17 Week Bump Date

How Far Along: 17 Weeks as of yesterday.
 (You can check out my 17 week post from when I was pregnant with Jackson here.)

Size of Baby: (According to babycenter.com) 17 weeks: Your baby is about the size of a turnip. Your little turnip now weighs about 5 ounces and is roughly 5 inches long from head to bottom.

Total Weight Gain/Loss: I had a doctor's appointment yesterday and found out I've gained 10 pounds so far! Yikes!

Maternity Clothes: Yes, all maternity clothes.

Gender: A sweet baby girl!! (Still working on a name.)

Movement: I've felt a few flutters here and there, but nothing regular yet. I'm hoping to feel it more often soon.

 Food Cravings: No real cravings yet.

What I miss: Being able to sleep through the night and wear my wedding rings. They are already fitting tight. :-(

Sleep: Sleeping okay, just having to get up several times a night to use the restroom.

Symptoms: Having to use the restroom often.

Best Moment this week: Hearing our baby girl's strong heartbeat at the doctor's office yesterday.

What I am looking forward to: Thanksgiving dinner this Thursday and getting to spend time with family. I'm also looking forward to our gender scan sometime in the next week or so. We already know its a girl, but I always look forward to anytime I get to see her and this will more than likely be the last time before she's born.

A New Blog Design and Some Randoms!

-  Last week I decided to give myself a little blog design update! I've been loving the colors Navy and Yellow together and thought that would make a great color combo for a blog design. So I started putting it all together and I'm so happy with the result! I hope you all like it too. :-)

 - So, there must be something up with Blogger. :-( All of my posts in the last couple of weeks have been coming out way late for some reason. I've done a little research and it seems that some other people are having the same problem. Have any of you had this problem, and if so, is there a fix for it? I can't seem to find a way to fix it. :-(

- Last weekend, I had three photo sessions and they were all so fun. I feel like the more sessions I have, the more comfortable I get with it, which is great! For the longest time, I've been pretty nervous with each and every session I shoot. The lack of confidence and the fact that I'm not the most outgoing person, have been a bit of a challenge to overcome. But these sessions went so well and I seem to feel a little more confident with each session I have.

 Here's a little sneak peek of one of my favorite photos from each session. I'll have a more detailed post of each session once I get all the editing done. :-)

The Waltman Family

The Fitzpatrick Family

The Jacobs Family

- I'm so looking forward to Thanksgiving this year! We have the first of 2 family gatherings this Saturday. Bring on the Turkey and Pumpkin Pie!! :-)

I hope you're all having a GREAT week!

Project Life 2013: Week 36

Ugh, I'm so far behind, but I'm determined to get caught up! So here is my week 36 page from the first week of September. 

I used the Gratitude Full Kit Freebie from Word Art World.

16 Week Bump Date

How Far Along: 16 Weeks
 (You can check out my 16 week post from when I was pregnant with Jackson here.)

Size of Baby: (According to babycenter.com) 16 weeks: Your baby is about the size of an avocado. Your baby now weighs 3 1/2 ounces and is about 4 1/2 inches long from head to bottom.

Total Weight Gain/Loss: I go to the doctor next Monday, so I'll have a better idea then what my weight gain has been so far. At my 12 week appointment I was up 4 lbs.

Maternity Clothes: Yes, all maternity pants and some maternity shirts.

Gender: A sweet baby girl!! (You can read about how we found out here.)

Movement: I've felt a few flutters here and there, but nothing consistent yet.

Food Cravings: I had a yummy snow man sugar cookie Saturday morning from Starbucks and ever since then, I've been wanting another one.

What I miss: My wedding rings fitting. They are already pretty tight so I haven't been wearing them.

Sleep: Other than getting up multiple times to use the bathroom, pretty good.

Symptoms: Having to use the restroom often and a sensitive gag reflex.

Best Moment this week: Doing a little shopping for baby girl, getting to take a nice long nap yesterday afternoon and dinner out with friends this past Friday night.

What I am looking forward to: Feeling the baby move more, planning the nursery and deciding on a name.

5 on Friday

Yay for another Friday!!

I'm happy to be linking up with the fabulous girls above for another week of 5 on Friday!

For those that may have missed our Gender Reveal post earlier this week, we are having a baby GIRL and we're so excited!!!

My mom bought this Essie "No Chips Ahead" Top Coat and told me about it. She said it was great and she was right! I painted my nails on Saturday and have had no chipping in almost a week!! Amazing. I highly recommend it.

I'm excited to be spending this evening at dinner with friends tonight! There's 5 of us couples who are all looking forward to an "adult only" night out. Last time we all got together for dinner with no kids, was back in July, so this evening is well over due. We are going to Elephant Bar! I can't wait.

I'm also excited because tomorrow I have 3 photo sessions lined up!! November is turning out to be a busy month for Storybook Photography and I couldn't be happier!!

Jackson can now do all the actions to "The Itsy Bitsy Spider". It is so cute, I just have to share. :-)

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend!!

A Storybook Photography Photo Session - The Smiths

Here is the second photo session I've done this month. This is my Brother-in-Law and Sister-in-Law and their family. :-) We had a really fun time taking these pictures and it was a beautiful Fall day!

15 Week Bump Date

How Far Along: 15 weeks + 2 days.
 (You can check out my 22 week post from when I was pregnant with Jackson here.)

Size of baby: (According to babycenter.com) 15 weeks: Your baby is about the size of an apple. The future apple of your eye now weighs about 2 1/2 ounces and is 4 inches long from head to bottom.

Total Weight Gain/Loss: Around 4lbs. gained.

Maternity Clothes: I'm wearing all maternity pants now and a mixture of maternity shirts and regular shirts. I did some maternity clothes shopping over the weekend which was fun. :-)

Gender: We found out Monday that we are having a little baby GIRL! We are so excited! (You can read about how we found out here.)

Movement:  I think I've felt a few flutters here and there. Can't wait to feel it more often though.

Food Cravings: None yet. Just whatever sounds good at the time.

What I miss: Nothing at this point.

Sleep: Sleeping fine other than getting up a couple times to go to the bathroom.

Symptoms: Frequent trips to the bathroom and still pretty tired most days, but most other symptoms are fading away, thank goodness. My gag reflex is still so sensitive. It seems like when I was pregnant with Jackson it was really only sensitive in the first trimester, but with this pregnancy it's still very sensitive at 15 weeks. Brushing my teeth is a chore and not very fun.

Best Moment this week: Doing some shopping over the weekend and then finding out that we're having a girl Monday evening!

What I am looking forward to: Feeling more movement and hearing this sweet girls heartbeat at my next doctor's appointment on the 25th. I'm also looking forward to doing some shopping for baby girl, coming up with a name and planning her nursery. :-)

Sugar and Spice and Everything Nice...

...that's what little GIRLS are made of.

As many of you already know from Facebook and Instagram, Jake and I got to find out the gender of Baby#2 last night!! 

(Jackson admiring his new baby sister!)

... and we couldn't be happier!!! I may have even yelled "Yay" and clapped when she told us it was a girl! ;-) We are so excited!!

We'll have our actual gender scan at 18 weeks, but when I saw so many others getting to find out at 15 weeks, I looked into it and found a 3D/4D elective ultrasound center here in St. Louis that offered a special on Mondays for a discounted price. So after twisting Jake's arm, I called and scheduled us an appointment. :-) We didn't tell any of our family and friends so that it would be a fun surprise. 

It was such a fun little surprise and so cool to see our little baby girl moving all around in 3D. :-) Amazing in fact! We took Jackson along with us too and the three of us had a little celebratory dinner afterwards at the Olive Garden. (Thanks Chris and Holly.)

Here are a couple 3D pictures of our tiny little girl. 

In this one, her hand is up by her ear. The ultrasound tech said she's already on the phone. Ha.

In this one you can see her hands up by her cheek. So sweet. :-)

As for a name... well we're still working on that, but I'll let you know as soon as we figure it out. :-)

A Storybook Photography Photo Session - The Jacobs

I had two photo sessions over the weekend. The first was for my Sister and her family. The Fall colors were so vibrant this past weekend and so pretty! Here are a few of our favorites.

14 Week Bump Date

How Far Along: 14 weeks today.
(You can check out my 14 week post from when I was pregnant with Jackson here.)

Size of baby: (According to babycenter.com)14 weeks: Your baby is about the size of a lemon. Your baby – now weighing roughly 1 1/2 ounces and measuring about 3 1/2 inches from head to bottom – can squint, frown, grimace, pee, and possibly suck her thumb.

Total Weight Gain/Loss: Around 4lbs. gained.

Maternity Clothes: I'm wearing mostly all maternity pants plus some maternity shirts and still some regular shirts.

Gender: We should be able to find out in about 4 weeks. Sometime in early December. I can't wait.

Movement:  I think I've felt a few flutters here and there. Can't wait to feel it more often though.

Food Cravings: None yet. Just whatever sounds good at the time.

What I miss: Nothing at this point.

Sleep: Sleeping fine other than getting up a couple times to go to the bathroom.

Symptoms: Frequent trips to the bathroom and still pretty tired most days, but most other symptoms are fading away, thank goodness.

Best Moment this week: Having a pretty relaxing weekend and gaining an hour of sleep thanks to Daylight Savings Time ending Sunday morning.

What I am looking forward to: Getting to find out the gender of the baby next month and starting to feel the baby move. Happy to finally be in the second trimester!! :-)

**And just for fun, here's a comparison from 6 weeks to 14 weeks of this pregnancy. :-)

Five on Friday!

Yay for Friday!

We had so much fun trick-or-treating last night. We had my parents, my sister and her family, Jake's mom, brother and his family and all his nieces and nephews over. We ate pizza and then took all 10 kids out trick-or-treating! We went around our whole block and got a whole bunch of candy! Jackson had so much fun and did so good! We ended the night in his Halloween Jammies, watching "It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown". I really didn't think he would sit and watch it since it's an older cartoon, but he was glued to the t.v. the entire time! So sweet and such fun memories!

These two were so into it this year. They didn't want anyone to help them with their buckets, Ha! They held onto them the whole time!

Our whole parade of trick-or-treaters.

 

While trick or treating, we ran into Darth Vader. :-)

I'm so happy to have a free evening tonight! It's been a while since I've had nothing to do on a Friday night. October is such a busy month for us with birthday parties and fall activities, I haven't had an evening free in a long time! I plan on doing a whole bunch of NOTHING tonight. :-)

Now that Halloween is over, I'm already getting excited for Thanksgiving! Bring on the turkey, chicken and dumplings and pumpkin pie!! Being pregnant during the holidays is gonna be fun! :-)

Starting next week, my dad will be putting a second bathroom in our house!! I'm so excited. We've lived in our house for 6 years now with one small bathroom. It will be so nice to have another bathroom and will make selling our house, in the next couple years, a little bit easier too. :-) It's going in our basement, which will be so convenient when we are down in the family room. I will be sure to post pictures when it's done. 

Jackson had his 2 year Dr. check-up this past Monday. He weighed 31.4 lbs (75-90%) and he measured 37 inches tall (95%). He's getting so big! He had to get 2 shots (one of those being the flu shot) and have some blood drawn for a lead test, which wasn't fun, but all things considered, he did pretty well and enjoyed his cookies for being such a good boy! That should be the last of the shots until Kindergarten, thank goodness!

Have a GREAT weekend everyone!