It is definitely a...

Girl!

Our family of 5 will be complete with 3 little girls! Our little Charlotte looks great and would not stay still. Her spine and heart looked fabulous! She is measuring right at 18 weeks and just like Kaylee and Elanor, she has very long legs. (No wonder I have been feeling her move for weeks!)

Her profile is so sweet.

She is such a little mover. She would not stay still so that the technician could get all the pictures that she wanted. She kept having to push on my stomach to make her move around back to her last position.

Can't wait to meet our little girl!

Boy or Girl

Tomorrow we find out the sex of the baby.

To say I am anxious would be an understatement.

Elanor wants another sister. Kaylee wants a brother like her friends Anelise, Leah, and Addison.

I love my girls. They are best friends. And a bond that I never had with my brother. Sisters.

If this baby is another girl, I will be happy for her that she and her sisters will grow up close and have that sisterly bond. Clothes will not be an issue because we are swimming in girl clothes.

But I would be lying if I said that I didn't hope this baby is a boy. A boy that Adam can take hunting and fishing. A boy that he can wrestle with. A boy that can carry on the family name. A boy to play in the dirt and collect sticks.

When Adam and I first got married, he always said he wanted 5 boys. Right now we are on target for 5 girls.

If you know me, you know I will be happy no matter the outcome of tomorrow's ultrasound. I simply want a beautiful healthy growing baby. I am so thankful that we are finally at this point in the pregnancy.

Until tomorrow.

Selling Our House

This last month has been busy and emotionally stressful as Adam and I have been weighing all of our options. We first started thinking about moving because Adam has a country itch. He wants the girls to be able to play outside and run around without worry. While country living sounds nice, it also means starting over on a lot of fronts. New church, new community, new friends, new doctors, new dentist, new times to do grocery shopping, and new stores to shop at. All of those new things plus a newborn made me realize that I am not ready to start over right now. This brought ideas of adding on. We got several estimates and decided that unless we were going to stay in this house forever, it would not be worth the cost. Then, we considered re-doing the basement and adding a bathroom down there. Somewhere in that discussion, school started coming into our conversation. Halting all of our considerations of staying in our house.

Pause. While I loved being homeschooled and I think I could handle the educational side of it, I am not sure I have enough patience to teach our children. Would I try? Sure! But there is a chance that it would not work. And in this house, we have no other option that we can afford. It would be on me. I can't commit to that without knowing exactly what I was getting into.

That was how we came to the conclusion that we need to move to a better school district.

We love our house. It is in a great neighborhood. It has tons of room thanks to the large basement downstairs and the two sheds we have out back. The yard is large, but not overwhelming. It has served us well.

It will be a good home for someone else. Here is our listing if you are interested or know someone else who is looking. We decided to try to sell it ourselves since we are not in a huge hurry.

I hate moving. And I know I will miss this house. It is our first house. We started our family here. This house has seen a lot of laughter and a lot of tears. Both of our college cars died here. Lots of memories in this house. I will definitely miss it.

But it is time for a new chapter in a new home.

No More Sippy Cups. No More Diapers.

It has been about 2 weeks since I washed a sippy cup. I know that we are not finished with sippy cups and that they will return when the baby is old enough for them, but it still makes me face a difficult reality.

My girls are growing up.

We are still working on potty training. Someone asked me the other day how long I potty trained Kaylee for and I told them it took a year. At least that is what it felt like. A year to be accident free. Elanor is much more stubborn than Kaylee (Didn't know that was possible!!!) and so some days she has only 1 accident. Other days, she refuses to go in the toilet even with all the rewards and bribes. It will be interesting to see how long it actually takes her to finally choose to consistently use the toilet. Either way, I feel like there will be a short amount of time before this baby arrives where our house is diaper free.

I am looking forward to going through it all one last time. With the mindset of firsts being lasts.

It is crazy to think that my girls are both almost to the point where they are independent little beings.

Before I know it, they will be fighting over clothes instead of Barbies.

13 Weeks

Today is the last day of the 1st trimester. That feels so good to say.

The idea of this shirt I, of course, got off of Pinterest. The girl that made it, made hers much easier since she had a cricut cutter. I used some 0-9 stencils and stenciled each number on individually with fabric paint. I mark the numbers off using a fabric marker that dries pretty fast. 

I really like doing something different for this pregnancy since it is such a special pregnancy to me. What are some things you like to do to document your pregnancies?

Kaylee's Kidbits and Ella's Endeavors

It has been a while since I have updated you on the girls so instead of writing separate blogs for them, I am doing them together this time around.

Kaylee is so grown up. She just looks like a big kid. Some of it is that she has always been on the tall side, but sometimes she just comes over and says things and Adam and I are just in shock at how old she seems.

Elanor is also tall and seeming big as of late. Her vocabulary has grown and we can almost understand everything she says. My favorite words she says right now are flip-flops and vitamin. I just like the way she says them. It is pretty cute.

Kaylee is taking gymnastics and I feel like it has been such a good experience for her. She loves to practice her tumbles and warm-ups at home. I love watching her.

Elanor is finally jumping. She has been trying for months and this morning I finally saw her feet come off of the ground together.

Kaylee is finally alright with sleeping with her door closed and we no longer leave the bathroom light on for her. This is leaps and bounds from where we started when she moved into her room before Ella was born.

Elanor is starting to potty train. I am hoping the process is quicker with her since she has Kaylee to help coach her and encourage her along side of me. She also has never been fond of diapers so I am hoping that helps as well.

Both girls love playing together. Kaylee is a much more introverted and likes to play by herself at least once a day, but overall they can play together nicely for hours. (As long as I don't have anything important to do like make phone calls.)

They are both very fascinated by the baby. Kaylee understands that the baby is growing in my belly and loves to know as much as possible about the baby. Ella just loves babies in general and so she loves to hear about the baby even though I don't think she understands that we are having another baby.

The girls are growing up so fast and sometimes it is hard to keep up. It is one of those things I don't think you ever get used to as a parent. Time just flies once you have children!
         

Pregnancy After Loss

Over the last two weeks I have spent a lot of time thinking about the baby that we lost. It is surreal to think about the fact that in order for this baby to have life, my other baby had to die. This little one in my womb would have never been had my third baby survived.

Monday night I felt this baby move for the first time. This is the best feeling in the world, whether you have lost another child or not. If you ask any expecting mother what her favorite part about being pregnant, her answer will most likely be feeling the baby move. Monday night. For me. It was so much more. It was relief. Followed by longing of the baby I never felt move. Joy. And truly my first real sense of excitement about being pregnant again.

I know to some that may seem strange. But honestly this pregnancy is so different than my other pregnancies. Having never experienced pregnancy loss before, I looked at my other pregnancies as "when". Like when I am 12 weeks, I will finish this trimester. When I am 20 weeks, I should start showing. Losing our precious 3rd baby has made this an "if" pregnancy. If I make it to 12 weeks, my chances of miscarrying drop significantly. If I make it to 18 weeks, we get to find out what we are having. It is not intentional. I am not living in fear. Or worry. It just is how it is. It is just different.

A good way to describe it is that I am all of a sudden keenly aware that having a healthy pregnancy resulting in the birth of a healthy baby is a HUGE MIRACLE!

Even more so since Kaylee is super fascinated by the baby. There are some videos on Babycenter.com that show the weeks of pregnancy and in them they explain the different parts of development that take place during those weeks. Kaylee will ask me to watch these over and over. And each time we watch them I am more and more amazed at the intricate way God knits us together in the womb. Seriously. A miracle.

Hopefully, over the next few months my view will change and this pregnancy will have it's "whens." But if not, I will continue to enjoy and celebrate each little moment of this baby's life. No matter how long his or her life is. This baby is a miracle and I love him or her with all of my heart.