At the beginning of my pregnancy I felt like I was growing pretty slowly and was fairly small.  I thought that due to this I might be able to get away without maternity pants and just use my belly band for the whole pregnancy.  For those of you not familiar with it, a belly band as my husband explains it is like a “tube top for your pants”.  And really, it sort of is.  With a belly band, the idea is you can where your regular, non-maternity pants during your pregnancy and unbutton and unzip them as you go, but the belly band will keep them from falling down.  I thought I had it made, I was going to where this belly band the entire pregnancy and not have to buy maternity pants…boy was I wrong!  By week 15 I already was wearing some of my work pants completely unzipped and the “tube top for my pants” wasn’t exactly the most comfortable and didn’t always make me feel like my pants were going to stay in place the entire day.

So, this weekend I gave in and bought my first few pairs of maternity pants and oh my goodness I didn’t know what I had been missing!  I no longer looked at it as giving in, but realized I didn’t know what I had been missing out on all this time!  Why hadn’t I bought maternity pants sooner…even when I wasn’t pregnant for those days I ate too much!  My eyes have been opened to a whole new world of comfort and style.  No longer do I have to worry about if my pants are going to button or zip- they don’t even have buttons or zippers on them!  No longer do I have to wonder if my pants will fall down in the middle of the day, they are snug as a bug in a rug around my ever-expanding belly.  Maternity pants are down right heavenly.  

I will be forever grateful to the man or woman who decided one day to make pants for pregnant women.  You forever are on my list of people I greatly admire.

As I write this I can feel him moving ever so slightly!  Just this week I started feeling movements that were more than just flutters.  I told Ross, I picture Baby J doing flips in there and every time he comes around he brushes against my tummy.  It is not consistent movement yet and I haven’t noticed any pattern of what makes him move.  Right now, I just think whenever he feels like moving, he does.

Lately, I have started having my first major food craving, oranges.  But not the big oranges, I actually am craving the small cuties that you can buy in bulk.  They are absolutely delicious!  I bring about 4 to work every day and they easily don’t last past lunch.  I figure I need the vitamin C, so they are probably good for me.  Ross teased me when we bought them because usually I will take a liking to a certain food and it lasts all of 4 minutes and then I don’t want it any more.  He assumed it would be the same with the cuties, but it has been a whole week and I am still loving them!  I also have started sleeping with a body pillow.  I haven’t been sleeping well since about week 12 and I typically am an amazing sleeper!  A girlfriend of mine gave me her body pillow she used during her pregnancy and I tried it a couple of weeks back and wasn’t sure if I liked it.  So I took a couple of weeks off from it and now it is back in bed with us.  The other night I slept soundly all the way until 4am- that is a huge accomplishment and I think I owe it all to my body pillow.  Unfortunately, it does take up quite a bit of space in our bed, but Ross has been very gracious and doesn’t complain too much about how little room he has to sleep now!

I have decided that my dreams of wearing my normal jeans all the way through this pregnancy may not be a realistic dream and I may venture out in the next couple of weeks to check out more maternity clothes.  I have had several of my friends suggest different stores that sell maternity clothes at decent prices (most times I have found it is hard to find maternity clothes on sale!).  We will see what I find in my upcoming adventures.

I have had several of my female friends encourage me to really enjoy my pregnancy.  To enjoy all the things that come along with growing this tiny human being.  So, I am taking that to heart and really focusing on being pregnant and enjoying the entire adventure as the Lord prepares my little son for this world.

So, who was right?!  Well, I will tell you, the next movie we are going to watch is a chick flick…have you figured it out yet??  Yes, I was right!  We are having a baby BOY!!!!  We are so excited and can’t wait to meet our little boy.  In looking at the ultrasound, our ultrasound tech said she was 99.9% sure that we were having a boy and I must say, it was pretty unmistakable!  After we told her we wanted to know the gender, we found that out right away.  She then proceeded to show us tons of pictures of our baby boy.  His head, face, arms, hands, feet, back, spine, stomach, brain, kidney’s, heart- it was amazing!  And he was moving around like crazy!!  I still can’t really feel his movements, just little flutters every once in a while, so I couldn’t believe how much he was moving around.  At one point, our tech was trying to capture pictures of his heart and he kept sticking his face into the picture- he just wanted us to see his beautiful little face!  Our tech said I was right on schedule at 19 weeks and 2 days, so the due date is still June 2nd!

Knowing the gender makes things even more real than they were before.  We can’t wait to meet our new little baby boy.  We aren’t sharing a name yet, so in the meantime we will continue to refer to him as Baby J, but now I can picture a little boy every time I say that name!

What a blessing.

People have asked me if I have a gut feeling as to what we are having.  From the very beginning I have said boy.  I don’t really know why, I just have this feeling.  At first I think it was because we had decided on a boy name and couldn’t come up with anything for a girl.  But now we have a great girl name picked out too and I am still leaning towards boy.  I don’t know if Ross has any strong feelings either way, but he said tonight he is willing to say girl just so we can bet something on it.  We still haven’t decided what we are betting.

We are so excited to finally know (and are praying that Baby J cooperates!).  I told Ross that I will love having a conversation about our little one without having to refer to him/her as “it”.  We don’t plan to reveal the name until he/she is here, so for now he/she will remain Baby J, but I am looking for to no longer having to write he/she when I am talking about him/her!  So here’s to hoping Baby J cooperates and by late Monday morning we should know!

Anyone want to share their guesses or intuition?  Boy or girl?

The Jahnke Family

Okay, I realize it is the first of the year and I am writing about Christmas- but I am just getting the chance now to sit down and write about our Christmas activities!  I highlighted in my last post our time spent with Ross’ family the weekend before Christmas.  We are so blessed to be able to celebrate Christmas with both of our families and enjoyed our time with Ross’ siblings and parents.  Next Christmas at our celebration with the Jahnke’s we will have added a babe to the mix and Ross’ sister Kate will be a newlywed!  I am so excited for what this next year will bring our way.

The weekend of Christmas we were able to spend about 5 days with my family in Wisconsin.  Even though we didn’t have the whitest of Christmas’, we were grateful for the dry roads and snowless sky as we drove the 4 1/2 hours to my parents house.  Wisconsin did get a small dusting of snow on Friday and Saturday so we in fact did have a white Christmas (with a few blades of grass poking through).  We were also able to spend time with my brother, sister-in-law and adorable niece Grace!  Grace just turned one on December 7th and she brings so much joy and entertainment to our family!  She was up and walking around holding furniture and fingers, any only a couple days after we were back in MN she started walking on her own!!  We spent time relaxing with my parents and watching TONS of Christmas movies.  Unfortunately Ross got a bad sinus/chest cold and was feeling pretty miserable most of the weekend.  He was so kind and tried to keep his germs to himself, and I think he was pretty successful!

The Radix Family

On Christmas day my grandma and aunt and uncle drove down to our house for further celebration.  We had an enjoyable time and Grace had a great time with a new audience showing off all her faces!  I am telling you, Baby J is going to have some major competition!  We enjoyed a couple more days with my parents after Christmas and drove back to MN on Tuesday, again with dry roads and snowless skies.  We had a very enjoyable Christmas with my family as well.

As we welcome in 2012 I think about how blessed we are to have the families we do and I look forward to how we will grow and change in the coming year.  My prayer is that we continue to trust in God’s wisdom and guidance through this new year and look forward to things He is bringing to us.  Merry Christmas everyone and Happy New Year!

As of Saturday I am 16 weeks!  I have now finished my fourth month and will start the journey into month 5.  The second trimester has definitely proven to be much more enjoyable (and bearable) than the first trimester.  I no longer have any nausea and the food aversion that I had been experience has lessened.  I still have quite a bit of food aversion where nothing sounds good, but yet I feel so hungry.  I have compared it best to feeling like a teenage boy going through a growth spurt.  I am hungry ALL.THE.TIME.  So, being hungry all the time and no food sounding good sometimes causes a problem.  I have been sticking to fruit and protein bars and the occasional chicken mcnuggets and fries (and a chocolate shake) from McDonald’s!

According to our pregnancy books and my weekly pregnancy e-mail update, Baby J is approximately 4 1/2 inches long and weighs 3 1/2 ounces.  Such a wee little babe right now.  The books also say it is between weeks 16 and 18 that I will start to feel Baby J moving around.  I have told Ross that I am almost positive I have felt a few flutters in the last week right around my belly button area, so I am going to believe that I am feeling our little one moving around.  The other option is that it is just gas….

Ross has been an amazing support and I never expected anything less.  I think my absolute favorite phrase to hear from him when we are talking to people is “I knew I wanted to be a dad, but I never knew how much I wanted to be until we found out we were pregnant”.  If that doesn’t make you feel good, I don’t know what does.  He endlessly suggests food ideas when I am starving but nothing sounds good.  He puts up with my weird emotions and rubs my back when I need it.  I couldn’t make it through this without him and I couldn’t imagine a better partner to walk through this next phase of life!

Baby J got to celebrate his/her first Christmas this weekend with Ross’ family.  His brother and his brother’s girlfriend flew in from Seattle this weekend and along with Ross’ sister and her fiance and Ross’ parents we celebrated Christmas with the Jahnke family.  We got a couple of baby items, but I am hesitant to mention them as they were a putrid purple and gold color and had a viking logo on them!!  Yes, Baby J is now set with Viking pacifiers, booties and a bib.  I believe our child is going to be very confused as his/her two family’s adorn him/her with purple and gold and green and gold!  We enjoyed a wonderful weekend with the Jahnke’s and traveled down to Austin, MN on Sunday to celebrate with the extended family.  It is hard to believe at this time next year Baby J will be here with us celebrating Christmas in person!!

I posted a picture at the top of my growing baby belly.  So far it isn’t super noticeable, but I have also read in the next few weeks Baby J will go through a growth spurt, so my belly could go through some extensive growing these next couple of weeks!  I’ll keep you posted as we grow!

Up until this point I have been telling Ross I don’t really “feel” pregnant.  Besides morning sickness, being extremely exhausted and feeling a little chubby around the mid-section it doesn’t always seem like I am pregnant, but after today, hearing that little heart beating inside me things felt real!

We also had an opportunity to just talk with our doctor and ask her questions.  She is so great and very willing to listen and answer our questions in detail.  We feel very blessed with her as our doctor.  Our hope is that she is on call the day we go into labor!  It was a great appointment all around and added another level of excitement.

I’ll post belly pictures soon!  Nothing too exciting to look at quite yet .

Well Ross and I decided to do a mixture of old school news spreading and 21st century news spreading.  We decided it was important for our family’s to hear our good news in person, not over Facebook or blogging.  So now, that our family is set with the good news, we have now decided it is time to go viral.  So are you just dying to know what this big announcement is????

Ross and I are having a baby!!  That’s right, our family of two will soon become a little family of three!  We are due June 2nd and I am currently 14 1/2 weeks along as I write this.  Things have been going pretty well.  A little morning sickness for the first 12 or 13 weeks, but I am on the mend now in week 14.  We had our first baby picture taken on November 7th and Baby J (as we kindly refer to him/her) was looking good!  We have another appointment on Thursday and hope to hear the heart beat!  We only saw the heart beat the first time, so we are hoping to hear it this time around.  We also are counting down the days until January 9th when we find out if we are having a little boy or girl!

We are thrilled and nervous for this new adventure and this amazing blessing the Lord has given us.  We will keep you posted along the way as we walk and learn through this next chapter of life.

This year, we finished almost all of our Christmas shopping yesterday!  I took a vacation day from work and we set out on our shopping adventure!  We ended up buying all but three Christmas presents.  We started the morning with a coffee stop at Caribou at about 10am and shopped until we dropped at about 6:30pm.  We of course had a lunch stop in there (yummy soup at Eddington’s) and then we continued on our way.  We had a really fun time together and didn’t have to fight any crowds, as most people were back at work for the week.

I was feeling quite ambitious after our shopping trip and planned to even start wrapping a few presents when we got home.  But once I walked through our door and saw our couch and heard it calling my name- I decided it was a much better idea to just relax the rest of the evening.  I figured we have plenty of time to finish the wrapping!

The Christmas season is here!

Now, I have lived in the Midwest my whole life except for the one short year we lived in North Carolina.  So yes, I do remember how bitter cold it gets in the middle of January and how miserable it can seem once the holiday season is over and all we have to look forward to is more snow and more cold.  I do remember the icy roads and long commutes.  I remember the layers of clothes it takes to stay warm when you step outside and how the snot freezes in your nose within seconds of breathing in the crisp winter air.  But, I also remember the magical feeling that accompanies Thanksgiving and Christmas when there is a beautiful layer of fresh, white snow on the ground.  As the moon twinkles and the Christmas lights shine and the families gather, there is just a sense of security that comes with the winter snow.  This morning as I was getting ready for church, I told Ross that I couldn’t help but feel giddy for the new snow that had just fallen.  Everything seems so new under this blanket of white.

I know to some of you I sound crazy and insane.  Who could ever embrace the snow like this?  And perhaps come February I will be wishing I was back in the warm climate of North Carolina.  But for what it’s worth, for the time being, I have found a new appreciation for this magical season we call winter.