Birthdays, Showers, and Christmas

Delainie and Aunt Shellie

Okay so first of all, I know the new background is seriously loud and obnoxious.  It was the closest thing I could get to being Christmasy because I am blogger challenged.  I will play around a little more later but this will have to do for now.  I walked into Target on Tuesday and they already had their Christmas decorations up so I feel justified in starting to celebrate early!  To me, Christmas = Zachary! So let the celebrations begin!  I'm also posting more pictures of Delainie that I got off of my phone.  I'm sorry if you're tired of them but she's so cute!  Also, she's got so many different facial expressions, I have to share them all!  Can you imagine what I'll be like with my own child?

While you scroll down I will indulge you in the all consuming event of my life at the moment.  Being Pregnant.  We are officially at 33 weeks, and sorry no belly picture.  I'm vain enough to admit that I'm typing this in sweat pants, a hoodie, and a ponytail so I will wait until I look more decent to take a picture that I will be sharing with the world wide web.  But I can tell you that my mom told my dad who told me that my frame makes me look super awesomely pregnant.  And I feel it.  I don't feel it's fair for me to complain because women have been going through the same exact thing for hundreds of thousands of years.

D trying out her cousin Zach's bouncer.  She didn't like it much

Mommy and Baby.  This really highlights how similar they look

Plus I'm only experiencing normal pregnancy symptoms.  But that does not mean I'm hoping this all continues on for too much longer.  Some less than pleasant things include:

• Zachary having this awful habit of sticking something like a foot or a knee up into the right side of my rib cage.  In fact, he has a weird habit of hanging out on the right side most of the time.  So there's a lot of times where I'm feeling pressure up in my rib cage and down on my hip.   When I need a break, I lay on my left and let gravity work its magic.
• Rolling out of bed in the middle of the night is about as much fun as trudging waist-deep in mud.  First, I have to uncover myself from the mountain of pillows surrounding myself.  Then I have to literally roll off the bed and hope I land on my feet. As a result, I have vowed never laugh at a turtle on its back (I know the feeling all to well). Once I'm out of bed, I have to cradle my belly because Zach shifts all his weight down onto my bursting bladder.  Once I'm back, I have to go spelunking through the pillows again, let Zach shift over to whatever side I lay on and attempt to find a comfortable position for myself.  Once this is achieved, I lay my head back down, wondering how on earth Tommy is still asleep and drift blissfully into awakefulness as Zachary has decided that since he's up, he might as well  get some exercise in and proceeds to kick me in the bladder repeatedly.

  

  All tuckered out. She nodded off like an old man

• This baby moves all day.  I really am not exaggerating on this one folks.  I really hope it's because he's so excited to come out.  I also hope that once he's out, he'll spend a lot of time catching up on all the sleep he missed in the womb.  The movements are still super fun to feel and watch but there's a few once in a while that are not that great.  There's this thing that he does that I imagine he's stretching his arms and legs out into the back of the uterus and pushing his back up against my tummy.  It causes a lot of discomfort but it's so neat to feel this hard mass up against my tummy.

 I could never grab her big smile so this will have to do

Trying on her other cousin's hat

•  Last complaint, I can't stand on my feet for more than 15 - 20 minutes at a time.  Anything longer than that and I'm stuck sitting for the rest of the day.  I get a pain in my lower back and legs that doesn't go away if I overdue it.  This makes for a messy house.  It takes so long to clean because I'll work for 10 minutes, sit for 15 or 20, work for 10 sit.  But after about an hour or two of that I have to nap.  It definitely makes a girl feel good to know that a few minutes of cleaning pushes her into a sleep coma.

Zach at the genetic level.  Pretty cute huh?

My Favorite! I love the little curl of ha

And now on to the title of the blog.  My birthday was the 30th!  I'm 24 and haven't really thought about it.  Birthdays just aren't the same once you're older.  But Tommy made mine special.  First, I got my presents 10 days early!  Tommy has this habit of giving me my presents as soon as he gets them.  Last year for my birthday I don't even think he wrapped them!  It works great for me but this year he was determined to hold out.  He was able to get them wrapped but succumbed after only 3 hours.  AHAHA!  I hope this tradition continues for years to come!  Now, this is the part where I get to brag and tell you that Tommy picked out this super awesome pair of brown swede boots that  are amazing!  It was adorable how proud he was of himself and I was incredibly impressed and surprised.  He also made me breakfast and this was my birthday cake :) 

We had some great news this week.  We thought our first child Weatherby was lost to us forever.  Tommy got me this orchid back in March and we named him Weatherby Fredrick Velham May III.  He was such a beautiful thing.  He had 3 white flowers on each stem and we kept up with his feeding (2-3 ice cubes once a week, my kind of plant) very well.  But one day, we noticed one of the flowers look wilted.  Tommy finally decided to cut it off.  After that, all the flowers began to grow limp and slowly we had to cut them off.  Except for one flower that held on strong for another month after the 5th flower succumbed to death.  Then the tops of the stems started turning brown.  If I tried to trim them, the brown would spread further down.  I was worried he could read the writing on the wall about me being pregnant and Weatherby had sunk into a hopeless depression, willing life to end. Tommy wanted to toss it but then I saw a ray of hope.  A new leaf was coming through.  I also read online as long as the leaves are still green and healthy, the plant is fine.  So we kept at it.  Two months later, if you look closely at the stems, you'll see new stems coming in with flowers on each side!  Weatherby's alive! He is living proof that I'm not completely hopeless when it comes to plants.  Zachary may have a bright future after all! 

And last, I posted some pictures of some of the things I got from my baby shower.  You can look if you want or if you're still reading you can stop.  I'm not offended.  There were just so many cute things and a ton of my friends are super crafty so we got a ton of awesome stuff.  I'm sorry I didn't post everything, there was seriously so many wonderful gifts from people and I didn't want to waste people's time.  But thank you to everyone who has shown their love and support to us during this exciting new adventure in our lives.  We would never have been able to do it without any of you!  Whether it's been through gifts, asking me how I'm doing, or the advice and encouragement that we've received, we really appreciate it all!  Thank you!  Also, I can't figure out the picture formatting that well if you haven't noticed already so down below is just a disaster.  Sorry!

Car seat/stroller from mom, cover from Lisa, I wish they made those for adults!

Sweater vests!!!

My friend Savannah MADE this!

TIES!!!!!

Oh so many fuzzy pajamas... He had none before lol

Zach's own personalized blanket!

Shellie's gift, I love it!