trimester two!!

I'm officially 13 weeks today!! Hello second trimester, so long first 33% of pregnancy! I hear the second trimester is the best, so I'm ready - with high expectations - to love my life for the next few months!

I'll post another picture soon - when I'm not in my pajamas!

Apparently the baby is moving a lot these days - like a graceful ballerina. But I won't feel it for several weeks still. That is a moment I'm pretty excited about. Hearing the heartbeat was definitely the highlight of trimester one and I look forward to feeling my little tyke swimming around in there soon!

Another bit of good news is that we have a few more names on our girl list (and still have plenty on our boy list). The names Haley and Kate have joined Millie - and Haley may have bumped Millie out of first place. Who knows what will happen in the next 6 months but that's the decision of the week!

As for boys we really like last names of church figures (just like daddy - named after David O. McKay). On our top 3 list we have Maxwell, Holland, and Rockwell (we'll call him Rock or Rocky . . . he'll be a tough guy!) with a bunch of other last names coming and going regularly!

It will be exciting to find out in June which list to start focusing on! McKay and I have our guess . . . and we're pretty confident about it. We'll see how good our instincts are!

a call for vegetable help!

Alright, friends. I know there are budding/full fledged chefs out there. I need your help.

I

hate

vegetables

right now.

I am awesome at getting fruit in my diet. Peaches, pears, blueberries, strawberries, apples. Check. Check. But vegetables are another story. Even corn - which is a sissy veggie, and my most common veggie friend - has been absent from my diet recently.

I blame it on the baby. Nothing sounds good to me right now. I need a solution.

Here are the stipulations:

-it needs to be cheap

-I'm anti-Mexican spices right now, so don't even think about it

-quick/easy would be nice, but isn't required

(I coud also use some quinoa suggestions as I recently inherited a box)

So grab those cook books and help a sister out! I'll give a grand prize blog shout-out to the person with the best suggestions! Ready. Go!

12 and a half week pictures

Here's a pic of me at 12.5 weeks - do I look like a graduate?

getting a bit of a bump!

Baby stats for this week:

The baby is roughly the size of a peach - about 3 inches long

He/she weighs somewhere between 1/2 and 3/4 of an ounce

The baby's head is about half the size of its body!

The gender is distinguishable by now (though the ultrasound won't be until June).

The baby's vocal chords are developing this week and the intestines are moving from the umbilical chord into the abdomen (crazy, huh?!)

Today I'm very grateful for my health and for naps.

I'm grateful that the baby is growing as it should be.

I'm grateful to be happily married to the father of my child - we're just over a month away from our first anniversary!

I'm grateful for my blessings.

12 weeks and a heartbeat!

This week has been the best! I hit my 12 week mark on Wednesday, heard the heartbeat on Thursday and got my college diploma on Friday!

Hearing the heartbeat was a great moment - up until now I've just trusted that everything is growing like it should in there (because my belly and rear end are sure growing!). It was amazing to hear that little assurance that he/she is alive and well. Here is a clip taken on McKay's iPhone.

11 weeks!

Wow! I'm closing in on the end of my first trimester. 6 days until the heartbeat. 6 days until graduation. 60 something days til we find out the gender.

It's time for the weekly picture updates, but McKay has the camera in Boston. Since I missed last week's picture I couldn't miss this week so I did my best with my iPhone at arm's length. Here is me at 11 weeks.

And in response to my crazy hunger post I went to the store in between studying ribosomes and cytokineses. I stocked up on a few of my unhealthy cravings. I cooked up the Scooby-Doo shaped noodles while I watched half of a couple lame movies on Netflix.

Week 11 Baby stats

length: 2.5 inches - the size of a "large" plum

weight: .5 ounces (about how much Rachel and Greg's wedding announcements weigh)

This week the baby is working on hair follicles, fingernails, a "tongue palate", normal-looking ears and gender specific organs!

hunger game

I'm sitting here studying for Biology. And my stomach is rumbling. I just ate cereal though! Am I starving? Or just having weird digestion? I'm torn between feeling ultra lazy and not wanting to get up to make something. Being ultra low on food that is appetizing to me. And being ultra broke - which prevents me from going to buy what I'm craving (which is likely unhealthy anyway). Grrrrrr!

hormone overload

If you read my family blog post yesterday I waxed nostalgic about the last day of school, memories of college, blah blah blah. So I was ready to enjoy my last day of school with childlike excitement today!

The day started out fine: I slept in and then lounged around a bit with a bowl of cereal. I read some blogs and dilly-dallied until I headed upstairs to shower. The shower was great; nice and warm and relaxing. But when I tried to find something to wear, things really started going downhill.

My rear end, which has always been quite a healthy size is ballooning out of control. Does my profile look like a cute pregnant woman? No! I look like a donut addict. Plus, I hate all my clothes right now. Everything I put on was a mistake. Outfit after outfit went from the closet hanger to the growing pile on the floor. And it's not like I have that many jeans options these days. I have a huge stack of great-looking denim that my niece could probably wear. But not me!

What I wish I looked like when I had nothing to wear . . .

I finally settled on the least-repulsive shirt and the jeans that I wear every day now. I threw in some jewelry to draw attention away from my squishy mid-section. Now I'm eating lunch in my messy kitchen, avoiding the vegetables that are sitting, ready to nourish, on my plate.

Maybe I'll just go back to bed.

10 weeks and then some

I was so excited for my ten week post . . . a quarter of the way through my pregnancy! But then time somehow flew by and I'm two days away from eleven weeks! So here are the latest stats:

My little fruit salad has gone from blueberry to raspberry to plum and now is the size of a lime! A whole two inches or more. And now the baby weighs enough to measure - a third of an ounce!

McKay will be out of town visiting Kimball at Harvard and cheering Monta on at the Boston Marathon later this week so the highly-anticipated heartbeat appointment has been moved a week! I'm so anxious to hear it!!! But of course I want McKay there more, so the official appointment is April 22. I am looking forward to knowing that all is as it should be in there. It's still hard to believe - I'm ready to hear some feedback from my little tyke.

It's crazy to think that in a couple weeks I'll be in my second trimester. I'm so grateful that I've made it this far with minimal illness (though a lot of sleepiness!)

And the breaking news of the week is that we've finally agreed on ONE girl's name for our list (of one).

The List

Millie

It's a variation of McKay's grandma's middle name - Mildred (which she hates, but she approves of Millie!).

We'll have to leave a middle name for another discussion, but at least the hardest part is over. In another 8 weeks or so we'll find out the gender. Wow!

confessions

I used to think that the moment I found out I was pregnant I would immediately cease all unhealthy practices - such as eating cookies, or pizza - and would become the perfect exerciser. I would provide the perfect little home for my growing speck.

Newsflash. This is false.

Although I've managed to keep all my food in my stomach where it belongs, I still fight nausea and sometimes the only thing to cure it is a whole blue box of Mac and Cheese! And with school and 24 hours of piano teaching a week I have managed to go on one jog in the past two months.

My current prescription for food-weirdness is a beautiful little snack my family calls "cheese things". Known to the rest of the world as "cheese toast" or "open faced grilled cheese " (a very long name), these pieces of toast with melted cheddar chase my troubles away faster than any other treat - with Oreo McFlurries being a close second.

So write me up for reckless pregnancy. I like fat right now. And I'll keep eating it.

timely messages

Wow, was this the parenting conference or what?! I thoroughly enjoyed General Conference this weekend and will immerse myself in the podcasts over the next 6 months to prepare for November!

Favorite speakers included Sister Beck and Elder Ballard.

Truth be told I kind of fell asleep for some of Sunday afternoon, oops! If you had any favorites let me know and I'll be sure to listen to those first!

On a final note, today marks the first day of my last full week of school. Wow! I had good intentions of going to my 10:00 class, but it blew up in my face. I had to get gas first, but when I got to the gas station, I had forgotten my wallet. By the time I got home and would have gone back to the gas station I would have been miserably late to class . . . so I decided to eat some ice cream and rest instead! I haven't felt the best this morning, so it worked out.

Heartbeat appointment in a week and a half. Yipee!!!

picture updates

me at 9 weeks

I think it's amazing how much the baby is growing and changing from week to week! Here are three illustrations that show what the baby looked like last week, this week, and where he/she will be next week!

from baby alien . . .

8 weeks

to baby human!

9 weeks

age progression provided by

"Your Pregnancy Week by Week"

10 weeks

sugar and spice . . .

I apologize to all my admiring fans for the unacceptable passage of time that has occurred between my last post and this! But I'm back in action!

Well, I'm a little over 9 weeks now, just a few weeks away from the end of the first trimester! I'm so grateful that I haven't gotten very sick, although I'm SUPER tired all the time. And my appetite is still a bit wacked out.

I've discovered some bad jobs that are made much worse by pregnancy - like anything dealing with trash. And cleaning out the fridge and dumping old, smelly, moldy, colorful foods. Sick. I did that last Friday and because of the negative impact it had on me I designated a "once-a-week" shelf in the fridge. It's the leftover shelf. Anything not used up by Fridays gets dumped. Seems like a good plan (although I had to throw something fuzzy out this morning). Okay, enough about my fridge.

So turns out that McKay and I have loads of boy names we can agree on but have the hardest time with girl names! Last Sunday while settling in for our afternoon nap we decided to get serious about getting some girls names on our list. The result? We now have FIVE boy names picked out. In order. With middle names.

And no girl names.

Oh well. We have 7 more months.