Pregnancy journal: 30 weeks

Oh my word am I big and uncomfortable! I know that it is only going to get worse, but there are times when I can't believe that I still have 10 weeks left. I feel like I am ready to pop!

I did my glucose screening and blood work right after the 4th of July and I found out this week that I passed! No yucky three hour test for me! Everything looked good except I had a really low vitamin d level, so the midwife put me on supplements. It is so surprising that we live in the sunshine state and I don't get enough vitamin d, but I am really good about wearing hats and sunscreen so maybe that has something to do with it. Anthony says he sees it all the time in his patients and that it is actually pretty common. Strange. Another funny thing about our midwife appointment: the midwife scolded me for reaching to pick James up! She told me that I absolutely can't be lifting him at all ever unless I want to end up in the hospital....ummm yeah. So there is no way that is possible. I pick him up to get in and out of his crib, his carseat, etc... I don't have any risk factors that she is concerned about, I guess it is what she tells all her patients but I just don't buy it! Mothers all over the world have young children while they are pregnant and I guarantee they are picking them up as needed. Of course, be careful and cautious about it but come on! I went home and researched it and couldn't find any real medical reason not to pick up children while pregnant (which I consider to be totally different from dead lifting a 25 lb box or something). Has anyone ever been told this? It has really thrown me for a loop!

We keep having discussions with James about having a baby brother and it seems like he is starting to get it. He knows that I have baby brother in my belly (although sometimes he forgets that it is just me and talks about the baby brother in his and Anthony's belly :) and whenever we mention baby brother he wants to pull my shirt up and pat my belly. He usually says something like "come out!" and we tell him that one day he will come out and we will have a baby in our house. Today when he was looking at my belly and talking about baby brother he said, "I (want to) see it!!" and he leaned over me and put his eye to my belly button like it was a peephole. So funny!!!

I have started having midwife appointments every two weeks and it feels like I have an appointment all the time! I realized that I was spoiled with James because they let me go four weeks between appointments right up to the day I had him. Usually we all go together and Anthony has to control James while we wait and wait and wait. Since we are going so frequently now I am considering just starting to go by myself. However, I love that James is a part of it and gets to hear the heartbeat when we do. It makes me feel like we are including him as much as we can. I guess we will have to see how it goes.

We are still stumped on a name! Does anyone have any boy names they aren't going to use?? We need suggestions!

Phone pictures

Our computer mysteriously died earlier this week so I am trying out blogging from my phone for the very first time. Did you know there is an iPhone app for blogger?? Who knew?? This is a good chance to get caught up with some pictures from my phone!

A few weeks ago I was organizing James' dresser in his room to make room for baby clothes and James was running around the room chasing Bitsy. He tripped next to his crib and planted his face into the corner of it, managing to get two separate gashes on his head from the same fall! This is the picture I sent Anthony that night:

Last week we got to watch our friends' little girl for a few hours and James was so excited to play with her! They watched her favorite show together since she was a little sad about her family leaving. It was so cute to see him bring her toys, he was really kind. 

It is so interesting to see James start to like being around other kids and playing with them! Up until recently he would get overwhelmed and shy and would just play around other kids, not with them. Now he gets so excited to see someone to play with! Today at the park we played by ourselves for a good while, but when too little girls came, James jumped up, yelled "kids!" and ran over to them to follow them around :)

I got this picture one night while I was cooking dinner. Almost every evening Anthony gets down on the ground and gets rowdy with James. Sometimes James rides him like a horse and other times they run around the house making motor boat sounds, pretending to be speed boats. Anthony is such a great dad, I love watching them play together!

James is still loving reading books all the time!! It is amazing how long he will sit and read with me, especially since he never sits still at other times. Even the librarian that does story time has noticed a difference in how much he listens and pays attention to the stories now. Last week after she read a story he actually said "More!!" when it was done (which is what he says to me at home when he wants to keep reading). He seems to never get tired of being read to and will say "more" after every single book for so long! Usually I have to be the one that decides reading time is over.

We go through an enormous amount of library books each week and I have started just letting James pick out the books and put them in our library bag instead of trying pick out ones I think he will like. That just takes too much time! So usually I sit there and hold the bag open while James pulls a bunch of books off the shelf indiscriminately. It has definitely made for some interesting story times! I read this one to him the other night and I couldn't stop laughing!!!

Isn't that hilarious!!! Diarrhea happens, why not talk about it right :)

James saw this ad on the back of a magazine and kept pointing to the man and saying "picture Daddy". I tried to see if he thought the girl looked like mommy, but he wouldn't say it and kept giving me this look like, "you crazy, lady!" :) I sent a text to Anthony with the picture telling him what James said and instead of being flattered like I thought he would be he was like, "what are you trying to say? You don't think I look like that?" (Teasingly of course) 

Anthony's schedule is going to change slightly starting next week and he is going to be working a few more hours during the week and have Saturday afternoons off, which will be nice. There always seems to be fun things going on on Saturdays and they will be so much more fun if we can all do them together!

I am feeling pretty good, just tired and hot and hungry and uncomfortable a lot of the time :) I will have to do a 30 week update with pictures and info tomorrow. I started making a list of things I need to get done and taken care of before my due date and it is crazy to me how quickly the end of September is coming up! 

4th of July Weekend

We had a great 4th of July weekend!! It started Wednesday afternoon when we drove to Orlando to pick up my mom from the airport. She had been in Ohio visiting my sister since our Myrtle Beach vacation and was going to stay with us for the weekend before heading home. I was excited for James to experience the airport for the first time! He loved the escalators and the elevators and seeing the planes take off. Fun fact: he calls the gates that go up and down at parking garages and railroad tracks, "Do-ti-do's". We have no idea why, but it is so funny to hear him say it!!

My mom's flight arrived right as we were pulling into the parking garage and she even had a celebrity on her flight! She met Abby Lee from the reality show "Dance Moms"! My mom asked her for a picture and she told my mom that she would do it after the flight once she had her makeup on. After they arrived and got off the plane, my mom didn't see her and assumed that she had left, but then she tracked my mom down so that she could get a picture. How nice is that?

 Since Anthony had off of work for the holiday on Thursday, Wednesday night his dad came to spend the night so that they could go fishing at 5am! James was in heaven having Grandma and Papa come visit him, although he still calls both of them Papa :) Anthony hasn't had a lot of luck lately on his fishing trips, so I was worried that he wouldn't catch anything. Luckily, they did well! They caught a total of 4 fish between the two of them and they had a great time out on the water. They left around 5am and didn't get home until the mid afternoon.

My mom, James, and I spent the morning playing with trains and made a visit to the produce stand so that we could make fruit salad to bring to dinner. Our landlords (a really sweet older couple) invited us over for a barbeque and I wanted to bring something yummy! Everyone was really impressed that I actually cut up a pineapple for the fruit salad and it was a big hit :) James loved exploring their house, although the amount of breakables they had did make me a little concerned. They kept assuring us that "he couldn't hurt anything!", and I was thinking, "Oh buddy, you haven't spent time around this kid! He can do way more damage than you would think!". We had a great time talking with them and their friends, even though there is a big age gap between us and everyone else. I think they think of us as surrogate grandkids :)

After dinner we came home and put James down for a late nap, hoping that he would sleep a little bit before the fireworks. This was our first year braving our town's fireworks and I was worried about how James would act since they are so late. He napped for a little bit and then was up at 8pm ready to go! For a few days I had been showing him videos on youtube of fireworks and talking to him about how fun they were and telling him that they were loud. I didn't know if it would work, but the preparation seemed to pay off because he loved them!! He seemed a little scared at first, but it quickly passed. We had such a great time, I was really glad that we decided to go.

He started out in Anthony's lap to watch. Our spot was perfect, right in front of where they were setting them off:

 About halfway through, he wanted to get a little bit closer, but not too close so he moved to right behind my mom. He kept his hand on her shoulder almost the whole time, it was so sweet!

Friday morning Anthony went off to work and we stayed home to get ready for my brother Daniel to come and visit! It is hard to tell if James likes his grandparents or my brother Daniel more, it is a close call. He loves his Uncle Daniel! Sometimes when he is playing with a toy phone and chatting away we will ask him who he is talking to and most of the time he says, "Naniel, abunchofgobblygookwedon'tunderstand....boat". James was so excited when Daniel arrived with his bassett hound Henry! He would laugh and giggle and call him "Henry dog". We had a great time hanging out, watching TV, and catching up Friday night.

For even more fun, as part of the weekend festivities we got to celebrate Daniel's birthday on Saturday! While everyone else slept in Saturday morning, James came up to me in the morning right after breakfast and brought me a book. When he wants to read something, he usually gets a book and brings it to me and says, "read it!". Of course, I can never say no to that!! He started out wanting to read "If you give a pig a pancake", and after each book he would say, "more" and would go get another one for us to read. We ended up reading 13 books in a row for about 45 minutes! Here are all the books we read:

I had to finally tell him that we couldn't read anymore, my voice was giving out!

Saturday night my brother requested a local Mexican restaurant for his birthday dinner. It is a really yummy place and whenever he visits we usually get takeout from there. James did great in the restaurant, Anthony and I both got to eat our food at the same time!! My mom took this picture of us sitting at the table. It seems like James does the best in restaurants when he can sit next to us instead of in a separate highchair. (As a side note, do you see my shirt? It says "Does this baby make me look fat? :)

We told our waiter that it was Daniel's birthday in case they did anything special for birthdays. He kind of shook his head apologetically and said that they didn't...he lied!! After we finished our food, the entire staff came out of the kitchen with sombreros for everyone, singing a song (something in Spanish, I am assuming birthday related), and gave us free ice cream. It was such a fun surprise!

James loved the hats and didn't want to give his back when it was time to go. He dug right into the ice cream with his spoon, but didn't seem to care for it. He sure liked the whipped cream though!

Sunday morning we all went to church and after we got home, my mom and Daniel left for home. It was so sad!!! I told James that Grandma and Daniel were going home to their house and he yelled out, "No!!!!". That's the way I felt :) We had such a good time, we will have to do it again soon!

What we've been up to

Life has been pretty busy around here lately. It seems like our to-do list is always a mile long and with my crazy nesting urges, I can't stop myself from adding more things to the list! A lot of times I can't stand to wait for Anthony to get home to get things done so I have been venturing out of my comfort zone. I took apart and fixed (!) one of James' favorite toys all by myself and I even pulled out the manual of my car and checked the oil and transmission fluid when the car started acting funny. I've also been doing a lot of online shopping since throughout the day, I will remember I need something and I want to go ahead and get it off the list. One of the perks of online shopping? Big boxes for James to play with! This is still one of his favorite toys:

Anthony has a lot of things on his own to-do list too, mostly aquarium related. Remember when he said he was paring down the aquariums? Yeah, he has slowly worked his way back up to three different aquariums. At least these are small ones :) A few weeks ago Anthony came home from work and showed me a picture of some coral an aquarium guy had posted on his facebook page. The guy was having a contest, whoever could come up with the best name for the coral would win it! Anthony had a few ideas, but he liked my idea the best (I suggested "Arctic Chill" since they were icy blue) so he submitted it. He ended up winning! A few days later we took James to go pick it up and Anthony ended up buying a few other things too. James loved seeing the fish in the tank :)

James is just growing and growing and has been amazing us every day with the things he says and understands. I really need to get better about writing down the funny things he says so I can remember them for later. Yesterday I officially put away all of his size 18 month clothes and put all of his 2T size clothes in his drawers. His shorts were getting pretty short and I noticed last week that his t-shirts barely covered the top of his diaper. Today he got to wear some of his "new" (since a lot are hand-me-downs) clothes and he insisted on wearing the "white" shorts. I had no idea what he was talking about, so I told him to show me. He went to his drawer and pulled out a pair of cream colored khaki shorts from the very bottom. He must have remembered seeing me put them in there yesterday!! His memory is too good!!!

I usually run out of energy by mid-afternoon, so it has been a bit of a struggle figuring out what to do with James everyday. It seems like the more tired I get, the more energy he gets! Last Wednesday we went to story time at the library in the morning, but I was at a loss of what to do after that. I realized we needed gas in the car and the cheapest gas station is right next to a Burger King that has an awesome indoor, air-conditioned play place. I was already tired from story-time, so the thought of sitting indoors and just letting him run around sounded too good to pass up. I am so glad we went, we had such a great time!! James was so happy and I felt like we were on a little date :)

Eating his kid's meal:

I asked him to "say cheese":

We spent a good hour/hour and a half there. James would come eat some food, and then go back to running around and exploring everything. The slides are really high and twisty, so he would come and get me and say "Mommy slide!" until I got up and went down with him. He liked the "hat" they gave him, but he wanted to wear it around his neck. It was so funny watching him try to figure out how to eat his food with the crown in front of his mouth!

This is what he came up with:

James loves playing with Anthony's tools and going through his toolbox in the garage. If he gets out there, he actually spends more time with the tools than looking at the boat which is shocking considering how obsessed with the boat he used to be. I got him his own play tool set and he loves them! Every morning he immediately goes to look for his tools and picks out a few to take around with him. He almost died of excitement when I hung a few pictures up and started hammering the hooks into the wall. He went and got his play hammer and started hitting the wall with it right underneath me. Hours later when Anthony got home, he got his hammer and started showing and telling Anthony how he "helped". He loves to tell stories about things we have done or seen during the day to Anthony. You usually can only understand a few of the main words, but you can tell he thinks he is telling you this detailed story. We really need to get a video of it!

One of Anthony's coworkers quit recently, so there is a possibility that Anthony's hours might change soon. I am a little nervous about it, but I am hoping our schedule won't be too disrupted. It is really hard to get a hold of Anthony while he is at work. He keeps his phone on vibrate in his pocket, but he never feels the phone vibrate, so he never checks his phone. I don't expect him to answer if he is in with a patient, but I can't even count on him getting a text or phone message from me until he basically walks into the door of the house and remembers that his phone is in his pocket. Yesterday I wanted to ask him a question and I knew that he was done seeing patients for the day, so I called him. Of course, he didn't answer! I looked at James and said, "This is so annoying!" James repeated, "annoying!" Then this morning I needed to ask him a question right after he walked out the door. He was in his car, probably only a few blocks down our street when I tried to call him. Of course, no answer. I didn't say a thing, but once the voice mail message came on, James looked up from his toys and said, "annoying!". That's right kid! I couldn't have said it better myself :)