Egg hunt.

(I know. Worst blogger ever. I'm gonna go ahead and use the simultaneously-raising-a-toddler-&-growing-a-fetus excuse.)

Sunday was the Easter Eggstravaganza down at the Rec! The weather cooperated, so we were able to have a chilly, but sunny, egg hunt on the lawn. Brooke and her cousins Claire (pictured) and Hannah were all in the 2 & Under group, i.e. eggs and toys are just thrown all over the grass. Though not all that challenging, the munchkins still had a blast with it!

Brooke was a very good little hunter, "finding" her 10 eggs in no time.

After the hunt, she had a chance to open all her eggs and check out what was inside. Her loot: 5 packs of Spongebob gummies, a few Safe-T-Pops, several stickers (which she LOVES now) and a paper telling her she'd won a special prize (a bucket full of snacks/candy and a bunny.)

There were lots of activities for the kiddos at the little party, though only a few were age-appropriate for the Big Lady. She played a game, decorated a cookie with Daddy, and even made a craft project.

 Somebody enjoyed the icing stick a bit... :)

Her favorite part? Going over this little bridge in the middle of the gym. She went back and forth over this little thing about 100 times.

I'd love to say Brooke enjoyed the whole event...but that would be a lie. Remember the Santa meet 'n greet? Yeah, the Easter Bunny went about like that. I don't even have a picture of it because she was so freaked out from the very start. Oh well, maybe next year!

21 Weeks.

Exactly 2 years ago, I started this little blog as a way to chronicle this crazy journey towards parenthood. Now, 2 years and 300 posts later, I can't even believe how different things are. I am a mom, not a mom-to-be. I am married to a father. We are 4+ months away from being parents to two children. It's incredible how life works out.

How far along?: 21 weeks, 0 days.
Total weight gain/loss: +0.5 this week, +10.5 total.
Maternity clothes?: Took a little spill in the rain this week; thankfully, I only busted up my knee a bit - but I came thisclose to ripping a hole in the only maternity jeans I have. Luckily, they're going to survive a few more weeks until the heat sticks around for good.
Sleep: Getting more and more uncomfortable. And the little one has decided to practice her aerobic exercises in my belly around 11:00 each night = not helpful.
Movement: So much, so often. Baby Reeder is a squirmer :)
Food/Cravings: No real cravings, but I do go in waves of super-hard-to-satisfy hunger.
Gender: I don't even care, baby is 100% healthy!
New w/pregnancy #2: Going the TMI route again, so beware. I started my last pregnancy about 25 lbs heavier than this one; I didn't even start gaining weight last time until about this point in the pregnancy. The weight I'm gaining this time seems to be more noticeable (to me, at least)...especially in one particular place. Well, make that two. The Girls kinda deflated with all my post-baby weight loss, but they are making a comeback! Here's the extra-TMI part: they are getting...um...heavy.
What I miss: Sleeping comfortably.
What I am looking forward to: Hot dog, hot dog, hot diggity dogs :) (I promise this obsession is going to end soon....promise.)
Best moment this week: Without a doubt, it was seeing my favorite little fetus at the ultrasound! AND finding out the munchkin is growing so perfectly. Best news of the year :)
Weekly Wisdom: I just don't know.
Milestones: Baby Reeder is the length of a banana!

Excellent news!

Yesterday was my big ultrasound at the doctor's office. We were given the most excellent news:

I can eat hot dogs!!

Hooray! The Root Beer Stand, Reds games, and Skyline are now at the top of my list of things to do this summer! It doesn't get more exciting than that, folks :)

Oh wait...

Well, we also found out that the baby hard at work growing inside of me is perfectly healthy. I guess that's pretty ridiculously exciting, huh? Oh, and also, WE GOT TO SEE HIM/HER! So really, the hot dog thing is about the 3rd most exciting part of the appointment yesterday.

The 12 minutes that I got to lay there and watch my little one up on the screen were magical. It was just as awesome as it was with Brooke, just as exciting. Actually, don't tell her, but I think it might have been a bit more exciting, mostly because it put a very real spin on this pregnancy. Seeing that tiny little thing squirming around in there made things very real, a feeling I've been waiting for for quite some time now. This little guy or girl (still Team Surprise on the gender!) was moving all over the place during the ultrasound, a sign that this one may be even sassier than Miss Brooke.

Baby Reeder is, in the OB's words, "perfect". He/she has all of the right parts and they are all in the right places. The tech & OB saw no signs of birth defects or abnormalities. Heartbeat was a steady 152 bpm; watching the heart flicker on the screen is one of my favorite parts :) He/she weighs a whopping 14 oz. already. The average for this point in pregnancy is 12 oz... Surprise, surprise, the Reeders made another giant baby. (For the record, Brooke was only 1.5 oz above average at her ultrasound...ruh roh!) But the head is within the normal range for now - hooray for me!

We came home with a few pictures of the little one to show his/her big sister. She kept pointing to the pictures saying "baby", which was completely heart-melting. Without further ado, here are the best ones we have.

The standard profile shot. You can see a little bit of the spine and ribs, as well as a clearly outlined head. The little thing jutting out is the back of the baby's upper arm - I'm pretty sure the baby was rolling away from us here.

And here is the more hi-tech photo. Say what you will about 3D pictures, that they are creepy or weird, but I think they are flippin' awesome. Look at that cute face! It's not super easy to see, what with the giant umbilical cord in the way on the left, but the munchkin had his arm up over his face in a very dramatic fashion, so you can kinda see tiny fingers towards the top of the head on the left. And there's another blurry hand right below the mouth. Precious, no?

Relief is an excellent word for how I'm feeling today. Of course we had no reason to believe anything was wrong, especially since Baby Reeder is having parties in my belly all day long. But I still walked into that appt with a bit of trepidation. Knowing that the baby is perfect and I am doing everything right is so comforting!

Less than halfway until we meet face-to-face, kiddo. :)

Halfway!

Baby Reeder at 20 weeks

How far along?: 20 weeks, 0 days. Oh snap!
Total weight gain/loss: Well yesterday the scale said I was down half a pound, but today it says I'm up one. I did eat a bunch of crap yesterday (delicious crap, but crap nonetheless.) Still, I find it very hard to believe the scale today. Oh well, we'll go with +1 this week, +10 total.
Maternity clothes?: Wore my first skirt of the year today! The best part of my job before Brooke came was the dress code. Rather than having a closet full of useless suits and button-downs, my closet is jam-packed with cotton drawstring skirts & flip-flops. And those pre-pregnancy skirts fit perfectly under my growing belly :)
Sleep: Other than some CRAZY dreams (like craaaazy dreams), sleep overall is still not so bad. I'm up to needing 2 extra pillows - 1 between my legs and 1 behind my back. Still very much relying on Tylenol PM to sleep deeply.
Movement: This kiddo has started doing flips!
Food/Cravings: Ready for this? I'm craving....fruit. No joke. Well, it's not so much a craving as it is just the only thing that sounds good most of the time. Apples have taken the place of Pop-tarts as my go-to - certainly not a bad swap, eh?
Gender: Still thinking blue. Wishful thinking? Maybe.
New w/pregnancy #2: TMI Alert! TMI Alert! I'm starting to experience pressure. Like, pelvic pressure. And I can only assume it's somehow due to Baby Reeder. I carried Brooke so high up in my rib cage that I never really felt pressure, um, down there. So we'll see what the OB says about this on Friday.
What I miss: Bending over comfortably. Yes, already.
What I am looking forward to: Can't wait for Ultrasound Friday!! :)
Best moment this week: Throwing up twice in one day at almost 20 weeks pregnant...oh wait...
Weekly Wisdom: Nada.
Milestones: HALFWAY, friends! I'm enjoying the thought that we only have 20 weeks to go. I'm NOT letting those 8 extra days I had in the first pregnancy bum me out. I'm going to pretend this baby will be one of the 4% of babies that comes on his actual due date :)

Crafts & baking.

Last Saturday, I decided to get my big girl going on some different projects - two things that I'm a huge fan of, crafts and baking!

First up: craft time! I had seen a tutorial on a blog on how to make little sheep prints for Easter. It's not so easy to engage a toddler in a craft project; they can't really paint or color or cut & paste. So when I saw this was geared towards munchkins, I ran out and got the supplies (i.e. washable paint.) I thought, "What a brilliant idea this is! I'll let her get messy, which she loves come dinner time, and get lots of her cute little hand prints!"

Well, I thought wrong. She wanted NO part of messy hands. We ended up getting no pictures of her actually putting her hand on the paper because Daddy the Cameraman had to be called in for reinforcements as she tried to wiggle her way off my lap with 2 very black, messy hands.

Thankfully, I did manage to get 3 decent little hand prints for our little sheep. I think they turned out pretty darn cute! Both of Brooke's grandmas seemed to enjoy their Easter shadowboxes :)

After traumatizing Ms. Priss with the messiness of my craft project, I decided we both needed some cookies. And by both I mean me and Baby Reeder, because Toddler Reeder a) only kinda knows what a cookie is and b) is equally satisfied with Goldfish or grapes at the moment. But yeah, double chocolate chip cookies were in order for Mom!

She was a very big fan of baking! She especially enjoyed turning the bowl and helping me dump in the ingredients. She stayed relatively clean, despite the lack of apron (Note to Self: find a darling little Brooke-sized apron on Etsy for her Easter basket!) The cookies turned out pretty delicious and certainly satisfied my chocolate cookie craving for a few days. My baking assistant got to try one, too, and gobbled up every last crumb :)

I gave her one of the beaters to lick at the end (judge me all you want for offering my child raw cookie dough - what kind of parent would I be if she didn't get a chance to lick the beaters?) but she was surprisingly uninterested. Maybe because somebody was full on the chocolate chips she had been sneaking the whole time...

(And no, Brooke has not shrunk. That is, in fact, a ginormous Sam's Club-sized bag of chocolate chips. What can I say? I like to bake.)

At the end of the day I learned that baking is more up her alley, at least until she learns that messes can be washed off. Not to mention that baking involves eating, one of her most favorite past times....

Busy busy!

Things have been busy, y'all. In an awesome we-have-lots-to-do-every-day kind of way.

It's been crazy, really. Brooke-o and I have been quite the busy little bees over the last week & a half. Let's see...there have been doctor visits and tumbling classes and craft projects and chocolate cookies and park visits and ice cream cones and LOTS of play time with crazy cousins. Oh yeah, and my little hair bow shop has been doing quite well lately.

To an outsider, it may not all look like a big deal. But to a pregnant woman with a 31 lb toddler who has just gotten back the energy that this pregnancy had stolen away, it's been exhausting. There are pictures from all of these events, but I just don't have the energy to post them right now. After all, it took me all day to just finish this blog post (not kidding, I started it before lunch.) But I promise, there will be lots of pictures and stories and updates to come very soon!

19 weeks.

How far along?: 19 weeks, 0 days.
Total weight gain/loss: +2.5 lbs over the past 2 weeks, so up 9 lbs total. If I continue at this pace of roughly 1 lb a week, I'll be right around 30 lbs total by the end, which is where I was at the end of my 1st pregnancy.
Maternity clothes?: Wearing the same pair of maternity jeans almost daily. At least they are cute.
Sleep: Not bad.
Movement: All the time. Still just little kicks and jabs and still very low (about an inch or 2 below my belly button.)
Food/Cravings: Cookies, which Brooke helped me make just yesterday :) Oh, and you won't believe this, because I hardly believe it myself, but I had 4 salads this week. 4! And they actually sounded good to me, which is why I ordered them. In other words, I'm finally over most of my 1st trimester food aversions. The only thing that makes me sick now is waiting too long to eat (which, first thing in the morning, is anything more than 30 mins.)
Gender: Feeling boy again.
New w/pregnancy #2: Back pain started early :(
What I miss: Hot dogs. And I don't know why, because I don't eat a lot of hot dogs normally. I think I might ask the OB next time just how dangerous they really are...
What I am looking forward to: Seeing my baby on the ultrasound screen a week from Friday!
Best moment this week: Watching my stomach jump as the baby kicked me. And so it begins... :)
Weekly Wisdom: 1:30 a.m. is no longer an appropriate bedtime for me, especially with this pregnancy (I didn't have a 31 lb 8 a.m. wake-up call with the last one.)

Milestones: Baby Reeder has (approx.) reached half a pound! The size of a mango! Only 9 more lbs to go, baby (please no more than that - Mommy's not sure she can handle a baby bigger than your sister was!)