it's a...

girl!

Lucia Grace

third trimester, baby #2! (written on December 14th, 2015)

at the beginning of my third trimester we went to utah to see alex off for his mission! he went to the georgia atlanta north mission! i was feeling good and the flight didn't bother me at all. we were considering leaving at the same time if prim didn't do well on the flight to utah, but she did. i stayed an extra few days and she and i flew back to TX alone! she did great. 

 27 weeks

27.5 weeks

28 weeks, our last day in utah.

  30 weeks

34.5 weeks

36 weeks. Prim's birthday!

 37 weeks. right before leaving for the hospital to get a version performed.

fortunately baby was already head down so they sent me home!!!!

bare belly! 37.5 weeks

39 weeks

39.5 weeks

2 days before due date. getting eggplant parmigiana to try to induce labor.

the night before my due date. went on a strenuous walk to encourage the baby to come out.

 

40 weeks and 3 days. this was the night before i got induced.

the trimester in all really wasn't that eventful. i felt good and was able to keep up with primmy.

i am being induced tomorrow at 4am. i have shown no signs of labor and am currently 3 days overdue. my dad is in town and prim was 4 days late. they worried about meconium with her, so we didn't want this baby to be any later. plus if he/she is born tomorrow, they'll be exactly 13 months apart!

it has been nice knowing exactly when the baby's going to come. we cleaned the bathroom really good (for some reason, coming home to a dirty bathroom REALLY bothered me with prim), got our car ready and are in the process of cleaning up the apartment. this is so exciting! i can't wait for prim to meet her sibling tomorrow! i really haven't wanted to finish this blog because i don't know what my official gender guess is going to be. . . i think i'm going to say boy. i've felt boy the whole time although that's how it was with prim as well until the end. now, the day before, i am still unsure. but i'll go with boy. jon guesses boy as well!

2nd trimester, baby #2!!

here i am at 26 weeks. i can't believe how quickly this pregnancy is going compared to the first! i am so grateful to prim for keeping me so preoccupied and happy.

(16 weeks)

i am still feeling really good. my stomach is starting to get pretty cramped and it's not comfortable to bend over. i can squat and pick stuff up, but bending over puts weird pressure on my stomach and bladder. i think this started happening earlier than it did with my first. i keep telling jon "i can't believe i _____ already!" and he says "a.j., i don't think you realize how far along you are." i guess he is probably right. everything seems to be happening earlier, but i think it is just because it was this time last year that it was happening so it doesn't seem like enough time has passed, if that makes sense. i got pregnant so quickly that i don't remember what normal is. hard to explain.

(18.5 weeks)

the summer went by way too fast. we had tons of plans to swim all the time, but that just didn't happen. i definitely started wearing maternity clothes earlier than i did last pregnancy. at the beginning of the second trimester i started feeling fat and not cute yet. my small clothes didn't fit and my maternity stuff didn't fit right either. at 12 weeks i went to the temple store without prim. i was wearing a maternity shirt with my skirt and the lady at the register congratulated me and asked how far along i was. i thought that was pretty bold of her, but figure it was probably obvious because of the scrunching on my maternity shirt. she's the only one who congratulated me for a long time and i think it's because Prim wasn't there. when i was pregnant with her, people were commenting on it ALL the time from when i just barely started to show. now people are afraid to say anything when they see my belly and see my little baby. they aren't sure if i'm still trying to work off my baby weight! 

(20 weeks)

my belly really popped while amanda was here at the end of july/beginning of august. i said "look at my belly!" and she said "yeah, that was not there when i got here" and she was only here for a total of 5 days. now that i've popped and its increasingly obvious that i'm pregnant, people have started to congratulate us and prim. i had expected people to say weird things about having a baby so soon and babies so close in age, but i haven't been offended or surprised by anything that's been said so far! 

(23 weeks)

i worked out pretty consistently until around 22 weeks when our jogging stroller got a flat tire. i was walking at least 3 or 4 times a week and then doing push ups and other arm work outs. since the tire popped i've had a really hard time doing cardio. i only go when jon comes with me because her normal stroller is really heavy and hard to push on our drive way. that sounds super lame, but you have no idea how long and bumpy/hilly our driveway is. it takes about 10 minutes to get from the house to the main road and by the time i get there i already want to turn around, haha. i'm dedicated to getting back into walking and doing easy work outs though, hoping it'll help get back to my normal size after teeny gets here. 

(24.5 weeks)

mid august we went on a gap shopping spree (thanks to emma for the coupons!) for me and prim. i desperately needed post baby clothes and don't want to have to deal with it when i have two babies, no time and no money-ha. we got clothes for prim for her to grow into next year and even got one item for teeny. a little white fuzzy snowsuit that is to die for. we put prim in one her size and lost it. she looked so cute, but it wasn't practical with her crawling and starting to walk. teeny is going to look SO cute in it! this is so far the only thing we have bought specifically for him/her!!

(25 weeks)
while lizzie was in town we got to have our big ultrasound! our doctor prefers to do them as late as possible (we are never in a hurry since we don't find out the gender) so that she can do the anatomy scan when the baby is pretty big and she can see it clearly. we went on tuesday september 1st and it was the cutest thing in the world. it was so much better than prim's ultrasound (i think the doctor was rushed with her). she let us just look at teeny moving on the screen. it's little hands were up by its face twitching and moving and he/she was opening and closing its mouth. at one point prim looked at the screen and giggled. for the most part it seems like she is oblivious, but there are little tiny moments like this where i think she knows more than we think she does. we could see that teeny has chubby little cheeks like prim did and it looks pretty bald so far! (as if we really know) it was really exciting and special that both lizzie and prim got to be there. jon and i are over the moon excited about this new baby coming into our lives. we have enjoyed prim so much from day one (okay maybe like day 14) and can't wait to experience it all again with prim in tow. we are all three so lucky.

waiting for the doctor. she'd always lean over lizzie's shoulder to look at her close up.

there he/she is!!!! i can't get over those eyes and that nose.

(26 weeks)

bring on trimester three!

new-new baby

on may 1st, we got to see the new-new baby! (hehe)

we've taken to calling him/her teeny! we aren't finding out the gender, so it'll be another exciting surprise!

it was amazing to see this tiny thing with a heartbeat moving around on the screen. i felt a huge sense of relief seeing signs of life and it helped me become even more excited about baby #2.

after the sonogram we went to la cantera mall to celebrate. we got appetizers at cheesecake factory and had a burger at kona grill. primmy started to get a bit fussy so we took turns eating while the other held her. she is such a sweet baby, she is so well behaved. 

we posted this picture on prim's photo stream for family and close friends and jon posted it on insta (i deleted my instagram). i think we took a lot of people off guard! at this point Primrose was only 5 and a half months old. she's so cute and tiny and nice and funny that we couldn't resist trying for another. we are all three (we assume) so excited!!

jon loves doing this with her in sacrament meeting or making her laugh. i usually try to tell him to stop and without fail somebody always comes up to us after sacrament meeting to tell us how cute her laugh is or how they loved hearing her little noises...irreverence is cute for now!

on cinco de mayo we expiremented with a new food: turkey and vegetables. ahh so funny and so sad! her shuddering and gagging tells me she didn't like it, but she never denied it, soo....

usually bandit stays pretty far away from prim, but when he gets desperate for attention he'll come sit by us when i'm feeding her. (i love her eating noises) 

this was one of her first foods besides mashed baby food. we were at her aunt kaitlyn's house.

rolling around and being cute at work

on may 8th we were heading to utah (alone!). this was her suitcase before i even started on the clothes and accessories. eeeee yikes.
daddy went straight to moab after dropping us off at the airport. prim did so good on the flight and everyone was kind and encouraging. it is a beautiful thing to be reminded that there are good people in the world. this man even held her for me while i used the restroom. don't worry, he looked super trustworthy, heh heh heh... i figured not much could go wrong since like five people heard him offer, i took max 45 seconds and he was locked on an airplane. turns out i was right!

first trimester, baby #2!!!

I am officially out of my first trimester and feeling great! i was fully prepared to be exhausted and sick, sick, sick. luckily, this was not the case. when I found out i was pregnant, i could have tricked myself into thinking i wasn't. it was so different from the first pregnancy, i didn't feel pregnant at all. as i got to week 6, i kept remembering back to how sick i was at this point before....week 7, week 8 and I still wasn't sick. i remember telling amanda and lyndsi that i believed at this point it was mind over matter and if i truly believed i wouldn't get sick, that i wouldn't. (HA) i kept putting off being sick and i never became plagued with sickness like i was before and i can't say how grateful i am for that. there were a handful of days that i felt crummy, but mostly when I was in utah with a lot of help with prim. i also think that taking care of primmy took my mind off of tiredness or sickness i may have been feeling if i was able to mope around and feel bad for myself. i've been reading about other women with 'short interval' pregnancies and they all talked about how tired they are/were. you guys. when i had my kidney issues, i was. so. tired. i couldn't get out of bed and couldn't hold prim because it made my arms too tired. i guess i'm seeing now how those events could be blessings in disguise. i am nowhere near as tired now as i was then. 

 this is when we found out. i was at ashton's house and we were talking about how i wanted to get pregnant again. i was a few days late, but didn't say anything. on the way home i stopped at the grocery store and bought a pregnancy test. cassidy happened to be there, so again, she was one of the first people to know (sort of know)! she is the checker so when she scanned the test she looked at me and said "seriously?" then got so excited and hugged me and prim even though there was a line. i went home and took it and it was positive. this is right when we got back from california, so i text jon and asked him to come home from school. he didn't think anything of it because after being together for the whole weekend, he just thought we missed him. i put the test on the bathroom counter and told him to go look at it. he turned around with tears in his eyes and hugged me and prim! we were both in blissful shock.

right when i saw the positive, i ran to prim and told her "mommy's having a baby!" she smiled SO big and starting kicking her legs. later, when i told jon, we asked her if she knew who the baby was and she smiled again and got excited.

 bold to be posting this, eh? this is between 5-6 weeks pregnant. nobody knew. i took this picture to send to amanda showing her how the swimsuit she gave me fits (we're like that). not flattering but pretty much me post baby and pre baby :)!

 at exactly 8 weeks, we went to our first doctors appointment. i had text my ob to tell her the good news, so she was expecting us. as she was doing the sonogram she said "aw, i was hoping it was twins". who would wish that juju on us at this point in life?! the baby looked great and seeing that little heartbeat was really touching.

 celebrating after the appointment at cheesecake.

we told my family and jon's family at about 7/8 weeks and then told everyone else around 9.

here i am at ten weeks.

 11 weeks up at the cemetery.

and 13 weeks!
it took me a few days to get over the anxiety and guilt about having another baby. i got melancholy about taking time away from prim, but i had to keep reminding myself that we wanted this like crazy. we aren't taking anything away from her, but giving her a little sibling that can hopefully be her best friend! we love being parents and love little prim so immensely that we knew pretty darn soon we wanted another one. we have so much love to give these two babies. we keep thinking that this may be our last one, so i'm soaking up this pregnancy just in case!! i am looking forward to the second trimester, hoping to have a little more energy and starting to see a cute little bump (before i get huge). here we go...

and baby makes three.

just kidding, it makes four.

baby #2 due in december!

i feel like i could just burst with happiness and gratitude.
(and yes, he/she was planned.)