Twenty-Eight

Picking up again after a Christmas hiatus...

How Far Along: Twenty Eight Weeks (THIRD TRIMESTER WOOT WOOT)

Size of Peanut: Eggplant...

Total Weight Gain: Taking into consideration the amount of cookies I have eaten over the last few weeks, I'm guessing my weigh in at my appointment next Monday isn't going to be as full of good news as my most recent one was.  HA.  Stay tuned.


Maternity Clothes: Well y'all, this body keeps on a-changing and I just can't keep up with it.  If I'm being completely honest, I've been really impressed with myself as far as exercising goes this time around.  Even throughout the holidays, I still managed to get myself to a gym or studio 3-4 times a week.  My current exercise wardrobe has not been up to snuff.  I decided I needed another pair of maternity leggings from Target because I really only had one NON-see-through pair to wear, and if I wore them as actual pants then they basically were not an option for working out.  Of course I love the $25 pair from Target more than the more expensive pair from Athleta, but we don't really need to go there.  The good news about the pair from Athleta is they should be a viable option even when I'm not pregnant because the waist is really just a rollover.  On the flipside, the ones from Target are straight up maternity pants with a really stretchy belly that won't be much use to me after this baby makes her exit from my midsection.  I also finally caved and bought a sports bra that will hopefully actually fit me.  I have been squeezing these suckers into my old sports bras for 5 months now, rocking some 6 inch cleavage because the bras just plain do not fit, and I can't take it anymore.  If I nurse Macy as long as I nursed Sam, then it should work for me for about the next year (maybe longer, we'll see).  I found a bra on http://www.lynxsportswear.com/category-s/84.htm for women with *ahem* large breasts and am hoping that it really works.  It has always been impossible to find a sports bra to fit my smallish ribcage and my huge boobs, so my fingers are crossed that this actually works and fits appropriately!

Exercise: I have been doing so much better this time around than I did last time (toot too <ridiculously sore
 abdominal muscles getting kicked and punched from the inside.  Wow.
Sleep: In a not super surprising twist of events, Jake and I are not 100% satisfied with our mattress. Even though I really thought I wanted and needed a firmer mattress, I think I was wrong.  Both of us are side sleepers, and it seems like this mattress is just a little too firm for us to stay in proper alignment all night.  I've gone ahead and ordered another bed in a box (the Helix), this one is a little more personalized and has a layer of springs in it, so I'm hoping it works a little better.  I'm hoping the return process for the Leesa is just as seamless as all of the online reviews indicated it would be!

Movement: This baby seems so much more active than Sam ever was.  Just a few weeks ago her only real active time was from about 9-10pm, but now she seems to be moving around all day.  My mom got to feel her move last week too.  I am continually creeped out by the look of my stomach waving around while she moves.  I hope her constant activity is not an indication of her sleeping habits when she makes her grand entrance.

Best Moment(s) this week: Well it's been 3 weeks since I posted any super fun updates, so it's kind of hard to say what my best moment was the last few weeks.  We had a fantastic Christmas morning with Sam at my parents' house.  She loved all of her "Frozen fings" and her little motorcycle from my parents.

We also had a great New Year's Eve with some great friends playing a game that I do believe is funnier and more entertaining than Cards Against Humanity.  If you have never played Utter Nonsense, I recommend you run to Target right now, buy it, and play it with some of your closest friends who don't embarrass easily.  You won't regret it and you'll get your money's worth in laughter in the first 5 minutes!

Food Cravings: All of the sugar.  All of the time.  Sing me that "Sugar" song, Adam Levine, and while you're at it bring me some cookies and donuts and ice cream.

What I Miss: Alcohol.  My clothes.  A relatively flat-ish/non-rounded pregnant belly.  Zippers.  Being able to bend over while breathing.  Running.  Easily putting my socks on and/or painting my toenails.  Boobs that are not inhabiting my armpits <<< yes, you read that right.

Symptoms:  My symptoms have really cooled it lately.  I hesitate to even say this outloud, but my headaches have been very rare, and my sciatic pain has calmed down a lot too.  I am still NOT A FAN of being pregnant by any stretch of the imagination, but as far as complaining about annoying symptoms right now, I really don't have much to complain about (other than the aforementioned boobs inhabiting my armpits which is a new revelation this week).  I'm sure this symptom free bliss will last approximately 3 more hours now that I put that juju out into the world, so I'm going to enjoy it while I can.

What I am Looking Forward to: We are having Sam's birthday party for our families on Saturday.  I'm looking forward to decorating and baking for her and having everyone over to celebrate our little munchkin.  I think she's awfully cute and deserves to be celebrated every once in a while :)

Sam Tidbits: 
-Sam's birthday was the 28th and we made a whole day out of it.  We started the morning with balloons outside of her room and her opening her present.  Then we made winter shaped pancakes.  From there we moved on to mixing up her cake together.  After cake making we went to Tom and Chee for lunch, then went to see The Good Dinosaur at the theater (I would not recommend this movie by the way, it was loonnnnnnng and sloooowwwwww).  For dinner we made her favorite - SKYLINE - and then we sang happy birthday to her, she blew out her candles, and stuffed her face with cake and ice cream, just like a three year old should!  It was a pretty great day for me and it wasn't even my birthday, so I've gotta imagine she had a blast.  The funniest thing that happened that day though, was when we gave her her present in the morning.  She opened her book and looked at us and said "where are my other presents?".  #christmasbirthdayproblems  The poor kid thought she was going to have 400 things to open again.  She is in for a nice treat in May though, when she gets to go on a date with Mommy to see Frozen on Ice.  We're gonna keep that a secret for now though, since I doubt I will be able to stand to listen to her talk about it she will be able to contain her excitement for 5 whole months.
-She woke up on Sunday morning with a pink and crusty eye, so we took her to the Little Clinic where they told us it was probably pink eye and gave us some drops for her.  Unfortunately it seems to have developed into a full blown cough/cold/fever virus and she has been pretty pitiful.  It breaks my heart into a million pieces to leave for work when all she wants is to stay home and snuggle with mommy, but such is life.
-We had a really rough spot with her behavior throughout December.  After a lot of soul searching, tears, and over-analyzing, Jake and I decided we needed to change up our parenting game.  I think the stress of the holidays and the move and Callie had really gotten to us and our fuse had gotten really short with her.  We were spending a lot of time yelling and not enough time being patient and diffusing the tantrums.  We went back and read a few tidbits in some parenting books we had read, and realized we needed to get back to patience and grace - ignoring tantrums, recognizing good behavior, only yelling when danger is present - those kinds of things.  Luckily, her behavior has been a lot better since we adopted our new strategy.  It's not always easy to try to stay calm when she's literally laying on the floor flopping around and screaming because she wanted her Doc McStuffins cup instead of the blue cup I gave her, or because there's not enough ice in her water, but a few deep breaths and a quick prayer usually bring me back down to earth and quiet the yelling before it starts.  Parenting is hard.

Callie update: I just can't seem to shake the grief from losing my fur baby.  I can't believe it but I am still crying when I think about her on a weekly basis.  Sam has finally started talking about her a little bit.  Just this morning she said she wanted to get another doggy and name her Callie, because Callie is in heaven now.  And she "was going to hold her paw but she was sad" (I'm not sure what that means, but cue tears).  Christmas was weird and hard without her sniffing around at all of the presents.  I still think I hear her every night when I wake up in the middle of the night, but inevitably it's just Jake snoring, or the humidifier bubbling, or the house creaking.  I honestly still look for her when I walk in the door after work.  I guess it's going to be a long time before I'm truly used to her not being around.  We did a quick drive-by of our old house on the way home from Kroger the other day, and I told Jake I couldn't do it anymore.  Every time I have driven by since we left, I just see her running around outside in the yard and it takes everything I have to not completely break down.  While I think the emotions may be a combination of missing Callie and missing our house/feeling weird that someone else lives there now, I think Callie is the major catalyst of the sadness.  I miss you so much baby girl.

A few more notes:

-GOOD RIDDANCE 2015.  I'm not much for resolutions, but here's hoping 2016 is a little better for our little family than 2015 was.  This past year we struggled for 2/3 of the year to get pregnant, learned our dog had cancer, sold our house, moved in with our parents, and lost our dog to cancer.  There was a lot of good mixed in there (hello two new nieces, best friends getting married, siblings getting engaged, actually getting pregnant), but unfortunately, the bad is seeming to outweigh the good when I look at the year as a whole.  Here's to new beginnings and a better year than the last!

-And last but not least:

If one more person offers me an unsolicited opinion about how "my body will never be the same again, especially after the second baby", I'm going to go postal.  Just this week I was trying to commiserate with this 40-something woman at work about how I'm sick of doing modified exercises at the gym (not being able to/wanting to jump or run is getting old, fast), and she starts going on about how her body has never been the same after her second kid.  BRO - that's not what I was saying, like, AT ALL- I just want to be able to do some jumping jacks again without worrying if I'm going to pee a little or get a black eye from these boobs that have taken over my entire chest and armpits.  Listen, I don't really give a flying crap if my body is never the same again.  I know my tune has changed since I had Sam, but here's the thing - my body was not meant to be the same again after carrying babies.  My insides have stretched and moved around, my abdomen was cut open (at least once, maybe twice), my boobs fed one baby for 9 months and will probably feed another for just as long, and my back/knees/hips/joints in general have had more pressure on them than I care to think about.  I have no expectation that my boobs are going to be perky and plump after this baby is born.  I have no expectation that the cellulite that has accumulated all over my body is just going to magically disappear. (I will, however, relish that my arms are probably the strongest they have ever been or will be from hauling around a toddler and shortly a new baby). But I'll be damned if I won't be back to running, lifting, jumping, barre-ing, and all of the other things my body was doing a short 8 months ago shortly after Macy gets here.  And I'll be even more proud of myself when I do it, because I'm doing it after giving birth to not one, but TWO babies.  Can I get an amen?  And also possibly a commitment from other women that we'll stop this whole "misery loves company" bullshit and just support each other before/during/after having children?