3rd Trimester!

We have reached the third trimester on the week of my 25th birthday!  Last week, on Monday we entered the 3rd trimester and Wednesday we celebrated my birthday.  It was a busy week!  My days usually consist of teaching summer school in the morning, then serving at Applebee's in the evening.  On Monday, I celebrated reaching the 3rd trimester by cycling 5 miles, I would have love to fit in a 2 mile run, but I had to work that evening.

On my birthday, we took our summer school kids on a field trip and I led an activity of collecting aquatic life from the creek.  The students caught lots of spiders and snails!  It was beautiful weather and it was a nice hike to the creek.  The kids behaved well and the local newspaper interviewed me.  My interview was printed the next day.  After summer school, I went home and JJ took me to get ice cream in a waffle cone.  It was delicious.  We returned home and I opened the gift from my husband.  It came in a HUGE box, so I was very curious.  It turned out to be a massive body pillow!  A pregnant woman's dream come true!  It was like heaven.  I was refusing to take a nap on my birthday, even though I had to work at Applebee's until 1:00am the night before. I lied down with the pillow and was out within 15 minutes of opening the present.  I ended up napping for an hour and a half!  Short coma!  Once I woke up, I showered and curled my hair for dinner.  JJ's parents took us out to Texas Roadhouse.  We ordered so many appetizers that I ate two bites of my entree and was full, needless to say dessert was not even needed because we were so full.:)  I had a very ambitious list of things I wanted to do on my birthday like playing tennis, fishing, stand up paddle boarding and camping.  There just were not enough hours in the day.  I wanted to do some fun and pregnant safe activities.  JJ and I love to try new things.  I would have loved to go skydiving or even eat sushi.  But pregnancy restricts options.:)

Late night birthday dessert once all our dinner settled.

JJ has been so sweet, lots of foot rubs after work and saying sweet things.  I hope he knows that it felt really good to hear him say "You're dominating pregnancy" and "you haven't even played the pregnancy card much."  My dad came to visit over the weekend.  He saw our new home for the first time. He brought TONS of meat, my favorite cake from a hometown bakery, a wooden chest and Boji. She has gotten so big already.  She is about the size of Boyd when he was a year old!  She's very tall and slender.  He's still having trouble with the potty training and training in general, but hopefully he picked up a few things from us while he was visiting.  Wrigley is close to being fully potty trained.  He can sit, lay down and shake.  We are still working on fetching with him.  He is such a lazy dog, he fetches his fribee on his own time.:)

Bailey's Irish Creme Cake!

While dad was here we enjoyed lunch at Chris and Lorie's house, then took the dogs to the dog park.  We hadn't been to the dog park in town yet, but we discovered it's HUGE.  The dogs seemed to have fun playing, JJ definitely wore them out simply walking the perimeter on the park.  We grilled out at our house and invited Chris and Lorie over for steaks.  We cooked up some of the meat my pops brought.  After dinner, we enjoyed the cake my dad brought.  It's called a Bailey's (Clearly it was made for me) Irish Creme cake, made at Carroll's Bakery in Spencer, IA AND Josh took my dd for a drive on the triumph to tour Hastings.  If the car had more than two seats I would have went, but no such luck in the tiny car.:)  The next morning before my dad headed home, we took him out to breakfast at this great local breakfast dive in Hastings.  My dad enjoyed Hastings and said it was a great town.  I hope he makes it out again before the babe arrives.




Alright, let's talk pregnancy.  I have had to adjust quite a bit to serving again.  The long hours on my feet carrying around 15 extra lbs has been difficult.  My feet usually kill at the end of every serving shift.  Hopefully they will grow accustomed to it soon.  I have neglected exercising on days that I serve.  I am afraid to over do it.  That, in consequence has allowed love handles and arm jiggles to grow and occur.  My dad even commented on BOTH of those downfalls while he was here.:(   Harper's kicks are getting stronger.  Borderline uncomfortable even.  The body pillow JJ got me has made great improvements on my sleeping, but her kicks keep me awake.  My next appointment is Friday, then I go into checkups every two weeks.  My last appointment I measured perfectly at 25 cm at 25 weeks.  I hope this week I will measure well again.  I will also take a glucose test at this appointment to see if I have gestational diabetes.  Only 4% of pregnant women develop it, so I'm not too concerned.

Updated picture of Harper's room