38 & 39 Weeks!

I missed my 38 week post last week. Mostly because I didn't have Ryan around to take my picture until Saturday morning (and I always forget to just pull out the tripod). As of last week, not much was happening. I saw the doctor last Tuesday and had absolutely no progress. WHAT?! At 35 weeks I was dilated to 1cm and was starting to efface. Then last week, nothing. I'm not sure if there was just a discrepancy between my doctor and the NP I saw last week (because my doctor was sick), or if I actually back tracked.

I went back to the doctor (I actually saw the midwife) this afternoon and I've made lots of progress! I'm 3cm dilated and 70% effaced! I knew all those painful Braxton Hicks had to be doing something! The midwife was really happy with how I'm progressing and doesn't think I'll go too far past my due date, if at all. I'm SO glad that things are actually progressing... I was pretty depressed after last week. Plus, 3 friends have all had their babies in the last 3 days, so that wasn't making me feel to happy either. I'm much more hopeful now that I know my body is doing what it's supposed to do!
Especially since it didn't with Jax.

Here is my picture from last week. I don't feel like I'm getting much bigger at this point. I've stayed the same for the past few weeks. I'm just getting more uncomfortable!

Ryan and I also did this maternity picture last week. I saw the idea on Pinterest and copied it. I LOVE how it turned out. Pregnancy is such a miracle from God!!

Here I am this week

And my sweet boy loving on his sister

No more comparisons with Jax because I stopped taking pictures with him at 38 weeks. I was so huge and miserable and I didn't want to remember any of it! I know I keep saying this, but I'm so thankful that I feel (and look) so much better this time.

I'm so anxious to have this girl. It's all I think about. I keep hoping that these Braxton Hicks will turn into the real thing, or that I will get up in the night to go potty and my water will break. I know it's just a matter of days, but I just can't wait to hold my sweet girl in my arms!!

Commenting Challenge- Social Media

Today's topic for Jenna's Journey Commenting Challenge is social media. At this point, I don't use any social media for blogging purposes. My blog is mostly to just document my life so that I can look back and remember how things were at each stage. 

I do, however, have a personal Facebook that I usually check multiple times each day.

I also use Pinterest, and you can follow me HERE if you would like! One of my favorite boards is my "Newborn Photos" board, and I just CANNOT WAIT to be able to put all that inspiration to good use!

(I mean, HELLO SWEETNESS!!!)

I have a Twitter account but hardly ever use it. Sometimes I read what other people are posting, but I never post anything myself. I guess I just never really got into it. 

Other websites I check daily (or almost daily) are Pioneer Woman, Brown Eyed Baker, Beth Moore's blog, People, Southern Savers, and My Frugal Adventures.

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On a completely different note, I have my 39 week appointment tomorrow afternoon. I've got my post all ready to go (which includes 38 weeks since I skipped it last week). I'll just add any updates/progress from my appointment and get it posted later in the day. 

Check back then!

Gymnastics Play Date

Last week we met some friends at The Little Gym for a play date. If you remember, Jax had a membership back in NC and we absolutely loved it! There is a Little Gym just down the street from our current house, but everything in CA is so much more expensive and it just isn't in our budget right now. But we jumped at the chance to go for a play date, and Jax had a blast... as always!

Climbing

Dancing

Sitting on the (inflating) air mat

Balancing

Spider walking

Shooting hoops

Swinging with Luciano

I love days when we can get out of the house and do something fun with friends!

Commenting Challenge

I'm once again participating in Jenna's Journey Commenting Challenge. I did it last summer and made a few new blog friends that I've really enjoyed connecting with over the last year.  I love "meeting" new people from all over the country and getting to peek into their lives. I find it fascinating to see how other people live. Plus, connecting with other moms and exchanging thoughts and ideas is always good. For this challenge, the goal is to link up your blog, then find 10 other blogs to comment on per day. 

Today's topic is introductions.

 For those of you who are stopping by for the first time... WELCOME!

My name is Jenna. 

I've been married to my husband Ryan for almost 5 years. He was in the Army for the past 8 years and just got out in April. During our Army time, we lived in North Carolina. We are both originally from central California, so we recently moved back to our home state and are now living in the San Francisco Bay Area. 

We have a hilarious and adorable son named Jax who turned 3 on June 3rd.

 We are expecting our daughter, Lexi, any day now! I'm due in 10 days, so we are anxiously awaiting her arrival. I had a horrible delivery with Jax, so most of my time over the past few months has been focused on educating myself in order to have a natural VBAC with my Little Miss. 

That's me in a nutshell!

To those of you who are here for the first time- thanks for stopping by! Please leave me a comment so that I can come check out your blog too!

And for those of you who visit my blog regularly- I know a lot of you are sneaky followers, so please leave me a comment and say hello!

Randoms

Sometimes I go for days without taking any phone pictures. Other times, I have lots of pictures from just a few days. This is one of those times. 

Ryan was showing Jax how to mix drinks. Ha! He was making a mojito and let Jax help him, then of course Jax wanted one. So after they finished making Ryan's "daddy drink", they made virgin ones for both Jax and I. It is now my new favorite. It was so yummy and refreshing. Fresh mint, lime juice, simple syrup, club soda. Yum and yum. I may have wiped out our whole mint plant over the last few days :)

This is why I love summer. There's also peaches, nectarines and corn in the fridge. 

I successfully taught Jax how to write his name last week! He has been able to spell it for a few months, but now he can write it. However, before you think my kid is a genius (wink), let me tell you that he still doesn't recognize a lot of the alphabet if you just randomly ask him what a certain letter is. We're working on it though.

I've been in such a baking mood recently. The other day I realized that I had some Heath bars that were about to expire, so I made some chocolate chip cookies (from the recipe on the chocolate chips... because it's my favorite), and substituted half of the chocolate chips for chopped Heath bar. They turned out SO yummy! We gave some to my dad and grandpa for Father's Day.

Ryan and Jax waiting for Grampy and Grammy to get here last week. 

This boy has been really into "reading" magazines recently. He will sit with a magazine and flip through all the pictures for probably 10-15 minutes. It's pretty cute... and maybe a little odd ;)

The rest of the family relaxing/napping while I made dinner a few night ago. I love it when my boys are all snuggly!

We met our park friends at a local splash pad last week. Jax always attaches to the "older" girls. He was cracking me up following them around and being their little shadow. He's such a ladies man. 

I made this onesie dress for the Little Miss and I'm so happy with how it turned out! I have a ton of plain white onesies from Jax, I got the skirt fabric from remnants at JoAnn's, and I had the ribbon from other crafts in Lexi's room. I had seen something similar on Pinterest, so I just came up with my own pattern and went from there. I can't wait to put her in it!

My kid is cool. Yup.

My in-laws bought us a double stroller! Jax was pretty excited about it and insisted on sitting in it while he watched TV. I can't believe there will be a little girl on the other side very soon!

Have a wonderful weekend, friends!

Grandsons, Sons, Fathers, Grandfathers

Yesterday, for Father's Day, we went to church in the morning then headed to my grandparents house in the afternoon. They live about an hour and a half south of us. My parents and brother met us there, too. It was great to be able to see my parents because I didn't think I would see them until I go into labor. 

We spent the afternoon relaxing and enjoyed a yummy dinner before heading back home. While we were there, we took a picture of my grandpa, dad, and brother. Hopefully my brother gets married and has kids soon so that we can get a 4 generation picture!

We also took a picture to include my two handsome guys

I am so blessed to have a great dad, and to have a fantastic husband who is a great daddy to our kids. We had a nice, relaxing day and I couldn't have asked for anything more.

In-laws and Cherry Picking!

My in-laws just returned from an Alaskan cruise and on their drive back down the coast, they stopped by our house for a night. Jax was SO excited to see them and show them our "new house". It was the first time they had been able to visit us here.

 Grammy and Jax... being a stinker, of course.

They got him this cool hat, sunglasses and "pirate" necklace on their vacation.

After dinner, we went to Cold Stone and Jax had to wear all of his cool new gear. 

He was quite the sight :) 

Jax came into our room at 330am and asked if he could go wake up Grampy and Grammy. Ha! I took him back to bed, then at 6 he came back and asked again. Ryan had to get up anyway, so I let Jax go downstairs and jump on their bed to wake them up.

 We went to a local diner for breakfast, then headed to some 

nearby orchards to go cherry picking. 

Everything was already picked over on all the low branches, 

so Jax couldn't reach anything.

  Grampy was nice enough to climb way up on the ladder and 

get a bunch for all of us to take home.

We found some that were low enough for Jax to reach if he was lifted up. 

On our way out we found a tree that had some that were still out of reach, but a little lower than the others. I let Grammy take Jax up on the ladder and he had a blast! The kid has no fear. He was turning and reaching and stretching to get everything that was nearby. 

He would drop them down to the bucket and say "picked by Jax the farmer!". 

Haha! He is too funny. 

 He was very proud of his accomplishments and we ended up with a tummy full of cherries plus lots to take home and enjoy. 

I am so blessed to have fantastic in-laws and Jax is a lucky guy to have 2 sets of amazing grandparents. Their visit was short, but very fun and it was great to spend some time with them after not seeing them for awhile. They went back home and now are on standby until I go into labor!

37 Weeks... Full Term!

I am officially full term this week! 

(Just don't remind me that Jax didn't come for 5 more weeks from this point. Ha!) 

I can't believe we are down to a matter of days until Lexi arrives. I have said this before, but I am so beyond ready for her to be here. It's not even that I don't want to be pregnant anymore... although that will be nice too. It's more about just wanting to hold her in my arms instead of in my tummy. I am ready for no sleep, cold dinners, and diaper bags full of stuff wherever we go. 

This week has been good. I ended up not having my 37 week appointment today, but I go back on Tuesday. I'm really hoping for some progress. Some of my Braxton-Hicks are pretty uncomfortable, so I hope that's a good sign! I've been trying to walk more, bounce on my birth ball, drink red raspberry leaf tea and have Ryan massage my ankles. I know that none of these things are guarantees to bring on labor, but I figure that they can't hurt!

Here is my picture from this week.
(Ignore my roots... my photo editing made them look much worse than they really are!)

And here is the comparison with Jax. Ugh.

Overall, I have plenty of energy and I feel really good. The heat is getting yucky, but it hasn't been too terrible. It's much better than when I was overdue with Jax in North Carolina and the humidity was slowly trying to kill me! I'm just praying the major heat wave stays away until after she's born. I can handle it much better if I can snuggle with my sweet girl!

Randoms

These days we are just passing time, waiting for Lexi to get here. We don't have anything planned over the next few weeks. We've just been playing with friends and running errands, trying not to get too bored. Here are some recent pictures of our life.

Jax loves to take pictures of himself with my phone. He was sitting on my lap and I was making him laugh. I love his little face so much!

I pulled out the rest of the baby gear and washed all the covers for everything. This line of baby junk made me giggle.

After putting things in the wash, I came out to find Jax just hanging out in the baby car seat. I laughed and asked him what he was doing, and he said "Look how cute I am!". HA!

I text this picture to my mom a few days ago. I managed maneuver my 9-months-pregnant body enough to paint my toes. (Why do pedicures have to be so expensive?!) I just had to take small breaks to breath ;)

Daddy/son snuggle time at Nana and Boppa's house last weekend. See Mojo all snuggled up with them?

We try to be outside a lot since the weather is nice, so we got some finger paints and spent some time on the patio painting pictures.

Jax thought his messy hands were pretty cool.

Happy Wednesday!

3 year check up!

Jax had his 3 year well child check up on Friday. It was his first time seeing his new doctor here in California and we loved her! She was great with him and super open and talkative with us. I'm really pleased with her and I'm glad we found someone that we like so that Lexi can see her too. 

I thought this tiny blood pressure cuff was so adorable! I told him it was measuring his big muscles and he thought that was pretty cool. 

  They also had him do an eye chart, which he passed with flying colors. Some of the pictures were SO tiny, I was impressed! My small boy weighed 29.7 pounds (28th percentile) and measured exactly 3 feet tall (12th percentile). The doctor was happy with his BMI, though. He's right where he needs to be. 

The day was extra great because he didn't have to get any shots! I had been warning him and prepping him for the "little poke", but apparently 3-year-olds don't need any shots. Next year he will have his last 3 shots, besides random boosters in future years, so that won't be fun. But it's a whole year from now... so who really cares?!

Overall, everything went great and I just can't believe how big and grown-up my little boy is. He's such an amazing little guy and I know that this next year will be full of trials, but also full of new and exciting things!