Today is August 29th!!!

Are. You. Kidding. Me. We are officially on the one month countdown. Wow!
I'm pretty sure I'm officially in the "nesting" stage but not it could be more because we're in a new house and still have "house stuff" to do PLUS the fact that I'm a planner and like to be prepared. I haven't started doing any of the weird nesting stuff you hear about like cleaning cabinets, the top of the refrigerator or scrubbing the corners of the bathroom floor with a toothbrush. No, I'm just having fun washing bedding, clothes and other baby things as well as figuring out where everything is going to go in the nursery, how to decorate the walls, etc. I'm also trying to figure out exactly what I want on our walls throughout the house. After we've patched and painted all of the walls, I'm EXTRA hesitant to put anything on the wall until I'm totally sure we want it there. Yes, I know, I have GOT to get over that.

Since every post is more fun with a picture or two...here is a pic of Mike and I last weekend. No, I didn't cut my hair, it's just pushed back for some reason.

And here is one of Mikey with Jack...cuteness!

Oh and one more thing: I still owe you pictures of shower in Blackburg (I still need to get them from Momma), shower in Cincy and pics of Nursery. I haven't forgotten!

35 weeks

We are heading to the final month...wow! It seems like we just found out we were pregnant.  And literally like yesterday when I was 20 weeks and we found out the gender of our little one.
It has been a wonderful experience so far though and one that I really think I'm going to miss. It's been fun to be the pregnant lady! I may be over it in 3 weeks or so, but I'm still enjoying it now. 

Here is a 35 week pic. I'm looking slightly rough as I had been at work all day and ended up throwing my hair in a ponytail, but everyone really just wants to see the belly anyways, so overlook the hot mess up top. :-)

We had another doctor's appointment this week and will be having them every week from now on. This was just a basic one and everything looked good...yay! We did, however, meet a new doctor in our practice. She seems pretty cool and not much older than me. 

One other cool thing this week is that Hope and I attended an infant CPR class. I hope to God I never have to use it, but it feels good to know we learned it. We also practiced helping a choking child which again, I hope I never use but I'm no fool, I know we're more likely to use that at some point. It's pretty much the basic "beat them on the back" technique but there are a few helpful hints we learned along the way. (Just as a reminder for some of you, Hope has twin boys (Garrett and Walker) that are about 3 1/2 months old so I'm learning a ton from her. Nice!)  I should have taken a picture of us at the class with our dummy babies; I was in full student mode!

Parents-to-be

Mike and I don't have a great deal of pics of the two of us while I've been pregnant but this weekend we had several taken so I thought it would be fun to share them here. I am 34 wks 3 days in these pics.

Ok, you can't see the belly here but I still have it! 

You can definitely see the belly here!

Here I am "overseeing" the painting. Anyone who knows my artistic skills knows it's much better for all involved if I "oversee" the project rather than draw/paint. :-)  It's another belly shot though.

And just because I can't resist, here is little Jackson Mercer (Jenn's precious baby boy). LOVE these cheeks!  He's ready to show Baby Girl the ropes.

State Fair!

As you all know, I LOVE the WV State Fair...it completely represents tradition to me which is fun. This year is my 31st fair (no, I'm NOT 31) and even though I didn't enter any candy or cookies in the competition, I was still VERY excited to do my Fair thing.
Mike is always a good sport and attends the Fair with a smile on his face because he knows how much it means to me. Who knows what he really thinks, but it's ultra important to me so he goes with it. And lets face it...he enjoys the food!!!!
Here is a pic of Mike double fisting Fair food. Don't let his expression fool you, he was enjoying the food. Perhaps he wasn't enjoying me taking his picture in the middle the fairgrounds? :-)

We met mom in Lewisburg for the concert on Saturday night and she snapped a pic of the two of us; our last Fair as a twosome. And actually we don't have that many pics of the two of us with my baby belly so I really appreciate the ones we do have of our family of 2 1/2.

Yes that is kettle corn in my hand...don't judge. It was fantastic. I didn't completely "pregnant lady" indulge though...there was no ice cream or funnel cakes woofed down with the kettle corn. There may or may not have been a country ham biscuit situation...I'm sure if I did eat it, it would have been delicious and SO worth it. :-)

I was 33.5 weeks in this picture.

Movin' and Groovin'

That seems to be one of our little girl's favorite things to do and I actually think it's really cool. Well, most of the time. :) She is loving to move around and make sure we know she's here.  In fact, when we went to the doctor last Thursday, the nurse practioner said, "You have such an active little girl." I swear they have told us that at almost EVERY appointment EXCEPT our 28 week ultrasound that we wanted her to move. She was stubborn, I wonder where she gets that? :-)  As the nurse practioner pushed on my belly she felt Baby Girl's hand and evidently Baby Girl pushed against the nurse's hand.  This prompted the nurse practioner to say, "She definitely makes her presence known, doesn't she?" ha!

Mike was able to come to the appointment with me which was nice even though it was a basic appointment. Everything seemed fine with both the Baby Girl and the momma.  But here is the best part, she was head DOWN! Yay! Now I know she could move all around before now and "D day" but the fact that she was at least exploring the option of "head down" makes me very happy as she's been head up at my appointments where they have checked.

So woohoo for Head Down!!!

Oh one more thing...Baby Girl has started having the hiccups. :-)

Nursery

With help from my mom (and more discussions than she probably would have liked) and the muscles of Mikey, I'm getting much closer to finishing the nursery. It's not done yet, but it's definitely coming along and I'm really loving it. The walls are yellow with yellow/orange/green and white accents.  There are lots of fun things to tell you about different parts of the nursery but I'll leave that for another post when it's done. For now, here is a sneak peek. :-)

oh and as I write this I'm trying to laying in different positions b/c Baby Girl is VERY active tonight and there is no way I'll be sleeping until she calms down a little bit. Is this just a preview of things to come? :-) oh my!!!

32 weeks

It's been a really nice week...feeling good and productive, (can't beat that!!) and spending time with my hubs.

I really do feel good and don't have much of anything to complain about...certainly looking more and more pregnant each day. And I've noticed myself grunting when I do certain things like paint my toenails or bend down to pick something off of the floor; I almost laugh at myself.

This week Baby Girl had the hiccups. It's the first time we've noticed them and it was very cool. At first I told Mike I could feel my heartbeat in my stomach. I know that makes no sense but many things in pregnancy make no sense to me so I didn't think much of it. It was such a steady pace but didn't seem the right speed to be either mine or Baby Girl's heartbeat. Then it hit me, she has the hiccups! It all made sense then and she was hiccuping so much that you could see my belly jump. I guess she held her breath long enough, had a glass a water or someone scared her because they eventually stopped. :-)

This weekend was Steppin' Out in Blacksburg and Mike and I joined in on the festivities. I worked our Junior Women's Club booth for children on Saturday morning and Mike and I went back together  Saturday evening to check out the vendors, listen to the music and have dinner. Lots of fun just to hang out together with nothing in particular to do. (We did get quite a few things done around the house on Saturday so that felt nice. :-))

Here is my 32 week belly pic.

And here is what Finn does when I take belly pics. He's VERY involved in everything we do...checks it all out.

"Baby Girl" is not going to be her given name...

...I swear! Yes, we call her that NOW, but we really plan on giving her a REAL name. :-) Now what that name will be is yet to be decided, but we're working on it. No really, we are!!  We'll let all of you know her name just as soon as we figure it out. It's a big deal ya know, it's her NAME!!!! What she'll hear multiple times a day for the rest of her life, we want her to like it.  Am I being dramatic here? :-)

Anyways, just wanted to update you that no, we don't have a name yet. No, we don't secretly have one that we're just not telling people. No, we're not having a hard time agreeing on a name, we actually both like several of the same names. And YES, we'll let you all know her name just as soon as we know it.

"Baby Girl" says hi!