25 Weeks

25 weeks along!

In my opinion I'm not looking all that different from week to week yet.  Although I can attest that it is getting noticeably harder to bend over and pick up things from the floor.

I had my 24-week OB appointment Tuesday, September 24th.  It was uneventful, which is always a good thing at OB appointments.  Next month I will take the glucose test (I failed the 1-hour test when I was pregnant with Sydney, so I'm always a little wary of this test).  No other pregnancy news!

Sydney and Lorelei wore cute outfits to church yesterday, but I can't prove it because I didn't get a good full-length-ish picture of either of them.  Lorelei was a crab when she woke up yesterday, but then perked up a little right before we left for church:

Sydney was immediately in a good mood when she discovered she was wearing "down sleeves" to church:

 

I know it's hard to tell in the pictures, so I'll tell you that both girls are wearing dresses, sort of.  Lorelei's top is not technically considered a dress, but her legs are so short she can wear it as a dress for now.  She has ruffled pants in the same polka-dotted pattern as Sydney's dress that go with the solid orange top.  Sydney's is a dress, and she has brown leggings to go with hers.  Neither of them wore their pants yesterday though, because it was too hot by the time we left church to even wear the long-sleeved dresses.  Oh, well, it was fun while it lasted.

 

Happy Monday!

21 graces

I've not been good at keeping up with the "21 graces" posts, and this post is a combination of this past week, and a post that I started that should have been posted four weeks ago (time is flying!).  I could have just erased the old post and started over, but the things I had already listed were too good to let go.

1. Meeting a friend's newborn daughter
2. An event hosted by a member of our spouse's club that she called "Taste of Asia"...oh, my word, she should open her own restaurant!
3. The best childcare provider (not a babysitter, since she's a grown woman) on the planet, living just one street over
4. A morning at the coffee shop with a neighbor/friend (who tolerates my wild children well), despite the pouring rain
5. Not going crazy in the house on a Saturday, again despite the pouring rain
6. Popeye's chicken
7. Going back to church after two weeks away (due to travels)
8. Pruning our front bushes without keeling over due to the heat
9. The girls acting very concerned and taking care of me after I banged my elbow on a rocking chair (perhaps in the future in the midst of their chaos I will pretend to be injured in order to get them to focus on something besides their squabble of the moment)
10. Finding out we're expecting a healthy baby boy!

11. Buying myself a new, and very snazzy, BLUE diaper bag (to be used when Baby Boy arrives; for the next three months I am relishing the ability to carry a large purse, instead of a diaper bag)
12. Stocking up on Bath and Body Works' fall scents
13. An uneventful (read: good) 24-week OB appointment
14. Target's Cartwheel app
15. Candy corn
16. Attending a (free!) base-sponsored self-care workshop, which ended with chair massages by local masseuse-school students (not sure if "masseuse-school student" is the correct term though...)
17. Spontaneously sorting through top-of-the-closet boxes
18. A phone call with my brother on his birthday
19. My first meeting with a new MOPS group
20. Sydney playing at a new neighbor's house
21. Dairy Queen ice cream cones

21 and 24 Weeks

I'm still taking belly photos, sort of.  My dad was visiting at the 21-week mark, so he took my picture, but then we went out of town for two weeks.  So I was in Orlando at my 22-week point and in Baltimore at my 23-week point -- no pictures.  But my neighbor took my picture today, so woo hoo!

21 Weeks

21 Weeks

24 Weeks

That's sort of a "yikes" picture.  I think it needs to be the last time I wear that shirt for a while...

Just for fun, here are my 24-week pictures with Sydney and Lorelei:

24 Weeks with Sydney ("yikes" again...what was I wearing?)

24 Weeks with Lorelei

Anyway.

We arrived back home this past Tuesday.  It really is nice to be back.  I didn't realize how tired all that traveling would make me.  In fact, I went to the hospital in Houston on Monday, because I was having more contractions than I thought I should be having.  (I always experience Braxton-Hicks contractions during my pregnancies, but Sunday night/Monday morning I felt like they were more frequent than normal.)  Anyway, everything is perfectly fine.  I was just a little dehydrated, super tired, and thrown off from my drastic change in daily schedule.  Apparently all of those things (or even just one of those things) can make you have an "angry" uterus, thus the contractions in my case.

And since I feel like I've been a bad mommy blogger lately, here are some random pictures of my children...

Lorelei's ridiculously chubby toes (check out the flip-flop arrangement on that right foot):

Lorelei, door police:

A rare picture of the three of us:

Papa John reading to Lorelei...

...while Sydney acted like a cat/dog:

Some pre-bedtime brain cell reducing, I mean, TV watching:

Sydney specifically requested I take this picture:

Crazy hair going on here (Sydney has two clips in her hair also, a Christmas present and an Easter egg):

This was earlier today.  I asked Syd to take this pile of clothes to the laundry room, and she did.  But then she brought the clothes back and arranged them into a "crib."  She is pretending to sleep in the crib.  Weird.

I hope everyone's having a great weekend!

Still Here

For anyone who may read this blog and is waiting with bated breath for news of Baby #3, we are having a boy!  The ultrasound went really well.  More on that later.

(By the way, the theme of this post is "more on that later".  I just need to get something written so I don't go too long without posting.)

We've had a very busy last couple of weeks.  On a whim, I decided to drive to Orlando for a family party last weekend.  More specifically, Chet's sister lives in the Orlando area, and she was having a birthday party for two of her three kiddos (one is born in late August, the other born in early September).  All of Chet's family was going to be there, and I felt strongly that we needed to go to see all of them.  I know for a fact we are not travelling anywhere for Thanksgiving or Christmas (I will be too pregnant), and there's just not an event in the foreseeable future that will gather us all together.  Not to mention that the sequence of events of early 2014 is 1) have baby, 2) Chet return from deployment, 3) move to Washington D.C.

But moving to Washington D.C. in March (approximately) is a topic for a whole 'nother post (or, "more on that later").

Anyway, the drive from Gulfport, Mississippi to Orlando is 9 hours.  There was no way I could do that on my own, so I enlisted my neighbor (whose parents live in the Orlando area) to ride with us/serve as the girls' slave during the drive.  She was an absolute saint, and I feel like I should pay her about $6,000 for all the help she gave me.  We departed Gulfport at 6:30 a.m. Friday (September 6th), and arrived at Jenni's house 11 hours later.  The party was Sunday, and we departed Orlando at 7:30 a.m. Monday (September 9th) and arrived home 11 1/2 hours later.  The girls had a blast playing with their cousins:

Tuesday all I did was laundry and repack, because we were headed to Houston the next day (September 11th), as soon as Sydney finished preschool for the day.  We got on the road a little after 12:00 p.m., swung through the New Orleans airport to pick up my mom (it's only about 80 miles from Gulfport to New Orleans, so she was able to help us with the majority of the drive), and arrived in Houston at 9:00 p.m.  We rested Thursday, and then Syd and I hopped a 7:10 a.m. flight Friday morning (September 13th) to Baltimore for a wedding (Lorelei stayed in Houston with Didi).  The older sister of the girl's wedding that Lorelei and I attended in San Diego last July (2012) was getting married, and it was fun to go Northeast (although I realize Maryland is technically the South...yeah right) this time of year.  The weather has actually been quite hot in Baltimore, but Thursday storms brought a cool front, providing absolutely perfect fall weather for Stephanie's wedding weekend.  Sydney and I loved getting away, just the two of us, and wearing long-sleeves and long pants (or in Sydney-speak, "down sleeves" and "down pants").  We both had a lot of fun at the wedding, and it was beautiful.  Here is a picture of the enthusiastic wedding guest:

Unfortunately, we had to depart Baltimore early this morning, at 7:50 a.m.  We were back in Houston by 10:00 a.m., and now I need a nap.  We are headed back to good ol' Gulfport Tuesday, so that Sydney can go to school Wednesday morning.  After that...I'm not sure we're doing any more travelling at all until the baby comes.  But, by all means, come and see us!