Holy guacamole how am I 30 weeks already?!? 10 weeks to go! EEK!

Here are the baby bump photos from the last four weeks. As you can see, I broke the trend of taking baby bump photos in the bathroom! 🙂

The baby and I have been doing / feeling great! This past Wednesday we reached the 27th week – crazy to think we’re in the third trimester now and that the baby will be here in just three months! And to think there was a point early on in the pregnancy where I felt like things were taking forever.

Things we’ve been working on:

• QT:  I know I say this a lot but time sure does fly by, which is why we’ve been trying to spend time talking to the baby, playing our favorite songs for him and letting him know how excited we all are for his arrival!
• Room:  Keith and I have been working to get the baby’s room in order. We’re painting his room this weekend, and just got his crib and chair delivered today.
• Registry:  Who knew that registering for baby items would be so intense – there’s just a ton of brands to choose from! In any case, we’ve been trying to fill out the registries with the necessities in preparation for our baby showers with family and friends in October.
• Baby Classes:  One thing Keith and I have been good about is scheduling our baby classes. We’ve registered for the Childbirth and Breastfeeding preparation, Newborn Care and CPR classes. Say goodbye to our weekends in October.
• Names:  This is by far the hardest thing we’ve had to do. At this point, we have a few contenders but nothing that has really stuck. We may have to wait until his arrival to see what name he “looks” like.

Here are the latest baby bump photos:

Being pregnant has been great so far. I’m very lucky and thankful it’s gone smoothly, and really hope this is how my future ones will go!

In the last few weeks, I’ve felt Chip Whitley (baby’s nickname for now) move quite a bit. He seems to move around most when I’m working and in the late evenings right before bed. I sure hope he’s one of those rare babies that sleeps through the night and maybe even sleeps in – I know Keith and I would appreciate that.

Whenever I feel the baby move, I have Keith put his hand on my belly to see if he can feel the movement. It wasn’t until the other day that Keith could feel the baby. Although it was just a tiny little kick or roll, it’s a moment I’ll never forget. I love seeing Keith’s face throughout this process – his face just lights up with a big smile on it. I can only imagine how much he’s going to love his little dude when he arrives and that’s the best feeling in the world.

Below are some recent baby bump photos. All taken in the bathroom of course. 🙂

We may not own a boat (and probably never will) but I had to get the baby his very first Sperry’s. I love when Keith wears his boat shoes so it was only suiting to get his mini me a pair as well. Plus, they were on sale at Nordies!

P.S. Now knowing the gender of the baby, I may have gone overboard with buying baby clothes and shoes. I hit up Nordstrom, Gap and Carter’s in the couple weeks – at least everything I bought was on sale right?!? 😉

Before I get to the main point of this post, I want to recall a few things that happened in the last couple weeks:

1) A few days before Keith and I found out we were having a boy, I had a dream about the baby. In the dream, I didn’t know the gender of the baby right away but saw it’s foot pushed against my stomach. I remember thinking that the foot seemed really big and it was also this bluish color since I was at an ultra sound in my dream. Towards the end of the dream, I had this inclination that the baby was a boy though it was never confirmed. That was the only time that one of my baby dreams revealed one gender or another – guess it was right. 🙂

2) At the ultra sound where we found out the gender of the baby, the technician taking the measurements commented a couple times on how big the baby’s feet were. She even stated that I was growing a puppy in my belly!

3) On another note, we were at Bartell Drugs the weekend before the party and were looking for a gag gift to use for the incorrect guess prize winner. Keith had suggested getting a random big foot figurine that was on the shelf with some other terrible Seattle chotskies. We decided against the big foot figurine as the prize giveaway but we still laugh just thinking about the stupid thing.

4) I had to go in for another ultra sound today to check the baby’s heart since my brother had a heart condition when he was younger and the doctor wanted to make sure it wasn’t hereditary. A different technician helped me this time and during the visit, she had also commented on how big the baby’s feet were!

Here’s a picture from today’s ultra sound – I think we’ll nickname him Big Foot for now. That was the main point of my post so sorry for the ramble.

Here’s a picture of the baby bump in full effect – this was taken just shy of our mid-way point.

Photo Credit:  Kerry Rickert

I have to admit, I thought I would be better at taking baby bump photos but I’ve been failing in this department. I blame the fact that I work from home and that the best photos I can get are taking selfies in the upstairs bathroom. 🙂

In any case, below are baby bump photos from the first half of my pregnancy.

Keith and I got married last Summer – September 14th, 2013 to be exact. We always knew that we wanted to start a family shortly after the wedding. Our hope was to have a baby before the end of 2014 and as luck would have it, our wish came true.

It was mid-March when we found out I was pregnant. The week prior, I had taken a pregnancy test before heading to Los Angeles for work. I wanted to be sure that if I was pregnant, I was careful about what I ate and drank. The pregnancy test came out negative so I thought I was good to go. The week after I still hadn’t gotten my monthly friend yet but assumed it was nothing given the fact that my cycles were majorly off (ranged from 24 – 38 days). I remember like it was yesterday. I was on the phone with Kerry that morning (our daily routine) and told her I hadn’t gotten my period yet. She suggested that I might as well take a pregnancy test since I still had one left over from the previous week. Sure, I thought, what the heck so I took the test – within a few minutes I saw a the solid test line appear and then the second, very faint / barely there line. I took a picture of the pregnancy test on my phone and texted it to Keith to see if he could see a line. He said he thought there was something there. As a third opinion, I texted the picture to Kerry who told me that “a line is a line”. When Keith got home from work, we decided to head to bartell drugs to pick up a backup pregnancy test. This time we opted for the digital kind that tells you “pregnant” or “not pregnant” which was simple enough. The next morning I had to get up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom (I think it was around 4 am). Half asleep I decided to go ahead and take the pregnancy test since I had to pee anyway. As I sat there for a couple minutes waiting for the results, I wondered how i would feel / react if it showed up positive. Within a few minutes, the verdict appeared…”pregnant.” I’ll be completely honest, I didn’t really react right away and this was most likely because I was half asleep. I went back into the bedroom and contemplated whether to wake up Keith with the news. I didn’t contemplate very long before I was poking him and whispering “Keith…Keith…”. He awoke and asked if everything was okay. With confidence, I responded with “the test was positive.” Keith’s reaction was much more lively at 4 am than mine – he was so excited and gave me a huge hug and repeated how happy he was. You would think it took us a while to go back to bed but nope, we were both back in a deep sleep within a few minutes.

When we finally got up for work, I showed Keith the test results and he was beyond excited. I think I was more happy to see him happy, then to know I was pregnant.

We had our first appointment with our doctor mid-april. The ultra sound confirmed that there was definitely something in there, though it looked more like a peanut (honestly, it kind of looked like a penis) than anything else. The doctor estimated the baby’s arrival to be November 26th, 2014, which means it could very well be a Thanksgiving baby.

As I look back on that mid-March day, I think about how I really felt deep down inside. I may not have showed it initially but I fell in love for a third time (Keith first, Pearl second) as I knew I would meet the other love of my life in 9 months.

baby carpenter

first appointment with the doctor