Steph Snippets

Seems like I'm just full of random posts lately. Such is life. I have zero energy and my computer has been all wonky, so alas I've been MIA and this is about all I've got.

I have a yummy review and giveaway coming up super soon!
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This past weekend was busy and exhausting! Andrew's spaghetti dinner, a friend's daughter's birthday party and Reagan's friend birthday party and sadly, all I wanted to do was sleep all the live long day. I'm not complaining at all, honestly.  Just feeling every bit of my age this pregnancy.
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Looking forward to Lily's bff Victoria's 2nd birthday party this weekend! It's been too long since we've seen Amy & V and we miss them! Plus seeing our other friends--moms and kids is a bonus! I can't wait!
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This morning, Reagan handed Lily a cup of milk that she'd found hidden in Lily's kitchen that was from SUNDAY! It's Wednesday.  Thank God I walked in right as Lily was going to take a drink. *gag*
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I'm working with a designer on a new blog design. We'd started before I found out I was pregnant and now I'm all sorts of confused on what to do. I've been trying to come up with something to rhyme with "guy" and "pie" to incorporate this baby and well, pregnancy brain...so I've got nothing.   Thankfully, the designer is awesome and understanding about my lack of focus.   Feel free to offer your suggestions! ;)
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10 minute car naps for kids are the devil.
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Yesterday, it was pouring rain when it was time for Andrew to get home from school, so I drove down to the bus stop to pick him up instead of him walking home in the rain. As I was waiting for him, the time he is usually home had come and gone, so I decided to head home to see if by chance I'd just missed him. As I was pulling in, the phone rang with an automated message that the busses were leaving the school late due to a breakdown of one of the busses.  They left 30 minutes after school let out.  Grateful for the call, yes.  I don't, however, understand why if they were only waiting on only one bus, they delayed ALL the busses. Seems silly to make all the high school, junior high and elementary school kids get home later because one bus was broken down.  And if you knew that it was affecting all of them, call sooner and I would have picked my kids up at school instead.
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My irritation level is at an all-time high lately. I'm blaming hormones.
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I'm totally loving the young man my son is becoming, minus his mouthiness.  I enjoy spending time with him and talking with him.  He's interesting and knowledgable about things I didn't know he knew, so I'm really appreciating our conversations these days.  On that note, he'll be home from school in 2 minutes and we're off to get his haircut!

6 weeks: baby i 2.0

We have a heartbeat!!!

Yippeeeeee!!!

This past Friday we headed for our first ultrasound. We were very excited and anxious to be able to see the baby's heartbeat. The baby is measuring right on time!

The u/s tech started with a regular u/s and said we'd have to do a vaginal because I was so early which I expected. She pointed out the gestational sac during the regular and said, "It's tiny." So, my nerves started to kick in and I said, "Like appropriately tiny?" and she replied, "I'm not sure yet, I have to see better with the vaginal." Ok, then...let's get on with it!

She did say, "There is something in there for sure!"  and the relief I felt was amazing...a baby in the right place.

When we started the vaginal u/s, she immediately went looking for the baby and I saw the flickering of the heart on the screen and shouted "Oh yay!!" and the same time, she and I said, "there's the heartbeat!" George said, "How do you see that?" to me and I told him it wasn't my first rodeo--I knew what I was looking for!

So yay! We're even more excited!!

The baby looked like a teeny little blob with a flickering heartbeat that measured at 124.
I cried as soon as I saw the heartbeat and then again on the way home with gratitude and the blessing of carrying this little life!
 

~Next appointment:  March 13 
 

~Gender:  unknown!
 

~Maternity clothes:  I am solely wearing comfortable clothes. Any pants that need to button are forgotten.
 

~Sleep: I could sleep all day long. All day. But I'm up a few times a night to pee and then wide awake around 5am. This sleeping pattern is for the birds.
 

~Food cravings:  tomato soup with cheddar cheese. cottage cheese.  water.
 

~Symptoms: exhaustion primarily. sore boobs although not too bad! bloating.  
 

~Movement: nope, too early. 
 

~Labor signs: nope, too early.
 

~What I miss:  not being exhausted all day. 
 

~What I'm loving: the blessing of being pregnant... 
 

~What I'm looking forward to: a continued healthy baby growing
 

~Best moment this week: seeing the heartbeat at our ultrasound
 

~Milestones:  1st ultrasound and seeing heartbeat 

Meet baby i 2.0...our sweet little blurry babe. ♥

 

Twenty Years & Two Husbands Ago

As I approach forty, this song plays through my head more and more...

 

 

 

 

"...with all the wrong turns that I've made, I'm right where I should be..."

Steph Snippets

~After almost a week of no computer due to a battery on its last leg and a charger holding on by a thread literally, a certain two year old did the charger in and the thread was broken.  Out of commission. While we're awaiting a new part to fix and a new battery, I do have a new charger and am able to function plugged in.  The timing wasn't actually too bad with the exception of some blog work I needed to get accomplished. So, catch up, I will.

~If you have a tiny one that you've wanted to get a pair of Toms for, Zulily has an event going on right now where Tiny Toms are only $18.99. {they're $29 normally}   I actually ordered a pair for Lily using my Ebates money. Ummm hello??? Money I got back from shopping online that I was spending anyway.  If you're not using Ebates when you shop online, you're doing it wrong. 

Zulily has been restocking their Toms over and over. When I first tried to go to the site, it was down and then when I checked back, they didn't have the style I wanted. I checked again this morning and yep I ordered what I had originally looked for yesterday.  I'm a big fan of them for kids, not for me.  If you're interested in signing up for Zulily, it of course would help a girl out if you clicked through my link and same goes for Ebates. PLUS if you sign up for Ebates as a newbie, you get a $10 gift card!  And in case you're wondering, I simply wanted pink Tiny Toms for Lily.

~There's been a lot of exhaustion on my part this pregnancy. Par for the course, I suppose, but of course last time I didn't have a 2 1/2 year old. I've fallen asleep at 9pm some nights and woken up at 5am other mornings.  I literally could sleep all day if I was able to do so. I'm working on a pregnancy update with the rest of the sharing details and where we are, aside from being exhausted. ;)

~I'm over winter. O-V-E-R.  It's too cold and I'd like to get out of my house and sit in the sunshine. We've had a lot of random snow showers that are just a nuisance and making roads bad. Not really enough to play or when there is enough, it's too cold for Lily to be out.

~Andrew is playing lacrosse this year for the first time. I have no idea about lacrosse, so it should be fun to learn along with him! He's doing really well in school and having a great first year of 7th grade. This weekend we have his Scout spaghetti dinner and he's decided instead of waiting on us this year, he wants to eat with us, so we're waiting until his serving shift is over and then eating together. Love that kid. A few weeks ago he had a winter Scout event called the Klondike Derby...it was fa-reezing this year! He likes this event, but when it was over was ready to come home! You can read about last year here.

~Reagan turned 9 this week and although she's with her mom this week, it was our year with her on her actual birthday, so she came home after school and we had supper, cake and ice cream and presents together.  We're having a birthday party for her this weekend with her friends at a roller rink that she's thrilled about! {"We" being, us and her mom and stepdad.} This is the first time we'll all be together essentially outside of court.  Things have been great between us all for the last 9 months and we're all pretty excited to be able to do this for and with Reagan! 

~Lily is potty trained and although she wakes up dry from her naps, I still put her in a pull-up at both nap and bedtime. It's honestly been consistently a good couple months where she hasn't had accidents. I still need to write about the whole journey, of course, but I'm so grateful we will have only one baby in diapers! Yay Lily!

"I'm a lion, Mom"

~I've been very lucky to have found a pretty amazing group of friends the last year plus. It seems lately, everyone has had something going on and having an emotional time lately --not all bad stuff, but just taxing. Walking beside these women in all times in our lives is something that is important to me. I love having true friends who are there during both amazing and difficult times.  Yes, I'm purposely not writing details because they're not my stories to share, but I want this here for me to remember this time.  Instead of saying I'm lucky, I say I'm blessed.

Speaking of those friends, we're heading into birthday season for all these baby girls starting to turn 2 with the first one next week! So hard to believe it's that time of year again!

~One month from today I will be forty!

Let's Talk Photography

These days it seems like everyone is a photographer. :)   I personally just love to capture pictures of the everyday, not just the events--holidays and posed pictures and investing in my dslr last year was one of the best decisions ever!

Capturing who my kids are and evoking the same emotions I had when I took the photo is why I love taking pictures. I want to look back and see the story.

SanDisk's spokesperson, Erin Manning, offers tips for photographing and as a newbie, I take all the tips I can get. On SanDisk's website there are lots of tips and tricks to help you out! 

And truth be told, can you ever have too many memory cards?  I learned that lesson the hard way not having a back up in my camera bag when I took Lily to the zoo for the very first time and realized my memory card was in my computer at home.  I know?! Can you imagine?!!  Luckily the zoo gift shop had one for purchase and the day was saved!

Check out these tips from SanDisk's very own Erin Manning about photographing your baby!

Photographer, author and educator Erin Manning provides her Top 3 Tips for capturing better baby photos. Erin gives you advice on setting the scene and getting close to the baby for those perfect images, as well as using a SanDisk Ultra SDHC card to make sure she never misses a shot.



I participated in a campaign on behalf of Mom Central Consulting for SanDisk. I received a product sample to thank me for participating.

We've Drafted a New Player

Surprise!

While I've been absent from the blog the above was only a small part. Truth is I've been sick with a cold and this horrible congestion. I was taking some medicine that was working somewhat until I discovered those two pink lines and stopped because I'm not about to take something that is unsure of being safe--especially in the first trimester. 

Anywho!

We're very early, but we've been to the doctor and originally had our ultrasound scheduled for today, but are pushing it back until next week by choice to be a little further along to see a heartbeat.

Today we're 5 weeks, 1 day.

I'm realistic in that I'm a 39 year old woman who will be 40 next month and coupled with my pre-eclampsia with Lily---anything can happen.

We are proceeding happily and do feel very positive that come October we will be holding our baby! And that is ultimately where we are.

After our miscarriage in 2009, and some of the complications with our pregnancy with Lily in 2010, George and I  feel that sharing our news early can only lead to more love, support, and prayers.  That is more important to us than the unspoken pressure to wait until 12 weeks to announce, for if something should happen, then we'll have that much more love, support, and prayer around us.

We're excited and having a baby!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

More details to come...how I told G, what the older kids had to say and Lily's funny stuff. :)

Brown Eyed Babe

I never thought I would have a brown eyed baby.  I don't know why I really thought that, but it does surprise me. 

Perhaps because Andrew's eyes are so blue that I expected the same with Lily. After all, their dads both have brown eyes and Andrew's are brighter blue than my own, so I knew blue was possible.  I was hoping Lily would end up with dark hair like her daddy with blue eyes like me. I love that combo!  Since her hair didn't really grow until well after 2 years old, the hair was still up in the air.  It's blonde. I suspect it will darken as she gets older just as mine did and Andrew's did also.

Actually, Lily has two different colored eyes. Slightly. But in natural light, you are able to truly tell. One is more dark brown and the other is more of a golden amber.

Brown eyes and blonde curly hair?  Not my expectation at all. 

She is stunning.