Bump Love {35 Weeks}

Baby is the Size of a Coconut!

Baby girl is due October 26th, which is in 4 weeks and 5 days.

***
I am still not at the "I'm so done being pregnant" phase, but I feel like it's getting close. I am starting to imagine what it will be like to be done after all this time. To have an actual baby instead of a heavy bump. And to be able to wear normal clothes, even if they are bigger and stretchy!

***
It's so hard to get out of bed, it's almost comical. Our bed is all soft and squishy so I have nothing to to push myself up on. The baby is kicking the crap out of my organs. For the first time this week, I can feel her up in my ribs and it feels so weird!

***
For the most part, Layla has really not taken any notice of me being pregnant. If I point to my belly and ask her what's in there she looks mildly horrified and runs away. I'm not worried because she loves kids and babies and she's not the jealous type. The other day she was sniffing my belly and she pressed it with her nose exactly the way she does with her squeaky toys to get them to squeak. It was soo cute.

***
Speaking of Layla, whoever said dogs don't prepare you at all for having a baby has never had their dog leave a big pile in the reception area of the vet. Also not the first time that's happened (4th, actually). At least babies wear diapers!

***
I read that as of 34 weeks, babies can hear and recognize simple songs when you sing them, which makes me wonder if I've accidentally taught my daughter all the words to "Timber."

***
Nesting mode is the best thing ever. I have never been so productive in my life. I hope it never goes away. I've been organizing, hospital packing, prepping freezer meals, stocking up on things for the few months I'll be off. My body is tired and achy but I have all this energy and want to do this kind of stuff constantly.

***
In other productive news, I have finished all my assignments for my pre-and post natal fitness certification! I still need to write the final exam, which I may do October 19th if there is no sign of the baby. If there is, I am going to write it in January probably.

***
Sometimes it feels really nice to stand and do little walks and sometimes it's the worst feeling ever. I am trying to listen to my body and do what it tells me. Symptoms wise I am at occasional rib pain, feeling out of breath from being squished, entire pelvis aches and the baby is beating the crap out of me. But I don't mind a bit because I'm in the home stretch.

***
Sleep has oddly been a lot better this week, even though I am not comfortable at all, eventually I kinda just go into a super deep sleep regardless.

***
Sometimes I wish that I could have set up the baby's room ahead of time, but I'm kinda glad I have a lot of extra time to plan it out. I finally have a vision for what I want it to look like. We are staying with my in-laws until our apartment is ready. Currently our possession date is March 17th which I'm sure will be here before we know it. Until then I am glad to have our cozy little corner of my in-laws help and the extra help that comes with it! I feel lucky to have my mother-in-law just upstairs when the baby comes. She's also helping me with the sewing part of my glider project! Which I have basically done nothing myself lol. My uncle is painting it and my mother in-law is sewing the cushions. At least I picked out the fabric! ;-)

Until next week, that's about it! I will be 36 weeks on Sunday and who knows how many more weeks I have!

What I'm Loving: Gold, Pumpkins & More

I haven't done a favourites post lately but I have been loving so many things so it's happening today! First on the list:

My dog. It was her 2nd birthday on Tuesday and yes, I bought her a cake. She brings us so much joy I could buy her a cake every day, except then she wouldn't get as excited. She knows the words "birthday" and "birthday cake" so we loved to get her all psyched up about her birthday.

When I got my makeup done at Mac for my maternity pictures, I asked the makeup artist for her absolute best product for under eye circles. I have always had horrible under eye circles, I don't know if it's skin or just shadows but the fact that I'm going to be living on no sleep made me want to arm myself with something that will make me look human again. I am wearing Mac Prep and Prime in Bright Forecast and a little bit of Matchmaster Concealer in 2 on top and it totally works, even when I recreate the look on my own (minus fancy eye shadow, of course).

Also a new favourite that I'm wearing in the above pic: Mac Cremesheen Glass Lipgloss in "Floating Lotus" the most perfect shade of pink! I asked the makeup artist for a lip color that I could throw on and it would look pretty and brighten up my face and she found the perfect one!

Pumpkin Macarons - words cannot really express how I felt about these. They were freaking delicious. The most interesting thing about them was they tasted exactly like pumpkin pie but in macaron form. Instead of the normal filling, it had like pumpkin pie filling. Unexpected and amazing.

Why is Mindy just so, so great? I watched the first episode twice and laughed a million times. I could not love this show more. I'm so glad it's almost fall again. I am collecting comfy clothes, pvr recordings and soup recipes in preparation for a cozy winter with a baby sleeping on my chest.

Speaking of cozy clothes, this baby girl outfit which is one of the many amazing outfits that we got. The top and leggings are from my sister in law's friend Jenna, who helped plan the shower, and the little shoes are from my friend Nicky. I put them together and almost died from cute overload. The little gold touches are so perfect.

Bump Love {34 Weeks}

Baby is the Size of a Butternut Squash!

I don't feel like filling out my quiz this week, so it's going in point form because I'm pregnant so I'm the boss.

***
While I love picking cute oufits for my bump photos, this one is an authentic what I wore to training clients last night outfit. ;-)

***
Currently at 34 weeks and 3 days, Baby girl could decide to show up anywhere between 3 weeks from now and up to 7 weeks from now. No one knows!

*** 
My mother in law had a baby shower for me on the weekend, in case you missed this post, and we got spoiled rotten. Seriously so many cute outfits. It was so much fun!

***
I am feeling pretty good, back has been good. Sleep has been okay, some nights are definitely better than others. I am physically tired but I am definitely getting into nesting mode, I keep working on little projects and organizing! I will not miss heartburn at all, it's so gross. I lost my tums for a few days in my car and I kinda suffered though. Not doing that again. Lots of weird little pains everywhere mostly in the pelvic region. I am also starting to feel way more out of breath like she might be spreading out a bit into my ribs.

***
I'm riding out the last few weeks of maxi dresses, it's still a bit warm for jeans and long sleeves. Also, my jeans are just a teensy bit snug. I probably should have bought stretchier ones because this baby has gone straight to my butt ;-)

***
I will miss being pregnant, especially having the round belly, but I am also looking forward to not feeling like the slowest heaviest turtle around!

***
She is SUCH a little mover and kicker, I know I say that every week but she is so strong and her movements sometimes stop me in my tracks!

***
My mom and I went to the states today, we got fabric for the glider project that I can't wait to finish and show you guys. I also picked up my stroller (thank you Uncle Mark!!) and we got a few little things like a change pad cover and the sweetest baby book ever. I really wanted to pick out one that looked exciting to fill out. This one made me tear up.

***
Appetite is really up this week suddenly. I had a craving for a cinnabon today that I indulged. In the tiniest one they had!

***
Leigh and I still only have one baby name that we love and a few that we like. Most likely it will be the one that we love, we just want to make sure it suits her before we give it to her.

***
Leigh and I watched the Business of Being Born. Holy. Crap. I never thought I would ever watch anything like that and in my defense, I watched the first 15 minutes by myself, deemed it "not gross" and then Leigh and I watched it together. Umm...it gets gross. But also super interesting. Highly recommend anyone pregnant or thinking about having kids watch it. I have now officially seen it all from hospital birth, c-section and water birth. It freaked me out for a little bit but I am glad I watched it, it made me feel more prepared.

***
This week kicks off WEEKLY midwife appointments, my next one being tomorrow, which means things are getting pretty real around here. Eeek!!

Showered with Love and Pink Things

I have had SUCH a fun weekend, I feel spoiled rotten! On Friday, I met up with my favourite photographer for some maternity pictures. I debated if I should do them but Carol-Ann made me sooo glad I did! I had my makeup done at Mac, hair by my sis of course and then we met up at Bonson`s Landing in Pitt Meadows. Here`s a little sneak peek:

On Sunday, my mother in law Julie threw me an amazing shower with the help of my sister in law Claire and her friend Jenna. Everything was so adorable and thoughtful. She invited all of the Evans side of the family, which was so nice because I rarely get to see them. It was so much fun and we are so thankful for everyone coming and their amazing thoughtful gifts! Baby girl now has a ridiculously cute wardrobe and I cannot wait for her to get here to dress her up! 

Julie made this diaper cake, the hat and fleece you see under my tiara (which I wore for the rest of the party, of course) is actually for the baby, it`s a cozy sleepsack! Behind them you can see the little diaper napkins favors which were filled with candy.

Jenna made this adorable stroller watermelon!

Homemade lemon and chocolate cupcakes by Julie.

We played this hilarious shower game where you had to hold the baby (doll), carry on a phone conversation, and pin baby clothes to a clothesline, whoever had the most clothes on the clothesline won. I sucked at it, I literally could not carry a conversation while hanging up clothes haha!

Julie rocked it though!

Our next door neighbour Sandy was also awesome, she was giving the person on the phone a recipe for pasta sauce that actually sounded really good. I missed the winner though because I was tending to my whining puppy on the porch.

So many presents. And yes, my dress is doing double duty. It was too light and comfy to only wear once!

I seriously wanted to take pics of everything but these were little pink trainers and they were so cute.

My two Moms and me!

My mama and I. My sis was there earlier but somehow we didn't get a pic together. They spoiled me with a robe, slippers and a new pandora bracelet (I lost mine about two years ago somehow) and a sweet matching blanket for baby girl!

Me on the deck looking ready to pop. 6ish more weeks to go!!

Bump Love {33 Weeks}

Baby is the Size of a Durian! (don't ask me what that is, no clue)

Due Date: October 26

Gender: Girl!

Maternity Clothes: I was looking in Motherhood Maternity today and I heard the saleslady tell a woman that the clothes will last her the whole nine months. This. Is. A. Lie.

Best Moment This Week: I think sometimes Leigh thinks I'm being dramatic about how strong she is kicking around in there so I had him feel when she was doing some of her usual acrobatics and he was like "WHOA!" and looked so shocked haha. Also just did my maternity pictures, which was sooo much fun!

Miss Anything? Being able to go upstairs without getting out of breath. Seriously stopped halfway up last night to rest.

Sleep: Sleeping a bit better. Propped up with lots of pillows or sometimes on my side feels okay. Still using my app to get seriously deep sleep.

Movement: Tons. It feels so crazy because she's getting big!

Cravings: The usual stuff sounds good to me. Don't feel hungry at all except at breakfast time. Feels like there is no room for food in my belly anymore. I did have a moment this week where I HAD to have gyoza from a specific restaurant.

Aversions: Had some chicken and meat but still a bit iffy.

Symptoms: Heartburn, out of breath, a bit of back pain but much better. My belly feels super tight when I am standing or walking and I feel a lot of pressure on my pelvis. Fun stuff!

Workouts: Getting out of bed is a workout. Still trying to stay a BIT active at least. 

Baby Items Purchased: Our stroller is on our way to us, an extremely generous gift from Leigh's uncle! We are so lucky!

Mood: As usual, all over the place but everytime I get stressed I try to go into the gratitude zone. And then usually I start crying happy tears. It's great. 

Loving: Getting everything organized with the help of my mom and mother in law! Even though it's a tough process because I seem to just attract clutter somehow, it will be so worth it when it's all ready for Miss Evans.

Looking Forward To: I just got home from my maternity photoshoot with the amazing Carol-Ann! I just counted and it was my EIGHTH (including fitness/business pics) time getting pictures done by her. She is just my favourite ever and she always makes me feel like a million bucks! My mom came with me so we got a few nice pictures together. I can't wait to see them and I can't wait for photoshoot number 9 with our ltitle family next year. There I go again, getting all ahead of myself. :-P

Grateful

Whenever something in my life goes south, I usually call my mom. Which is funny, because she only lets me whine for a minute. One of her signature comebacks is asking me to name ten things I'm grateful for. I sometimes get annoyed at this. Why? Because it's human nature to wallow, and by the time I'm done naming ten things, I am usually already feeling way better and I can't wallow anymore.

Lately I've been feeling like I'm focusing on the wrong things. Having a baby is a huge deal, buying an apartment is a huge deal, so things are naturally overwhelming for Leigh and I at the moment. But everything always works out, you just gotta get through the stressful moments, and being grateful is the way to do it. I thought about starting a gratitude journal (again) and then I realized I was just looking for a reason to hit up the Target stationary section. Then I thought, what if I collect them in a blog post instead? So this is my grateful list for the last week:

*I am grateful for my mom, because this morning she made me coffee and breakfast and helped me put my head back on straight.

*I am actually super grateful for both sets of our parents because they have both helped us so much in getting where we want to be. My mom, my dad, my mother in law and father in law are all supportive and each help us in their own ways. We are so lucky to have parents like them.

*I am grateful for my whole support system. I have so many friends and family that are there for me in so many ways, especially with being pregnant. They have been putting up with my craziness which is increasingly more crazy lately :-P

*I am grateful for coffee and tacos.

*I am grateful our our little (growing) family:  me, Leigh, Layla and soon our little daughter. Just thinking about us all being together is more than my hormonal little preggo brain can handle and I may have had a little happy cry on the way to work this morning.

*I am grateful for our medical system. It's complicated, I know and there's always something to complain about but the way I see it, if you need to have a baby or are sick and need treatment, you can go get it and not have to worry about a several thousand dollar bill on top of whatever else you are going through. At this point in my life, this means so much to me.

*I am also grateful to be in the care of 3 amazing midwives.

*I am grateful for my beautiful bump. Even though I can never quite wrap my mind around the fact there is a mini human in there, I love my bump and the thought of carrying said mini human around with me. I am grateful for my healthy pregnancy and healthy baby.

*Speaking of my work, I am grateful for my schedule. It's not always convenient but I am grateful for the rest periods in between work/clients. I can go home, relax, eat meals at home and go back to work. Right now, it's perfect

I tend to get so caught up in the wrong things (I'm sure I'm not alone in this) so sometimes it's so nice to just sit back and realise that I have everything I need in this moment.

Bump Love {32 Weeks}

Baby is the Size of a Squash!

Due Date: October 26

Gender: Girl!

Maternity Clothes: I wore my comfy old navy maternity maxi like a zillion times this week. The rest of the time my regular non maternity capris/gym clothes.

Best Moment This Week: We had an ultrasound thursday because I had a low lying placenta on the last scan at 20 weeks. The tech told me that the placenta has now moved into the proper position, the baby has hair, and she's growing right on schedule. When she brought Leigh in, she said "It's hard to see anything because she has her arms and legs in front of her face." and Leigh said "Oh yeah, she always does that." It was so cute.

Miss Anything? Not having back pain. It's been like 5 or 6 days straight.

Sleep: Sleeping okay with great effort. Pillows, white noise app, sometimes heating pad.

Movement: Yup. Her butt is sticking out of my stomach and I can see throughout the day it slides around from my left to my right and back again.

Cravings: Nope. I did quite enjoy a couple veggie rolls when out for sushi with the girls the other day. 

Aversions: Everything grosses me out. I feel full all the time and then I'll be suddenly ravenous but then I can't figure out what I want!

Symptoms: I got hit with some pretty bad back pain last weekend. I don't know what started it but it hasn't really let up yet. I'm not suprised my back hurts, I basically have a medicine ball strapped to my stomach! Other than that just heartburn.

Workouts: Ha.

Baby Items Purchased: Nothing new this week, but Leigh did build our little baby closet. It looks so cute! I also got a little baby gift from one of my clients, she gave me these little trainer shoes and a bunch of other handy stuff, plus another pair of shoes for when the baby is older. 

Mood: I've had it all this week haha. I'm still soo excited, but I've also been very tired and very cranky too. :-P

Loving: Getting closer and further along. I am not at that point where I'm "done" yet. I will probably get that way close to the start of "full term" which is 37 weeks.

Looking Forward To: We are visiting Leigh's uncle in the US right now and next weekend we have our Evans family baby shower and maternity pics! Everything is starting to happen fast. Eeek!!! :-)

Some Random Tuesday Ramblings

We are all kinds of preggo crazy over here today. I hate complaining and I feel like I've been doing a lot of it lately but I'm just gonna be honest and then we're going to move on.

The past few days I have had horrible back pain. I actually brought in my zero gravity (basically like a comfy camping chair) into the house and covered it with blankets because it took the pressure off my back. So I've been using that and then also sleeping on the couch in this makeshift nest that allows me to basically sleep upright without falling over in the middle of the night. I have been getting a few hours of sleep each night which is better than nothing but the lack of sleep and presence of pain is causing me to behave like a total moron. This is some of the dumb shit I've done in the past few days:

**Asked my father in law to fix my lamp. It did not need fixing. It needed an new bulb. Did not occur to me.

**Did hair and makeup super cute for family BBQ on Sunday. Noticed my roots looked kind of weird, decided to freshen them up with dry shampoo instead. Used dry shampoo. Except was not dry shampoo. Was hairspray. Then had to put my hair in weird looking shiny ponytail that made me look like a member of fast and the furious.

**And the winner of stupid shit I did this weekend was LOST MY PHONE. I had it with me, I texted my sister to see if she wanted anything at at the store. Pretty sure I took it into Chevron with me. Layla started barking like crazy because she couldn't see me in Chevron so I was definitely distracted. Got to my sisters, phone was nowhere to be found, went back to Chevron and tore apart car. Gone, gone, gone. I am sad and lost without it.

So this weekend was kind of interesting. On the bright side, we had a family BBQ at my Grandma's and it was really fun, Leigh brought a little plane to fly so we all went down to the park. My nephew Oliver went absolutely nuts over this plane, he was running around trying to catch it. He kept calling it a helicopter which was adorable.

Also on the bright side, we (mostly Leigh) put together a little baby closet as I like to call it. Because the baby won't have her own room until we get our apartment, I wanted somewhere I could have all her girly stuff cutely displayed and I am loving it so far! Leigh put it together in about 5 minutes. I wish I was handy as that guy!

Well thanks for reading my crazy rant for today. Even though I kind of want to just hide under the covers until my brain returns to it's normal functioning (although a bit ditzy) state, I'm off to go sort out a phone situation. Tempted to buy a shiny new iphone for my birthday next month but for some strange reason, Leigh seems a bit reluctant to shell out for a brand new phone for me right now. Isn't that strange? :-P

I also have an ultrasound today that will tell me if I do or don't need a c-section. Excited to see how my little mini me is doing in there!