2010 in pictures

We're ringing in the new year in the way that has become tradition in our house; we find something to watch on TV, maybe play some cards, then fall asleep on the couch around 10pm. Good times!!

2010 has been a good year for our family, and we look forward to finding out what 2011 has in store.

January (Jake turns 2!)



February (Snowmageddon 2010!)



March



April (Look! We went out on a date!)



May (Congrats, Nate!)



June



July



August



September (time to move!)



October (we found out baby #2 is on the way!)



November



December



Happy New Year!!

Differences

I mentioned before that this pregnancy has been totally different from when I was pregnant with Jake. I know every pregnancy is different, but some things are making me feel like a newbie to this whole carrying a child thing.

-Sickness; I already mentioned this before, but wow...I was sick with Jake, but in hindsight, I'm realizing that was nothing in comparison to this time around. I was nauseous most of the time and actually getting sick a lot (sorry, gross)...the biggest culprit of getting sick was liquids, which is how I ended up on the Zofran. I was FINALLY able to go off of that around 15 weeks.

-Skin; the breakouts on my face are making me look like I'm in 9th grade again, so annoying.

-Movement; I'm guessing this is because it's my 2nd time around, but I started feeling little flutters of movement around 14.5 weeks. Now, I feel them more often & it's very obvious that it's the baby squirming around in there :) Brian felt the little one for the first time last night (16 weeks, 6 days)

-My backside; so uh, yeah...my back side is definitely bigger. This one is a toss up though; I'd like to blame the baby, but there's a pretty good chance that it could be due to the standard holiday eating that comes between Thanksgiving and Christmas. :(

-Cravings; with Jake, I craved juice, sweet tea and mexican food. This time, the only thing I'm really craving is Dr. Pepper (so random, I know). I've tried (even pre-pregnancy) to cut down on my pop consumption, but if someone tells me they have Dr. Pepper when I'm out to eat, all bets are off!!

-Hormones; I'm sure I was hormonal with Jake, but this time...watch out! I'm emotional, irritable and just kind of snippy in general. I can feel myself acting that way and I don't like it, but I just can't seem to help it. I seem to suffer from extreme road rage & just general disgust with lack of common courtesy lately from total strangers. It's totally normal for a pregnant woman to want to rip a stranger's head off for not holding the door open, or for driving way too slowly, right??

-Subchorionic Hematoma; after waking up on a Saturday morning around 9.5 weeks with bleeding, a trip to the ER showed that I had a small subchorionic hematoma, which basically means that some blood has collected along the uterine wall. Fortunately, mine was very small and resolved completely on its own with no harmful side effects, other than a huge scare for me.

To summarize, this pregnancy thus far at 17 weeks has involved prescription medication, 3 ultrasounds, one trip to the ER and about 7 appointments with my OB. For all of those reasons, Brian is predicting a girl, with his reason being that only a girl would cause this much drama in such a short period of time :) Very scientific, right? A lot of people seem to be thinking girl, probably because it's been so different this time, but I really don't have a gut feeling one way or the other at this time. We should find out next week though, so the wait will be over soon enough!

Merry Christmas, from our family to yours.

I was so excited for Christmas this year, even more than usual. I felt like this year was the year that Jake would really get it; he had been learning about all of the holidays at school, singing the songs and asking every day if it was "time for Christmas yet".

The day was finally here! Thankfully everyone (including me) managed to sleep through the night, which was good because we had a big day ahead of us. Brian's family had come in to stay with us 2 days before, and my parents were arriving later Christmas morning, then my brother and his girlfriend would be there in the afternoon.

I couldn't wait to watch Jake enjoy his presents and experience the day through his eyes. We had to hold him back to keep him from running straight into the room with the tree, but here is a video of him once we unleashed the beast:



And then opening the "Cars" DVD that Santa brought for him:



We all got some amazing gifts & we are very grateful that we were able to spend the day with both sides of our family.



And as always, everyone was grateful for our bar.



Finally, it was time to eat!! There were a few mishaps, but really, what's a holiday without some type of incident? Two lessons were learned that day: 1. never allow me in the kitchen without having some burn medicine on hand and 2. always check the table to make sure that the leaf is completely attached before starting to pour red wine. The good news is, the tablecloth was red, so at least it wasn't a total disaster.



I couldn't have asked for a better day...we hope that your Christmas was just as great!

Happy birthday to....ME!!

It's the big year...3-0. I don't feel any older, but I kind of feel like after your 21st birthday, they all just kind of blend together. We don't have any big plans for tonight, but I will be enjoying my free birthday burger at my favorite restaurant, Red Robin, at some point next week :) We celebrated my birthday with my family last weekend, and I received some great new clothes and some stuff for the house, so I was excited about that.

The BIG celebration will actually take place in February; my BFF Melissa, turns 30 in January, so we're doing a girls trip to NYC to celebrate! No husbands, no kids...just US! We're super excited & counting down the days until then!

Weekend Recap

I was so grateful to have almost all of my Christmas prep done last week, because we had a really busy weekend planned and it was nice to enjoy it without stressing over all of the stuff that needed to be done.

Saturday started out with a trip to visit the BFF's, who were in town for the weekend! As always, the boys had a great time together and exchanged gifts. Jake received an Aquadoodle, bath crayons and 2 rock & roll race cars....all of which he has been playing with since then (thanks, Martini Family!)


We went to the annual Capo Christmas Open House that evening, where there was tons of yummy food and multiple rounds of cornhole.


We celebrated my bday a bit early that evening with my family, check out the pretty cake!


On Sunday, my cousin and her family came to my mom's house for a visit...the kids don't get to see each other very often, but it's very cute when they do get together:



We made it home that afternoon just in time to watch the Steelers lose (boo!). It was a busy, but fun weekend....it's what the holidays are all about, right?

Santa: What a rip-off!!

We had assumed that our annual Santa trip would result in tears for the 3rd year in a row; we were wrong! But, the tears were replaced with disappointment this year. Clearly, I needed to do a better job of explaining to Jake WHY we were going to go see Santa. We got there & he immediately started looking all around the little "workshop" area they had set up, trying to peek behind Santa then finally asked "Where are my toys? Where are the presents??". Poor kid. He thought we were going to see Santa to pick up his goodies. He even tried to steal some of the presents that were being used as decoration:

Fortunately, he recovered fairly quickly after a brief explanation that this is where he puts the order in so that Santa knows what to bring in a few days. Initially, he wouldn't sit beside Santa by himself...fortunately, there was a bench, so I wasn't forced to also plop on Santa's lap (which can get a little creepy).



I was able to slide off the bench after a minute, and Jake continued his conversation with Santa. His random wish list includes: a candy cane (which he calls a "handy" cane), a Lightning McQueen and a Steelers helmet.


Only a few more days until Christmas!! The little kid inside of me is having trouble sleeping lately, I'm so excited......

Dreaming of a white Christmas?

It looks like it could happen.....

Fri
Dec 24

Few Snow Showers

28°
18°

Sat

Dec 25

Snow Shower

27°
16°

15 week check up

I had a check up yesterday, though there's never much to report after them at this stage, it's just the standard pee in a cup, weigh in, heartbeat check, ask any questions, then they send you on your merry way. That being said, everything was good yesterday, baby's heart rate was 158 (I looked in Jake's baby book last night, his was 148 at my 16 week appointment). My blood pressure was 108/64, so the medication is doing the trick this time around so far, so that's always a relief.

I've started having Braxton Hicks contractions already, which seemed super early (again, after looking in Jake's book last night, with him they started at 21 weeks), but the doctor assured me they were nothing to worry about as long as they're not occurring with regular frequency or painful. She said I'll probably just be one of the lucky ones to have them throughout my pregnancy, yay me!

The highlight of this check up was getting the prescription for my big ultrasound, which of course I called to schedule the second that I walked out of the office. The big day will be January 6th, at 7:45am!! Hopefully the little one will cooperate, so feel free to leave your boy or girl guesses :)

Here's a belly shot from this morning, 15 weeks 1 day(I should have Brian start cutting out my face in these pictures if I'm going to do them 30 minutes after waking up and before drinking coffee, I look like a zombie):



And for comparison purposes, 17 weeks with Jake (which is the closest to 15 weeks I have, but look how much smaller I was, even 2 weeks later!):

Check, check, check!

I almost feel like I'm jinxing myself by saying this, but for once, I feel ahead of the game for Christmas.

Things that are already done:
-Tree is up & decorated
-House is decorated
-98% of presents have been purchased & are already wrapped & under the tree
-Christmas cards are addressed & stamped, just need to be mailed out this week
-Grocery shopping for Christmas day is 95% done
-Toys for Tots gifts purchased & dropped off at donation center

Left to do:
-take Jake to see Santa (we'll probably do this Friday night)
-buy last minute Christmas meal food items (potatoes, veggies, etc...)
-finish up the last few gifts
-Clean house
-Bathe Gracie (she is quite the mess from being out in the snow & slush, we can't have a dirty dog for Christmas)
-Figure out Christmas day outfits for myself & Jake (I'm leaning toward busting out some maternity pants for myself to allow maximum food intake)

All in all, I feel pretty good about my progress!! Brian took the day off today to do some birthday shopping for someone special (ahem...MOI!) but he's also going to pick up a few of those last gifts that we need as well, so we can mark those off the list after today.

I'm glad that I found the motivation to do most of this stuff earlier in the month, it's nice to have a few days to just relax & enjoy the season!

A few of my favorite things....

Fellow blogger Cara had a similar post a few days ago, and it reminded me that I've been meaning to take some pictures of my favorite Christmas decorations and post them. While I feel that I can improve next year by adding a few things here & there, I was pleased overall with how the Christmas decor turned out.

First up, the newest addition to our ornament collection...an adorable owl from my friend, blogless Lisa :) He matches the shower curtain that we put up in Jake's room:



There was a delay in the stockings being hung by the chimney with care, because we didn't want to put any holes into the mantel. I couldn't find any of those hooks that sit on top of the mantel that I liked, and the whole mantel is curved, so we couldn't just use those removable sticky hooks. Final solution? Hang them from the screen!



My MIL bought me this beautiful Willow Tree nativity set last year, it looks great in front of the built-in book shelves in our living room:


I bought this tree years ago, during the day-after-Christmas sale (my 2nd favorite day of the year to shop, next to Black Friday) at Bath & Body Works...it's still one of my favorites, I have it on our entry way table this year:



My mom bought us a few new pieces of Christmas decor as part of our housewarming gift; I didn't realize until after it was already up that it's probably supposed to be hung vertically. Oh well, it's staying this way for this season :)



She also got us this tree for our entryway (good deal from walmart!)


I tried this year to make use of some of the glass containers that I already have, and just add a Christmas or winter touch to them.

The mantel....



Dining room table centerpiece:



Only 10 more days until Christmas, I can't believe it!!