 month pregnant) we have made the trek to NY for Christmas.  The people in these memories have changed, but the feeling is always the same... exciting, warm, loving, magnificent smells, people coming and going with cheery smiles, arguing over who would get the "little bed"... then arguing who would NOT get the "little bed," opening stockings Christmas Eve night...of course complete with gas ex and other embarrassing items, the annual Christmas Eve eve trip to Wegman's and the yummy lunch in their cafe', fighting for Grandma's last sugar cookie... the list could go on forever.  Throughout the years there have been some absences that are ever present and make your nose hurt (as my dad says) for a brief second, but it all comes back to remembering the great traditions and memories that we have!

This year was no different!  We have added some new characters (well, really just Ron... and little Al :)) And what's funny is, I think that the thought of the upcoming years with Little Al there to join us brought the spirit up a notch! There is that thought in the back of my head that Al may never run down Grandma's stairs Christmas morning to see if Santa felt her worthy of his visit like Kyle and I did for all of those years... and that breaks my heart for an instant, but here's to new traditions with the same great feelings!

Wow that was a big stream of consciousness... my apologies :)

Anyway... Ron and I made our way up to Corning and had a lovely dinner with Grandma and were later joined by the rest of the family.  We carried on the usual traditions, with some added laughs (see below).

It was an amazing holiday!  Minus the chorus at church, which was very much sub standard... mom even let us get away with laughing during the mass... that will never happen again, so must be documented here.

Christmas Day we made our traditional trip to Wellsville to spend some time with the Grantiers which is always fun... so many children there now!  That night Mom, Dad, Kyle, Ron and I played Catch Phrase in the Microtel Lobby for about 4 hours, and I cannot think of anything I would have rather been doing :)

The next day we got up and walked to the Texas Hot for a delicious breakfast and then headed to Homer, NY to see Allie, Jeremy and Liam!  It was my first time seeing their new home and LIAM!  He is SUCH a cutie pie and I cannot wait for he and Al to meet this summer... hopefully in their sweet little bathing suits at the lake!!

Al's Future Husband :)  Such a sweetie! 

Al's cute bikini for 2013! (Hawaii, Dad?)

Since we have gotten home we have had some amazing weekends of just relaxing and cleaning and planning and spending quality time together.  It has been amazing. 

My new job is proving to be fantastic!  Aerobics are still going strong.  We started childbirth class last week and have the most hysterical peers; it really makes the class fun!  This weekend Mom and I are throwing Charly a baby shower brunch in Danville and I cannot wait!  

The pregnancy is definitely the most uncomfortable that it has been (but is still not bad).  I started having trouble sleeping around the holidays, and just recently have started to have back pain if I stand for too long of a stretch.  All in all though Al is moving around enough to make me happy and forget all about the pain.  

Ron started painting the nursery last weekend!  Soon we will put up a chair rail and then I will post some pictures. 

Life is good! :)