28 Weeks, 7 Months, 3rd Trimester

Woooh!!! I am now 28 weeks pregnant and in the 3rd and final trimester!!! I cannot believe that we will meet our little girl in 12 weeks (hopefully). At this point Baby H weighs about two and a quarter pounds and is 14.8 inches long.

This has been a big week for baby girl H. Her daddy and I have started educating her from inside the womb. When we got to NJ our Baby Plus Prenatal Education system was waiting for us. Yes, I know many of you will think we are crazy, but we have done a lot of research on this product and if the reviews and Dr. testimonials are even half true, it will be well worth it. The Baby Plus or "beat" as we like to call it is a series of 16 lessons that deliver naturally derived sounds that resemble the mother's heartbeat to the baby. The sounds stimulate Baby H's auditory sensory, which is supposed to strengthen her learning ability before she enters the real world. Now by no means do we think she is going to come out reciting Shakespeare, but parents and doctors swear babies who are exposed to Baby Plus are more alert, active, better sleepers and hit their developmental goals sooner. If Baby H comes out sleeping well, we feel it will be well worth the investment!!!

Twice a day for an hour I attach this little device to my belly. I usually do it as soon as I wake up and around dinner time. Baby H is usually very quiet while the "beat" is on, but as soon as it is done she starts moving around. Now many of you may be laughing at me now, but we will see a few months from now how things are going and if Chad and I are getting 8 hours of sleep a night people will be begging us to borrow it for their pregnancy's :O)

How far along? 28 weeks
Total weight gain/loss: 17 lbs
Maternity clothes? Have you seen my pictures.....what else would I be fitting into :O)
Sleep: Great....probably because we have been very busy running around, while we are home in NJ.

Best moment this week: Celebrating the holidays and seeing our friends and family.

Movement: I have been getting less jabs and more feet constantly pushing my tummy for more room.

Food cravings: Nothing really

Gender: Girl
Belly Button in or out? In..... Chad and I joke that my belly button is like the timer that pops up when a turkey is done. It will pop up when baby girl H is done cooking!!
What I miss? Nothing really, but I am sure I will miss drinking tonight....it is New Year's Eve!

What I am looking forward to: Celebrating New Year's tonight with Frannie, Ryan and Conner

Milestones: Making it to the third trimester and passing my gestational diabetes test.

The Holidays

Now that I finally have the house all decorated I have to take everything down. Since we are leaving on Tuesday for NJ I will be spending Sunday taking everything off the tree and putting all the decorations away. This makes me so sad because the house is so much more festive and cozy with all the decorations. I can't leave everything up because Chad will be gone until January 2nd and I will not be returning until the 22nd. I wanted to make sure I shared some pictures though since not many people got to see our hard work in person.

Chad putting up the outside lights for me. He was such a superstar this year!!! I was not allowed on a ladder so had it not been for Chad we would have never had outside lights or a topper for our tree. Thanks babe!!! Doesn't he look happy.

This was the result of his hard work!!!

Our Tree!!! Nutmeg really liked it. Probably because it did not fall on her this year!!

Our stockings and the sleigh my mom hand painted for us.

Chad and I celebrated the third night of Hanukkah with a lovely latke dinner!! Chad worked hard cooking the latkes, which tasted delicious!!!

Chad cooking the latkes.

Our fancy dinner!!

26 Weeks..... sorry I missed 24 and 25

Between preparing for Thanksgiving, painting the baby's room, and decorating for Christmas, I totally missed my 24 and 25 week updates.

So here we are at week 26, the sixth month of this pregnancy!! Baby girl H is now the size of an eggplant. According to Thebump.com, it is possible at this point for Chad to hear the babies heartbeat if he places his ear on my belly. We tried this twice this week and while Chad was unable to hear her heartbeat, he did get kicked in the head numerous times by our baby girl:O) She is also growing more hair this week and if we could see it we would be able to discern color and texture. Hair color is one of the biggest question marks when it comes to Baby H's features. Looking at both of our backgrounds, she has the chance to be blonde, brunette or even a red head. The blonde would come from her mommy. The brunette is both from either myself or Chad and the red hair is from Chad's side. I am not sure what color hair she will have, but I have a strong feeling she is going to come out bald or have very little hair. One of the reasons I feel his way is because I do believe she will have light hair and light haired babies are often born with little to no hair. The other reason is that people often say you have bad heartburn when your baby has a lot of hair. This has been true for many of my pregnant friends in the past. For me I have had no heartburn so far in this pregnancy (knock on wood). Like everything else we will have to wait a little more than three more months to find out.

How far along? 26 weeks

Total weight gain/loss: 14 lbs

Maternity clothes? Just ordered a couple of new tops from Old Navy.

Sleep: Not so great this week, but that is mostly due to the cold I have :O(

Best moment this week: Chad making it home from Atlanta despite the snow storm.

Movement: She doesn't seem to stop moving.

Food cravings: Anything sweet

Gender: Girl

Belly Button in or out? In..... Chad and I joke that my belly button is like the timer that pops up when a turkey is done. It will pop up when baby girl H is done cooking!!

What I miss? Exercising....I have not been feeling well enough to go to the gym

What I am looking forward to: Getting rid of my cold and feeling better!!

Milestones: Nothing to report this week!!

For some reason this week Nutmeg wanted to join me for my belly shot. As Chad was getting ready to take the picture she just walked right up and sat down in front of me. It was really cute especially considering it normally takes lots of treats to bribe her to stay put for a photo. Perhaps she knew her mommy is getting a little more self conscious about taking the pictures and this was her way of showing her support!! Chad seems to think she is just making sure everyone remembers that she is our 1st baby girl!!

The Babies Room!!!

When Chad and I ordered baby H's furniture we were told it would take 6-12 weeks for it to arrive. Two weeks later, we got the call that it was already in!!! We were in no way ready to pick up the furniture at that point. We still needed to have the chair rail installed and get the room painted. The store we got the furniture from said we could wait up to 90 days to pick it up which was great, but we knew we had to get the room done before we leave for NJ on December 23rd since neither Chad nor myself will be in Michigan in January. Chad will be traveling for 4 weeks straight for work and I will be hanging in NJ while he is away. The only free weekend we had in December was this past weekend. So after all our family left Michigan, I was fully dedicated to painting the nursery before we picked up the furniture.

It took me 5 days and eight trips to Home Depot, but I finally finished the room at 9am on Saturday morning.... one hour before we left to pick up the furniture!! Chad and I decided to go with pink and brown as the color scheme. Under the chair rail I painted pink, brown and white stripes. Above the chair rail I painted a slightly lighter shade of pink.

My tape job for the stripes.

The finished product!

Chad and I were so lucky that our friends John and Rachel offered to let us use their truck to pick up the baby furniture. The four of us set out at 10 am on Saturday for the 2 and a half hour drive to Grand Rapids. We had to take both of our cars to make sure all of the pieces fit and oh my did they fit perfectly in John and Rachel's truck. We honestly could not have planned it better. They were able to fit the crib, hutch and dresser in their truck and we took the nightstand and conversion kit in our SUV.

Once we arrived back home our friends Adam and Kate were so kind to help Chad with getting all the furniture upstairs and unpacked. All the pieces were already together except for the crib which Chad and I assembled together. Everything fit and looks perfect in our little girls room! The only thing left to do it to decorate the walls, find window treatments, and fill her shelves with diapers, books and stuffed animals:O)

Our little girls crib

Our glider

Changing table/dresser and hutch

Thanksgiving

The Thanksgiving festivities started on Tuesday evening with the arrival of the Onesto's. As soon as they arrived we headed out to grab some dinner. After dinner we all relaxed knowing that we had a lot of cooking ahead of us. Wednesday, Chad headed off to work while Lauren and her mom hit the gym. After the gym Lauren and her mom picked us some last minute ingredients before they headed home to start cooking. While Lauren and her mom were out, Fed Ex delivered their fresh turkey courtesy of the Estevez family!! Wednesday was filled with lots of cooking as Lauren and her mom worked on getting the stuffing, mashed potatoes and sweet potato casserole ready. Once Chad got home from work he was busy preparing his apple pie. The picture below is of Chad sporting one of our new aprons which were a gift from his parents.

The Holzer's arrived late Wednesday evening/early Thursday morning after being delayed in Newark. Thursday was filled with lots of food starting off with fresh pastries from Cafe Zinc and fresh orange juice courtesy of Chad's mom. Despite Chad's teasing that the Macy's Thanksgiving parade would not be televised in Midland everyone was able to enjoy the balloons, rockettes, and Santa Clause!!! After 6 hours of cooking the turkey, at 5PM we finally sat down to a wonderful meal. As you can see in the picture....everything looked great in our new dining room!! Dessert featured two of Chad's yummy creations, an apple crumb pie and gingerbread pumpkin trifle. Both we amazing!! Good job hunny!! The evening ended with some Wii bowling.

Big thanks go out to both of our families for traveling so far to spend the holiday with us!!