Monday, March 28, 2016

| Hello 2nd Trimester | Happy Easter!

It's just a miracle. I can't even tell you how blessed we feel to be here now. I'm now officially in my second trimester. I'm 151/2 weeks and I feel like I'm walking on a cloud.


Let's be honest, the second trimester has surprised me in a few ways. My energy level is totally on the upswing. I haven't had a day where I've been sluggish, unless I was under the influence of Benadryl - thank you allergy season. But because everyone is still watching me like I'm gonna break at any moment (which I am thankful for, but I always repeat "I'm fine. She's fine." constantly.) I spend a lot of my time taking it easy and resting. For example, this past week was busy, and so whenever I was at home and not on the run, I could be found sitting on my tush. I managed to top to bottom house clean on Good Friday to get us ready for the weekend. I spent all day Saturday on the couch.

The first thing that surprised the heck out of me was TMI TMI TMI leaky nipples. Again, let me just stop here and remind you how it's always my intention to be 100% honest with how I'm feeling, what I'm thinking and what's happening. So.... I have leaky nipples. Yeah, it shocked me too. Typically leaky nipples don't happen until much later in the second trimester, if in the second trimester at all, but definitely in the third. Typically in the third trimester - and much closer to your due date - you will leak colostrum, which is sort of a precursor to your breastmilk, think of it as super milk. But it isn't entirely unheard of to start to leak as early as me. It IS NOT colostrum, if it was I would be super concerned about my little girl and her waterbed situation. It is just a clear liquid. I noticed the front of my pajama shirt was wet at 13 1/2 weeks. Immediately I hopped on Google and discovered that it wasn't anything to be alarmed about. From what I've read it's generally a good sign that you will have a good milk production, which is great because it is my full intention to breastfeed.

Ok, now that that is out of the way let's move onto something else! My hips are still pretty much in agony from sleeping on my sides. My doctor suggested that it may be time to invest in a pregnancy pillow, so I will definitely look into it if I can't come up with a combo of pillow placement on my own with what I have at home. And I'm still dealing with congestion. It's the norm these days lol. When the time comes that I can sleep and breathe through both nostrils I may throw a party. This past week was bad for my allergies. Sunday night I spent sleeping for 2 minutes at a time and then waking up gasping for air. On Monday I lost count at how many times I sneezed after 200 times. I took a Benadryl and was a slug for the next two days. But I slept that night, so that was good. Towards the end of the week if I laid on my left side I could breathe totally out of one nostril and then partially out of the other. Aaron said he noticed that I wasn't up as much, or sniffing and snuffing as much and that it seemed like I was actually sleeping. I was so thankful for that. And am so thankful for being able to sleep and breathe at the same time. I'm a hardcore multitasker like that.

I have nothing else to report as far as symptoms. Seriously, if I didn't know for sure I was pregnant, I would wonder. If I hadn't seen her on the ultrasound at 7 weeks, and if I didn't keep hearing her heartbeat at every doctors appointment I would just assume that everything was normal.

My belly is starting to pooch, we call Candis the "lil pooch" sometimes. I noticed it at 13 weeks, that it was definitely bigger, more round than it was before. But now, it is for sure a tiny baby bump. I'd kind of hoped to be a little bigger at Easter, just for photos sake, but I'm not going to complain. I'll either get HUGE in a hurry or I will be lucky and not be the size of a house. So, fingers crossed that I don't end up big as a Buick. And just like every pregnant woman, I'm bigger at night. In the morning I look like I ate too many onion rings the night before, but once I'm up and moving I think Candis settles back down into whatever squishy spot she's found and then I'm looking pregnant again.



We've been working on getting Candis' room cleaned out. It's been our storage room for the past few years and we've just cram packed it full of garbage, basically. We've tossed about 15 bags (the industrial size) of garbage and made three trips to the goodwill, we've got more trips to go! I would buy something decor wise to use in our house, and once I got tired of it, instead of taking it to the Goodwill or reselling it I would save it because "one day we will have a bigger house that I'll need to decorate and this way I won't have to buy anything." Yeah, no. Do as I say not as I do. Once something has serviced it purpose, if you are no longer using it, get rid of it. I'm so thankful for my Mom and her tough love on this subject. "Missy, you will never use that again. It does not match your house. Why are you keeping those casette tapes? You don't own a casette tape player. Seriously? You're gonna keep that box of purses that you never use? Put them in the Goodwill bag." She was no nonsence when it came to the purge and I needed it. Once the room is completely empty then we will clean it with some super intense cleaners - it's been sitting full of junk and collecting all kinds of nastiness for years - and then we will paint it and start decorating. During the painting time, we are going to paint our bedroom too, just so that everything is nice and uniform in the house, everything will be the same color and everything will be hunky dory!


Easter 2016 has come and gone. It was such a sweet weekend. Aaron had to work on Good Friday, so like I said above, I spent the day cleaning the house and getting it ready for us to spend a lazy couple of days together. Saturday we literally did nothing. Nothing at all. We laid on the couch and watched movie after movie after movie. DareDevil, Daredevil the Netflix show, Johnny English, Johnny English Reloaded, Good Burger, The Addams Family, just whatever struck us as good to watch, we watched it. We snacked all day and went to bed completely satisfied with our lazy day and with our church clothes laid out for Easter Sunday,

Our Family, Easter 2016

This is us with Aaron's family outside of our church. Aaron has the only shot of me and my Mom on his phone that I'll have to steal later on. I spent most of Thursday afternoon dragging Aaron around Kohls trying to find an outfit. I wanted a maxi dress, simple, easy for me to wear now and later, something that would fit. I didn't NEED to be maternity it just needed to fit. Waiting until the last minute wasn't a good idea because I couldn't find a single thing. Aaron actually found the dress I'm wearing in the maternity section (yeah, those two tiny racks between bathing suits and kids clothes) I was totally on the fence about it and kept calling myself a "bouquet of flowers," but everyone loved it. I paired it with that super soft coral cardigan, and Aaron even was a sport and matched me with his coral tie. You can't even really see my Candis bump in the dress right now, but I will definitely grow into that dress and may use it for baby showers. IDK. It all felt a little fussy for me at this stage in my life. But it was nice to get to dress up. I know that sounds horribly petty, but I do good to get out of my pajamas these days.... I felt like I was going to a ball getting that dressed up. That, plus my hairdo didn't do. I should have just dried it and straightened out the front like I normally do. Instead I tried to get fancy and curl the front with my flat iron. Ugh. Oh well. Who was looking at my hair anyway?

We had a wonderful service at church, and then instead of going to my sister in law's house as we usually do, this year we decided to just eat out. So we all went to a nice restaurant, where I ate the nastiest chicken wrap I've had in a while, and then parted ways. On the way home Aaron and I decided to spend the rest of our day at my Mom's house. We love going there and just being able to spread out and relax. It is just the three of us and a dog there. We watched some old videos and then watched a movie. My Mom made her amazing Nachos that I can never seem to make right and we finally left her house at 1am. 0.0 Whoops. Time flies.

So it's on to another week today. I've got a ton of laundry ahead of me on this particular day. Ugh. It never ends. And you know how I hate laundry! Did I mention I hate laundry?


Happy Easter from my family to yours! God bless!

Tuesday, March 8, 2016

It's A........ | Gender Reveal

I've not been updating weekly. Truth be told, nothing is changing week to week. I've not had a whole ton of symptoms with this pregnancy, they're not going and coming or getting worse or easing off, so there's very little, if anything to report on a week to week basis.

But at our 11 week appointment on 2/25 we decided to have some optional testing done. Here in KY it's called the Harmony Test, I'm not sure if they call it that other places, and the only reason I say here in KY is because I've heard youtubers talk about it and they don't call it by any name. Anyway this test tests for all sorts of chromosomal abnormalities including Down's Syndrome and for diseases like Cystic Fibrosis. Because it's checking baby's chromosomes it can tell as early as 10 weeks the gender of your baby. And so with that on the table in front of us, how could we resist?

They took my blood and said "we'll call you in 7-10 business days." So we came home to wait.

The call finally came on Friday March 4th. I told Aaron as soon as he got home from work a half hour later and so we set about pulling together the cheapest most on-short-notice Gender Reveal party you've ever seen.


Like an idiot I neglected to take any photos of how we decorated inside, but everything came from the Dollar Tree. We accomplished the whole shebang for $40, including food.

We decided to have it at my Mom's house. She's got a gorgeous back yard, plenty of parking space and is always good at a moment's notice. We covered her kitchen table with two table clothes, one side blue, one side pink. We did the same to the snack bar area in her kitchen, one side blue, one side pink. On the table we added little pop up centerpieces that said "Baby Boy" and "Baby Girl" and sprinkled some plastic safety pins out. We used the snack bar for the food. We bought 3 boxes of pizza from Little Ceasars and my Mother in Law brought sandwich things and drinks. We laid the sandwich stuffings out on two plastic trays from Dollar Tree to make it all pretty lol. We hung two banners, one boy, one girl, across my Mom's back door and called it a day. It was simple, but very cute, and very inexpensive.

We even got the balloons from the Dollar Tree. For a buck a piece I was super pleased with them!


Here are some photos from the big moment. It's hard to be in the photos and make sure they're up to your photographer standards. But I like them for what they are. When I start showing a bit more I will be sure to have to good maternity shots taken. I'd love to remember this time forever.


Part of our frugal party was this box. My Mom moved 4 years ago and still has a ton of boxes left over that we are trying to use up. She wrapped up a big UHAUL box in craft paper that she already had and at the last minute she printed off, hand cut, and glued the little hearts to the front and sides. The sky was gorgeous that day!

Because Aaron and I already knew what our little baby was, this was totally for our families. We were way too excited to hear their reaction for us to stand still and pose and look surprised. We had our moment the day before in our kitchen. It was private and special.

As soon as the box opened I was swarmed by my Mom, sisters in law and my niece - who is the only granddaughter on Aaron's side... for now ;) 

My Father in Law knew it was a girl from day one too. He wasn't surprised at all. 

IT'S A GIRL!

So happy! 

It's hard to believe that in 6 months (thereabouts) that we will be parents. To a little girl. Holy Cow. The sunset was so beautiful there at my Mom's that we just couldn't pass up an opportunity to have a few shots done there. Huge thanks to my brother in law for pressing the shudder button! 


So our secret is out! Our baby is a baby girl! We are still in this "can't believe it's real" stage. Even today, as my Mom and I started tackling the storage room that's going to become baby girl's room, I still couldn't wrap my mind around "in September there will be a baby living in this room." It's insane to think about it being real.


So what are we going to name this little darling? Well.... if you know Aaron and me at all, you will know that this name thing has been something we have been stuck on for months. We started thinking about names in October, before the miscarriage, and only arguments happened. This time around, same deal. We settled down on a name we both could agree on, but neither of us loved it. But we were willing to settle because there wasn't any arguing about it.... until one afternoon about two weeks before we found out she was a girl the name came to me while I was talking to my Mom. I texted Aaron, he loved it, and that was the end of it. 


We chose to name this little miracle Candis Anne. Candis is my Mom's middle name. She was named after her grandmother Candis. And Anne is Aaron's Mom's middle name and Anne of Green Gables is one of my most favorite things in the world. It just felt right from the minute it rolled off my tongue. Aaron said "I LOVE THAT" via text message, and so it was decided. It was way too easy, but it felt so right that we haven't revisited the subject since. Now that we've told everyone, it's totally official. When we told our Mom's they flipped. We also agreed on a name for a boy, should it be the boy that we've been assuming we would have first for years. But it's a secret until we have a boy. Should we have a boy. Ever.


I can't even begin to explain how over the moon we are. We are still also very cautious. My family isn't letting me do much besides simple housework, like dishes and laundry. My father in law texts me almost daily to make sure I'm resting. Aaron has been a champ helping me when I ask him to, and even when he makes me let him help me. My Mom is a phone call away for anything I need. I'm so grateful.


On the roster for the next few weeks is finish cleaning out her room, we made some serious headway today, but it's no where near done. We plan on finishing up cleaning her room out this week, and move everything into storage this weekend, cause its supposed to be nice weather. Then the room gets a goooood cleaning and then it's time to paint. We will also be painting our bedroom. We had paint left over from when we painted the living room and kitchen, so painting this time around is totally free! Yay! Plus everything will be the same color, nice and clean. I like that. Then I can start really planning out Candis' nursery. How I want it to look, how I want the furniture set up. She will be here before we know it and I hope to have her room ready by the time my baby shower's come along so that I can just bring stuff in and put it where it needs to go.


Thanks for sharing this fun, special time with me!

Missy