Nora's 6 Month Photos

Authentic Joy Photography

Nora is now 7 months old and it kind of blows my mind. Honestly in most ways I still don't feel like I have a grasp on life with two kids.  A super trivial example being this blog.  I haven't even finished Nora's Birth Story post from... well 7 months ago now.  I love blogging to keep a journal of sorts about our family and it's something I always mean to and want to sit down to do, yet there just doesn't seem to be time. Or rather when there occasionally is "free" time, I choose to A) eat lunch B) shower or C) do something productive around the house.  It almost never makes it to a D) something I'd love to do but it doesn't actually have to get done.

So at least right now I can do a short post and add the pictures from Nora's 6 month shoot.  (6 months... almost 7... my brain is technical about that type stuff.)

Nora's photos are by Authentic Joy Photography, a couple that goes to our church.  We love our pictures and will definitely be using them again! (That is if they will want to work with us after the Owen fiasco during the shoot!) If you need a SA photographer you should totally check them out. 

Nora is such a sweetheart.  We love her to pieces.  The first two months with her were pretty rough.  If I ever manage to get around to writing more to fill in all the details I will do so, but to sum up briefly she ended up having a dairy and soy intolerance. I cut out dairy at one month and then also cut out soy at two months and since then she has been completely content and joyful and oh so smiley and sweet : )

She is however still a poor sleeper.  I knew we got lucky with Owen being a great sleeper and I guess we couldn't get that lucky twice.  I still feel like I'm usually running on too little sleep and low energy and bedtime has always been difficult with her.  I'm sure there are other kiddos and situations that are much more challenging, but at least for us especially compared to what we experienced with Owen, her sleep is so much more difficult.  We'll get there... right?

Right now Nora is quite a rolly-polly! She has always had excellent head and neck strength and now rolls all over and back and forth.  We've had several times now where I've put her down on the play mat and come back to find her several feet away rolling all around.  She is not sitting or crawling or scooting at all yet, and she also is not a fan yet of trying foods.  We haven't done too much because a big part of me thinks she just isn't ready.  We've tried sweet potato, banana, and rice cereal, and she mostly just isn't at all interested and pushes it away. We've had random moments of "success" with the rice cereal with water (we've had less success with the cereal with breastmilk actually) but that means literally just 4 or 5 half spoonfuls make it into her mouth.  We'll keep trying and we'll get there.

Nora does not take a bottle (Owen didn't either so that's 2 for 2) and loves to nurse. She is kind of a quiet baby and has an adorable little grin that perfectly fits her personality.  She is typically quiet but then has sort of moods of being extremely talkative or noisy by blowing raspberries. She LOVES her big brother : ) and it melts my heart seeing them interact.  She loves to watch him and smiles and laughs a lot at him.  Owen is a great big brother and helper and loves to hold her hand, do tummy time with her, get her toys, and "help" her.  Of course he also likes to pull her socks off, sometimes take away her toys, and we're really currently working on not yelling or making dinosaur noises right in baby Nora's face. Overall though he is so, so sweet with her, and we can already tell she really adores him.  I just love my babies so much : )

Angelica did manage to snap this precious photo of Owen although I don't know how with his mood!  My only thought is she possibly photoshopped the massive tears and red face haha. 

So enjoy some of the photos from her 6 month shoot!  We did not get a good whole family photo as Owen was in the world's worst toddler mood and 100% didn't cooperate.  Oh well though as this was focused on Nora.  We love you, Sweetie!

Baby #2 - Part 5: The 3rd Trimester

The 3rd Trimester

Pretty early in this last trimester I started to reach a point where I felt pretty bad again.  I really don't like the fact that I fall into this category of pregnant women, but honestly I do not love being pregnant.  Both times now there was a window during the second trimester where I felt much better and more like myself, but with that exception I'm usually pretty miserable.  I do love the fact that my body was made to do this and I am extremely grateful that I am capable of this, because I definitely know there are plenty of women out there who would hands down love to switch places with me and go through everything I am in order to be pregnant.  I am very grateful and honored I've been able to go through these pregnancies and carry our babies, and at no points have I ever wished I wasn't pregnant.  I just do not like actually being pregnant. It makes me think of that scene in What to Expect When You're Expecting when the lady is speaking at a baby expo and has a meltdown about how she says pregnancy has sucked.  That's how I generally feel.  It honestly sort of blows my mind how some women love being pregnant and have almost 'nice' pregnancy symptoms.  Definitely not me.  I'm not the one running around looking cute in fashionable maternity clothes with a nice pregnancy glow; I'm the one without pants on who is just laying on the couch moaning with a rice bag pressed up against me. (Yes that's really the visual that is found in our home right now... and for most of this last trimester.

So this third trimester has not been my friend.  It has been full of Braxton Hicks -which at times are annoying and uncomfortable but not really a problem, but at other time I have had a ton of them with intense back spasms and pain and pain in my legs as well. Even not during the Braxton Hicks this trimester brought on an incredible amount of lower back pain.  The second half of this trimester my difficulty sleeping really kicked in - with in general being so uncomfortable, plus getting up to pee 3-5 times a night and then I've had several spurts of insomnia on top of that, where after I get up to pee I just can't go back to sleep and have been tossing and turning in bed. And I basically eat Tums consistently after every snack or meal no matter what I have due to really bad acid reflux around the clock.  It doesn't matter if I barely eat or eat a lot, or if I try to eat healthier items or eat fast food or whatever else.  I don't know how many bottles of Tums I've gone through in these last months - but it's a lot!

I have continued to have the weird pregnancy dreams, not as consistently as during the second trimester, but fairly often.  They're still the same type of just a really vivid and totally random dream, usually with people from my past.  Also the second half of this trimester I've developed stretch marks.  I started to think I'd avoided them like I did with Owen.  With Owen I got a really noticeable line, the linea nigra, but really not many stretch marks except a few minor ones on my thighs.  This time I barely have a noticeable line nigra but after week 35 have gotten super huge and distinct shiny purplish stretch marks.  They are just large thick lines all around my belly button kind of like a star burst radiating out from my protruding belly button.  I couldn't have gotten lucky twice, right?  Oh well.

Last pictures of Owen's nursery before it was redone for Nora!

I definitely had a hard time taking all of Owen's things down and moving them into his big boy room. 

During this trimester we did most of our preparations for Nora's arrival and all that would entail. We moved Owen out of the nursery and into this big boy room and bed.  He still hasn't adjusted to the bed and Cody and I think he probably wasn't ready to move out of the crib.  Honestly he was sleeping amazingly in the crib, and if we weren't having Nora we wouldn't have moved him any time soon.  But we did and we don't want to go backwards now.  Once Owen was out of the nursery that freed it up so we could reorganize and reset everything for a newborn again and decorate it for Nora.

Big boy room!

Big boy bed!

He totally tricked us.  The very first couple nights he did great falling asleep and staying asleep in his bed... not any more.

I enjoyed washing and organizing all of Nora's clothes and hanging up all of her newborn outfits.  It's amazing how you do forget how little they start out though! Owen is just almost two; it hasn't been THAT long, but when I was handling all of the newborn onesies, it was so surprising to see how tiny they all are!  It's crazy to think Owen was that little two years ago and Nora will be too when she arrives any day now.

Washing and preparing Nora's clothes!

The nursery closet is all set with her newborn clothes! Yes that's ONLY newborn!

There were tons of errands and appointments and different things that I finally got done and checked off my loooong "To-Do Before Baby" list.  I stocked us up on basic household items, which Cody thinks is silly, but I think can only be helpful to not need to worry about running out of basic things. Towards the end of the trimester I got our hospital bag packed and ready to go, minus all the last minute things we'll need to throw in, and also a bag ready for Owen who will be with Cody's parents while we are in the hospital.

He will always still be my baby.  I just love this tiny guy so much.

At this point there are only a handful of things left on my to-do list, and it's nice to be at a place where yes I'd like to get them done, and I'll keep doing things slowly for as long as Nora stays put.  However, none of them are crucial to get done so if she comes before I check anything else off, that's perfectly okay with me.  For example there are some decoration items I'd still like to do for her room - but that can definitely be done after we have her as well.  She won't even be in the nursery for the first few months anyway.  There are a couple more blog posts (this one and one about Owen's birthday) that I'd like to complete but I'm okay if they don't get done before hand either.  (If you missed the last ones I caught up on you can catch them here:  Port A Family Trip and Maternity Photos.) I had a goal of preparing ten freezer meals (each with two dinners worth) and right now I've got five done.  I'm okay with that if I only finish half.  If I'm able and up to it I will keep doing a couple more and just add to what I already have. Really the only item left on the list that really can't be done in the same way after we have Nora is a date night.  Sad that's still left on the list right? I have just been feeling so awful, especially in the evenings, that I usually don't feel up to going out or doing much of anything, and the last couple weekends just haven't worked out anyway.  So if we haven't had Nora by this weekend that's a goal! A date night or maybe a date Saturday afternoon would be easier for me to do. Either way, if Nora doesn't arrive first, I would love a little time with just Cody before our lives transition again.

I love watching Cody with Owen at bedtime : )

This was during our Port A family trip we did towards the end of March.

Owen still loves books!  We read all the time and always before bed.

Currently as I type this we are at 39 weeks (as of yesterday).  Weeks 32 and 33 were when my back pain really started to get bad.  Week 34 we went on our Port A family beach trip and thankfully I did pretty well during the trip.  Weeks 35-36 were really rough when I started getting the intense Braxton Hicks.  With Owen I didn't get any that I was aware of.  My doctor has said I probably did have some, but they were mild enough that I didn't recognize what they were.  Well there is no question this time and they are far from mild.  Like I said at the beginning, some of them are just annoying and uncomfortable, but more and more of them are getting really intense with a crazy spasm in my back and pain down my legs.  I had a ton of those during weeks 35 and 36.  When I went in for my first weekly appointment and 'check' at 36 weeks I was 2cm dilated and 60% effaced, and I remember thinking thank goodness those hadn't been for nothing!  If those intense BH had been for nothing I might have lost my mind.  Then I had a nice break where they eased up and I still had a lot of BH but not the intense bad ones.  So when I went for my weeks 37 and 38 appointments, I didn't necessarily expect progress and I was mostly right.  At week 37 I had progressed to 3cm but otherwise the same, and week 38 had no progress.  Yesterday was 39 weeks but my doctor appointment isn't until this Friday which will be 39 and 1/2.  But this week I've gone back to the awful intense BH with crazy bad back pain again and oh my gosh so much low pressure!  It feels sometimes like she just wants to drop out and I basically sit on the toilet forever convinced I'm going to pee as soon as I get up because I constantly feel like I'm about to pee myself, even though there's usually not much there. So when I go in on Friday, I'm again going to seriously hope to have made some more progress and that these aren't just all for nothing.

2cm dilated and 60% effaced.

3cm dilated.

Cody has been awesome though as I've been getting worse here towards the end.  He's gone to the store for me, made dinners, and often takes over with Owen once he gets home.  Poor Cody though because by the time he does get home from work I am at my worst place for the day and just so uncomfortable and often in real pain and worn out and emotionally done.  Cody's probably the biggest trooper in all of this.  He surprised me with a birthing/yoga ball that helps to sit and bounce on, and he always warm up and bring me my rice heating bag for my back whenever I need it.  I definitely appreciate all that he does and how he's so understanding.

Blurry but cute! Owen loves to help vacuum. 

Vacuuming behind the crib before painting the nursery accent wall. 

Thank you so, so much to Sue and Cody for painting the wall for Nora!

So this is how Owen sleeps now.  He prefers the hallway over his bed.  What a turkey!

I guess I'll wrap this up with a funny story that just happened the other day.  So while pregnant with Owen I had two big hormonal emotional meltdowns that I can specifically remember - one was about buying prenatal vitamins at HEB and the other was about craving frozen yogurt.  Cody might argue this but so far during this pregnancy I would say I haven't had anything super big and out there yet, up until this past weekend.  Our church small group went out bowling to celebrate one of the guy's birthdays.  It was sort of a nicer bowling place that had some real food and we were planning to eat dinner there.  We looked it up online first and it's Yelp page showed sandwiches and chicken burgers and some things like that.  Well I always love sandwiches, but while pregnant I realllllly love sandwiches.  So we get there and our waitress comes over and I ask what sandwiches they have, and she looks at me and says she's so sorry, they don't serve sandwiches.  And I start crying.  Yes, crying. I really wanted a sandwich and I saw a delicious looking sandwich on their Yelp page.  This poor waitress!  She starts going through their menu offering me other items.  One of the items they served was mini-hot dogs.  I asked if she meant mini corn dogs (because call me odd whatever, I love mini corn dogs), and she said no they're regular hot dogs just miniature.  I get upset again that they aren't mini corn dogs and at that point Cody pulls me away to help me calm down.  It is SO RIDICULOUS. I can recognize in my head that it is ridiculous that I am so upset about this, and yet I CANNOT help how I am reacting with the crying and being so upset and emotional.  Crazy hormones I tell you; they are real. Cody calms me down and is probably trying not to bust out laughing. Anyway.  All I can say is I felt so bad for that waitress, and she was so sweet and apologetic and she definitely was super careful and extra helpful to me the rest of the night.  And in case you're wondering, I ordered the mini hot dogs and they were not very good, but I ended up eating some of them and then one or two of Cody's mini burgers which in fact were delicious.  Sorry Loves that I took over your dinner.

The nursery finally making progress! The wall is painted, curtains replaced, and the crib is reset to the highest setting and changed to Nora's girly sheets. 

I am more than ready to be done being pregnant.  I pray she decides to come tonight, or this afternoon, or within the hour even.  But I know there is still a decent chance that she doesn't come for another week or so.  While we do keep waiting I am trying to enjoy and soak up all this time with just my Owen as I can.  I do still get fairly emotional thinking about how we're about to have a new baby, but Owen still is my baby, and how I've loved this time with just him so much and while we are so excited for Nora, change can be a little scary and I am worried about how this adjustment will go for him.

No additional progress this week.

He sure is cute!  He enjoys going with me to the dr to "check Nora".  I think he'll be an awesome big brother!

So now we're playing the waiting game for Nora to be ready to arrive.  Owen was due April 29 and arrived May 2nd.  So I keep hoping that since Nora is due May 3rd, that she'll arrive sometime in April.  If we do go into May then on one hand I don't care I just want her to come whenever, but a small silly part of me really doesn't want her to be born on Owen's birthday (the 2nd), or also on May 4th or 5th because Cody is already joking about those days (he keeps saying May the 4th be with you as a Star Wars joke, and then May 5th is Cinco de Mayo).  So anyway, Nora, just come on any time now! We're so excited and ready to meet you.

Nora's name is finally (almost) done!  I'm debating adding ribbon on top but I'm not sure I'll use it yet.  So they may stay like this, which I like a lot, or they may get ribbon added. We will see. 

We reached 39 weeks on Tuesday, but the doctor isn't until Friday - so no update yet!

And a big thank you to my Loves for helping me finish the letters with the ribbon!

I love how it turned out : )

We're ready for you, Nora!  We are so excited to meet you!

Baby #2 - Part 2: The First Trimester

The First Trimester


So now that we're well into the third trimester, I decided it was finally time to go back and write about the beginning.


We started trying to get pregnant again during the summer last year after Owen turned one.  Month one was a miss but month two worked out for us.  I remember we went out on a date night and I wanted a margarita, but realizing that it was during the window where technically I could have been pregnant but it was too early to know yet, so I didn't order anything, and made the comment to Cody that "there was a chance baby number two was in there".  And well, turns out there was!

Our date night when I didn't order the margarita I wanted just in case there was a tiny growing baby. 

In late August Cody went on a mission trip to León, Nicaragua.  It was during that week that I found out I was pregnant.  I knew that the timing of his trip would line up with finding out and I was torn about waiting to test until he came back or not, and then if I did find out if I wanted to tell him over the phone or wait for in person.  Well when my period didn't come I pretty much knew I was pregnant and the test would just make it official, so I went ahead and did two home tests to confirm.  I decided to wait and tell Cody in person because I didn't want to interrupt his personal thoughts and feelings with his mission trip, and because I wanted to share the news face to face.  So when he came home I told him I wanted him to look at some pictures on my phone from while he was gone, and the pictures included the positive tests.  Just like the first time with Owen, Cody was thrilled again immediately : )

Cody on his mission tip in Nicaragua.

His trip as with Living Water International.  He was part of a team that went to dig and build a well for a community. 

Officially confirmed the news while Cody was gone on his trip.

Two different tests to be sure.

Found out right at 4 weeks.

With Owen we had our first OB appointment at 6 weeks and were able to hear his heartbeat then.  This time they would not schedule us until 8 weeks.  Waiting a whole month to go to the doctor to confirm everything was going well and then share our news was so hard! It felt so much longer than waiting with Owen (technically it was double the time, two extra weeks). Just like the first time we wanted to wait to tell our parents and most friends and such until we had that good confirmation at the doctor, and we like being able to show our parents the ultrasound picture with the news.  So at 8 weeks we got our first pictures of baby #2 and heard her heartbeat.

5 Weeks 

Just like with Owen I started getting morning sickness (I mean round-the-clock sickness) at 6 weeks. I would have said it was pretty bad with Owen, but this time was way worse.  With Owen I never at all threw up, just constantly felt like I needed to and wished I would for some relief.  This time I did throw up but only a handful of times, but the nausea was even more constant throughout the day and somehow more intense.  I would just wish I would throw up thinking that would bring some relief.  Hardly anything sounded good to eat.  I ate a lot of dry Kix cereal because for whatever reason that was one thing that didn't seem to make it worse.

8 Weeks

8 Weeks - already bloated!

I also was more exhausted than I was with Owen.  Just so physically tired and feeling awful that a lot of the time during that first trimester I would just have to lay down on the couch for quite a while each day.  In my head I thought that this time since I wasn't teaching, it would be easier because I could lay down or rest whenever I needed to.  And well it turns out with a toddler running around it isn't the easiest thing to just have rest time for yourself.  I will admit that this is the point when we started really watching T.V. - that being Daniel Tiger episodes.  Prior to feeling so awful he hardly had watched any T.V. at all and didn't borrow our phones much or anything like that.  I did really want to limit technology for as long as possible. However I physically just could not do more than rest and I had to have Owen occupied, so for a lot of the time when he didn't want to play by himself and didn't want to sit by me and read (or if I didn't even feel up to that sadly) then we resorted to Daniel Tiger, and that was way more than I'd like to admit.

First sonogram pictures at 8 weeks : )

There were a few smells that really bothered me and made my nausea worse.  One was red hand soap.  We had some cherry scented liquid soap in our bathroom and I had to throw it away because every time I used it I started gagging and it was so awful!  Another specific thing I remember was one night Cody and I went to a Spurs game with some friends, and walking past one of the restaurants in the AT&T Center almost made me actually throw up.  I think I did a little in my mouth.  It was so bad I started crying walking with Cody to our seats.  What was that horrible smell... I don't know exactly but I couldn't get away from it fast enough.  Sorry Cody for the super ultra sensitive and emotional mess I was that night out!

Sadly we/I have not document this pregnancy nearly as well as we did with Owen.  With how awful I felt I just had zero motivation to bother taking a weekly picture (or even just a random picture ever now and then), and to write about it.  Also as I mentioned in my first post about our announcement, I will be honest and say I had a lot of conflicting emotions during the first trimester of this pregnancy, and part of me really didn't want to document that.  I was completely caught up in the fact that this would end my time with just Owen, and that combined with the normal pregnancy hormones and all, made me extremely emotional and sad - way more than I'd like to admit.  It took quite a while for me to be able to get past that and focus all the positive things and remember why we wanted to get pregnant again in the first place.

We put Owen in this Big Brother shirt to tell my parents we were pregnant!

Another aspect of it all that made me conflicted and sad was that pretty much as soon as I got pregnant my already low milk supply dried up.  I was still nursing Owen, granted it wasn't much at all, when we got pregnant.  My goal with him was to nurse until 18 months.  My supply had already dropped a lot just naturally and he was not nursing much each day at all, but we were still hanging on and I wanted to reach our goal.  I knew getting pregnant would likely dry up my supply but I thought  that wasn't until farther along like the second trimester.  For me at least it was almost immediate.  We made it to 17 months which was awesome and so close, but I was still sad we didn't reach the goal I had in mind, and it made me feel so emotional and upset when at the end Owen wanted to nurse and he would sign "milk" and there just was none.  He did just dry/comfort nurse some at the end but it broke my heart each time he was doing that and would stop, look up at me, and sign milk.  Of course I know it's not like we would have kept nursing forever, but I just wasn't ready to stop quite yet, and I also felt so sad that Owen still wanted it but I couldn't give it to him.

Super excited for a second grandchild on the way!

We told Cody's parents the news over FaceTime, but there wasn't a picture or anything to document telling them. 

This time around I had to start wearing maternity shorts and pants extremely quickly.  (See the above Week 8 pictures in which I'm already bloated.) I had heard it was normal to get bigger in general, and to show and get bigger earlier with each pregnancy, but I really had a hard time accepting that my pants didn't fit as early as it happened.  I think it was at 8 weeks where my shorts hurt SO much to try to wear, but I really felt like it was ridiculous to need maternity pants at only 8 weeks.  I didn't need maternity shirts still until much later just like with Owen, but those pants, that happened oh so quick and I didn't want to accept it.

To wrap up the first trimester, we had our second OB appointment at 12 weeks.  That time we only got one ultrasound picture but heard the heartbeat again like you do every time, and got the confirmation that everything was still going great which is always a relief to hear.  Even with no signs to worry about, with both Owen and this second time, I always had that tiny ever present fear that something could go wrong and we could not know.  Thankfully all was well again and we had another black and white picture to add to our fridge : )

12 Weeks!