It better still be a girl!

I have been hearing all of these stories about pregnant women that are told they are carrying a girl, around their 17-19th week, only to find out at a later ultrasound that it is actually a boy!

This has made me so nervous (due to all of the work we've done on the room and registering) that I actually scheduled a 4D ultrasound for February 7th! I got a coupon in the mail (yes, a coupon for an ultrasound. You get some weird stuff in the mail when retailers find out you're pregnant) so I decided to just go ahead and do it. I'll be almost 25 weeks at that point so there shouldn't be much room for error!

In some ways this pregnancy has flown by so far. When I was going through my belly pics, I found my earliest one at 6 weeks and decided to compare it to this week, going into my 23rd:

I can't believe the difference from September to January....and look how much tanner I was! Damn!

Nursery progress:
The furniture is all together. We're just waiting on the rocking chair glider. Dustin did an awesome job on it and the painting too. He started playing around with free handing some water lilies:

I love it. It's simple and child like, just like I envisioned. Of course, my art perfectionist husband thinks it's too amateur but he seems to forget this is for a newborn!

Furniture:

This room is super hard to take pics of but you get the idea. Ignore the blue painting tape around the baseboards.






The pic above is just so everyone can see how much I've changed overall. The only part of me that hasn't grown much is my arms. No one ever told me that your ass gets huge during pregnancy. Maybe it's just me? I hear these pregnant girls saying that they are still in their pre-pregnancy jeans at 18 weeks. It makes me very envious. I won't even say when I grew out of mine!
The pic below is Lily's first shower gift from her Auntie Gina, who was visiting from Chicago last weekend. Lily is going to be one spoiled little girl, I can already see it. This basket was filled with great stuff for her.

The baby shower date is set for March 21st and I am over the moon excited. We're doing a non-traditional couples shower, back yard BBQ style. Dustin really wanted to be there and we figured this would be the best way! My amazing mom and friends are planning it and so many people are flying in from so many different places. A bunch of my FIFs (freaky internet friends) are coming and I will be meeting a few of them for the first time! This group of women have been amazingly supportive and present in the last year and a half of my life and I am so excited that they want to be a part of this. We feel so lucky.

Random Updates...

It's amazing how much a woman can lose herself in pregnancy. Honestly, I feel like there isn't anything going on in my life except for being pregnant. It's crazy. I guess it's more of the fact that everything else has kind of taken a back seat to the pregnancy/baby planning.

There is hardly a moment in each day that I am not somehow thinking about being pregnant. Just when I get absorbed into something else, I am somehow reminded that I am pregnant by a swift kick to the bladder or an ache in my back. Not to mention my ever growing belly and the fact that I hardly recognize my own reflection in the mirror. I am not mentioning any of these things in a negative light. They are all amazing in their own right, trust me. Feeling Lily move around, especially on a particularly active day, is indescribable. It's exciting and reassuring to say the least.

I have noticed how much I have gravitated to my previously pregnant friends and how much more significant they are in my life (not that they were any less special or important before but now so more than ever). I can feel a small division growing between me and some, not all, of my non-mom or non-pregnant friends, which makes me a little sad but I think it's par for the course at this stage of life.

I was trying to think of something, anything, else to blog about...but I fail. About the only other things that are happening in our lives right now, besides the baby planning, are 1.) planning a small weekend getaway in February and 2.) the continued planning of our anniversary trip to Costa Rica in September.

We decided to stay local for our February getaway and go up to St. Augustine/Jacksonville to spend some time with friends. It will just be a three night weekend and we are so looking forward to getting out of town.
As always, we are beyond excited to get back to Costa Rica. I actually had a dream about Dustin and I taking Lily there as an infant. SEE! I can't even dream without the baby being in my thoughts!

I'm almost 22 weeks now and feeling the best now that I have the whole pregnancy. I have more energy and I am enjoying food A LOT...so much so that my weight gain is a little, well, a lot on the high end! I had my monthly doctor's appointment the first week in January and I need to slow the weight gain down a bit! Not a terribly difficult thing to do. I know what I'm doing wrong. Eating Chik-fil-a more than once or twice a week and hardly exercising is probably where my problem is (:sarcasm:). I have started walking a few nights a week again and I am trying to eat a bit healthier. I have to be honest though, eating a salad for lunch does not cut it for me. I need substance! I'll find a balance...I hope!

Dustin has been working on the nursery and I have ordered the furniture. The crib bedding came a couple weeks ago and we are so excited about all of the decorating. Dustin is loving designing things to paint on her walls.

The bottom color is a little more pink than we anticipated. It was called "Drama Violet", and looked a bit more purple in the sample, but it will look great with all of the dark purple accents. The top color is actually a very light green, not yellow as it appears in the pictures.

This is the bedding and the dark purple color is what Dustin is going to use to freehand some butterflies and dragonflies all around the top portion of the walls. He's going to put some water lilies on the bottom too.


And here's Bear with his violet butt. He had to see what was going on while papa was painting and mom was in there talking to him. Opps.

Dear Lily,

I'm sure you know this by now but your mom likes to write. I have been writing in a pregnancy journal, as well as doing this blog, in hopes that someday you will enjoy reading these things and enjoy laughing at me. Writing is how I have always expressed my feelings, so, this is the only way I know how to express how I feel about you, while you're still growing inside of me.

The reason why I'm writing this in letter form to you was actually a suggestion of my pregnancy journal. It suggested that I tell you how I feel about you now and mys hope for your future. I thought it was a great idea.

The first thing I want you to know about is the love that created you. Not all children enjoy hearing about their parents' love story so I won't say too much. Just know this, I was excited about you since the moment I looked into your dad's eyes. It took us almost six years to decide we were ready for you but we always knew that we wanted and needed you in our lives. Your dad is such an amazing person and I knew that having his child would be the greatest gift of my life.

I feel so many things as I carry you, it's truly such an amazing experience. I feel blessed, elated, anxious, worried, happy, and special. I am already a changed woman for carrying you for the past 20 weeks and I imagine you will continue to change me in so many ways from here on out. Pregnancy is a fragile state, as your grandma describes it, and I feel like I am a part of some elite club for being able to have you inside of me. I hope you will chose to experience all of this when you find someone you love enough to share this with.

I hope you have your dad's eyes, his smile, his laugh, his athletic ability, his calm demeanor and his book smarts. I know he will take good care of you, always, and you will be "daddy's girl". I hope that you love surfing as much as he does so you will have that to share with him. If not surfing, I know he will support whatever it is that you do love, just like he does with me.

I hope you have my organization skills, business sense, communication skills, and my good heart. I hope to be a strong female role model for you so you can be assertive and a good judge of character. I hope we can bond through a mutual love of something, such as, yoga, the outdoors, traveling, writing, dog loving, or possibly just communicating effectively.

I hope, as parents, we will influence you to be non-judgmental, honest, assertive, confident, street smart, expressive, independent, active and so much more. We will instill strong family values in you and hope you will always find comfort in us. We will always try to guide you down the right path and empower you to make good choices. Know that we won't always make the right decisions as parents, but we will be learning through you, so go easy on us.

My purpose in life now is to ensure your health and happiness. That is all I want for you throughout your whole life. Grow strong in my womb so you can grow strong thereafter. We love you already and will love you unconditionally your whole life. Thank you for growing inside of me and being whoever you are going to be.

Life as we know it will never be the same after your arrival and we can't wait to introduce you to our world.

Love,
Mommy and Daddy

20 weeks.