Hello, Third Trimester!

We are officially one month closer to moving AND to meeting our sweet baby boy! For some reason, February seemed to drag on a little more than I expected, but we are excited for March to be here and for spring to come. We had a lot going on this month, so enjoy our recap!

Preparing the House

We had a lot of work that needed done to the house to prepare it to sell. We are SO lucky to have the resources that we do, including my dad and sister, who sell houses for a living and know exactly what to do to prepare the house, AND Ryan’s parents, who manage rentals for a living and know exactly HOW to prepare the house. Ryan’s parents visited at the beginning of the month to help us do just that. We got a LOT accomplished in just a few days, including lots of power washing, painting, and repairing. Ryan did all the power washing outside and decided to have some fun with it, and to entertain the kids…see picture below!

Again, we are SO grateful for the family that we have and how willing they all are to help us with anything at the drop of a hat…hence the reason why we are moving closer to them!

Daddy Daughter Dance

Last year, Ryan and Kinsie went to the Daddy Daughter Dance in our town and had a great time, so they did it again this year! Kinsie loved getting dressed up and having a special night with her Dad. With his schedule, any quality time with him is so special to all of us, and she enjoyed every moment! And I know Ryan enjoyed time with his little girl as well!

Family Campfire Night

The kids are all about campfires and s’mores, so we try to fit them in whenever we can. Ryan’s schedule has been tough lately with lots of evening shifts, so one of the only nights we had available was a very cold night! But we bundled up and made the most of it. It was so cold, in fact, that Brax actually agreed to wear a hat and gloves! If you know him, you know this is a big deal and he really must have been cold! We had a great night roasting marshmallows, eating s’mores, snuggling by the fire and telling knock knock jokes.

Artwork, writing and crafts

With lots of indoor time this month, the kids have been really into drawing and crafts.

Kinsie recently learned about American symbols at school, and loves teaching us all everything she learned. I still can’t get enough of her sweet writings she brings home from school!

Below are some of Kinsie’s most recent drawings. I love her details!!

It’s pretty easy to tell what she draws these days, but just in case you can’t tell…

Top left- Mickey Mouse Clubhouse with Mickey and friends; top right – The Avengers; bottom – Frozen and Frozen 2 characters

Brax has learned all of his letters now, so his newest obsession is writing his name and lots of random words. He also has gotten much better at drawing people and animals. I’m  obsessed with his little imagination!

Top left- a gorilla going to the eye doctor; top right – two sharks chasing fish; bottom left – Mickey Mouse Clubhouse with Mickey and Friends; bottom right – dinosaurs holding hands

A few more…Kinsie drew all the Disney princesses along with their friends, sidekicks, significant others and accessories! Brax drew dinosaurs in the jungle

And finally, here is a picture of drawings that the kids made me when I was having an extra rough and exhausting day. They are the best!

Kinsie recently discovered a short series on Disney+ called Family Sundays, where they have families doing Disney themed crafts together. One weekend, she saw an episode about making Frozen 2 themed soap. We needed a Saturday family activity to get out of the house anyway, so we took a trip to Hobby Lobby and bought supplies to make soap. She loved watching the video and following the step-by-step instructions. While we were at it, we made unicorn soap too!

Holly’s Baby Shower

One of the intern residents’ wife is someone I’ve become very close with this year, and shortly after they moved here from Arizona last summer, she became pregnant with twins! She already has 3 kids, so now she’s adding 2 more to her crew. The ladies from our bible study and I threw a small baby sprinkle for her so she can get some extra stuff they may need two of now. I loved getting to celebrate this sweet friend of mine and the baby boy and girl that will make their appearance soon. Meanwhile, Ryan took our kids over to her husband’s house and they ordered pizza and let all the kids play. They had a fun Daddy Kid play date!

Valentine’s Day Festivities

Valentines for class

The weekend before Valentine’s Day, Ryan worked the ENTIRE weekend…two 12 hour shifts in a row, which was rough on my very pregnant body and mind. However, we made the most of it and did all of our Valentines fun and prep to keep busy, starting with the kids’ valentines for their classes. Brax picked out shark valentines, and Kinsie, my little overachiever, always like to buy a kit and make her valentines. This time, she picked heart emojis, so she could design each heart with different features. This is the first year that Brax could address his own valentines, so he was excited to get to do his own!

Valentines Cookies

This is a yearly tradition now, and the kids love doing it. They worked so hard and we ended up with lots of beautiful, delicious valentine cookies!

Valentines Day Fun

The kids had a great time at each of their class valentines parties. Brax made lots of cute crafts, and Kinsie worked hard on her “love bug” valentine bag they made in class.

Another tradition I started last year, was every day from February 1 – 14, the kids receive a heart with a reason why we love them. They loved waking up each morning to see what their heart said!

Ryan worked another evening shift the night of Valentines day, so, like last year, I made the kids heart-shaped pancakes for dinner. I even made them extra special this year and added Nutella and pink and red sprinkles!

Overall, we had a good Valentines Day. However, my sweet Brax started not feeling great that evening, which started his week of sickness.

Sickness Strikes

Our little guy doesn’t get sick very often, but when he does, it breaks our hearts because he’s not his perky, silly little self. On the afternoon of Valentine’s Day, he went downhill fast. He didn’t want to play, but just wanted to snuggle, and I noticed he was getting a fever. Everything escalated pretty quickly, and we could tell he felt terrible. He’s not a big fan of medicine, so I had to trick him and sneak some into his gatorade. He felt better for a few hours (while the medicine did its job), then he went downhill again once the medicine was out of his system. Ryan had to work that evening, and the kids and I had some valentine fun, but you could tell Brax just didn’t feel good. He ended up vomiting once that night (I already struggle with vomit…add pregnancy on top of it and it was almost unbearable to clean up). Once I got him cleaned up, he fell asleep on the couch. I let him sleep out there on the couch with me until I was going to bed…mainly to make sure he didn’t vomit again. The next few days were still pretty rough, but at least Ryan was home to help. Brax was mainly really tired and sluggish with a high fever. The only way to manage it was to keep him medicated (which, again, I always had to trick him into taking it!) He never sleeps well when he’s sick (who does, really), so we all didn’t sleep great. A few days in, he started complaining about his ears. Luckily, we had a doctor in the house and he was able to check his ears, diagnose him with a double ear infection, and prescribe him with some antibiotics. FINALLY Brax started to feel better!

(In the bottom photo below, it was a beautiful day so we tried to take the kids on a wagon ride…Brax tried to have fun, but he just wasn’t feeling it!)

A little more outside time

This month, we were able to get a little more outside time than last month. Ryan worked lots of evenings and 12 hour weekend shifts, so we definitely needed activities to keep these kids busy that didn’t require a ton of extra energy on my part.

We did lots of chalk and tracing of each other and stuffed animals…

Lots of bike and scooter races and tree “climbing…”

Bubbles, bow and arrow practice and hula-hooping…

And a few trips to the park complete with playground fun and climbing/rolling down the hills.

Papa and Yaya visit

My parents were able to make a long weekend trip to come visit us. The breaks between family visits in the winter always seem especially long. This month has had its rough moments for me with feeling mentally overwhelmed and physically exhausted, so getting to see my parents was a breath of fresh air. They helped us with a few last minute things on the house that I wasn’t able to physically be much help on, and they also helped us with the logistics of what’s next on our house-selling adventure. But most importantly, they just got some quality time with us…which is what we all needed most!

Pregnancy Updates – THIRD Trimester

The third trimester creeped up on me fast. It seems like all of the sudden, I am to the point where I can barely reach my feet to put on socks or shoes, and I can’t get comfortable no matter how hard I try. The kids often forget that I’m getting bigger and less mobile, so we have to constantly remind them to help me out in whatever ways they can. When the kids are at school, I usually use that time to run my errands and get as much as I can done. I still do that to an extent, but overall I’ve been trying to use at least part of that time to just relax, which is easier said than done for me, especially at such a busy time in our lives.

This photo was taken at 28 weeks – baby was the size of a head of lettuce

Symptoms this month include:

• Braxton Hicks contractions
• Starting to get very uncomfortable. It’s hard to be comfortable in pretty much any position except laying on my side.
• Shortness of breath – mainly because the baby is often up in my ribs!
• Mind constantly racing and sometime experiencing anxiety – like I’ve said before, my mind is extra “busy” when I’m pregnant. With a busy mind, but a body that’s physically unable to do much, I have a problem. I’ve been having to rely a lot on devotionals and reading to help with this problem.
• LOTS of baby movement – again, I love it, and I am going to miss it when I’m not pregnant anymore…but goodness, this kid is already strong! I often wonder if he moves a lot in his sleep, or if he just doesn’t sleep because he is constantly moving. The kids LOVE feeling him move all the time!

This month I had to do my glucose tolerance test. This is where you drink an extremely sugary drink in 10 minutes, and then get your blood drawn an hour later to check for gestational diabetes. You are supposed to fast for 2 hours prior to drinking the drink, which created a problem for me. My test was in the morning, so I had to wake up early and not eat anything, and just drink this sugar-filled drink. Ryan was originally supposed to work this day, but I asked him to switch his shift because I had experienced dizziness during this test in my previous pregnancies. It was a Friday so Brax didn’t have school, so he would have had to come to the doctor with me…another reason I wanted Ryan to drive me… I did not want Brax in the car with me if I was dizzy. Well, its a good thing Ryan was able to switch, because in the car, halfway into my “hour wait” between the drink and my blood test, I got extremely dizzy and threw up the entire drink in the car! I was mostly upset because I knew there was a good chance they wouldn’t be able to draw my blood now, and I would have to completely redo the test. Unfortunately, I was right. I was super bummed and nervous that I wouldn’t handle it well the next time too. I picked a different flavor for the next time, and made an afternoon appointment so I wouldn’t have to fast all day. The day of my retest, I ate a big breakfast before my 2 hour fast. Luckily, the test went much better this time around. I kept the drink down and passed my glucose tolerance test!

We are ready for March! March has always been one of my favorite months because we start to see some evidence of upcoming spring. We are excited to be one month closer to lots of exciting life changing events for our family!

Here is our 1 Second Every Day video for the month of February. Enjoy!