Pregnancy Update - 37 Weeks

We are officially considered full term y'all! This means the term "any day now" is being spoken by pretty much every single person I come into contact with... as if I am not already aware of that already. :)
Onto the update!
 
How far along: 37 weeks 
Total weight gain/loss: 23 lbs. gained... That's another +2 since last week! I'm definitely getting the pregnant lady face and I am trying not to let myself call it "looking fat" because it really isn't. My doctor did give me "the eyebrows" today, though, so I know its a little bit much. So my task for this week is to watch what I'm eating a bit better... I gots to be a healthy momma!
Maternity clothes: Even my maternity tops are having trouble covering my whole belly. I pretty much stay in tank tops because of the heat and there is typically a 2-3 inch view of my skin between the top of my pants and the bottom of the tank tops. It's pretty hot.
Stretch marks: Still none and I am so so happy about this!
Sleep: I actually only woke up with the night sweats once this last week, and my aches and pains seem to be better too. I don't know if I'm just more used to it now or what, but I'm not complaining!
Best moment this week: Most definitely the shower my Clarksville girlfriends threw for me! My mom and sister were able to come in for it too and having them finally meet this amazing group of girls I have here was so fun for me. It was a wonderful time full of many laughs, great food, and the most amazing gifts a girl could ask for! I even got a jogger stroller!!! Clarksville Greenway- get ready for Momma Wohlford to take you down!
Movement: Tyson got to show off quite a bit this week for my parents, sister, and friends. I will just lay down and people can watch him roll around. Its kind of gross and weird but for me its just so unbelievable that he is really right there... Ahhh!!!!
Food cravings: Its back to the Dr. Pepper, nutella & strawberries, and cucumber water!
Food aversions: Still the meats and anything super greasy and heavy.. yuck!
Labor Signs: Still just Braxton Hicks. Also last week at our 36 wk. appointment I was not dilated at all. Still have a bit to go I guess!
Belly Button in or out? Still in but when I sit up from laying down it literally looks like it is about to pop out any second. I think its gonna make it though.
What I miss: The physical freedom to move and do what I want with my body. Being a dancer, I have always had a kind of unique connection to my body and movement... Dancing gives you such a sense of control and release, both physically and emotionally, (although I'm not dancing in a company anymore, I would still dance all around the house almost on a daily basis... if you are a dancer you know what I'm talking about) and for that to be almost impossible for me now is very sad.
What I am looking forward to: Right now I'm kind of having tunnel vision for labor and the whole birthing process so honestly I'm not even thinking about life after that. I guess I could say I am really looking forward to seeing Justin hold his son... he is beyond excited and the thought of seeing him finally get to hold this little person he already loves so so much is enough to make me cry. I need to focus on that... the pain will be so worth it just to see them together...
Weekly Wisdom: Ask your friends for help and advice. I am a pretty anxious person in general and right now I feel like I could almost explode with all the emotions I am feeling. The one singular thing that I am clinging to right now is my friends, family and of course Justin because I know they will keep me smiling and laughing even when I am feeling more afraid than I ever have in my entire life. In a way, they are holding my hand through all this, but people can only be there for you when you allow them to be, so I think my wisdom is to be open and fill your whole heart with the love of everyone around you. For me that's the only way I am even functioning right now...
Milestones: This date, August 1st, is a huge milestone for me... its the month I become a Mom. Aaaaand that sentence makes me want to throw up... did I mention I'm an anxious person?

We will be posting the nursery reveal tomorrow! Stay tuned!

the lemon anniversary

To start off I have to acknowledge that, yes, I totally missed our actual anniversary for our anniversary post. I had an excuse though... I was eight months pregnant and we were driving back from a trip to Michigan and had stopped in Louisville, KY for a quickie anniversary celebration.

I guess you could say I was tired, and that whole following week I was even more tired and the idea of documenting our not-so-amazing anniversary trip sounded like hell. So I put it off until now because now that I have more energy I just cannot pass up the chance to say a couple of nice things about marriage, tell you our hilarious story from Louisville, and best of all, to post some fun photos of anniversary trips past where I happen to look a lot skinnier than I do now (which when you are growing a baby inside of you and gaining over a pound a week you need to look at skinny pictures of yourself to feel happy).

Anyhoo...

So July 11 was our second wedding anniversary and July as a month is the marker of us being together for five years. (See, I guess I'm not really technically late on this post after all!) For every single one of our "anniversaries", starting with our first year of dating, we have traveled to a new place to celebrate. Our first was in Denver, CO. in 2007.

Don't we look SO young there! Ahhh to be 22 again... Anyways our second anniversary we spent in Asheville, NC and this happened to be when Justin decided to propose! So sweet!

Our third anniversary/honeymoon was in Key West. We love that we got married in July, which was the same month we began dating, because we kind of just get to keep on counting the years. I guess technically is starts over here though... Anyways, Key West was AMAZEBALLS!

I love you Key West... We'll come visit soon I promise.

Ok moving on to our first official wedding anniversary. We decided to keep it a little light and just took a quick weekend trip to Atlanta where we had a nice romantic evening followed by a great day at Six Flags where we got to unleash our inner kid... well who am I kidding. We are just big kids every day!

Selecting only two photos from each of our anniversaries was pretty hard for me. There are so many fun memories we have captured with so many great pictures and looking through them all has me smiling from ear to ear. I'd like to think its pretty obvious we have a blast with each other; Justin is by far my all time favorite travel buddy for sure. So when I looked back through the pictures from our second anniversary trip/pit stop to Louisville, KY and found only one picture of the two of us I knew it was as bad as I remembered. And this one picture wasn't a cute dinner picture or anything... it's this crap-

Yup... our reflection in a freaking window. Awesome. Let me explain...

This anniversary trip was essentially a tack-on to our trip up to Michigan for some good friends' wedding. I guess this would mean it started on our way out of Michigan Sunday July 10th... the day before our actual anniversary. This day started out pretty rough, as any morning after a wedding does. Justin was a little hungover and I was dog tired from staying up way too late two nights in a row. I decided to drive however, to let Justin sleep off a little of his yuckiness. Within the first hour, we got the first sign that the rest of this trip was going to suck... We got a phone call that we had left all of our hang-up clothes back at the hotel in Brighton, MI. Greeeeeaaaaatt. An hour and a half later we start the trip again, with both of us being that much more cranky.

I have to say here that Justin has been the most amazing, supportive and perfect guy for this entire pregnancy, but today, well this was not his day. He was not in a "coddle-my-pregnant-wife" mood whatsoever and without boring you with the actual meat of the fight, I'll just tell you that it ended with me not talking to him for the remaining six hours of the trip. SIX HOURS. If you have met me even once, you know that me not talking for six hours is unthinkable, yet it happened. It really did.

So we pull up at our absolutely incredible, romantic hotel and Justin is trying his best to snap me out of the cold shoulder attitude from hell. He even asks for an upgrade to a room with a tub knowing that a bath would be the perfect thing for his tired and sore eight months pregnant wife. That was a no-go but usually the gesture would have been rewarded with some love from me, but not today buddy. I was like Stone Cold Steve Austin's evil twin. After getting up to the room we begin talking about dinner; well he is talking about dinner while I maintain a "I don't care where we eat" attitude. I know, real mature. Anyways, he gets it out of me that I'd like Italian, yet after finding out that pretty much every restaurant in good ole Louisville is closed on Sundays, we decide on Macaroni Grill.... because ya know, I didn't even care.

Pulling up to our anniversary dinner at a chain Italian restaurant we should have known... the parking lot was empty and I swear I saw a dust thingy roll by. But in we go, and there were surprisingly a few people in the restaurant. The hostess tries to seat us at a table, where I bitterly say I'd prefer a booth. Maybe she didn't like how I asked because I swear she sat us at the most uncomfortable booth on the planet. So as we sit really awkwardly in this booth from hell our server comes up and poor thing could already feel the tension. He asks for our drink orders as quickly as possible and runs off to get away from the really pissed off couple... well the really pissed off huge pregnant woman. He then brings us our waters, which are served in the sorriest little glasses I have ever seen (strike two) and while he is standing there I ask him where the Ravioli Formaggi is on the menu. "We don't have that on the menu anymore, mam". Oh. Hell. No. And this is where I crack... the last seven hours of me maintaining what I thought was a calm, collected but really super pissed off attitude then immediately turned into a pathetic, bawling mess of a pregnant woman. It was awkward.

I could go on for three more paragraphs about how terrible this meal was. Poor Justin, poor server and poor me. It was awful. We left after eating mere bites of our disgusting food and were driving back to the hotel when we decided to just quickly drive by and say hello to a friend who was also in town at the time. I mean its not like we were heading back to the hotel for nookie or anything so why not hang out with friends at a bar on your anniversary. We were on the road to the bar when the clouds parted a bit and God sent me a little angel.

As we were driving we spotted a sign that read Homemade Ice Cream & Pie Kitchen and I almost started crying again, but this time out of happiness. Justin, who was just happy to see me smiling for a change, immediately parked the car and we went in where I took approximately ten minutes to narrow my order to some homemade birthday cake ice cream, that had actual chunks of real yellow cake in it, and this little guy:

Note to anyone reading this: If you see a pregnant woman who is sad, give her a cookie monster just like this and all will be right in the world.

We ended up having a total blast with our friends that night, and when we came back to the hotel we were in love and happy again, which I guess is why we decided to pull out the camera and take the one picture we got of us from the entire trip. The next day was good too, well as far as "us" being good. As things continued to go wrong in the same fashion as the whole Macaroni Grill incident, we just laughed about it. We had planned to do some antiquing to find ourselves our usual anniversary gift (I forgot to mention that we always buy a gift for ourselves on each of our trips instead of buying individual gifts) but every single store in that damn city was closed. "Oh well", we said, "We'll just go to a cool restaurant to make up for a crappy dinner last night". Negatron. Every restaurant we wanted to try was closed. Still happy and in love though we decided to go to Texas Roadhouse as a kind of throw back to the place we met... sweet right. We head to the closest one which was in Indiana, believe it or not, got stuck in terrible traffic, decide to go to a different location in KY and when we roll up it was the freaking dust thingys again, yet this one was actually CLOSED! Seriously?! They didn't open until 4:00...

Things like this continued on all day but each time we only laughed a little harder and in a strange way it only made the whole day better. That's the thing with me and Justin, the world can be going to crap, but its all ok as long as we are "us", meaning that we aren't in a stand-off of crankiness. It was a lesson to try and take some things a little less seriously, because fights can be so dumb. I don't want to be quiet for that long ever again, because in those seven hours of me pouting, we probably missed out on some great things. I know fights will happen, but when they do, I want to try and resolve them quickly and move on to keep living this great little life. Love is so much more fun...

Looking back on how terrible this anniversary was I know that it was exactly what it was meant to be. As everything around us was going wrong, we could still look at each other and get that pit of your stomach raw feeling of happiness and just smile. To be more in love with every anniversary that passes, well, to me that is the greatest anniversary present of all.

I am so so lucky. Love you J.

proof that nesting is very real...

... and makes you very crazy.

This is our fridge. It may look normal from far away but what is that?! Is that a humungous list pinned up there?! Why yes, yes it is...

Remember that list I mentioned in a pregnancy update a week ago? Well this is it, displayed in full view of us everytime we walk past the refridgerator... and who am I kidding, with me being 8.5 months pregnant and Justin having intense sympathy hunger pains, well, we are around this little zone quite often. It must be working because in the week since its been up we seem to have crossed off a number of items! Although we keep adding them too... like for instance I just remembered we still have to buy the big mama-jama breast pump eventually. I'll go add that now before I forget...

Welcome to crazytown everyone...

Pregnancy Update - 36 Weeks

36 Weeks - 7.25.11

Wow look at my eyes... I guess stoner eyes can now also be called pregnant eyes. Whatever, I'm tired!

Onto the weekly update: 

How far along: 36 weeks 
Total weight gain/loss: I weighed myself this morning... I am now at 21 pounds gained! Ahhh... thats two pounds gained in one week! I hope this is ok and it's definitely going on my questions list for our OB appt. tomorrow... 
Maternity clothes: Dresses are becoming my best friend. 
Stretch marks: Still none but if I keep gaining at this rate I don't know if I'll make it the whole way! Ahh! 
Sleep: The latest and greatest night time fun has been night sweats. I get them almost every night around 3 am and I end up leaning into the freezer for about 5 minutes to cool off. I'm also hungry ALL THE TIME now so this usually ends up with me eating something while I'm standing in front of the freezer... Saturday night it was Oreos (because they were sitting right on the counter!... who leaves Oreos out on the counter with a 8.5 months pregnant woman in the house?!) and I guess I ate a lot because Justin had a heart attack when he saw the almost empty package. Aaand now the whole gaining two pounds last week is making a little more sense... 
Best moment this week: While at Wal-Mart yesterday, a complete stranger came up to tell me that I was one of the cutest pregnant people she had ever seen. I feel like this was a treat from God because at that moment I was feeling at my worst! I realized then that pregnant people need compliments from strangers because we feel so terrible that we honestly don't believe you if you are family or a friend trying to say something complimentary... you all have to be nice to us! 
Movement: I am much more used to his craziness now although when he tries to break out of my sides that still hurts like hell. 
Food cravings: I had a craving for cucumber water this week. We will probably be keeping this in the house for the rest of the summer. It's so refreshing!!! 
Food aversions: The textures of most meats are really grossing me out... Chicken, steak, pork... I can't eat any of it. 
Labor Signs: Tons of Braxton Hicks but nothing more. 
Belly Button in or out? Still in! 
What I miss: Laying on my stomach. 
What I am looking forward to: This weekend my parents and sister are coming in town to help us with some last minute stuff around the house and to also go to a shower being thrown by my BFFs in Clarksville. I am so so excited for the weekend to get here!!! 
Weekly Wisdom: Sunburns + Pregnancy = Misery... Wear a higher SPF!!! I went to the pool on Sat. for only two hours, and I even applied sunscreen twice! Still, I fried. I guess spf 15 doesn't stand a chance protecting a pasty girl like me... 
Milestones: Washing all of Tyson's clothes, sheets, etc! I have been DREADING this because I hate laundry more than anyone I have ever known... until now! With every little onesie it started to sink in more and more and I just had a blast looking through everything again. I even enjoyed matching up his socks! Who woulda thought!? It felt really good to get this part done and I feel like we are that much closer to being ready for our little man to get here!!!

Stay tuned for the big nursery reveal! We plan to get the last minute touches done this week and will get together a big post for yas then! It's coming together so well and we just love it!

trips to the park

One of our favorite things to do with our dogs, Boone & Rocky, is to take them to a local park just down the road from us. We would go to the dog park here but Rocky has some social issues (devil growls are kind of embarrassing in public) and Boone gets so distracted by the other dogs he doesn't get enough exercise to wear him out (if you have a lab or any other hyper dog you know that wearing them out is KEY to your personal sanity at home). The park is called Swan Lake Sports Complex and it is usually pretty empty aside from a random baseball practice or some informal tennis matches up at the courts area. There is SO much space for us to throw the ball to Boone and with it being pretty deserted usually, Rocky gets to run around off leash also and we don't have to watch him in fear of him provoking some other dog to kill him. Its the perfect set up and its always a fun time when we go here.

The whole routine starts with us filling up our water jug which is a tell tale sign to Boone that he is going to the park and he will immediately start running around the house freaking out with excitement of all the fun that he is about to have. Rocky also gets excited but he typically just runs downstairs and waits for us since he is the smarter of the two and just wants to make sure he doesn't get left behind because of said social issues. Once we all get downstairs, we get the leashes on the dogs, and make them wait by the door while we get the 4 Runner all opened up and ready for them. Once they're in, they poke their heads out the back window and we're off!

 The drive is just as much fun as the actual park time to them and one of my favorite things ever is seeing the drivers behind us smile at the sight of two dogs enjoying life so much. Once we get there and scope out the situation (how many people are around and if everyone would be cool with us turning this family sports park into our personal doggie playground) we let the pups out and start the fun.

The area we go to is a little benched sitting area around a memorial garden and we set up shop there with the water bowl and our huge water jug. The time is usually spent with Justin and I laughing at our dogs, talking about random things, and just enjoying the outdoors. Sometimes I'll walk around and say hi to a stray dog that lives there or I'll sit up on the hill and watch Justin try to get Boone to catch the ball in his mouth from a hundred feet away. We both will take turns throwing the ball to Boone with our much loved Chuckit and a few times we'll make sure to include Rocky and throw it to him too, although he is usually content with just rolling around in the grass and peeing on random bushes.

Boone is our tennis ball obsessed baby and his enthusiasm for this game is neverending. We usually cut him off at a very specific time that is expressed when his breathing starts to have a wheezing sound and he slows his pace when returning to us with the ball. Although there have been a few times that he cuts himself off and will walk straight to the car and lay down as if saying "allright Mom & Dad, I'm done", he typically would play with that dang ball for way longer than we can stand.

The trip home is much different than the ride there. Instead of hyper excited dogs shoving their heads out the back windows we have two dogs laid out in the back of our truck, drooling all over every surface. The time it takes them to get back into the house is almost quadrupled from the time it took them to get out to the car from the house. And the stairs from the basement... thats the best part! Boone will always stop at the bottom, look up, then look at us as if we would ever carry his 85 lb. butt, then back up at the stairs. He usually takes a good "come on Boone, let's go!" before starting his unbearable walk up to the kitchen and once upstairs he falls flat out on the wood floor by the front door. This is our biggest reward... seeing our pups so tuckered out we know the next 24 hours are going to be quiet and easy with calm cuddly dogs.

Its a fun little routine that I'm sure I told in WAY too much detail but its a really special thing for us. It's times like these that we cherish and love and we are so grateful for the freedom and time to make these memories together. I only hope that when Tyson gets here we will still be able to sit back and soak up life's simplest moments with as much gusto as we do now. Life is just way too short to do it any other way...

snack time

This is one of our favorite snacks these days... a bowl of strawberries, a jar of nutella and a glass of ice cold milk. Here is the process: Fork dipped into nutella, fork picks up strawberry, fork into mouth.... rinse with milk and repeat. Uh... YUM!

there is something scary in the backseat!

Yesterday when I got home from work, Justin told me he had something scary to show me. Anytime anyone says anything about something being scary my very first words are "is it a snake?!". Once they roll their eyes and say no I can start breathing again and so as Justin reassured me he was not about to show me a snake I followed him down to our driveway. This is where he proceeded to open the door to our 4Runner and show me our baby boy's car seat all attached and ready to go.

We both stood there a little bug eyed for a second then looked at each other with our classic "oh, shit" faces. After another second we both relaxed and began to smile at each other as we realized this is really happening... we are weeks away from having our little man in our arms.

Its a mix of happiness, terror, anxiousness and love and we are just trying to enjoy this crazy time in our lives before things are about to explode into a whole different reality. There are plenty of times, though, that this doesn't even feel real. I will completely forget that I am even pregnant at certain points throughout the day and when I see myself in the mirror I have to do a double take. Today though I have had plenty of reminders. Every time I turn around in the car and see this:

... Well it all comes rushing in and my eyes bug out and I may or may not even curse out loud in shock. It never fails, though, that those scared emotions ease off and it always ends with a smile. This is really happening and we absolutely cannot wait!