22.5 Weeks

K so last time I posted a picture, I was 20.5 weeks along.  Conveniently, I'm wearing the same shirt this week for my picture, so maybe differences in size will be easier to see?  I dunno, whatevs.

Aside from looking somewhat shocked in this picture, I think I look a little bigger.  Feeling slower each day, for sure.  And I can feel that dealing with tantrums (which have become a daily occurrence :( ) or dragging screaming child from the park or store is really hard on me.  I probably shouldn't be doing that sort of thing though.

Speaking of the screaming child, I should probably do a little update about her.  And really, for the most part she's adorable and sweet.  She's just reached that age where if something frustrates her, even a tiny bit, she flips out and can't control her emotions.  We're working on it, and have become very familiar with timeout.  This past Sunday we got to church and sat through sacrament meeting in the foyer because she was angry that she couldn't go to nursery immediately.  Or well, I sat in the foyer, Tucker took himself and Nettie into the clerks office for timeout.  I would say it's embarrassing that she acts like that, but I mean, she's just barely two years old, and a majority of kids go through similar phases.  We've just gotta get through it.

But really, she's mostly just a sweetheart.  When I ask her where the babies are she pats my tummy, though I don't know if she quite understands exactly what that means.  A few weeks back we decided to start leaving the side of her crib down (with a big box pushed against the side) so she can get out on her own in the mornings.  This has actually worked pretty good, the only downside is she comes out about 5-10 times after we've put her down for the night asking for different things.  She knows if she asks to go potty when she gets up that I'll oblige and won't just send her back to bed, so that's usually the request.

Lately her favorite tv show is Jake and the Neverland Pirates, which I'm ok with, cause it's not annoying at all like some little kid shows are.  She even understands what Halloween is because of the show, so if she still likes pirates by October, I'll probably try and put together a pirate costume for her.

Eh...

So I fiddled with the blog stuff a bit cause I was bored this morning.  Sorry if you don't like it.  I'm still trying to decide if I want to leave it this way or not.

21 Weeks

Ok, so not quite 21 weeks, technically that's on Friday, but close enough for me.  Anywho, I finally took a "belly picture", something I've been putting off cause I was afraid I just look extra fat lately and not actually pregnant.  I know I definitely feel pregnant; like, can't lean forward when I sit without multiple kicks of protest, have a hard time getting off the floor when I sit down to do things with Nettie, have EXTREME round ligament pain (it's bad... really, really bad), and I can never seem to find a comfortable position when I sleep at night (I sleep on the couch currently cause our bed was just too hard for me with the whole having to sleep on my side thing).  Enough rambling, though.  Picture!

Disregard the fact that I have to use our tablet to take a picture; it's currently the only camera we have (Nettie dipped my digital camera in the sink).  For comparison, this post was me at 24 weeks with Nettie.  Apparently I didn't take any pictures of myself sooner than that when I was pregnant with her.  Oh well.  I definitely look bigger in this picture, though I'm sure some of that just has to do with the weight I've added on since two and a half years ago.  If I actually make it to 37 weeks... I'm kind of scared to know how big I'll be.

In the worry department this week, there are a couple of things.  Least worrisome, we have to move.  Apparently you can't have more than 2 adults and 2 kids in a 2 bedroom apartment.  *Sigh*  When I talked to the office here at our complex about it, they gave us the option of transferring to a 3 bedroom place here without any penalties or fees whenever we want (we just signed our lease again in June), or they said we could just wait till our lease was up next summer to move and it wouldn't be a problem.  So we had the choice of moving with or without babies, and we've decided to do the move before they come.  Basically by either the end of this month or the end of September we'll be in a new place.  Woooo?

Worrisome thing number two: the internet.  This is mostly my fault though.  Whenever I get bored, I got searching for stuff about twins, twins support sites, random blogs, etc, and all that you ever find (or at least a very large majority of the time) is the tragic scary stories about people delivering at like 24 and crazy NICU stuff, or losing one of the twins, or other sad scenarios.  I'm making myself paranoid.  Also, a thing called TTTS (Twin-to-Twin Transfusion Syndrome), which is something that can only happen with identical twins.  Basically because both babies umbilical cords are hooked to the same placenta, stuff can happen where one baby is receiving more blood and nourishment from me and the other starts to fall behind in growth.  This can develop at any time in the pregnancy, and can come about fairly suddenly.  TTTS is one of the reasons they like to do so many ultrasounds with twins (so far I've had a doctor's appointment every month, a separate ultrasound appointment, and a home visit nurse person), but from what I'm reading, I'm on the low end of what is standard.  Most mo/di twin pregnancies have ultrasounds every two weeks after you're 16 weeks along.  I'm gonna ask about that tomorrow at my appointment.

Third worrisome thing: potty training.  I've decided to try and do this with Nettie probably starting next week, but I honestly have no idea how to even go about doing this, even though I've read lots of stuff on it.  Although, she's pretty good about going poo on the potty if I catch her before or in the act of it, haha!  Today, for instance, she started concentrating real hard, so I asked her if she wanted to go on the potty but she said no and ran off, then I went about my business getting her a drink of juice ready, but she came in really upset with me, still with the ultra-concentration face on and wouldn't let me do anything till I took her into the bathroom and set her on the toilet.  She had held pretty much most of it in till we got there.  It was impressive.  So, that sort of thing is encouraging, but Nettie has a drink with her pretty much all throughout the day, so pee is going to be another story.  I doubt she has any idea about what bladder control is yet.  Blah.

I think that's it for this post though...  Can't believe I actually wanted to sit down and write something up.  Haven't been motivated like that in forever!

18.5 Weeks

I have a feeling the pregnancy is going to drag on and on.  It has only been three weeks since we found out we'd be having twins.  That's it!  Just 3 weeks!  It seriously feels like it's been forever.  Maybe it's dragged cause there's been so much going on during that time frame?  I dunno.  All I know is I'd like it for time to speed up and feel normal again.  Bleh.

Next ultrasound is a week from today.  I'm going to try and see if they'll take a picture of both of the babies heads together so I can actually prove there's more than one baby in there.

We bought car seats this past week.  I happened to be near a Babies R Us with my mom while she was in town, so we stopped in and they let me test out a bunch of them in my car.  Ended up going with the one I really wanted, but probably wasn't going to get because it was way more expensive than the Graco candidate.  But there was an awesome sale on one of the Chicco designs in the style of car seat I needed, and you get an extra 10% off when you have to buy multiples of stuff (woot?), so I got the Chiccos for the same price I would have gotten the Graco for.  I like'em.

Now my mind is focused on breast pumps.  I really, really, REALLY want to be able to breastfeed this time around.  With Nettie, I could only do so for the first few months (maybe till she was 4 months old?) cause stupid birth control pills sabotaged me.  Not doing that again.  But yeah, breast pump.  Me and Stephanie are planning on going to the Kids Exchange thing this week at the Fair Grounds, so maybe I'll find something I want there... but I've got my heart set on the new Avent pump.  Haven't talked to Tucker too much about getting one yet.  Maybe I can convince someone to gift it to us?

OH ALSO!  Circumcision.  I'm kind of torn on this issue.  It's not covered by Medicaid (which is what we have currently for the pregnancy), so we'd have to pay out of pocket for it to be done.  As far as I can tell with all the research I've done, there is no medical difference for circumcised or uncircumcised boys, like cleanliness or whatever.  It's purely a cosmetic thing.  Which I mean.. only 60% of American baby boys are circumcised nowadays apparently, so it wouldn't be weird for them in the locker room later on...  Ugh... boy parts.  I think I'm fine not having it done.  Both because I don't like the idea of my poor little ones possibly being in extreme pain and also because I don't want to fork out an extra couple hundred dollars if we don't have to.  Tucker has remained silent on the issue so far.  Anyone have any opinion or.. something.. on the subject?

Lol at the post, by the way.  Breast pumps and circumcision.  Oh goodness... 

Suprise :)

So we got quite the shock yesterday when we went in for our first ultrasound yesterday.  We were just hoping for a normal, healthy baby (girl would have been nice too) but was told that we've got TWO normal, healthy babies growing right now.  Identical.  Oh... and boys.

INSANE.

I'm still not sure if the whole thing is real, but seeing the two of them squirming around inside yesterday is a hard thing to forget.  It's amazing how much this surprise has changed how we're having to think about things.  I'm still not entirely sure how it will all work out (or if I will ever have sleep again), but as long as both of them get here healthy and everything continues to go smooth, I won't complain.  Or well.. I'll keep my complaining to a minimum.  Ok, so probably not, but I won't go complaining publicly.  That's the best I can do.

It's really funny; on our trip this past week with Tucker's family, he and I talked about how many kids we actually wanted to end up having.  I honestly wasn't sure how well I was going to handle two munchkins running around, cause while Nettie is a sweetheart, she still doesn't listen very well and can be a handful.  So we decided we probably would be done with this "set" of kids for 3-4 years and then see if we wanted to do another couple later on.  Welp... that's certainly changed now, haha!

But I'm not going into this twins thing completely inexperienced.  For a couple months earlier this year (just before I found out I was pregnant actually) I was babysitting twin boys whose parents are both in Tucker's lab working on their degrees.  Guess Heavenly Father knew Nettie and I needed a little time to prepare for our additions to our family.

I still stop every few minutes and think about the fact that there's two babies inside me rather than just one, and I can't help but shake my head, just completely stunned.

Guess we better actually start getting together a list of names of the boys, all we had come up with was the name we wanted for our next girl cause we (or at least I) was so set on having a little sister for Nettie, haha!  This is what I get for trying to will that situation into existence.

Been Awhile...

I think I've established by now that I'm a horrible blogger, but this is somewhat blog worthy (since I don't want to put it on facebook yet).  Baby Dos (that's baby two for those of you that don't count in spanish) is on it's way! :)  Only about 8ish weeks((EDIT: In reality I'm actually only 6 weeks at this point)).  I've actually had a bit of nausea this time around, so I'm hoping that doesn't mean it's a boy.  Cause let's be real here... girls are just better.  And I just want girls.  Which means this baby is obviously going to be a boy.

But yeah.. for those few of you that might happen to stumble across this, lucky you!  You get to know before everyone on Facebook.

And who knows, maybe I'll do an update post or two for our little family soon.  Don't hold your breath though.

Home

It's kind of crazy that I've been gone for six years now, but Phoenix is still 'home'.  I'm not sure if it will always be like that for me.  Kind of makes sense because I've lived kind of nomadically since I left home, never staying in one apartment for very long.  Raleigh, I think, I could definitely call home someday... if we stayed.  But more than likely we won't be, which is sad, because I'm really liking the city, love our ward, and love being close to family.  Although, we do have the potential to stay in Raleigh for 3ish more years; Tucker just needs to decide if he wants to get his PhD.  I'd be fine if he decided that.  I'll be fine if he decides he's done with school, as well.

Anyways.

I'm home in Phoenix till Wednesday.  Been here since this past Tuesday.  I haven't really done much, just mostly hung out at home with my parents and Nettie.  That was kind of the main point in coming anyways, so that they could see her again while she's still smallish.  Jenna was able to come home for the weekend, which was awesome.  It's crazy how much we like each other now, considering all the fighting and disliking we did when we were younger.  I was sad to see her leave tonight; had to concentrate really hard on not crying in the airport (but she failed, both when she got here and when she left).  We must figure out a way to live close to each other someday.

We had a nice day yesterday filled with family.  Got to see my oldest brother and his family (and his kids are so big now it's crazy!), and my Uncle Ron and Aunt Pam.  The day was super fun, and apparently exhausting because I fell asleep at like 7:30.

The home ward was great (as usual), though there are so many people that I don't recognize in it now.  It's kind of strange being a "grown-up" in the ward.  I remember being a kid, watching all the teenagers leave for college, then get married and start coming back to visit with their kids.  Now I'm doing that..... weird.

Nettie has been pretty good on this trip.  Not gonna lie, I was like super stressed to fly with her.  She's normally not a big fan of sitting (while being held) for long periods of time, and that's basically all I can do on the flights.  But we survived.  The first flight people were super helpful.  I was in the last group to board the plane and had a diaper bag and backpack with me plus Nettie, so when I got to my row to sit down, I looked at my seat and then at my bags and must have looked frazzled or something cause a bunch of people sitting near me asked to help me out.  I'm so glad there are decent and nice people in the world.  Couldn't have made this trip without strangers offering assistance along the way.  Also glad that the older lady I sat next to on the flight didn't care when spit up rolled off of me and onto her.  And glad that she and the guy sitting on my other side didn't complain when Nettie pooped with an hour left in the flight (this poop ended up as a blow-out too.... yeah....).  Second flight Nettie just slept the whole time, so it went much more smoothly, all in all, than I pictured it going.  Now we just have to make it home to Raleigh, and I'm sure I'll stress over that trip until it's over.

And tonight I was able to get together with a few of my high school friends (as well as some of their new friends).  It's awesome that no matter how long I'm gone for I can just come back and basically pick up where I left off with them.  Pretty sure I'll be able to call them my friends for my whole life, which is great, cause they're all awesome people.  I wish that I could come home more often to visit, but I'm glad that I can always see them on the few times that I do come home.

But yes.  My trip has been good thus far.  I've been really bad at taking pictures so far, but I always am.  I'll just steal pictures from my mom and Jenna eventually.