Friday, April 26, 2013

18 Week Pregnancy Update


How far along: 18.5 weeks (Sunday is my turnover day)

How big is baby: 5 1/2" long and 7 ounces! About the size of a bell pepper!

Weight gain: I'm guessing 5 lbs? I kind of don't care.  I mean- it's good to know if I'm gaining too much or too little but I just feel normal with a bump :)
Standing behing my latest food creation! Almond Kringlers
Stretch marks: no news ones :) I have plenty from the girls!

Sleep: I'm loving the second trimester so far!  I sleep great at night and still take a nap almost every day with the girls.  It's glorious!
Definitely getting up there in the bump department!
Cravings/Aversions: I think about spicy food all the time.  Yup.  All the time.  It can't get hot enough.

Movement: I feel the baby all the time now!  Nothing from the outside yet but I know my placenta is on the back of my uterus so my man and the girls should be able to feel the baby soon!

What I'm loving: Sunshine.  Plain and simple.

Symptoms: A little touch of heartburn here and there but nothing really to write home about.

What I'm looking forward to: Springtime with my ladies and walks! And transitioning Audrey Lou to a big girl bed!!

Best moment of the week: Just now I've been working on the computer for a bit and I can feel the baby doing all sorts of crazy movements.  I love that sweet time when no one else knows about this little one besides me and the people I share with.  So precious.

How I'm feeling: Awesome!  Ready for a fun but busy weekend with my family.  Going to attempt to start social media free weekends.  Not sure if this is the weekend for it or not but I'll go without blogging, Instagram (which I'm on by the way but private.  Look me up! ) and any other forms like Pinterest (unless it's for a meal- but no scrolling!).

Prayer Requests: I'm starting a new section here- I'd love some prayer for a bachelorette party I'm throwing this weekend.  I don't know most of the girls coming and I'm attempting to keep it quite clean but it's always a tricky thing to plan when you're a believer and the others coming may or may not be.  Want to honor God first and foremost, know what I mean? That's it! Enjoy this beautiful day if you haven't had a chance yet!

Wednesday, April 17, 2013

Movie Monday

Yes.  I realize that it's Wednesday.  But I had a fabulous idea this Monday to start posting videos on the blog from our weekend and then I ran out of time.
Family of 5!
So, here's a video from this weekend.  My man and I took the girls on an impromptu trip to the Mall of America for some rides and dinner.  It was nice to not have to cook however, we soon realized upon parking that we were going to one of the busiest places in the world on a Saturday night in Minnesota when it was really cold out.  It was busy.  But we still had a blast!

For one reason or another I can't load the video.  Sorry.  I'll try again as soon as I have another chance!

Thursday, April 11, 2013

16 week pregnancy update

I was terrible about updating during my pregnancies with the girls so this time around I'm going to attempt to be better at it.  A lot of my friends use this little list of questions to answer each time and I think it's a fun way to watch the progress!

So here goes:
How far along: 16.5 weeks

How big is baby: 4 1/2" long and 3 1/2 ounces already! About the size of an avocado!

Weight gain: I have no idea!  I'm guessing 5 lbs?

Stretch marks: no news ones :) I have plenty from the girls!

Sleep: I'm loving the second trimester so far!  I sleep great at night and still take a nap almost every day with the girls.  It's glorious!

Cravings/Aversions: I think about spicy food all the time.  Yesterday I had a Charley's sub with tons of jalapeƱos and banana peppers on it and it was awesome! Nothing really sounds gross now though.

Movement: I'm hesitant to say that what I'm feeling is the baby and not gas but I think it's just starting!

What I'm loving: The snow has forced us to stay tucked inside and I really don't mind it.  Time to bake and sew and play with the girls.

Symptoms: After a fairly eventful first trimester I'm doing great.  Nothing out of the ordinary.  My gums bleed when I brush them but that's about it.

What I'm looking forward to: Popping!  I'm so ready to start showing.  I think this baby just likes hiding because most days it's really hard to tell I'm pregnant.

Best moment of the week: I love to read to the girls and they are just getting used to sitting for longer periods of time so we're starting chapter books.  Right now we're reading Charlotte's Web and they love it.  Today though, we hit a few pages in a row without any pictures and rather than complain Greta just started staring at me.  Literally staring.  When I asked her what she was doing she just said, "Oh, I'm watching your mouth read!".  It was really sweet.

How I'm feeling: Great! Ready for the snow to melt so we can start playing outside! Ready for walks and all the good things that come playing at the park!

Number 3

We're pregnant again!
And we couldn't be more excited!
Dan and I started talking about adding another member to our family towards the end of 2012 and by mid January we were no longer talking about it and were simply realizing it.

I love when the verse for the day lines up with my heart. 
We found out on January 12th that another little lamb will be joining our family.

Of course I told my man via text message.
He was downstairs with the girls and I couldn't tell them yet.  
Our official due date is September 22nd but with my track record I changed it to September 29th and honestly am planning another early October birth.
Audrey's immediate reaction!
We plan to have this baby at home again, with the same midwives, and are so excited to experience it again!
Here is Dan's drawing to help explain it to the girls.
Audrey and Greta both had p.j's on at the time with animals on them, hence the little drawings on them. 
We, as of right now, are not finding out the gender.  Dan really wants to be surprised!
On Valentine's day we got to see Baby Love's heartbeat! 
The girls are really excited to be big sisters!  Greta thinks it's going to be another girl and Audrey says, most days, that it's a boy!  Either way we feel blessed!

walking foot

For those of you who quilt this will make total sense.  For those of you who don't, I'll explain what a walking foot is in a bit.

So I'm ambitious.  If you know me well this isn't news to you.  So when we moved Greta into her toddler bed and talked about the day that we'd have both girls in bunk beds I said to my loving husband that I'd love to make their quilts for their Big Girl Beds!  Little did I know the work it would take to accomplish such a feat.  Also- the tools.  Also- the money.

But I trudged on.  It all started with a trip to Joann with my dear Shelby for fabric.  I quickly found 5 or so that I fell in love with and knew I wanted to do for Greta's.  They are feminine but also not super girly.  I bought what I could afford and we had a day of cutting- deciding to do a quilt of squares and rectangles that will make rows that would make a complete, twin size quilt.  The squares that we had cut would piece together to make about a third of the entire top.  Not enough.

So I saved.  And bought more.  And pieced them together.  And realized that they were still not enough.

So I saved again.  And cut coupons.  And went back a third time for the rest of the materials I would need.  Mind you- this was just for the top.  I hadn't even dreamt of the back yet or the batting for the inside.

Then the sewing started.  My lovely mother-in-law loves to sew and is quite good at it so she was forced volunteered to help!  We made all the rows in one weekend and I quickly fell in love with the quilt.
Liz- my lovely mother-in-law taking a moment to sip some iced coffee!

And so I did what anyone would do.  I took about 6 months off from it :)
The whole quilt top!

And then Christmas came.  And with it came the sales.  And so I bought the batting one day on a solo trip to Joanns.  And then that sat there.

I made a mini quilt for Audrey's baby elephant so I could practice all my new skills before I tried it on a larger scale.
And then that same mother-in-law made plans to come visit in February.  So I got my act together and had everything ready to go for when she came that visit.

The backing all taped down .
Top on and pinned!
And because the quilt was so large and I didn't have a piece for the back large enough I had to make one.  Took a little math but we got it figured out.  Once the back was ironed we taped it, face down to my living room floor- the only room with enough floor space to work.  Then the batting gets smoothed down on top of that.  Then the quilt top gets placed face up on top of it all.  And then you start pinning. They make these great safety pins that are curved and perfect for this step so I invested in some of those and it made the whole thing go much smoother.  And once it was pinned I immediately wanted to start sewing. I got a row in and realized I didn't have enough thread.  My man and I took a late night trip to Walmart (because Liz was still with us we could leave right when we wanted to.  So fun!) and bought 4 spools of grey.  And headed home.

To which I proceeded to sew four rows (the long way) only to realize that I hadn't dropped my feed dogs and the bottom of the quilt was sewn faster than the batting and the top.  We had to rip them all out.  And I was sad.

And so I didn't touch the quilt for a couple more weeks.  Seemed logical.  Breathe.  Look at it.  Feel sad again.  Then, get your act together and get it done!

Liz purchased a Walking foot for me (well two actually since we didn't know what would work) and I got to try it out on a different machine.  My oh my- this made all the difference.  A walking foot has feet under the presser foot that pulls the top fabric at the same rate as the bottom fabric.  It's incredibly smooth. Of course I had to re-lay out my entire quilt and re-pin it because of the mistakes we had already made but that wasn't as hard I thought it would be.  Once pinned and ready to go I set to sewing it. For the second time.  And with the help of Shelby again I was able to get quite a bit done that first night.  With motivation running high I finished "quilting" the giant thing.

Then came time for the trimming. Which made me more nervous than I care to admit.  But from what I can tell it looks pretty square.  The next step was to sew our bias tape right onto the edges.  Success.

Checking with other bloggers who quilt made all the difference!
Then I needed to bring the bias tape around and do the hand sewing.  Which I was totally not interested in before but once I had spent so much time and money on this puppy I really wanted to finish well.  The last step is washing and drying.
Here's a terrible photo of the finished quilt.  Dan is holding it with his arms stretched up all the way just to show how huge it is! 
It's done.  And we love it!  Greta can't wait to get a bed big enough to use it with and I can't wait to start on Audrey's.  Good thing I already started buying her fabric!!