Shower for Baby K!!!

My sister and Anna hosted a wonderful baby shower for me on June 11th. I figured since it's already almost July, I should get on the ball and post about it before I start to forget things! They did a bee theme and I absolutely loved it!!! I decided I would like the shower to take place at my house - that way, we didn't have far at all to move everything after the fact. This was a very good decision! While everyone set things up for the shower, my mom and I went out for a mani-pedi, which was much needed! Warning - this one is a little picture heavy.

 Favors & diaper cake

LOVE this banner that Anna made!

 Beautiful flowers my sister arranged - I am in love with the fruit in the vase!

 Punch - YUM!

Me with a proud Uma and Natalia

Natalia - how is this kid already 9?!? 

 With Nana

 With Aunt Nikki

And Aunt Kristian 

 Snuggles for Baby K!

 2 of my favorites!

 Baby K & Baby M - besties already?

 With Kristen - I absolutely love her dress!

 With Amber - Baby Daniel has already arrived, now we wait for Baby K!

 Time for presents! 

 Cutting the cake - YUM!

 The aftermath - Bailey missed helping to open presents, but she enjoyed helping clean up the decorations!

Post Bailey balloon cleanup. 

I had so much fun at my shower! Baby K is so blessed by family and friends awaiting his/her arrival! Josh and I are so happy to have so many people who already love our little one! 

Baby K - 33 Weeks!

Baby K is getting SO big...the size of a ferret this week. We're looking at somewhere between 17-19 inches long and around 4.5 - 5 lbs! There's a lot of variation, so it's hard to estimate at this point. Baby's bones are hardening and the brain is continuing to develop and get ready for delivery day! I can definitely tell our squishy is getting a little cramped. I felt it behind my ribs yesterday and that was a little weird. It was kind of cool at the same time tough. I told Josh the baby was running out of womb. Haha. We actually felt hiccups for the first time this week. It felt a little different than I expected. 

As for me, I'm doing pretty good. Swelling is becoming more common, but it's not always bad. If I'm on my feet or sitting for too long, I'll start to swell, so I have to try to find a good balance. I'm still experiencing some carpal tunnel - it's actually gotten quite a bit worse. Luckily, it's mostly just my right hand. It's constantly numb and my range of motion is getting worse. Writing and doing little detailed types of tasks is quite a challenge. It does hurt sometimes, but most of the time it's just numb. Luckily, it should go away very quickly after the little one comes! Sleep is still just meh. I'm waking up several times a night for potty breaks. Chiropractor visits have been going well. It has helped my back SO much. We're in maintenance mode now and I don't have another appointment until July 6 unless I start to experience pain again. 

We took maternity pictures last Sunday and we had a lot of fun! I can't wait to share some once we get them back! We had our second of four birthing classes this past Tuesday. Yesterday, we had our breastfeeding and newborn care classes. We've really enjoyed all of the classes so far! We got to take part of the breastfeeding class and the birthing class in two of the birthing suites we could possibly deliver in, so it was nice to get more familiar with them.

We've been pretty productive this week! We got the rest of the carpet upstairs shampooed. Now, we just need to clean the stairs. I've been working on getting baby clothes washed and organized. We've been working on recliner shopping for the nursery, but we haven't found the right one yet. Fingers crossed that happens soon!

Non-Baby Updates

Although it already looks that way, I swear everything isn't about baby these days. I've just slacked so much on blogging that that's the only thing I've made it around to blogging about. I REALLY fell behind on Friday Favorites. What happened to those?!? I love doing those, because it helps remind me how awesome things are actually going when my mind starts to pick out all the negative stuff. So, I decided to do a quick recap!

Since the last non-baby post, which was in FEBRUARY, we've had some pretty dang good times! Unfortunately, since I didn't blog about them, I have forgotten many of them, but I'll do what I can.

Josh and I celebrated our 15th dating anniversary! That's over half our lives, y'all. I feel so blessed to have found my best friend so young! We did find out that our dating anniversary happens to fall on National Meatball Day. One of our favorite restaurants happens to be a little meatball shop downtown and they had all you can eat meatballs for $15. That didn't really appeal to me at the time, so Josh went with some co-workers. He ate 14 (massive) meatballs and proceeded to lose 2 pounds. I mean...HOW?!?

We had some great friends visit us!

We went on our first cruise!

We've gone to a couple weddings to see some amazing friends tie the knot!

We got to spend a night in Greenville, SC on the way to one of the weddings. I love that place!

Such a cool tree!!! These are the roots that are growing down the side of a huge hill.

We completed some pretty exciting projects around the house!

Added more shelving and organized the pantry.

All of the shelving at the back of the pantry and the entire top row of shelving is what we added. SO much more storage space.

After we got all of our stuff in there.

We added a little flower bed to the back yard between the house and patio.

This is right after our patio was put in last Fall - with no flower bed.

 Yes...pressure washing is high on our to-do list

This used to be just weeds

I love my little bird hose guide!

I organized the coat closet.

We went to MD to visit some of our favorite people and eat some of our favorite foods!

Nom! Poutine! Duck fat fries, smothered in duck, gravy and Gruyere cheese!

We went to see Willie Nelson in concert!

We celebrated our 6th wedding anniversary! Since traveling hasn't been super enjoyable for me later in pregnancy, we decided to stick around and just enjoy each other's company locally. This was a very good decision and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.

Baby K - 32 Weeks!

June 13, 2016

Y'all, it's crazy how fast time is flying! I can't believe we're less than 8 weeks away from our due date!!!

Baby K is the size of an armadillo this week, about 18 inches and close to 4 lbs! Baby is sucking its thumb pretty regularly, which is helping it prepare to nurse and helping with coordination! We confirmed at our appointment this week that baby is still head down - yay! Baby has a head full of peach fuzz and a complete set of fingernails and toenails by now. Baby K is swimming like crazy and we're really enjoying feeling and seeing it!

I am doing so much better since starting to see the chiropractor! Of course, I still experience some lower back pain - I have a small human attached to the front of me - it's to be expected. BUT, it is SO much better than it was a couple weeks ago and I haven't had to take a single Tylenol for it this week! Yay! I'm back to enjoying pregnancy very much! 

We had our 32 week appointment Thursday and everything is looking great! We met a new midwife (we just have 1 more to meet and we've met them all) this time and she's my new favorite! She let Josh use the doppler to find the heartbeat (which he found very quickly) and he showed him how to find the baby's head, so he was able to feel it through my belly!

We've made quite a bit of progress this week. We put the pack n play and the high chair together. I've started to purchase some of the remaining things from our registry and some other things that we will need when baby arrives. There are still some things that we need to purchase soon, like the seating for the nursery. We're pretty sure we've decided to go with a recliner vs the traditional glider. We want to make sure it's something super comfy! Hopefully we will decide on one and purchase it withing the next week or so. Things are definitely starting to feel more real!

Friday Favorites!!!

I haven't done one of these in forever, and I really need to start doing them again. It helps me keep track of what's going on in my life. Things have gotten so crazy that I honestly couldn't tell you what I've done for the past few months without REALLY thinking about it. I'll try to get better about posting these!

1) Shower - My sister and Anna hosted a wonderful baby shower for me! I'll try to make a separate post soon, but it was absolutely beautiful and it made us feel so loved! 

2) QT with my mom - Before my shower, my mom and I went to get mani/pedis. It was really nice to relax and get to spend some time with just her.

3) Progress - We've made a lot of progress this past week. Josh stained the rest of our deck. It will need another coat of stain to match the old part that I stained last year, but it looks SO much better and more important, it's protected from all the rain and sun now. We also finished a flower bed that we started a few months ago. I  put our pack n play together and got the baby's area of our bedroom (our sitting room) mostly set up.

4) Baby appointment - More about this in my weekly baby update, but we had a great appointment this week and I think I have a new favorite midwife!

5) Surprise date night - Josh surprised me by taking me to see Finding Dory Thursday night! Yay! It was really good!

6) Massage - Josh got me a prenatal massage for our anniversary and I got it earlier today. It felt great!

Baby K - 31 Weeks!

June 6, 2016

We're 9 weeks from our due date! That's single digits, y'all! How did we get here so fast?!? Baby K is the size of a small-clawed otter (not including the tail) this week! Baby is over 3.5 pounds and will still gain about 3-5 lbs between now and delivery day! Baby is mostly developed now and is just growing, developing the brain/nerves and developing its immune system to prepare for the big day! I'm feeling (and seeing) lots of not so little movements lately!

This week was a HUGE improvement from last week for me. I saw my chiropractor for the first time on Monday. Turns out, I've been doing a lot of things wrong that contribute to my back pain. Being pregnant and having all that extra weight out front just makes it worse. I had an adjustment and she told me some things to do to help, including icing my back 3 times a day. This has really helped! I had been using a heating pad. She said that would help with pain short term, but it would do absolutely nothing for inflammation, so in the long run, it just made it worse. The ice pack doesn't feel as good initially, but it's SO much better than the heating pad afterward. I have 2 appointments a week for the next two weeks to get me all squared away, then hopefully we'll just be in maintenance mode. I've noticed the carpal tunnel getting worse. It's still mostly numbness, but it does work its way up to discomfort and borderline painful at times, so I'll talk to my chiropractor and midwife about that when I see them again. Another thing that is looking up is heartburn! I've been getting better about eating smaller meals and that seems to help quite a bit.

We had our first of 4 birthing classes this week and it went really well! We went over some massage techniques, stages of labor and what to expect during each stage, what to do in early labor, and a few other things. We really enjoyed our class and we're looking forward to the next 3!

My baby shower is this coming Saturday and I'll probably have a separate post about that. I'm really looking forward to it!

Baby K - 30 Weeks!!!

May 30, 2016

Little (or not so little) squishy is the size of a platypus this week! Baby is about 3.5 pounds and is almost 17 inches long! As far as development, baby's eyes are in their permanent place, but they still have a long way to go before the baby has decent vision. Baby's vision will be developing a lot over the next few weeks! The lanugo (the baby fur) is likely starting to fall out as the baby packs on more weight.

For me, sleep is not coming any easier these days. I do seem to sleep better on the weekends for some reason. I'm waking up to pee a lot more often and I'm getting more uncomfortable in general. Swelling is picking up a little, which I expected with this lovely NC heat & humidity, so I have retired my rings. :-/ I have some pregnancy induced carpal tunnel that has picked up this past week. I've noticed it before, but it was very mild. This week, I've noticed it several nights. It hasn't progressed to pain, just numbness, so that's good. I've also made arrangements to start seeing a chiropractor. Early on in pregnancy, we talked about me seeing one toward the end to get some adjustments to help prepare my pelvis for birthing. I've been putting off making an appointment, but the discomfort I've had this week has motivated me a bit more. In addition to the increased discomfort in my lower back, I've started having issues with my right side/back. I've been to see my midwife and we have ruled out a UTI. It's definitely more than discomfort. It's pretty bad pain. I've made it through my first 2 trimesters without taking any Tylenol at all. Not for headaches or general body aches. I caved and took it several times for the pain I've started to have.

I obviously expected some pain and discomfort with me putting on so much weight and carrying it all right in front of me. I knew it would strain my back. I just thought it would gradually increase. It didn't. I literally woke up one morning with this pain in my side. This has by far been the most difficult week I've had so far, so I'm really hoping I can get some relief once I start going to the chiropractor and get a prenatal massage.

Highs: Baby is responding to daddy's voice more and more. I can feel movements getting stronger and daddy is starting to see belly move too, so this provides us with some amusement. We celebrated our 6th anniversary this weekend with some cake from our wedding baker. Baby K seemed to like the cake!

Lows: The pain. All of the pain. And the heat. And the swelling.