20 Weeks Pregnant

Today marks the official half-way mark of this pregnancy. How crazy is that?? I feel as though I'm going through a growth spurt at the moment. My lower back has been pretty uncomfortable the past few days - not really painful, but just really tired. I also have just a general achiness throughout the front of my tummy. I think it's all just from things getting bigger. Thankfully, I still haven't had any back rib pain like I did with Ila. I think that this baby is sitting much lower than Ila ever did, so maybe I'll luck out and go the whole pregnancy without having to experience that again.

Another pregnancy event going on... I started having some Braxton Hicks contractions yesterday afternoon. It felt as though the baby was curling up into a little ball in the bottom of my stomach and I looked down expecting to see a huge lump. The was no lump of course, but when I told my mom about it later, she reminded me that I had that same feeling when I started having contractions with Ila. It seems awfully early for these to start, but I did some reading and it's totally normal. And for those who might be pregnancy illiterate, Braxton Hicks contractions aren't any actual part of labor. They are basically just like your body's way of practicing contractions for whenever it does decide to go into labor.

Here is the latest belly picture at 20 weeks:

And here is an amazingly cute picture of Ila that I took while we were outside playing with bubbles yesterday. I don't even know what to call this face!


Ila's booty dance that she MUST have learned from Aunt Haley:

It's A....

GIRL!!!! It's been a crazy and hectic day, but I at least wanted to post some pictures. I'll write more later. Yay for girls!!

Vacation! ...or Trip to Clarksville...

I took off a few days from work and Tim and I headed up to Clarksville, TN to visit his family and get some free babysitting! We got in last Thursday night and the next day, left Ila with the grandparents so that we could have some alone time in Nashville. We rented a room at the Sheraton Hotel downtown and went out for a night on the town. We had dinner at the Wildhorse Saloon. Tim had never been there and the last time I was there, I was celebrating my bachelorette party with my college girlfriends. Big Bad Voodoo Daddy was performing that night so we were able to have some good entertainment. It was a lot of fun and I was sure to take some pictures. Afterwards, we headed out to the bar and I swear we tried to be young people who stay out late. Unfortunately, by midnight we were exhausted and went back to ye old hotel room.
The next morning, we went to the Waffle House for breakfast and then went over to Opry Mills for some shopping. While walking through the mall, I started having some major pain in my right leg. It had happened a few times previously, but never that bad. The pain started right under my butt, went down the back of my thigh and through my calf. It finally occurred to me that I was probably have sciatic nerve pain thanks to parasitic fetus (who shall be named soon, I promise). It only hurt really bad if I was standing. So, Tim and I decided we'd see a movie since walking wasn't really agreeing with me. We saw Night at the Museum II which was very good and I'd definitely recommend it to anyone.


That evening, we got to meet up with several of our college friends and that was an absolute treat. One of them, Katie Broderick, was just moving to Nashville so I guess we had a sort of housewarming party. We got to visit with Katie, Taren Spence and her beau, Bethany Andrews, Matt Pullen, Ashley Rousselle, and Mrs. Fancy herself, Emily Denton. I'm quite jealous that they're all living so close to each other and will be seeing each other often.

We went back to Clarksville the next morning and spent the rest of the weekend visiting with Tim's parents and relaxing in their neighbor's pool. Ila did GREAT in the pool. She warmed right up to it and enjoyed jumping off the steps into daddy's arms. I was very paranoid about Ila getting sunburned, so thanks to my anal sunscreen application, she didn't get burned at all! I got some good video of her in the pool with daddy too, so check it out below.





On our final vacation night, we headed back down to Nashville for one last night out with the friends. We went to our friend Charles' apartment for a few starter beers (I had part of a beer and that was it - don't go all psycho on me) and then I was lucky enough to drive a truck full of people downtown to a bar. There were two of us up front, three across the back and one poor soul in the truck bed. We picked up two more girls on the way, totalling three people in the truckbed. And wouldn't you know, it started raining. So all three had to pull the cover over the truckbed to keep from getting soaked. It was quite a sight. And yes. I took pictures.

It was a VERY late night for us, but we had a great time. Well... at least I did. Perhaps you should ask Tim what happened when he paired beer with jager bombs... *ahem* Anyway... it was great to spend more time with our friends and family before heading back to Johnson City on Tuesday evening. Ila did great on the whole trip and didn't get her routine messed up too badly. I know Clarksville wasn't quite like the beach, but at least I got to have a mommy-break for longer than 24 hours - a first in Ila's 15 months. It was nice to relax a little, but it's even nicer to be home.

And now for a very cute video...

17 Weeks... Already?!

17 weeks! (and don't I look sexy?)

Three more weeks and I'll be half-way through this pregnancy. Is anyone else stunned by that besides me? I always heard that after the first pregnancy, you're so busy with the first kid that you don't have time to think about the second one and it's definitely true. This pregnancy is flying by. We'll find out the sex of the baby on June 30th and that's only 2 weeks away! I'm still feeling the baby move, which is great and one of the best things about being pregnant. Today, he or she had some sort of leg spasm and kicked me 7 times in a row! Maybe the baby is working out all it's energy inside the womb so that it will be nice and peaceful when it comes out... at least one can hope, right?

Little miss Ila is just as adorable as ever. She's pretty much running nowadays and one of her new favorite games is "chase." You ask her to come to you and she simply grins at you and runs the other way. It's the cutest thing ever. She's making a lot of effort to mimic words we say, but she's still not using a lot of words on her own. (holy crap! I think a bird just flew into my front window while trying to eat from the bird feeder! anyway...) I'm not going to be surprised if her pediatrician wants to send her for some speech therapy or something at her next appointment on June 29th. Eh... we'll see I guess. Ila is definitely sharp as a tack, however. She knows exactly what you are saying to her and will follow just about any command - whether you think she knows certain words or not. Very smart girl.

Tim is officially done with his second year of medical school AND the first licensing exam he'll have to take. He studied for 6 days a week, 10 hours a day for a whole month for an exam with 300+ questions and took the test on Monday. He'll have to wait to see how he did on it, but he's just so glad to have it behind him. Now, he can relax for 2 weeks until he starts 3rd year rotations on June 29th. I know two weeks doesn't sound like a lot, but in medical school land, it's like a month off of school. This is honestly the first time in two years that he hasn't had some sort of studying he could be doing. He's spending his time with Ila, watching her while I go in to the psychiatric hospital 3-4 days a week.

Tomorrow, we're taking our only vacation for the summer - heading up to Clarksville, TN to see Tim's family. We're going to let the grandparents watch Ila for a couple of days so that we can head to Nashville for some much needed quality time. I've never been away from Ila for more than 24 hours, so it will probably be good for me to have some adult time without her. We'll be back next Tuesday and hopefully I'll have some good stories to blog about. Thanks for reading!!