The Name Game

New Facts and Tidbits about life right now

-I can see the bottom of my bellybutton for the first time in my life.

-I finally told my manager at work I am pregnant this week. At least one of the three found out and reacted normally.

-I should give up wearing my jeans soon and resort to the pregnancy pants, I am just being stubborn not wanting to give up some flexibility I have with clothes.

-I officially think Lord of the Rings does not live up to the hype. Matt and I decided to watch the trilogy, since I have always refused to watch the 3.5 hr long movies. And after some really corny special effects kicking off the 2nd movie tonight, it will be hard to sway my opinion. Which def. eliminates the idea of ever viewing the other "epic" series I have never watched.....Star Wars, sorry babe. I can spot a movie I won't like a mile away.

-My legs/feet fall asleep ALL THE TIME. No one can put any pressure on them or numbness will soon follow. Gotta love the circulation issues in the Springer family.

-I have had bloody noses for the past 2 weeks on and off. Also a fun reminder of the increased blood supply I am carrying around.

-I have resisted buying a little girl outfit so far. This may be due to my preoccupation with fabric for her room instead of fabric to dress her with, but so many people have asked I kind of feel like a bad mom for saying no. There will be plenty of time for that type of shopping to come.

-I have felt her little kicks some more but I have to be in the same position and it has to be later at night. It will be interesting to see if my night time hours effect her sleep/wake cycle as a newborn at first.

-We have started the brainstorming sessions for her name and they have ended in failure. I am really picky about girl names, in the sense that I hardly like anything. I have said before if someone had to name my children, I would probably be ok with most boys names they would choose and probably hate any girl name they picked. I mean Adam, Daniel, Jack, Jacob...any top 100 baby boy name I could be fine with. That is not to say that I would name my son any of them, but they don't annoy/offend/make me want to roll my eyes/make fake puking faces. Now the common girl names out there....wow. The verbs previously listed are how I react to most of them. So this will be a challenge. And not that I want to name my kid a popular name but I also don't want to make up a name or change the spelling of her name so no one ever knows how to pronounce it. We were looking at "unique baby girl names" tonight and things like Oriel, Orenda and Olica were popping up. Guess what naming website, those aren't unique, you are just substituting a different letter in the first place slot. Those names are actually Ariel, Brenda and Alica...you are just jacking with them and I am not impressed with your "creative" efforts. We ended up just making fun of names like Pussti, Phoolan and Titilani (just call her tit or titi for short) and dry heaving at names like Adorabelle instead of seriously looking anymore. Plus if we were having a boy, the middle name would have be Matthew. Matt's middle name is his dad's first name and Matt and I wanted to continue the tradition. Now that we are having a girl, we have to pick two girl names. I also don't like popular girl middle name options. Ann, Marie, Leigh, Lynn, Nicole...I think those are most everyone's middle names from our generation and I am not a fan of any of them. And I can say that because my middle name is Leigh, so no taking offense here if any of those are your middle name and you love it, they just aren't working for me :)  So needless to say, Dad and I are still at square one with your name little peanut.

Part 2

Pictures from the gender reveal party......

So I am really happy we decided to have a gender reveal party. It was such a blast to share the news, especially because it was a shock for us. Matt wanted to have everyone go outside to the fire pit and throw in smoke bombs/fireworks that were pink. However that night was FREEZING so we had to modify a bit to our backyard's walkout patio. Everyone waited inside and watched thru the glass. With the crazy wind, Matt's lighter kept blowing out. So there was a lot of build up to the news. Finally he grabbed some matches and the bombs took. Pink smoke spilled out everywhere and everyone was yelling and jumping up and down....well I was at least :) After everyone got over the big news we went back upstairs and played some baby pictionary. We picked out words from our baby books that people had to draw ranging from Fallopian tubes to contractions. There was a lot of great pictures that came out of it. Then Amanda showed up after she drove all the way from Arkansas after work. She was so awesome for coming so we had to do something fun for her to find out it was a girl. So I bought a black balloon and filled it with helium and pink glitter for her to pop. Unfortunately the glitter was too heavy for the balloon to stay afloat AND they gave me a see-thru balloon so you could see there was pink inside. Lame. So we turned the lights down and let her pop it on the floor. Slightly anticlimactic but we tried. Overall such a fun night!

Here we are at 18 weeks. I felt like we had to do something to note that we found out she was a girl this week, hence the silly pictures to follow. On another note, I felt her move 18 weeks to the date! I thought I had been feeling something funny all day but kind of ignored it and blamed it on the food I ate the night before. But by night time I couldn't deny it was a distinctly different feeling, almost like a muscle twitch. I got really excited when I figured out what was happening. I woke Matt up to tell him but he was too groggy to care. So I did a little happy dance by myself. :) Also this week I finally booked our babymoon. Matt and I are going to San Diego the beginning of March! So relieved to have it planned, booked and off my to do list. Now I am really looking forward to having that much time for just the two of us with no work, studying or responsibilities to get in the way. Oh and I bought fabric for her room today! I went to buy fabric for gifts I am making for friends and randomly came across stuff I liked myself. Two hours later I was walking out with fabric for her crib sheets and a couple other projects I have in mind. More importantly I now have a color scheme to work with when creating the rest of her room. It has been a good couple of days in terms of productivity around here.

WHAT!?

Thursday night we got the most shocking news of our pregnancy yet.....

How were my maternal and Matt's paternal instincts so wrong? What a crazy feeling. We both have thought, from very early on, that we were having a boy. Neither of us could say why but we just did. We had started discussing boy names, very briefly, I had looked at boy clothes and nursery ideas and my mind just wandered to all things boy. Maybe that was God's way of preparing my heart to be content with whatever gender it was.

 I have always been scared to be the mother of all boys. I only have one brother, Matt is the only boy in his family and the rest of the combined 8 kids between our families are girls. I know boys have a lot of energy that needs to be channeled into constructive not destructive actions and you have to strike a balance between "letting them be boys" and teaching them structure. With one boy or maybe two, I think I could give it a shot. The thought of having 3 or 4 boys and no girls though made me want to break into a nervous sweat. Girls are all I know. I know they are not easy and have their own sets of issues, but with all our sisters, I have experience with that at least. I kept thinking, if I could just have a girl first, I would not be care about the gender of any of my pregnancies from here on out. I would at least have a girl and that could be enough. My mom's pregnancies with girls were also harder. She was more sick, in the hospital getting IV fluids all the time and had trouble eating much through the whole pregnancy. I thought if I was having a boy this time, I had a chance of this all being worse the following time if it was a girl. That terrified me.

When it boils down though, I ultimately wasn't trusting God to be bigger than my weakness, my nerves and my fears. I could give a list of the reasons I wanted girls over boys but they were all silly in light of what having faith says. So during these first 17 weeks I prayed for peace about having a boy. I thought about all the positives of boys, about all my friend's sons and how wonderful they are, about having a "little Matthew," in the physical sense. So far the past couple generations of Clark boys I have met all look the same, so I can safely guess our son would have looked just like his father. With me thinking more about baby's health, I didn't end up praying/thinking about this all the time. But when nerves or doubt would creep in, these are the things I would choose to focus on. Ultimately God has the perfect plan for what our family will look like, not me, and I am thankful he is in charge.

Which led us to Thursday. Both of us knowing it could be either option, but both of us convinced it was a boy. So when the US tech said, "Mom, you know what three lines mean..." I about fell off the table.

To Be Cont.....

17 weeks

Well here we are at 17 weeks, a big week for us because this week we find out if our baby is a boy or a girl! I hope baby cooperates and we can easily tell. We are having family and a few friends come over on Friday to announce the news. On a more nerve-racking note, we also have our more in depth ultrasound this appointment. Being a NICU nurse puts all the worst thoughts in your head about what could be happening in there so I am ready to just get this over with and stop the anticipating. Surprisingly though, I have been much better about not worrying as I thought I would be. I chalk that all up to God. He has brought peace to a place of my heart that is always anxious. I am such a planner, organizer, type A personality so the thought of things being out of my control, which they always are, stresses me out if I let it. The health of my baby is, for the most part, out of my hands. Baby could have Downs or Turners or Hydrocephalus or Gastroschisis or a heart defect ....ect ect. My mind has gone to all these places and more but it has only done so briefly, without much lingering. Matt and I discussed some of these things and what we might be able to tell by this appt. I feel blessed to have a realistic grasp on many medical battles we could be facing but it has never been my child going through any of that. So in prayer I have been focusing on the emotional toll some of these diagnosis may bring. In the end though, I know God has knit together this baby for us to parent and he will equip us with the things necessary to do this well.

It's funny in some areas of the pregnancy I can trust God completely, and in others I can be so worrisome. Matt and I sat down this weekend and wrote out lists of all the things that worry us and weigh on our hearts about this pregnancy, the baby and our relationship. We threw everything out there from picking a name to safety in labor. It was good to write them all down and clear our heads of all of them. We joked about burning the lists in the fire we were planning on making the next day, but decided to hang on to them for awhile. I have thought about praying through some of them and laying them down as requests to be freed of. I seem to do better in prayer time when I have some structure and this seemed like a good outline of things I obviously still need to pray about. So we'll see.

Another thought I keep having is the idea that the baby can hear us now, or can they? Matt's grandparents are both deaf, although only one was born deaf. But there is a part of me that wonders if that could be our kid's story too.... If there was anything genetic to why grandma was born deaf.... If maybe our child could inherit the same issues. Having a deaf child would fit perfectly into our family and we would be equipped to handle that better than most people. I wonder if God ever thinks along those same lines? Our baby would feel right at home with Matt's family and my family, I am sure, would make efforts to learn to sign and communicate but what about our friends, church, neighbors? I always talk with my friends about our kids growing up together and being friends. How different would that friendship look if our baby was deaf? Just interesting to think about. We plan on teaching our children to sign anyway so they can communicate with their great grandparents and continue that unique part of the Clark family's identity. Their cousin Lynley is being taught to sign as well. Leslie has started with her already. The thought of our kids signing to each other is such a cool thought. I am glad our baby will be supported in that way whether they are deaf or not.

That is about it, not much has changed with me this past week. Still feeling alright, no cravings yet, no noticeable movements from baby, not much change in the way I am looking and still a little on the tired side. All in all, pretty good :)

The bump

Well you get a two for one deal this week. With the craziness of Natalie's wedding festivities and work, I took our 15 week picture and never posted it. So here we were last Monday. I got my act together and made signs for each week to mark our progress and add some color to our gray backdrop. This picture was a drastic improvement from week 14 and baby got a little bigger.

Now tonight's picture I feel like I grew a ton since last week. Maybe it was the fact that I was lazy and took this week's pic in sweatpants and not leggings. I felt last week you needed to see my in leggings to get my bump to show, but this week I was showing no matter what pants I wore. With it being winter, I can still hide baby in most clothes I wear so it's crazy to see my profile of how big I am actually getting. I know I have a long way to go but it's weird to see your own body change like that.

Here is a not as attractive front on picture of me and baby. I'm big-excited-smiling so my neck is doing that weird tendon popping thing and you can tell my hair was not done today BUT you can tell there is a bump from the front view too! Crazy.

I have been feeling better this week but my appetite still has not come back. I am starving at times but nothing ever sounds good. So then I just end up eating to eat but not really enjoying any of it. Meat still does not sound good either, which for burger loving me is still so weird. Sugar, on the other hand, sounds good again so the Christmas candy is getting devoured around here, as well as the thin mints that have been hiding in my freezer since the fall. Now that they have been discovered, they will be shown no mercy.

According to websites, baby can start to hear from this point on. This is exciting for Matt since he has been talking to baby for quite some time now but now baby can actually learn his voice. It is also exciting for me because I have been waiting to fill this baby's head with good music and now we can jam out together. Today we danced around to Florence and the Machine as we packed up Christmas at our house. It's fun to think the next time I will unpack all of those things, it will be with a 5 mo old around!

Finally Pictures!

Taking time to load pictures to our computer and then upload them to the blog is for the birds. I am too lazy to do this all the time. So I will dump them on you all at once.

Here was our best attempt at a picture of the two of us at the Nutcracker. Matt got free tickets to see the show at the Kaufmann Center, the new performing arts building downtown, so we were stoked. I took him to see the Nutcracker for the first time last year. Now that he knew the story, it was easier to follow along. Pretty fun date night, complete with a baggie of Crispex for baby to munch on because that was not a feeling good day.

Then the next day of that weekend we traveled to Leavenworth to pick up this awesome hutch for our kitchen. We found it on Craigslist for 75 bucks. I have been wanting a hutch since we have moved into our home but was refusing to spend a lot of money on one. Plus I wanted one with some character. Our patient waiting paid off, along with some searching help from my mom, and we found this guy. Matt and my dad are going to sand it all down and then paint it. I can't wait for it to be in our kitchen and brightening up the room. Plus the extra storage is going to be great for all our kitchen and party supplies.

This is my fun craft I talked about in a previous post. I found a DIY tutorial on how to make these trees last year. I didn't have time to make them so I stored the link away. Beth came over and we crafted one afternoon and made them finally. We each had a big, medium and small guy when we were through, these were just the first round after the dried. I was pretty happy to have to new decorations to put around the house for winter time and I thought they turned out very close to the online version we were trying to copy. So great when that happens. We also made these billybutton flowers out of rolled felt but I need a cute vase before I can display them. They are complete but all laying on my desk in the craft room/soon to be baby room.

This picture was taken right before our small group came over for our advent celebration the week of Christmas. I was feeling better that day and decided to decorate a bit. I dipped the mugs in red chocolate and sprinkled them with sugar sprinkles for our hot chocolate bar and got out my tissue pom poms. It was so great to have everyone over to our house and celebrate with them. We made advent wreaths together as a group and celebrated lighting our candles each week at someone's house. It was fun our week ended up being the last one because I was feeling up to hosting and our house was decorated by that time. My advent wreath on the other hand was too embarrasing to even take a picture of. I didn't even secure my candles onto the actual wreath. Minus two points to me for lack of creativity, I will do better next year.

So here, finally, are the pictures you really care about. I am officially showing, barely, with clothes on. So we decided it was time to take our first belly picture. Here we are at the start of 14 weeks. I am finding some things with this pregnancy to be going oddly quick. I thought about belly pictures and how cute people make them and what creative way I wanted to document our own. I thought I thought about it for awhile but I guess in all that thinking, I never made any decisions. Before I knew it I was showing and I didn't want to miss taking a picture just because I was indecisive, that's just silly. So for the sake of capturing a true 14 week picture, we scrambled around before I left for work and took a few. After I looked through them, this was the only non-blurry one. I decided Matt needs a little coaching since I thought we just got the gray wall and me, when clearly you can see our random picture and the inside of our bathroom :) So here is to a better picture tonight for 15 weeks. Still not sure if anything cute will come of these but 20 yrs from now I prolly won't care anyway.

And here is baby! This was from our 12 week appt. Here is the classic one foot picture that confused Matt :) I know this is zoomed in more but it was crazy to me how different this one looks that our first. I mean, it's a baby. So wierd that baby is growing inside of me right now. I think a good part of me is still in denial over that fact. I can face that we will, God willing, welcome our first child to the world this year but I can't seem to grasp or even remember all the time, that there is a little human growing inside of me. Maybe when I feel the baby start moving it will hit me, but so far, it is still bizarre.

The baby got some fun gifts for Christmas too. The common theme from the Clarks seemed to be ducks. All of the aunts got some cute duckie thing without knowing the rest of them did. I think it will be easier to buy things once we know the gender but everyone was playing it safe. My mom got me this hat box with all sorts of fabric to start sewing things for the baby. This was a genious gift! I just got a sewing machine right before Christmas and am excited to make things with it. This will give me a jump start. We also got a food processor and a baby food cookbook, both were great ideas too. Our family was so generous. It seems very worldly of me to say but tangible things have really been what makes this seem real so far. I am just surprised how long it has taken me to come to grip with the fact that this is happening to us. I feel so blessed and undeserving.

Because motivation has been lacking around our house I need a to-do list that I am held accountable for. So here are my goals for this week ....

1. Come up with vacation plans for our last get-away with just the two of us before we add another member to our family. Somewhere warm, sometime in march...that's all the progress I have made.

2. Figure out how we want to tell everyone if we are having a boy or girl.....get together/party or informal announcement. Just how big of a deal does this need to be and do we want it to be?

3. Start organizing my craft room and move things out to make room for baby...sounds easy but you have not seen the looks of my craft room as of late.

4. Pull out my sewing machine and learn how to use it.

5. Take another picture of how big baby is tonight :) Yay for 15 weeks

Side note: I am a terrible speller and the spell check function on this is not working currently, so sorry for any typos!

Practice

Late night posting,

Sleeping weird (if any) hours now... I suppose it is just the Big Guy's way of telling me I need to start training for our new arrival.

Finding contentment with His plan has been my latest endeavor. I’ve been having trouble with looking forward and hoping that my kid is going to be a fun kid. I can’t help but want him/her to be a funny and cool kid. In the light of full blogging disclosure, I’m most hoping for a smart and semi-quirky kid. I’ve decided these are most definitely sinful longings from a most sinful man. But, I’ve resigned to the consideration that this is just the way I’m wired, and this is just my little way of putting His grace to work.

I recognize the fact that these are shallow and shortsighted feelings. Furthermore, these thoughts certainly neglect the full view of our future construct for the more immediate availability of a selfish, and idealistic story. When we see the whole picture, we certainly see how silly we are.

Needless to mention, this season of waiting has been a perplexing time.

- MPC