24 Weeks!

I am 24 weeks along today which means only 16 weeks to go... maybe 18 if she hangs out as long as her brother did. At this point I am just figuring I will have her mid to late April, hopefully before May though :)

We had some friends over for dinner last night and talked a lot about babies and birth stories. It was nice to talk to someone who understands wanting a natural labor and delivery. I am really hoping that I will not have to be induced and will be able to experience a completely natural labor this time. Oh well we have 4 months before we need to worry about making that decision.

On a different topic Chris has already received notice that he will be asked to interview with the Southern College of Optometry! We are so excited to be in this stage of his schooling and getting ready to take the next step in his college career. I think he is going to be the best Optometrist ever!

Pictures

So I was getting a Christmas present ready for Chris' Mom which was lots of fun for me. She wanted lots of pictures of Matthew and us for her digital picture frames and hopefully to show off how cute he is. I am very sad that she doesn't get to see him very often, hopefully once Chris is done with Optometry school we can fix that. So I got to go through all my pictures from the last year, which was a great reminder of all the fun we have had! Matthew has grown and changed so much this year. I will not put to many pictures up right now because I am using Chris's computer and all our pictures are on mine. However I do have our family pictures and Matthew's one year pictures so I wanted to share some of those tonight! He is such a sweet boy, we love him, and we have had a great year together as a family. It has been rather stressful at times and I feel like we are barely hanging on at some points, but it has really been a great year and we have been blessed more than I see at the time of course, but looking back I can see the blessings much clearer.

**** photos all taken by Melissa Kilner Photography in July 2011

Finals Week

It is finals week for Chris which apparently equates to me being super stressed out with him. It has been a rough week between finals and Matthew teething with all the other kids here. Anyways that is sorta what I am going to write about but mostly that is just venting.

Ever since I got pregnant I have been exhausted and moody. I don't remember it being this bad with Matthew, I feel like I was in the beginning and then the end of my pregnancy with him, but this time it has been constant. I really don't like feeling this way all the time! I am so excited to have our baby girl, and everyday I just get more excited, sometimes I think it is because I want to start feeling like myself again. I want my patience back, I want to feel good again, I want to not feel tired all the time (I know that will be awhile, but at least once she comes I will be closer to sleeping normal again).

Now don't get me wrong as far as being pregnant goes I have it easier than a lot of people. It just drains me of energy, kills my back (I get pregnancy sciatica), steals my patience, and makes me grouchy. That's all :) At least I am not sick all the time, or on bed rest, or have high blood pressure, or countless other things that can truly make pregnancy miserable.

I guess I know in many ways I am lucky that this is all I have to deal with, but it is still no fun.

On another note: I love my little Matthew, he is such a great kid and he just gets better everyday. He is learning so much now, we are still adding signs to his vocabulary and he is trying to use more verbal words. He is super grumpy right now because of all the new teeth, but the thought of molars coming in doesn't sound like it would be pleasant, so we understand. He is going to be a super big brother, I just wish he understood what was happening so that we could prepare him, oh well he will adjust. He has always taken to transitions easily, sometimes amazingly easy. 2012 is going to bring lots of changes to his little world, I just hope that he handles them all okay. We will be having a baby, a couple months later closing the daycare (meaning he will loose his friends), and then moving somewhere completely new. That is a lot of changes in a few short months for our little guy!

Goodluck!

Yesterday was a busy day. We left the house around 8 in the morning and headed up to Coeur d' Lane, Id where we met a lady off Craigslist and bought some cute girl clothes from her. Now I feel like we will be able to dress our little girl, especially since we have some good friends (the Jackson's) who have of offered lots of hand me downs for baby girl!

After we got the clothes we headed over to Spokane and saw our friends Tim and Liz and Matthew got to play with Travis while Chris and I made a quick trip to Costco (we got really neat things like paper towels, Kleenex, and toilet paper). Matthew had fun playing and it was great to see our friends even if it was a quick visit.

Then we were able to go and see our friends Adam and Bridgett who are moving to Kansas next week! It is crazy to think they are moving so far away but it will be great for them. Adam got a job in Kansas and we wish them the best of luck in their new adventure! It was nice to hang out with some great friends for awhile, we were all close while undergrads at WSU and have remained friends through all the changes life has brought, we were missing a few good friends from the group they know who they are.

After that we ran a few more errands got some dinner and headed home. I was sad I forgot my camera and was not able to get pictures of any of our adventures but it was a good day. On another note I think that Chris and I are more than ready to move on from Pullman, there are a few people we will miss a lot who are in the area, but other than them. We are pretty much just ready to leave. We have been going to church and activities and all the things you do to make friends and for some reason, maybe we smell bad, but we have only made a couple new friends in church. If those few people are not there then we literally sit alone at activities. People have even taken chairs from our table to move them to another table that was full. Not trying to complain but I am ready to stop going to activities and start out in a new ward that we might actually feel like a part of. We really attribute a lot of this to the set up of the ward, because it is all married students who are super busy like we are, and if you can't make it to certain things the relief society organizes then you don't really get to make friends. We don't have anything against people in the ward in fact they are all nice people from the little that we have interacted with them, we are just ready to move someplace with a more welcoming ward.

22 Weeks

I had another check up today. So far everything looks good, the doctor said that I am measuring small, and the ultrasound put me 4 days or so later than we thought, which would be about the 14th or 15th of April. He however doesn't think we need to change the due date at this point. The difference in days is not big enough. He thinks that I am not measuring as large as I should be is simply because she is hiding inside me so well, that doesn't explain the difference in the ultrasound, but he is not worried at this point.

Other than that she has a nice strong heartbeat, and is very active. He even felt her kick while he was getting her heartbeat, which apparently is good considering they don't really expect others to be able to feel the kicks until 24 weeks. Chris has felt them a few times though, starting about a week or a week and a half ago.

First Hair Cut

Matthew went and had his hair cut for the first time tonight. I had been debating about doing it myself or taking him somewhere, but with Christmas coming up I really didn't want to ruin his hair. So we took him over to Super Cuts to see what they could do. He sat in my lap while she was cutting his hair, she was really good with him too. He was even a trooper he started to get upset at first with the trimmer but then she started saying "tickle tickle" whenever she would put the trimmer up to his head. So we came out of it with no tears and much shorter hair, we might not cut it the same way every time, but we didn't know how else to do it this time. I brought my camera but didn't take pictures... so here are some after pictures.

"CHEESE!"

Signing Time

I went to the library the other day and found a movie for kids called "Signing Time" and it is great! Matthew loves it and each time he watches it he picks up another sign which is wonderful, hopefully we will get more spoken words soon, but for now this will help us communicate a little better.

So far he has learned:

Milk

Food

Ball

Dog

We have watched it about 3 times so that is pretty good I think. Now he knows those signs plus:

More

Please

Love it and totally recommend it to everyone with toddlers, especially those lacking spoken language like mine :) We will be moving on to volume 2 here at the end of the week I think.

Names

Now that we are having a girl we get to talk about names.
Lots and lots of names, we have some favorites,
but I'm not sure if they are the only ones we want to consider...

Here is how we named Matthew,
We looked at hundreds of names,
made lists,
and then more lists,
and evenually narrowed it down to about 5 names,
we took that list to the hospital with us.

At that time I thought naming a girl would be so much easier!
Ha! So here is what I am asking,
Do you have a favorite name for a girl?
Or maybe a few favorites?
Why do you like them?

We are (I think) going to copy a friend of mine who gathered a bunch of names and then made a bracket, they then went down the list choosing one over the other, they ended up with a great name, which they both liked, and it was not one they would have thought originally. Now we may do this a few times or take the runners up with us to the hospital also. Then when we meet our baby girl we will have a nice list of names and can choose the one we feel fits her best.

Please comment with some awesome names to add to our list!

Thanks!!