Week 16: AvoCado and Christmas

Week of Christmas!! Always excitement! Always exhaustion! And the sass was strong in the little one... but the sweetness was as well, as usual. She wanted pictures of her with the chalkboard. She did not want to take one WITH me.... and she did not want any taken OF me. Oh 3 years. At least we still had some beauties of that perfect little face.

 

 I'm not sure who would mind with that sweet stinkin' face.
 

Movement:  I can still feel movements. They just seem so insanely low! My belly in general seems to be sitting lower than with McKenna.  Maybe it's just my poor ab muscles that never returned to their original pre-children form.

Energy: Our whole house hit an energy wall after Christmas traveling and late night gift opening. We literally ate and watched Christmas movies all Christmas Day long.  All three of us would have definitely ended up sick had we had anything planned.  But it was the most wonderful Christmas Day ever!  This is literally the only Family shot we have from the day, and it describes our day perfectly: couch and matching pjs!

Oddities: I have had an eye twitch for going on like 3-4 weeks now.  It's insane! and insanely annoying!! It is literally multiple times a day, and distracts me when I'm speaking to someone.  Midwife said there's really not underlying concern so it's just one of those random pregnancy things that makes no sense.  

Weight: Still the same since the  beginning. Pretty crazy, but I guess the ebbs and flows of my nausea and terrible dieting along with my inconsistent workouts really have my body confused.. Thank goodness for prenatals!!

Nursery:  IS OFFICIALLY EMPTY! Now I don't know what to do with the room!

Sleep:  It's been getting more difficult.  Dreams have been picking up and becoming more intense, which tells me my quality of sleep is definitely declining.  Kevin surprised me with a pregnancy pillow for Christmas, after a couple of nights sleeping with it I decided it's just not for me. Same thing happened with my MK pregnancy... though with that one I just assumed it was a poor quality pillow. This was a good one and it just is still too confining for me.  I'm giving a generic body pillow a try and we'll see if that helps me out at all!

Looking forward to:  Still looking forward to McKenna and Kevin feeling Little Man move! This is the most impatient I've felt about anything!

And a picture of McKenna from Christmas Day trying out her new scooter.

Week 15: Disney Update

Amazing is an understatement to describe the coincidence of this week update.

We've had this trip planned for a few months, possibly even prior to getting preggers. So there's no way we could have planned for this crazy coincidence.

Week 15 for McKenna:

Week 15 for Little Man:

That's right.  We just so happened to be at Disney World for the same stinking week for each pregnancy!! How cool is that??!!

Of course McKenna needed to be included for one...

And then we had to visit our favorite cast member in all of Walt Disney World to share the news with her!

We have visited the British Pub for most major Milestones in our life together: we went there while we were dating, when we got engaged, when we were honeymooning, every anniversary, when we were trying for McKenna, when we were trying for little man (yup, the Disney Pixie Dust runs through both of the kiddos!!). You name it, Carol has sang a song about it! Some I remember, most I do not.  Cheers for Carol and Disney MAGIC!!

Week 14: The FIST?

It feels good for the news to be out and to be able to admit to people I'm exhausted and emotional. The holidays were kicking in right around 14 weeks, and I was all in on bringing the holiday spirit to our house!!

We giggled for this chalkboard, looking back at the "fruit/veggie" updates.... why in the world did we choose FIST for this week? Regardless now, we committed to doing the same updates that we did with McKenna! :)

One thing we've had fun doing it including McKenna in a picture for the updates.. I think there's a couple that were missed, because, #toddler, but they have been fun to include her!

Cravings: Daddy has done a pretty spot on job of keeping my sweet tooth satisfied! The single serving of chocolate cake from Publix is AMAZING. I'm salivating thinking about it.

Movement: I've definitely felt movement pick up a bit by this point. Most often right after dinner and early evening time.

Weight:  I still have not gained or lost any weight since our initial visit.

Energy: It's slowly coming back! MK has been motivating me and we've been doing workouts from YouTube while she stacks couch cushions and avoids an Emergency Room visit.  ANYTHING for mama to burn some calories!!

Looking forward to: McKenna and Kevin feeling baby move!

First Trimester Shenanigans

It's amazing how different the pregnancy experience can really be from kid to kid.  To put it simply, I had not prepared myself in the slightest for the nausea that I have experienced during this pregnancy. Called "morning sickness", I was typically OK during the first parts of the day as long as I ate steadily.  It wasn't until right around the time I would start thinking about preparing dinner, my witching hour.... aka my body bitching hour!  The time I get nauseous is the time I have to cook food that I was more likely not even going to eat. Another difference this time around, having another little human that still needed to be fed regardless of whether you were going to eat or not.

I will try to roll through these chalkboard pictures quickly! For the most part, my symptoms remained constant: nausea, exhaustion, and periodic indigestion.  My nose has been pretty sensitive to food smells, so I spent most of the trimester downing Saltines like none other. My weight has pretty much remained constant throughout thus far.

It was nice to have a chalkboard handy this time around thanks to our toddler.  These first few weeks she was completely clueless to what we were drawing and why we were taking pictures!

One thing different this time around was me wearing the same clothes for every weekly chalkboard. I did try to pick some more forgiving fabrics.... only time will tell if they will survive!!!

We told McKenna about the pregnancy around 10.5 weeks. We were surprised how well she kept our little secret, and she was absolutely over the moon with the news. You'll likely see a subsequent post for that experience :-)

It might seem insanely early, but I was most definitely feeling flutters around 11 weeks! I felt movement relatively early with McKenna, and they say that you can feel movements earlier with subsequent pregnancies.

We found out it was a BOY right before 13 weeks. It was awesome to be able to share the gender of the baby at the same time we announced the baby!

At the beginning of the first trimester, I thought there was no way that I was going to be able to make it without letting the cat out of the bag.  We were just around way more people for this pregnancy, and my little bump was definitely showing earlier this time around.

Energy:  Low.  Exercise was very difficult to come by, especially with a toddler that really doesn't want to hang in the stroller anymore!

Looking forward to: McKenna and Kevin feeling the baby move!

Baby P #2 Set to arrive June 2018

It's been 11 months since I posted an update.  Life happens, and you have to make priorities, and unfortunately blogging about "life" did not come in at the top.  But I'm here for a very important reason!

We are expecting our SECOND baby! I would love to keep it at a simple "We are all thrilled," and we ARE, but the amount of joy that McKenna has for her future sibling is indescribable. Literally no words. To the point of almost bringing me to tears daily because of how much the emotions well up in me. She kisses my belly, hugs my belly, listens to my belly, talks to my belly, blows raspberries on my belly. She's even gone through toys that she's going to let her baby brother have.

THAT'S RIGHT.... IT'S A BOY!

We were given a hard time that it was likely another girl because at our first ultrasound Baby's heart rate was 190 bpm!!! (The wives tale is high heart rates are girls, which was certainly true for MK who peaked at one point at 200!)

We did the genetic blood testing again this time around and were able to find out the gender right around 11 weeks. No special gender reveal or anything for us, a phone call from the nurse saying our results came back low risk for everything, and oh yeah it's a boy.

I really want to do my best to do pregnancy updates like I did with my pregnancy with McKenna.  Things might be different, but I want them both to be able to look back and see what Mama endured to bring them into this world! Maybe even compare who was rougher on me :P. Luckily we started our chalkboard updates the same week that we started McKenna's, and we will be doing the exact same fruits that we did for her :).

As I type I am 14 weeks on the dot. Today is the first official day of the Second Trimester.  Granted all of my struggles of the first trimester began to improve a couple of weeks ago, it's been a slow progress. I'll write a separate post to recap my first trimester to help split this up.

But I'll end this post with a family shot of us.

Halloween 2017: The Three Caballeros

2017: The McKenna Update

You might be wondering to yourself: WHO IN THE HADES is this person taking over a dead blog??
Well, it's me. Elyse. Mom of McKenna, Chief, & Boogs. Wife of Kevin. Stay a home mom turned small business owner! Yup. A lot has happened. I feel ashamed that I have not kept up with milestones and life, but the adjustment of moving, toddlerhood, a husband working endless hours hit me hard enough to set it aside for a while. I'm not committing to anything so don't get too excited, but I did want to come and chat with you (aka Myself).


Two years old held quite a bit of "lots" for McKenna.. let's just say she's officially an independent human being with some very independent views and opinions on life.  I didn't even check to see when the last time I made a post was, but we've had some significant things happen like potty training, weaning, and starting school to name a couple!

McKenna took on Potty Training herself not long after her second birthday last February (2016). We did a lot of naked time in front of the tv with the small potty, lots of ooopsies, and lots of excitement for forward progress. Truly, I believe it was going out of town that pushed her to consistency. I actually hadn't really intended to potty train when we went to Miami for a couple of days because it was so early in the process so I didn't even bring her little potty.  Lo and behold, even while wearing a diaper she informed us when she needed to go and we just plopped her on the big potty at the hotel. Upon our return, she was no longer interested in a baby potty and wanted the seat for on top of the toilet.  There really wasn't much looking back for her. She even night trained within a few months on her own.... we have had a setback recently and decided to just start wearing dipeys again because having accidents wasn't waking her up anymore.  I guess she sleeps as heavy as her daddy does!

Speaking of sleep, McKenna was down to nursing at bedtime for several several months.  We were very grateful that any changes to her "routine" (aka removing nursing sessions) were met with an understandable and manageable amount of an adjustment period. Even experimenting with that last session was trial and error, but she seemed to know and understand that she was OK without it anymore.  We spent several weeks working toward no longer nursing to sleep and I would spend extra time reading/rocking with her or we would have daddy come in to the helm.  Then, one day, it was just the day it didn't happen. No dramatic ending, no sadness. We just went a few days without (as she had done before) and then she never asked again.  It wasn't until a couple weeks later I looked back at some of my "final" nursing selfies to realize that it was over.  The beginning was a tough journey for us, but if you asked me that I would nurse a child until they were 2 years, 4 months old I would have told you you were crazy! Funny, I could say that about a lot of parenting decisions! :)

Potty Training and nursing are covered. I need to get back to Momming and hopefully I can come back and update more on school and just McKenna's incredible personality in general.  Good chatting with you again, hopefully we do it again soon ;-)