A Few Random Things to Catch You All Up

I've been a bit AWOL lately. We've been busy as always and work is taking a lot out of me lately! I live for the weekends and struggle through the week. No fun, but gotta do it.

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving complete with Turkey lunch and dinner with each side of the family.

Bean is growing well and right on schedule. I've gained 5 pounds so far, but I feel like it's been at least 20! I'm into my 3rd Trimester now. I can't believe we have less than 12 weeks 'til D-day!

We have even started on the nursery. So far, we have purchased paint and cleaned out the room, but that's as far as we've gotten. It's a start at least!

At my last appointment I took my gloucose test. It actually ended up being one of the easiest blood draws I've ever experienced, so that was nice. Another plus, the orange drink doesn't taste as bad as everyone says it does. At least it didn't to me. It just tasted like the orange syrup that they flavor icees or "flavor-ice" or whatever they call those things with. It was SUPER sweet and not refreshing at all, but the worst part was downing all that sweetness as quickly as possible! I got my results back on Thursday and my levels were normal.

During the same appointment I also got my H1N1 vaccine - mostly to help everyone else rest easy! - and I even got to get stuck one more time for a Rhogam injection because I have Rh-negative blood and they want to be sure I don't produce any antibodies against my possible Rh-positive baby which can cause problems in any future pregnancies. I'm now to the point where I have to start visiting the doctor every 2 weeks!

Another craft project that I finially finished and which Mark has been bugging me to get done for a while now:

We've been looking for something to go in this spot for a while now, but we couldn't find anything in the color palete we wanted that was a price we liked, so I decided just to do it myself! I'm pretty happy with how they turned out.

Also, fun story... we went out to dinner the other night and I was nearly too big to fit comfortably in the booth! Granted the booth was kind of smaller than I would say normal booths are, but my tummy was definitely right up against the table! We might have to switch to tables til this pregnancy is over!

It's Beginning to Look A lot Like Christmas!

We put up Christmas decorations today. Here's a peek!

Disclaimer: I really have trouble photographing anything not in natural light not to mention trying to capture lights in dim light. It's harder than you'd think! So, use your imagination a bit, these things look better in person!

Outside:



I really can't take any credit for this, but Mark did an awesome job as always!


Our little Christmas tree:


I miss doing a big tree, but the smaller one works much better for us. This way we can have it up off the ground keeping our living space. And the mini-tree is pretty cute! Mark's mom donated mini-tree to us last year.




And I made this bow for the top of the tree:


I'm very proud of how it turned out! it's very hard to find small tree toppers. We saw bows like this at Hobby Lobby and asked if they sold them. Yes, they do, but one of the associates custom makes them, so to purchase one it's the cost of whatever ribbon you want + $10. I was not okay with that. So I bought a roll of $5 ribbon for something else and I ended up making a bow on my own. It turned out just how I wanted! You could also attach long trailing ends, but I didn't want to overwhelm mini-tree!


Here is the top of our bookcase:




And I put this together for the top of our coffee table:


I couldn't get a good pic of it, but it's sparkley brown balls and red bells surrounding the candles.


And last, but not least, the ornament wreaths that I made to go over our couch:



Mark had a super-fun time assisting with this little project! I LUUURVE how they turned out though! And I made the bows to go on the wreaths. I'm just a bow-makin-......pro(?) now!


Now, if I can just get Mark to spell out "Welcome Santa!" on our roof in blinky lights we will be ready for Christmas!

Why "Fun Size" Isn't So Fun After All.

Being a pregnant woman I tend to think about food a lot. What to eat, what not to eat, when to eat it, all while trying to keep my appetite in check so I don't end up looking like a beached whale by the end of this whole experiment with procreation.

With the passing of Halloween and Trick or Treat, my crazy pregnant lady thoughts have turned to candy. I'm not a huge sweets person, but I love Halloween candy as much as the next 23 year old who sometimes likes to pretend she's still a kid. Did I say that out loud? Yes, I did.

Here's my kvetch: "Fun size" candy ain't so fun. Nothing thrills me more than eating a single square of snickers which is exactly 1" by 1" in dimension. It's SO fun. Yeah right. Or how 'bout yesterday when I had a Kit Kat. *A* Kit Kat. It was a single stick that was approximately 2 inches in length. What is that all about?!

So, instead of having a nice little chocolatey treat you actually end up having to tear open about 6 of them to get your sugar fix and even though they're tiny seeing all those discarded wrappers makes me feel like I've done something very naughty. And I KNOW that it's the candy getting smaller, not me getting bigger because I don't even remember seeing a single Kit Kat stick option in "fun size" until this year. 2 sticks? Sure. One stick that's shorter than normal? Uncalled for.

Back in the day when I had to walk 15 miles uphill to Trick or Treat it was a REAL treat to get a name brand mini-candy bar in your bag. It didn't seem as widespread to hand out name brand candy as it is now when you hardly even see off brand options! Or maybe those were just the cheap people in my neighborhood... I digress. The point is, I really enjoyed those darn fun sized candy bars! You could enjoy a Snickers, a Reese's Cup, and a Milky Way all at once! Now, I'm just really annoyed by the fact that they keep getting smaller and smaller, but the prices seem to be staying stagnant or going in the other direction and getting higher.

I move that no overly-tiny candy bar be falsely labelled as "fun size" and they instead refer to them using the following adjectives:

Lilliputian, bitsy, bitty, diminutive, insignificant, itty-bitty, microscopic, mini, minikin, minuscule, minute, negligible, pee-wee, petite, pint-sized, puny, slight, teensy or wee.

*Sigh* if only I ran the world. This would definitely be on my list of remedies.

I Have a Frightening Confession to Make.

Hai, my name is Stephanie and I like White Castle. ::hides face in shame::

Yeah, that's right. I said it. *I* like White Castle.

Scene: 10.30 at night at the McCarrell household. Saturday football games are wrapping up (thank goodness!). Mark gets The Crave.

We proceed to have a conversation that entails "does it really have to be White Castle?" from me. Insistence that yes, it must be White Castle and it must be Right Now from Mark. Eventually, I say I'm tired and cold and no, I'm not going along to ride to the next suburb over to get a sack of sliders, I'm going to bed. Maybe I'll eat one because I'm kind of hungry.

Now, I have never liked White Castle. I'm 23 years old, have had several experiences with White Castle and I just have never liked the taste, the smell makes me wanna barf... it's just not good. I proceeded to lay in bed dreading the White Castle fumes that were about to enter my house and questioning whether I was even going to eat one slider or if I could just go to bed a little hungry.

Mark comes home, sets the smelly bag on the table, lines up the sliders from his bag as well as a little box of crinkle cut fries and digs in. I gingerly pull one slider from a box and take a taste. And imagine my surprise when not only was it palatable, but I actually enjoyed it. I enjoyed it a lot. I scarfed down *3* sliders all by myself before either Mark or I even knew what happened. When he went for another slider from the 2nd bag, Mark was surprised to find that there weren't any left!

I then went on and on for the next 30 minutes about how I really wanted some more sliders, how those were the best little burgers I had ever had, and why did they taste so good this time as compared with others? Maybe Mark laced them with some sort of addictive drugs? I don't know. What I do know is,

A) I need to get some more White Castle soon
B) I think I'm growing a mini-craver in my uterus to accompany Mark on his White Castle runs
C) I'm utterly convinced that pregnancy really does change your palate. (Also see: Skyline coneys, and Burger King Whopper Jr's.)

I officially feel like my body is not mine.

Oh, delicious White Castle mini-burger, please get in my belleh!

Updates!

Sorry, we've been busy and sleepy!

Here's an updated bump pic:

I'm at 21 weeks, 6 days. It's odd because I don't feel that I look this pregnant in real life, but I must look something like that, right?

Anyway.

I can finally feel movement! It seems to have been a bit delayed due to the whole anterior placenta which I discussed previously, but last night when I was laying in bed reading I started feeling it all of the sudden and it was definitely the Bean moving! It wasn't little flutters or bubbles like I've heard other people describe it. It felt more like the baby was doing full body flips in there or something! His acrobatics continued for about an hour and I've felt it on and off all day today as well.

It's the coolest and strangest feeling at the same time. It's really nice to feel the baby moving around, but at the same time there is a live human in there! You're not supposed to feel movement like that in your belly! Overall, I'm very excited to finally be feeling movement. I feel like I've been waiting forever for this!

Mark and I have been spending a lot of time lately discussing nursery decor and baby names. We are still in the very abstract planning stages of both. We have compiled a "prospect" list for names. Some of them are a little more "out there" than others, but what I we like seems to vary from day to day.

The list so far is as follows:

Liam - this is top of my list, not so much Mark's
Colin
Connor
Jackson - top of my list for the day; We'd call him Jack, or maybe we'd just go with Jack
Cash - I think this is topping Mark's list right now
Noah - probaby my #2 or #3 pick
Cade
Cooper
Joel
Levi
Matthew - my hold up for this one is that it's really common in my opinion

Feel free to comment/add suggestions. We aren't in love with anything yet so it's time to weigh in now!

Aside from the whole growing a human thing which while involuntary seems to be taking up a lot of my time and effort nowadays my adorable niece Kylie just celebrated her 1st birthday last weekend!

She's so cute!

And I made her cakes:

Which I think turned out very cute!

She was very ladylike when she ate her cake and there was no icing in between the fingers or all over the face.

Here's a quick clip because she's so darn adorable:

It's a BOY!!!

And because everyone should see my son's penis in utero, here it is:



At first the doctor had some trouble seeing the goods. The baby was... erm... exploring its anatomy. When she saw that she said it's usually an indication of a boy. Shocking ; ) But after rolling the wand over my tummy for a while and taking some measurements of the head, arms, and legs, Bean seemed to get on board with what we were trying to do and moved his hands so that we were able to get the money shot! Definitely a boy!

Mark and I are so excited! The doctor said that everything looks good and is growing properly. We got to see a lot of movement today and could clearly see the fingers and toes. I was also informed that I have an anterior placenta, which basically means that the placenta is attached to the front of my uterus instead of the back. It's not an issue, but that's why I have yet to feel much (if any, still unclear about that!) movement! I wish I had known this sooner because I had been starting to worry that Bean wasn't moving around in there! Well, as we were able to see today he's doing plenty of moving I just can't feel it yet. Apparently it's normal for women with an anterior placenta to be a bit behind in feeling movement.

After our appointment we of course made a whole list of calls to important people and sent off plenty of texts with the big news. We had a nice lunch out together and then treated ourselves to some celebratory shopping!

We each picked out an outfit:

Guess who picked which outfit?

Here's a hint:

Of course Mark sought out the football related outfit.

And here's a close up of the darling little monkey footie on my pick:

And Mark was introduced to the wonderful world of baby stuff. He's amazed at how much gear is out there for babies and how expensive it is. It's kind of like planning a wedding all over again, but this time the prices are inflated because it's baby-related.

2 days 'til the big reveal!

We are less than 2 days away from finding out the sex of Baby McCarrell! I'm so excited it's all I can think about right now! I don't know how I'm going to be able to go another 20 weeks without meeting this little one once I know what we're expecting.

For the record - Mark feels like it's a boy. I have absolutely no idea, but I feel that I need to formulate an educated guess by appointment time.

Edit to add: Okay, my official prediction is boy! I don't know if Mark's guess has influenced me and I'm still not 100% sure, but this is my guess. I've been thinking about it all day today and on the drive home from work I realized that in a lot of my daydreams about when the baby is actually here it seems to be a boy, so that's what we'll go with.