19 weeks 2 days

Baby girl is the size of a large tomato this week! I'm at the "I'm not getting any bigger" stage again. I'll have to start comparing older photos.  I feel like this week has been soooo slowwwww!  It's been less than a week since we found out we were having a girl and naming her Penelope!  I will probably call her Penny most of the time.  I've been posting just about everyday between gender and name announcements.  Don't know if my blog followers find that annoying or exciting, lol.  I also feel like this will be a longer post since so much has been going on since last week, so bear with me. =]


So let's begin with the ultrasound.  We spent about 30 minutes looking at the baby's body parts to make sure she looks good then the technician asked if we wanted to know the gender.  She said, "well I think it's a girl, but I can't prove it." She said her ankles we crossed so I went to the bathroom and shook her up some. haha. We got a great view then.  The technicial said, "well... I don't see any boy parts...."  Josh said, "I'm not convinced" So then the lady drew an arrow on the screen and wrote girl.  She said, "I have a pretty good track record, so if it's a boy, you let me know" Then Josh asked if their was another baby and the boy was hiding somewhere.  But we are both happy with a girl.  Of course he wanted a boy, but he doesn't even know yet how happy he will be with a little girl.  It took about 2 days for us to pick a name.  We kept narrowing down the list.  After a while I thought, this is ridiculous, in the end her name is going to be Penelope, so why are we dragging it out.  I have two middle names and one is Leona so that's how we got her middle name. I don't think it flows very well but Josh likes it.  We couldn't agree on any other middle names. 

My friend from work gave me a tub full of baby girl clothes, mostly newborn sizes.  It also had about 15 receiving blankets and bibs.  Tons of clothes!  But I'm glad we didn't spend a bunch on newborn clothes.  It's basically an entire wardrobe for a baby girl. Really nice clothes too, a lot from Carters.

The blue, green and pink outfits hanging up are the only things I have bought for her.
Annie and Reaver have to check everything out.

so many clothes!

I sanded and painted the dresser over the weekend.  Just need to get knobs for it.  I want to paint some details, but haven't decided what yet.  I don't want it to be solid white.  I also got my crib this weekend off of Craigslist.  I was going to order it online but it was out of stock everywhere and I wasn't willing to wait.  I will have to repaint it though.  I got a Jenny Lind crib, changing table and a dresser for a total of $90.  Bargain!  When we go home for my baby shower we are bringing back an old rocking chair that Josh is going to spruce up and my parents are bringing out an old toy chest/bench.  I might re-do that too. 

sanded down

all painted

Ta-da!

So this Saturday my parents are coming to visit for a week and we are really going to get started on the nursery.  I cannot wait to see how it turns out!


How far along? 19 weeks
Total weight gain/loss: 12 ish pounds
Maternity clothes? yes
Sleep: eh, sleep is never good but thank goodness for my body pillow
Best moment this week: finding out we are having a girl, naming her and getting a ton of baby clothes. oh! and getting a crib!
Miss Anything? flat tummy
Movement: nothing major, still just feels tingly.  
Food cravings: kit kats and smoked sausage and milkshakes and mcdonalds
Anything making you queasy or sick: nope, thank goodness the first trimester is over
Have you started to show yet: yes
Gender: It's a girl!Labor Signs: nope
Belly Button in or out? out
Wedding rings on or off? on
Happy or Moody most of the time: i've been pretty happy lately.
Looking forward to: working on the nursery

Penelope Leona

Penelope (Penny) Leona Parrish!

2 names

So, for next baby. I'm just going to reveal the name right away and not do this drawn out reveal.  I am not crossing out a name everyday based on opinions of others. Josh and I decided on a name, then I came up with this idea.  I took all of these pictures at once.  Basically, I'm saying that we already have a name picked out and I'm still getting tons of suggestions.  Makes me feel like these names aren't good enough.  Tough! It's my baby!

=]

3 names

Another one bites the dust. 

 Lucille was my grandmother's name and Josh's grandmother's middle name, but we didn't pick it.  I should also add that Emily and Leona are both my middle names.  Leona was also the name of both of my great-grandmothers. There is no real connection to Maggie or Penelope other than we like them.

4 names

Emily wasn't too popular among guesses anyhow.

5 names

Possible baby names!  I'll post each day with a name crossed off to reveal our choice!  Feel free to guess!

18 weeks 3 days

ITS A GIRL!

So excited!

I didn't see a need to post a picture of her lady parts...

First girly outfit I bought her!

Baby weighs 9 oz.  Average weight at 18 weeks is 6.7 oz.
Maybe baby girl will show up early!

18 weeks 1 day

Gender Predictions

Chinese Calendar- GIRL
Ring test- BOY
Online gender quiz- GIRL/BOY
Heart rate- GIRL
Cravings- GIRL/BOY
Belly- BOY
Morning sickness- GIRL
Dry Hands- BOY
Mood- GIRL
Movement- BOY
Josh- BOY
Sara- BOY?
Family and friends- 12/11

(I got the family and friends guess just from a Facebook status.)


Had our monthy check-up yesterday and the most exciting news is that we get an ultrasound on Thursday!  I am so beyond excited!  I was just telling Josh that I wanted another ultrasound soon.  It seems so strange to go a long time without seeing baby.  Last month my midwife said they will schedule an ultrasound at 20 weeks, so I was guessing sometime in early June.  Yesterday she said, we will schedule your 18/20 week ultrasound today.  So I was thinking... ohhhhh, maybe I won't have to wait til June.  Then right before we left the receptionist was calling the hospital to schedule the ultrasound and she said, "What about Thursday at 7 am?" I was shocked when she was pointing to the same week, only 3 days later.  So now I am super super excited because I just want to know!  I haven't done any baby shopping yet.  The nursery is still a guest bedroom.  Once we know I feel like we can finally get going on that sort of stuff.  We need to get working on baby names too...

I don't think I ever figured out if I really thought baby was a boy or girl.  As soon as we found out we were pregnant Josh has been talking about a boy.  So I was like, fine, I hope it's a girl then.  But he almost has me convinced that it's a boy.  For a few weeks I really thought it was a girl.  But then I went back to thinking boy.  I really don't care which it is.  It would be nice if it was a boy since Josh will be sooo excited, but little girls are so much fun to dress up.  It doesn't matter to me which we have this go-round, but next time I will be rooting for the other.  I think I will be surprised if it's a girl, honestly.  I really thought everyone thought it was a boy, so I'm surprised with the family/friends prediction; I thought it was going to be a landslide for a little guy.

I had a dream this morning that we were having a girl.  In the dream I was standing in a long line like I was in class.  The teacher had a transparent ultrasound picture that she put on the overhead projector for the whole class to see.  She would call someone's name, put up a picture of their ultrasound picture and say if it was a boy or girl.  She kept calling my baby "Zoe" then said it was a girl.  I was really excited, yet surprised in the dream.  I remember thinking the instructor would say it was a boy.

I need to stop reading other baby blogs.  Those women never seem to gain any weight.  There are girls at 18 weeks who have gained 4 or 5 pounds total.  I don't see how.  I don't think I have really gained weight anywhere besides my belly.  My face, legs and arms look the same to me. I think the last 2 months I have averaged about a pound a week and I think that is pretty good considering McDonalds has become one of my cravings.   Maybe these women don't understand that they need to be eating more and gaining weight.  I guess I'm just jealous because it's so strange to look at the scale and see those kinds of numbers.

How far along? 18 weeks
Total weight gain/loss: 12 pounds
Maternity clothes? yes
Sleep: sleep has been awful lately. waking up at least 10 times a night and flopping around 
Best moment this week: thinking we wouldn't get another ultrasound for 2 weeks and learning we get one in a few days. hoping baby cooperates so we can see what "it" is!
Miss Anything? sleeping on my belly
Movement: kicking high on the right
Food cravings: kit kats and smoked sausage and milkshakes and mcdonalds
Anything making you queasy or sick: nope, thank goodness the first trimester is over
Have you started to show yet: yes
Gender prediction: boy? i'm really bad at this "mother's intuition" thing.
Labor Signs: nope
Belly Button in or out? out
Wedding rings on or off? on
Happy or Moody most of the time: moody, last night josh told me i just wanted to argue about everything
Looking forward to: ultrasound in less than two days!

17 weeks 1 day

I like the first one, Josh told me to put up the second one, so you get two pictures this week.

Since I wasn't standing up straight, like week 16, my belly looks a lot bigger than it probably is. It looks like a HUGE difference from last week.  I haven't gained that much weight, I promise.

Baby is the size of my palm or a red onion or a baked potato or 5 1/2 inches (depending on what website you look at).  My back is hurting more than usual.  The other day I woke up and said, "I feel like my belly grew overnight!" Josh says, "That means the pregnancy is working." Haha. Yeah, he's right.  Someone reassured me that I actually have a baby bump now and am out of the awkward pregnant vs chubby stage. Thank goodness!  People are starting to notice I'm pregnant without me having to tell them, so that's fun.

So, I've determinded that I can feel baby move.  It started four days ago.  I was trying not to get excited about it.  Kinda like a tingly muscle spasm.  But after four days in a row of it coming back, I think it's baby.  This is the time I should start to feel him/her anyways.  Too early to feel from the outside.  Does anyone know when I will be able to feel it from the outside?  When I feel baby kick I try to feel it with my hand, then I start to push down and I'm like, Ah! I'm poking it! Sorry, baby.  But all I can feel is my pulse when I do that.  Baby has been moving a lot in the last few hours.  But just in the same spot.

Still not too concerned with names yet.  We probably have a boy name picked out, but not a girl name.  I feel like it's such a big deal that I don't want to rush it.  I'm trying to come up with a creative gender reveal picture but all I've seen on Pinterest is the blue/pink balloons flying out of a cardboard box, so I think that is over done a little.  I'm getting closer to a nursey theme too.  But of course my mind will change 3 more times.  Speaking of minds...

I read that research shows a woman's brain cell volume actually decreases while she is pregnant.  And it seems more so when carrying a girl.  Some days at work I swear I have no clue what I'm doing.  I get confused all the time and customers there are not very friendly when I ask them to clarify themselves.  I'm surprised that I'm doing so well in my Biology class since apparently I'm lacking brain cells.  I need to find out if my school has any sort of maternity leave...

The golf course I work at closes at the end of September or October for the season.  I don't know if I will work there up til close.  That's 8 months pregnant and consists of a lot of standing.  I want to be hired back in the spring, at least a few days a week.  I have got to work on my resume.  Being a military wife and moving a lot means some jobs I only have for a few months and my resume makes it look like I can't hold down a job.  So if I don't go back next season, that's another job I only worked at for 6 or 7 months.  I think that will be like, 4 jobs in a row. (only one of those jobs I quit because it wasn't working out. the rest, we were moving)  So yeah, I don't really want to work with a small baby, but one or two days a week won't kill me in order to have a good job application again. (The basis of this ramble is: I need to see what the maternity policy is at work so I will be able to come back instead of just quitting.)

How far along? 17 weeks
Total weight gain/loss: 8 pounds gained, at least. I only weigh myself at the doctors office once a month.  (next week)
Maternity clothes? yes
Sleep: i usually gave trouble getting comfortable. can't wait to sleep on my belly again.
Best moment this week: feeling baby move!
Miss Anything? red bull
Movement: i can feel it a little more and more each day!
Food cravings: kit kats and smoked sausage and milkshakes, oh and mcdonalds
Anything making you queasy or sick: nope
Have you started to show yet: yes
Gender prediction: boy
Labor Signs: nope
Belly Button in or out? out
Wedding rings on or off? on
Happy or Moody most of the time: happy
Looking forward to: appt in a week. need to ask about vericose veins and water birth.  hopefully we will be able to schedule the ultrasound to find out the gender.  also looking forward to getting started on the nursery in 3 weeks.

16 weeks 2 day

Baby can hear my voice now.  Any day I should start feeling him/her move.  But probably not for another couple weeks.  If I had an ultrasound now, I would be able to tell if it's a boy or girl, but still a month until my doctor will issue one =/  My belly is supposed to start growing faster now because in the next few weeks baby will hit a growth spurt!   I have dreams about having a blonde-haired baby girl all the time. (Which doesn't make sense since Josh and I have dark brown hair) I cannot wait to actually have the baby here and hold it and feed and even change their diapers! I'm told not to wish the time away though, because before you know it, I'll be a new mom.

Not much new news in the world of baby right now.  My next appointment isn't until the 21st but I don't really expect to learn anything new then.   I feel like my belly isn't growing!  When I wake up in the morning I look like I did at 10 weeks, or at least that's how I feel.  But a stranger recognized that I was pregnant last week.  I was really confused though.  She is the ticket-taker at the races we go to every weekend so I guess she remembers us from last year.  This Friday she was taking our tickets and asked me if I had all my baby stuff picked out yet.  I kinda looked at my husband and then said no....  She said, that's about where they are too.  She is a bigger girl, so it's hard to tell if she is pregnant, but I guess she is.  I asked my husband if he told her and he said no.  She must have been able to tell!  But that really surprised me. 

How far along? 16 weeks
Total weight gain/loss: 8 pounds gained, at least. I only weigh myself at the doctors office once a month.
Maternity clothes? yep
Sleep: i slept awful last night
Best moment this week: Josh graduates his ALS class tomorrow and we have the whole day on Friday together!
Miss Anything? being about to work out if I wanted to
Movement: none
Food cravings: kit kats and chocolate milkshakes
Anything making you queasy or sick: nope
Have you started to show yet: yes
Gender prediction: boy
Labor Signs: nope
Belly Button in or out? out
Wedding rings on or off? on
Happy or Moody most of the time: happy
Looking forward to: finding out if we've got a boy or girl!

15 weeks 5 days

So I told you guys I would be posting later this week with nursery details.  Now I can't decide to do yellow with blue/pink or yellow and grey.  I really like that yellow and grey, but I don't know if it's too grown up looking and not enough cute baby looking.  I still have a month to figure it out because at 20 weeks I will find out the sex and begin on the nursery.  That is also when my parents are coming to visit and my mom said she'll help paint and stuff.  Which reminds me, I still don't know what to do with my dresser.  I'm going to paint it white. But do I paint the drawers yellow or blue or pink?  It hard for me to visualize things like this.

this is the crib i will get

wall inspiration

  

So here is the sketch I drew so the layout of the nursery.  It makes the room look a lot bigger than it really is.  My husband is an artist so when I showed this to him he laughed at my rocking chair and told me the changing table doesn't "line" up.  But I don't think he really cares what I do with the room.

So this is a pretty short post because I need nursery help.  I guess it's just hard to plan a nursery and try to get a feel for how it looks when I'm not going to even start working on it for a month or more.

I just thought of a great idea.  Everyone go to my Pinterest page and look and my "Nursery Ideas" board and comment on what you like.  Haha, I don't really expect anyone to do this but it would help a lot. Maybe I just need to hold off and wait until I know if we're having a boy or girl.  

15 weeks 2 days







Kind of hard to see my belly in these pictures.  Sorry guys.



Little baby is 15 weeks now and the size of an orange.  But it is also Joshua and my 3 year anniversary!  So this post is going to be about more about the two of us and less about baby.

Pictures of us from high school

So we met in high school.  We were biology partners in tenth grade and "made a baby" together for a project and named it Christian.  We talked to each other through flirty Myspace messages for the next 4 or 5 years.  We never hung out in high school.  He was an artsy skater and I was a studious jock I guess.  Apparently we were both secretly in love with the other but too nervous and shy to do anything about it.  I remember right after graduation he came up to me and shook my hand and said, "see you around." I got really sad because I realized I won't see him in the halls anymore and don't know if I would ever see him again. So in late 2008 while he was stationed in Okinawa, Japan with the Air Force, he deployed.  We started writing letters to each other.  When he came back from his deployment in January 2009 we talked on the phone every day for hours and decided we should get married.  I was 19 and he was 20.  I picked him up from the airport on April 21, which was about 10 days before the wedding and the first time we had seen each other since high school graduation (2 years).  We got married and about 2 weeks later he flew back to Okinawa.  We spent 2 months apart while he worked on paperwork to get me in the system and everything in order to go over there and have a house on base with him and such. 

picking him up from the airport

We spent our first anniversary in Okinawa and went all out.  I bought him and expensive suit and he bough me a nice dress and diamond necklace.  The night before our anniversary we got all dressed up and hit the bars.  On our anniversary we went to a beach resort and watched fireworks right on the beach.  It was amazing.  On the way back home we stopped at a butterfly garden.

On our second anniversary we were already at our new home in Missouri.  We didn't do anything too exciting, just went out to dinner. He got me a watch and I got him a book about Bruce Springsteen.

May 2, 2011

Since this year our anniversary is on a Wednesday,  we will probably just end up going out to dinner again.  I was supposed to work today from 10-2 but got called that I didn't need to come in anymore.  Josh showed up at the house at about 11:30 with lunch from Sonic. He said he stopped by my work to have lunch with me but I wasn't there.  With all the running around, he just basically dropped the food off and went back to work.  I felt bad that he was trying to do something sweet for me but it didn't work. 

I was having trouble coming up with a gift idea so I went on my Myspace (that I haven't used in 3 years) and printed out all of our messages and conversations and made them into a book called "How we fell in love."

Next year we will be celebrating four years with a six month old baby!  How exciting. I can't wait to meet the newest member of our family.

How far along? 15 weeks

Total weight gain/loss: 8 pounds gained, at least.  I only weigh myself at the doctors office once a month.

Maternity clothes? yep
Stretch marks? none
Sleep: so sick of sleeping on my side

Best moment this week: Josh and I had a great weekend together. And it's our ananiversary!

Miss Anything? I had a dream last night that I was drinking beer, even though I've never been a big drinker... i think it's because i took a big wiff of josh's beer last night.

Movement: none

Food cravings: ham and cheese and kit kats

Anything making you queasy or sick: nope

Have you started to show yet: yes

Gender prediction: boy... or girl

Labor Signs: nope

Belly Button in or out? out
Wedding rings on or off? on
Happy or Moody most of the time: mostly happy but a little moody.  i don't know what it is, but i just want to swear all of the time now.  and i don't swear.  i told josh and he said, please don't swear, it doesn't sound right coming from you. i haven't slipped yet though. i dropped my drink on my computer a while ago and yelled 'suck!' not sure why exactly, but thats what came out.
Looking forward to: 5 weeks until we find out the gender and 5 weeks until my mom and dad are coming to visit and my mom is going to help me get started on the nursery. I sketched a picture of the nursery when i was bored at work so i will post that later this week and you can see my awesome art work =]