Weeks 17 to 23

So...I've been pretty behind on this whole blog thing lately.  I'm feeling SO much better and actually haven't thrown up at all for almost 3 weeks now...hallelujah!  I'm still pretty tired though, so sometimes life is just at a standstill.  Anyway, here's my attempt to catch up a little.

Rachel and I were together when I was 17 weeks and she was 29 weeks, so we got our picture together!

After we got our dining table (I need to post about that too!) I lost our photo studio in the empty green room, so we had a change of scenery for the weekly pictures.

And I don't have a 22 week picture since Trevor accidentally  deleted all of the pictures off of our camera before I got them uploaded to the computer.  Oops!  Oh well.

We're Having a...

BOY!!!

I just think he has the cutest little face in this next one...but maybe I'm already a biased mother!A hand and a foot....a little contortionist!His little foot...And the proof that he's a boy!

I honestly felt the whole time that this baby was a boy, but I'm not sure why. I can't say if it was maternal instinct or if I just was right on a 50/50 guess. Even though I thought it was a boy...I was still kind of in shock when the ultrasound tech said "I'm a Boy!" At the last minute, I just still felt like the Duffy's were only able to make girls (even though Rachel is due three months before me with a boy...but maybe that was just a fluke!?!?) :) Trevor was all smiles when he found out though and honestly after watching the baby move around for 5 minutes before we found out, I couldn't have cared less. I think it was the most amazing thing I've ever seen in my life. It's all so much more real now that there is actually a baby in there!

I started to look through Trevor's scrapbook the other day to see what he looked like as a baby boy. Here's a slideshow of him as a little boy that I made. I sure wouldn't mind our baby looking like him...I think he was a little cutie! Our good friend Paul sent us the song in the slideshow called "Anything Like Me" by Brad Paisley after he found out we were having a little boy. If any of you knew Trevor growing up, I think you'll know why Trevor and I are both a little scared we'll have a dare-devil that's full of energy that's anything like Trevor was! :)

We told my family on the phone since we knew we wouldn't be seeing them anytime soon. We waited until this past weekend to tell Trevor's family and my college roommates, Mary Ellen & Gladys, who were visiting. We decided to tell everyone by buying some black helium-filled balloons and filling them up with colored confetti (blue or pink) and having them pop them. We told Justin & Karen and Paul & Emily this way too, but Justin popped the balloon before Trevor and I were even outside so I didn't get it on video. Impatient I guess! :)

Here are the Goertzen's finding out:

They all were telling Allie "sorry" because she wanted a girl cousin so badly. She only has boy cousins right now...oh well! :)

Here are Mary Ellen & Gladys finding out. (Gladys is deathly afraid of balloons...don't ask! So they did theirs with nails on a stick). Gladys was very convinced it was a girl and definitely wanted it to be a girl since all of her friends/family have had boys lately and she wants to buy girl clothes. So that's why she had this reaction. She told me by the end of the weekend, that she was coming around to the idea of a boy though! :)

So all in all we couldn't be more excited! Only a little over 4 months left to wait!

#4: Visit Adam & Elaine in Arkansas

Over Memorial Day weekend we headed down to Little Rock with Trevor's parents to go to visit Adam & Elaine and go to Levi's 1st birthday party.   Adam & Elaine always seem to visit the whole family in Kansas and we don't make it down there enough. 

Levi had such a fun party.  Elaine and her mom made this amazing train cake.  We were all very impressed!

Levi was excited to open all his presents...

...and he was very good at ripping them open!

Elaine said that Levi was really into balls.  So we got him this ball popper.  Elaine apparently had the same idea, so he got two ball poppers.  Levi wasn't sure what to think of it though...I think he didn't like that it kept taking his balls.

The kids then spent time outside playing in the swimming pools and shooting each other with water guns.  After that, Levi got to dig into his cake!

The kids all got to pick which piece of cake they wanted.  (The adults were a little choosey too!)

It was hard to say goodbye to them all...especially to wave goodbye to this little cutie!

What's Your Guess?!?

We have our ultrasound on Thursday!  So the big question on our mind right now is "boy or girl?"   I have a hunch, but that's all it is...a hunch. 

I thought it would be interesting to see what you all think.  Vote for your guess!

We're not going to be able to share with everyone until we tell Trevor's family and my college roommates in person over the 4th of July weekend.  Hopefully I don't slip up and say "he" or "she" before then.

We'd also appreciate prayers that the baby is healthy and that everything looks good.  Thanks!

15 & 16 Week Pictures

My goal is to not turn this into "Stephanie's Pregnancy Blog", but since I don't journal or scrapbook this is where I have to record what's been going on.  So if you are one of the three people out there that actually care about the pregnancy, keep reading.  If not, just come back some other time! :)

We had our 16 week doctor's appointment last Wednesday and got to hear the heartbeat again.  The heartbeat was 153.  Nothing else too exciting at this appointment.  We scheduled our ultrasound for June 24th - that's when we'll get to find out the sex of the baby!

Here are a couple of pictures from the past two weeks.

   

I look like I've grown a lot in the 16 week picture, but in all fairness, it was taken at night, when I think I look a whole month farther along than I do in the morning.  I did finally start doing the rubber-band trick on my pants today...I don't know why I didn't do it sooner.  So much more comfortable!

We're Having a BABY!!

That's right, the little one is set to arrive November 13th and we couldn't be more excited! 

You might have noticed I have been MIA for the past 3 months...  I started out February by being out of commission with a case of Labyrinthitis, which is inflammation of the inner ear that causes you to constantly feel like the room is spinning.  Crazy stuff.   That took almost a month to go away, which was about the time we found out we were pregnant!  I had about a week of feeling pretty good, then I was hit hard with morning sickness, make that "ALL-DAY, 24/7, even wake-up-in-the-middle-of-the-night to throw up" sickness.  It was so bad I ended up taking short term disability from work for 4 weeks and then after that worked half-days in the afternoons for 2 weeks.  I am finally back to work full-time and am starting to feel human again, which is wonderful!!

Anyway, back to the good part of this all!  Trevor and I are already praying and dreaming about all that our little one is going to be.   We realize what an important and hard job we will have as parents and I have to admit that is a little nerve-racking, but we are ready for the challenge.   We're also very excited that this baby will have a cousin just 3 months older.  My sister Rachel is due August 22nd and is having a BOY!  We can hardly believe that there is going to be a boy in the Duffy family.

I don't know that I'm showing to other people, but my pants are definitely starting to get tight.  Here are just a couple pictures.

12 weeks

13 weeks

Trevor was very sweet and gave me this beautiful pearl necklace for my first Mother's Day gift!   (Excuse the scary picture...I felt weird just standing there so I thought I'd do something "fun"..and this craziness is what resulted.)

We also got to celebrate Mother's Day with Trevor's parents at a Mexican Restaurant halfway between us.  The waiter  saw we were taking pictures and gave his parents these sombreros! 

I can't wait until next Mother's Day...it's hard to imagine that we'll have a 6 month old baby!

#99: New Goal - Organize our Pantry

I decided after Christmas that my next goal would be to try and get our pantry more organized.   It's not terrible, but it could definitely use some more order.  My goal is to get some tools in place that help KEEP it organized.  Many times I've gone through and put things back in order after they've gotten strewn all over the place, but hopefully I can come up with some sort of a system that helps it stay in order!  We'll see. 

I took some pictures of the craziness the other day.   Tell me I'm not the only one who has a pantry like this!?

I think that one of the biggest problems is one of the things that I originally liked about the pantry.  It is big!  (Well, relatively anyway.  At least compared to what I was used to in apartments.)  It's not even that it's big...it's just deep.  When you have deep shelves, things tend to get lost and you can't easily see them.  I'm not sure what the solution is to that. 

While we're at it,  I'd also like to paint it white and either paint or replace the shelves.  I know it is just a pantry, but it drives me nuts to see shelves that look like this right now.

One of the biggest motivators for me to get going on this is that I received this from Trevor's parents for Christmas.  I'd been wanting to get some pantry organization that would keep things fresh.  I found some cheaper options than this, but I was worried how well they would work as far as really being air-tight.  I read a ton of reviews (yes, I research everything!) and these Oxo Pop Containers got great reviews over and over again.  They are a little pricey, but I figure they should last forever.  My goal is to still be using them in 20 years!

Does anyone have any other suggestions for organizational things that they've found helpful?  I've contemplated Lazy Susans, Baskets, Drawers, etc.

Hopefully I can come up with something better than we currently have.  I'm kind of a perfectionist, so I'm trying to adjust my expectations, because what I would really like, is something that looks like this all of the time....

I have a feeling that's not going to happen!