Archives for December 2014

Baby Update Numero Uno

December 22, 2014 By amusingmjblog 5 Comments

Alright y’all, so I promised that last week I would give you a more detailed update on the whole pregnancy gig. And here it is! If babies and pregnancy aren’t your thing, go ahead and skip over these posts, but if you are like me and nosy about every last personal detail of people’s personal lives… by all means, read on!

I took a few pictures early on, but not much has changed, so I’ll post the few I have and update weekly-ish starting next week. And I’m going to go ahead and apologize for the bad quality of most of these pictures. Especially the week 12 picture (taken about a week ago) because we were in the middle of the move, I couldn’t find the white maternity shirt I’ve been wearing in the other pictures and it was taken in weird morning light. I’ll get better at taking these more regularly and find a regular place in the new house to take them!

Before week 9: We found out we were pregnant really early on, and had a doctor’s appointment at what we thought was 7 or 8 weeks, but it turned out to actually be only like 5 or 6 weeks, and the doctor told us that we were definitely pregnant, but that it was really too early to tell if everything was developing well, etc. So we really held off on telling anyone, buying anything, just until we knew a little more. So we went back at the end of 8 weeks, had another sonogram, heard the baby’s heartbeat and got some reassurance from my Doctor that everything was going well and looked good! We also got to hear the baby’s heartbeat for the first time which was a total tearjerker! But that being said, I didn’t start keeping good track of ‘updates’ until after that appointment.

Week-6

Week 9 Recap

Baby’s Size: A Grape

Baby’s Progress: All the essential body parts are there, and it looks a little more human like. Now that everything is there, it will start growing rapidly.

Weight Gain: -8 lbs, thanks to not being able to eat much and a bout of stomach bug post-Thanksgiving… that’s one way not to gain any weight over the holidays. Doctor isn’t too worried about it as long as I start to gain in the second trimester… Which let’s be honest… shouldn’t be a problem (especially since that will hit right around the week before Christmas.

Sleep: Sleeping like a baby for 9ish hours a night. I’m trying to enjoy it while it lasts since rumor has it this will be the last time I ever get to do that. Thanks to first trimester exhaustion I turn into a pumpkin around 9pm every night.

Milestones: We got to share the news with our families over Thanksgiving! Everyone is super excited!

Symptoms: Still suffering from pretty constant nausea, but after about 4 weeks of it, I’m getting used to it.

Workout: I can’t even walk my normal pace without wanting to get sick… so workouts are definitely not happening. I’m hoping to pick back up after the nausea subsides.

Week 10 Recap

Baby’s Size: A Kumquat

Baby’s Progress: Baby is about an inch long and weighs about a quarter of an ounce, but has done a lot of growing! Now has fingernails, vital organs that are starting to function and can bend his or her arms and legs.

Weight Gain: -4 lbs, Eating is still a major chore, but I’ve found a few coping mechanisms: pretzel sticks and chewing gum are my BEST FRIENDS.

Sleep: still sleeping soundly!

Milestones: I traveled a lot for work this week in my last crazy round of work, so it feels like I crossed over a major hurdle of busy and will hopefully be able to relax and take it a bit easier for the next few weeks.

Symptoms: Still suffering from pretty constant nausea and driving 1000+ miles through Nebraska wasn’t easy with nausea since driving makes it worse. But I survived.

Workout: Still definitely not happening.

Week 11 Recap

Baby’s Size: A Fig

Baby’s Progress: Baby is now 1 1/2 inches long and is the size of a fig. Baby is starting to get tooth buds… which feels a little insane, I mean… it’s only an inch and a half and it has tooth buds?! Theoretically baby is kicking and stretching but it is way too early to feel it.

Weight Gain: still down 4 lbs but staying pretty constant at that, so pretty soon when baby gets a little bigger I’m sure I’ll be back to normal (and I’ll probably FLY right past normal)

Sleep: Getting up a few more times during the night to go to the bathroom, but overall able to sleep just fine! But since I fall asleep every night around 9pm, I’m still getting tons of sleep!

Milestones: This is moving week! So we are doing tons of activities/coordination/last minute packing, so getting into the new house and starting to unpack feels like a HUGE milestone! Plus we are getting closer and closer to the end of first trimester which may mean I’ll start feeling better!!

Symptoms: Nausea is still going strong, and I’m getting very sick and tired of being sick and tired. But as we move into this new house and I look at the MOUNTAINS of boxes I’m hoping and praying for a major nesting phase! Other than the nausea I feel great and my energy level is starting to pick up again, so I’m hoping the nausea will go away soon. Oh and that rocking sense of smell… still going strong, which by the way? Doesn’t help the nausea… AT ALL.

Workout: I did a lot of walking around the new house, packing, unpacking and putting things away… so I definitely think I got my fair share of workouts in this week! But I’m still not doing anything really exercise related again. Probably that won’t happen until after the holidays (when I hope I don’t feel sick) and I’ll just join all the resolution seekers in January!

Week 12 Recap

Baby’s Size: A Lime

Baby’s Progress: Baby’s got some reflexes! Baby can open and close it’s fingers, curl its toes and respond if you poke at your abdomen… except that its still too small for me to feel it, so I wouldn’t really know, but that’s what the app says!

Weight Gain: -2 lbs. I definitely think the holidays will put me over the normal hump, so I’m not so concerned (and neither is my doctor in case some of you mom types were worrying about me!)

Sleep: New house, new route to the bathroom in the middle of the night, so I’ve stubbed my toe more than once this week! But really, still sleeping great.

Milestones: We made the news public this week! And it was super fun to have all our friends and family wishing us well. This baby is going to have one awesome community of people loving it and caring for it, which is really as much as anyone can ask!! My husband is a youth pastor, and besides MANY of the youth lobbying for us to name the child after them, two of them gave him an hilarious book called ‘100 Reasons to Panic About Having a Baby’, which is really funny and very appropriate… having a baby is a big deal!! We had another doctor appointment this week and got to have another sonogram so we got to see baby and hear his or her heartbeat which was super fun!! Everything is going really well, all the 1,000s of tests and questions and whatever they do to you, we’ve passed and so far baby and I are healthy and progressing normally, so we feel very fortunate! Plus… I’m so close to end of first trimester! (most people say end of first trimester is really after 14 weeks, not 12, so whatever) But I’m in the range!

Symptoms: Yep, nausea is still there. But energy level is getting back to somewhat normal (except I still want to go to bed around 8pm every night). And as you can see in the picture above I’m starting to show, but right now it looks like I’ve just gained a bit of weight not that I have a baby in there!

Workout: Haha. No.

Also a few people asked about a nursery, which I’m sure after we know what the baby’s gender is I’ll have tons of plans for what we are going to do with the nursery, but for now it is a good box storage place.

But this is the room that will eventually be the nursery (and not it won’t stay this blue even if we are having a boy). It is next door to the master bedroom and the smallest room in the house, which feels appropriate for the smallest member of our family.

Filed Under: Pregnancy

Bringing Up Baby

December 18, 2014 By amusingmjblog 1 Comment

In case you thought my life was starting to get boring and that CLEARLY I didn’t have enough going on with the move and the holidays and a busy year for my day job, we thought we would add in another (not so little) extra.

Lexie is very excited to announce that she will have Baby Guard Dog Duty starting next June! That’s right, the husband and I are going to have a baby! Like everything else, I’m sure I’ll overshare on the blog about this whole adventure, so if reading about that isn’t your thing… skip over those posts! And if you have ever met our dog, you understand that this picture is QUITE humorous because Lexie would not guard anything from anything. She might however break your kneecaps with her tail of steel since she’ll be wagging it excitedly while she has a toy in her mouth.

If you are curious on some of the details: I am at a little over 12 weeks now, so I’m headed into my second trimester. Tomorrow I’ll post some weekly updates that I’ve been trying to write (see them here), but let’s be honest, I’ve been moving and working so they aren’t SUPER consistent… but I am trying!

The short version of what you can read tomorrow is that I’ve had crazy intense nausea and massive amounts of sheer exhaustion; all of which people tell me is a good sign. Although it took everything inside of me not to punch my doctor when she was so excited about my nausea. Apparently round the clock morning sickness and exhaustion make MJ pretty grumpy!

And I do have to give a massive shoutout to my husband for being a Rockstar during the moving process: he (along with a little help from my parents) packed the ENTIRE house up while I mostly laid on the couch. HUSBAND OF THE YEAR AWARD. The morning sickness is starting to let up (and I’m hoping for one heck of a nesting phase) so I’ve been able to do quite a bit of the unpacking.

We are going to find out the sex of the baby, but I’m thinking that won’t really happen until February because of our doctor’s visit schedules. The husband is completely convinced it is a boy, but I’m pretty sure that is wishful thinking on his part. And that leads me to my next story: how we found out. You know how some people have cute stories about how they tell their husband’s they are pregnant? Well, first of all, I have no poker face, so I’m pretty sure he would know immediately anyway, but in our case? He found out first.

What’s that you say? How on EARTH does something like that happen? Well, he was convinced we were pregnant and we decided to take a test, well at the time I was getting up to go to Camp Gladiator at 5:30 3 mornings a week, and this happened to be one of those days, but all the pregnancy tests tell you to take it in the morning, so I did. I was in a hurry, so I looked at the test (one of the ones with two lines if you are pregnant, one if the test worked but you aren’t pregnant) and there was one line. So I tossed the test on the counter, told my sleeping husband he was wrong and we weren’t and went to my workout class.

When I got home from CG, he said… are you sure we aren’t pregnant? There are two lines on there. So of course I run in there and look at the test, and sure enough: two lines. One dark one (the control line) and one VERY VERY faint line. Well turns out faint line or dark line… a line is a line (and yes we googled that). So my husband told me we were pregnant.

But we are over the moon excited about this and its already been a crazy ride, but we are excited for the next chapter of our lives!

ps… Extra shout out to our awesome friend Claire for writing the sign… SO JEALOUS OF YOUR CALLIGRAPHY SKILLS!!

Filed Under: Keepin It Real, Life, Pregnancy

New House Tour!

December 16, 2014 By amusingmjblog 1 Comment

Y’all!! After an exhausting weekend of moving… seriously I hate moving… we are in the new house!!! I’ll write a later post about the process… but let’s get to the things you really want to see: pictures of the new house!

I snapped these photos on Saturday morning while waiting for the security system guy to do his thing, but AFTER we had all the carpet in the house replaced. I’ll talk more about that later, but let me just say this: worth EVERY penny. The carpets in the house had clearly been well used and getting this done while we had no furniture in the house was the way to go. The guys (Signature Flooring for all you Dallas-ites looking for a good company) were great and got the whole house done in one day.

But without further ado:

Right as you walk in the front door there is a very long room that is the formal living/dining room

Right now it has a mirror covering half of the far wall (which until I buy a full length mirror was the only way I saw my whole outfit on Sunday, picture me standing on a chair surrounded by boxes and you’ll get the picture) This room is very long, and a bit awkward, but we will see what it looks like when I get all the moving boxes out. Since I don’t really have any formal living furniture this will mostly just replace our formal dining room + the piano (much to the piano mover’s relief it wasn’t going back upstairs). We really think this room needs a grand piano, but since we don’t have that kind of dough to throw around we will be satisfied with our upright piano for the time being.

From here you go through an archway just to the right of that mirror and go into our kitchen/breakfast area/living room.

Its kind of hard to tell from these pictures, but the dining room that is at the front of the house is through the archway on the left, I was standing in the living room taking this photo and the breakfast area (which is shown in the next picture) is to the right… along with the door to the backyard and our new pool!

You can kind of see in the picture above that the laundry room is just off the kitchen/breakfast area. Which will be a change from having it upstairs, so we will see if I like it better or not!)

Ignore the random things that I brought over from the old house, they were mostly things left that I didn’t want to have to pack into boxes or cleaning things I thought we would need!

From there if you turn around, the living room is connected to the kitchen/breakfast area, making it one nice large room that feels very open. This room is slightly larger than our last living room, but laid out very similarly.

The previous owners clearly had a very nice speaker system installed all over the house, there are built in speakers in almost every part of the house, including outside. And a MASSIVE amount of wires that go with it. Husband and I are definitely going to have to seek out some help from a friend to get that all set up and going, but I’m looking forward to having music all over! (and bonus… someone was nice enough to label what each cord goes to… YES!)

So in the picture above you can kind of see the stairs that lead to upstairs (you know… where stairs normally go), the hallway on the left which leads to a downstairs guest room and full bathroom, and the archway to the right which leads to the formal dining room, just to give you some bearings.

The last room downstairs is a guest room and full bath. Since this will be the bathroom most of our guests use and used for pool guests and changing, we will be changing out most of the wood floors for tile in this part of the house. The wood (I think actually laminate) has definitely seen better days, and since we expect to have youth and kids running through the house wet, we think tile is a better decision for in here. I’ll keep you posted. But have no fear, we will be leaving the wood floors in the front dining room.

The good news for you guys is… I get to learn how to strip wallpaper. The bad news for me is… I have to learn how to strip wallpaper. Be grateful that I spared your eyes the maroon curtain/valence that went over the shower. You’re welcome.

The guest room is still evolving but for now it will have the same white desk and bed that were in my previous guest room. Currently it looks like this:

Once you get upstairs, we have another ‘bonus room’ landing area:

That door on the left is magic… but i’ll tell you more about that later. From here the bedroom on the right is the master (you can just barely see the door frame), straight ahead is our 4th bedroom, and to the left down the hall is another bath and the other bedroom.

The master bedroom is E-NORMOUS, when I get pictures of our furniture in, you’ll be able to see some scale, but it is a golden brown color that matches nothing I own, so this will be one of the first rooms painted.

Through the double doors on your right is our master bathroom, which I’m pretty sure is larger than the my bedroom was in my first apartment. I don’t love that they painted the trim in the whole room a dark chocolate brown, but since stripping that off and repainting them white gives me hives I’m trying to think of a creative way of incorporating the brown into something I like. Any and all suggestions welcome.

Back out of the master bedroom and down the hallway are the other two bedrooms. One is very very blue, don’t worry it won’t be staying this color… this picture doesn’t do it justice… it is ELECTRIFYING. Although not nearly as bad as the lime green highlighter color in our first house.

The bathroom looks eerily similar to the upstairs bath from our last house, and is your definition of builder basic (sorry for the grainy pic… it was really dark in there).

And the last bedroom will end up being Reese’s study.

But my favorite part of this room? I GET A CRAFT CLOSET! WITH A WINDOW! I have no idea why this 3rd bedroom has a GINORMOUS closet (for a not so ginormous room) but I’ll take it! It is definitely big enough to put a desk for my sewing machine and build in some AWESOME shelving to house my fabric, paper and crafty things. And best of all? I don’t have to clean up my project when I am done. Score one for MJ! Of course it is virtually impossible to take good pictures of closets like this, but just trust me… its going to be fantastic.

And that concludes this tour.

I realize as I get to the end of this post that I didn’t include any outdoor pictures. Oooops. And I’m travelling for work this week which makes it very hard to pop outside and snap a few photos… so you’ll have to come back later to see the pictures of the pool and the front of the house!

Filed Under: House Tour

Archives for December 2014

Baby Update Numero Uno

Bringing Up Baby

New House Tour!

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