"knocked up"

friday night buxton's head connected with my eye in just the right spot to give me a beautiful black eye. this pic is 4 days after the fact, so you can imagine how lovely it was all weekend, especially for the baby shower i had on saturday.

friday was also my last regularly scheduled dr's appt related to this pregnancy. when my dr. measured my belly with his tape he found that i was measuring at 32 wks, instead of almost 38. then he sent me to the other office for an ultrasound to make sure that the fluid level wasn't too low, or the baby too small. ultrasound results showed that the fluid level is fine, and that elin is measuring at 38 weeks and 2 days. i was 2 days away from 38 weeks on friday so according to that appt she is ahead of the game. the tech said she weighs 7.5 lbs. i took this with a grain of salt cause this is the same weight they told me buxton was right before i was induced. she was 2 lbs low on that "guess", which really is what they are doing. guessing. and speaking of, i'm predicting that baby elin will be at least 20" and at least 8 lbs come monday.

sleep has been OK but the pains (muscular and ligament), mostly in my lower belly, have been rough. supposedly this is what comes with your 2nd pregnancy, and when you are a small person. oh and having a not so small husband definitely has an affect here.

i was hoping to post some pics of the nursery this weekend, since our electrician came to hang the chandelier last week. but he only finished 1/2 the job so currently the nursery is a mess. it's a good thing i have a lot of other things to focus on this week (work, cleaning, washing, grocery shopping, etc) or i might be a little more irrational about not having the nursery done. i'm really happy with how it's all come together though so it should be well worth the wait!

2 weeks and 3 days to go

not too much to report around here other than being very pregnant and doing my best to balance pregnancy and an almost 19 month old. buxton is definitely sensing that i'm not able to give him 100% and he's letting us know how he feels about this quite regularly. last week i bought him a mini basketball goal and today i bought him a car to ride in with a pole on the back for us to push it with. he really likes both and although i feel bad bribing him with toys to focus his attention on it makes things a little easier on me. i was so exhausted/pregnant/feeling miserable this morning while at babies r us that i would have bought anything that i thought would entertain him these next couple of weeks. but since we don't have a money tree in our yard i recognized this dangerous state of mind and exited quickly (well with a car and some cute baby girl leggings and side snap shirts). i also got some goodies for a very big celebration i'm attending next weekend. the celebration is a baby shower for my dear friend catherine, who is expecting twins in november. God very much took His time when it came to blessing cat and trey with these babies and it's really been awesome to see all His work come together for this soon to be family of 4. i spent some time with catherine last weekend, and a few other of my most cherished childhood girlfriends, and enjoyed this time so much. harper took this pic of cat, buxton and i after lunch one day (even though neither cat nor i was thrilled about having our picture taken). but i'm so glad she did because the twins will be born very soon after elin arrives and i'm really excited about them being so close in age.

every pregnancy and child is a blessing and miracle of God, but the ones that are harder to achieve tend to pull at our hearts in a different way. my heart is overflowing for catherine and trey -so much that i get tears of joy just thinking about the precious boy and girl growing inside her. please pray for these babies to wait until at least the beginning of nov. to make their big debut. and for catherine to feel good and strong until that day comes.

i'd also like to ask for prayers for amy who has another round of chemo on monday. 2 weeks from tomorrow we will join amy and team patwa at the susan komen charlotte race for the cure. pray that amy has a restful and good 2 weeks before this really big event.

oh and i would love prayers to be able to walk with the team as well, since i pretty much pulled the "i am going to walk at 39 weeks pregnant so please donate $" card when i asked for contributions.

no hurricanes for us

every labor day we go to the outer banks for a week. this year that was out of the question since i am too pregnant to be that far from my dr. and home hospital. the timing was divine considering a hurricane would have surely ruined at least the first part of our beach trip. so we were very happy to be in the NC mountains instead, where it was cool and close to home. it's not labor day without the webster's and we had a truly amazing weekend with the 6 of us, and mom and bill.

as soon as we arrived on thursday we took buxton fishing at a trout farm. 10 minutes and $45 later we had 6 fish. this is the kind of fishing buxton's attention span needs right now, however we won't be spending that much money for 10 minutes of fishing again.

beautiful butterflies at the trout farm:

thursday was ben and i's 3rd wedding anniversary. it was the first anniversary we celebrated in the same place we got married (hound ears) and the first time we actually went to dinner on the day of our anniversary. mom and bill kept buxton while we went to dinner at the game keeper. i had some tasty elk and ben got the ostrich. my iron deficiency is to blame for me being so daring in the meat dept., but that was a good thing since whats the point in going to the game keeper if you don't try something out of the ordinary.

the webster's arrived friday afternoon, just in time for a little swim and a yummy dinner at home. mom made banana pudding and grandma and jimmy were able to join us too.

saturday morning we headed to tweetsie, which was buxton and wynnie's first trip to this fun-filled place. i'll spare you all the iphone pics on the kiddie rides, but i love this one of buxton on the train.

and here we are being silly on the fake horses:

the weather was so amazing that we were outside as much as possible. here we are in hound ears at the little swing set where their ski slope used to be (and where i learned to ski 28 years ago).

you don't even notice wynn's chewed up chips in this pic cause her eyes are so amazing:

sweet sweet girl

she loved feeding buxton:

on sunday we drove a few minutes up the road to check out this trail that went through foscoe that jenn did with stephanie awhile back. we drove around for a bit, but eventually found it. it is called tanawha, and is the best trail i've ever been on in nc. it has grassy fields, streams, beautiful bridges, lakes, and probably so much more beauty that we didn't see since we only covered part of it. the kids had the best time and were very impressive little hikers.

i mean what kid wouldn't be in heaven running through this beautiful field:

we found an apple tree and buxton was very happy to eat an apple that he picked:

our little hikers, after 3 hours on the trail:

we all can't wait to do the rest of tanawha. and i have no idea how we didn't know about this trail in college, considering it was so close to where we lived for 4+ years.

being in cooler weather, with great friends and family for 4 days really recharged me and i have felt surprisingly good this week. i am so thankful for this because i really want to enjoy the last few weeks before baby girl's arrival. oh and we can officially refer to baby girl as elin frances smith now. she has a name!