22 Weeks and an Ultrasound

How Far Along: 22 Weeks

Size of Baby: Spaghetti Squash.  11 inches long and 15 oz.

Total Weight Gain/Loss: 6 lbs

Maternity Clothes: All out maternity clothes.  I don't really like the jeans I have, so I am craving slightly warmer temperatures so I can make the switch to capris and dresses. 

Baby Movement: ALL the time!  I felt baby move at 17 weeks 2 days.  At first it was a "what did I eat?" feeling, and then I realized it was the baby.  At this point the baby is getting so strong, and the movement is unmistakable.  This baby is moving a ton and most of the movement I feel is low.  It feels like the baby is positioned with his/her back toward my ribs and baby's arms and legs are hanging down towards my hips.  My suspicions were confirmed about this positioning at our ultrasound.

Sleep:  Some nights are good, some are not.  Pregnancy dreams are crazy vivid and I often have to remind myself that "it was just a dream!"

What I miss: IBProufen.  I've had more headaches with this pregnancy, and it would be nice to take some Vitamin I.  Also, I feel hard on the ice last week.  I was carrying Lillian and my purse and holding Cecilia's hand.  We all went down and the majority of the impact was on my left rear cheek.  The next days I was really sore through my whole lower back and left side of my back and the right side of my neck.  Vitamin I would have been nice.

Cravings:  Ice Cream.  Savory foods, still.  Nothing too crazy.

Aversions:  Not too much.  I guess it depends on the day, or time of day.  

Symptoms:  Metal Mouth, on occasion.  HOLY Heartburn!!!  Sciatic pain.  Headaches.  Foot cramps.  Emotional.  

Best Moment:  Feeling baby move. Jon feeling baby move.  Seeing baby on the 22 week ultrasound.  Also, the girls are still very adamant that this baby is a girl (I need to get it on video, just so you can see how adamant they are about baby being a girl).  They have each named 'her' at this point too.  Lilly Jeanne will tell you that her name will be "Emma Katy", and Cecilia has decided her name should be "Hannah".  Both are good names.  I suppose we will add them to the list...

20 weeks

22 weeks

Baby was stretching!  See that indentation into the black space on the right?  That is Mom's bladder.  Thanks, kid!

Cecilia and my Tummy

While reading stories just now before nap time (glorious nap time!), Cecilia is awfully fidgety on my lap.  She finally says to me " Mom, your tummy is getting big!  I can't sit here any more."

Made me smile.  22 week ultra sound is this afternoon ;)

Easter Sunday 2013

Jon and I attended all three nights of the Triduum this year.  It was very special and we both enjoyed celebrating Easter this way.  I felt slightly guilty for not taking the girls to Mass on Easter Sunday, but they are little, and there will be plenty more years for them to participate in an Easter Mass, or an Easter Vigil with us.

My parents were able to spend Easter morning with us.  They watched the girls find their Easter baskets and hunt for eggs at home.  Cecilia was all about it this year, and showed Lilly Jeanne the ropes.

We headed to Ma & Pa's for the annual Easter Feast.  We could not have asked for better weather.  We sure are spoiled here!  Cecilia got to hunt eggs with the big kids this year, and Lilly mastered the "little kid" hunt.  Of course, her cousin, Eva, had to inspect Lilly's basket at the end :)

We had perfect weather for kite flying.  There were so many kits in the air at one point I couldn't even count them all.
 

Speech Graduation

Cecilia has graduated from speech therapy!!  We still have some work to do at home, but not $80/week worth of work.  She is doing so well, and we are so proud of her.  We had her assessed again and she is now scoring in the average range, and her confidence level is way up.  She is still scoring low, but definitely in a comfortable range.  We will continue practicing and working with her at home and school, and we will possibly go back for a check in appointment at the end of April.

We are so glad that we got her the help she needed when we did, and that we continued private therapy for her with Brianna.  Brianna, her speech therapist, has done such amazing things with Cecilia, and we are truly blessed to have had her in our lives.  Cecilia is definitely going to miss seeing and playing with  her.

Why do they call it Spring Cleaning??

Because of the MUD.  Yep.  We have mud, and lots of it.  Our back yard is not quite half grass, and more than half dirt at the moment.  We are planning to re-sod it in the next few weeks.  But until then, we will probably have many more moments of tears and mud being carried over the freshly cleaned floor and straight to the tub.  And extra laundry.  Yep.

 

Good thing we still know how to have fun inside too :)

Going to the Dentist

Cecilia got to go to the dentist for the first time on Monday.  Lucky for us, we happened to be reading an Elmo book where The Count goes to the dentist, and Cecilia thought that was pretty neat.  She was excited to go, and did a great job getting her teeth cleaned.  She choose the raspberry flavor for the paste, and got good report from Dr. Greg.  She and Lilly got to pick a toy from the "treasure box" and they both got new tooth brushes.  Lilly has since been dubbed "The Dentist" because she requests her tooth brush every chance she gets.  She loves to have her teeth brushed :)

 

Sunk the Battleship

When we bought our house the inspector told us two things about our original 1956 furnace.  He said "The good news is, these things were built like battleships.  The bad news is, these things were built like battleships."  That furnace has sailed right along, and probably would have kept sailing, but it was time for it to go, and last weekend was the weekend.  Of course, we can't plan the weather, and we happened to pick the day that we had temperatures in the twenties, and we got close to a foot of snow.  We cranked the temp on the furnace up in the morning.  We were roasting at 85* by 10AM.  It was the hottest my house has ever intentionally been.  It was a good experiment though, because we were barely down to 77* at 5pm.  Our windows were doing a great job!  Such a good job, that we had to open the windows and turn the attic fan on to cool the house off enough so the new furnace could be turned on.  I'm sure our neighbors thought we were crazy.

The major driving force behind its evacuation was our desire to finish our master bathroom.  The old furnace was venting straight through our master bathroom, causing the small shower space to be even smaller, like 32x32 small.  The new furnace vents out the side of the house, giving us a space of 32x48 for a shower.  Now thats more like it.  I'm excited to get moving with the bathroom project.  The goal is to have it done by the time the baby gets here.   It is amazing how much we notice the air actually blowing through our house now.  We can actually tell the furnace is doing its job.  And, I'm really excited to see how much money we will save monthly with the new 93% furnace.  We figure the old one was doing about 50% efficiency.
 
We've replaced the windows, plumbing, and furnace and now we have one more house "organ transplant" to do: the electrical.  Ugh.  Good thing my husband is handy :)