Week 23 (photo catch up!)

I can't believe it's already week TWENTY THREE!  Less than 4 months to go!  Our due date feels so close now.  I know time will continue to fly this next month with the holidays and the trips we have planned.  We're off to Vegas for Thanksgiving to see Aron's family and off to Seattle to see friends and then Moscow to see my family for Christmas.  The Christmas trip will most likely be our last big trip before the baby is born.  We may do a babymoon in January, but we'll probably stay close to home...a Bed & Breakfast in Julian or a fun weekend in LA.  We'll see how energetic I feel at that point.  So far everything is going along great so we've been cleared to travel/fly right up until the end of February.  Knock on wood that nothing changes and everything continues to progress perfectly.

The best thing to happen in the pregnancy the past few weeks is the start of little baby Lum's belly acrobatics!!  I feel him kicking all the time now and it's still thrilling me each time!  He usually gives me a nudge or two hello right when I wake up, and then he's quiet until after lunch, when he starts his afternoon exercises.  Then there will be another lull, and he's really active in the evening and after dinner.  This is the window when Aron's been able to feel him kick quite a few times.  Which is soooo cool!  I love watching Aron's reaction and seeing the surprised and amazed look on his face when he feels the baby.  Because the pregnancy is going so smoothly right now, there are times when I forget I'm pregnant and I'll feel baby boy kick and be momentarily surprised.  As I type this baby just kicked (or punched, or elbowed) me twice!  I think he can feel my happiness.

A not so fun part of the pregnancy the past few weeks is the heartburn.  I only get it at night, usually right before bed.  It's like my body knows I'm winding down and wants to give me a little kick in the chest to top off the day.  I've taken Tums a few times, but mostly it hasn't been too awful and I've been able to ride it out.  Some nights I fall asleep propped up a bit but that's about as inconvenient as it's been.  More inconvenient to my sleeping is the body pillow I'm sleeping with.  I've been a back sleeper for as long as I can remember and having to sleep on my left side now has been horrible.  I got one of the big u-shaped pillows to keep me wedged in on my side but I still fight my way out of it most nights and end up on my back.  I've never been a restless sleeper so waking up 2-3 times a night is annoying.  Oh well, I'm sure soon enough baby will be keeping me up or I'll have to pee all the time and it'll be the norm to wake up that many times anyways.

Aron and I have been really bad about taking pictures with all of the exciting things that have been going on the past few weeks, but we did manage to snap a few shots.  This is our Week 17 produce picture...the last one we took!  And it's kind of blurry; I blame the mint green walls in the background (yes, this is the color of some of the walls in our new house!).  The camera has no idea what's in the background and can never focus...and this color is impossible to match, decor-wise.  Believe me, I've been trying!

Week 17 and baby is the size of an onion!  A lot of the websites say turnip, but I was not buying a turnip just for the sake of photos.  I found one site that said onion, and an onion we will always eat.  Spanish tortilla, baby!!

Here's my Week 18 belly photo:

And here's the Week 21 belly photo...where I am QUITE a bit bigger!  

Holy cats, my belly looks BIG!  I'd say it's officially "popped."  It also might have something to do with the jump in weight gain this past week.  I finally managed to put on a few more pounds, putting my total weight gain at 9 pounds now.  I can tell some of this weight is going to my arms and face though...argh. :)  Time to start the push-ups!  Side benefit - stronger arms to haul around baby boy!  Overall I'm pleased to be up 9 pounds.  In the next 17 weeks I hope to gain 11 more pounds, 6-7ish of which better be all baby!!  According to the books, little baby Lum is only just over 1 pound now.  But already a foot long!  It's amazing that I can already feel something so tiny moving around inside me.  I can't wait for baby boy to put on more pounds so I can really see his baby kicks and punches.

Aron and I went to a gala for my work last week and luckily I still had one dress from party season last year that fit me and my new belly.  Courtesy of my friend Michaela, who gave me awesome maternity clothes, now I have a few more options to wear to the two other holiday parties we have on our calendars this year.  So I don't have to rock this same dress all December. :)  I do love this dress though, even sans the cute belt that normally goes with it!

In case I don't get around to adding a few more updates this week, I hope everyone has a safe and happy Thanksgiving!!

We're halfway there!!

And boy (oh boy!!!!) do we have a lot to catch up on!  Ok, so now we're technically at 22 weeks and past the halfway mark.  I've been very slow to update the blog with all the exciting things happening the past few weeks so this is the first entry of 3 or 4 that need to happen.

First up, because I know everyone's curious, I'll tell you about our anatomy scan and our big gender reveal dinner.  We don't have our printer/scanner unpacked so no ultrasound pictures up here yet (and I've been too lazy to take them to work and scan them :); I'll post them later.  For now, I'll just try and explain how UNBELIEVABLY awesome it was to see our baby on TV!!  The scan took about 45 minutes and we watched the whole thing except for when our tech got to the sex-revealing part.  We looked away and it seriously took some willpower not to have her just tell us.  And we only had to wait until dinner!  I can't imagine how some people go the whole pregnancy without knowing.  The rest of the ultrasound was so neat, getting to see baby's heart beating and pumping, see the brain, the lungs, and every little bitty limb wiggle around.  Baby was super active during the ultrasound, starting out by laying down flat in my belly, then curling up into a cute little ball and then turning head-down, facing my spine.  I was in awe watching this little person come to life and then settle back down.  Aron and I held hands throughout the whole scan and just like our first ultrasound, the whole appointment felt perfect and right.  The way I felt when Aron and I were looking at our baby onscreen is possibly the happiest I've ever been.  I can only imagine what it will feel like when we're looking down at our actual baby.  On the medical side of things, our baby checked out perfectly!  No red flags, no issues to be on the alert for.  Everything looked so great that we didn't even talk to a doctor the day of the scan.  When we had our appointment with our OB last week she confirmed that everything looked awesome and baby is healthy and happy!

After the scan, Aron and I went to our jobs, where I only halfheartedly completed my urgent tasks because I was so anxious to know what we were having!  I ended up getting to leave early to go meet the cable guy at our new house.  Which was a waste of time, because the cable guy ended up not being able to show.  Aron came home and we waited around for an extra hour past the specified time-frame before finally getting a call that he was hung up at the appointment before us.  ARGH!  All the waiting and extra anxiousness for nothing!  After rescheduling for the next day, off we went on our dinner adventure!  We had originally planned to go to this place called Best Pizza and Brew, which we'd never checked out in person.  Turns out, it's a tiny little place and more of just a quick bite and drink restaurant.  Not really the vibe I was looking for to find out what we were having.  On to plan B - Pizza Hut!  Which turned out to be the most awesome choice ever because they so enthusiastically embraced our plan!  So this pizza hut is a good old fashioned eat-in Pizza Hut.  Which I haven't seen since Moscow!  That fact alone already made the dinner special, because I had nostalgia and the memory of many family pizza dinners on my mind.  When the waitress got to our table, we explained our plan that we wanted the cook to put a "B" or a "G" on the pizza, depending on what was in the sealed envelope we were about to hand her.  She was on board and so were the cooks!  The 10 minutes it took to make our pizza were the longest ever!!  Finally...it was here!  Our waitress volunteered to snap some shots and she got some great ones!  I'll let the pictures do the talking for the next little bit.

Me: Oh! Um, what is it?

Aron: Ohhhhhhhhh!!!!

Me: I still can't read it! I'm blind! I never learned my letters!

Aron: It's a BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB!!!!

Me: Oh! A boy! A boy!

Aron: Yeahhhhhhh a boy! A boy!

Me:  Oh...a...boy. Huh. Well. What the hell am I going to do with a boy?!

Aron:  I'm way happier than you right now, huh? :)

Our "B" pizza!












Me and the B

Aron and the B














After dinner, the Pizza Hut crew brought out a surprise "boy" dessert! This totally made me cry because it was so thoughtful and sweet.

And then Aron got a little too creative with the baby boy news.  If there's been any question about whether our child will play with his food...yes, yes he will.

When we got home, the pets were eager to find out what the sex was!

 

Mom! Mom! What is it?! What is it?!

      WHAT?! Another BOY?! It's already 3 against one! NOT FAIR.

A what? Is that a food?

Ooh let me see, let me see...what?! He better like dress up.

I won't tell you what I think until you get this balloon off me. 

Finding out the sex of the baby was definitely the highlight of week 18.  I was so nervous before the ultrasound that we wouldn't be able to find out because baby would be crossing it's legs or something and it was such a relief to KNOW.  I was a little ambivalent about the baby being a boy at first...I just couldn't absorb what that meant.  Aron was very excited though and that rubbed off on me and all the congrats and well wishes we got made me really pretty happy that we were having a boy first.  We got a few adorable baby boy outfits over the next few weeks which made the whole pregnancy seem so much more real.  Not only was there a tiny baby in my belly, there was a tiny baby boy who would one day soon fit into these very cute baby outfits.  To repeat our blog title...holy crap!!

A lot more has happened in the past few weeks (the house! engagements! meeting new babies! my belly popped! visits with friends!) but those stories will have to wait for the next few blog posts.