It's Friday!!!

Not only is it friday, it's opening night of high school football season! And we don't even have to travel to catch a game, my cousin Jordan cheers for Grape Creek, and they happen to play here in Stanton, so we'll get to see some family and watch some football tonight. Yay! The weather is supposed to be a little bit cooler, too, so maybe I won't get too hot. My dad is open tonight, so he won't start his season until next week. Monday I printed off Dad's football schedule, Jordan's football and volleyball schedules, Iraan and Ryder's JH football schedule, and looked up Wall's homecoming (that's probably the only game we'd try to make it to, and I doubt we'll even do that this year.) We try to make it to as many games as we can, but since we have to travel for any of them, except in the rare cases like tonight, it's not always easy.

People are weird about things, ok, maybe I should just say I'm weird about things, but I have always thought that the outfit your baby comes home from the hospital in is so important. It's in pictures for the rest of the kid's life, and is always a little more special than most other outfits. D'Laney came home in a precious, very vintage looking yellow sundress with little purple embroidered flowers and a matching bonnet. It was beautiful, and I want something just as sweet for Brynna to come home in. Since the weather will be a lot colder, a little sundress won't do, but I don't want the dress to be Christmas-y, her birth is way more special than some ol' holiday. I want something very classic and looks like baby clothes. I don't like a lot of frill on the girls normally, but like I said, it's a special occasion. So I'm on the hunt. Winter clothes won't be out for a couple more months, so I can't buy anything now, but I'm sure scouring websites looking for what will be released. My plan is to take D'Laney's sundress and whatever Brynna wears and put them in shadow boxes. I'm also trying to find just the right wardrobe for D'Laney to wear for those 3 days. I want something very special for the day Brynna is born, probably a big sister outfit of some kind, and then probably a matching dress for the day we bring Brynna home, but I won't frame it. All I'm thinking about are the pictures that will be taken, but don't you always feel like whatever going on is a little more special if you have a brand new, bought specifically for the occasion outfit to wear? Just me?
We didn't get a very good picture of D'Laney in her sweet little dress, and I'm still mad about it to this day, and the dress actually came out kind of pink in the pictures, but it was such a precious outfit, and the bonnet set it off just perfectly.

110 days to go....

Yes, I'm counting down in days. Susan is, too, so I don't feel so bad. Today we're 23 weeks. At our appt. last week, the doc said that at the next appt we'll schedule the C-section, so we should figure out what day will work out best for us. We decided on December 14th, so that will be Brynna's birthday! The 14th is on a monday, and Doc said she wanted me staying in Angelo for a couple days after I'm discharged in case there is some kind of problem. So we'll deliver on the 14th, leave the hospital on the 16th or 17th, and go to my mom and dad's for a couple days. We're going to get a couple of Christmas's in during those 2 days. Our barn Christmas with my dad's side has already been planned for the 19th, so we'll be in town for that, and we'll have my mom's side out to her house on the 18th, so we won't have to go anywhere but still get to see everyone. After that we'll go home, wherever that may be by then, and have a week to rest up before more festivities. Hopefully, we'll already be in Iraan, where all of Cameron's family is, and won't have to travel at all.
It's so strange to know the exact day that she'll be here. It's even stranger that her delivery is the only thing that's for certain in our lives right now. We don't know where we'll be living, what we'll be doing, etc. It's very stressful. I can't plan a nursery because if we're still in this house, the girls won't share a room, but if we've already moved, they probably will. Planning for Christmas is hard because after we do get to whatever home we're going to, traveling might not be very easy. I'm sure it'll be fine on the baby, but I'll be recovering from my second c-section, and I don't expect it to be easy. I'm really stressing over this, even though I know there isn't a thing I can do about it. I've really been praying for peace and to relax and let things take the course God has laid out, but it's difficult for me. Some might say I have control issues, lol. I've quit praying for a buyer for the house, because that might not be what God wants for us right now. Maybe I should just go ahead with plans to be here for a while, get the nursery ready, plan for the holidays, etc. We are going to continue trying to sell the house, I think we've decided to lower the price again, but I'm not sure what good it'll do. No houses are moving in Stanton right now, it's not just ours. If no one's calling, what does a lower price matter? But sometimes that's just what needs to happen. Who's to say that some one's been keeping an eye on the MLS listings and likes our house, but hasn't called on it because of the price (which by the way, is way below appraisal as it is!) It's so hard to know what to do! UGH!
But, enough with all the lamenting! I'm not a negative person, never have been, and I refuse to get bogged down. After all, I have another baby on the way! And an absolutely precious 2 year old. So a baby update, if anyone is even still reading this (I probably would have given up on this post a while back!)

• Brynna moves constantly! I feel her at least once an hour, but it's late at night that she really gets rolling. I hope that she moves a lot in her sleep and that she's not awake so much. And I really hope that the 10 pm gymnastics practice will stop once she's born. I felt a heel a couple nights ago make about a 3 inch swipe. It's so tiny! Cameron said that I'm crazy for thinking that I know which body part I felt, but when you've been through it before, you know what you're feeling for and how different limbs feel. She also had her first case of the hiccups yesterday, I think. She's still a little too small for me to feel those very well, but I was laying down while D'Laney was napping so I was still, and my tummy was twitching a little. D'Laney had the hiccups every day at 2 o'clock the last 2 or 3 months of that pregnancy. You could have set a watch by it!
• At our appt last monday, I was 21 wks 5 days, and my belly measured just over 23 inches. You're supposed to measure the same: 21 wks, 21 inches. Not my babies, I grow them big! But since we'll deliver almost 2 weeks early, neither the Doc nor I expect her to get to 9 lbs like D'Laney. I also gained the most at this appt. to bring my grand total to 7 lbs. Maybe I'll actually fall within the normal weight gain range this time, as opposed to the 60 lbs. I gained with D'Laney. I guess technically, I only netted about 30, because I was heavier and lost 30 when I was so sick before we got it under control, and then gained that 30 back plus 30 more. But I didn't lose much this time, maybe 5 lbs, and then just didn't gain any for a while. I don't step on a scale, ever, I don't believe in it, so I'm not sure what the gain vs loss was in between appt, but the baby is growing really well, obviously, and I feel pretty good, and the only thing on me that is growing is my tummy (ok, and a little back fat) so if Doc says everything is fine, I believe her.
• The average baby is a foot long and weighs just over a pound right now, so I expect that Brynna is around 14 inches and weighs 1 lb 2 oz. Of course, I'm just guessing. I really have no idea. I do know that if she were born today, she has over a 60% chance of surviving. Cameron got down right mad at me for bringing that up when we hit that point with D'Laney, so I think I'll let him know that as soon as he gets home, hehe. He said that it was morbid and why would I even think about the baby coming this early, but it was comforting to me then and is now too. It means that she's closer to being an actual baby and not just this alien in my tummy.
• I'm still feeling pretty good. I stay exhausted, but my allergies have been really bad lately, and that really wears me out. And of course D'Laney wears me out, but I don't mind that too much. I'm beginning to have some Braxton-Hicks contractions, but they haven't been painful, just annoying. It's actually kind of comforting knowing that those lovely things come towards the end. My feet and legs have been swelling a little, too. That's a new preggo symptom that I didn't have the first go-round. I think it has to do with my lack of water intake. I'm trying, I really am, but I simply forget to drink as much water as I should. And it's not like I'm drinking a lot of coke or anything (I've cut way back, if you can believe it) I'm just not really drinking anything. I've never been one to drink a lot throughout the day, and it's been very difficult to keep up with the water. Which reminds me...
• Ugh, I hate water.
• I've decided not to do cloth diapers. The deciding factor was all the laundry I did the last two days. I'm bad about letting it pile up and then spending all day one day (or two days) catching up, and I couldn't let diapers pile up like that. You would think that would make me keep up a little bit better with the laundry that I have, but I don't work that way. So disposables it is. I'll just hope that Brynna doesn't have the high maintenance hiney that her sister had and that we won't have to buy the most expensive diapers they make. D'Laney would break out if we put anything but pampers on her, she still does.
• We go back mid Sept and we'll schedule the delivery, and then our next appt in mid October will be the BIG one! I'll take the nasty glucose test, yuck!, and we'll do the 3D sonogram. I'm so excited about it, because it is a very accurate picture of the baby. D'Laney looked just exactly like the sono. I'm more curious what Brynna looks like that I was with D'Laney because we already know what a baby of ours looks like, I want to know if she'll look exactly the same or way different or just slightly resemble her sister. With my sister and I, you can tell we're siblings, but we don't favor each other all that much, Cadye actually looks a lot more like one of our cousins than she does me. It's the same with Cameron and his brother, they don't look exactly alike, but you can tell that they're related. For some reason, I think that Brynna and D'Laney will look like twins separated by 2 1/2 years. Cameron thinks that Brynna will have much darker hair and maybe get his blue eyes. I sure hope so. He has beautiful eyes, I hope they're passed to at least one of our girls.

Well, I think that's it. I know I said I was working on a 2 year old post for D'Laney, but it's coming along pretty slowly. She doesn't really hit any milestones these days, so it's more her likes and dislikes, and I have a hard time remembering when I sit down to blog. So as I remember something during the day, I pull up that post and add a little each day. It might take a while.

Party!

I'm working on a two year old post for D'Laney, but I wanted to post about her party! We had a great time. We had about 30 people over, all family from both sides. We ate burgers then opened presents and had cake and ice cream. As I've mentioned, my camera is no longer in commission, but my mom took some that I got from her before she left, so here they are!
If you've read Lindsey's blog or Marlayna's, you'll see that monkeys were a popular theme this year. When Mar and I were talking about what we were going to do for the girls, we kept saying, yeah, I'm doing that too, I was going to do that, etc... I ended up cutting my list of planned things in half, so really the only monkey thing was the cake. We just felt irresponsible spending money on decorations for a birthday party right now. But anyway, here are the pictures. I'm not going to comment about each one, but I will say that the cake was quite an adventure. I made it myself, as you'll be able to tell. I just free-handed the monkey and filled in with colored icing. It turned out ok, but it tasted pretty good. And I enjoyed making it, so that's really all that mattered. I also wanted to put a short video up of D'Laney and her daddy dancing. They do this all the time, but when he's holding her. Tonight, she came up to him and lay her head on his stomach and started leading. It was so sweet, if I were less exhausted I probably would have cried.

So here goes, picture overload!

Potty training = a cranky momma

Potty training has sort of stalled. D'Laney gets excited to go sit on the potty, but not in actually using it. She wore panties all day yesterday and had 2 accidents, both on the kitchen floor, thank goodness. Today we've been cleaning and packing to go to Angelo for the weekend, and she slept kinda late and then went down for a nap early, so we haven't even tried yet, but as soon as she wakes up we will. I'm really struggling with finding the patience for this right now. I'm just not feeling well enough to fight with D'Laney all day every day.
We have a full weekend in Angelo planned. My dad has his first scrimmage tomorrow morning against Iraan, so we're going to try to make that. Then I'm meeting the girls from high school for lunch, and late that afternoon is Maddie's birthday party! Sunday should be pretty low-key, and then monday is my next OB appt. This appt is pretty short I think, just listening to the heart rate. I'm only 2 1/2 weeks away from the third trimester!

We used the potty!!

I realize that not everyone will be as excited about this as me, or really even want to hear about it, but too bad! D'Laney used the potty!!!!
The little potty that we have can be taken apart and part put on top of the regular commode and the rest turned upside down is a step stool. (No pun intended!) I put it on the commode this morning to see if that would generate any new interest from D'Laney, because there's nothing new and exciting about the little potty and she wanted nothing to do with it. But that worked, she wanted to climb up the steps and would pull herself up on the potty, I wasn't allowed to help her at all. Once there, however, was the same old thing, she'd sit for a minute, get down and play, climb back up there, get down to play. After a few minutes of letting her get used to it again, I said if you're not going to use the potty, we're getting out of the bathroom. She fussed at me for a couple minutes, but then her minute attention span was on something else. Well a few minutes ago, I was sitting at the computer and she came and stood in front of me and just stared at me. It was weird for her to just stand there, but then she started to squat a little bit and I knew exactly what she was doing. She hadn't had a dirty diaper today, and I figured she was having some difficulty but that things were about to happen. So I acted really excited and said Let's go sit on the potty! We got into the bathroom and took her diaper off and I tried to sit her on the potty and she screamed NO! I held her for just a sec and then sat her down again, and she tried to fight me, but things were happening! I was right, she was a little constipated and had to really work at it, but she did it! She pooped in the potty!!! I went nuts and I think I scared her a little, but when she realized I was happy, she got a little excited, too. She got to use her very own toilet paper and wash her hands with her very own soap (yay, Kandoo!) She loved flushing the toilet herself, but her favorite part was getting the M&Ms. We called Daddy, who was still working, and tried calling both of her grandmothers, but neither answered. She did get to tell her Aunt Cadye, and she loves talking to Cadye on the phone, so she was excited about that. I'm excited about the fact that afterwards, I put some panties on her and she hasn't had an accident yet and it's been over 30 minutes!! About every 2 minutes I check and say, tell me when you need to teetee and we'll go sit on the potty again. At first she thought I was saying DeeDee, which is my mom, and she thought DeeDee was here, which is sweet but sad. So we'll see how much progress we make now. I've thought all along that if she just goes once or twice, she'll get it and that'll be that. I hope today wasn't a fluke, and that she understood what was going on, not just that I was holding her down on the potty. Regardless, she did it, and I'm so proud of her!

probably only funny to me

I'm exhausted and going to bed at 9! I'm actually excited about that! But I wanted to note, because I just realized, that last week's flashback of Cameron playing football and the week before's flashback of me as a very small child, were taken the same year! Within weeks of each other, actually! LOL, gotta love a 9 year age difference. We don't even notice it anymore, but every now and then we're reminded. I just thought it was funny and wanted to let y'all know.

Flashback Friday

I don't have much to post about. My parents have had D'Laney all week, and I have gotten absolutely nothing done I had planned, except catch up on rest. But that was the whole point, so I guess I got that done.

For today's flashback, how about an old picture of Cameron. In honor of two-a-days starting this week, my studdly husband: