Growing...growing...21 weeks

Well, there's not really been much happening in the last few weeks...I feel Little Man a lot more now and Jonathan has actually felt him a few times and belly keeps growing, lol. :). Jonathan is starting to paint the baby's room tonight (hopefully) and then we'll be well on our way to having at least the main parts of the nursery done, yay!!! Since there's not much to update on I'll leave you with one of my newest pics. 

Stuff for Baby Berry :)

I thought I'd make a post dedicated the things we've specifically picked out for Baby Berry's nursery now that we know we're having a boy :). I ordered the crib and dresser this morning (thanks to my Mom and mother-in-law) and will be ordering the changing table as soon as it gets back in stock. We are heading to Winston on Saturday to register!!! I am so excited about finally getting to register because that means we're one step closer to having showers!!! LOL. While I'm there I'm going to go ahead and pick up his bedding so we can match paint and Jonathan can get crackin' on painting the nursery before we get the furniture. Anyway, here's some pictures of the things we've picked out.

It's a...

BOY!!!

We found on last Wednesday (3/31) that we are having a baby BOY! We are both SOOOO excited. I was secretly wishing for boy just because I knew Jonathan wanted one and I knew that the "Stansberry" name would go on so that would satisfy his family PLUS I can see myself more with a boy (don't really know why) and my family was really wanting a boy as well....so, needless to say, we are all VERY tickled!

My Mom went with us to the ultrasound and we had to wait FOREVER, it was driving us all nuts but once we finally got back there it seemed to go pretty quick. The Doctor did tons of measurements to make sure that he wa

s doing good and was healthy and everything looked perfect, he's even measuring about a week ahead - no change to my due date, she just said that he's probably going to be a big baby. After all the measurements the Doctor finally said "Well, let's see what this baby is" and quickly found his "private area" and proclaimed that he is a he :). After the initial determination by the Doctor that it was a Boy my mother decided it was time for her to embarrass me (as usual) so she proceeded to scream out the statement "I thought I saw balls!" LOL, I kept apologizing to the Doctor but she thought it was pretty funny herself. Ha! Here's a snap shot of his private area and a 4d of his face :)

With my sister-in-law, Holly, being in Japan we had arranged a time for her to call and see what he verdict was because I couldn't possibly call her from my cell phone considering I can't make International calls so we had determined that she should call around 3:00 pm (her 4:00 am) and I felt really bad because when she called we were still in the waiting room! So, Jonathan told her to call back in 30-45 minutes and she was right on time and called just as soon as we were leaving the building. She was shocked to find out it was boy because she has always told me that she sees us having all girls (which, since I really wanted a boy first, I hoped wasn't true) but she is very excited. Poor little Hazel is a little bit confused on the whole "cousin" thing. She told me last week BEFORE The big revealing that she wanted a girl because if it was a girl it would be her cousin and if it was a boy it would only be Lane's cousin. I tried (Holly also tried) to explain to her that it'd be her cousin either way but she really just didn't understand. When Holly told Lane and Haze the news, Lane was VERY excited and wants to buy him clothes (lol) and Hazel said "uh...I thought *I* was getting a cousin!" So...she still doesn't understand but I'm hoping soon it won't matter. 

After we finally got in the car and after the phone chain that we had going to tell everyone the big news my mom handed me a pair of blue socks and said "Here's it's first piece of clothing" and I was like "Mom, did you only get boy ones?" (this because she wanted a boy so bad) and she said "No" :) and pulled out a pair of pink ones too. Haha. So, the socks were his first piece of clothing but he got much more that day because me and Mom took advantage of the outlet stores in Blowing Rock and went to town on boy clothes :). After all of the clothes we bought that day Jonathan made the statement "If you HAVE to have something buy it but slack off a little because we're going to get tons of stuff at our showers" LOL...so I have to try and refrain from buying anything so we're not completely broke when he gets here. BUT, since he said if I HAVE to have something to buy it...I went ahead and ordered some cowboy "booties" from gymboree since they were on sale for $3.99 :).

Kicks!

So I started feeling the butterflies that everyone describes about a week or so ago but it wasn't often and I was afraid to really say that it was the baby but I am pretty sure it was now. On Thursday (maybe Wednesday) of last week (17 weeks) I began to feel actual little "kicks" down low in my belly and thought, maybe it's just gas (lol) but I have been feeling them pretty frequently now and especially when I'm sort of hunched over sitting at my desk or something...sort of like the baby is saying "Get off of me!". haha. I am so excited to finally feel movement and I can't wait until it's a lot more and when Jonathan can feel it too....so cool!

Drum Roll Please :)

I have been asked to post some belly pictures so here's one that is terrible quality from my webcam, lol. My other cameras were both dead so that's the best I could do :). 

Anyway, I'll be 17 weeks tomorrow! WooHoo. I am very excited to find out what this baby is and I don't know if I can wait until the 31st!!! I am feeling pretty good, just really hungry, lol. I am hungry all the time and we just got an e-mail at work this week saying that we can't eat at our desks anymore so I'm in the break room a lot! Oh...I'm not sure if I said this before or not but there are 3 people who are pregnant at work - Renee, Holly and myself. Holly is due in May and Renee is in labor as we speak! We have been getting updates all day on her and at 5:00 she was fully dilated so there may be a baby by now, I don't know! She's having a baby girl and Holly is also having a baby girl which she is naming Macie Rae so everybody says that I'm having a girl because it's the year of the girls, so we'll see :). 

Warning...whine fest below

Ok, so this is just a warning...this will be a very whiny post! LOL.

I have always wanted to be a stay-at-home or work-at-home Mom but I've known since we got married that that was probably not going to be possible and it sucks! I would love for my PaperMePretty business to thrive and I'm doing all I can to help it along but I don't foresee it turning enough profit in the next 5-6 months to allow me to only work on that and not have a job outside of the home. I know that I'd go crazy not doing something but I've worked consistantly since I was 14 and I'd love to have a nice break where I didn't have to work outside of the home and all I had to do was watch my baby grow up and go to play dates, play groups, the park, etc and then work from my home on my own designs. Don't get me wrong, I love the company I work for, that's not the issue...it's just that why would anyone want someone else watching their baby while they went to work? Well anyway, this dream I'm speaking off isn't possible right now in our lives for many reasons but mainly vehicle payments and insurance so unless Jonathan can start riding a horse to work (he'd love that) and they would make carseats for horse buggies, I don't foresee this being even the slightest possibility at this moment in time.

So...I finally decided to break down and go on some daycare tours here in the County...if you ever want to cry doing something try being 4 months pregnant, hormonal, wanting so badly to stay at home with your baby and HAVING to go look at daycares...its sucks! I went to Generations because it's supposed to be the Cadillac of daycares in Ashe and while it was very nice I was not impressed AT ALL with the baby room. It was the size of my office at work (very small) with 2 teachers and 6 or 8 babies and the babies didn't have anywhere to go....okay okay, I know...where do babies need to go? These babies were starting to crawl/walk and they had nowhere at all to do that so I left VERY upset and sobbed the entire day, lol. I then went to Learning Thru Play Too and I felt much better about their facilities. I knew most of the teachers and one of them I've known for years and I wouldn't think twice about her watching my baby so I just had an all around better experience there. The baby room was MUCH larger than the one at Generations and then the next room was also fairly big and I felt like the babies were getting plenty of attention so that was great. Also, my mother-in-law will be moving her office up to that same building so she could go check on the baby anytime I/she wanted and I can get there within 2 minutes if I needed to and hopefully I can go up there on my lunch breaks to nurse the baby (hopefully). So anyway, I guess we'll end up going with that daycare...it's really the only one I would consider, I've seen some others and I wasn't impressed. :/

Well anyway I hate the thoughts of even having to do daycare but I'm much more okay with that than I would be to leave "it" with a random old lady who had 6 other kids to watch and couldn't give mine the attention "it" needed...so I guess daycare is the lesser of two evils in my eyes, everybody's different. The cost is another sucky part about daycare but I can afford that much more than I can afford to not bring in an income and stay at home so I guess that part I just have to live with.

See told ya it was whiny :). I plan to post a belly pic and do another update tonight so stay tuned!

Week 14

I start my 14th week tomorrow and I am just so excited to be out of the first trimester. I haven't been near as queasy as before and although I haven't quite gotten over being sleepy all the time, I'm hoping that part will pass soon too. I am starting to "show", I guess, because people are commenting on my belly and it's actually starting to get hard and not look much different from day to day like it was before. I am so excited to finally start getting a belly! haha, That may be a little wierd but I can't wait to wear the maternity clothes that I've gotten so far and not have them fall off of me!!! We got to hear Baby Berry's heartbeat again about a week ago and it was 164 bpm this time! Based on the old-wives-tale, that means girl, but I guess we'll wait and see! :)

My parents are very insistant that we have a boy because they never had any and my in-laws are convinced I'm having a girl, lol, so I guess everybody will just have to wait and see. Jonathan and I really don't have a preference, I mean sometimes we want a boy and sometimes we want a girl and honestly, I don't really care - especially with our first, I'll probably have more of a preference with our 2nd but with this one I would be equally as excited for both! My sister-in-law had a dream that I am having a boy with a ton of hair and this changed her mind because she had a feeling from the get-go that we'd have a girl. I have since had a dream that we were at our ultrasound appointment and the baby flashed us and was a girl, so I guess it all just depends on who's dream is right! LOL. We have a for-sure name for a girl but we are totally undecided on a boy so I hope, if it is a boy, that it will at least have a name before it's born! haha.

Well, I guess that's all for now but I'm hoping soon I can start posting "belly pictures" and not look too terrible so maybe I'll do some of those next time.