Holidays!

Now that I'm past 22 weeks, there's no nifty weekly size comparison.  My little turtle is growing at his own pace now.  I've been loving and hating feeling him kick me, reminding me that he's there and making me uncomfortable at the same time.  It is a very weird sensation to be kicked in the bladder!

We spent several days with the Carpenters and Jemisons on Signal Mountain, and on Monday drove to Wilmington, NC to be with my brothers, sisters and nieces for the week.  It has been great to talk with my sister-in-laws about pregnancy and having babies and to be with the little girls.  They are vaguely interested in my pregnancy to my face, but have spent all week putting baby dolls in their shirts and talking about going to the hospital.

Will and Henry got an iPad from my Mom for Christmas and Myers introduced them to a game called Minecraft that they and Patrick have been playing a ridiculous amount.  We have 5 Apple laptops, 2 iPads, an iMac, a iPhone, and 2 iPod Touches in the house, which is a little bit more than slightly ridiculous.

 Before deciding to monopolize all the computers in the house

 Opening presents from Aunt Sarah

 Aunt Sarah, Lily Kate, and Lillian

 Uncle Patrick and Charlotte on the trampoline my Mom gave Lily Kate and Charlotte

 Helping Charlotte eat dinner

 A hourly occurrence

 Charlie-boo

 Uncle Will and Uncle Henry at the Children's Museum

 Lily Kate and Liz

  Patrick, Sarah, Will, and Myers

What Henry did most of the time at the Children's museum

A Little Off Schedule...

I don't know if anyone's noticed, but I used to make weekly posts on Mondays, but since our due date goes changed, I'm no longer getting "week" emails on Sunday.  I'm not sure when I'll get my next one, but I am now 21 weeks, almost 22 (I guess).  The whole thing gets confusing when you're not totally sure when you conceived and have to rely on how big the baby is for a due date and a schedule.  My mom says I should just listen to my own body, and from that I can say I agree with the doctor.  I've always thought the baby was just a little bit bigger and I was just a little bit farther along than the books and website said.

I will post a "how big is baby at 22 weeks" post later, but right now, my life is even more off schedule than not being sure what week I am in my pregnancy!  I came back to Chattanooga early to help my Mom after her surgery yesterday on her wrist.  She had to have a plate put in it because one of the bones shattered.  Patrick and I met my family part way to Chattanooga to have lunch on Sunday and I've been away from him since then.  It's very strange.

The baby decided it was high time to let me know he was there the day of the ultrasound and I've been dealing with the kicks and punches ever since.  Patrick is jealous he hasn't been able to feel him yet, but I know that's coming soon!  Today, Mom comes back from the hospital and hopefully Patrick will be able to come tonight.  He's doing a lot of prep work for when he's on vacation over the next week and a half and may have to stay so late at work he wouldn't feel good about driving to Chattanooga.  I hope I don't have to spend another night without him!  Mom is going to be in pain, Henry is feeling sick, and Sarah has to work.  I need another head to help me during the day.  I feel like I can do everything physically, but that my brain isn't working well enough to remember everything I need to do.

So I don't leave this post without a picture, this was the picture we used for our family Christmas card this year. (Edited because Patrick thought my previous picture was weird.)

He's a Boy!

Yesterday, Becca and I went in for the much anticipated 20-week ultrasound. We were told that we might get the opportunity to find out if we would be having a boy or a girl, but as Becca said so many times, "I just want to see my baby!"

And see him we did! I was not prepared for how beautiful the baby would appear, not yet born and just by ultrasound technology. Now, the moment you've all been waiting for... pictures!


Here you can see his little head. He was curled up the whole time we were watching, so we didn't get to see his face yet. For a moment, he brought one of his hands up to his face, maybe to suck his thumb?

We watched him kicking his tiny feet back and forth for a good while, before he showed us that he was a boy. I won't be posting a picture of that. It might embarrass him when he's a teenager, and I wouldn't have that!


This is something I found fascinating... look at his spine! This is one thing you can admire in an ultrasound that you can't see with the naked eye when the child is born. At one point, he turned just so, and his whole rib cage glinted. Just amazing to me!

We had a few more (blurry) pictures, so I won't post them all. Other than this, the doctor just said that our son is looking normal and healthy, so we are grateful for that! Also, our due date got moved up from May 1st to April 27th, since the ultrasound showed our son to be a little larger than expected.

Everybody's asking if we have a name yet... we have one that we like at the moment, but we can discuss it a lot more since we only need to consider boy names now. I'll save the baby names for a later post: I think this was news enough for one day!

20 Weeks!

Wow! I can't believe we're half way through!  This has been a really crazy journey for us, with all of the emotional and family turmoil, and we are ready for next year, when pretty much all we have planned is having the baby.  I will be so glad when our days are more regular and Patrick will work normal hours.

I'm so glad that we get to have our ultrasound tomorrow!  We're going to post again then, with the new ultrasound picture, but for now, we know our baby is around 6.5 inches, or the length of this Mac mini:

DISNEY WORLD! (19 Weeks)

This is quick post because we're at Disney World (yay!) and it's really late, I'm super tired, and internet is kind of expensive.

We are staying at the Caribbean Beach Resort in a really nice, "Finding Nemo" themed room.  It's bee really great to stay at the resort and be able to take shuttles everywhere we need to go.  We also really like having the dining plan, which let's us ignore the ridiculous prices of the food here!

We got here late Saturday afternoon and went to eat out when our friends drove in.  Sunday we went to Animal Kingdom during the day and went to Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party in Magic Kingdom that night.  Today we went to Disney's Hollywood Studios during the day, ate an early dinner at the Moroccan restaurant in Epcot, walked around for a while and went to a late second dinner at the Hoop Dee Doo Revue.  We made the mistake of taking the boat shuttle from the Wilderness Lodge to Fort Wilderness and it took forever! I was sure I could even eat anything, and even though we didn't eat a whole lot, the show was really great!  I laughed super hard and the audience was great.

Tomorrow we are going to Epcot all day with dinner in Germany and Wednesday we're going to Magic Kingdom during the day, including lunch with the characters from Winnie the Pooh, and the Cirque de Soliel show in the evening.  Then Thursday we're going to go to the Universal Islands of Adventure where I really want to go the Wizarding World of Harry Potter!  Then Friday we will do everything we missed or want to do again and shop for souvenirs.  Saturday we get on a plane to come to our freshly painted and updated house that our friends Jason and Robin have been working on all week!  I can't wait for Tuesday and our ultrasound either!

Our baby is the same size as this Dumbo stuffed animal, about 6 inches