Adrian is 18 Months!!

Wow - my sweet, precious, crazy, adorable baby boy is a year and a half already! I don't want to forget this milestone. He has grown so fast.

Dear Precious Boy,
HAPPY 18 MONTHS!
 

We love you so much. We love that you've grown so fast and we can't imagine our world without you!

We love how you need snuggles before bedtime and can't go to sleep without a little song.

- We love how you're learning to talk more and more. You can say "Sit", "out", "hot", "Cat", "mama", "dada", "yes", "this", "that", "what's that", "have this" and many many more you've invented for your little language. We love hearing you talk. You are starting to refer to yourself as "baybaybee", which is funny to us as we rarely call you"baby". You also started saying "Ohh, Ghee Ghee" when I tickle you - we both love that. You are copying a lot of what we say too. This past week you've said "mama's eyes", "baby's eyes", "broom", "Owen", "cold", "get you" (after hearing me say "mama's gonna get you" when I was chasing you), "uh oh", and a few other words. You love mastering a word.

- You are starting to get more determined. You know exactly what you want.

- You LOVE music. One of my favorite things that you started doing recently is reaching out your hand for me to hold it across the back seat as I'm driving. We hold hands and rock out to the radio in the car. I love that!

- You love your daddy! I love to see you wrestle and play with him. You are very good at playing ball and you love to play all the time.

- You are very into copying everything we do. If we move a certain way, or joke a certain way, you want to be doing it right along with us! You even like to take off your Daddy's shirt when he comes home from work so you can wear it. You look so cute in his over sized giant clothes and you feel so proud!

- You love dancing! You love to spin and wave your arms and always have the biggest smile on your face when you do it. You are still our precious music man! You always melt my heart when you ask me to dance with you. Many of our afternoons are spent swaying to the silly songs we play on Pandora.

- Your best friend is Isabell. You love to follow her around and copy everything she does. We're so thankful you have such a little buddy and hope all our kids have friendships like that in every stage of their lives! It's really fun to watch the two of you interact together.

- You LOVE to brush your teeth! We usually brush them for you after bath time and then you always try to do it yourself afterwards for a good ten minutes or so! Your toothbrush plays an "ABC" song and you've started trying to sing along. You are so cute trying to sing "A, see, see, see, dooga dooga dooga" so sincerely.

- You are a little man of routine. You have a specific routine for every room you walk into - you insist on having the fan and the A/C on every time you enter your room and you have a similar routine for other rooms (the kitchen, the nursery at church, the bathroom).

- You suddenly don't like being dirty - it stresses you out to have flakes of food on your fingers or your clothes. We've never insisted on you being clean all the time (or even most of the time), so this little part of your personality is especially sweet and unexpected to us.

- You really like talking on the phone. You are happy to turn anything into a phone (a block, a CD, a hair brush, a bottle cap) and carry on full-fledged conversations. You love talking to your daddy on the phone when he's at work and he loves talking to you!

- Your current favorite things are: your blanket (you have one favorite but have 4 or 5 that you are also attached to - this helps me with the laundry), your laugh and learn piano(s), your blocks, your gloworm, and your play phones. Your favorite foods are: apple sauce, sliced apples, green peas, cinnamon graham crackers, and gold fish.

We love you so much, baby man! We can't wait to see you be the best big brother in the world. We are SO blessed to have you in our lives. 

We love you too too much. 

26 Weeks Pregnant!

Owen's movements are changing this week - I can clearly feel his head which is often in my hip or his little feet against my left hip. He usually likes to snuggle against my right side and I'm loving being able to feel him more definitely now. He seems to have his own little schedule of activeness...being really jumpy as soon as I open my eyes, mid-morning, early evening, and before I go to bed. I'm enjoying "predicting" his movements. He doesn't seem to respond to music like Adrian did at this point but I've still been playing to him. He does move to music, but not to the level that Adrian did. 

We had our first trip to Labor and Delivery this week. I have had sciatic nerve pain that was pretty unbelievable with Adrian, but I don't really remember having it until after 30 weeks or so. It has been pretty terrible with Owen so far these past few weeks. On Thursday, I started having aching pains in my right leg which is pretty normal, and then it continued into my thigh/shin bone and then into my foot, making my toes numb. Eventually my right hip went numb with shooting pain in my lower right back and then stretching to the left side. After a few hours I had constant shooting pain down both legs and in my hips. Owen was moving a lot but I was genuinely concerned that I might be dilating or something. We decided to got L&D after calling my doctor and being encouraged to do so. They put me on the monitor for an hour or so and I had no contractions. I learned that this is going to be my "normal" until the end of pregnancy. 

It's starting to get difficult to do every day things since my legs go numb from sitting in the same position for over 3 or 4 minutes, I can barely walk, and am having a lot of trouble sleeping. I'm praying for the Lord to help me change my attitude from feeling overwhelmed to feeling deep acceptance. The pain is truly ridiculous, and I'm reminding myself how quickly I bounced back from this pain with Adrian and that these next 14 weeks are going to go by so so fast and then baby Owen will be here!

I know that this is fleeting, and I'm thankful for the Lord's sweet daily mercies that keep reminding me how trivial this "big" thing is in the large scheme of things.  

It's not THAT bad. 

And. 

It's going to be so so so worth it.

Isaiah 40: 28 "Have you not known? Have you not heard? The everlasting God, the LORD, The Creator of the ends of the earth, Neither faints nor is weary. His understanding is unsearchable.
He gives power to the weak, And to those who have no might He increases strength. Even the youths shall faint and be weary, And the young men shall utterly fall, But those who wait on the LORD
Shall renew their strength; They shall mount up with wings like eagles, They shall run and not be weary, They shall walk and not faint".

Look What I Got!

I really really really love deals :) Especially for my babies.

That's why I was really really excited when a friend of mine posted a link to ThredUP on her facebook page - If I signed up through her link, I got $10 credit. 

Sold.

ThredUP is an online kid's consignment store selling gently used name-brand clothes. By sending out my own referral link, I've been able to get all these name brand clothes for my boys for almost free. My heart sings.

Brands are: Disney, Carters, Jumping Beans, Okie Dokie, WonderKids and Hatley. Two of these were BNWT - eeeeek!!

If you want to sign up, go through this link. Yes, you and I will both get $10 credit when you join. Also, customer service is awesome!

25 Weeks Pregnant

I've been less consistent about updating about my pregnancy. Honestly, nothing really huge has happened.

I'm really feeling "pregnant" this week...LOTS of pain in my hip/pelvis area. I ordered a maternity belt that's supposed to help pain in that specific area so hopefully that will help be be able to enjoy the rest of my pregnancy with minimal pain.

I had an appointment this week for Owen and he's doing great. So great, that we don't "need" the 28 week 3D ultrasound that we had for Adrian. I'm disappointed that we won't get to see him (we opted out since it's not necessary), but I know we'll be snuggling him all too soon!

Only about 15 weeks till we meet our sweet son! Can't wait! I feel like we're on the downhill part of the roller coaster now - we still have a lot to do and it's going by so fast. Nick's been really helpful and dilligent this week cleaning out the storage room to turn it into Owen's nursery. It's going to be so cute!