less than 4 months and counting

I'm almost 26 weeks along and approaching the end of my second trimester!  Baby t is the length of a an English hothouse cucumber or a burp cloth (really? neither of these seem like good analogies to me), which means he is around 14 inches long.  Another source says he's the size of a head of lettuce, which is much easier to imagine, so we'll stick with that.  Apparently he now has eyelashes and is taking his first breaths of amniotic fluid.  I can also feel his kicks much more strongly and frequently than before, and while that is so fun, it has made it harder to sleep because he's extremely active when I'm in bed.   Speaking of kicks, as you can see from his latest ultrasound pic, his foot looks HUGE, so that explains a lot...

Since we recently had a weekend at home together, which is a rarity these days, we decided to paint the nursery (ok, mostly it was Ben painting and me watching, but I did help some).  Of course we also had help from bubby and nibby, and as you can see by the picture below, bubby really did try to help by sitting against a wet wall so he could spread paint around the room.  The best part is that we now have at least one of his hairs permenantely painted to the wall.  I like to think he wanted to leave his permenant mark in his new brother's room.



I took it as my responsibility to keep bubby occupied while Ben finished painting



Speaking of bubby, he is officially a year older!  We celebrated his 6th birthday on September 12th.  I was unfortunately out of town for the big day, but Ben made sure he got some extra attention.

We also had some other birthdays to celebrate.  Cam and Leni had their little girl, Annabelle, 6 weeks early on September 10th.  She's beautiful and doing really well.  I got to meet and hold her when she was just two days old and can't wait for her to meet baby t. 

Two sets of our friends, Kyle and Julia and Kent and Annie, had their little girls this month too, but we haven't had a chance to meet them yet.  Baby t really will have his pick of beautiful ladies to date in a few years...

After meeting little Annabelle, I spent the weekend with some of my best girlfriends from college for our alpha chi beach reunion.  This is our second year in a row at Ocean Isle, and we plan to make it a tradition.  I will say that it was quite different than last year  since I wasn't drinking, but I figure I'll just make up for it next year when I leave our 8 month old home with Ben.  Fortunately, there were three of us who weren't drinking, so I wasn't alone with my mocktails (thanks MG for the intro to ginger beer!).  Also, my sweet friends gave us a mini shower that included a delicious cookie cake (Ben says thanks for the leftovers) and a piece of artwork made just for baby t by Mary Grace.



Thanks Casey for providing my first AX t-shirt since 2005!






week 23

I am trying to get better about posting updates more often, so yay for those of you who check! 

I'm almost 24 weeks, which means baby t will be here in just 4 months (or sooner, hopefully, so we can be home with him for Christmas).  I asked my doctor at my appointment this week if they'd induce me on/around my due date, and understandably, she said not until he was a week late.  I really hope he comes in 2012, but I know he'll come when he is good and ready.  Interestingly, I was measuring 27 weeks, so perhaps we have a giant baby in there and he will want to come out early!

We haven't made any more progress on his nursery, but the paint did arrive last week, so we're thinking about painting this weekend.  Ben already primed the room and taped it, so the hard stuff is out of the way.  This is one of our only semi-free weekends over the next few months, so I figure we'd better get started.  And, knowing me, I'd really like the nursery to be done yesterday because I am so impatient.

In other news, we had a great Labor Day weekend thanks to Drew and Sayeh visiting from Philly.  Drew, who Ben met in law school, is one of our closest friends, and we hadn't seen him in a long time.  Another good friend, Ryan, also stopped by for a night last week because he was in town for the NC State game at the Georgia Dome (I won't say any more about the kickoff of football season since both our teams unfortunately lost). 

To show Drew and Sayeh a good time, we let George and Nibby love on them, fed them (and tried Persian food for the first time, thanks Sayeh!) and showed them a few highlights the city has to offer, including Piedmont Park, World of Coke, and the Braves (our luck of course that the Braves v. Phillies game we went to was the only game the Phillies lost).



We had the pleasure of holding the torch from the London Olympics (why it is at World of Coke, I have no idea)



impressive, huh?

And obviously this posting wouldn't be complete without an update on George and Nibby.  They had the pleasure of seeing their vet this week, and I am happy to say Bubby's down 6lbs thanks to our recently exercise regime.  Unfortunately, the Nibby's only down 1oz and is still 'slightly overweight' (read: borderline obese), so we're cutting back on his food, which means he wakes me up even more often in the middle of the night because he is hungry.  I figure this is good practice for when the baby comes, or at least that's what I'm telling myself.