We shall name him...

a)Bryson
b)Jameson
c)Evan
d)Adam
e)none of the above

If you guessed "e", then you are right! These are all first names that I loved that Justin gave a big fat "no" to!

Some of Justin's suggestions that I said no to: Robert and Fletcher

We both liked Ethan and Jacob, but those names are two of the most popular names in the US, and we really want something more unique this time around. We just dont want any weird trendy-type names.

That being said, we are finally coming to some agreement on a first name. The name that we are settling on is not common-I dont think I know one person in real life who has this name. The problem is now that we have pretty much have a first name down, the middle name that we picked out doesn't work as well. SO its back to the drawing board for a middle name. My goal is for this baby's middle name to be one of my family names since Jackson is named after Justin's family.

That means that this baby still remains nameless! Also, we have decided to try and wait until the baby is born before revealing the name, which is driving our families crazy! :) We have never kept anything a surprise, so it will be nice if we can wait until he is born for the big reveal. Now if only we could agree on a middle name...

21-24 Weeks

Sweet Feet:

24 Weeks:


23 Weeks

The past few weeks have been going well, and I can honestly say that this pregnancy is FLYING by! This baby boy is so active and it seems like he is more active than Jackson was. It is reassuring to feel him move so much, but sometimes the movements are so powerful that it wakes me up or keeps me up at night from the constant kicks/punches/movement. I wonder if that will translate to a more active or demanding baby once he is born? Jackson was so laid back for the first year and a half, so naturally this just might be my wild man! :)

I had my scan to try for a second look at his spine and everything looked perfect. As my ultrasound tech said, this baby gets an A++ so far. We didnt get any more good face shots, but the tech was able to witness this baby moving like crazy. She said he was a wild man, but that it was always a good thing to see an active baby. He is now head down, but as always, that could always change.

My heartburn has kicked up more, but it definitely seemed worse with Jackson than it does now. I can easily keep it at bay with a Tums and it doesnt wake me up a night like it did with Jackson. Hopefully it stays tolerable. These past few weeks, the weight has been piling on and I already feel like a whale. At my last OB visit, my doctor said I had gained 6-7 lbs since my last visit, and they look for me to gain more like 3-4 lbs a month. Oops! I blame the Holidays! :) She wasnt concerned b/c I am still well within normal limits. I was only up 13 lbs at my visit, which is still a good bit less than this time with Jackson. At 25 weeks pregnant with Jackson, I had put on 20 lbs. As long as I dont have any more months of extra weight gain, I will be on track to gain 25-30 lbs with this pregnancy. Here's hoping! Also, I have my gestational diabetes test scheduled for Jan 5th...who does that right after the Holidays? I hope I pass!

I am excited to reach the 24 week milestone-fetal viability! Although-I do want this baby to stay put for the long haul. We want a healthy full term baby and we need time to get things together. There is still so much to do to prepare for this boy's arrival.

Jackson's funny "boobies" story! aka Vampire baby strikes again

This was too funny not to post. A week or so ago, Jackson walked up to me as I was sitting on the couch and lifted my shirt up over my belly. He then laid his head on it, which was so sweet. He definitely knows something is up and he says that there is a "baby brudder" in my belly. Anyway, then he proceeds to lift my shirt all the way up over my bra. I was wearing a Victoria's Secret push up bra and he climbs up on me and sticks his face in my cleavage and starts rubbing his face/head around! I was like "Justin-please look at what your child is doing". Justin walks over and says "what the?....YEAH THATS MY BOY!" and started laughing. Well, then Jackson gets tickled and starts laughing and says "BOOBIES!" and the proceeds to bite both sides of my bra with a wild look in his eyes. I have no idea where that came from because then he walked away! We got a good laugh over that one! What in the world was he thinking?

That night I was getting ready to take my shower when I noticed that my bra was kind of wet feeling. I looked down and I guess there was some gel or something in the bra that he punctured with his teeth, because both sides of it had slowly leaked gel/water all over it. I had to throw it away....and that was like a $50 bra!! Boo!

Haha. Thank goodness he is weaned from breastfeeding. Can you imagine what he would have done to me if I was still nursing him!? Ouch!

20 week anatomy scan

Our favorite ultrasound tech did our scan and Jackson got to come with us. Jackson was a little uneasy at first as to why his mommy was laid on the table and having an ultrasound, but he held my hand for some of it. He kept asking if I was okay. Ahh my sweet boy!

As for the scan, it went perfectly! We got to see our precious new baby and he appears to be 100% healthy. It is truly amazing what you can see via ultrasound. We go to visualize all of the major organs and even the blood flow of the major vessels. We got several 3D "face shots" although, he was buried against the placenta for many of them. He continues to still be breech, although he has lots of time to spin around. We saw him drink amniotic fluid and saw his full bladder.

He measured 3 days ahead, so we just might have a March baby on our hands. They are not changing my due date just yet, though. He confirmed for us that he is still all boy several times and was not near as shy this time around. At 20 weeks, I am officially up 9.5 lbs, which is about 5 lbs less than I was with Jackson at 20 weeks...yeah!

We got to see his spine and visualize that it is fully enclosed, but due to his position, my tech could not get one picture that she needed, which was a cross section of his spine. She said that she can see that the spine looks perfect, but she just needed that one picture to check it off of her list. That means that I get another ultrasound at my appt on Tuesday. She said hopefully he will have moved and she can get the shot, as well as get some more pictures of his sweet face. Based on what we saw so far, he seems to resemble Jackson. It is still so early to tell, though! Check out the pictures of our hansome man!

Pregnancy-weeks 17-20

Photo taken at 18 weeks

Oh geez, here we go trying to play catch up with this pregnancy. I can only say that my lack of blogging about it is surely revealing that I have much less time than I did before with Jackson. With my last pregnancy, despite working full time and finishing up grad school, I still had loads more time to focus on each new development with me and the baby. It is amazing how much work it is taking care of a rambunctious 2 year old! This time around, sometimes I forget which week of pregnancy that I am in and I find the weeks whizzing by! I have not been taking any pictures I keep forgetting. I am trying to remind myself to sit back and enjoy every minute of this pregnancy because I know how fast it goes by. By the time I have an hour or so to myself at night before bed, all I want to do is sit back and relax, not blog. I am trying to be better about this!

Lets see, weeks 17-20....well for starters, I am feeling movement every day. There is nothing so reassuring as feeling our sweet boy move and kick. Thats, right, I said BOY! I dont think that comes as as surprise to anyone, considering what we saw at our 13 week scan. My awesome OB let me have aquick scan at my 17.5 week appt b/c the office was super slow and I was complaining about wanting to know for sure and not wanting to wait until 20 weeks to find out. Baby boy was super shy and kept his legs crossed, but right before we were about to give up, he showed the goods. Yep, its definitely a boy! :) His heartrate has been great and my 2nd trimester screening for neural tube defects was negative-excellent news! This is surely the most fun part of pregnancy- I feel great, I am showing (but not super huge yet) and I have mild discomfort (round ligament pain, heartburn) Overall, there is nothing to complain about. Admittedly, it has taken me some time to get used to the idea of being a mommy to 2 boys (I was so sure this was a girl), but I am getting more and more excited about it as time goes on. Every day I think about how blessed we are to have been given not one, but TWO beautiful boys! Plus, I think it is really cool that Jackson will have a brother. I hope they grow to be very close.

Potty Training

Gosh, I am terrible for not have written about this sooner. We are making great strides toward potty training! For a while we have been talking to Jackson about it, reading about it, and encouraging Jackson to sit on his potty. We have not been pushing it though, because I heard that may do more harm than good. One day a while back, Jackson said he needed to go pee pee in the potty, and he did it! Of course we had to do a big song and dance out of it (think "Look Who's Talking "pee pee in the pot-ty dance!) Jackson got a big kick out of it and has proceeded to go pee in the potty almost daily, athough it is usually just once a day. Then, on Justin's bday (11/13), Jackson gave him the best present of all by going poo poo in the potty for the first time ever. He is still pretty inconsistent, but it is wonderful to have forward progress and progress that has been led by Jackson. I am hoping that this trend continues. We will definitely start pushing him a little more once he reaches 2 1/2 yrs old. I am so hoping to have him potty trained, or at least somewhat potty trained by the time baby #2 gets here, even though I know he will most likely rergress some. Our plan (and hope) has always been to have only one baby in diapers at a time!

Halloween 2011

We kept it low-key this year since we were just coming back from the cruise. We dressed Jackson up and took him to our church's fall festival where there were games, jump castles, and candy! We ran into a few of his friends and one of his teachers. Jackson's favorite part of the night was jumping like a wild man in the jump castle and getting a glow stick at the end of the night. We didnt have a single trick or treater during the time we were home, so the three of us had to finish the Kit Kats that we bought for them all by our selves :)

Disney Cruise

We set sail on the Disney Magic from Oct 22-Oct 29th and had a fantastic time! Our ports of call were in the Eastern Caribbean: St Maarten, St. Thomas/St. John, and Castaway Cay, which is Disney's private island in the Bahamas. We had been anticipating this trip for some time! We pulled Jackson out of preschool the week prior to leaving to ensure that we would all be healthy and thankfully it worked! We left out of Port Canaveral and made a stop in St. Augustine on the way down. We have been wanting to get to St. Augustine for awhile, so it was nice to be able to spend a little bit of time there. The architecture is just beautiful and we had perfect weather for lunch/stroll around town before heading for Port Canaveral. When we arrived at the port, Jackson go VERY excited and wanted to get on "Mickey's boat" immediately. We didnt have to wait at all to board and when we got on board, they announced us and clapped as we boarded. Then they had a fun deck party with music,dancing, streamers, characters, etc.

The ship was great-Of course, Jackson LOVED all of the elevators and lights. There was a certain part of the ship that was designed to look like NYC at night and Jackson would go there and dance, run around, and just have a blast. We had to go see "the lights" at least once a day! Our room was great-we sprung for a balcony and it was a pretty spacious room. We ended up being seated with a family from Long Island who had a 2 year old and they couldnt have been more different from us...but we really got along great and had a great time at dinner every night. One thing we did was bring Jackson's portable DVD player to dinner at night and put in on for the last 30 minutes or so of our 2 hour dinner-It was a lifesaver and really allowed for us to enjoy all 4 courses every night.

The food ranged form pretty good to really good-definitely a few steps above typical cruise food. We really enjoyed our time spent on the ship. Here is a recap of our cruise:

Day 1 (day at sea): We had the breakfast buffet, swam in the pool, played in the kids playroom (it had a giant treehouse/slide), watched Disney movies, etc.

Day 2: (day at sea) We had breakfast, then put Jackson in the kids nursery and I had a facial, Justin had a hot stone massage, we had a great long nap, played in the pool again, and took Jackson to his very first movie theater experience to see Cars 2 at the theater on the ship. He did great and lasted about 1/3 through the movie before losing interest. I am glad we didnt spend $$ on the movie since he didnt stay for the whole thing! This was also the day that we had Halloween on the ship and dressed up and took Jackson trick or treating. There was also a fun Halloween deck party that we went to and danced with the characters. Jackson was Lightining McQueen from the movie "Cars", I was Snow White, and Justin was Mr. Incredible. Jusitin's costume was a hit-I think a lot of the kids thought he was a real Disney character. It was a lot of fun!

Day 3: St. Maarten: When we arrived, it was cloudy skies. We decided to go into the town to check it out and wait for the sun to arrive-big mistake! We got into the city and it began to downpour! We huddled in a dumpy shop until we decided to brave the monsoon and made our way back to the boat. Right about the time we made it back (10 mins or so), the rain quit and the beautiful sun came out. We got back on the ship and changed into bathing suits and headed out to the beach. We rented some chairs/umbrella and swam in the water for a while. We then ate at the Hard Rock Restaurant across the street and got some cool new T shirts before headed back to the boat. After naps, we went back into St. Maarten for some shopping and chocolate. It turned out to be a really beautiful day!

Day 4: St. Thomas/St. John: This was our favorite day. The weather was perfect and this was our favorite island. We were off the ship early and headed to the sky lift, which took us up to a wonderful overlook called Paradise Point. Jackson loved the skylift, as it was like a giant glass elevator. we took some photos and then did a little shopping before heading back to the ship to change into bathing suits. I had researched different beaches to try and we decided on Magens Bay. Wow, that was a great decision!! This beach was absolutely breathtaking and we got to see much of the island on the cab ride there. At the beach, it was still crystal clear water and amazing views. It rivaled some of the beautful beaches in Hawaii. We both agreed that it was the most beautiful Caribbean beach that we had been to. Jackson had a BLAST playing in the water. He is definitely a water baby. We had a wonderful beachside lunch and then headed back to the ship for naps. While me and Jackson were sleeping, Justin went back into town and did some shopping for souvenirs. We left port around 3 pm that day, and we witnessed several people who missed the boat and were left standing helpless as the boat pulled away. I felt so sorry for them!

Day 5: Day at Sea: We mainly spent the day relaxing. We went to the pool, splash pad, and played in the kids club with Jackson. I got fire and ice manicure at the spa, which was fantastic! We enjoyed a nice leisurely day on the boat.

Day 6:Castaway Cay, Bahamas: This day was our 5 year wedding anniversary! We had another beautiful morning and we set out bright and early to claim a spot on Disney's private island. We thought the island may be crowded, but it was not at all! It was so spread out and well organized. They had 2 family beaches and one private beach, along with water slides, splash pad, etc. We put our beach chairs in the water and let Jackson play. Then we took Jackson for a stroll to the splash pad and he had a ball. They had a beach bbq buffet for lunch, which was really fantastic. It was well organized and not busy/crowded at all. About this time, the skies turned cloudy so we took our sleeping boy back to the ship and laid him in the bed for naptime. That evening, we fed Jackson early and put him in the nursery so that we could have our upscale dinner at the special adults-only restaurant, Palo. I didnt have super high expectations for the restaurant since it was on a cruise ship, but it was Ah-mazing!! Our server was top notch and the food was out of this world. I would put his restauraunt up against any fine dining restaurant in Charleston and that is saying a lot! They really made our anniversary dinner so special and it was wonderful to have a much needed "date night' with Justin. My only regret is that we didnt eat at this restaurant more than once. Jackson did wonderfully in the nursery and was a happy boy when we picked him up.

Day 7: Back to reality-We had a nice breakfast with our new friends and then headed to disembark the ship. This was by far the easiest and most smooth process of all of the cruises that we have been on. We stepped out into Port Canaveral on a dismal and dreary day but we hit sunshine as we made our way back home. I think it's safe to say that we were all ready to come home and put our feet back on dry land. It took me about 2-3 days to adjust from the vertigo of the ship. We had such a wonderful vacation and enjoyed every minute of it!

Better late than never...

I am slacking too much on this blog lately! I will be working on posting these soon:

-Jackson potty training update
-Disney Cruise/Halloween 2011
-Pregnancy wk 17-20
-20 wk anatomy scan
-Jackson's funny "boobies" story

More to come soon!!

15/16 weeks

I missed a week in between, but life keeps me so busy these days! Also, week 16 was spent on a wonderful Disney cruise! (more on that later). This was a very special week for me, as I felt the baby move for the first time at the beginning of week 16. It has become more noticeable now and I am feeling it pretty consistently. Also, all of the nausea and most of the food aversions have disappeared, which was perfect timing for the cruise. I am starting to show a lot more now and am finally starting to tell more people about the pregnancy. I am actually about 17.5 weeks now, so I will work on that update later. Here is a belly shot that I took on the cruise since I realized that I hadn't taken any recent belly shots. This was taken at 16.5 weeks. He/she is growing!!

14 week belly shot

This is the first belly shot that I have taken this pregnancy so far-I am already slacking!

BIG News!

Jackson is going to be a big brother! I am currently 14 weeks pregnant with sweet baby #2.

Ah, where to start....Well, for starters this pregnancy has been a total 180 from my pregnancy with Jackson. We found out we were pregnant in July and we were a little surprised. We were going to officially start trying for a baby again in August, and while not a total surprise, it still took us a while to believe it! We were on the way home from church and decided to get a pregnancy test since I was a day or two late. Much to our shock and excitement, it was a blazing positive result! It still took a while to sink in.

This pregnancy has been SO different that my pregnancy with Jackson. I have had many more symptoms: cramping, fatigue, and nausea...the worst! Every afternoon/evening I get nauseated and by 10 PM, I have been miserable. The blessing in all of that is that Jackson is asleep then, so I can prop my feet up and relax in my misery. It has been pretty bad nausea with no vomiting, thankfully. Weeks 5-8 were awful, as I had nausea around the clock which peaked at night. These days it is definitely tapering off and getting better. I am hoping that it will be completely gone in a couple of weeks.


At 14 weeks, I have gained just under 2 lbs, but I am definitely starting to show in the last few days. Today I got my first "when are you due?" question from a complete stranger. I was wearing a maternity dress, which I think made the bump more obvious. I can't believe how much faster I am showing with #2. I have had the same food cravings that I did with Jackson, but more food aversions. I love: salty, mexican, breakfast food, etc. I hate: ribs, fish, tollhouse cookies, and french fry oil.


We have had scans at the exact same times in the pregnancy and compared to Jackson, the rates of the heartbeats have been identical with the exception of one scan, where they were one beat a part. Amazing! Baby # 2 is already adorable and appears to be very happy and healthy so far. We had our nuchal scan about a week and a half ago, which was amazing!! The baby was moving all around and was very active. He/She measured perfectly to the day and we got to the brain, spinal cord, heart, bladder, etc. The nuchal measurement was 1.7, which was wonderful news! I got my blood results back several days later which were 1 in over 10,000 for both downs syndrome and trisomy. This is a different lab than we had with Jackson, so instead of giving us the exact number, they only test up to 10,000. According to my u/s tech, she said the results were the best possible normal that you can get. This made us very happy!


Also, baby was NOT shy at all and gave us several shots between the legs. Our tech has been doing u/s for over 30 years and she and the dr said that they are 95% sure of the sex, although we won't know for sure until around the middle of November. I will post pictures and let you see for yourself!


Here are a bunch of photos of our sweet baby:

9.5 weeks




Almost 13 weeks:

We counted 5 fingers on each hand! Here is one of them:

Here are some helpful shots for gender guesses. This one can be used to test the "nub theory" (google it!)

Potty shot!! What could the arrow be pointing to? Innnnteresting!

Our tech was sure to let us know that what we are seeing is not the umbilical cord. ha! We are in love!

Dear Jackson,

Have you been reading this blog? Because it wasn't 24 hours after I had written my last post about you not having tantrums when you showed me that you were fully capable! You were fighting naptime, so I held you to rock you and you let me know that you were not happy in the form of a full blown 2 year old tantrum. You were screaming, screeching, hitting yourself, hitting me, shoving your hands in your mouth, and kicking. It was almost like some wild animal had taken over my sweet boy! But then you finally gave in and fell into a deep peaceful sleep.

I knew it was just a matter of time before you had a true tantrum. You have been quite the firecracker this week, but I know it is just a phase. I know that you are frustrated and trying to find out how to deal with that frustration. Still, you have spent a lot of time in 'time out' this week, although at times you seem to enjoy it. I think you pretend to enjoy it just to spite us sometimes :) You must get that from your mommy!

Tonight on the way home from dinner and a stop at Toys R Us, you decided to have a fit during the car ride home. Boy, you were really screaming and angry that we left the store. You thought you'd really show mommy and daddy by pulling your socks off with your teeth (yes, with your teeth!). Only it backfired because mommy and daddy started laughing so hard at you that you got tickled yourself and started laughing. Then you proceeded to entertain us the whole rest of the way home by shoving your dirty sock in your mouth (you are such a boy!) and giving us the cutest belly laughs. See, that is how I know that underneath the moments of nastiness, you are still our sweet loving boy. We love you, our little wild animal!

2 years old!

It is hard to believe it, but our sweet boy is 2 years old! It is amazing at how much he has changed in the past year. Here are Jackson's official 2 year stats:

Weight: 28.1 lbs-50th percentile

Height: 37 in-96th percentile

In his doctor's words, he is seemingly "perfect". We would have to agree!

At 2 years old, Jackson

-is sleeping in his bed all through the night about 75% of the time. He still has times every now and then when he wakes up once in the middle of the night, but he usually goes right back to sleep. He sleeps from about 8:30 pm-6:30 am and takes an hour and a half nap everyday from 1-2:30.

-has started 2 year old preschool. He goes to preschool at our church on MWF from 9-12 and then he still goes to MMO on T, Th from 9:30-1:30. Preschool has been an adjustment for him, as he is in a bigger class with new teachers and even though he is in the same room as his Sunday school, it is still a different crowd. He still cries when we drop him off, but the teachers say he doesnt cry for long. He has already done many new activities such as planting a seed, painting a picture, made a collage out of magazine pictures, and working on new puzzles. On Mondays, all classes of the preschool come together for chapel. The teachers say he is great and is the first one out the door and the last one in from the playground. I know there will be a day (hopefully soon) where he will walk in without crying. He is always happily playing when we pick him up.

-has still been good about trying new foods, but loves fruit (bananas, strawberries, grapes, and apples) above all else. We will be trying peanut butter soon. I am always looking for new things to fix him for lunch. When we go to a restaurant he opens up the menu and says really loud "Ice cream, poofs, cookies, chocolate cake!". The boy loves his chocolate! We have noticed he has been drinking less milk than before...not sure if it is just a phase or if he will dislike milk like me. Also, we still haven't given him juice and don't plan to for awhile.

-He had his second dental cleaning last week and everything looked great! The dentist said he has one last molar to come in and then he will have his full set of teeth. He still lets me brush his teeth for the most part, but he does go through phases where he fights me.

-He still has his little fits when he doesnt get his way, but nothing too bad. I am still waiting for the full on tantrum-I know it has to be coming. We still do time out with him, which seems to work well. One thing that I have learned-when he is overtired, he gives the wild animal screech when he cries. It is a dead givaway that he is waaay tired when he starts making those screams/screeches. He has also begun kicking his feet when he is mad/upset.

-He is stringing along more words and sentences. It gets easier every day to communicate with him. He still loves to count and we are currently working on colors. He is also starting to sing along to some songs that he hears often.

-His newest obession is cars. He loves racing his cars around and carries them everywhere. He even sleeps with some of them at night. He can point out a corvette and camaro (guess who taught him that?)

-He LOVES going to the playground and would stay for hours if he could. He loves the swings and slides. He woke up from his nap today and the first thing he said to me was "park, slide, wheee!". He also loves throwing and kicking a ball.

What can I say, these last two years have been nothing short of wonderful and Jackson brings so much happiness, joy, and laughter to our lives. He is surely the biggest blessing of our lives! I am so excited to watch him grow and we are sure to cherish every single moment with our boy!

***I probably won't do monthly updates anymore. I plan to just update as needed, when there is something that we will want to remember. That is, until I (hopefully) get pregnant again in the future. I will probably go back to regular updates then.