Latest Levi Pictures

I had an ultrasound Monday, April 25th to see how big Levi is.  My doctor was a little concerned with how little weight I've gained (about 11 lbs), and how big Levi seemed to be getting.  They estimated him to be about 3 lbs 10 oz which puts him in the 67th percentile.  We'll see what my doctor says this Friday about these results!

Can you see his face?  It looks like his nose is smushed up against my belly or something!

And his beautiful profile of course:



Last Trip Before Baby

I warn you now, this is a long post!

Justin and I took one last trip in February, when I was 20 weeks, to Nashville, Tennessee.  And we drove.  We started our trip on Wednesday morning and stopped in Nacogdoches to visit Justin's Grandma, who was in the hospital, and ate lunch with his mom.  We made it to Little Rock, AR that evening in time for dinner and stayed the night with Justin's Uncle Ron and Aunt Nevada.  Also his cousin and her family came over to visit.  Thursday morning we continued on to Nashville where we used Justin's Hilton points to stay at the Hilton downtown - and it was the perfect location.  Our room was on the top floor and had a great view of the Country Music Hall of Fame.  We were also right behind Music Row and a block from the Ryman theater.  That Thursday afternoon we just walked around Music Row checking out the little shops and grabbed a bite to eat at a little hole in the wall place.  On Friday, we started a little late but still managed to do a tour of the Ryman and the Country Music Hall of Fame.  Thanks to the hotel concierge, we had some great coupons that saved us a lot of money on entrance fees.

 

The view from our room of the Country Music Hall of Fame. It is designed to look like a keyboard from the front and if you were directly above, it would look like a treble clef.

  It was really nice.

 

That Friday night we went to the Grand Ole Opry and got to hear Jimmy Newman, Sunny Sweeney, Steve Wariner, Riders in the Sky, Connie Smith, Little Jimmy Dickens (who was hilarious, even at 90 years old!), Ray Pillow, Terri Clark, Vince Gill, John Conlee, Craig Morgan, and Jesse McReynolds and the Virginia Boys.  It was a great show and again we had awesome aisle seats down in the "Gold Circle" thanks to our hotel concierge.

On Saturday we checked out the Parthenon and went out to the Hermitage, Andrew Jackson's home.

I'm not sure why Justin was attempting to do the Egyptian (or is that the Running Man?) in front of a Greek replica inspired building, but it was cute and I took the picture nonetheless.

This does NOT look like the statue I saw in "Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief"!

Out at the Hermitage, where Andrew and Rachel Jackson are buried.

Their house was very pretty inside (no pictures of course). We toured the grounds via a carriage ride which was well worth it because it was actually pretty cool that day (in the 50's I think) and I was 20 weeks pregnant - that would have been a lot of walking and I was feeling lazy!

The rest of Saturday was spent visiting with some old family friends of Justin's, the Bingham's, who live in Nashville.  Their son was part of a business expo that was going on in the convention center, again only a block from our hotel.  We all went out to dinner afterwards at the Wild Horse Saloon.  Mr. Bingham knew a guy that worked there so he got us seats right away at a bar which he opened up just for us.  His friend also gave Justin and me several souvenir glasses for free!

The next day we checked out and headed to Memphis.  The plan was to spend Sunday night in Memphis but when we started looking at where our hotel was (way outside of the downtown area), we decided to cancel our reservation and just drive all the way to Nacogdoches instead.  We did stop in Memphis to eat lunch down on Beale Street and listened to a little bit of music.  We plan to take another trip to Memphis in the future and actually spend some time there.  But the break was a nice reprieve from the God-awful Tennessee highways.  We ate at the Rum Boogie Cafe which was a favorite of my Dad's when we lived there. 

We didn't make it in to Nacogdoches until about 10 that night.  Justin's Aunt Rebecca and Uncle Daryl were there to let us in the house.  It was a long drive that day (about 14 hours), but I'm glad we went ahead and did it.  That gave us the luxury of being able to sleep in on Monday and only having about 2 1/2 hours left to drive back to Houston.  We visited his Grandma in her assisted living place that morning and she was doing much better than when we saw her in the hospital.  She still didn't talk much but she smiled a lot at Justin and made out a couple of words.  This was also the last time we saw her alive because she passed away on March 17th.  So we are even more grateful that we made it back to see her again that day.  We finally made it back to Houston that afternoon, tired from being in the truck/driving, but glad we had the opportunity to check out Nashville and take our mini-vacation.  It's certainly not the last time Tennessee will see us; we'll be back again someday!

Some Belly Pics

 

Here are a few belly shots.  Justin loved the one of me, barefoot, pregnant, and in the kitchen.

I'm even bigger now; I think this last one was taken on 2/15.  I need to get Justin to take some more!  He is kicking strong and moving around a lot.

It's a BOY!

And here's the obvious proof:

 For those who can't figure it out, this is looking at him with his butt closer to you and his legs up in the air with the tell-tell sign standing at attention in the middle.  As the ultrasound tech said, "Whoa!"

And here is a profile with his little hand just above his head.  He was moving around like crazy the whole time so that was really fun to watch!

Baby Update and New Year's Resolutions

Well, after my 15 week check-up, I discovered that I still had not gained any weight.  Which is odd because I definitely have a belly and I certainly haven't been skipping any meals.  And this leads me to 1 of 2 New Year's Resolutions.  My first NYR is to eat more!  How many times in my life will that be number 1??  But I am excited to continue to eat more than normal - and I will try to keep it healthy.

My second NYR is to work on my side consulting business.  I have done a little bit of accounting/bookkeeping consulting for small businesses and I want to grow this into a full time gig.  My goal is to not have to go back to Triad after the baby is born.  My dream is to have a home based business that I can work on when I have the time and energy - no more commuting! And most quickbooks work is remote, so I can do it from home in my pj's. 

My last announcement related to baby is that we have scheduled the next ultrasound to hopefully find out what it is!  It is scheduled for February 14th, Valentine's Day!  (And Hannah's 21st b-day!).  I have never looked forward to a Valentine's Day like I am this year!  So, with that news, I am going to see if I can add a poll for people to vote boy or girl.  I have one up on the whiteboard at work, and boy is just beating out girl after one week.  There's a lot more people in the office that need to come vote, so this should be interesting to see.  And I can honestly say, I don't feel like I have a "mother's intuition" about it.  Justin and I would both like a boy first, so I think that just for wishing it that way, we'll have a girl.  But I really don't feel one way or the other.  We will hopefully find out in a couple of weeks!

Happy New Year!

What an exciting year 2011 will be!  I am officially in my second trimester today and the baby is about the size of a lemon according to the weekly email I get.  I'm ready for a baby bump instead of looking like I have a beer gut.  Pants are definitely getting tighter around the middle - but luckily nowhere else!  I have my next doctor's appointment next week so we'll see how much, if any, weight I have gained. 
 
This past week has been a bit of a bummer because I came down with a cold and have felt like a truck ran over me.  And being pregnant, there's not much in the way of medicine that I can take.  So for about a week I was taking Robitussin every 4 hours and a Benadryl at night and drinking lots of hot water with lemon.  I finally called my ob-gyn on Monday and asked if there was anything else I could take or do because I was just miserable.  She called in a Z-pak for me to my pharmacy that I picked up on my way home from work.  I'm not 100% yet but I do feel a lot better.  At least it's giving my nose a break and I can breathe again.  My poor nose looked like Rudolph's there for a couple of days - red and raw.  And I was putting Vaseline on it because it hurt so bad so then it was shiny and red and raw.

I'm going to talk about my New Year's Resolutions in another post soon (I'm tired and ready for bed right now) but I was excited and wanted to share my second trimester news!

Baby Makes the Belly Go Round!

WE ARE PREGNANT! Sorry I haven't posted anything in a long time, but I couldn't share my biggest news yet and everything else paled in comparison to write about. But now that the majority of friends and family know, we can share it online. I will be 12 weeks on Wednesday (the ultrasound picture was taken at 10 weeks). We are due on July 6th, but I have a feeling this kid will be late - all of my siblings, including me, were late. Plus, the doctor said the measurements from the ultrasound would put the due date on July 8th, but we are leaving it at July 6th for now.

So far I have not had any problems or issues. I had a little bit of nausea just a couple of nights but I ate some crackers and soup and felt better. I also have not gained any weight yet which my doctor was happy with. In fact, I was still doing bootcamp up to my 7th week! I haven't done anything since then though :(. I did look for a prenatal yoga class in my area but haven't had any luck so far. I may just have to go to one in Houston if I want to do it :(. I will keep everybody updated much better on the blog from here on out, I promise!