Baby #3: 22 weeks

3/4/14: I'm 22 weeks pregnant with baby #3 today!

Where to begin? Here is my belly.



It seems rather small here but I feel pretty large in real life. Well, not 'large' actually but I marvel at how hard and high it seems lately. My belly button looks mighty shallow and some of my maternity shirts are already too short (the horror of tall people and especially frustrating in pregnancy!).

I think I've embraced the 'small' comments as a way of pregnant life for me. I will usually respond to the, 'You are HOW far along? You are soooooooo small,' comments with 'my height helps,' as I've always done. Nobody ever seems to buy that. The really fun part is when I say, 'No, this is my third,' after people ask if this is my first baby. I love the wide-eyed looks they give me, as if they are totally shocked at my veteran mom status. I had a doctor tell me that she was huge at this part of her second pregnancy and I'm very lucky to have such a small belly right now. In general, I *do* feel very lucky with how pregnancy is mostly enjoyable for me. I like my bump. I'm okay with not being gigantic and uncomfortable just yet. I truly love pregnancy most of the time and I feel pretty awesome overall with good energy, I'm sleeping well, and my general excitement for this baby is every bit as obnoxious as it was for my first babe.

HOWEVER, this week I came down with frickin' strep throat for the first time in.....oh....15 years? Shoot me now. I started feeling like crap suddenly on Thursday but tried to ignore the sore throat, body aches, and general fatigue. I figured it was just a cold and it would improve. On Friday I worked, then mom and I got a mani/pedi (did I mention Mom and Memaw are here for Truman's birthday??!), and we had a big pizza dinner at our house for the entire family. After that event I started to feel like total hole, but again, tried to be tough and ignore it. I don't usually get sick besides colds and mostly just didn't want to deal with the idea of being sick for Truman's fourth birthday and party!

Well, on my big boy's birthday, I woke up and seriously could not swallow without wanting to cry. It felt like sandpaper was rubbing together in my throat. There were a few minutes of my life when I stood above the bathroom sink and just kept spitting out my...spit instead of swallowing it because it hurt so horribly to swallow. Flashlights to the back of the throat, lots of 'ahhhhhs' and an attempt at self-diagnosing left me feeling like I was probably just dealing with some virus. I attempted to ignore my misery again but eventually I caved and told Nate I was going to the Urgent Care clinic (first time ever) to rule out strep. I officially decided this just wasn't some minor sore throat, it felt like it was getting much worse and sure enough....one hour later, I had a positive rapid strep test to assure me that I really was sick. Crap.

This was obviously good news in the sense that I could get on antibiotics ASAP but horrible news since we were hosting a party for 15 adults and 12 kids in a few hours. I quickly texted all of the moms in the group to inform them of my contagious state of being and left it up to each family to decide if they wanted to come. I did cry a few tears at Walgreens, waiting for my prescription, imagining having to cancel the party for Truman since he was SO excited to see his friends (and to open numerous gifts). It turned out that three of the families backed out to be extra cautious, but two families (Erin and Dizzy) wanted to take the risk. So that crew plus our parents and Memaw meant we had just 7 kids and 10 adults at our house. Turned out to be a blessing in disguise because we had a blast, I didn't feel too much pressure to make the house look spotless or anything, and it was much lower key than planned. Plus: leftovers for days!

And Erin and I are exactly 8 weeks apart in our third pregnancies. So fun to share this with her!


Anyway, I started to feel 100x better after being on the meds for 24 hours. I woke up the next morning and could swallow without crying. BIG improvement. But yeah, that was a big moment of last week. Glad baby boy is fine in there and seems to be extra active despite his host feeling like death.

Another big happening this week not truly related to pregnancy but worth mentioning? Um, I backed into a parked car at the end of our driveway. First accident I've ever had (unless you count the time I ran over our basketball goal when I was 16 years old) and thankfully nobody was hurt. Not even our brand spanking new mini-van. But the other lady's car was not as unscathed as our tank, I'm afraid. Totally stressful and annoying and hopefully our car insurance won't skyrocket. But obviously, it's only important that everyone is fine.

Truman now tells me each time we back out: "Mommy, make sure you don't hit anyone, ok?" Thanks buddy. I have my excuses for why this happened and it wasn't because I was distracted or anything---I was just hyper-aware of cars coming at me left and right during a busy school time on our street. Lesson learned: must also look for cars parked at the end of our driveway. Duh.

Moving on...

We've also had visitors with us all week long, which is a BIG happy event for the week. Mom got here on Tuesday, Memaw on Thursday, and they both leave today on Tuesday. I have a feeling that Cecelia might lose her little mind when she realizes GoGo left her. We already had a little glimpse into that 'goodbye' on Friday, when I took the kids to daycare for Truman's party at Lori's. As we pulled away and my mom was still inside our house, CC cried the saddest cry for way too long wailing, 'GoGooooooooo!' Oh boy. It will be an adjustment for all of us, for sure. Such a fun visit, as always, and luckily they will both be back for Cecelia's party in a few more months. Goodbyes suck but returning to a routine and looking forward to the next visit is always nice. We are blessed with how often we *do* see our out of town family, anyway. These are the types of pep talks I give myself when I feel sad about an impending goodbye.

Also, this is what my house looks like with GoGo and Memaw playing with the kids non-stop. (I'm twitching). You might have noticed the chaos in the weekly belly picture, too. It's just not containable.






Obviously, very much worth it. Everyone has been having a ball. I can't wait to vacuum.

Other happenings from last week that *are* related to this pregnancy:

-Both Mom and Memaw felt baby boy kicking from the outside. Pretty amazing moment right there. They both love his name choice and I think I'm getting even more excited about it as time goes on.

-A slightly demented woman who lives in an Assisted Living Facility with one of my patients commented on my belly out of the blue the other day. She is easily over 70 years old and said the following: "Oh, you are having a BABY! I'm having a baby, too. But I'm going to let you take care of it for me when I have this child." Hahahahaha. Ok! The next time she saw me she recognized me and immediately asked how my baby is doing. I guess this means I'm really, truly, obviously pregnant. Also, she is hilarious.

-Nursery planning is in full force!! Obviously there will be some nursery posts all on their own, but Mom and I bought the fabrics for the quilt she will make baby boy, we bought fabric for the Roman Shades she will make, plus a crib skirt/changing pad cover. I love it so much I could puke. I also bought a rug online and truly, my head is spinning with the possibilities of pulling this all together. I just cannot say enough how much I love planning nurseries for my children. Having my mom's sewing abilities combined with my love for Pinterest and researching and dreaming = scary amounts of ideas. Sneak peek?

We are officially going with a mustard yellow, orange, and turquoise color scheme along with the dark gray. Mom is using this quilt pattern---looks like trees to me. In love with the outdoorsy theme right now. So many possibilities! Wisconsin! Colorado! Nature!

The quilt fabrics we pulled together. Kind of into the 'southwestern' arrow theme too, which sort of goes with the nature stuff. Leaves, trees, triangles that look like mountains..I like it.


Found this fabric on Spoonflower, a print called 'Squirrathalon' by Tracey Runnion. I adore how well these colors will pull it all together for us. In.Love. These will be our Roman Shades and probably a crib skirt.


The orange rug I bought on RugsUSA for 50% off--could we stretch it and say this looks like woodgrain somehow?


I should really do a mood board or whatever with all of these elements for the room. Maybe someday. But my 'Baby Boy Nursery' board on Pinterest is getting a little bit out of control! It's been noted that I can't even do an earthy theme without using bright colors---I can't help it, I guess! I also seem to have a pattern of picking a wall color first, then I find a rug, and then fabrics. After those three big elements are in place in my head, I can picture how it will all come together and make other decisions about the details. Next up for baby boy's room? White birch tree wall decals, painting the crib (probably mustard yellow) and maybe even the changing table (turquoise?). So much fun.

-Truman is the cutest big brother ever, in my biased opinion. When leaving for work on Monday he ran up to me unprompted and said, 'What about my hug and my kiss?' I squatted down to plant one on him but he said, 'No! I mean for the baby! Both of you are going to work!' He will frequently ask to hug and kiss his brother. I truly cannot handle the sweetness and yesterday he laughed when he kissed my belly saying, 'Woah, look at how big it is now!' Ha! The only person that calls me big is my four year old! Truman has a love for baby boys right now as evidenced in his pride when holding Dizzy's baby at the party. He requested to hold Tommy multiple times and didn't want to stop for quite some time. I sure do hope he is this sweet with our baby! Haven't really decided how Cecelia will do as a big sister but I'm banking on Truman being at least somewhat excited for the addition.



-I lied, this is not about the baby but needs mentioning: our bunk beds are up in the kids' room! Eeeek! We needed to do some rearranging with Memaw and Mom both staying in the vacant nursery, so we figured having my mom on the bottom bunk, Truman transitioning to the top bunk, and keeping CC in  her crib in the same room would be best. A packed house for sure, but it's only temporary (although I joked to Nate that would could easily have four kids in our three bedroom house this way! He promptly asked me who I was going to have four children with. Wah-wah.)

Truman was scared as the beds were being assembled but once he climbed up there for the first time he was SOLD. He loves it, has done amazing each night up there, and will climb up and down all on his own. Now we will put C in the bottom bunk as soon as my mom leaves…so maybe tonight! Holy transitions, I'm scared! This means we just bought CC's big girl bedding and I can put the final touches on their shared room and then there will be a reveal of that room. Super lucky that Truman's twin bed has always been a part of the bunks that Nate and his brother used as kids, and the other twin bed is available for us to use with CC (my in-laws still had it). We could definitely keep the two twin beds separate, too, but having the bunks really does open the room up so much more. And they seem super fun. I hope CC does well in the big bed. Truman sure has done amazing in the top bunk, that's for sure.

I'm excited for this part of the transition to three kids---room sharing is pretty fun over here right now. Let's hope it stays that way. We also got a video monitor system for both the big kids' room and the baby's nursery. It's by Fosacam and our iPhones/iPad will be the monitors through an app. I could go on and on about these but I will just add it to my Baby Gear post at some point instead. We love.






What else? Baby boy is still very active and I'm feeling more connected to him each day for some reason. I just cannot wait to meet this little boy in a few more months. Labor and delivery, the hospital stay, seeing our son for the first time, introducing him to the kids----that whole experience is always so new and magical and I can't believe we can do it all over again. Then settling in as a family of five at home and getting into some sort of routine with three kids seems a little more scary but doable. The everyday part of having three kids doesn't scare the bajeezus out of me like it did before. I guess I'm just resigned to the fact that it's happening *soon* and we will just have to figure it out. I was just thinking about how we are nearly reaching the point of 'viability' with this baby pretty soon. It's seeming more and more real each day. And I'm doing my best to soak it all in while I can.