Pregnancy Journal: 38 Weeks

 I can't believe I have made it this far! Being this pregnant is a whole new experience for me. I am constantly wondering if different things I am feeling are normal or not since I don't have a previous experience to compare it to. This is also my first time of wondering every day if this is going to be "the day". It makes time go sooooo much slower! I am really tired all the time and sleeping has gotten pretty difficult. I have almost no clothes that fit me anymore and it is starting to really feel like I have this alien body. How do people do this??? I did not have proper respect for pregnant women who make it all the way to their due date or (the horror!!) past. Seriously. They are warriors, cause this is hard!

This is what I see when I look down:

 And if I lean over a little bit and suck in I can sort of see my toes :)

I am also literally the heaviest I have ever been in my entire life, which is a strange feeling. Pretty soon I am going to weigh more than Anthony! I think I need to start closing my eyes when I get on the scale at the doctor's office, because no one needs to see that :) 

Family/Maternity Pictures

Last week we finally got our family/maternity pictures taken! I was hoping to get them done a little bit earlier than 36 weeks pregnant, just for my own vanity, but our schedules just didn't line up. I was definitely feeling hot and puffy, but that is to be expected when taking pictures in September in Florida! James was pretty cooperative, aside from being extra attached to Anthony that day. He just didn't want to cooperate with any poses that involved just me and him. Luckily we were able to get a few :)

 

 I love how this one turned out! James wanted nothing to do with hugging me or hugging my belly, so Anthony made it a a game of forcing him to hug my belly and he actually gave us a smile!

 

 I love James' expression in this one! We would tell him to listen to baby brother and he would get this really serious expression, like he was really listening :)

It is nice to look back and the pictures and feel like I looked stylish and put together :) Even though it was only a week ago, now I am so tired and exhausted that sweats and no shower is pretty much the usual for me every day. Only a few more weeks to go, although I am hoping for sooner :)

New ultrasound pictures

We had our midwife appointment yesterday and it went great! The ultrasound was so cool! Everything looks perfect and they confirmed he definitely is a boy :) The sonographer tried to get a good close up of his face for us, but he refused to move his hand away from his lips. We tried nudging him and pushing him to see if he would adjust himself but it didn't work. I guess he was comfy and wasn't interested in moving! The pictures we did get are still really cute though:

The midwife checked me since I had contractions last week and said that I haven't dilated at all and I'm about 50% effaced. So it looks like he is going to be staying put for a little while longer, which is okay with me! When she measured me she said that I am measuring on the small side, so she thinks he isn't going to be a very big baby. That is always good news to a pregnant lady! 

Family Trip to the Zoo

Since Anthony had the day off yesterday, we weren't sure what we wanted to do for Labor Day. Sunday on the way home from church, James started excitedly shouting, "We going to the zoo!!". Anthony and I looked at each other and I said that it was actually a good idea for something to do the next day. Our passes expire at the end of the month and I wanted to go at least one more time before the baby comes. We planned to get there as soon as they opened so that we could attempt to beat the heat. It was still hotter than anything!

James didn't seem to mind the heat, he was so excited that Anthony's parents and our niece and nephew were able to meet us there! James had a great time following Dallas around and they were so sweet with him, holding his hand on the stairs and showing him things. Dallas would even lift James up so that he could see over the hand rails:

Our first stop was to the giraffes. They are my favorite!! There were two baby giraffes running and chasing each other around the enclosure. I don't think I have ever seen a giraffe run before, and it was really cool looking. While we were waiting to feed the giraffes, one of the volunteers told us that mother giraffes carry their babies for 14 months!! The mother giraffe at the zoo has had 5 babies so far. I have a serious amount of respect for giraffes now :)

 

Here are James and Anthony feeding the giraffe:

The zoo was having a cold-blooded weekend that featured the reptiles so they had extra activities planned. We got to watch them feed the alligators frozen discs of food. It was crazy to watch them crunch right through the blocks of ice with their jaws!!

 

Watching the alligators:

We also got to see the baby Jaguar, although he doesn't really look like a baby anymore. Maybe more like an adolescent.

 James wasn't too interested in the jaguar, he mostly just wanted bites of Anthony's dippin dots. I think it is so funny that he cries and refuses to eat regular ice cream, but he liked the dots ice cream. I think it is because it is not as messy. He is so particular! On the one hand it can be frustrating, but on the other hand I totally get it because I am the same way :)

The heat was really getting to me, so we made our way to the kids area. While we waited for everyone to look at the aquarium and touch tank, my mom and I took a break in the shade.

Finally we got into the air conditioned kids discovery area. Sweet relief! James and his cousins loved playing in the large sand area, digging for fossils. We had a sand throwing problem at one point that required a time out, but other than that James loved it :)

 Nevada decided to bury herself in the sand :)

It was such a great way to spend our holiday, we decided that we definitely have to plan family days at the zoo more often. James loved having Anthony come with us, since usually it is just me and him. When James got up in the morning, he didn't even think to look for Anthony. He played with me and my mom for awhile before he came into the living room. When he saw Anthony he got excited and ran up to him and said, "You're here!!" It was so sweet! It made me really glad that we decided to spend the day together instead of Anthony going fishing (which he considered doing). Now that Anthony gets off of work at noon on Saturdays, hopefully we will be able to schedule more family activities like that :)





Family Home Evening

This post is mainly just for me and for journaling purposes. We have a hard time doing family home evening in our house. James hates sitting still, and I never know what lessons or activities to do that will be spiritual but fun for him. Anthony also works until 10:30pm on Mondays so we try to have FHE on Sundays. However, after church and the craziness of primary we are usually so tired Sunday nights that we don't have the motivation for it. I started a binder with laminated magnets of scripture stories, so we usually just pull out one of those and go through the story really quickly for our lesson.

Last Sunday I realized that we probably hadn't had FHE in at least two months. So I sat us down to do it right before bath time. I didn't realize it, but my mom was videoing it! I wanted to be able to look back at it to remember, so here it is :)

For song we have a primary song app on the Ipad that sings the songs with pictures and words. We always let James choose the song and he usually picks the one with birds on it, or the star song :)

Pinterest Fail

I am a pinterest junkie. I look at that website all the time on my phone, especially at night time when I should be sleeping. There is something so relaxing about looking at the stuff other people find useful or beautiful or interesting. When I was planning activities for us to do with James in the Keys, I got most of my ideas off of pinterest. I had a few leftover that we didn't do on vacation so I decided to try them out at home.

One of the activities was to take shaving cream and mix it with food coloring to make paint that your child can use in the bathtub. It looked like so much fun and seemed easy to clean afterwards, just turn on the faucet and wash it away. That is not how it turned out. To be fair, James was really cranky before I got all the stuff together to do it, so I probably should have put it off for another day. I thought it would be so fun that he would snap out of his bad mood. Nope.

Here he is getting started:

 I put him in our bathtub because it is bigger and I thought he would have more room to paint. What I didn't consider is that in his bathroom the walls around the bathtub are all tile, almost to the ceiling while in our bathtub, the painted walls start a few inches past the bathtub. Almost immediately after getting food coloring dyed shaving cream all over his hands, James smeared large hand prints all over the walls! I had no idea how I was going to get the stain out of the wall and I spent the rest of the time telling James over and over to paint only in the bathtub and not the walls.

He had fun for a little while while I googled how to get food coloring stains off of walls:

Then he discovered that if he got the brush a little wet, he could fling droplets all over the bathroom.

 Once he noticed that his hands were stained blue, he started to get upset. He kept asking me to "wash it off". This kid doesn't not like having his hands dirty!!

It was getting late, so I told James that it was time to wash it off and take a bath. He was not interested. I tried just turning on the faucet and giving him a bath right there, but he got so upset that I was washing his masterpiece away that he started screaming so hard he almost couldn't breathe. Since he was covered in food coloring, I didn't want to just pick him up and get my clothes all stained, knowing that he would be kicking and flailing the entire time. I tried to grab him and just wash him off quickly in the water so I could get him out of the tub, but he saw what I was doing and ran to the other side of the tub and immediately smeared his hands all over the walls in defiance. At this point I was so frustrated that I finally got a hold of him and rinsed him off as quickly as I could and took him to his room to get dressed for bed. He was crying so hard that he couldn't catch his breath and all I could think about was the clean-up job that was in front of me once I got him into bed. After a few minutes he settled down and I talked to him about how we can't do fun things if he is going to get so upset when it is time for them to be over. I don't think he comprehended any of it, but at least I tried.

After he went to sleep I tried 3 different chemicals to get the stain off of the walls and the last one finally worked! Thank goodness! Once the tub was cleaned out and the food colored bathroom rugs were put in the washer I practically fell into bed for the night. Sometimes it is good to remember that those pictures on pinterest of blissfully happy and content kids playing obediently with what is in front of them are pictures of one second! Just one! Right before and after could have been total chaos. And probably was :)

Pregnancy Journal: 36 Weeks

 Only 4 more weeks to go!! I feel like I am getting bigger by the day :) In fact, my belly has grown so much so quickly, that I have started bumping into things with it all the time because my brain hasn't caught up yet! In a few days I will be as pregnant as I have ever been (since James was born a few days after 36 weeks), and if I make it to my due date it will be the first time I've experienced the last month of pregnancy...in Florida..in September. It is hot!!

Friday night I woke up at 4am with some pretty strong and consistent contractions. I was so nervous that it was real labor! I wasn't sure if I should wake Anthony up or if I should just wait them out. I tried just lying there and relaxing, but they were so uncomfortable that I couldn't sleep. Finally after about an hour I got up to take a warm bath. As soon as I got in, everything relaxed and the contractions went away. Phew!! I was so relieved. I am definitely not ready for labor yet :)

We still can't decide on a name. I have a feeling that we are going to be in the hospital after he is born, debating names and having the same discussions over and over again. I am hoping that once he is here, one of the names we like will all of a sudden jump out at us and make the decision easier. For now, we have a list of names that we like, but none of them seem right for some reason.

I am doing pretty well on my list of things I need to get done before the baby is born. It feels like we have been really busy lately so I've been trying to get things done so that we can relax a little bit before our life gets turned upside down. I can tell that soon I won't have a choice but to slow down because I am so tired all the time!!

Wednesday we have a midwife appointment and an ultrasound scheduled to verify that the baby is head down (we know that he is, but they routinely check at 36 weeks anyway). So there are more pictures to come!