Bumpdate :: 28 Weeks

Bump, there it is. Third trimester, yo!

The Bump says the baby is the size of an eggplant but I'm pretty sure she's bigger than that because 1.) look at my stomach and 2.) I can feel her kicking way on my right side as though she's packed up and moved my uterus to my backside and at the same time karate kick my bladder which makes me then pee my pants a little. TMI? Sorry.

My firstborn really tested my mom-patience this morning. She refused to put on her pants (it's a thing these days) and would only let me put on one shoe. So, off we went to daycare pantsless and {almost} shoeless. I told our daycare provider "good luck" when I dropped her and her articles of clothing off and hightailed it to work. She, of course, had a great day at Miss Kim's house only to come home and defy her parental units all night long until an early bedtime. Are the terrible two's making an early appearance? No shoes, no pants, no service, kid.

I skipped a 27 week picture because she was the size of a rutabaga and I don't even know what that is or where to find it at the grocery store. I'm not 100% sure what we'll do with this eggplant either. If you have any good eggplant recipes, please send them my way.

11-ish weeks to go!

Birthday + Blog + Bella

I turned 29 yesterday. Which is basically 30 but I'm not going to think about that, ok? It was a good day - I had to work, which was lame, but the day ended strong with a Moms Night Out event hosted by Kansas City Moms Blog at Bella Patina in the West Bottoms. My mama and cousin came with me and it was a fun night of shopping, eating, and pampering.

Most of these pics were on Instagram at one point or another yesterday so I apologize for the double dose but I feel like life isn't complete until I post them on the 'ol blog too.

birthday selfie with my girl(s)

yep. two.

good hubby.

I'm off work today and we're heading out to brave the crowds at IKEA. I have a list of things I need want and I might even hit up the cafe for some Swedish meatballs. Just sayin'.

Cheers to twenty-nine.

I'll sleep with I'm dead...

Gracyn has never been what I consider a great sleeper. She started off strong - sleeping "through the night" from about 2-4 months. Then she started teething. And then she didn't stop teething until she was 19 months old when her last 2-year molar popped through.

Throw in some normal sleep regressions (4 months, 8/9/10 months, 18 months...) and we've had some nights where we've been up every hour, I start crying right along with the baby because I'm desperate for her to go back to bed, and poor Justin is begging for morning so he can hightail it out of crazy town and go to work.

By the way, why doesn't anyone warn you about sleep regressions? I mean, seriously. If someone would have told me that G's sleep was gonna go to hell (or stay equally hellish) around 18 months, I could have at least prepared myself a little bit. And apparently the 18-month sleep regression is the worst one so that's awesome.

She is now going on 20 months and she we are still not sleeping well. The other night, I had a full-on meltdown (pregnancy hormones, much?) and told Justin that we are so screwed once December comes and we have TWO babies that don't sleep.

On Friday night, we got Gracyn to bed around 8:30 pm. During the week, she's normally in bed between 7:30 and 8pm; on the weekends she might be up a little later but normally she sleeps a little later too since we don't have to get up and head out the door like we do on the weekdays. Our night went like this:

8:30 PM

G's in bed. She whines a little, fights sleep, but eventually calms down.

12:45 AM

She's awake. We wait a little to see if she'll calm down. She starts to fall back asleep and Rufus starts barking. He is almost murdered and the baby starts crying again, hysterically. I go in, rock her a little bit and put her back into bed.

3:30 AM

She's awake. Again. After 15 minutes, Justin goes in. She freaks - only wants mama. Justin is able to get her to relax and he rocks with her for a good 15 minutes. She falls back asleep in his arms but wakes up the second he puts her down in the crib.

She starts crying. Again. We wait 20 minutes this time and she's still losing her shit. I'm crying because I'm so 'effing tired (growing a baby is hard; it's even harder when you don't get to sleep like a normal person) and Justin says we need to "stay strong" so she learns to go back to sleep on her own.

4:45 AM

We've all been awake for over an hour now. I wave my white flag and bring her into our bed, which she thinks means its time to party.

5:05 AM

Gracyn finds a comfortable spot in the small of my back and falls asleep. I don't dare move - that would risk waking sleeping beauty - so I try to fall asleep with two feet (make that 4 feet) kicking me in my kidneys the rest of the night.

6:55 AM

Gracyn is awake for the day. Yay.

The next morning, I begged for help on Facebook and drove to the library to check out self-help books on getting your toddler to develop healthy sleeping habits. My wonderful friends offered up some good advice, I skimmed the chapters in the books that related to our "situation" only to come away with contradicting information (like everything else related to parenting and kids) and we tried to develop a new game plan.

We started our bedtime routine (dinner, bath, books, bed) at 6:30 to make sure we were up reading books by 7 PM. We made sure to be out of her room by 7:15 in hopes that if she started crying she'd calm down and be falling asleep by 7:30 PM.

The sleeping gods intervened because on Saturday night, she went to sleep at 7:30 PM and she slept. All. Night. Long.

It was glorious.

Even more miraculous, she did it again last night. The earlier bedtime might be what she needed - it's crazy to think that making such a small change would make a such a big difference but I've heard and read that it could do the trick. Or (most likely) this is a complete fluke and she'll be back to waking up like a newborn tonight. It's 8:40 PM and so far so good. Either way, I'll take the 2 good nights and pray our winning streak continues.

Until she turns two, that is. I guess there's another developmental sleep regression on our horizon. Right about the time we bring an actual newborn home from the hospital.

The upside? I'll be able to have a stiff drink (and all the caffeine in the world) to get me through the inevitable sleepless nights...

Cheers.

Bumpdate :: 26 Weeks

Baby Girl is the size of a head of lettuce. A half-eaten, half-wilted head of lettuce because that's all we had in the house tonight.

I have my glucose test tomorrow and based on the amount of ice cream and gummy worms I've consumed during the last 26 weeks I won't be surprised when they come back and tell me I'm diabetic and need to eat only leafy greens from here on out. Fingers crossed because I really like ice cream. And gummy worms.

Big Sister was being silly and offered up all sorts of emotions during our mini photo shoot. She got a new book about pumpkins and throughout the book each pumpkin makes a different face. Ever since we've started reading it, she's obsessed with making the same faces...

silly

sad

surprised

really surprised

happy

Love her.

Bumpdate :: 25 Weeks

25 weeks.

I wrote a post on Kansas City Moms Blog today about how I feel like I haven't done anything to prepare for this little girl other than take fruit and vegetable themed pictures every week. I'm rapidly running out of time seeing as how we only have 15 weeks left, give or take. We have been talking to Gracyn about her baby sis, at least. I feel pretty good about how she'll react once the baby is here - she seems excited every time we talk about the baby so that's a good sign, right?

We'll see. It will probably be a complete cluster but that's ok too, I guess.

Family Pictures 2014

Special thanks to Ashley of Blu Sprout Photography for our family pictures! Gracyn was being super-serious this day and didn't give up many smiles but Ashley still managed to get some great pics and I love them.

Bumpdate :: 24 Weeks

I'm so tired.

That about sums up how I'm feeling about week 24.

We were up in Lincoln, NE (go big red!) for Labor Day Weekend visiting my brother and his family and now I need another weekend just to recover.

Even though I'm exhausted, we had a good weekend with family. Gracyn enjoyed her cousins - dance party and all - and my little brother even made the trek from Minneapolis to spend some time with us. I'm not sure if we'll see everyone again before the little lady is born so it was nice to see everyone.

Bring on week 25 and more energy!

Turn Down for What?

Turns out, Gracyn has mad dance skills.

I mean, I knew she liked to bop along to the beat when a song comes on, but girlfriend likes to get. down.

Like, if she was challenged to a dance-off, she'd own you. She'd throw out every trick in the book in one dance sequence - twerking, dropping it like it's hot, and break-dancing. It's legit.

G and her cousins were having a little dance party on Sunday night. Lucky for you, I recorded a few snippets and put together Gracyn's first music video.

Enjoy. And you're welcome.


Gracyn :: Dancing from Mackenzie Oakley on Vimeo.