23 Weeks

Wow, the past month has been a whirlwind! Dec 8th was a phenomenal day where we closed on our new house in the morning then had our 20week ultrasound anatomy scan in the afternoon! As you can tell from the last post, we're having a BOY! It's so exciting knowing what the gender is for sure, and cool that the initial 12 week scan prediction ended up true. The past few weeks have been chaotic with moving/unpacking/holiday shopping/travel for Christmas, but now we're feeling more settled at our new place and the nesting bug is kicking in.

It's been so fun planning for our son's arrival - we bought his very first outfit to hang in his future closet for inspiration to start his nursery. It is an adorable onesie with whales and says "Little Squirt" :) We also got some cute baby items for Christmas including an adorable print of Paris that will be framed and hung in the nursery from Danielle and Scott, a beautiful "The Night before Christmas" book and pillowcase from mom and dad, and can't-handle-the-cuteness tiny socks that look like sneakers from Joe's parents. It's fun to watch Baby B's closet fill with special items from our family and friends.

We've used our break to start working on the house a bit. We selected the color for the nursery - Cumberland Fog by Behr. It is a light greyish blue that will make a calming backdrop to add some fun pops of color through curtains and fabrics.

Behr Cumberland Fog

I've had fun "pinning" inspirational photos for Baby B's nursery on pinterest. You can follow my board here. I need to start my registry soon, so this board will just keep growing! Stay tuned for nursery progress photos as it starts to come together.

Other baby happenings:

• The name hunt has started with full force. I bought Joe "The Baby Name Wizard" book for Christmas, which is full of useful information on the popularity of names and groups names into categories. We've been going through the book and making independent lists of what we like. Once we're done, we'll compare and hopefully find some we both like and start the selection process! I think we're generally on the same wavelength with tastes, so hopefully this will not be a big battle, but we want to get it right as a name is a big deal! Either way, the name will be kept a secret until baby's big arrival - it's fun to make the birth announcement with the name for the first time :)

Maybe "THE" name is in here??

• We visited our first 2 daycare centers today. It's crazy that it's something you have to decide upon so early (I'm not even into my third trimester yet!), but that's the way it is. Both daycares we visited were actually very nice - I had a lot of nervousness/apprehension about how it would be, but I really feel like our baby would be in good hands in either place. The nice thing is they are both extremely close to my work - maybe 5 min away - and open during the day for visits, so in the beginning I plan on using my lunch break to come spend time and check in on how he is doing. We may look into a few others before making a final decision, but I'm glad we started the process early enough to avoid waitlists and choose the place that we feel the most comfortable with.
• I have my next monthly doctor's appointment next week (24 weeks). I will soon have to complete the glucose tolerance test, which I am not looking forward to (apparently the sugary drink is pretty gross)! Fingers crossed that everything will look good and I can cross another milestone off my pregnancy accomplishments.

As far as my pregnancy, the second trimester has really been fantastic. I don't really even feel pregnant most of the time. I have been feeling lots of pokes and kicks from Baby B, which I've been enjoying since it's a sign that he is doing well in there! Joe felt the baby kick for the first time right before Christmas - it was such a touching moment. My appetite is back to normal with me being able to eat most foods without any issues. I wouldn't say I've hit the "I'm starving all the time" pregnancy symptom yet though - my appetite is pretty similar to what it was pre-pregnancy. I probably get full a bit faster if anything since there is getting to be less room in there for food! No specific cravings to report. My belly is growing fast, but still smaller than I had imagined I'd be by this point (not complaining!) I hate that I slacked on taking photos over the last month, but here I am at 23 weeks (in our new house!)

23 Weeks!

I'm solely wearing maternity pants at this point. I probably could still fit into some of my non-maternity pants, but it just feels uncomfortable to have anything too constricting on my belly. I'm starting to require maternity tops, which I haven't been wearing previously. A shopping trip for extra long sweaters is in order! 

That's all for now - time to head to bed in preparation for starting back at work tomorrow after my nice and long winter break! Gotta buckle up - no more days off from tomorrow until baby B comes!