Pacific City

My favorite place with my favorite people. Stephen and I took the long way up to Seattle (where we currently are for a four week ER rotation) to spend the weekend on the Oregon coast with my mom, some of my cousins (non of which made it into my pictures...?! Oops!) and my best friend and her husband. It was a full house, but it was a fun weekend! Lots of food, talks, games, swimming, movies and a few beach walks (because for some reason the sun decide to hibernate during their visit. Literally, it came out the day the left!) Stephen left for Seattle on Monday and Uriah and I got to stick around for the rest of the week with my mom (where the sun was much more generous). Not everyone gets why I love the Oregon Coast so much - even in the summer months you can expect wind and rain and clouds - so maybe I won't be able to explain it to you, either, but I do love it, and a week there, even in January, is a good week.

maternity pictures // 30 weeks

What am I going to do when I move away and don't have my mother and all her talents right at my fingertips?! Thank you, mom, for capturing me and my little girl so beautifully. I'm not a fan of pregnancy, but still, I wouldn't trade this for the world. Baby girl, I can't wait to meet you!

twenty-eight

How far along are you?: 28 weeks - officially starting my third trimester - three months left! 

Baby is: the size of a head of cauliflower - 16 inches, 2.5 pounds

Movement: all. the. time! I can feel her move much, much lower than I ever felt Uriah move (like, is she trying to come out...?!) Her moves are getting bigger and are sometimes painful (she throws that elbow around far too often!). We can occasionally see and feel a head or a bum bulging out, too! She is almost always moving when Uriah is on my lap or once he goes to sleep (and all I want is sleep!) - she's already fighting for attention ;)

Total weight gain/loss: ugh. Too much! Ok, not too much according to doctors and standards and all that, but more and faster than I gained with Uriah - 16 pounds. I started at a lower weight this time around and am already 10 pounds away from my total weight gain with Uriah... Oops! 

Maternity clothes?: since about 14 weeks! Pants, at least. There are still some regular shirts in my closet I can get away with ;)

Belly button in or out?: out! So far out. But out because of Uriah, not because my "timer's done". Uriah left me with an umbilical hernia (never typed that out for public information!) and doctor's didn't recommend getting it fixed anytime soon because it wasn't causing any damage or pain and the fix would most likely tear during my next pregnancy. So, my belly button's out. 

Stretch marks?: no new ones, and I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it stays that way! At 36 weeks with Uriah they showed up - only above and below my belly button, but still, they showed up! Just 6 days before I went into labor... So not fair ;)

Obsessing over: the size of my belly! I feel huge, basically. I keep saying I feel as big now as I felt at 34 weeks with Uriah, but looking at pictures, it just isn't so. I was big with him (despite what I think, bigger than I am now) and I'm most likely going to get even bigger with her. I just feel so big right now, I don't see how that's possible...!

Sleep: I'm getting it! Though it's admittedly not the best - I can't sleep on my back because by the end of the day it just hurts too bad, which also makes rolling over a little painful and difficult (I'm telling you, I feel 35 weeks pregnant, not 28!) Annnnd I'm usually waking up to pee at least once a night, I have this whole pregnancy. If I wake up and am just too tired to get out of bed, I can usually "convince" myself to hold it and fall back asleep, but it's then the first thing I have to do in the morning ;) 

Favorite moment this week: we talk about the baby to Uriah every once in awhile, but I try not to do it too often because I don't want him to get annoyed with the topic and then not like her when she gets here because it's all momma talked about for nine months (the kid likes our attention!) but, I want him to understand or at least not be completely shocked when this belly goes away and a baby comes home with us ;) So he was sitting on my lap patting my belly and said "baby" (and shakes his head up and down as he says it and looks and me like he's searching for confirmation - it's the cutest thing) so I said "yeah, there's a baby in mommy's tummy. A baby girl! Your baby sister! She's going to come out in a little while to live with us!" He looked from me to my belly a few times and then got down off my lap and got out a couple of his balls and brought them over to my belly and said, "baby, out, pay" - loosely translated that means "the baby's going to come out and I'm going to play with her" ("out" came with hand motions, too). When I asked if that's what he meant he shook his head yes and ran away to get more toys to show the belly and he kept repeating that he was going to play with her. He's in for a bit of an upset when he learns he won't be able to play with his baby sister for awhile, but it was the sweetest thing. Any moment that he touches my belly and says "baby" is really my favorite moment of the week. 

Feeling: good! Emotional, like, I've gone maybe a little crazy, but good - happy and excited! My energy is still up, too, and assuming it decides to go as my third trimester gets going, I'm going to miss it!

Working on: my "before baby gets here" todo list (which I think has been my answer to this question every post). I'm making slow but steady progress on it, trying to get enough done before leaving town for 4 weeks that I don't feel overloaded with stuff still to do when we get back! 

Thinking about: where residency will take us, which is only slightly baby related. Our rank list is due next month and now that interviews are over, we've been talking more and more about where we'd like to go. I've been trying to picture our life as a family of four in each different city - looking up apartments and houses and cost of living and parks and things to do... My biggest worry right now is ending up with a baby girl who sleeps like her brother did and having to go through the "cry it out" phase in a two bedroom apartment complex. Sorry, neighbors! 

Anticipating: those gosh dang iron pills. The tests came back and while I don't have gestational diabetes, I am anemic. I've been diagnosed anemic and have been on iron supplements before, so it's not really a big deal, but I know that those pills cause constipation and if we're being honest, I don't think my current situation can get much worse. So... yuck. 

Currently craving: I don't really crave anything specific, like, I've never made Stephen run to the store at midnight because I just couldn't sleep without blank. But certain things do sound better than others - still (and really, always) cereal, turkey sandwiches (specifically Jimmy John's), ice cream, bagels, apples (granny smith), most anything fresh or plain (like pb&js). 

Anything make you sick or queasy?: during both my pregnancies, throwing out the leftovers has had to be Stephen's job. I don't know if it's the smell or the look of them, probably the combination of the two, but I just can't handle it. This time around it's also been the smell of salsa - yuck! 

Wishing: time would slow down and somehow speed up at the same time. I'm having a hard time not wishing she would just be here already, which is to be expected! I'm so very unbelievably excited! (Stephen and I were laying in bed last night looking at baby pictures of Uriah, talking about how little she'll be and where she'll sleep...) But I'm trying so hard, too, to just enjoy this time we have left just the three of us, just Uriah and I during the day. I know it will only get better, but I just can't picture better than this, so I can't decide if I'm really in a hurry to have this be over or not. 

What are you most looking forward to?: labor. It's also what I'm dreading most, but I keep thinking about Uriah's labor and I'm getting kind of excited to do it again. That's weird, right? That's weird. I just remember them telling me I was 10 centimeters dilated and it was time to push - they gave me 20 minutes or so to wrap my brain around that and get ready, but how do you prepare for that? For having a baby...! And now that I've done it once, I keep picturing that moment when they tell me I can push and I've come so close to finally meeting her and it still feels the same - scary and weird and exciting and terrifying and wonderful... I'm just excited to feel that again, I guess. 

Christmas in Pocatello

I was hoping to get this post out before the new year, because I'm not really a fan of backtracking and I love to focus on the new and moving forward instead, but, it's just a blog post ;)

So, we spent Christmas in Pocatello! Since we've been engaged, we've been able to do an every other year Christmas - switching off between families. It worked out great that we were living in Boise this year, an easy drive down to see my family, and were able to spend Thanksgiving with Stephen's family in Alaska, so we could do Christmas away from them a little guilt free, though they were certainly missed this year!

Uriah's too young to fully understand Christmas - though we tried our best to talk to him about the reason for the season, Jesus, he didn't quite get it. We didn't even mention Santa to him, not because we never will celebrate that part of Christmas, but because the Jesus thing is confusing enough for an almost two year old - I think we'll wait to explain Santa until he has that concept down, first. But! Harper understands Christmas and I was so excited to be there with her to witness her witnessing it all. Even Uriah, who didn't understand there were presents to open until Christmas Eve, was such a joy to watch and share this holiday with. I am certainly not the first to say it, but Christmas and the whole holiday season is so much more enjoyable and magical with little kids! And I can see it's just going to keep getting better!

We stayed in town for a week, filling our time with cozy mornings playing inside, lunch dates to Bagelry, football games, family dinners, last minute Christmas errands, naps, baked goodies and a little time playing outside (but gosh, it was cold!) Though I have no photographic proof of it, my mom's brother, Dave, flew in for Christmas this year. No one other than my mom had seen him since my sister's wedding in 2010 - he had met Stephen there, but it was before we were even engaged! Uriah took to him right away and he got mentioned in quite a few bedtime prayers, so I hope he felt welcomed and loved :)

And that's that! It was a quiet Christmas - cozy and simple and fun - just the way it should be. It will be our last Christmas with my family, any family, for at least a year or two (with Stephen as an intern in residency we won't be celebrating any holidays on the actual day) unless they want to come visit us...!? ;) Because of that, it was all a little bitter sweet, but so much more special, too, at least for me. Feeling so grateful for our families continual love and support - we have truly been blessed with the best crews around!