Here’s the belly at 11w4d:

Sheesh.  That’s a pretty crappy picture, but it’s the best I could do with about 1 minute before we needed to leave while asking a husband that hates taking belly pictures.

Anyhoo, what’s new?  Let’s see…

The morning sickness is starting to ease up, so that’s good.  It feels good to start enjoying food again…even if it is mainly starches and carbs.  It appears it’s being replaced with heartburn though.  I had a little bit of that with Elijah, but it definitely wasn’t this early.

I had a doctor’s appointment on Wednesday.  My weight is exactly the same as my baseline, so I was pretty stoked about that.  I’m not on a scale everyday like I was the first time around, so I’m just going by the numbers they see.  I got to hear the heartbeat, and it was perfect.  We scheduled the anatomy scan for 6/27, so that means that’s the date we find out if B2 is a little girl or a little boy!  Can’t wait!

Sometimes I feel guilty that this pregnancy is literally flying by.  It’s crazy.  I had a weird feeling when I heard the heartbeat at the doctor’s appointment… probably because it’s really starting to sink in that we’ll be having another baby this year.  With Elijah, I had all the time in the world to think about it, and it literally consumed every minute of the day.  With this one though, I’m so busy with life that I don’t have the same time to dedicate to dreaming up nursery ideas, names, cute outfits, etc.  I need to make time for that.

That’s about it!  Here’s to hoping that everything continues to go smoothly!

Gah, I love that sweet boy.  He makes my world go round.

Also, he’s a great little shopper, right?

Saturday was Elijah’s birthday party.  We decided on a monster truck theme since the kid loves a big truck.  I didn’t get nearly as many pictures as I wanted, but we managed to get a few good ones.

Since our house is so tiny, we were hoping like crazy for beautiful weather so that we could hang out outside as much as possible.  We got so lucky.  The weather was perfect!

We spent all morning getting ready, and Elijah went down for his nap around noon like usual.  He woke up a little early, and after a massive meltdown, I took him upstairs for more napping.  He ended up sleeping until 3:30 or so (his party started at 3), and then refused to go outside when he realized the back yard was full of people.  He was being shy.

So GiGi came to the rescue, and after some dinosaur toys and a lot of begging, he joined the party.  Once we got over that hump, everything was good to go.

As long as Sam’s sells 30 cupcakes for 13 bucks, I will NEVER make them again.  I swear.  We had monster truck picks to spice them up a little.

We got super nerdy and had shirts made for the party.  This was the front (based off the invitations Dave made).  Ours said STAFF on the back and Elijah’s said DRIVER.

I found these 36″ balloons online.  They were huge…and caused a meltdown during the party setup.

Presents!  Elijah got some awesome swag.

He didn’t quite get the concept of opening presents, so it pretty much came to a halt with the first present.  Julie got him a ton of books that he loves, so he wanted to stop everything and read them all.

More reading…

And ignoring the rest of the presents while he begged Dave to read his tractor book.

He loved his other presents once he finally got around to opening them.  Here I’m opening a Chuck truck for him that Betsy and Austin got him.  He also got that mat that goes with them, and he loves it!

This is the dirt cake that Ma made.  It was yummy.

Elijah liked the gummy worms.

Nicholas preferred the cupcakes (I don’t blame him).

And the only shot of the food we got.  Dave cooked 4 pork butts, and we had BBQ sandwiches.  They were yummy.  We also had baked beans courtesy of Ma, slaw courtesy of Butthead, and pasta salad courtesy of Lauren.

You’ll see exactly zero pictures of Elijah being serenaded and blowing out his candles.  He HATES the attention, so we just didn’t do it.  Doesn’t hurt my feelings one bit.

By the end of the day, we were T-I-R-E-D.  Elijah went to bed way past his bedtime and still managed to get up at 6:45am on the dot the next morning.  Story of my life!

Thanks to everybody that came out and made Elijah’s party a success!  It was great seeing everybody, and I hope you had as good of a time as we did!!

Elijah woke up with a sudden fever Sunday night, so I worked from home with the little guy yesterday.  Much of the day looked like this.  The rest looked like him on the couch watching Spongebob or playing with his iPad.

He was clammy all day, but in good spirits.  Just as fast as it came on, the fever broke around 7pm.  He never had any other symptoms, and it turns out the little girl that Julie keeps did the exact same thing yesterday.  How weird is that?

Anyways, he woke up feeling great this morning, so I’m hoping that’s the last we see of any sickness for a while.  Coming soon – birthday pics!

Converse outlet, for the win!

Elijah’s feet are growing at the speed of light.  I just sized him up to a 9, and I don’t think he’ll make it through the summer in them!

Well folks, this week makes 10 weeks preggers for me.  I feel every bit of 10 weeks pregnant too.  It’s crazy how different this pregnancy has been from the first round.

Anyways, here’s what the belly is looking like these days:

I think it took me at least 4 months to get this big last time.  Crazy.

So here’s a little bit of what’s been going on:

1.  Morning sickness.  With Elijah, the only thing that really bothered me was cottage cheese (still does actually).  With this pregnancy, I’ve had a love/hate relationship with food for a while now.  I have times where I feel great, then as soon as I eat it goes downhill.  I have other times where the thought of food just makes me sick (even when I’m really hungry).  Most of the time, nothing sounds good, but I eat anyways just for the sake of eating.  I haven’t been throwing up, so that’s good, but my stomach is upset a lot, so that sucks.

2.  I feel SO pregnant.  Oh man, up until now, I used to love talking about how awesome I felt while pregnant with Elijah.  Now I want to slap that Lindsey.  Truth is, I never felt that pregnant with him until around 34 weeks (then it hit me like a brick wall).  This round, I swear I’ve felt pregnant since day 1.  The bloating is ridiculous and all my guts are sore.  It’s really weird.  Since I’m more aware of what I’m feeling this time around, I’m noticing when my organs are shifting.  It’s crazy.

3.  I’m still waiting on the awesome hair and nails.  Oh, and where’s my awesome skin?  Instead, I have crazy hair, the same old chipping nails, and more zits than I had in high school.  It’s definitely making me lean towards believing I’m baking a girl in there.

4.  Other than the morning sickness and the sore guts, I’m feeling pretty great.  I don’t feel as tired this time around.  I think that’s mostly because I’m just always tired and I’m used it now.  I’m still able to sleep on my stomach, so that’s awesome.  I’m appreciating that as long as possible.  I’m not getting up to pee a lot yet, so I’m appreciating that as well.  Time is flying so much faster for this one.  I have a feeling that has something to do with how busy a certain somebody keeps us these days!

All in all, it’s awesome.  We’re super excited and nervous at the same time.  It should be interesting with a 2.5 year old in the mix this time around.  I can’t quite get a feeling for how Elijah is going to react.  I’m leaning towards him being pretty ‘meh’ about the whole thing with bouts of jealousy.  We shall see!

This is our house courtesy of me at Elijah’s request.  On the right is Elijah, me, Dave, and Mollie.  I can’t remember who’s on the left…probably GiGi and Lou Lou.

Within the last month or so, Elijah has really started talking about family.  He usually goes through a rotating list of people when he’s talking about a particular object.  It’s really cute, and it’s usually something like this:

Example includes a red Hot Wheel car (because that’s important and ownership of those changes a lot).

Mama car?

Dada car?

GiGi car?

Lou Lou (pronounced wou wou) car?

Dow (lots of emphasis on the ‘o’) car?

And the list goes on…

Usually I agree with him as he goes through the list.  Sometimes I’ll ask him who something belongs to, and it almost always ends with a similar list to what is above.  It’s really cool that he’s starting to grasp the concept of family and that he wants to incorporate them into his daily life.

We took a trip to the museum in Durham Saturday morning.  It was really an excuse to stop by our favorite bakery, Scratch.  Man that place is good.  Anyhoo, it was already hot, but we had a great time while we were there.  We managed to beat most of the crowd too, so bonus points.

Such a big boy.  Look at that!  He’s easily over half my height.  Can’t wait for his 2 year check up this month!

I found out that Dave had never tried honeysuckles.  Lauren and I grew up “eating” these right out of our woods.  I thought all country kids did that.  Were we the only ones?

Sweaty boy.  Did you guys know that Children’s Place puts like 40% polyester in some of their shirts?  I mean, they look great forever, but dang they make my kid hot.  P.S.  Am I the only one that thinks the moss animals on the train ride are creepy?

Elijah had zero interest in planting his own plant, so Dave made one for him. 

A little girl shared her stick with him, and he spent the next 20 minutes going to town on the bells, chimes, and drums.  It was cute.

After that, it was nap time.  I’ve been napping with Elijah on the weekends so that I can literally make it through the day without crashing head first into my dinner.  Not gonna lie – I like it.  I woke up from the nap with a super ridiculous craving for Outback.  Had to have it.  I never had those types of cravings with Elijah, so it’s new to me.  We packed up in the thunderstorm, and I ate my face off.  Mmm…cheesefries.  That’s quite the feat these days.  I’m in a constant state of hungry with a side of the thought of food makes me want to barf.  It sucks.

On Sunday, Elijah played at GiGi’s for most of the day while Dave and I knocked out some chores around the house.  I felt like absolute crap all day.  I’ll be seriously one happy lady when this morning sickness BS is done and over.  Anyhoo, Elijah has a Baby Einstein movie at GiGi’s that he LOVES.  One scene is two mice having a food fight and then they get busted by the mama mouse.  GiGi provides commentary throughout the video that Elijah loves to repeat, so his new favorite phrase is “Mama mad!”  Lots of emphasis on mad.  He even woke up yesterday morning saying it.  It’s pretty funny, but it also gives me a glimpse into the things kids say that can easily be misunderstood.

Anyways, that’s our weekend in a nutshell.  Hope you guys had a great one as well!

How awesome is Julie?  So awesome.

However, I’m officially green with envy that I’m at my stupid office working while they’re celebrating.  Can’t wait to celebrate with everybody this weekend!

Happy birthday to the sweetest, most cuddly, smart-as-a-whip 2 year old I know!!!  Good grief, time flies.

Sweaty (but cute) boy.

This is super off topic, but does anybody else’s kid ALWAYS have dirt under their fingernails?  Is that just a boy thing?  I feel like the only window where his nails aren’t grody is immediately after his bath until the next morning.  Then the dirt magically appears again.  Regular hand washing techniques cannot touch this magical dirt either.  It’s weird.