24 weeks...and catching up

It's been a little bit since my last post. I promise I really do try to write one every week! Between a full-time job (which is currently at max stress level due to open enrollment!) and wife/mommy duties, it's hard to find a few minutes to sit down and write in my blog. But alas, I am trying.

So with work being a tad stressful right now, it's making time go by at warp speed. I'm not complaining, but when I sit down and realize that we're a mere three months away from Penny being here, I start to hyperventilate a little. We literally have nothing done to her nursery. She'll be sharing our room for at least the first month that she's here anyways, but it would be nice to have her room completely done before she gets here so all we have to worry about is the transition from pack-n-play to crib. I have it all decorated in my head, so now it's just getting the ideas from there up on the walls! Welcome to the nightmare of an interior designer...

I had my 24 week appointment yesterday and everything is looking perfect. Seriously, this is what I had hoped for last time! At this point last time, we were already experiencing concern from Dr. Favor that Emma was going to be small...shocker. This time around, she made a note from the beginning that Penny would be small and there would be no other concerns unless I started to have complications or something abnormal (besides being fun size) showed up on ultrasound. I'm already preparing myself for Penny to be a bit bigger than Emma since I'm already at the weight I was when I had Emma...and I've got three more months to go! I know that you get bigger faster with subsequent pregnancies, and it could also be that I wasn't really all that sick this time around like I was with Emma. At any rate, I already feel like a whale and I can't even imagine how much bigger I can possibly get! Sleeping has become a joke so most of my nights consists of sleeping about 4-5 hours and then up for an hour to get comfortable again and then another 2-3 hours sleep before getting up for the day. I know it's just God's way of getting me ready for doing that EVERY night with a newborn, but I really like my sleep! :(

I may have made a comment in past posts about my back pain too. It finally got to a point where I was afraid that it was something having to do with nerves, so I had my first experience with a chiropractor a few weeks ago. The guy that owns my company has a brother-in-law that is a "holistic" chiropractor, meaning that he doesn't do all the twisting and pulling and cracking that normal doctors do, and he's right downstairs from where I worked, so I felt pretty confident that if anyone could give me some relief, it would be him. He has a small tool that looks like a stick gun that he pushes on areas of your back to realign it. That was literally all he did. He did a few strength tests on me to see which nerve, muscle and vertebrae were being effected (which ended up being my C1...who knew) and it was so cool to see this different approach to medicine! He used what I can only describe as transference energy to see what was going on with my body. Since my belly was so big, I couldn't lie on the table, so he had his wife lay on the table while I touched her arms and my pain was transferred to her so he could see what was being effected. It turned out that, no shocker, I'm not getting enough water so it's making my muscles weaker. Sitting all day at a desk is also not so great for my neck and back. He also commented that it was amazing that I haven't been having headaches so far with my spine being out of line. He did a quick push on my C1 and almost immediately, I could feel the pain start to go away and my back felt amazing! He gave me strict instructions to drink more water, having Rory massage my lower back and my neck, and lay on a heating pad for a few minutes at night and in the morning to loosen the muscles. I still have some lingering pain, but it's no where near what it was and it's more due to the lack of hydration. I try to drink my 64 oz of water a day, but its seriously hard yall! That's a lot of water and I already have to pee every 5 minutes (unless I sit in my seat all day) so it just makes it more inconvenient when I have to walk away from my desk so often. I know I really just need to stop my whining and deal with it because I'll be getting the best Valentine's gift of all after dealing with all of this, but it's just the miserable pregnant lady coming out in me.

I'm starting to have more Braxton Hick's contractions as well, which is definitely not making the back pain go away any faster, but I've been through these with Emma as well so I know they aren't really doing much but making me uncomfortable. They seem more intense this time around (or it might just be that I forgot how they felt) so when I get one, I have to take a short break until it passes and I can regather myself.

Penny is much more active than I remember Emma being too. She doesn't necessarily kick; it's more of just constant movement. Every time I roll over in bed to my other side, she'll start moving around to get comfortable. I can only imagine how much of a mover she'll be when she gets here! I'm also getting the feeling that she's going to have some hair. The heartburn isn't anywhere near what it was with Emma but it's starting to become more prevalent at night so I'm popping at least 2 tums every night now. I hope she does have hair because I loved how much dark, thick hair Emma has when she was born! Maybe Penny will have light hair! Not likely, but I can dream.

Speaking of dreams, my dreams lately have been so vivid! I can remember some from when I was pregnant with Emma, but most of my most vivid dreams were earlier. This time, I'm having crazy dreams most nights where I can get at least 5 hours of uninterrupted sleep. I'll wake up almost in a panic because they seem so real! They range anywhere from being about going on vacations to saving friends from drugs (ask me about my one last night...insane!) I do usually feel very rested when I wake up from a particularly odd dream, but it's usually 2 am when I'm waking up :/

For my other child, Emma's third Halloween was a good one. I couldn't ever decide on what costume that I wanted to make her (yes, make) so a quick trip to Target resulted in her being Ana from Frozen. She even got upset in the store because I wouldn't let her change into the outfit immediately...oh to be 2. She would get so excited to show people her dress and her cape by twirling. She's gotten to be such a girly girl :) We didn't do legit trick-or-treating on Monday but we got together with some friends on Saturday night and did a small trunk-or-treat for the kiddos and she loved it! I taught her to say "trick-or-treat", which was really "trick treat", to get candy and she would get so excited when someone would hand her candy to put in her bucket. We discovered that her favorite candy is nerds. She would eat each piece one at a time and end with a big smile :)

Our little Ana!

She decided to decorate the bathroom cabinet while daddy was getting ready :)

Her speech is continuing to go great! She's getting more and more understandable every day. She's still working on getting the right sounds and blending, but she learns a new word almost daily and is putting together more sentences that help us to understand what she wants. She still gets frustrated when we don't understand what she's saying but I imagine that will be an ongoing thing and would have been an issue regardless of whether she needed speech therapy or not. We'll see where she is at the end of the year (which is just a mere 2 months from now!)

Chillin' with Aunt Kalai

Already so independent!

Picture with Ana, Elsa and Olaf (she was NOT a fan of Olaf, which is why he's way in the back)

As we head into the holiday season, I imagine time will only speed up. Our weekends are pretty booked from here on out. After the first of the year, our travel will be pretty limited until Miss P gets here. I'm looking forward to seeing family and friends over the next two months but I'm more looking forward to my Valentine's Day present! Come on Miss P!

Hope everyone enjoys the first weekend of November and pray that we can get some temps below 80 and some much-needed rain!

16 weeks to go!

God Bless!

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