Screen Time

From last week's ultrasound:



Things I can't even handle:

• That little hiccup/head tilt she does.
• Her little hands up to her mouth.
• Her tap dancing little feet.
• She's already training to be a gymnast, with all those flips.
• That glorious heartbeat.

Happy Friday!

19 Weeks

I skipped my 18 week update, but it wasn't by mistake. We secretly had our anatomy scan on Tuesday instead of Thursday, and I just knew if I wrote an update post that night after hearing the news I would mistakenly slip a "she" or "her" in there somewhere.

So now that the excitement of the gender reveal is behind us, we can get back on track.

1. How far along? 19 weeks today.

2. How big is Baby Girl Wade? Either the size of a mango or a large heirloom tomato (random?) That translates to about 6 inches and 8.5 ounces.

3. Movement: I'm definitely feeling her move! It actually started a bit after the 16 week mark. About once a day, while sitting (at work, at the movies, etc.) I would feel what I was pretty sure was a baby flutter. But I was surprised to feel it so early so I was reluctant to say for sure that's what it was. But now I feel her multiple times a day, mostly when sitting but also sometimes when laying too. Nothing strong, definitely faint but pretty exciting.

4. Belly: I'm still in that stage where if you didn't know me you might not be able to tell whether I'm pregnant or just ate too many cheeseburgers. But the belly is definitely getting bigger and my clothing options are getting smaller. Speaking of which...

5. Wardrobe: This is what my once-full closet looks like now, with just the clothes I can still fit in (and some of these are becoming questionable):



Looks like a shopping trip is in order SOON.

6. Names: I had hoped that once we found out the gender, we'd just "know" what the perfect name was. No such luck. I think we have a few solid options, but I keep second-guessing all of them. Good thing we have some time.

7. Nursery: I actually had lots of boy nursery ideas in mind. Now that it's a girl? I'm totally stumped. And all of the furniture options (and prices!) can be really overwhelming. Looks like I need to be hitting up Pinterest and blogs for some inspiration.

I'm not really sure why, but MTV's 16 and Pregnant has been on in the background while writing this post. Something I'm thankful I don't have to worry about in this pregnancy: Will the baby's daddy stick around? (See also: Will I be able to graduate high school? How will I find a job/support the baby?) I guess if my only dilemma is which car seat to choose and whether to splurge on a glider rocker then I'm doing pretty good.

Baby Wade's Gender Reveal Party

As soon as we set our 18 week anatomy scan appointment for the Thursday before Easter, I knew I wanted to have a little gathering to let our families in on the news.

We live about an hour and a half away from both families and didn't want to tell them over the phone (and also deal with the "who found out first?" issue). Plus we wanted to have a little fun with it.

Easter weekend was already packed with lots of other activities and celebrations, so we set our party for lunch on Good Friday. Pressed for time and wanting to keep things casual, I sent out email invitations via Paperless Post.



Let me just take a moment to say that I was SO impressed with Paperless Post. So much faster, easier and cheaper than a paper invite (I was able to scrounge up enough credits to send all of my invites for free) and yet so much nicer than a traditional eVite. And from the customizable envelope liners to the animation of "opening" the invite, it's a nice experience for the recipient (at least I think so). Plus I think being able to see the guest list and others' responses is nice too. I'll definitely be using them again in the future.

As I was designing the invitations and planning my decor, I had visions in my head of a lovely Spring lunch in my sister's yard on the farm on a beautiful, sunny Spring day. But as tends to happen on important dates in my life, the weather decided not to cooperate. Rainy, cold and windy was the forecast, so we had to move the party to our church fellowship hall. Oh well.

Lee made me these long planters and I turned to my go-to party trick: growing wheatgrass.



I added pink tulips (blue flowers are hard to find!), but balanced them out with lots of other blue, green and yellow elements. I also created quick and easy burlap table runners with burlap from Joann and tied them up on the ends with ribbon.





For food, we stuck with a Spring picnic theme: chicken salad croissants, fruit salad, mini tomato pies, pasta salad, pimento cheese sandwiches, chips and dip and a nugget tray from Chick-fil-A (yum!). We also served cake a lemonade, but I didn't get a picture.

We had everyone "wear their guess" as they walked in the door.



Team Boy:



Team Girl (looking a little lean!):



We made the announcement by passing out Easter eggs with a peep inside to announce the gender (pink peeps for a girl and blue for a boy).



Well, the majority of our guests were WRONG, because Baby Wade is a little GIRL!!

Here's a video of the reveal:



Lee and I actually found out on Tuesday. I got paranoid that the baby might not cooperate and then I had this party planned and no gender to announce, so we moved the appointment up to Tuesday but didn't tell anyone (they could barely stand the thought of us knowing and not telling for 18 hours, much less 3 days).

Well, she did cooperate and immediately showed us her stuff, so we had fun having this secret all to ourselves for a few days.

Happy parents:



Britt and Erin:



Me, Katie and Erin





And a cute shot of Brevyn, just for good measure.

We had such a fun time celebrating with our families, and I can't wait to start planning for this sweet little girl! More to come soon!

17 Weeks

1. How big is Baby Wade? The size of an onion (5 inches long and 5 ounces).

2. New fun pregnancy symptom: holy heartburn Batman! It's actually more like indigestion. With burping. It's gross. And kind of scary, because at first I was convinced I was about to have a heart attack. I'm still not totally convinced I'm not, because pregnancy is also doing weird things like making my heart race (evidently it's pumping twice the blood as usual) and I get out of breath sometimes after doing the smallest things. Fun times.

3. I'm in a weird limbo period where we're so close to finding out the sex (next week!) that it feels like it doesn't make sense to look at nursery ideas or baby gear or think of names until we know. Which is ok, because things are busy and I don't have time to scour Pinterest anyway.

4. This has nothing to do with my pregnancy, but can we talk about Jessica Simpson for a bit? She was on Ellen recently and I was so shocked by her appearance I had to save it and show it to Lee. (If you missed it, you can take a look here.) I've seen some VERY pregnant women in my life, but homegirl is a big as a house. And she's not having twins, although Ellen is skeptical (by the way, her comment about getting "knocked up by a baller" is about the stupidest thing I've ever heard). I'm concerned. Is this the way most pregnant women look at the very end? Or did she just go crazy with the onion rings and gain 80 lbs instead of 25? I hesitate to be negative towards any pregnant woman (after all I may be eating my words in a few months) but Jessica has put herself out there so much during this pregnancy (and out there and out there) that I don't feel as bad about voicing my opinion.

That's all my tired brain can manage for now, but next week is going to be BIG! And I can't wait to share it all with you!

16 Weeks

1. How far along? 16 weeks

2. How big is baby Wade? The size of an avocado.

3. Highlight of the week: we went for my 16 week appointment today. It was just a check-up (although we did get to hear that sweet heartbeat!) but the important part was that we scheduled our anatomy scan for April 5th. So in two and a half weeks we'll know if this baby is a he or a she! I can hardly contain myself.

5. Maternity clothes update: wearing "maternity" jeans for the first time today. I didn't go full panel though, just "low-rise knit panel." (I never even knew there were different options.) Everyone talks about how much they love maternity jeans, but I'm not crazy about them so far. They all feel like they sit too low and I can't hike them up high enough to feel right. Even the ones I'm wearing today feel like they're falling off and I'm constantly pulling them up. I'd prefer my rigged up rubber banded regular jeans, but they really do feel better when sitting down. I'm hoping when there's an actual belly to hold them up they'll feel better to me.

6. Belly laughs: I had another one of my signature pregnancy laugh/cry hormonal breakdowns this week. Riding home from the beach I was reading Jenny McCarthy's Belly Laughs. There was a funny part that I laughed out loud at, and so I read it to Lee. But I couldn't stop laughing, and before I knew it the tears were flowing. And then I was sobbing. Not in an I'm-sad way but definitely not your basic I'm-laughing-so-hard-that-a-few-tears-have-escaped way. Lee said (for about the 20th time already) "I'm not going to make it through this am I?" Followed by "It wasn't even that funny." And he's right, it wasn't.

7. Daddy freak out of the week: after I finished Jenny's book, Lee and I started talking about labor and delivery and I tried to prepare him for some of the things that might happen, stories I've heard from other women of what their birth was like, etc. He got this terrible look on his face and said "I don't want you to go through that! I don't want to do this! I change my mind!" So yeah, this is going to be fun.

I know this is my third straight week with just a weekly update post. I do have some non-pregnancy related posts in the hopper, I just need to get my act together enough to write and post them. Here's hoping!

15 Weeks

1. How far along? 15 weeks
2. How big is baby Wade? The size of a navel orange.
3. Maternity clothes? Coming sooner rather than later. I've been rubberbanding my jeans, and have been on  the hunt for a maternity pair. I went to Gap last week and although I didn't find jeans, I did buy a skirt and t-shirt on super clearance. Also, I bought TWO bathing suits at Target (well, the mama bought one -- thanks mom!) Do I have any idea if they'll still fit come summer or if I'll even have a desire to get into a bathing suit? No. But they had just been put out at Target and I was afraid they'd get picked over yada, yada.
4. The amount of checklists, PowerPoint decks and spreadsheets I've made this week is absurd. Daycares, baby gear, the list goes on and on. But I can't help it, it's the Producer in me and helps me feel like I have a little bit of control when really I have none.
5. Favorite quote of the week: from my Dad -- "when am I going to know whether to buy it a John Deere green fishing pole or a pink fishing pole? Because either way, it's getting a fishing pole."

And I leave you with this picture and the question: who is the pregnant one around here?

14 Weeks

I'm planning on doing a weekly update of some sort throughout my pregnancy, but I have no idea what shape they'll take yet. I'm definitely not ready to start posting a weekly picture, because there's nothing showing yet. (Although the waistband of my jeans is suddenly uncomfortable and I have a feeling I'll need to be making some maternity purchases sooner than I thought.)

I know there are various lists of standard questions that people use to give an update each week, but I think that might be a little too regimented for me. Some answers wouldn't change much from week to week so that might get boring for you. And I'm surely not updating you every week on how much weight I've gained (although the answer at this point is 0, thankyouverymuch.)

So maybe each week I'll just answer the questions I want to answer, and throw some fun ones in there along the way. And if there's something you want to know, holler. I may or may not tell you, but it doesn't hurt to ask. So here goes.

1. How far along? 14 weeks today, which officially puts me in the second trimester.
2. How big is baby Wade? The size of a lemon, or about 3.5 inches.
3. Annoying symptom of the week: round ligament pain, which is basically my uterus stretching to accommodate this human. Lovely, huh? It hurts, and sometimes is kinda scary.
4. Hormonal moment: There have been more of these than I'd like to admit. My favorite was when I was working on our headboard (post to come soon), tediously nailing nailhead trim in a not-so-straight-line. Lee came in an pointed out some things that weren't great (in a helpful and constructive manner) and I burst into tears. "It's not you, it's the hormones!" I said. To which he declared "I don't think arts & crafts are for pregnant people." And that is why I married him. Because he can make me laugh in the middle of a sob fest.
5. Scariest moment: calling around and getting pricing from local daycares. Holy guacamole -- I think I'm in the wrong business. When I sent the prices to Lee, along with stating that I was going to need some maternity clothes soon, his response was "baby needs to get a job."
6. Pregnancy brain already? Every morning before I leave for work I put Sugar in her kennel. I've been doing it for 3 years now and have never once forgotten. I'm sure you can tell where this is going. We've come home from work twice in the past two weeks to find Sugar chilling on the porch, free as a bird. Oops.

Well, that's it for now. I'm off to bed, where I'll wake up without fail around 3:00 for my required middle-of-the-night bathroom trip.