Heartburn, I loathe you.

Well today I am 24 weeks! 6 month point. Only 16 more weeks to go before we get to meet our sweetheart. Most days I feel fantastic! It's weird that getting off the couch or getting up from stretching on the floor is growing increasingly difficult. Today, I've felt like total garbage. Lance hasn't felt 100% either- so we are wondering if maybe it's food poisoning. Either way, it's been an extra lazy Sunday.

Symptoms this week:

• Walking up stairs makes me slightly winded. Well, winded enough that I need to walk around slowly before talking to anyone otherwise I sound noticeably out of breath ha...
• Sleepy throughout the day. I wake up feeling pretty good, but I could easily nap throughout the day if I was allowed. 
• HEARTBURN! It is increasingly worse if I eat something super sweet, otherwise it just hurts after dinner. Tums do the trick for the most part, but I really dislike popping them like a drug addict. 
• DROOL! What the heck- I never knew that my saliva production would increase so much. I wake up in a river of it. Also, I sleep so hard at night that I'm sawing logs, so when I wake up it feels like I've been yelling at a Spice Girls concert all night. 
• If it's hot outside I swell up like a balloon, feet, hands, face. I'm so thankful that we are going into the colder months. I made Lance agree that the next one would be conceived in August so that we avoid all hot months. Props to all the mamas who deliver from June-September. Mad Props. 

Catching Up

I missed blogging for week 22 and 23 and now I'm creeping up on week 24! Yikes.
Well let's recap on week 22 and 23

Week 22

• Flew to Denver for our dear friend's wedding. It was gorgeous! I had the honor of being in the wedding party and it was so much fun getting together with all of the girls and preparing for the big day all weekend. We have a pretty great group of friends and all of the bride and grooms new and old friends seemed to mesh so perfectly. We stayed at a house in Boulder and it was gorgeous. It was a 10 minute walk from their downtown area, so Lance and I walked to get breakfast on the morning of our 2 year anniversary. Honestly, I couldn't have thought of a better way to spend it than with some great friends, great food, and awesome dance moves. 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• As far as pregnancy symptoms go- week 22 was the week of extreme energy. I managed to stay up every night past 9PM (little victories guys, little victories) AND I even made it past midnight on the night of their rehearsal dinner. 
• My boobs continue to grow like tiny mountains, sorry, TMI. That's also where I've gotten my first stretch marks. Yikes, they're very prominent. 
• Ames is active as ever. Kicking around all the time, mostly active in the morning. 

Week 23

• Lance and I get up anywhere from 5AM-6AM on a daily basis. Even when we have a day off we aren't sleeping in much later than 6:30 or 7. This inevitably means that by 8:30 we've fallen asleep on the couch-whoops. Okay, I say "we" but in reality, he's fallen asleep with me maybe once...he's usually the one waking me up to go to bed. 
• Again, with the boob talk- I apologize. ITCHY, ITCHY, ITCHY!!! Cocoa butter to the rescue.
• I had another ultrasound so that they could get better pictures of his heart and all looked well! He is weighing in at about 1.6 lbs and was a total stinker. He was so cozy and balled up in there that he decided whatever way she needed him to face, he would face the opposite. 
• He's still most active in the morning and now when he moves you can actually see my belly move with him. He's getting stronger! 

Last weekend we went to the OSU VS San Diego St. game (Beavs won!!!)  and we, wait for it, WATCHED IT FROM A SUITE! Holy coolness my friends. Our brother in law rocks.

He's going to be the best dad ever :)

No Sleep? Why not!

Well we've hit 21 weeks and there haven't been too many big changes this week. I'm madly in love with feeling this little boy kick. It is the best feeling in the whole entire world. This week I went one day without feeling him and had a small panic attack. I was reassured by my wonderful mother that "he's sleeping a lot at this stage because it's hard work growing up! And he's still pretty small." I'm awfully lucky to have her to talk to about all of these things. The next day I felt him and all was right in the world. Last night we had dinner over at Lindsey's and he was up moving around enough for both her and Lance to feel. Also, we had waffles this morning for our Saturday breakfast and apparently, he's a big fan! He has been kicking and twirling in there all morning. Lance and I are in heaven.

Excuse the lack of hair/make up prep- it was early..

So the past couple nights I have woken up several times in the middle of the night for potty breaks and then by 3:30am I am WIDE awake. What's fun about that? Well I manage to doze off for about 15 minutes just before our alarm goes off at 5:00. I guess I'm practicing for when he actually gets here. Neat. 

This morning, on our day off, I woke up 5:30. I had a crazy pain in my belly button and then I felt him kick and I was up for the day :)

Pregnancy hormones have been fun. I can efficiently go from zero to sixty in record time. For example, an alarm of sorts went off for about 20 minutes this morning and it was the most god awful screeching one has heard in some time. Instead of ignoring it and proceeding to get up and get ready for work 45 minutes before my alarm, I sat and cried. I cried from lack of sleep, I cried for feeling overwhelmed, I cried because last night I was so hot that I felt short of breath/was sweating from every ounce of my being, I just cried. It's not typical of me to react in such a way- yes, I am a sap and I do cry....but not over car alarms. That's not the first overreaction perfectly rational incident that I have encountered over the past couple of weeks either. I'll spare any details since they all kind of end the same way- overstimulated/ frustrated/ exhausted = crying. And i'm not a pretty crier.

And finally, shortness of breath. I think that the heat has a lot to do with it. I had a walk at Portland International Raceway to end Alzheimer's yesterday. We took some of our residents and I drove the bus to pick up some other Activity Directors and their residents. It peaked at about 90 that afternoon and over the black top it was scorching. We probably only walked an eighth of the track because that was about all our residents could handle. So when I got home after a 7 hour, action packed, hot day, I was wiped out. Like fall asleep at 7:45 kind of wiped out. Also, the past few nights after I eat dinner (it has been well into the 90s lately) I feel like my lungs have shrunk 4 sizes and I'm struggling for every breath. My first reaction: take off all clothing because the heat is going to make me cry ;)...reaction number two: take large breaths, attempt yoga to get things to move around in there, sit straight up on the couch, lay down on the couch, stand up and walk around, lay on the floor and rub ice on my face, sit criss cross in front of a fan, lay on my side, lay on my other side, and finally....cry :) Do you see the trend here?

Lance and I have graciously been handed down many baby supplies/furniture/etc. and we are beyond thankful for everyone helping us out and being so unbelievably generous. We were given a changing table from his sister, Lindsey that we painted blue (it looks more blue in the picture than it actually really is) and we went to Home Depot and got a peg board for diaper storage/decoration. It feels pretty awesome to have a few things coming together in his room.

All in all things have been going very well, I just know that I'm going to want to remember these stories later on because eventually they will make me laugh. Eventually.

Kickin' up a Storm!

Well we are half way there!! 20 weeks down and 20 more to go before we get to meet our little sweetheart. Knowing that he is a boy is kind of crazy- from time to time I still catch myself calling him "they" before I remember- We actually know what we're having!! So exciting. This week has been pretty good, no crazy symptoms, just itchy skin, chocolate cravings, and pregnancy brain. Fun fact: If I wear a belt with my clothes you can some what tell that I have a belly! It's great! 

We have been talking about names and I think we are settled on Aemes (Ay-mms) Wilde. We aren't setting it in stone until we see him. Some of the other names we thought of were Wesley Lyon, Dash Steven, and if Lance had his way, he would be named Enzo (yes, like Enzo Ferrari). If little bug was a girl we had Sawyer, Leighton, and Harper picked out for names. We'll save those for if we have a girl on the next round :)

I celebrated my birthday last Saturday and it was wonderful. I spent the whole day relaxing with my husband and my dog, had food with family and friends, and ended the evening with swing dancing in the living room with my sweet hubby. The next day my mom, Nana, and I went shopping and I got new maternity clothes from Old Navy. Naturally, since Carters is right next door from Old Navy, we stopped there next. Needless to say, this boy is going to be STYLISH! 

Baby Armstrong was an active one this week, in fact, he gave me the best birthday present a mommy could ask for- he kicked hard enough for daddy to feel him! I can definitely tell that he is getting stronger because I feel him much more frequently now. 

So those cravings though....Random...

Spicy, hot sauce with my savory foods (lunches and dinners) and sweets whenever possible. And by whenever, I mean that if I could have them for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, I would consume my weight in chocolate cookies, brownies, candy, you name it. Thankfully, we have not stocked our house with any of those so I have to refrain. I can't say that I would go as far as to make the Kit Kat Lasagna below- but I'm also not above trying something similar.

Maybe it's all of the sugar cravings making me dopey, but for some reason when I'm formulating sentences sometimes, I sound like a 2 year old trying to express my needs and I just can't. I stare blankly just searching for the right words and then BOOM it comes back to me and I carry on until another simple word slips my mind. It's like I'm drunk on pregnancy. Shiza.