Baby Minnie: 32 Weeks!

This pregnancy is flying by!  I really can't believe that we're getting so close to holding our sweet baby girl!

Here are some pictures of "us" this week!

• How far along: 32 weeks!
• Size of baby: She's about 19 inches long and at our ultrasound on Friday she was 4 pounds, 1 ounce!  We have never gotten an ultrasound this late in a pregnancy, but it was a really fun thing to experience this time.  I had to have my placenta checked to see where it was in relation to my C section scar, and the doctors also wanted to have a fetal weight check since I have gained very little weight.  Our baby girl looks great weight wise, everything else looks healthy, and we got to see her sweet face!  We also found out that she's not going to come out bald! Hair shows up on the ultrasound.  Who knew? Ha!

• Total weight gain/loss: I'm up 2 pounds total since the beginning of my pregnancy.  At every appointment they ask me if I'm doing anything different, and at every appointment I tell them that I'm eating, that I started this pregnancy chunky (really, after Disney and Christmas I totally did.  Plus I wore a sweater and Uggs to my first appointment and now I wear tees and flip flops!).  I do my best to drink water all day, eat and snack, and make sure I'm eating healthy!  That's all I can do!
• Cravings: Ice cream sandwiches, plums, strawberries, cereal, icee pops, and Port wine cheese on Triscuits.
• Maternity clothes: Um yes.  And my mom showed up with a few new shirts last night for me.  That's where the green tank came from :).  I've also picked up a few nursing tanks for my hospital stay.  I don't know what it is about the hospital, but having new nursing tanks seems to make it better!
• Gender: She's a girl.  There is definite confirmation.
• Movement: She is a mover.  Big nudges, complete rolls, I feel it all.  I know she loves her Daddy because she goes crazy when he gets home at night!
• What I miss: Um...really nothing except for winter right now :).  It's hot out there, folks!
• Sleep: It's difficult to get comfortable, but I'm not up too much.
• Symptoms: Hip pain.  I'm tired all the time.  The hip pain doesn't help with that!  But if nesting counts as a symptom then I've got that one full force!
• Best Moment this week: Brian finally starting his list of names! I took her clothes out of the attic and started organizing and cleaning them.  Of course, I had to use real detergent and OxyClean  to get the yellowed breast milk stains out of the clothes!  I got some Dreft on clearance today at Target.  I can't wait to smell her baby smell. Wyatt also has been really sweet about wanting to cuddle with her and talk to her so that she recognizes his voice.  Hudson is constantly pointing at my belly and saying "Baby!" Then he smacks his lips to give the belly a kiss.  This is perfectly adorable until the baby comes out and he realizes that he has to share lap space!
• What I am looking forward to: Settling on her name!  I thought we were down to a couple, but Brian's list surprised me, so we might have a few more options!
• Goals for this week:  Keep the rooms that are clean in good shape.  Keep cleaning and organizing and crossing things off my to do list!  Sorting her clothes is also helping me make a better list of what we still need.  The car seat is at the top of the list!  I'd like to find a better place for some things in our room as well so that I can get her nook set up in there as well.

And for fun - pregnant with Hudson at 30 weeks!

Wyatt Runs the Bases

At the end of the Tides game on Thursday night Wyatt got to run the bases!  Here is the video:

He can be a little shy and a little, um, finicky about this kind of stuff, so I wasn't completely convinced he was going to do it.  I think he was nervous about being around the big kids, and also finding me at the end.  Fortunately Brian took him to the start, and I got his attention as soon as he was done so he would know that I was waiting for him

Berry Picking!

We went blueberry and blackberry picking on Friday with Stephanie and Natalie!  We've started at strawberry picking tradition, but I had never been picking for other berries before.  Blueberries are something that everyone in the house loves (except Wyatt), so they were very excited to go!  

Hudson especially enjoyed the blueberries that his sister would sneak to him while we were picking.  He shouts "Blue!  Blue!" whenever he sees a blueberry, so I didn't think he would make it through the trip without sneaking a few.

The kids filled up a bucket of blueberries and one of blackberries, and they had a lot of fun doing it.  Reese likes to look very closely for just the right fruit. Of course Wyatt gets distracted by the sticks all over the ground, but that's what boys do, right?

 

I found this idea for cleaning fruit on Pinterest and it worked like a charm!  I filled my sink with water and added a cup of vinegar, and then let the fruit soak for about 10-15 minutes.  The water was gross, but the fruit came out beautifully!

Source: aprettylifeinthesuburbs.com via Brittney on Pinterest

Tides Game!

On Thursday night we took the kids to the Norfolk Tides game.  I told Brian that his obsession with hockey this season has really cut back on our baseball time - this is the first game that he and I have gone to all season!  Wyatt and Reese have gone with my parents, and Wyatt went to a game with Brian's parents, so our kids already have us beat.  Ryne Sandberg is in town (again) with the Lehigh Valley Iron Pigs, so we had to go.  Brian grew up watching the Cubs play on WGN every day, and he is a huge fan.  He went to his last game at Wrigley Field, and he spent quite a bit of money on his 2005 Hall of Fame Induction paraphernalia.  Proof that before we were married and had kids we had more expendable income (well, and he had room mates to help cover the mortgage!  Ha!).

If Brian had his way this little boy's name would be Ryne! We settled on Wyatt instead, but he knows plenty about his Dad's favorite player.  He even has an action figure that I assumed Brian would never open!  And possibly his own Cubs Sandberg shirt on the way.

 Harbor Park is seriously gorgeous!  With kids we have to be more cautious about where we sit (family friendly, mostly out of the way of foul balls, etc), but there really isn't a bad seat in the place!

 Ryne Sandberg!

 Me and my Reesie. She did pretty well at the game.  Fortunately I fed her dinner before the game so all she wanted to eat was popcorn!  She put on her Yankees shirt in the morning to get ready for the baseball game that night.

 In case you can't tell, these guys love their Daddy!  It's hard on everyone in the summer when his days are reeeeeally long, but they get so excited to spend time with him when he's home.  Basically, you have to pry someone off of him all the time.  This includes at night when Wyatt sneaks into my bed just so he can be next to his Daddy!

They did so well at the game, and they were able to stay awake until the end.  It was pretty exciting (for us anyway) because that meant that Wyatt got to run the bases!  How cool is that?

Lunchtime!

The big kids are constantly arguing over who gets to sit next to Hudson at meal times.  But his high chair doesn't pull up to the table. Hudson is already crawling up the chairs (we have a tall table), so I decided to try out his Fisher Price Space Saver High Chair as a booster instead of a high chair.  And the verdict is in - he loves it.  And so do the big kids!

I was a little worried about his plate ending up on the floor - but the plate and the food survived the meal!

Brave

On Monday Brian and I took the two big kids to see Brave.  I think I might have been more excited about going to see it than the kids were.  They love going to the movies, but we don't really watch channels with commercials (thank goodness), so they didn't know much about the movie!

Source

I did my research ahead of time, so I knew to be prepared for some of the scary parts, as well at the main "premise" of the movie.  I'm glad that I was prepared because while Wyatt doesn't get too scared, we were prepared in case Reese got a little spooked when she saw the bears!  The kids arranged the seating on  the way to the movie so that Reese was next to Daddy and Wyatt was in the middle of Brian and I!

Before the movie.  The flash on Brian's iPhone flatters no one :)

The kids really seemed to like like it.  They had a lot of questions, but fortunately we were 4 of 9 people in the theater, and  no one else seemed bothered by their quiet voices asking questions.  It wasn't my favorite Disney Pixar movie of all time, but I liked the message of the movie, and I also liked that Merida was a Princess who didn't need a boy to save her :).  I'm actually excited that she'll be amongst the Disney Princesses when we go back to Disney World!

Swim Lessons: Week 2!

Last week was our second week of swim lessons.  Wyatt had a great week!  He didn't pass Station 6, but he's getting closer!  Because our swim lessons are through a local swim team, they expect them to actually do their strokes perfectly when they start learning, and Wyatt is currently learning the Breaststroke, the Modified Crawl, and the backstroke!  I can see his improvement every day when he's in their swimming, so hopefully he'll be able to move on to Station 7 soon!

Reese is....still not able to open her eyes under water.  She goes under by herself, she holds her breath and blows out, and she blows bubbles.  But she is scared of opening her eyes, and won't do it with me, to search for rings...anything.  That's the one thing that's really frustrating.  She can't move onto the part where she actually learns safety skills until she opens her eyes!

But she is having fun!

And so is he!

Every one's favorite part of swim lessons is jump time at the end!  Especially this guy!

There's also an excellent article in August's Parents Magazine about the dangers of swimming.  It was an eye opening read, even for me!  It was written by a pediatrician who lost a patient to drowning. Because of Brian's job, swimming and pool safety is something that we're extra cautious about, but it's definitely important to remember that you can never feel too confident in your children's swimming ability and that you have to stay vigilant near water!