31 weeks, 4 days

Hello, hello.

I would say that the lack of blog posts this week is due to being busy..but that would be a lie.  Basically, it is due to laziness and a return of my lack of motivation.  I have been at least attempting some amounts of productivity a day, but honestly, I have thoroughly been enjoying going to bed early and reading a few chapters of my book before falling asleep.  Or doing some crocheting.  Now that I finished the blanket I was working on for Bob, I made him/her a neat little hat and then Jesse put in a request for one, too.  I really have no idea what I'm doing, so we will see how his turns out!  Considering how busy we have been, just having time to sit in the evenings and know that if I didn't get everything done during the day, there is always tomorrow because we have no plans.  It is nice.

To go with that, last weekend was just nice and relaxing.  I honestly don't remember everything we did or didn't do, but I do remember Jesse grilled out a lot last week and it was fabulous.  That has been his new favorite thing: grilling on our charcoal grill.  If you don't have a charcoal grill, I don't care what you want to say about a gas grill, you are missing out.  Period.  We had our good friends, Chris and Jen, over on Sunday afternoon/evening for a grill out.  Not like we did anything fancy, but it was delicious and the company was phenomenal, so it really doesn't matter how fancy it was or wasn't!  It was so nice to have a whole evening where we could just sit and talk with them, even if we didn't get any board games in.  Next time you guys come out, you will need to bring Delta and the dogs can go exploring while we play games!

This week hasn't been anything overly exciting.  I am 90% done painting the baby's room, and I am so excited about how it is turning out.  I will post pictures when it is all done because I don't want to give away bits and pieces before I can show you the finished room, but for my female friends who either are pregnant, or will be sometime in the future, do NOT get it in your head that having one of your baby's wall's painted an argyle pattern is what NEEDS to be done.  Do this when you aren't pregnant.  Seriously.  You, your husband and everyone else in your family and circle of friends will thank you.  I love how my argyle wall has turned out so far, but my goodness, what a ridiculous endeavor.  More on that after I finish my dumb wall.

Oh, let's see, what else can I tell you.  I checked today and I see two more teeth popping through in Lily's mouth-- one on top, one on bottom-- and the only other two left are swelling on the other side.  I blame this for the crabbiness.  Although, she has been super ridiculous and funny lately.  I can't even describe to you how much more fun she is every day (that she is in a good mood).  She is trying to say more and more words, and even if "buckle" and "bubble" sound the same, we understand for the most part what she is trying to say.  Her favorite words right now are "cheese," "more," "horse," "Zeeeee" (Zeke), "wa wa" (water), "teeeea" (iced tea) and "Fiiiiiiiiiiiii!!!!!"  Jesse and I are agreeing more and more that children do not mimic adults, but adults mimic children.  This is evident by the fact that he and I both enjoy calling cheese, "cheesh" like how Lily pronounces it, and laugh every time.

Bob is still hanging in there.  I officially had 2 months left on the 25th, and am 31 weeks, 4 days along. And since it drives me nuts, yes, 32 weeks seems like it should be 8 months of pregnancy (32/4= 8, for the non math crowd), but in reality, it is only 7 months.  It took me all of my pregnancy with Lily and a decent amount of time into this one to figure out it, but here goes my figuring: doctors predict the due date based on the start date of your last period, and count out 40 weeks from then.  Since you are on that for a week, then depending on when you ovulate, there is another week or two before you actually even conceive.  Bottom line: the first "month" of your pregnancy doesn't really count because you're really not pregnant.  And if you look at it that way, it makes sense why I can be almost 32 weeks and only 7 months pregnant.  Sorry if I lost you/bored you, but that's been bothering me for awhile.

Anyway.  The baby is doing well, as far as I know!  I have really enjoyed everyone's comments when they hear that we really don't know what the sex of the baby is and we really aren't going to be finding out.  A bunch of my friends "can't wait!" and a few have told me that I need to find out because it is killing them not to know.  My favorite happened the other day, though, when I was talking to a 20something guy friend who I hadn't seen in awhile.  He asked when I was due and if I knew if it was a boy or girl, and I said "oh, we don't know" and before I could say "and we aren't finding out" he started laughing and said "wouldn't it be funny if people just didn't find out until the baby is born?  And the baby pops out and all of a sudden it's 'yaaaaaay!' (if it's a boy) or 'aww...' (if it's a girl)." And I laughed, trying to figure out if he was serious and then he said "so seriously, when do you find out?"  When I told him "when I deliver the baby" he said, so eloquently, "shut up, what I said really is going to happen!?"  Totally made my day.

I guess that's it..I thought I had more to blog about.  Apparently I don't.  Go check out my picture blog here, I updated with pictures from the past month.  You know, since I'm doing so well at updating the day to day picture..

we have been letting Lily help us feed Zeke.  she discovered tonight that she can open the container by herself.  AND reach the food.  Zeke ate well tonight.

catching up. again.

As promised, stories and pictures!

Jesse, Lily and I headed to Findlay on Good Friday to spend time with my side of the family for Easter.  We all had a great time, enjoyed coloring Easter eggs and having an egg hunt.  The Easter egg hunt is a tradition that my grandparents have continued for Jessica, Joel and me into our adulthood, and Jesse, Richard and Kimmy have been added into the numbers within the last few years.  This year was the first year in a loooooong time that we had someone a little more age appropriate participating, and as you can imagine, Jesse and Lily found all of the eggs with every little competition.

coloring eggs for the first time

mooching

family picture..we were cheesy and all somehow ended up wearing the same color.

Jesse had to head home on Sunday afternoon so he could go to work that week, and Lily and I stayed in Findlay for a few extra days for some much needed visiting time with family.  I should mention at this point that Jesse had left his cell phone at our house in WV over the weekend- so I was already kind of paranoid about his 5 hour drive home from my parents house- and had asked that he have one of his parents to text me when he arrived there (about half way, a good bathroom stop!) and when he was taking off again.  I received a message from Dad H telling me Jesse had arrived, then one that Jesse had left, and then another saying Jesse was back because he had hit a deer!  Jesse has since admitted that he is just all around bad with having a cell phone.  Regardless of that nonsense, he was fine, my car was just dinged up and is in the shop this week getting fixed.

Lily and I had a good time in Findlay, and even got to go over to Muncie, IN for the day to see Jess, Richard and Joel and get a short tour of where Joel and Richard are in grad school at Ball State.

One of Lily's favorite past times while we are in Findlay is watching my parents cuckoo clocks.  Yes, plural.  One clock was a wedding present to them and is the one that Team Pagano grew up hearing.  I know some people say that the ticking gets annoying, but I promise that if you live with it, you get used to it and really have to concentrate on trying to hear it.  The newer clock is one that my parents surprised us with when we were in Germany over Christmas my senior year of high school.  I love both of the clocks and fortunately, Jesse likes them too, so I think I have a good argument for getting one some day. Plus, Lily is fascinated and kept pointing saying "cuckoo, cuckoo?" and was most upset that it only went off every hour.

On Monday, Aunt Kathy arrived to spend a few days in Findlay on her spring break.  I'm so glad that everything worked out that I was able to stay in town long enough to see her as well and spend some time with her (and my parents and grand parents, of course), but it's been a ridiculous amount of time since I had seen her (and most of the family, unfortunately) and she had never met Lily!  So I'm glad this was remedied!

Mom brought us back to WV on Thursday and stayed for a bit before leaving on Saturday.  While she was here, Lily showed her how much she adores bubbles.  And that I need to make some more bubble solution.

And now, just some filler pictures.  I had a hard time narrowing down which ones I wanted to post, so sorry if there are too many!  SOMEONE was getting feisty with me that I was hogging all the internet and that he couldn't play his computer game..(I jest).

dear Chanell, Lily adores these boots.

 Oh, and I felt like baking today, so I made English muffins!  They turned out sooooooooooooo delicious.  

AND, I finished the blanket I've been crocheting for Bob!

Speaking of Bob, I am 30 weeks and a few odd days.  I had an appointment on  Monday where I had an ultrasound, my glucose test to check for gestational diabetes, got my rhogam shot (ugh) and got some blood work done.  A busy day at the doctor's office!  I've been feeling pretty good, but I can tell you with certainty that Bob is riding low.  I've had the same tech for both ultrasounds and she commented on how low the baby is both times.  I could have told her that, but I guess she gets paid to make official comments like that.  She also commented that Bob is measuring larger than just 30 weeks, which meant that either I was due sooner than June 25 or s/he is going to be roughly the size of an elephant, but by the time she was done measuring, the tech made the official statement that it all evened out to 30 weeks and right where I should be.  Excellent.  The baby's head is way, way down and she had a hard time getting a good picture or I might have had a 4d picture to share.  As it is..

shot of the face, with a hand up over the mouth.  kind of hard to see..but I apparently have a finger sucker in my tummy! the really dark slit is the eye (on the left side of the picture) if that helps you see a face..if not, just take my word for it.

While I think that overall I am carrying Bob the same as Lily, this baby still moves and acts differently than she did.  Something, I assume an elbow, has planted itself behind my right hip bone and likes to push out.  Which is just a neat feeling I can't describe beyond odd.  I think I was so excited about maternity clothes when I was pregnant before that I started wearing them as soon as I could.  I'm curious how long I could have fit in my regular jeans then because I can still zip and button most of my regular pants now.  So who knows.

ugh. feeling like a whale already. that's not good.

 Also, I believe that these pictures were taken around 30 weeks with Lily.  I was so tiny.

Tuesday. Thankful.

I'm glad it's Tuesday. My attitude has been getting grumpier and grumpier for the past few hours, and I remembered it was Tuesday and I have more to be thankful for than grumpy about.

1. The safe, happy and healthy arrival of my niece. Who I have not received nearly enough pictures of, but I will let my SIL off the hook for now. Please anticipate pictures sometime soon.

2. Gorgeous weather and new running shoes! Even if I can't use them for a few more weeks.

3. A healthy weekend! First weekend in 2 months I haven't been sick!

4. Friends loaning us a car this week while my car is in the shop.

5. Said car had diapers in it! I ran out while Lily and I out running errands and of course she had an explosive dirty diaper. I was not amused. But thankfully, her little size 4 booty fit in a size 2 diaper. I don't know how, but it got the job done until we got home to get more
Of the appropriate sized diaper on!

I was going to blog a life update last night but patio sitting and dishes got in the way. Soon! With stories and pictures.

thankful Tuesday!

Happy Tuesday, everyone! I have so much I am thankful for this week. Well, always.

1. A wonderful Easter weekend with family where we could celebrate Christ's resurrection! I will post pictures and tell about Lily's first egg hunt adventure later.

2. Everything worked out that I could stay in Findlay this week and visit with family more with Lily.

3. Even though Jesse decided he COULD NOT wait until this next deer season to get his first deer and he would bag his first doe (?) with the front end of my car on his way home, that it was a small deer; he wasn't hurt; since he didn't have his cell phone that he was close enough to his parents to go back; and that Lily and I weren't with him. In my pregnant, hormonal state, I would have been an absolute mess.

4. DEFINITELY thankful for good insurance!

5. Jesse, Lily, Bob, the rest of my family and friends. Generic, yes; 100% true, yes.

I will post a for real update with pictures when I get home and to my computer so I'm not blogging on my phone!

Tuesday. Thankful.

I definitely need/ed a reminder today about just how blessed I am. Lily has been a trooper over the past few days, but several later nights in a row are catching up with her and she is just a tired little munchkin today. Work was a challenge this morning, as a result of her being tired and grumpy. But I am thankful and blessed.

1. My niece, Koleen, is estimated to arrive this weeked. C'mon kiddo, your favorite and only aunt wants to see pictures!!

2. I get to see my parents, grandparents and siblings this weekend.

3. My awesome friends who watch Lily and don't complain even when she melts down over seeing dogs. Outside. That she has known for the majority of her life. Ah, the wonderful and random stages and phases that kids go through.

4. Speaking of awesome friends, that Betsy was kind enough to just laugh at me and not make fun of how naive I am when I said it would be ideal if Lily got through te "Terrible Twos" before Bob shows up.

5. My job. I really need to remind myself of this some days, but you don't get much better than what I have. Paid to play with your kid? I'm very thankful. It's more of a challenge than others some days, but I get to be a full time mom AND bring home a small paycheck to help out a bit. I wish some days I had a "real big kid job" but am so grateful that I can do this and be the one to raise my little girl.