Belly Status - 22 weeks

I can not believe I am on the down hill already. I have made it past the half way mark and it is just a count down from here on out! Incredible!

I feel like Blueberry grows every night. I wake up in the morning and do the 'ol stand side ways in the mirror and my mouth drops and I say, baby girl you grew again!!



This picture is a little darker then normal because it was full morning sunshine out... but I had to close the curtain because my little brother counts the curtain squares to see if I am growing. Pretty sure he doesn't need to count this time... you can tell just by looking at me!

I have begun the search for the perfect colors and accessories to complete a little girl room. Can I just say there is some incredibly cute stuff out there. So far I'm leaning towards the light pastel colors of green, pink and yellow. No surprise that green is thrown in there - I can't turn my eye away from it. I just have to have pops and splashes of pink too!!! The bedding I found has yellow in it which amazingly goes really well together. I never would of thought that until I saw it all together.

Ups:
~ I am still feeling wonderful and loving every moment.

~ The best fingernails ever! I think it is all vitamins, but my nails have never looked so good. My pointer finger I smashed in the door when I was in middle school and it never looked the same, but is looking rather normal these days. Then my middle finger (which I rest my pencil/pen on when I write) could never grow and it would split and get icky... it is looking like a normal one too! Love it!! I could be a hand model... kidding!!

~ Baby girl has a name! We saw my niece Elly a couple weeks ago and she told me what our baby's name is going to be. Elly's official name is... Ellyn Mae Laska. She thinks that our baby's name is going to be... Mae Ellyn Laska. I tried to tell her that my last name was Frey and she tips her little head to the side and puts her hand on her hip and gives me that look of... are you kidding me?

~ Big Wiggles! Blueberry is doing full body movements now. I swear I can feel every inch of her move, like she is doing a big somersault. The other night my belly was uneven and had Jesse come over and look down at my belly and he started laughing. The left side of my belly was sticking out farther then right. So he starts poking at her!! She held her ground though and didn't move.

~ Babymoon! We are not going somewhere tropical full of heat and sunshine, but we are getting away for a weekend in March! We are both so excited!!

Downs:

~ Strangers don't know that I am pregnant. I know that is silly... but here in the winter we wear huge fluffy winter coats and I went shopping the other day and bought maternity pants and the checkout lady probably thought I was nuts! I even feel funny looking at maternity clothes because they can't actually see that yes I do have a little something sticking out of my mid-section that I really do need these clothes! Then I saw a girl I went to high school with and she asked if we had any kids... one on the way I say and she does the look from head to toe and looks back and me and says "how far along?" Again, wearing that darn winter jacket!

~ Speaking of clothes... do they think that all pregnant people are short? I have the hardest time finding maternity jeans that are long enough. And the jeans that are long enough totally look geeky. They think if you are tall your ankles must be 2ft wide - and the jeans are bell bottoms! I have 2 pairs of jeans and I had to search high and low for them. I had to learn my lesson the hard way one day and it still burns. I was on Old Navy's website looking and I found a super cute pair of jeans for only $20! I put them in my checkout cart and went to make supper and came back after supper and they (the website) updated my cart and took them out and sold them to someone else!! They were then out of stock on all their jeans!!! If you find a pair of jeans buy them, don't go make supper and think that since they are in your cart they are safe... they aren't!!

~ Still have problems with low blood pressure. I even had to leave work one day for about an hour and half and go lay down because I felt like I was going to fall out of my chair.

Enjoy the Super Bowl this weekend!! Eat lots good yummy snacks!

Slightly Addicted

The beginning of last year I started getting creative with my pictures and doing some digital artwork with them. Kind of like a digital scrapbook. I searched the internet for free digital scrapbooking and came across loads of stuff. I have been downloading and creating every since. Well today I hit the mother load of free stuff!! My goodness! And I can't stop downloading! I think I need to go therapy for this. My computer is bulging at the seams and I don't have anything backed up. Forget the therapy I need a removable hard drive for storage and safety!!

Anyway my creative juices have been running wild the last two days and I have made some fun pages... or I think they are fun anyways. I thought I would share with you. Enjoy!

One of the projects I want to do is a baby book. So I started it last night. I know how the first child works... you do this whole baby book with all the details and the pictures and by the time baby #7 rolls around and you'll be lucky if baby #7 gets a bath every night let alone a full on baby book with details and pictures galore. Oh well, I'll give it a shot and see what happens! ; )

Cover page... a picture will eventually go in the square and possibly her name or initials.

Jesse wants to know what happens if the ultra sound tech was wrong and we are really having a boy. I told him that is when I get my black marker out and write "OOPS!" over the girly part! : )

Pretty Morning

The last couple of mornings have been so pretty here. The trees are frosted, the skies are gray, big huge snowflakes are falling, and everything just looks so peaceful and calm. I took this picture out our basement (my office) window this morning. This is looking out at our backyard towards the field and woods behind us.

Almost every night we take Maggy on a walk back here in this field. There is a permanent "Maggy trail" that goes back along woods. Way back and to the left there is a brand new house that is sitting empty and for sale. (You can't see it in this picture.) Jesse and I are beginning to think the place is haunted!! It gives me the heepy-jeepys just thinking about it. We have been doing this walk since we had Maggy... but the other night we were walking and the front porch light came on and it looked like the front door was opened just a bit. We kept walking... probably at a little faster pace... and kept our eyes on the door waiting for someone to poke their head out at us. Nothing. We kept saying over and over... is that door open? it looks like it is open. why did that light come one? is there a motion sensor? we are way over here on the other side of the street in the field? it couldn't of sensored us? did Maggy set it off when she went a little too far over that snow bank? okay this is getting creepy... walk faster!!

The next night Jesse took Maggy on her walk and I stayed home. He came back and said the light never went off.

Last night we both went on the walk and we get to this house again and Jesse is bound to set this light off again so we can rest assure that is on a motion sensor. He walks right up the driveway and nothing!!!! We get almost past the house and the porch light comes on!!! I am starting to get very creeped out and trying to figure out how in the world am I going to run, and run fast, with 5 pounds of winter snow gear on, in a field of snow to get away from this boogy-monster!! I pick up the pace real quick and tell Jesse to stop looking at the house! Then he says to me... I just want to see someone step out onto the porch! Are you kidding me!!!!?! Oh and did I tell you we go on our walks pretty late at night and it is fully dark out with only the stars lighting our path!!!

Jesse tells me I shouldn't be scared we have Maggy to protect us. Yeah right! She is so far ahead of us with her nose in every snow bank that I can't even see her anymore. Plus what she is going to do... run up to them and fall on her back so they can scratch her belly!!! Real guard dog she'll be!!

When is daylight savings time again? When will it be light out until 10? I'm so ready for long bright nights!! So ready for walks where I don't have to wear 5 pounds of extra clothing... although I am sure it is a great workout.

We're having a...

We had our first [and only] ultrasound today! They told us we are having a little bitty baby GIRL!!! Too cute!! I guess this pencil test has some truth to it.

Here are a few pictures. I had to scan them in so they are little bit hard to see I even took them into photoshop and lightened them because they were way darker before this.

It was so fun to see our little one wiggling around. We could even see her little tongue and she was making sucking movements! The tech kept saying... what a beautiful baby. We even had a student in the room training so the tech let her play around and try to find things and the tech tells her student... this baby is so easy to see and find stuff. I felt like a proud momma!! ; )

From what the tech can tell everything looks perfect and normal. Little baby girl is weighing in at 13 ounces. She is still measuring at 20 weeks with a due date of June 2nd. I think I originally heard June 3rd at my first appointment so it was bumped up a day. If I am anything like my Mom (which I think I am 99.9% my Mom. My Dad catches us in the same poses sometimes and it freaks him out. We were standing in the kitchen a while back waiting for him to get ready and he looked at us... and we were both leaning on the counter with our hand on our hip looking at him. We had no idea that we were standing like that!! Freaky!!) anyway, if I am like my Mom I'll go three weeks late!! Wowsers!!

Oh and lets hope baby girl takes after her dad with his birth weight!! I was a 9 pound baby!!! Jesse was only 7 pounds!!

Jesse isn't quite sure what to do with a girl... but he is pretty excited and gets a big smile on his face when he tells people that we're having a girl!! I told him she can still ride dirt bikes... it'll just have to be pink! : ) He'll be a great dad for a little girl! I can't wait! She'll melt his heart and get wrapped around his little finger!

I'm going to see my sister tonight and she says she picked out and washed all Elly's cute clothes and put them in a bin for me to take home tonight! Oh! I'm so excited to see! Shannon said she had this feeling it was going to be a girl so she was washing her girly-girl clothes for me!

Just call me... Betty!

Betty Crocker, Jr that is!! I tackled my first cake... from scratch!!

Jesse bought me a Kitchen Aid Mixer for Christmas. (The color is flat black... I know you wanted to know!) I don't bake all that much... actually probably never unless asked to. But I am sucker for kitchen gadgets!! It looks real pretty sitting on my counter and makes me look like quite the housewife!

I really wanted to try out the mixer, plus I was craving something sweet and a cake sounded so good! A red velvet cake to be exact! I went to my trusty foodnetwork.com and found a recipe that said "easy".

The mixer is awesome! I love it! Except I can't figure out how to add the flour and not have flour dust all over my counter and mixer! I was covered from head to toe in flour, my counters, the floor, the mixer... was covered in flour. I was worried a blew out so much flour that I might have to add more in!! Then it came time for making the frosting and the same thing happened all over again except this time it was powdered sugar!! I tried to be smart and put a towel over it to keep it from fluffing out... but it still snuck out.

Another reason why I am not into this baking... so many rules. You have to use cake flour! Huh? Why can't I just use flour? (I used my regular flour.) Your cold items should be room temperature... grrr that means I have to plan ahead. Sifting! I don't own a sifter and what does sifting do anyways? I'll just fluff it with a fork... that'll count towards sifting. ; ) Measurements have to be exact, you can't just dump in ingredients... unless you are my friend Lacy. She is a big time baker and she never follows a recipe and she never measures. I always look at her like she is crazy and she says... sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.

The end result was well worth it! I even took pictures I was so proud of my first real non-box cake!! It was moist, fluffy, and so good! I might even have to do this more often... not that I need to eat this more often... it was just kind of fun to bake and the mixer does all the work!

Now, I am not a clean perfectionist when it comes to this frosting thing. Plus I freaked out a bit because after I bought all the ingredients it said that they make 1-1/2 of the frosting to frost this 3-layer cake. Why don't they just make the ingredients more then, not just say that they do this!?!? I didn't have enough of every thing to make another half batch of frosting so I skimped on my layers... but then had way too much at the end. Oh well. Lesson learned.

Don't you want to come over and have a piece of this with a big tall glass of ice cold milk?!?!

Belly Status - 19 weeks

Wow is the time flying! On Sunday Jesse and I were driving to my parents house and out of the blue Jesse says "It is already January!" I know!!! That means the count down in on baby! In just six short months... we will be experiencing a whole new lifestyle. As if Maggy hasn't already turned our world upside down.

For some reason it was really difficult to take this picture tonight. Usually we take one or two and that is good enough. Well tonight we took about 7! The one that shows me more relaxed I am sucking on my bottom lip and I totally look like Steve Urkel!! Jesse says, looks good and I zoom in on my face and starting laughing and scream... this is not good!!! Take another one! Finally he says... how about you actually try to pose this time. So... um... this is the best we have for this week. If I was real good about photoshop I could crop my head off this picture and put it on my Steve Urkel face... but I'm not so good.

Yes, I purposely wore the same clothes for this. However I didn't purposely wear my glasses for all these, just happened that way.

Ups:

~ I feel wonderful. I absolutely love being pregnant! Depending on how this delivery goes... I could do this 100 more times. ; ) But don't hold me to it!! My Grandma did have 11 children (or was it 12 - I lost count) and my Mom tells me I could be the next Grandma Lea!! Jesse did you know what you got into when you said "I do"?!

~ Wiggle wiggle wiggle! Baby is on the move! There are some days where baby wiggles all day long and I stop and think... aren't you tired yet? Don't you need a nap? Jesse has even been able to feel a few wiggles. Such a weird feeling and very hard to describe! But I love it! The first time I felt a wiggle from the outside was on New Years Eve. We were at Jerry and Steph's house and I couldn't stop eating Steph's Hot Tamales candy. I ate about 7 of them and went to sit on the couch and the baby just starting wiggling so much and I had my hand on my belly and all of sudden I felt one! My mouth fell open, my eyes got big and I think I even let out a little scream.

~ 'Need' to shop! Never before have I 'needed' to get new clothes. It was always just a 'want'. But now I busting the seams!! Well not really, everything just feels different and doesn't fit normal. I'm so excited to get out there and see what I can get!

~ Heartburn has subsided! My Tums are lasting much longer these days!

Downs:

~ Low blood pressure! Almost every time I stand up I black out and get dizzy. I am having to train myself to get up slowly and to drink way more water. I have always had a problem with this since high school and I actually passed out a couple times. Thankfully I haven't completely passed out yet, but I have had some close calls.

~ I want everything that has sugar in it! On Sunday when we were at my parents I was eating poor Elly's snacks!! And I couldn't stop! Then we stopped at Jesse's parents house really quick (Jesse's Dad got himself a 'new' old snowmobile and Jesse wanted to see it.) There were cookies on the counter... M&M cookies!! I casually brought up the cookies and had to bat my eyes at Jesse's Dad so he would share with me! At first he told me I could have these other cookies (that did not have M&Ms in them) and I started giggling and said... but those have M&Ms! It is a good thing I don't keep sweets in my house... but I have this new kitchen aid mixer that I got for Christmas and I... um... really want a cake! Oh man! I have looked in my cupboards a couple times to see if I have all the ingredients and I don't... but you can bet on it that I will this weekend! Yummy cake here I come!!! Anyone ever made a red velvet cake?!?! That's what I want! With that creamy white frosting! Dang! I think Betty Crocker makes one in a box!! Oh she better!! ; )

~ Sleep Positions! When I sleep I like to curl myself up into a tiny ball and hug a pillow. This is getting harder and harder to do. When I curl into my ball... baby wiggles... and baby won't stop until I uncurl. So I feel like that is my sign that I am squishing poor baby and baby is telling me to make some room! Then I read that you should really only be sleeping on your left side. I'm not a left side sleeper... I'm a right side sleeper. And lately I have been finding myself on my back! Which is a huge no-no!! I guess I am cutting off some sort of vein when I am on my back or my right side which slows baby's heart rate down. So I am constantly fighting with myself to stop curling in a ball... straighten out... get on your left side... my left arm is asleep... tough it out... don't be a wimp... shake it off... close your eyes... stop thinking and go to sleep and you won't even notice your arm anymore!

~ Acne! I was lucky enough to be a teenager that was blessed with good skin. I never had to go threw the teenage acne stage. I praise God for this!! Except now... I have it and I don't like it one bit. I keep reading that pregnancy will cause this in some women. I would love the 'pregnancy glow' not acne! Seriously, Jesse comes home yesterday from work and goes "Is that a zit on your cheek!" "Why yes Honey it is! Thank you so much for pointing that one out to me as if I didn't see it this morning the instant I looked in the mirror!" It doesn't help that I have horrible skin in the winter, but sunshine cures it! Hmm... yet another reason for hubby to sweep me away to Florida!! ; ) Yesterday I actually heard the word... Mexico... come out of his mouth!! Hehehe!! Could it be?! Not getting my hopes up... not going to... just not...

Next Friday we get our first ultra sound!! Yup, we are going to find out if blueberry is a girl... or if blueberry is a boy. I'll let you know for sure!!

One more dream...

I forgot to tell you the best dream of all!! I just remembered it yesterday and couldn't believe I forgot to tell it. I can't remember when I had this dream... I think I was still living in our apartment in Appleton... so pre pregnancy.

Here it goes...

I am at the grocery store pushing my cart around buying groceries. I get to the bread isle. You know those little carts that they put the fresh-from-the-oven bread on? Well there is one of those carts in the isle except this cart is full of babies! I shouldn't really say babies... they are like 6-8 months old. These babies are for sale and you can buy them along with your groceries! (I'm grocery shopping by myself.) I see this irresitable little Mexican girl and I pick her up and put her in my cart! She is all mine! I was so excited to take her home and show Jesse!

Now I have to buy food for my new little Mexican baby. I am at the yogurt trying to figure out which one I can feed her. The next thing I can remember is being in the check out lane with our new little baby!

Chipmunk Strips

I freshened up our living room with a couple coats of paint (called Chipmunk Strips).

I remembered that I didn't take any before pictures after I had the living room torn apart to paint. But I did find a couple that I must of took when we first moved in. You can tell because you see green trees out the windows.

Before:

After - you see brown trees and lots of snow:

Now that I see this in pictures it makes it look like a cottage. I'm not sure how I feel about that look. It must be the wood beams that run on our ceiling.

That is all that I got accomplished on my vacation. Hmmm, maybe I should take this week off too!! I'm so not ready to go back to work yet. I have been trying to talk Jesse into sweeping me away to Florida!! I would love some sunshine, beach, and water right about now!!

Parenting Dreams

Since before I was pregnant I would have tons of baby dreams. They seemed to never be good ones. Dreams that were so crazy they made me wonder... am I cut out to be a parent? I would wake up and tell Jesse my dreams where he would just laugh at me because they were so strange!

Lately I have been having labor & delivery dreams. I like these ones because I wake up going... Now, that wasn't that bad! Deep down I am afraid of labor & delivery, but I think every women feels this way when it is their first and they don't have a clue what to expect. Right? Please tell me I am right! ; )

Last night I had another one of those dreams... Here it goes...

I just delivered a baby girl! (First dream where I actually know the gender.) I name my baby girl and I take her home. A few days later I forget her name!! I have no idea what her name is!! (Jesse isn't in this dream.) I go to my Mom and my Sister and tell them I am such a bad Mom, I forgot my baby girl's name. I start crying. They tell me to go back to the hospital and they will be able to tell me the name. That's what I do. I get to the hospital and I tell the nurses that they are going to think that I am a horrible mother, but I forgot my baby's name. I start crying! They tell me that I named my baby... Fye Joy. I was shocked! I really named my baby that?!!? Was I on drugs? Did I really say that? I was so embarrassed. I kept thinking... I have a girl name that I really like. Why did I not use that name? Where did this name come from?

The dream went on for a long time with me having to tell people that my baby's name was Fye Joy. She was a cute and snugly Fye...

Other dreams I have had... I own a motorcycle and I need to figure out how to get my baby on the motorcycle with me. I come up with this brilliant idea to put my baby inside the motorcycle. So in the dream I am trying to squeeze the baby into this tiny spot so we can go for a ride.

Another dream... I now own a truck and the baby doesn't fit in it with the car seat. So I decide that the baby is in a car seat (so that is safe) and we can just let the baby ride around in the box of our truck!!

Another dream... I just delivered our baby and Jesse wasn't there. I wanted to see Jesse and tell him that we just had a baby so I leave the hospital and leave the baby at the hospital so I can go get Jesse!

Another dream... my sister and I go into labor together and we are in the same room having contractions. Except I have to go get a c-section. C-section was awesome! No pain! I felt great afterwards! (I woke up that morning thinking c-section is the only way to go.) Again Jesse wasn't there and I ended up having to call him, after the c-section, and tell him to come to the hospital because we just had a baby.

I don't think these dreams are going to stop. I've been hearing (and reading) that your dreams only get more vivid and strange as the pregnancy goes on. I also had about 3 more dreams last night that were totally off the wall and strange. I even dreamed about Maggy!! I think that is the first time I have ever dreamed about about a dog!

I gotta run and go finish painting my living room! It is looking so awesome!!!! The color is perfect!! Check back later for pictures!!