23 weeks!

Well, I have to say, for someone who doesn't love being pregnant, this pregnancy is kind of flying by and I'm feeling pretty good. I'll be 23 weeks on Tuesday, which is a little bit crazy. Baby will be here in about four months and we are more than halfway done! One nice thing about heading into the end of this pregnancy over the holidays is we are always so busy this time of year, and that definitely makes time go by faster! It's hard to believe that tomorrow is October, and we are rushing head first into all the holidays and L2 and R's birthdays!

So, let's see; what's been going on with this babe and me? Like I said, I've been feeling pretty good. I'm feeling big and definitely look very pregnant at this point, but I still haven't really gained any weight and I haven't moved over to maternity clothes yet. (Which is a good thing because we have not been able to find my bin of maternity clothes since the move!) The weather is finally cooling down here a little, which means I've moved into jeans and they still fit, although I"m not sure how long that will last! Just in the last week I've started to feel the baby move a lot and S has been able to feel him/her too! I always love when you start feeling them all the time, and when you know that it is actually them and not just gas! All of my food aversion and nausea are gone, thank goodness, and I"m not really having any cravings. If anything, I"m not overly hungry and I"m trying to stick to healthy food, although I am indulging in ice cream and oreos much more than I would when I'm not pregnant. I've still been going to the gym and doing a good mix of cardio and weights, and I'm trying to sneak yoga back into my routine since I know how beneficial that was during my last pregnancy and delivery. 

No real complaints, except right on schedule my rib pain and my pubic bone pain have kicked in. These are both awful and really painful and something I dread each pregnancy. The rib pain I have never really been able to do anything about, and the fact that the pubic bone pain in starting is making me think I may have to switch from the treadmill to the elliptical sooner than I would have liked. I also got my first charlie horse cramp in my calf this weekend, and I'm not looking forward to those again.

But, the most important thing is that baby looks great and is growing right on schedule. We had our twenty week ultrasound a few weeks ago, and it's always such a huge sense of relief when you walk out of there knowing everything is looking good! And we also held strong with not finding out if this baby is a boy or a girl! Everyone keeps asking me what I think, and I honestly have no idea. Some days I think it's a girl because certain parts of this pregnancy have been so different, but other days I"m sure it's a boy, because we always have boys! I guess we will find out in January!

Here's a few pics of our babe from the twenty week ultrasound! Boy or girl, they are pretty darn cute!

And a bump picture that I managed to take when I actually had real clothes on and hair and makeup done!

L turns eight!

OK, I'm going to try not to get sappy here. But eight years ago, after 17 hours of labor, this sweet, red-haired, beautiful, amazing baby made his entrance into this world and made me a mom.  Eight years ago. And today that little baby turned eight and I'm having a bit of a hard time wrapping my head around it.

What can I say about my L? He is beyond smart. He is inquisitive and curious about everything, and he keeps the questions coming all day long. He is sensitive, he doesn't like feeling like anyone is mad at him or like he is in trouble. He is kind and friendly and able to make friends anywhere he goes. He is funny and make us laugh daily. He is an amazing big brother, and overall just an amazing kid. I can truly say he is one of my favorite people in this world and I love him more than he will ever know.

OK, OK, laying off the sap, I promise. He had a pretty great birthday. He woke up with our usual tradition of balloons in his bedroom and got to have fruit loops as a special birthday breakfast treat. His brothers reaped the benefits too!

Then I was able to leave R with a friend for an hour and take him lunch (McDonald's, of course!) at his school and stay and eat with him. I hope we never reach the day where he is not excited for me to come to his school and eat lunch with him and hang out with him and his friends. It was his special day, but he made me feel pretty special and loved.

And then came the big birthday celebration. We invited all of his best friends over for pizza and cupcakes and presents and then we had a birthday sleepover! Are we a little bit crazy for having seven kids under the age of eight sleeping under our roof? Especially when I'm pregnant? Probably. But they had so much fun, it was worth every second.

 (Grandma and Gramps are in town too and stopped by to celebrate!)

I feel so lucky that I genuinely love all these kiddos. L has an incredibly nice and sweet and fun group of friends, and even though they are loud and rambunctious and all boy, we absolutely adore all of them.

They ate way too much sugar and stayed up way too late, and we did have to run one of them (the little brother of one of the friends actually, so he was a little younger) home at 2:30 in the morning when he got a little homesick, but overall I'd say it was great success!

Happy eight birthday, L! We love you more than you can even know!

L2's looses his first tooth!

L2 lost his first tooth! His bottom adult tooth has been coming in behind it for a few weeks now, and we were worried it hadn't cut through the root and he would have to have it pulled like L did. But seemingly overnight it became super loose, and with a small amount of help from Daddy it came out on it's own!

He was so excited, he had been telling us for weeks that he had "two teeth" there and I was concerned it was gong to come out while he was sleeping and he would swallow it! but it all worked out and he got a nice visit from the tooth fairy and some money to put in his piggy bank!

He's getting so big!

Our new home!

Well, we've had a busy last couple of months! We finally packed up the old house completely, sold it, and moved into the new house! We've been officially living here for almost four weeks now, and I have to say I really all more in love with it everyday!

It was sad saying goodbye to the old house. Don't get me wrong, we are so happy in our new house and it was such a huge weight off our shoulders when it sold and we weren't shouldering two mortgages anymore, but it was still saying goodbye to what had been our home for the last ten years. I feel like we were still kids when we moved into that house, and were officially full blown adults when we finally left.

It was weird walking through all the empty rooms one last time, and all of us shed a few tears!

When we finally moved into the new house our contractor still had some work he was finishing up, mainly in our master bedroom and bathroom. That meant that while we tried to unpack and get settled we were still dealing with dust and construction and sleeping on a mattress in our loft for the first couple of weeks! Not an ideal sleeping arrangement when your five months pregnant and getting up to pee every few hours, but we made it work!

So here we are, almost a month in, and this house feels like home. We are mostly unpacked although there is still the random stray box here and there. Pictures need to be hung and we still need to organize and clear out the garage. The kids bathroom still needs to be painted, as well as the nursery, and the nursery has become the room where everything is getting stored right now if we don't know exactly where it is going to go. The yard is still an overgrown jungle and we need to set up the swing set. In terms of work we still need to do on the house, our next two big things will be re-doing the kitchen (painting cabinets, new counter tops and new appliances) and getting quotes to put a pool in the backyard. The backyard and front yard both need some re-landscaping, but until we know for sure what we are doing with a pool we aren't going to start that yet. Oh, and I'm going to refinishing the cabinets in the bathrooms.

Ha, I guess that sound like a pretty big list!  I know S thinks it is overtime I start rattling off stuff we need to get done. But honestly, this is our forever home as far as I'm concerned so we have plenty of time to get everything done that we want, and to take the time to do it right!

So, with all that being said, I'm going end with a whole lot of pictures of our new home! If you go back and look at the before pictures from a few posts back I think you'll agree that it's a pretty amazing difference!

The kids playroom:

Our super overgrown, but amazingly large backyard!

Master bedroom. (It's so big, I literally get happy butterflies overtime I walk in it!)

The view from the bedroom into the master bath and the master bath.

The little boys, L2 and R's, bedroom. Once I am 100% sure we are out of the nighttime accident stage we will set the beds up as bunk beds.

L's room. Another huge room, and he is so happy to finally be in his own space!

Front entryway.

View from front entry though the formal living room into the dining room.

View from front entry towards kitchen and family room.

Family room.

View from family room into kitchen.

Laundry room.

So there it is. I'm so happy this all worked out and that I can call this beautiful space ours. I'm so thankful we get to bring out new baby home here. I can't wait to create so many memories with our kids and our family!