Twenty-Two Weeks.

Dearest baby,

My belly is growing each day, I think! I don't know if it was the shirt I wore or what last week, but I felt like my belly grew out of nowhere! I also just walked past my full-length mirror after walking on the treadmill (in my sports bra) and had to do a double take at myself because I couldn't believe my belly was that big! You finally weigh about a pound, and are about a foot in length. My weekly emails say that your skin is changing now from transparent to opaque, although you still need to put on a lot of fat! You're getting more newborn-like each week now, with your eyebrows and eyes, your pancreas is developing further, too. You're developing tooth buds under your gums, but your irises don't have any pigment yet. But unless there's some weird gene thing, you should have blue eyes. Both your daddy and I have blue eyes, in fact, Daddy's entire family has blue eyes! Your grammy (my mom) has green eyes, but your uncle, your grandpa and I all have blue eyes.

We had another doctor's appointment this week, got to hear your heartbeat (150 beats/minute), but it was a very quick visit. Your daddy and I don't ask too many questions. I'm waiting for the childbirth classes to ask most of my questions since I don't have just one doctor that I know will deliver you. I have 13 doctors and whoever is on call when you decide to come will be delivering you. So I'm going to be asking a lot of hospital policy questions during our childbirth classes. Our next appointment is February 13th, and your daddy actually isn't coming to that one! I'm a little nervous because it'll be the first one he hasn't been to, but  he has an appointment on February 14th, so I want to make sure he goes to that one. I think your Grammy will come with me to the appointment. After our appointment this week we went to try to get new ultrasound pictures, since we lost the first ones. To our surprise, they took us back and did a quick ultrasound! You didn't cooperate very well, I think you're stubborn like Mommy and Daddy, but we did get a couple pretty good pictures! Then last night I got a text from Krissy, the cousin whose house we lost the pictures at and they found the pictures! So now we have extra pictures of you! And we got to see you again!

You're definitely moving around a lot more now. I feel you multiple times during the day and I love it. Each time it puts a smile on my face, and I pause whatever I'm doing to just appreciate the blessing that God has given me in you. Each night when we lay down to go to sleep, Daddy puts his hand on my belly and waits for you to kick. I know you love him already, he can always feel you moving. I can finally feel you on the outside, too, and I've even caught a few peeks of my belly moving when you move. I can't really differentiate between kicks and moves, but it's stronger all the time. And more frequent. When we were playing Monopoly on Saturday night at your Grandma's house I felt like you were up in my ribs! I felt like I was squashing you by sitting for so long. I had to stand up once we got home for a while, but once I woke up on Sunday, it was gone. I'm sure that feeling is going to be more frequent and get worse, but that's okay.

Speaking of monopoly, we've been playing monopoly with your uncle a ton and we played for the first time with your daddy's family Saturday night. Anyways, we play Disney Monopoly, because your mommy's a weirdo like that, and I always try to get your daddy to sing a song from whatever movie he lands on just so I can have him trained to watch Disney movies with you! He actually knows most of them!

I had a dream about you last night. I don't remember much, except that you were a girl with chubby cheeks and you had your daddy's dimples! I kept giving you kisses and I was SO in love with you. You weren't a newborn, but just a few weeks/month old and you were happy and lovable and so adorable!

I'm getting a lot better with exercising; I'm making a habit of it usually 3-4 days a week. 2 days I try to jog a little bit and walk a longer distance, then the other day or 2, I just try to walk for 20 minutes, about a mile or so before I get ready for work. My food is okay, weekends are usually bad, and I'm caving to more cravings more frequently now. I still try to drink my smoothie daily, especially during the week so that I make sure I get some fruits and veggies to you! My weight gain is about +13 pounds or so, which is right on track. I haven't had any cravings for much of anything, specific or strange. I know I'm eating too many cookies, and I'm trying to limit that, but they're so tasty!

I still don't have any stretch marks (or should I say new stretch marks - I have them from when I gained weight in HS/college), and all my weight gain has definitely be all belly. No cramps, not a ton of moodiness, sleeping has been pretty good, I can't complain about much. One thing I have noticed is that the hair on my stomach is darker now! I've been blonde my whole life, in fact my leg hair is still blonde! So it's kind of weird to have dark stomach hair. Also, my belly button is like a giant black hole with my stomach stretching. I don't know if it's because I was overweight before, but my belly button doesn't seem to be turning inside out at all. Oh well.

We also finished our registry, I think, and I'm hoping to write a post on that soon. I've been obsessing over making sure that I have everything that I need, even though my shower is probably going to be very small, and I'll probably only get about 1/3 of the stuff I registered for.

Keep growing little one!

Love,

Mommy