Halfway With Baby 2!

This last week I hit my 20 week mark with this pregnancy! I can't believe how quickly, and how slowly it seems to be going! :) It's weird. I feel like halfway is so far, but 20 more weeks sounds incredibly long! I know it will only go faster from here on out though.

The pregnancy has been pretty good so far. My morning sickness was a little more with this pregnancy than it was with Elliott. I think partly due to the fact that I didn't have the option to be lazy all day with this one. I now have a toddler to chase around. That made some of the days harder. But thank goodness for modern medicine that helped me at least keep food down and gave me enough energy to make it through. The morning sickness also lasted longer than it did with Elliott. I remember that as soon as I hit that 12 week mark with Elliott I felt a huge difference. This one was more like 15 weeks before it started tapering back. And even then, I noticed that I still felt sick a few days a week. But it was definitely more manageable. I'm now into the best part of pregnancy. Finally showing enough that people recognize that you are indeed pregnant and not just fat, and not sick! Glorious. I'm feeling the pregnancy glow. :) I started feeling her move around 16 weeks, but Josh just felt her this week for the first time. It was actually pretty funny. There were nights when I felt like she was moving so much and when Josh would feel, he couldn't feel anything! I swore he was crazy. But I forget how little she is and that even though I can feel her somersaulting inside me, there's a lot of padding between her and the outside. But he felt her kicking this week, and I'm sure there will be tons more where that came from.

This morning we had our 20 week ultrasound. That is my absolute favorite! I love all ultrasounds but the 20 week one is so thorough and exciting. I love the reassuring feeling of knowing everything looks great and the baby is growing as it should. And guess what, she is still a girl! :) That's a relief. I got used to the idea of her being a girl and so I think it would have been a hard adjustment to switch that thinking. Everything looked great. She is measuring right on with my due date (Oct. 1st). The place we went today for the ultrasound was a place we hadn't been before, so they gave us a free DVD since it was our first time. What a treat! We have never bought one before just because, but I'll take a free one for sure. And of course she was adorable through the whole thing. She even yawned for us. It was perfect. You could see her little jaw open up big and wide and her little tongue stick out. Adorable. Ultrasounds really are so incredible! She loved moving her arms the whole time but kept her legs curled and tucked down tight the entire time. The technician actually had me roll onto my side at one point to see if she could get a better angle and make sure that she was actually a girl. We got the shot, it wasn't great, but she said she could say with assurance that she was a girl. :) Her little legs were like frog legs. They were completely folded up and you could see her little toes poking out on either side. She was also crouched right on top of my bladder. That is one thing I have noticed a lot more this pregnancy. I think she tends to enjoy being head up because the pressure and need to pee is almost constant this time around. I remember having days like that with Elliott, but it's pretty much all the time this go around.

20 weeks in all my glory!

How I feel a lot of the time! Haha. 

And some beautiful ultrasound pictures of our sweet girl!

This is her face. You can see her nose and top lip and then her arms are up in front of her eyes. "Peek A Boo"

We can't wait to meet this sweet girl! Having ultrasounds and feeling her move around makes it all seem so much more real and makes her and her personality seem more real too. I'm excited to see how she will look in comparison to Elliott and how her personality is the same and different. And we cannot wait to see Elliott with her baby sister. She is obsessed with baby dolls and sleeps with a different one every night. I just know she will adore that little girl as much as we will!

And bonus pictures! Of our little daredevil of a child who will jump off of anything and everything. And climb anything and everything. It's scary sometimes, but we mostly love it. Josh's faces crack me up! 

Park and A Brisket

This weekend was a great one! Josh has been crazy busy, out of his mind, but because of the way holidays fall next weekend, he had a three day weekend, this weekend! Thank the heavens for that. He is currently working Mon-Fri (5:30-3:30) and has Saturday and Sunday's off. But he is taking a GMAT class from BYU (to help increase his GMAT score) which is Wednesday nights after work (for four hours) and Saturday mornings (again, for four hours). So, he's super busy. And we don't see a ton of him.

This last Saturday he still had class, but we made some fun plans for the day. On Friday we bought a big ol' brisket from Macey's and he started smoking it on the grill at 7am Saturday morning. While he was in class I checked it each hour and changed out the wood chips. After his class and after naps, we met up with Jacob and Valerie at the park to play for a bit. The weather this weekend was finally so nice, so we just had to spend some time at the park. Utah doesn't leave a big gap for spring, so this nice weather is going to turn hot soon. Gotta enjoy it while we can! The park was gorgeous. Elliott was overly excited, running around squealing. I swear, we do leave the house. :) The kids played while Josh and Jacob hit some golf balls around and Valerie and I talked. Then we attempted to play some Boche Ball, but the kids ended that prematurely by trying to fetch all our balls for us and ruining it. Oh well. 

After the park we all headed over to our house for brisket! Josh seriously nailed it. It was so, so good. He made his own dry rub that he put on it before he smoked it. When we brought it inside, it literally fell apart. It was so tender. We put it on buns, smothered it in BBQ sauce and ate our hearts out. Oh man, I want some right now. And since we had such a big brisket, Josh and I enjoyed sandwiches on Sunday after church, and Jacob and Valerie took some home too! Oh man.

Josh wanted me to take some pictures on my new camera to document his first brisket. Isn't she a beaut?

The proud cook!

 [Can I just say how much I love my new camera!? I've moved from auto to AV, which is like partially manual, and already, there is a huge difference in the quality of my pictures. So much fun!] 

After dinner we let the kids play for a bit while we talked. Once it was bedtime, they left to put Jack down and we put Elliott down. Then, Jacob came over to play video games with Josh and I went over to watch a movie with Valerie. We watched Filomena, which I loved. Man, it was such a great day!

Binky Removal

This weekend we decided it was time to take away Elliott's binky. She only uses it for naps and night time, which really doesn't bother me (especially since we did sleep training without it), but she is going through a clingy stage right now and anytime she sees it during the day and she can't have it, it turns into a giant tantrum. She has become far too attached, so we decided it was time to say goodbye.

On Friday after her nap I snipped the entire nipple off of all her binky's (this was mostly for my own sake, because having any binky's in the house would be such a temptation for me! Especially if it was a particularly bad day). So I cut them all. Then I placed the end and tip in her crib and asked for her to go grab her binky. She knows where it always is, so she ran into grab it. When she saw it laying in her crib broken, she immediately said, "uh-oh". We pulled it out and talked for a bit about what happened. We told her that had broken. She knows what broken means, and she is fine with that not having any other explanation. She brought it up multiple times that evening before bedtime, asking where it was. We would pull it out and remind her that it was broken. We were sorry but she was going to have to sleep without it.

Night one was a little rough. We tried to give her other distractions to help. She had her baby and a special book. But she was pretty upset. She cried for about 30 minutes before I went in to check on her. I got her out and asked what was wrong. She was so tired. She asked for her binky, so I reminded her again that it was broken. Having an explanation really seemed to help her. It wasn't just "gone". She had seen it and knew it wasn't going to work. So we calmed down, read some books and then put her back in her crib. She whined and cried on and off for another 25 minutes or so before she fell asleep. It was hard, but I think it could have gone a lot worse.

In all of this, I was most nervous for nap time. And for good reason. It has been harder than night time. She really used her binky to calm herself and make herself sleepy. So day 1 without her binky, she played in her crib for 2 hours without napping. She didn't cry at all. She just played.

Night 2 was amazing. She whined for about 4 minutes and fell asleep. I had to wonder though if it was from pure exhaustion having not had a nap that day. But, I was happy either way.

Day 2's nap was much better. It was Sunday so her nap was pushed back quite a bit. She doesn't nap til about 2:30pm on Sundays, where she typically goes down around noon. So she was tired! She conked out without a peep.

Night 3 was a different one. We had plans to go over to Matt and Kendal's for an outdoor movie that night. Even though we had already made those plans, we went ahead and took away the binky this weekend because all our weekends coming up have something in them. So we just went ahead with it. And we figured worse case scenario, if she didn't go to sleep over there, we would just have to leave early. When we go over to friends at night, Elliott sleeps in a pack n' play. So we set it up, put her to bed and let her be. She cried for about 25 minutes. I felt pretty good about that considering she didn't have her binky and we were at someone else's house in a strange bed.

Day 3's nap was nonexistent. I left her in there for longer this time (over 2 and a half hours) to no avail. Again, she didn't cry, but she played happily in her crib the entire time. I figure that as she continues to adjust to not having her binky, naps will come easier. I hope at least. And I think I'm going to start pushing them back later in hopes that making her a bit more tired will help.

Overall, I'm really happy with how she is doing! Even though nap times have been difficult, she isn't crying or complaining, so I'm happy. I can still leave her in there and get things done..(or take a nap, like I did today). :)

New Camera

Josh got me a new camera (the most wonderful thing I've ever owned) a couple months ago. With pregnancy fatigue and sickness, I haven't had a lot of opportunity to really play around with it. Don't get me wrong, it shoots amazing photos in auto, but manual mode is just so much better. But I finally got out and played around with the settings a bit. I shot in AV, which is partially manual (only some of your settings are manual, the rest are automatically set for you) and I was pretty happy with the results. I can't wait to play around more. 

Can you tell I cut her bangs? I kind of love them! :)

Seriously, who can't shoot good pictures with a model like this?! And she's all mine! How is that possible?!

Mother's Day '14

Mother's Day was so wonderful this year. I felt especially grateful being mother to sweet Elliott, but also carrying another girl. Being a mother is amazing. Josh let me "sleep in", (lay in bed and not be able to fall back asleep...dang motherhood) and had Elliott help him make me breakfast. Delicious. Church was wonderful. Our ward doesn't do Relief Society on Mother's Day. Instead, they set up a bunch of tables in the gym and the men serve us dessert while we just sit and chat. I sat with a bunch of girls that I didn't know too well, including one of our new neighbors and enjoyed getting to know them! (I tend to be a hermet). I had a huge slice of raspberry pie. Perfection. The lessons were amazing the rest of the day and I felt so grateful to be a mom.

Helping Daddy make breakfast in her new apron.

All ready for church. Wearing the pearls I wore to my sister's wedding when I was 9.

My two loves.

Love this girl!

I always have a hard time on Mother's Day because my heart goes out to all the women who find it to be such a trying and hard day. Obviously, those women who never marry or have the opportunity to become mothers, but also the women who try unsuccessfully to conceive. I cannot imagine the pain that ,a day completely centered around mothers, must bring. I thank Heavenly Father every day for blessing me with the gift of motherhood. I don't know why He feels the need to bless me so immensely, but I am so thankful that He has.

After church we all took naps and enjoyed our evening together as a family. Kendal brought me a sweet treat and we FaceTimed all the families. My mom hasn't seen Elliott since Christmas, so it was an overdue FaceTime! Josh made me navajo tacos (one of my favorite meals ever) and we watched a couple of our favorite shows. Overall, it was a wonderful day.