Pregnancy update

I am currently 33 weeks and 4 days into this pregnancy (if you want to be exact). I had an appointment on Friday and everything still looks great. Baby girl is positioned exactly how I thought she was: head-down and slightly posterior with her feet curled up on my right side.

I've been getting mixed reviews from people as to my size. When some people hear that it's still about a month and a half to my guess date (Feb 1), they give me this look like oh-I-thought-you-were-almost-done-because-you're-huge. Other people seem surprised for the opposite reason and think I'm too small to be that far along. (I think I prefer the second reaction, although I tend to agree with people who have the first reaction.) It's definitely true that I'm bigger than I was at this point with Jeric! I think this is for a number of reasons: (1) second baby, looser muscles; (2) she sits higher up than he did; (3) I have an anterior placenta (on the front of the uterus) as opposed to the posterior placenta I had last time; (4) I think she's going to be a bit bigger than Jeric was.

I'm still feeling pretty good. I am more uncomfortable than I was with Jeric (see reason 2 above: she sits higher up and is therefore in my ribs more), but not too bad. I have some heartburn and occasional sciatic pain, but nothing too intense. Yay for papaya enzyme to take care of the heartburn! Mostly I'm just enjoying feeling this child move around!

Jeric is very interested in baby sister. He likes to hug and kiss my belly, then he'll say "love you!" and go play some more. He wants to hold her, but I tell him she's too little to come out yet. We talk about all the fun things we're going to do with baby sister when she is born. I don't think he really understands that he's going to have to share Mommy and Daddy, and I'm fully expecting some jealousy and an adjustment period, but I think he'll do pretty well. He will be about 29 months when she is born.

And for those of you who stuck it out, here is a picture of me and my sister-in-law, who is due a week after I am. (She is also having a girl!) This picture was taken last Sunday.

Imagination

I just love that Jeric has an imagination. That kid cracks me up!

Picture overload

Most of these pictures are pretty self-explanatory, so don't have captions :)

(Mostly because I'm lazy. And a slacker blogger.)

For some unfathomable reason, he turns this chair upside down over his head and runs around saying, "My fireman hat! I a fireman!"

He calls this his leaf blower and makes sound effects to go with it. (As seen a few pictures above this,
Jeric loves to help blow the leaves in the yard.)

Applesauce ALL over him.

He had just woken up from a nap.

Reading scriptures. He LOVES this.

Girl.

So, probably no one ever reads this thing anymore. If you read this post, will you please comment? That would be great.

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For those who didn't know, we're having another baby! It's a girl this time and I am SO excited. Husband is a bit nervous because he doesn't have a lot of experience with girls, but he'll be fine and I'm sure she'll have him wrapped around her little finger in no time.

I'm lazy so I haven't scanned ultrasound pictures onto my computer, so I don't have any of those. But I have a couple of belly pictures. I did those with Jeric, so I feel like I ought to do them with this one too. For comparison, here is the 20-week picture and the 22-week picture from when I was pregnant with Jeric.

My due date is officially February 1, so I'm 22 weeks and 2 days today. I'm expecting her to come sometime the first half or so of February.

20 weeks with baby girl (Sept 14)

22 weeks with baby girl (Sept 28)

The white shirt in the last picture is officially a maternity shirt, so I think I might take all future belly pictures while wearing the same shirt. But I reserve the right to change my mind.

I feel like I showed a LOT faster this pregnancy, and I think I'm a lot bigger than I was with Jeric at this point, but I don't feel like the pictures really show that. I was less sick this time around, too, which was nice, especially since I really wasn't all that sick with Jeric! I do feel like I've been more emotional, and I've gained weight more quickly (though I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that I didn't lose weight the first trimester like I did with Jeric). I really have been blessed with easy pregnancies so far, and I'm very grateful. Baby girl has been moving around a lot lately (I don't feel her as easily as I did with Jeric because I have an anterior placenta) and she's already almost up to my ribs!

Jeric loves giving hugs and kisses to baby sister, and sometimes he sings to her, too. He sometimes asks to hold her, but I just tell him she's too little and has to grow big big big in mommy's tummy before she can come out and he can hold her. He'll be 2 years and 5 months old when she is born.

Sneak Peek

We took family pictures with my side of the family a couple of weeks ago before my youngest brother left for his church mission (he'll be gone for two years to Chihuahua, Mexico). So far these are the only two I've seen, but they're pretty cute.

Picture of Grandpa

One of the gifts Jeric got for his birthday was a small magnadoodle (it is awesome for church). Last night he was playing with it. He scribbled something and brought it to me and said "picture Grandpa!" Evidently the scribble was a picture of my dad. So I had to take a picture of it, and we called Grandpa to tell him about it.

He then erased it and drew pictures of Uncle Daniel, Aunt Anna, Grandma, Uncle Bob (what he calls my brother Robert)... It was too funny!

Jeric's "Golden Birthday"

Jeric turned 2 last Friday on the 2nd. (Thus the "golden birthday.")

We had some family over to celebrate his birthday. He was SO EXCITED about the cake! All day when you asked him what day it was, he'd say "CAKE!!!!" Too funny.

Here are some pictures from the festivities:

I also took him to the doctor for his well-child checkup yesterday. He is growing like a weed and is perfectly healthy.

Jeric can count to 10 (with help, and to 5 without help except he skips 3 :)). He knows some shapes and we're working on others -- yesterday he told me (without prompting) that his chicken nugget was a triangle. When I ask him what color something is, he tells me and is correct about 80% of the time, and gets it right on the second try the rest of the time. He consistently speaks in multi-word sentences and reads books to me (describes what is on the page). He is a very active little boy and is a joy to be around. I am so proud of my boy!

Last weekend

Last week, my mom's sister, her husband, and their five younger children (ages 20, 17, 14, 10, and 7 -- they also have two older sons, a daughter-in-law, and a grandson-on-the-way) were in town from Utah, so I took a couple days off from my babysitting job and we went to visit with family. We haven't seen them since we moved back from Utah more than a year ago, and it's been a while since they were in NC -- my aunt and uncle came for our wedding, but my cousins haven't been here since the 17-year-old was a baby! So only two of these five have ever been here, and they were too young to remember.

It was a fun weekend. Saturday was also my sister Anna's 15th birthday, so we ended up going hiking down to some waterfalls. My camera was (oh-so-typically) dead, so the only pictures I have are ones my dad took with his phone. Most of them are of Jeric!

I don't know why, but I labelled all the pictures in Paint. Maybe you won't even be able to read the font size, but at least the brightly colored arrows will show who is a part of our group!

******IMPORTANT: To our wonderful nephew Lathen, who turned 7 on the 6th and had his birthday party the same day as this hike, we are so sorry we didn't make it! We wanted to and it just didn't work out. But we will come and see you (at your new house!) very very soon. We love you!

And now, the pictures:

Yes, I know it has been more than two months. Again.

Last week.

Anybody out there? Probably gave up on me a long, long time ago. I don't know why I have such a hard time blogging consistently.

A few things:

1. Jeric is a nut and he makes me giggle.
2. Husband is glad it's summer break from school.
3. I have had two gray hairs in the last week. Blah.



And now, some pictures from my phone (ok, so not all of them are from my phone; a few are from my dad's or my brother's).

I apologize for several things about the pictures:

1. They are extremely fuzzy and poor-quality.
2. They are mostly reverse-order, and often without-order.
3. I cannot get blogger to let me put the first picture under the writing. I don't know what is up with that and I'm too lazy to try for another 5 minutes to get it to work.
4. Lack of captions, or even dates for the pictures.
5. My ridiculous son, who really is a very cute boy, refuses to smile for the camera. Instead, we get this weird grimace-y thing. We're working on it.

Hey, at least I posted!

This is my father-in-law's mother, who is not doing well at all. She has Alzheimer's Disease and is in a nursing home. We took Jeric to meet her recently. He did SO well being there and was calm and happy and talked to her. She doesn't talk much anymore and has no idea who anyone is, but she seemed to enjoy watching Jeric -- her eyes lit up and she focused on him as long as he was in her range of vision.