rainy day

it's been such a dark, rainy day today. days like this, all i want to do is stay in bed and nap and read and watch silly shows on netflix. (ha, i wish!)

no, instead i was woken quite early and quite unpleasantly by a very bad smell. my daughter had woken up with a very upset stomach and her bedding and pajamas were in the kind of state that had me starting the day out gagging. an early morning bath for olive and a load of laundry later, we finally made it down to eat some breakfast. not that either of us had much of an appetite by that point to eat much.

it was a surprisingly productive rainy day. i decided to wash my bed sheets as well, and cleaned and vacuumed all morning. it feels good to have everything smelling and looking nice. maybe "nesting" is setting in already?

i even let olive play with play doh all morning (under closer scrutiny and supervision,) and organized some preschool curriculem i've been meaning to sort out and look at for months. hopefully we'll have the motivation and energy to start on some late this spring after the excitement of baby silas coming wears off a bit.

i've been trying to spend olive's nap time off my feet, either napping or doing something quiet because it helps so much in the evenings with the heavy braxton hicks contractions and swelling in my hands and feet if i have those couple of hours of rest. but today i really wanted chocolate chip cookies, so i spent my afternoon doing that. i'll try to convince myself they were worth it when i can't sleep tonight (and when my midwife disapprovingly informs me i've gained 10 lbs since my last visit.)

i've obviously felt very uninspired lately. i miss working on blogging, taking pictures, and being creative, but i have no energy or motivation to do any of it. thank God for my iPhone, which makes taking pictures and keeping in touch with friends and family so darned easy, or i'd have nothing to remember this pregnancy or the events of the last 7 months by. i'm hoping and praying that after silas gets settled in, i'll find my old self again.

until then, we're still here, getting rather impatient for a special little boy to arrive and shake things up. xox

thoughts

we're well into february - hard to believe! can't believe baby boy will be here possibly next month! 


some friends from church threw me and the boy a sweet little shower. it was a lovely evening of fellowship, homemade gluten free treats, and some sweet presents. (it's still so strange receiving boy items. i guess we'll get used to it soon!)


i know it's not a common occurence, but i've been enjoying my third trimester so much more than the first and second combined. i've felt relaxed, i've been enjoying feeling the baby move, and i am even quite fond of my giant belly. i feel lucky that i've gained very little weight this pregnancy (all credit must go to the long period of horrible morning sickness and the stress of having matt in the hospital in december. i eat way more sugar these days than is good for me,) and i can tell that it's made a difference in how i feel this third trimester in comparison to my third trimester with olive, where every step and movement seemed to hurt. i'm grateful to still be fairly active, flexible, and comfortable. i have even been sleeping pretty well, and as long as i'm careful not to eat anything too late in the evening, have had very little heartburn. God is good.


that being said, i am really looking forward to getting the delivery and readjusting to a newborn over with. i'm anxious to get re-settled so i can get our lives organized and orderly again and get back to doing the things i love to do, (blogging, photography, day trips, projects with olive, etc.) things have been just too distracting lately to do much with olive out of the house, and i'm not counting on them getting any less distracting until this baby gets here.


speaking of olive, she's been giving us some worry lately. last monday she woke up covered in hives, and they're still plaguing her a full week later. she's been to three different doctors, and is taking way too much medicine for my comfort, but i'm at my wits end to keep the hives at bay. she's been so miserable. i don't think i hate anything quite so much as seeing my family sick. it makes me feel very helpless. it was bad seeing matt go through surgery and recovery in december, but funny enough, it's 10 times WORSE seeing olive go through these hives, which aren't life threatening. she goes back to the doctor tomorrow, and i am hoping he will give us some good information as to what our course of action will be. 


i've hardly been on the computer at all the last few weeks, because i've gotten completely absorbed in Suzanne Collins' books, "The Hunger Games." it's easy, silly young adult fiction, but very addicting and i've been enjoying getting absorbed in reading again. i used to read all the time, but since olive was born i can probably count the number of books i've read on one hand. it's pretty bad.


i'm also hooked on "Downton Abbey." i had started it when it first came out a long time ago, and stopped watching halfway through the first episode. (the gay scene turned me off, and i lost interest.) since then, though, several good friends have encouraged us to pick it up again, promising the series gets much better, and i'm glad i took their recommendation. it's a really well done, very absorbing series. looking forward to watching the latest episode on PBS's website tomorrow night!

silas benjamin

[27 week ultrasound]

we decided about halfway through my pregnancy with my daughter that her name was going to be "olive evangeline" (much to the shock of many friends and family members who i'm sure thought we were nuts!)  i was so in love with olive's name, there just wasn't any hesitancy or second thoughts after we put it together.

this time around, no such easy experience. boys names are hard! matt and i had a much harder time finding names we BOTH liked for this boy than we ever did for olive. and the list of names we could agree on was very small compared to the list of girls names we adore.

we read the list of names we agreed on to olive to get her valuable 2 year old's perspective. it was important to us that she like the baby's name, and could pronounce it fairly easily. she immediately liked "silas." and she's called my baby bump that ever since, and will tell anyone who asks about her baby brother that his name IS "baby silas." i've held back announcing that "silas" is definitely this baby's name, because i haven't had that romantic, "i know this is the one" feeling about the name like i did with olive's, but somehow over the last few months he's just grown into his name and we all call him by name now.

luckily the middle name was a piece of cake. because silas is the first boy grandchild to be born with my husband's family's last name, we wanted to give him matt's dad's name. i think silas and benjamin go together very sweetly.

soon

almost 30 weeks over here. other than having a weird case of food poisoning last week that knocked me off my feet for a few days, i've been feeling extremely well. sleeping well, not too sore, and enough energy still to go for long walks and do some organizational work around the house to get ready for this little boy's arrival.

it's coming up so fast, that i freak myself out thinking about it too much, because thinking about what's happening so soon in great detail makes me feel extremely unprepared and more than a little frightened. maybe it's a blessing to be too busy to think too much about it right now. when i was pregnant with olive i had ample time to overthink everything, and STILL all my carefully made plans got thrown to the wayside, and nothing turned out the way i imagined it would.

i'm trying to just roll with the punches this time. no labor and delivery plans, other than getting baby boy here safely and healthily. and no expectations as to what our new little man is going to be like. it was a huge shock to me realizing that newborn olive was just by nature a rather cranky, un-cuddly little person and not the snuggly, content newborn i had been expecting. so this time around - NO expectations. i'm looking forward to learning all about this guy's own individual little personality and attitude after he's born.

christmas recap

this was our first christmas in our 5 years of being our own family that we've spent the holiday with just ourselves. my family was all gathered in NC, matt's family was all gathered in OH, and we decided to stick close to home, since there had been so much going on lately with matt's thyroid surgery and the worries with my low amniotic fluid levels.

it was strange to have what is a usually busy, noisy day spent with lots of family so quiet and relaxing. it was a nice change (though, we have to admit, just a tiny bit lonely. we love our families!) we enjoyed leisurely opening gifts, watching olive play with new toys, skyping with loved ones, eating a homemade mexican feast, and taking really long naps.

it's really strange to think that next year we'll be celebrating with olive AND a little baby boy! so exciting!

some obligatory maternity pictures

some people are so great (and photogenic) that they document each week of their pregnancy through maternity pictures. i applaud their high levels of motivation and self-confidence.

with my pregnancy with olive, i had one...just one...picture of my baby belly taken. i allowed my sister to take it, with much protestation from me, when i was about a week past my due date. as swollen, puffy, and huge as i was at that point, (i don't think it's possible to feel more ugly and unhuman than when you're a week overdue...) i love that picture now, and i feel sad that i don't have any other pictures from that pregnancy.

this pregnancy i've tried to take more pictures. they've all been been taken with my phone, so they're not great, but i'm glad i'll be able to look back at something and remember what it was like carrying my littlest man. :)

[most recent pictures, at 26 weeks.]

Merry Christmas!

We finally, FINALLY got a picture to go with our cards this year.

Not a fantastic one, but with as much as we have going on right now, I'll take what I can get. :)

Hope everyone is enjoying prepping for Christmas! It's been a very nice, welcome distraction for us.

xox