32 weeks

Christmas has come and gone and we're a week closer to being a family of four!

It's crazy for me to think that we have seven weeks or less before Penny gets here! How did this happen so fast?! I keep thinking about how New Years is next week and then the next major "holiday" to celebrate is Valentines Day...which is a day AFTER Penny is suppose to be here :/

No more random fits of preterm contractions, but at this point, I'm just waiting for the real things to come on. I know that seven weeks is the max to wait, but I almost feel like it could be any day. We would ideally like for P to wait AT LEAST another five weeks, but this one has a mind of her own and will get here when she decides she's ready. Let's pray really hard that it is the full seven weeks so we can be fully prepared (well, as prepared as you can be for a newborn)!

New symptoms this week include restless leg syndrome and the return of round ligament pains. Both are extremely annoying and the latter is quite painful at times. It's really only when I'm making sudden movements or contorting myself into more "comfortable" positions that the pains happen. Thankfully, they don't last long, but they're more than painful enough to bring me to my knees at times. As for the RLS, I feel worse for Rory since he has to endure sleeping next to someone who is performing full ballet routines at random hours of the night. I remember having RLS with Emma, but not to this extent. I really feel like I have to run a marathon just to satiate the urge to move my legs! Don't worry though; I am in no condition otherwise to do any kind of distance walking, much less running.

I'm religiously continuing to take my Procardia, but of course, I've started to experience most of the side effects of the medicine: racing heart rate, dizziness, headaches. While they only last about five minutes, it was enough to freak me out the first time I experienced them. I didn't have any effects in the hospital, but I guess I was forced to be still and the effects weren't as bad. Since I was given the green light to resume activity, I feel like it's been nonstop mommy/wife mode again. I am beyond blessed to have a husband who still wants to pull more than half his weight when it comes to housework and "mommy" duty. He has been a champ at keeping up with the dishes and giving Emma her baths. We've also started transitioning to him doing bedtime, but E still wants me to sing to her (which I will gladly do!). 

I think this is why I'm more than ready for P to come, because I'm ready to start doing mommy and wife duties like I was. I know that things will have to be different with another kid in the mix, but I'm confident we'll get in our new routine quickly and all adjust because we have to. I'm really hoping that Emma takes the change well and doesn't have any set backs with sleep or her independence. So far, I'm a little worried about the latter. She's become VERY clingy and all of a sudden has "forgotten" how to feed herself and do other tasks that she's been fully capable of for a while. I really think she has a inkling that something significant is about to happen and her reign as center of the family is about to come to an end. Bless it...not a good realization for an almost-three-nager.

The exhaustion is still pretty bad, but I'm not expecting a change in this any time soon. I'll just have to utilize naps as much as I can in the next few weeks. Unfortunately, this is the busiest time of the year for me at work with open enrollment changes going into effect in the next week and making sure everyone has the benefits that they wanted for the next year. Inevitably, there will be a few people who will call at the last minute wanting to make a change...

Christmas was a success and Emma definitely racked up! Our Tennessee Christmas resulted in WAY more toys than she knew what to do with, so half of her haul is now boxed up in the closet. We'll swap things out in a few months so she can have "new" toys and our living room won't look like an explosion of girly-ness ;) Her favorite toys so far are her new playhouse (which is residing in our front room currently until the spring when we can take it outside) and her Barbies and Barbie car. And lets not forget about the bookoos of dress-up clothes she got! She had to wear her cowgirl dress for a couple of days and after today's Christmas, I see her having to wear her Elsa dress for at least 3 of the 4 days this week. If it were up to her, she would wear dress-up clothes 24/7!

Penny wasn't left out either. She got some new clothes from Mammy, complete with a few preemie outfits. I was actually really glad that we got a few more of those because if she's going to be around Emma's size when she gets here, she'll likely be in preemie clothes for at least the first couple of weeks! It was so hard for me to dress Emma when she was first born because even newborn sizes swallowed her! Here's hoping that maybe Penny will be a tad bigger and actually fit in newborn when she's a newborn ;)

It'll be back to the grind tomorrow, but I'll be looking forward to another three day weekend next weekend! I'm in a little disbelief that we'll be in 2017 this time next week. The countdown is getting real but I'm so excited to see what God has in store for us next year! Our immediate family will grow as well as our extended family! I can't wait for my brother's wedding in June! Now if they can just find a place to have it... ;)

Hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and has a happy New Year!

7 more weeks!

God Bless!