24 weeks!

Made it to 24 weeks! Goal #1 for the year accomplished :-). 24 weeks is still, of course, way too early for little baby boy to make his appearance, but it marks a wonderful point in the pregnancy - if he were to come early he would have a fighting chance at surviving. The great news is that I am feeling really good and not having any signs of early labor. With Lincoln labor started suddenly at 30 weeks, and he came within about 12 hours. Of course, this time around I know more what to look for, and what my limitations are. No heavy lifting, resting when my body tells me it's time, etc. I'm being good and making sure I take good care of myself for this little one.

My OB is also very confident that this pregnancy will go to full-term. Each week I receive an injection of progesterone to help prevent early labor. They have found this treatment to be extremely effective and have had very few early deliveries with this treatment. So, we will confidently continue on and enjoy waiting for baby #2 to arrive. My "plan" / hope / prayer is to have this little one that last week of April. I'm officially due on May 15, but daddy is graduating on May 10 and walking the stage in southern California - I'm pretty determined that all 4 of us get to be there to celebrate! So... start praying now for the last week of April for a healthy, full-term delivery. That way baby boy and I will have a few days to recover before our first trip as a family of 4!!! Can't wait to meet him... in April (pleeeeaaasseee)!!!!

The developing baby bump!

December 2012

To back up a little... the end of 2012 was a whirlwind. Here are a few snapshots (requested by Nana and Papa... probably our most avid blog readers... love you guys!!!!!!!!!!!).

Lincoln turned 4 and we celebrated with a small birthday party.

Lincoln is in love with the League of Incredible Vegetables (Veggietales Superheroes)

so he picked that as his theme this year... and had all his friends watch the movie before the party.

Making cinnamon ornaments for his preschool teachers and friends :-)

Baking cookies for Santa... turned into mommy saying, "Lincoln stop licking the sugar..."

then, "Don't you dare..."

"Oh well... at least Santa is the only one who will eat them."

The many jammies of Christmas morning!

Including baby brother...

Lincoln found a "Baby's First Christmas" stocking I purchased a while back and stuck away.

He insisted that we hang it for his baby brother! So sweet!!!!

Then Christmas morning Santa left a few books for the baby and Linc got to open.

MCC Annual Angel Breakfast... with an awesome Mary and Joseph!!!

Our other little one... who loves Christmas and can hardly contain herself.

She always opens a bone in her stocking and then usually gets so excited she

sniffs around to see if any of the presents are for her to open...

Sorry girl! The days of presents under the tree for you ended when the kiddo came.

Lincoln's gift from mommy & daddy. He had several dreams about having one...

He would wake up very bummed that it wasn't real. He was one happy camper on Christmas!!!!

Hope your Christmas was as great as ours!!!

Resolved

So it is the start of a brand new year... always a great time to reflect. To see where you were and how far you've come. To see if you were able to meet the goals you set... or to laugh at the goals you threw out the window in exchange for different ones.

Last year I set (and blogged) my resolutions (click here to read). I don't normally do that, and really have no desire to this year. :-) But it was really fun to look at my list and see that I accomplished all of them... at least mostly. I could have put more effort into some of them, but at least I tried.

By February I taught myself to sew with some wonderful troubleshooting help from a few ladies at my parents' business. I love sewing (most of the time) and wish I was able to do a ton more. I was able to sew some curtains, toss pillows, a drawstring bag for Lincoln, a purse for myself, etc. One of my favorite projects was a Valentine envelope for Lincoln. Each day for the week before Valentine's Day, Lincoln awoke from nap to find a little treasure in his envelope. He loved it... in fact, the other day he heard Valentines was coming up again and asked when I was going to bring his envelope out. Definitely a worth while project if he remembered it a year later! ... SO check 1 and 2 on resolutions within a month of 2012!

In March I surprised Jeremy with an overnight date at our favorite Bed & Breakfast. It was a great time for us to recharge and celebrate our 8th anniversary a little early. I LOVE that place and can't wait to go back again soon. That B&B has many sweet memories for us of refreshing times away, including the quick night away we took during Lincoln's first two months in the NICU. Hopefully we can steal away for another little "baby moon" before #2 makes his appearance (more on that later).

Potty training turned out to be the hardest resolution to accomplish! (And while I have an adorable pic of Lincoln checking out his awesome undies in the mirror, I will spare my son the embarrassment and not post a pic on this topic.) My unwilling subject continued to disagree with me on the need for using the potty. Luckily... just in time for him to start preschool... we were successful. Which brings us to September when the resolution I dreaded the most ended up being one of my favorites. I sent my sweet baby boy to preschool. He ran right in the room and has loved every minute of preschool since. My favorite part is that he tells me all about his day. I get to hear about all of his friends, what he did that morning, and how he loves his teachers. I love seeing him thrive in that environment!

The "do something unexpected" resolution I left open for a reason... obviously that I had no idea what it would be. I was looking forward to even surprising myself!!! In so many more ways than I did the surprising, God surprised me. For so long after Lincoln was born I refused the thought of going through all of that again. I was so afraid of what a second pregnancy would look like, how it would turn out, etc. I was scared! But we were challenged to trust God. We stepped out in faith and decided to try for one more biological child. (I am still holding out hope that God will add to our family through the blessing of adoption some day... but God made it clear that he wanted this baby born to this world at this time, so we obeyed.) I am 21 weeks and still trusting God that He has big plans in store for this little one!

So... looking ahead to 2013... if you aren't bored by my long-winded rantings. My goals, resolutions, whatever you want to call them... will be to have this baby. Beyond that I'm just going to take it one day at a time. (haha!) Goal #1 of the year will be to make it to 24 weeks... goal #2 is 30 weeks, goals 3-7 will be each week after that! Then I will happily welcome this little boy to the world! Can't wait to meet him... accept that I really would like to wait another 15 weeks before I do!!!