24 Weeks

Hard to believe we are here again...another bi-weekly update. There really isn't a whole lot to update on in B2K's world. I have started feeling her more and more. She is a very active evening baby. She will be still and quiet throughout most of the day and about the time that I am to leave work for the day, she starts up and doesn't really stop until after Jay and I read the daily journal entry before I go to sleep. She really seems to react to male voices. Grandpa Kern was talking one night and she was jumping around like a jack rabbit; apparently his voice gets her going. And then of course Daddy's voice does too. I am pretty sure that he would sit and talk to her to get her to kick, with his hand on my belly all day if he could! : ) Her cousin Ashleigh felt her kick last weekend after Daddy provoked her to kick for her. It was very cute to see her run to Nana and tell her about it and then keep asking me if the baby was kicking the rest of the weekend.

We are slowly making progress on the nursery. After all of Jay's work the last few weeks it's been put at a stand still; because really the rest of the work is mine!! I got the bedding out of the packages and washed them. The next step is to start washing the clothes that we have gotten so far and start putting those in the dressers and closet. I finally got the bedding washed and the bed made last week. Jay got the cabinet moved in there to put all of my dolphin stuff in, and much to my joy it matched the rest of the furniture. So again, it's really left up to me to continue the progress! Daddy got all the work done as I had asked him to do before racing season started!

Jay is fascinated by how "big" I have gotten just over the last couple of weeks (I continue to remind him that this is the only time that he will ever get away with saying something like that to me!!). I keep trying to remind myself that we didn't get to this point before and he is overjoyed by it. I must say that I have surprise myself each week as I "notice" how much more difficult something is to do than it was the week before. I find myself realizing that I can't "do it all" like I used to and still feel up to par to do more and more. We had state bowling tournament this past weekend; I ended up bowling three games then we went golfing and played 9 holes right after that and bowled another 3 games and golfed another 9 holes on sunday...needless to say, I am exhausted today!

In other ways of life, we are slowly finding ourselves falling into our summer routine! Unreal that we are already falling into MAY! The weather seems to finally be straightening up. Golf league starts for us both next week. Jay will golf on Tuesday nights and I will golf on Thursday nights. Plus Jay has his first Midwest Champions race next weekend! No surprise to anyone that knows us, we have been busy and not home a single weekend for the last 5 weekends and that continues for the next 2, at least. With races, family functions, holidays, and family visits. As far as my schedule, I just finished up my mid-term on my second to last class for my MSA program. The spring/summer classes are always the hardest for me with the weather being nice and Jay being out working on the kart; but I remind myself that this is the last summer that I will have to do this and next summer baby and I will get to be outside enjoying the weather instead of cooped up inside on the computer!! : ) As fast as the last few weeks have gone, I can only imagine how fast this summer is going to go and how quickly August is going to sneak up on us!!

If Only I Always Had a Camera....

22 Weeks, 2 Days and Daddy finally felt B2K tonight! I could feel her repeatedly kicking and finally feeling as though she was in one place and not an octopus with 8 arms all over the place. So called him over to sit and feel for a few minutes where he got nothing. He leaned over to ask her "why she didn't like him" and they "she should kick when he asked her to" where he was responded with a slight tap that he wasn't sure if he felt or not and followed by a harder tap (the hardest one that I have felt so far!!) that he clearly felt as a kick just for him! After his eyes returned to his sockets, they continued to tear up. I am sure he will hate me for posting this to the "public" but I want B2K to know just how proud her daddy is of her!! And since I couldn't get a picture of him when he teared up, I had to post it so I would always remember that look on his face! Now if I could just figure out how to get a camera and the mentality to take pictures of the proud daddy when he first meets his little girl!! I wasn't sure how I would feel and react when this time came....but besides overwhelming, it just confirms how incredibly great of a father that man is going to be!!

22 Weeks....Again...

I probably should have waited one more day to post so I could update from our appointment today. While it was "uneventful" it was very much "eventful" : ) B2K's heartbeat was in the 150's and Amie measured the uterus by measuring from the pubic bone to the top...we measured at 22 cm, which she is said is absolutely perfect and expected to be at 22 cm at 22 weeks! Aside from Jay's high hopes that we would get to see her today and my attempts to get that to happen, we did not get to do another scan.

A slight "eye-opener" today when Amie said that we would go see her again in 4 weeks, which will put as at 26 weeks on May 17th. Then after that we will start seeing her every 2 weeks! :-O My heart almost dropped but fluttered at the same time! It was an eye-opener to me that in just 6 short weeks we will be starting our third trimester; we will be on the downhill slide to seeing and actually meeting B2K; we are, as Amie said, coasting to the day that we get to bring our little girl home!! Ahhhh!!!!!! : - D

22 Weeks

The start of Week 22! It's amazing how "good" it feels to have a little person using your bladder as a kicking/punching bag in the middle of the day. I am beginning to feel more taps from B2K throughout the day and her Daddy is still impatiently waiting for her to kick him when he talks to her. Otherwise, the last 2 weeks have been "uneventful" as far as new things going on with B2K. We have our monthly OB visit tomorrow afternoon. Jay has high hopes that we will get to see our little spaghetti squash (don't worry, we didn't know what it was either until we saw the picture) but I think it will probably be a quick heartbeat check, urine test, and most likely scheduling our glucose screening for next month's appointment. In addition, I got us signed up for a tour of the maternity ward at Mercy Hospital for next Tuesday evening + birthing classes to start on June 22nd and go every Wednesday for 5 weeks. So a couple of other things checked off the list and that much closer to being "ready" (or at least prepared...I'm not sure "ready" is a word that I can use just yet).

As far as new things outside of baby's rapid development in the last 4 weeks, B2K's room is also developing rapidly. Daddy got the nursery furniture assembled. The crib, dresser and changing table are all put together and the nursery has shrunk significantly ; ) but it is all coming together nicely. The next phase consists of the closet organizer and to start washing the clothes that we have gotten so far and start to get organized in that aspect.

It's hard to believe that we now have less time left than we have gone through. 22 weeks down, 18 (or less) to go. April is over half way done so I can only imagine how fast the next 120 or so days is going to go! Jay will start racing in a couple of weeks to help "speed" the summer along even more. He has his first race on May 7th in Warrensburg then another one on May 21st in Newton. Unfortunately those will be the only two that I get to go to this year, which will be very odd for me!! I am sad about it but other things are taking precedence. We missed one special birthday party and I swore after that it would never happen again! Outside of racing, in typical Jay n Nita style, we are extremely busy pretty much all summer with golf league two nights a week (yes, I am golfing league as long as I can!), racing, kids' birthdays and parties, miscellaneous things that come up on top of getting the rest of B2K's stuff ready for her arrival. Needless to say, August will be here before we know it!!!

Half Way There!

Wow! We are officially half way there! 20 weeks down, 20 (or less to go!) We have made great strides to get things ready in B2K's room. Many probably think that it is too early to get things ready and prepared in the baby's room at this point in the game but (1) we have gotten all clarification that things are "okay" that we can possibly get and (2) our summers are incredibly insane (after all, very weekend in the month of April are filled already) and things don't slow down as the summer progresses so the more we can get done now (aka: the more I can get Jay to help me get done now before going head first into racing season) the better off we will be by the time August comes around. And as we seem to be realizing, she will be here before we know it.

So with that, the 20 week mark we have gotten the crib, changing table, and dresser in. Jay has started the painting of the "bubblegum" room. The colors being yellow, pink and green! We already had it painted yellow but changed only two of the smaller walls (much to Jay's relief on the painting side!) pink. He continues to ask me "does everything have to be pink?" so I am trying to be more conscious of my choices...it doesn't help, there is still always at least one pink thing in there! As soon as the painting is done we will begin the project of assembling the furniture. It begins to take form (although looking at it now about puts this this OCD person into a conniption) and it will start coming together. I can see the room shrinking very quickly and can only hope that I will be able to put all the pieces together as I have envisioned and still have room to maneuver.

My mom and I did some baby shopping yesterday. She is officially not allowed to shop for baby stuff with me anymore...I spend too much money! : ) She helped me add some stuff to our registry and we spent the afternoon together. It was a lot of fun and got some stuff crossed off the list. Between her shopping with me, her shopping herself and my sister; Jay has essentially already cut me off of shopping for B2K for awhile. I told him I needed to buy some of my own stuff for her and that shut him up for a little while...until I show him one more outfit to make him roll his eyes and sigh! He gets over it though when the outfit says "Daddy's Girl" on it! We are registered at Target and decided to only register there so we don't have to manage multiple registries; it's much more critical to "stalk" than the wedding registry was! : )http://http://www.target.com/registry/landing?ref=nav_registries

No new updates other than that, which I am grateful for! No news is definitely good news in this instance and the less I need to update anyone on, the better! We have our next appointment on April 19th; we will be 22 weeks at that point. It's hard to believe that we are so close to being done with our second trimester already! A humorous quote to end the (thankfully) boring post for the bi-weekly blog post:

You should never say anything to a woman that even remotely suggests that you think she's pregnant unless you can see an actual baby emerging from her at that moment.

~Dave Barry, "Things That It Took Me 50 Years to Learn"