Thursday, February 28, 2013

Pregnancy Weekly Update: Week 29

How far along? 29 weeks.

How big is baby? The Baby Center App says 2 1/2 pounds.

Total Weight Gain/Loss: Over 21.5 pounds. No scale at home so I have to wait to see what the doctor's scale tells me.

Next Appointment: Monday morning!

Maternity Clothes: Yes

Sleep: Not as bad as it has been, but still not great.

Best Moment This Week: Maternity pants my Mom sent me that actually fit well. :-D

Annoyance of the Week: As usual, the sleep situation.

Movement: A lot and her feet have been up in my ribs. Hopefully all the foot movement means she's prepping to be the next great NYCB ballerina.

Planning/Preparation: Birth plan draft complete. Possible housing arranged. Baby shower in the works. Oh and she has a name officially now.

Belly Button In/Out: Same as the last update...nearly out.

Gender: 100% Female

What I Miss: The same stuff I complained about the last time.

What I'm Looking Forward To: Holding my little girl in my arms and seeing my husband with his baby girl for the 1st time. :-)

Contractions: Yep

Milestones?: I hit the 3rd Trimester. Countdown to the end. (Wow that's scary & sad at the same time...trying to enjoy the last couple months of my likely last pregnancy.)

Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Wednesday I Confess Link-up


(I saw this on another blog and it looked cute, so I'm doing it too.)

I confess....I haven't actually been to Catholic confession (privately one on one with the priest) since my Freshmen year of college in 2003. Wow, that's pretty bad. :-/

I confess....that I am usually pretty horrible about responding to messages on FB.

I confess...that I'm the reason we haven't bought a second vehicle yet. The bill scares me. Yet I complain regularly about not having access to a car. Yes I'm a walking contradiction and it is humorous.

I confess....I let my son drag/dump out all the toys in the living room, because I think it's good for him and I really don't mind cleaning up the toys twice a day.

I confess....I let my son play for a really long time in the bathtub yesterday so I could give myself a pedicure.  (And before I get some judgmental person in here, there was almost no water in there and he had tons of toys and I was sitting next to the tub.)

This was fun! Oh and my Oscars post is in progress. I have to make sure I check people.com to see the dresses I missed.

Monday, February 25, 2013

Little Dude is 13 Months Old

Our Little Dude turned 13 months old on Saturday. Month one of toddler-hood is complete. I still find it strange sometimes to even consider him a toddler, but all those parenting apps & emails I signed up for while pregnant with him assure me he's a toddler now. And I suppose they are right...he does toddle all around the house now. I always knew he was smart, but here lately it is even clearer to me how smart my son is about life. He imitates us a lot now and is figuring out more & more how things work. I am definitely his MAMA (written in caps since he will scream it to get my attention.) Siri (the iphone lady) and he converse regularly. Okay mostly she gets confused by his language skills, but sometimes he actually does get her to look something up. I'm most impressed. Thank you Apple for inventing her if only to entertain my son & myself. Today he decided apparently that Ga ga (Gracie his favorite of the cats) needed to use my iphone so he put the phone in her bed with her...which is where I found it when I needed to make a call. :-)

He remains in the same size clothes & diapers from the previous month. The transition from formula to whole milk isn't going well so we have a call into his pediatrician hopefully to remedy this issue. I think he may not be able to tolerate milk by itself, as he does just fine with yogurt & cheese. He got tooth number 7 last week and is cutting tooth number 8 this week. With the obvious exception of the whole milk, he does great with all other foods. Sometimes he spits things out but I keep trying things out with him.
I recently began bringing him to Mass again and he does pretty well. He loves all his adopted Grandparents at church and they adore him too. The church has decided to baptize him & his sister together, so hopefully this summer he will finally be baptized. I really slacked on that one. :-(

Speaking of his sister...Little Miss finally has a name. She will be Julia Susan. Julia is a name my husband and I both like and Susan is both of our mother's first names (though my MIL goes by her middle name.) I am very happy we've got her named.

Who watched the Oscars? I did and am tempted to blog a few thoughts on them in a later post. Stay Tuned!

Sunday, February 24, 2013

What's this blog about and who am I?

So obviously like the title says, this blog is supposed to be my sailor wife ramblings, because guess what in case you missed it I'm a wife to a US Navy Sailor and I like to talk A LOT!
And that is exactly what the blog was for a year or maybe only 8 months. I don't remember. Somewhere in there it became an infertility blog, because obviously we had a few issues in that area. For the past year or so I don't know what the blog has been about. It sometimes is my ramblings, but mostly life updates.
This year I made a goal to blog more and I'm sort of doing that, but I want this blog to have more of a direction to make it easier on me to accomplish that goal.
My other "thing" lately has been who am I these days? Well after a few zillion discussions in my head, a couple months worth of prayers after communion and some rambling to my family & friends this is what I've come up.

So here we are:
My name is Liz and I'm a Navy wife with almost 2 kids. I like to talk about a lot of stuff. I love crafting, reading, fashion, too many television shows, and a billion other things. (See my pinterest page it sums me up pretty well.) I'm a moderately conservative/sometimes very conservative practicing Catholic who is a swing voter. I have a degree in Health & Human Services, with a concentration in Substance Abuse Counseling, that I use in the unpaid position of giving advice to others. ;-) Hopefully I'll use it in a paid position within the year. I'm considering my Master's degree now too.

This blog clearly should convey who I am and what my life is about. (Duh, how obvious was that & it took me forever to figure it out?)

On that note: who is watching the Academy Awards tonight? You know I will be! 

Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Pregnancy Update Week 27

Just sneaking this update in. Almost to the next gestational week mark. 

How far along? 27 weeks 6 days

How big is baby? The babycenter app says 2 1/2 pounds or the size of a head of cauliflower. However, my doctor says she is on the small side so who knows!

Total Weight Gain/Loss: Up 3.5 more pounds from 3 weeks ago. I *think* this puts my total gain at 21.5 so far. (Again this is very healthy for someone like myself who started out underweight and lost at the beginning.)

Next Appointment: March 4th

Maternity Clothes: Yes, though I've struggled to find maternity pants that fit me in a way I feel confident with. (The butt is so baggy in some of them!)

Sleep: Pretty much horrible

Best Moment This Week: Great sales this weekend on clothes for Little Miss! Her closet won't be empty. This is fun! :-)

Annoyance of the Week: Besides the sleeping & pants issue....finding out the house we thought we had is not available so back to waiting on a bigger house on base.

Movement: Yes, tons.

Planning/Preparation: Wrote a draft of my birth plan.

Belly Button In/Out: Almost an outie *pout pout*

Gender: 100% girl

What I Miss: Decent sleep and other stuff that will just make me sound ungrateful.

What I'm Looking Forward To:  Her birth, my Mom arriving in May, losing the baby weight, breastfeeding etc.

Contractions: Plenty to entertain me.

Milestones?: Umm...I got my Tdap shot at the doctor? I have no idea...haha!

Friday, February 15, 2013

Sunshine on my shoulders makes me happy...

and it clearly motivates me to do things I put off doing. 

Here in the big ole' PacNorWest (that's Pacific Northwest, for you non-military folks) the sun is often a novelty. Today it is out and shining directly on my back and creating a hideous glare on my computer and though a tad warm for me, I'm relishing in it. After days of grey I am enjoying every second of the sun I can get. 
SO....what have we been up to lately? That's a good question!

Matthew: is now walking (toddling is a better word) on his own pretty much all the time. He only stops to crawl occasionally. Thankfully we live in baby gate central, so I can keep him fairly well contained. I haven't yet tried letting him walk in a public place.  He's teething & fighting a small cold all in the same week. It's been a tad stressful on me the Mom, but we're managing.  I taught him to use the pots in the kitchen as drums...it amused him for 5 seconds while I was baking cookies.

He celebrated his 2nd Valentine's Day with lots of Momma loving and I got him a book again this year. I let him eat a bit of shortbread cookie and Daddy gave him a bite of chocolate covered strawberry, otherwise we played it healthily. Yes, I am that conservative food conscience parent. (Someday if you convince me, I'll blog about why this is the case.)

Me: I'm 27 weeks pregnant. I got my Tdap shot this week at the ob/gyn and did my glucose test. I must have passed it since I didn't get a call saying otherwise. The lady in the lab at my doc's office is amazing and remembered me (it's totally the little things like this in health care that impress me.)  I'm at the weight gain point where my body just doesn't like to be at....and this is where you all throw things at me and hate me....it just hurts more & more to carry it on my frame.  Baby girl is healthy though and she is on the smaller side compared to her brother. My doctor isn't concerned yet, but I am. Maybe she's taking after me though, we'll see.

Otherwise, I've been dealing with student loans and moving. Yes, you read it right-moving. We've been assigned a bigger home and will be moving to a new place on the base. It's a 1 story home, but I love the layout and space. Hopefully we'll know our move date soon.

Avery: is working and going to school. The schedule he's got going right now is crazy. He's basically never home during the week. Oh well...we're a military family so it's just our normal I suppose.

Whelp, gotta go....Little Dude is awake and I need to give him kisses.

Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Pregnancy Weekly Update: Week 25

How far along? 25 weeks and 5 or 6 days. Yet again just squeaking this update in!

How big is baby? Babycenter app says the size of a rutabaga.

Total Weight Gain/Loss: I'll find out next week as we don't own a scale so I can't see for myself.

Next Appointment: Next week Tuesday.

Maternity Clothes: Yes

Sleep: Not so great lately again, which is frustrating.

Best Moment This Week: Eating the delicious cookies I made today.

Annoyance of the Week: Sleep and anxiety.

Movement: Tons, she's a busy gal.

Planning/Preparation: Talked to Navy housing (I'm picky & they didn't appreciate my Little Dude's tantrum in the background...oh well!), moving forward on the car situation and continued nursery planning in my head.

Belly Button In/Out: It's still in, but super close now.

Gender: 100% female.

What I Miss: Sleep (maybe when my kids are teenagers I won't have to miss it) and energy.

What I'm Looking Forward To:  Valentine's Day...yeah yeah it's a cheesy Hallmark holiday, but I like Hallmark.

Contractions: Yep, they are still nagging me at times.

Milestones?: 100 days until my due date according to Babycenter

Sunday, February 3, 2013

Matthew Turns 1!

On January 23rd, Little Dude turned 1 year old. This meant so much. His first year of life on the outside, my first year of motherhood, Avery's first year of fatherhood and I could go on....

Eating a birthday cupcake
The first day of his life I could hardly imagine a whole year passing by me. He's gone from a tiny baby to a growing boy.  I am still in the process of finishing the letter from me to him detailing his 1st year of life. Hopefully it'll be done before he turns 2. ;-)

Pinterest inspired craft for him.

His birthday onesie. I had an iron-on made for him on Etsy. It was perfect!
On his actual birthday, Avery had school & work pretty much all day so we just did a cupcake for his snack and then celebrated on the weekend when Avery was able to be home.  We got him a cozy coupe little car. He had a great time playing in it. His favorite part is opening/closing the car door & gas cap. Haha! It's so amusing to watch him.

12 month stats: Matthew still has 6 teeth, beginning to wear 9month and bigger clothes (He's quite long and very skinny.) Still in size 3 diapers. Is down to 3 bottles a day, the rest is table food with sippy cups of water. We're gradually going from formula to milk. He plays pretty well independently. His favorite toys are still ones that play music and anything that rolls or moves. He has a ball pit which rocks his socks off. (Speaking of that, he's a Hawaii boy at heart...since he is always pulling his socks off.) He will take a step or 2 independently but then gets scared and wants to hold onto something. I am just waiting for the day that he just takes off on me!

Otherwise we are doing well. Little Miss has a middle name, and hopefully will have a first name soon. :-)