Adventures in La La Land

Baby is the size of an acorn squash this week! How Far Along?  29 weeks Total Weight Gain : Miraculously didn't gain anything this week!  +14 total.  Maternity Clothes?  Almost everything. I noticed that my pajama shirts (big t-shirts) are struggling to cover my belly all the way. Sleep : The restless legs have gotten a lot better, but I'm still really struggling to fall asleep at night. I just lie there wide awake for hours. So annoying.  Best Moment This Week : Baby brother got a whole bunch of adorable little clothes for Christmas! Movement : Yes. He goes crazy in there. I think he really likes to push out against my stomach. I can't even describe it. But there's always something sticking out - an elbow or knee or foot or something. It's kind of disgusting. Haha.   Food Cravings : Cranberry Sierra Mist. I ate so much this weekend that nothing even sounds good anymore. Haha. Food Aversions : Nothing.  Gender : It's a boy!!!!   Name...

Christmas week! My favorite week of the year!!! 1. We failed on our Advent Activities. We made cookies from a store-bought mix for the mail lady on Monday, but that was it for the week. On Tuesday, we made play-doh with the intent of putting it in cute Mason jars and delivering it to some of our friends. This was my inspiration: But I couldn't find any little Mason jars and the girls were having so much fun playing with the play-doh that we decided to forget the snowmen and just keep the play-doh for ourselves. Lol. #momfail 2. I've mentioned before that Lucy is obsessed with YouTube. She has a couple daily "vloggers" that she follows faithfully, and while I've watched lots of the episodes with her and have the safe search on, I'm still a little bit uneasy about her watching these adult-made videos. They're family-friendly, have little kids, and are usually just boring or dumb, but I still feel like she doesn't need to be watching such ...

Sorry for the delay. It's that busy time of year! (And I love it!) 1. Advent recap: On Sunday, the girls got to open their special ornament from us. I ended up getting them both the same one this year: I try to do something that characterizes what they were into that year. They both love  helping me in the kitchen, and they always wear their aprons, so I thought this was perfect. Monday was snow paint (shaving cream and glue). We got out some googly eyes and raisins to decorate our snowmen. Here's Lucy's: Here's Lena's: Lol. On Tuesday, we made " snowman soup " for the librarians: And of course, we had to have our own when we got home: Lucy took a couple sips. Lena guzzled all of hers! We skipped Wednesday, made Grandma gifts on Thursday, then hit up the gardens on Friday: 2. You know the saying, "It's no use crying over spilled milk?" Well there was some crying this week. Lucy loves to watch YouTube videos o...

Lena had her mouth full. Lucy has taken some liberties with the sign making.  I'm not the only one with a belly . . . I feel like these pictures don't adequately portray my size. Here's a mirror selfie that shows it off a little better: Wowza. Can you tell that's not a maternity shirt? Haha. Baby is the size of an eggplant this week! How Far Along?  28 weeks Total Weight Gain : +2 this week, +14 total. I'm gaining more slowly than I did with Lena, but about on track with what I did for Lucy - and I gained 42 lbs with each of them. So I'm not getting my hopes up. Maternity Clothes?  Almost everything. And my fleece is getting very hard to zip. Sleep : Really struggling to fall asleep every night. I suddenly have restless leg syndrome. It is horrendous. And my back starts hurting around 4:00 every morning. I just can't find a comfortable position.  Best Moment This Week : Lucy finally got to feel the baby move. She loved it.  Movement : Yep....

Every picture we took today was blurry. Baby is the size of a rutabaga this week! How Far Along?  27 weeks Total Weight Gain : +1 this week. +12 total. Maternity Clothes?  Almost everything. Still forcing my fleece sweatshirt to zip. I wear it every day, and told Justin that once it can't zip anymore, that's a sign I shouldn't leave the house and just get to stay home until the baby's born. ;-) Sleep : I have a hard time falling asleep, but once I'm out, I'm good. Back to sweating up a storm again. Best Moment This Week : Making it to the 3rd trimester! Movement : Oh yeah. And he's finally moved up into the middle of my belly. His feet are on my left side and are always moving. It's amazing that he's less than 3 lbs and 15 inches (according to the Internet), but seems to move in every part of my belly at once. Haha. Right now, he's kicking on the left, punching down low, and doing some kind of wiggle on the upper right. He also gets the...

1. We did better on our advent activities this week. On Sunday, we got our Christmas tree. It's our best tree ever and I love it. The girls love it too. This is their new breakfast spot: On Monday, I took them each to Family Dollar separately so they could choose a gift for each other. Lena spent $6 on Lucy. Lucy spent $12.50 on Lena. Haha. Fortunately, they're too young to understand or care. Tuesday was supposed to be cinnamon ornament day, but we didn't have any applesauce and I did not want to drive all the way to Meijer to get some, so we skipped it. On Wednesday, we went back to Family Dollar and I let the girls pick out a couple toys for Toys for Tots. And on Thursday, we made these adorable minion ornaments: I found a picture on Pinterest, but it didn't give any instructions, so we winged it. I got some clear glass ornaments and we filled them liberally with yellow paint, then swirled it all around until they were well coated. Originally, I taped off...

I posted in my Advent entry that we're doing something new this year: Nativity Devotions. Every few days, my girls put a new piece of the manger scene into the stable. We read the corresponding Bible story and talk about them as we go. Because I think better through writing than by winging it, I wrote myself up an outline for each day. And because I'm awesome (and humble), I'm sharing it with all of you. ;-) We're doing most of our reading passages from the Jesus Storybook Bible * because it's so much more kid friendly. JSB doesn't have a section on Joseph, so I read it out of the Bible (with a tiny bit of censoring. I'm not sure how appropriate that is, but my kids are 5 and 2. I wasn't prepared to discuss "public disgrace," divorce, and " consummation " with them.) The questions are largely geared toward Lucy. And some parts of the outline are pretty specific to our family, but hopefully you'll still find it helpful. :-) ...

It was a crazy day. Just got around to taking this after the girls were in bed.  Baby is the size of a head of lettuce this week! How Far Along?  26 weeks Total Weight Gain : +1 this week. +11 total. Maternity Clothes?  Almost everything. Sleep : Pretty good. Not sweating as much.  Best Moment This Week : A lady at Justin's work party yesterday telling me that I'm so tiny and adorable. People rarely use the word "tiny" to describe my pregnant state. Lol. Movement : Yep. He's turbo. Food Cravings : Cheese, pop - Cranberry Sierra Mist is finally on the shelves for the Christmas season and I'm drinking it like it's going out of style. It's caffeine free so practically guiltless! Food Aversions : Nothing.  Gender : It's a boy!!!!   Name : Not getting any closer to deciding. Probably just going to be Lars. ;-) Labor Signs : Lots and lots of Bra xton Hicks. What I Miss : Sleeping on my stomach. What I'm Looking Forward To : Picking...

1. I've already kind of failed on the Advent Activities. Every year, I try hard to make the activities simple and arrange them on our calendar based on what else we have going that day. I knew Wednesday was going to be crazy busy, so I had that night be "Christmas pizzas" since I knew we were going to have to eat dinner despite the craziness. I underestimated the amount of busyness though and ended up picking up pizza instead of making it ourselves. Still pizza night, right? Haha. And then last night was supposed to be Family Game Night, but I was feeling terrible, the girls were playing so nicely together, Lucy forgot to check the day's activity and I purposely didn't remind her. Oops. We did  do our two day's of Nativity Devotions, though. They've been going well and the girls are excited to see who we're going to add to the Nativity Set each time. I've only written out the first three days, though, so I need to get to work on the rest. I have a ...