Today marks 32 weeks, or about 8 months of pregnancy. I am definitely getting close, and my goodness am I getting more anxious! I have such a strong craving to snuggle this baby boy in my arms, and I am counting down the days (the best I can) until I can do just that. Luckily, in the mean time, I have a little girl who has been extra snuggly with her mama lately! In the last few months’ updates, I mentioned how fast this pregnancy has gone, and for the first 6 months, that was true. But now that I am in my third trimester, I feel like time is going in slow motion. I think because I became more physically uncomfortable earlier in the pregnancy, it has caused me to feel like I’ve been 8 or 9 months pregnant for several months now. I am coming down the home stretch now, and our little guy really will be here in about 8 weeks!

How I’m feeling:

Like I’ve said before, I am so grateful to even be pregnant and get to experience the miracle of life, but now I’m kinda ready to have my body back. Overall, compared to what some other pregnant women have gone through, I feel great. It’s more the little things that aren’t as big of a deal if you don’t have another little one to care for at home. My lower back is in so much pain by the end of the day that I can barely stand. I’ve been having extremely uncomfortable hip pain and pressure that makes it hard to even walk across the room. I already feel bloated everywhere and feel like a beached whale when I try to stand up or roll over. Let’s just say I’m ready for this baby to come for more than one reason.

Baby Size:

Right now, baby boy should be about 4 pounds and the size of a head of lettuce. This whole pregnancy I have felt much bigger than my last pregnancy, but this is the first week that I feel like I am starting to even out a bit. I am definitely still bigger, but it isn’t as much of a difference in the two pregnancies like it used to be. Either way, I am to that point where it is a daily challenge to find something to wear!

Wild Man:

I heard somewhere that around this stage is when you feel the baby move a little less because they don’t have enough room to make as big of movements…not the case with this kid! He is kicking me stronger than ever, to the point where it hurts. Even so, I am still so grateful for every movement I feel. Something tells me that this boy will have his Grandma Bev’s energy just like Kinsie, because he is moving more than he is still! He is especially active around 9 or 10pm, and Ryan and I will just watch my belly move around for extensive periods of time.

Here is a video I took the other day that shows a little bit of his wild side!

Other baby updates:

Baby’s name: We have names narrowed down to our top 3, but we haven’t made any decisions from there yet. Mainly because we have reasons why we really like all 3, and we really can’t decide which one is our absolute favorite. When we do choose, we are planning on keeping it a secret until his birth day.

Baby’s nursery: The only thing I’ve really had time/energy to do so far is buy stuff for the nursery (mainly online shopping). The room will really be the nursery/office because we only have one bedroom left, and we still need a place to put Ryan’s desk and all of our book shelves. The office has also been somewhat of a storage area the last couple years, so Ryan finally had an extra hour last weekend to go through all of that stuff and find another place for it. Now that I am on my 2-week spring break, my only goal is to finally be able to work on the nursery. My nesting instincts have been in overdrive for months now, but now I finally have a little bit of time to work on it. Because of the current colors of the wall (dark red and tan), we decided to go with a sock monkey theme (both Kinsie and Uncle Nate love sock monkeys, so we figured they would be happy!) My mom and I have found some really cute sock monkey decor, so I am excited to finally start setting things up. Once I’ve made some progress, I will post pictures!

What else we’ve been up to this month:

I’ve been doing my best to get through a rough time of the school year…the end of winter and ISTEP testing. Any other teachers out there know the torture of standardized testing! We still have one more round of testing after spring break, but after that we’re done for the year. Ryan is finishing up his Internal Medicine rotation, which has been a rough one. He has been working 80+ hours weekly. Most days he works from 7am – 5pm, but every fourth night, he works from 7am – 9pm (sometimes later). These nights are the worst because he doesn’t even get to see Kinsie, and we don’t get our much needed daddy time. Luckily, this is the last week for this rotation, then he moves on to a Psych rotation, which SHOULD have better hours.

At least now we are getting to experience a little bit of spring time. The weather has been random, but we have had several beautiful days so far. We get outside whenever we can, and lately, Kinsie’s biggest goal in life is finding a good worm to become friends with!

We started up gymnastics again this month, and Kinsie is loving it just as much if not more than she did last fall. It is amazing the improvements we’ve seen in her agility since November. She is still in the “Mommy & me” class, but now that she is 2 and a half (stay tuned for a blog post about this soon), she is old enough for the next class up where we would not be out there with her. I think she may be ready for this class in a few weeks, but I’m still a little skeptical because she isn’t the best at following the teacher’s directions yet!

Well, I hate to say it but I think Kinsie is officially done with regular naps. Not the best timing, considering I need naps more than ever when I’m home on the weekends. Even though she isn’t taking regular naps anymore, if we put her in the car in the late afternoon to drive anywhere, she is out like a light! She falls asleep almost every time Aunt Renata brings her home on days she watches her, so she’ll bring her in and lay her down on the couch, and sometimes she keeps snoozing for a little while!

We also officially transitioned Kinsie to her big girl bed! We figured this was a good time with the baby coming, and since we’ve given up on naps anyway. She’s obsessed with it. She had her first night in the bed last night and did great. She fell out of the bed a couple times (luckily it is a very short drop and her blanket was under her when she fell), so that will be a little bit of an adjustment. Whenever she doesn’t take a nap, she’s usually exhausted by bed time, so we probably won’t have to worry quite as much about her running around the room or trying to escape!

We are all anxiously waiting for May to get here…even Kinsie. She is constantly hugging and patting my belly, and telling me she loves her baby. The other day she even lifted up my shirt trying to find him because she wanted to see him! I can’t blame her one bit…I want to see him too!