Button arrives...

First, please bear with me as I'm trying out a new app on my iPad in order to post this to my blog. I hope if all goes well I'll be posting more often and keeping you all up to date easier. Fingers crossed...

Boy does time fly by when your little one arrives. It's hard for me to believe that as I sit here and type this I have a little 8lb, 5week old bundle of awesome sleeping on my chest. The rhythmic sound of her breathing is music to a mommy's ears. But I digress. 

The last few weeks before Button arrived were uncomfortable to say the least. As her due date came and went it seemed that everyone became impatient, even the folks at the local grocery store "you STILL haven't had that baby?". I actually avoided that store till after she was born because I was tired of the looks and questions. I wanted to shout "isn't it obvious????" I waddled uncomfortably, to the point that even my mother would giggle. Most nights were spent shifting from side to side uncomfortably and ultimately ending up on the couch propped up due to terrible reflux. I was a very patient pregnant lady but come a week over due I was ready to have this baby. 

My mother took this pic of me. As you can see even Beanie was done waiting.

Since I was overdue I was scheduled to go to the hospital to be induced on Friday June 22nd (one week after my due date). 

The following 2 pictures were taken the morning I went to the hospital. 

The next day was to be her Birthday!

All day Friday was spent getting meds, walking the halls of the hospital and being on monitors. Nothing was happening. Nothing more frustrating than being the center of attention, all eyes on you and having no control over any of it.

 "you feeling anything yet" "how about now"

That evening I sent my mother and Bear home to get some sleep while I received a different med over night and tried to get some sleep myself. I downloaded a white noise app onto my iPad and did my best to get sleep despite being woken up every hour by the automatic blood pressure cuff. A hospital is no place to get sleep. As my Dr. put it, it's a bad hotel at best.  6am the next morning I was woken up by my body in labor! The new med workend and kick started my body into labor on its own! Here we go! 

At 4:30pm it was time to push! 

After 20mins, six sets of pushes our daughter was in our arms

SAIGE ADELAIDE

June 23rd 2012

4:46pm

7lbs 12oz

The most beautiful girl in the world. We are so in love. 

Week 27 is a...Cauliflower?

Howdy dear readers. Wow, 2 posts in as many days? I'm on fire. Well, don't get too used to it since we'll be moving soon. Yes, we're moving again but this time it's pretty permanent as we've bought the house! Yeppers, first time Home Buyers but that's a story for another day.

As many of you out there are experiencing, Spring has come early this year. The weather is warm, all the flowering trees are in FULL Bloom. So you know what that means...

Break out the Flip Flops!!!!

These are my new loverly Apt9 flip flops from Kohls and I'm in love. So in love actually that I went back and bought another pair in black. I would have loved to have had brown as well but they don't come in brown :(

I love their vintage flapper feel.

So, on to what you've all been waiting for, my monthly belly pic!

Well here you go!!

(and no I don't "feel" nearly as pregnant as I look. WOW! What a BELLY!)

And to think, I've still got 3 whole months to go!

Yep, it's week 27 already. And YES I am still wearing the same white shirt I've been in from the beginning. Though due to the warm weather I haven't actually put this shirt on since last month's photo shoot. It will be interesting to see if I can still squeeze into it come next month. Probably, but there may be some belly peaking out below it at that point ;)

Button is supposed to be about 15inches long and weighing in at a little over 2lbs at this point. I'm not sure about you but I've never seen a Cauliflower that big. Another interesting fact about Button at this stage is that any day now she'll begin to open her eyes. Kinda cool and creepy all at the same time.

Happy Vernal Equinox Everyone!

Let those pedicures out to play.

Dam! And a Round Belly...

St. Patty's Day for us began with Bear wanting to go for a drive and explore a new place called Prettyboy Resevoir near Baltimore. We took back roads and wandered thru some of our favorite little towns. It was a gorgeous day for it.

(all of the following pictures are curtesy of the Bear. He played photographer for the day)

This was our first view after parking the car and walking up.

Looking down over the edge! Weeeee!

View from the other side. Nice perspective!

Okay, I took this one. Say cheese!

And here I am at 27 weeks. 3 more months till we get to finally meet Button!

I remembered to wear green ;)

It was such a lovely day and I was feeling so good we decided to walk all the way down the stairs to get a better view. So glad we did. The roar of the water and the moisture in the air reminded us of our visit to a waterfall in the mountains of Nevada. Such good times.

The force of the water is amazing. I wish I could have this sound in my bedroom to sleep by at night.

And here we are back where we started. See those stairs to the left of my hand? Yeah, we walked all the way down them and back up again! So proud of my 6month pregnant self! Go me!

What a wonderful day this was. Perfect spring weather and enough smiles to go around for everyone. We knew we needed to take advantage since soon it won't be so easy to just get in the car and go do something like this.

Okay, It's Week 23, What Fruit Are We?...

Well this week marks the beginning of my 6th month of pregnancy. Do not get me started on how 23 weeks equals the 6th month. That is an argument no one is going to win. They say "if you go by calendar weeks, well then your pregnancy would be 10 months". So what? If it's ten month then it's 10 months. Doing some Crazy Voodoo OB Math and changing the numbers around on paper isn't going to change the fact that this baby is in there for 40 weeks. Okay, pet peeve aired and over with. Thank you for listening!

Some of you may have heard of my CAKE addiction I had a few weeks back. Yep, CAKE!! The craving only lasted for a week and it was glorious! I even woke up one morning thinking the following "Pineapple Upside Down CAKE!! Yes, that is EXACTLY what I need" and I've never even had it before! So explain that one. Pictured above is the Cupcake version I made. Don't worry, I shared them with friends. Judging by the look on their faces when I showed up unannounced on their doorstep with a plate full of these babies, they are enjoying my cravings as well.

And here's a picture of me from this morning at Week 23. This week's Fruit Size is anyone's friggin guess. I think they are running out of ideas. One source says a Large Mango, but I've already had Mango week so that's lame. Another source says a Doll. What? You can't just throw Doll in there in the middle of fruit!

Wk 11/Lime, Wk 15/Naval Orange, Wk 19/Mango, Wk 23/Pomegranate

So there, take that, I declare this week Pomegranate week! Who's gonna argue with me?

It must be pretty obvious that I'm preggo, the Fed Ex lady just now delivered a package to me and asked how much longer I had. When I said June 15th she looked suprised and said "You don't have twins in there do you"? Nope just one happy girl I replied. That brief exchange marks my very first encounter with a stranger taking notice and making a comment. I guess there's no hiding it now! Bring on the comments, I'm ready!!

Well, as long as there's either CAKE or a Chocolate Malt Milkshake afterwards!

Mmmm, milkshake!

We're having a...

I first have to say that I feel so loved. I can't believe all the people that are coming along on this journey and are sooo excited to find out our good news!!

Are you ready?

Are you sure?

Okay, Here it goes..........

Yeppers! We are having a girl! Bear drew all of this himself. Yeah, I'd say he's excited!

This was such an exciting and emotional day. You see, this was Bear's first ever Baby Appointment. Despite "Button" moving around and kicking A LOT these days he has yet to catch a kick himself so I'm sure the idea of our baby had yet to become "real" for him. On the way to the appointment I asked him "From 1-10 how excited are you" and the answer came quick "50"! Having him there with me in the room and watching his face as he saw his baby for the first time was priceless. I have to admit I had tears running down my cheeks.

I have the world's greatest husband.

Week 19 is a Mango? Hmm...

Hello there dear Readers. It's me again. January is here and today we finally have our first snow fall of the winter. It's not even 2" and the top is a layer of it is sleet but I'll take it. It will all be melted by tomorrow so I'm enjoying it for the moment.

Some of you have been asking when you'll get to see my next "Belly" shot, well here it is!

Thanks to Bear the photographer!

This is what week 19 looks like. They say that "Button" is the size of a Mango this week but I could not find a 6 inch long Mango anywhere. This particular Mano is only 5 inches long but it will have to do. "Button" is suposed to be 6" from crown to rump. How in the world does all of that fit in there? This past week has really been an active week for Button with all day Flips, Twirls, and Kicks. This is quite an active baby already.

This morning was the first time I could feel the kick on the outside of my belly. Quite a feeling.

Week 11/Lime, Week 15/Naval Orange, Week 19/Mango

Now this is something I didn't think of ahead of time... How I would feel seeing myself pictured over time. I knew I wanted to take these pictures but I never thought how weird it would be to watch my body morph. It's funny how you get used to yourself changing little bits every day but as I look back over these pictures...well simply put, this is one amazing journey that's only going to get more amazing.

A HUGE thank you goes out to all of you who are coming along with me on this journey. I couldn't do this with out you.

I promise my next post won't be so long in coming as this Tuesday Jan. 24th is when we find out if "Button" is a girl or a boy!! Stay tuned!

Does Absence Make the Heart Grow Fonder???

This year is only days away from closing out and sadly I have been away from you dear readers for some time. For that I do apologize but I promise, it was for a good reason.

You see, I have been working on what is my largest handmade project to date...

A BABY!!!

If you know our history you know we move at relatively a snail's pace.

Bear / Bean

11yrs old/6yrs old (when we met. I moved in right next door)

22/17 (we decided we liked each other enough to start dating)

27/22 (yep, we liked each other well enough, so we married)

38/34 (after nearly 12yrs this marriage thing is perdy cool so why not try parenting)

On October 3rd 2011 we got the little "yep I think that's a baby" positive pregnancy test!

This is a picture of "Button" at 12 weeks and already a huge Thumb Sucker!

Here I am first at 11wks at Thanksgiving. Button is the size of a Lime. Then there I am at 15wks on Christmas morning. Button has graduated to a Navel Orange!

I think this is my favorite picture so far. A last minute hey lets hold the orange here, kind of shot. I'm loving every minute so far. All tests indicate that Button is healthy and growing well. I am doing wonderfully having had no morning sickness at all. My Dr. winked and told me not to tell that to anyone ;) The only symptom I had was EXTREME exhaustion. Bear said he knew I was pregnant even before the test because as he put it "No one over the age of 5 falls asleep at 7pm" There were whole months when I didn't even finish one TV show in the evening. There were days I slept 12hrs straight plus a nap in the afternoon, but I'll take that over morning sickness any day.

I'm happy to report that I've gotten most of my energy back, no naps and I can stay awake till nearly 10pm now!!

As this belly rounds out I just get happier and happier.

On January 24th we hopefully find out if Button is a boy or a girl! Feel free to weigh in in the comments section below wether you think Button's a He or a She. The votes have already started rolling in.

Button is tentatively due to be unwrapped June 15th 2012

(we all know how due dates are)