I have no good excuse!
John's been gone for over two months now, so no distraction there.
I was bogged down by overtime hours at work and house repairs for an appraisal, but as of recent, the OT has been cut down and the appraisal inspection is said and done.
Really it's just been making myself sit my butt down to do it.
SO, since last post I've swelled into a new stage of pregnancy that I LOVE.
Baby C has grown from an orange to the length of a banana and about 1 lb in weight.
I love my bump.
Never thought I'd say that, and I thank God daily I lost all that weight before I got pregnant, or I probably would not be saying that at all.
Nothing is more fun to me than going clothes shopping and finding something that accentuates the bump. I took away more than I thought working at Mimi Maternity in college, and am having perhaps too much fun buying more than necessary.
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| 16 weeks thru 21 weeks. :) |
Same day as my August Centering Meeting, I had my first experience of a consignment sale, and oh my--What an experience it was!
After work I met up with Steph and Katie, who are both on baby #2, at the expo center here in town to see what all the hype was about. Steph and Katie have braved these sales before but this was a whole new experience for me. I understood the concept, but just never experienced it from a baby theme perspective.
OMG, absolute pandemonium.
They allowed military wives "day before opening" access to the sale so we stood in line and eventually made our way into the warehouse and the madness began.
At one point I handed over the stroller and Luke and I went exploring (AKA: running!) some more and it was really interesting to see what people were getting rid of, what people were buying, etc. I ended up not buying anything, but gained in experience!
End of August proved to be eventful thanks to mother nature.
We/I experienced our first mini earthquake here in Fayetteville, and also stormed the rain and wind of Hurricane Irene.
There were mixed reviews of what the hurricane was going to mean to us here inland amongst everyone I talked too, but considering I had never even been near one in my entire life, I implored the expertise of my dad and Aunt Liz who have braved many in their years living in the Gulf Coast to be prepared just in case! I "survived" spending the day watching movies, being lazy with my fur balls, and scrapbooking. Thankfully all I found in damage was a shingle, and I'm not even sure it's from my house to be honest, so hooray.
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| Calm before the storm...."damage" from the storm. |
Over Labor Day my fabulous mother and grandmother came to visit me! It was so great to see them and although I had seen them both in July, it felt like forever.
GG had never been to my "digs" here in Fayetteville, so it was really fun to show her around town and base. We made plans to hit the Outer Banks prior to their visit, but thanks to Irene, half the islands on the south end were still not accessible because of road washouts and some parts of the islands were ferry accessible only to it's residents, not tourists. We decided to still make the trip, not sure what to expect, but all the vendors I called said they were "definitely open" for the Labor Day weekend, so off we went!
We stayed the night in Elizabeth City, NC which is about an hour outside of Corolla, which was our first hit. So we hopped back into the car Sunday morning and drove to the NC/VA boarder of islands to Corolla where we did some shopping, eating, and jumped into our off-roading tour to go find the wild horses of the island.
History says the bloodline of these horses dates back to when the US was first being discovered, and it's believed that these horses are of Spanish decent and they run wild on the islands (in a designated preserve to protect them). The parts of Corolla we toured to find these horses has no roads, so everything is 4-wheel drive only and it was a blast. A lot of the roads were water damaged and in some cases still majorly flooded from the last weekends hurricane, but in the end that created opportunity for a more eventful ride!
It's not very often one can get your mom, your 85 year old g-ma, and your 5 month pregnant self to go off-roading looking for wild horses on a island. LOL. It was awesome.
After hours of searching, our awesome tour guide (about my bro's age, so 21-22ish) finally found us some wild ponies. It's so neat to see them in their environment. Many people live on this island and since it's on the horse preserve, the horses have free reign to walk around and eat wherever they please, including in people's yards in the middle of the road, wherever they really want. People just kinda drive around them. I guess they were here first technically!
After off-roading for about 4 hours we trekked as far south on the islands we were allowed to go to Kill Devil Hills/Kitty Hawk where we toured the Wrights Brother's Museum and where mom and I hiked up to the Wrights Bro's National Monument which is where their first recorded flights were tested. It had amazing views and was so neat to see.
After that we packed back into the car and drove back to Fayetteville, getting in pretty late.
We slept in the next morning and left GG to rest some more while mom and I went and did some shopping. Again, since we didn't know what Baby C was, there wasn't much actual shopping to be done, more of playing and teasing ourselves looking at baby stuff.
We later picked up GG and I took them both to Babies R Us which is an experience of itself!
Everyone swears the BRU here is horrible, but to those of us that have never stepped foot into one, we don't know the difference, so we had a blast pushing around strollers, looking at colors/themes, trying out gliders, etc. It was totally worth the trip, "bad" BRU or not...
That week Baby C officially met the "half way" mark at 20 weeks AKA: cantaloupe size. Friend from back in college says all these fruit comparisons is making her think of Baby C as a fruit salad and it's going to come out looking like the Chiquita Banana lady. :)
The awesome milestone with the 20 week mark is time to find out what Baby C is! On the 9th I took a sick day and spent half my day at Womack doing some tests then my 10 am appointment with radiology for "the" ultrasound.
I drank my billion ounces of water they told me to down, and went in ready to see my boy. I KNEW it was a boy. All dreams and thoughts and pictures I had in my head were with a little boy.
The tech I had was really sweet and after hopping up on the table and getting slathered in jelly we got down to business.
First the tech measured the head and was really thorough in explaining what was what....they measured each limb--shoulder to elbow, elbow to wrist...then hip bone to knee, knee to ankle. She zoomed in on the heart so close I could see the valves moving while passing blood in and out with each beat. It was SO fascinating.
I was amazed at how good Baby C was. It sat very still only occasionally moving it's arms around and crossing and uncrossing it's legs (shoulda been my first clue!) and at one point "watched" the pressure of the probe go back and forth above it's head.
So finally at the end, the tech goes, ok for a girl we are looking for three dots and for a boy we are looking for a little turtle.
So she probes along, I have no idea what she's looking at, but finally after some maneuvering the tech goes, "Well, from what I can see, those are three dots, so it looks like you are having a girl."
Wait......huh??
GIRL. I don't see any dots!.....Well shoot, I don't see a turtle either.
Dang.
The tech started printing out pictures and gave me a towel and pointed to the nearest bathroom.
I walked back into the appt room, the tech was gone at that point, and just stared at the string of pictures left on the table....a girl?? Holy cow. What am I going to do with a girl!?!?!?
I left the hospital, still in a bit of shock, and met up with Steph and Jenn at Olive Garden to pass time while anxiously waiting for John to call me on his lunch break to tell him our news. He finally called at the end of lunch and I told him we were having a little girl and he was ecstatic.
"I'm so excited I'm shaking!"
I was happy too, but still in process mode.....
I went home and started making calls to family members also anxiously awaiting our news.
I called my mom first and that's when I broke down and started crying.
I couldn't even get the word "girl" out before I was choking up and the tears flowed.
I told my mom I couldn't handle a little me the first time around and I didn't know what to do, and she replies, "Well, we had to do it."
Touche.
By the time I called my dad, brother, grandmother, aunts, uncles and cousins, I started to get over the initial shock of it all and come to grips with the fact that I have a PERFECT baby girl growing inside me.
All 10 fingers all 10 toes...what's not to be happy about!?
I went out shopping later that day and throughout the weekend and my silver lining slowly faded away.
I HATE all the little girl stuff out there right now.
"Diva" this and "Princess" that and everything is drowning in glitter.
It was really disheartening and put me back down in the dumps.
I did manage to find one onsie I was ok with for John and her....It's pink, sigh, but it seems like anything non pink is not an option these days...
After John finished his work day and was able to call his family with our news, I finally posted our "gender" announcement on Facebook. Sorry baby girl, but everyone else thought you were going to be a boy too!
Later on in the week once the dust settled I was sitting in bed reading and I felt her moving around inside me. I instantly began to feel around my bump wanting to connect with "her," no longer an "it" anymore and it made my eyes tear up. How GREAT is this adventure going to be??? I was instantly reminded of something my mom told me when I was in the middle of my break down, "Katie sometimes God knows what's better for us than we do and I believe that babies are given to families that need them."
She was so right.
I need her. I need everything she is and everything she is going to teach me, and I can't WAIT.
This last weekend I finally went out on a venture to really get myself in a "Baby Girl" mindset. So far last week she's received more mail than John and I have including an awesome package from my cousin Ashleigh who I think I'm going to put on retainer to style this little girl for the rest of her life.
Can you say baby JEGGINGS?? How awesome is that!?!
So, in order to have our real true first mother daughter weekend we did what all moms and daughters do, we went shopping. :)
I drove out to the outlets about 40 minutes from Fay, and we stormed ALL the baby clothing stores (ok, I went to Yankee Candle for me) and I have to say she came out extremely well. A lot of the designer stores had their spring and summer baby clothes half off then an extra % off to move it out to make room for fall items, so I was ALL over it buying up in sizes for some awesome prices. After a milkshake and dinner at Steph's house I came home to admire our spoils and I think we did some awesome damage.
Luckily for us, her dad approved. :)
Poor guy, he has no idea what kind of trouble this little girl and I are going to be getting into together.
