quick update on life

Brett turned 30! So we celebrated with lots of friends and pies and Brett celebrated by buying more gun parts. This man of mine is an amazing father and husband! I truly believe I married better than me and I know I am one lucky girl!

Pregnancy update: So as of now (37 weeks) I am 2 1/2 cm dilated , pretty much completely effaced, and baby has dropped. So right now we are spending most of our time waddling around and feeling super uncomfortable. I can't complain though....we feel so fortunate to have made it this far after our scare with preterm labor so I'll  suck it up! But sooner would be better than later:) 20+ weeks of of nonstop contractions is getting pretty exhausting! But if my attempts at walking doesn't get her out then our induction date is set to May 7th...so only 12 more days!!! We're freaking out over here!
                 

                                                        Here we are at 35 weeks and 37 weeks.

                                                                                                   

I can't end a post without a picture of Drake so here we are at some gardens today with friends.

Well, hopefully we'll have more exciting updates soon...

a little catch up

Between sicknesses, preparing for baby, bed rest, family visits, Holidays, and birthdays, I'm finding it hard to stay on top of this blog. So here's somewhat of a recap of the last couples months...

Valentines day wasn't our best this year. Brett went snowboarding all day with my brother while I spent all morning at the doctors with contractions...that's about it for our romantic day. We picked up Five Guys that night while I lied around and chugged water (doctors orders). But I decided that since I never got Christmas cards out this year (which I'm usually on top of) I would send out Valentines cards instead. That was another fail, because I made the cards and ordered them and then never sent them out. So here's the pictures of Drake I used on the Valentines cards. At least Brett got one right? I was trying to get a couple cute pictures of Drake but instead got 15  to 20 random funny expressions...but I kind of love them. These pictures pretty much sum up my kids personality.

We had both Grandparents visit in February. Drake has really gotten into cooking so he was always in the kitchen with his Grandmas cooking away.

Holidays are the best with kids! The naughty leprechaun came to visit us fr St. Patrick's Day. Drake was so excited when he woke up to find that the leprechaun got into his paint and made a mess all over the kitchen. 

My amazing friends threw me a baby shower (which was great considering we've done pretty much nothing to prepare)! It was so crazy opening presents with little girl stuff! It's just making me so more excited to meet our little girl! Come on May!!! 

My mom came into town a couple weeks ago to help out with Drake while I've been on bed rest. I have a pretty amazing mom in case you didn't already know that.

I grew up with this girl in Virginia. Our due dates are exactly a week apart! I actually have my induction date set (cause lets face it, if I can be induced a week early I'm on top of that) is on her due date.  

                                          One of my favorite people, Cami. Grew up with her in Virginia too. You wouldn't know she just had twins last summer.....she looks amazing!(taken with phone so a little blurry)

We were very excited about the Easter Bunny this year! Drake is really starting to get excited about the Holidays so we went all out with the Easter Bunny this year. He actually visited our house twice so he could celebrate with cousins early. 

        and of course we couldn't forget about my family tradition of the coconut in the Easter basket.

And here we around 34 weeks! Our goal for the last 7 weeks was to make it to this point and we will officially be 34 weeks tomorrow! Baby is measuring right on, placenta has moved up (because I was borderline placenta previa), she is head down, and already showing that she has hair in the ultrasounds. I'm also nice and low as you can tell in this picture. I refuse to buy bigger maternity shirts since I only have a month left so I might have to move on to Brett's shirts before too long here. Now I'm allowed to move around more and our next goal is 36 weeks! I'm excited to finally start decorating the nursery!

Darn my irritable uterus!

Here I am hanging out in bed again. I went to the doctors a few weeks ago to discover that I was indeed feeling contractions and I'd started to efface and at 27 weeks with my history of preterm labor that was not a good thing. So we were sent to the hospital for steroid shots to help mature the baby's lungs and to monitor her for a while. I never get tired of hearing her sweet heartbeat! Also got few minutes of hiccups which is a normal daily thing from this little one. Baby girl is super active so it was no surprise to me that she was crazy while they were monitoring her. The nurses all commented on how wild she was. They also told me that she acts older than she is which is comforting to hear so maybe and hopefully I'm a little further along than we think. After the monitoring they told me I have what they call an irritable uterus. Yes, as lame as that sounds, it is a real thing. So on top of the uncomfortable Braxton hicks contractions (that I've been getting since 16 weeks)  I am also having contractions from the baby moving. This baby moves ALL DAY LONG so pretty much I'm having little contractions all day long and unfortunately these little contractions are causing me to start the whole effacing/dilating process (on the bright side, it will might make my labor pretty quick since I'm getting most of the work out of the way now). The irritable uterus explains a lot from Drake's pregnancy because this happened at the exact same time during his pregnancy, but we all figured it was because he was so big. But thankfully, I ended up carrying him full term and he was a healthy and happy baby which is comforting. So I'm really trying to take the whole bed rest thing seriously again (way harder this time with a two year old). Thank goodness for good friends and neighbors watching Drake who hasn't been very happy with mom for lying around lately. And I'm thankful for a good husband who has been such a big help. Ladies, don't let those husbands fool you...they can do laundry and dishes and cook dinner. Mine actually does all those things better than me! I have told him many times that he is a better housewife than me. Anyways, the doctors all say the baby girl is super healthy and shes measuring right on (which is a relief because Drake was measuring weeks ahead at his point and although I want a big healthy baby I'm a little scared of having to recover from delivering another 9 pounder). Maybe it'll even be like Drake's pregnancy where we stop the preterm labor only to be induced in he end. But for now, we have a goal to make it 4 more weeks and after that I can let up on bed rest, so a few extra prayers that baby stays put 4 more weeks would be appreciated:)

I've been horrible at documenting this pregnancy so I thought I'd catch up a little. Here is baby girl (who does have a name unlike Drake at this point...But we're going to wait to share) at 20 weeks, 24 weeks, and 30ish weeks. We are so in love with this girl already:)

Drake's baby

Wow...I am so behind on our blog. Nap time was always my blogging time, but since Drake is taking shorter naps and I'm falling asleep almost every day during that time my house and blog have both been getting neglected. So one of these days I hope to get around to posting about Christmas! But for now here's a couple of my favorite moments from Drake that I don't want to forget about.

here we are comparing our bellies

Drake noticed about a month or two ago that something was up with my belly. I was getting ready one morning and I noticed Drake looking at it. Then in the middle of our conversation he turned to Brett and said "Mommy. Belly. Big!" Drake has been pretty excited about the baby. Whenever he looks at baby clothes with me he loves to pick out cute outfits and yell "momma look...for my baby sister!" But ever since me told Drake their was a baby sister in mommy's belly he has been going around telling people he has a baby in his belly. When ever people ask him where the baby is he points to his belly and says 

"right here in my side." This was a little random conversation we had the other day....

Drake:  Momma, my tummy hurts.

Me: (totally panicking because the stomach bug has been going around): Oh no! Why does your tummy hurt?

Drake: because the baby keep kicking my belly 

This was followed by tons of laugter of course.

Drake is a pretty amazing kid! I feel beyond blessed to be a mom to him and our sweet little girl.

The results are in....

 

And we are having a GIRL!  

Brett and I both burst out laughing and were completely shocked! We for sure thought it was another boy! But of course we're beyond thrilled to add a little girl to family! Drake's been telling us for months he was going to have sister and praying for his sister even though we've never told him it was going to be girl. So I guess the kid knew what was up all along! Anyways were super excited and a little terrified all at the same time but we can't wait to meet her.

Lately

We've been a little busy lately....

because we've been tired and nauseous!

But we couldn't be happier!

Baby Hadley is due May 15th:)

  

Beach continued

Favorite beach memories include dance competitions, surfing, making my Dad say dirty words during family games, watching Drake laugh his head off while he ran away from the waves, eating some amazing crabs, and of course hanging out with the fam.

We did a whole lot of dancing on the rainy days...

 love those chunky cheeks!

Virginia Beach Aquarium 

  Found a live crab in the pool. We took him out and put him in a bucket with salt water only to find him belly up about 30 minutes later...

I learned that blond hair turns green in Chlorine

                                                       This face just makes me laugh

                                       Horrible lighting...but here we are on our last night at the beach house.