A new post!

Well I am officially feeling huge! I am half way to 25 weeks pregnant and I can't suck in my belly anymore. Not that I was trying to before, but sometimes it was sort of comforting knowing that I could still do it. This little girl is quite an active little tyke. She moves... and moves... and moves... and then moves some more. I swear she never stops. At first I LOVED it and now I am starting to get a little irritated. Especially when I am trying to sleep at night! I of course still love feeling her moving but sometimes I fear it is a sign of things to come. Carter didn't move nearly this much and he turned out to be a never ending ball of energy. Since the day Carter was born he just wouldn't stop moving! What does this say about this little girl who is constantly spinning in circles?! I am not sure if I can handle another one just like Carter- although I will give him this- he is the most adorable little kid EVER and if baby number two is anything like that then I will sure be one lucky lady. I am secretly hoping she comes out with little red curls like I did when I was born. Ok ok... so I wasn't actually BORN with hair but eventually when it grew in I had luscious locks of curly red hair. Wouldn't that just be the cutest thing ever? I have a feeling she will be darker like Carter is though. A girl can still dream right?

Feeling this baby move so early was awesome because Kaleb and Carter both have been able to feel her for weeks. At first they had to press against my stomach to feel her little flip flops but now they just have to lay their hands gently on my stomach because she sure kicks hard! Carter always lays on my belly especially first thing in the morning and sings to her or talks to her about his day or preschool. He is always putting his hand on my stomach and moves it up and down himself and says "Look mom! The baby is moving!" Hahaha. I just hope that when she actually comes that he will love her as much instead of dwelling on the fact that he isn't the center of attention anymore. We have been trying to work on that with him. For 3 years it has been all about him and I am pretty sure he will have a hard time sharing mommy and daddy... and especially Grandma Scholes!

This pregnancy has been different in so many ways. I was much sicker this time around. I finally stopped puking all the time a few weeks ago but I still am nauseous sometimes and it stinks! I am also a lot bigger at this point than I was with Carter, but I have been told that always happens with your second and third etc. I also have been experiencing round ligament pains since I was about 10 weeks along. At first I didn't know what it was. I though for sure I was going to die or that my woman parts were just going to fall out of my body because of the pain. I thought something was wrong with the baby. My best friend told me it was probably round ligament pains but when I looked that up on the internet it said that round ligament pain was off and on and was a shooting pain at random times. This was definitely not that. My pain was constant and almost like a dull thudding ache that got worse the more I walked around. But of course T was right because she is so brilliant like that and my doc told me it was indeed round ligament pain. She said mine was a severe case which is not super uncommon and that it would not go away until the baby was born (UGH!). In fact she said it would only get worse the bigger the baby grew (DOUBLE UGH!) and that Tylenol (the only thing I can really even take) doesn't help. So it's just something I have to deal with constantly every single day, slowly getting more and more painful until the day I deliver and maybe beyond. Hmmm... I wonder which will be worse, this constant pain for the next 15 weeks (more precisely 105 days) or childbirth? If I could choose I would hands down take childbirth over this- but lucky me I get BOTH! lol. And always the cherry on top- a few weeks ago i started feeling sciatic nerve pain down my lower back and butt cheek on the right side of my body- probably brought on by both pregnancy and the fact that I was not moving so well to begin with so maybe a nerve somehow got pinched. That almost hurts more than the round ligament pain sometimes especially when I sleep. It's been a fun couple of weeks that's for sure!

To be honest though it sounds worse than it is. Actually, scratch that. It is just as bad as it sounds. But I really don't mind it as much as I thought I would. I tried for years to get pregnant with this little miracle baby and I am just so thankful that I even get to bring her into this world. I am so incredibly grateful that I was chosen out of every other woman on this planet to be the mother of this little girl and that Heavenly Father thought I was qualified enough to teach her and raise her to be the kind of woman He would be proud of. I'll take pain and torture any day just for an opportunity like this one. And what is 9 months compared to a lifetime of happiness? I'm pretty darn excited :)

In other news, Kaleb is now working for the Church in Salt Lake City in one of the branches of their Temple Department. He has been home for the last two weeks working remote and it has been awesome! I love having him home all the time! It has been a little hard for Carter to not bug him constantly and want to play with him all the time, but he is figuring it out. It's fun to have Kaleb here when Carter does the cute things he does. He misses a lot of it when he is gone working and pictures and texts are just not the same as the real thing. We are still selling our house and we just barely put it on the market yesterday. It took us forever! We wanted to get things cleaned and looking their best as well as setting up a blog and posting it on a few different sites and in some papers before we put a sign out. But it is now officially for sale! It is a little sad, but I am confident that this was the right decision for us at this time and we will just leave it in the Lord's hand's. It could potentially take FOREVER to sell (if it even sells at all!) but I have to be positive and just hope that the Lord will make a way for us.

Carter is now officially Spiderman. I swear that kid is the funniest child ever. He gets onto these kicks and latches on tight and won't let go until something else comes along. He isn't even quite 3 years old yet but he understands so much more than I give him credit for. All he ever wants to watch is spiderman. At first I thought that the cartoon was too mature for him- not violent or anything but I thought he wouldn't understand the plot or what was going on. Boy did he prove me wrong a thousand times over! He is always running around saving me from the green goblin and other various villains and "climbing" up the walls and web slinging from couch to couch. One minute he is Spiderman saving the world! And the next minute he takes on his mask and becomes Peter Parker. It has been very entertaining these last few weeks. He knows all of the characters and pretends to be talking to each of them. We switch it up a lot and sometimes he watches the really old spiderman from like the 60's and other times he watches the newer one from the 90's. Lately he wants to watch spiderman and his amazing friends which is something completely different. So crazy that netflix offers so much! We have had to cut back on his cartoon watching because he figured out how to run netflix by himself and when one show is over he will start another one without me knowing. What started out as me letting him watch one show turns into like 3 or 4 because I am busy cleaning or doing something else! Now I have to keep a close eye on him the little rascal. :) He definitely is his fathers son. He is in love with the computer and knows how to run the mouse. He plays these little learning games on the computer and won't let me sit with him to help. He does it all himself and you know what? He does it right! Sometimes I think I know less about this computer than he does.

 Once again I have made a small thought into a huge long boring blog post! I forgot how nice it is to have an outlet for my thoughts. Hopefully I will remain stalwart in my blogging, but for some reason I doubt it! Hope everyone is having an EXCELLENT fall! Once we get our pumpkins carved finally I will post some of those pictures.

Ch-ch-ch-changes!

Wow, this is a long one, so prepare yourself! Take an eye break every few minutes so that you don't go blind from all the random things I'm saying as I try and string my jumbled thoughts into words and complete sentences :)

Things around here have been crazy! No posts from me for over a year. That should tell you how great I am with talking about my life! Things happen daily and I think "I should really blog about this" and then the moment passes and I forget all about writing it down. I told myself I would blog when I had something truly wonderful to say and I suppose that has finally happened in a couple of different ways.

First of all some of you know and some of you don't but Kaleb and I had been trying to conceive for about 2 1/2 years. Right after Carter was born we both felt like we should start trying again to have another baby. It seems crazy and believe me, I thought so too. I wasn't completely sure it was the right thing until I realized the reason we needed to start trying again so soon was because it looked like I would have some infertility issues. That also seemed crazy to me since getting pregnant with Carter happened so suddenly and somewhat accidentally. But Heavenly Father works in mysterious ways and a refiners fire I had to face in my life was desperately wanting another baby for 2+ years and not being able to have one while every friend around me had one (and sometimes 2!) while I was left barren and broken. I felt a lot of self pity and didn't feel like I was fulfilling my divine duty as a woman on this earth. It was quite a difficult few years full of tears and a constant and draining emotional roller coaster of feelings. I found a fertility doctor early on and she worked with me through different health issues that were new since having Carter and we started treatments to help me conceive. One of the most comforting (and saddest) parts was the fact that I wasn't alone. My best friend was going through the same thing after having 3 children of her own and it was so nice to have someone who actually understood what I was feeling to talk to.

After so many months of trying and failing I finally found out I was pregnant! There were so many happy emotions and my heart was so full of joy I thought it would burst until I found out that my best friend was also expecting! Just like with our last boys, our next babies are due within a week of each other! I truly and honestly believe that Heavenly Father knew what we would be facing and gave us each other to be able to comfort and strengthen each other through such a sad and depressing time. But oh the happiness we both feel now!! I am due at the beginning of February and am literally counting down the days. To top it all off, yesterday we went in for my 20 week ultrasound and found out the gender of the baby. I told myself it didn't matter what the gender was, I was just happy to be having a baby at all. I didn't mind having another boy because I love Carter so much and he brings me so much happiness each and every day. But secretly I really wanted a girl and always have. I think Kaleb deep deep down wanted a little baby girl as well even though he played it cool and said it didn't matter to him. Well we went in for the ultrasound and this baby just kept moving and squirming all over the place! The ultrasound tech was so funny and kept talking to the baby and telling it that it was being a naughty baby and it needed to stop dancing and playing around. The tech was having a hard time seeing all the things on her little checklist that she needed to see including the heart and certain bones that rule out diseases and down syndrome etc. We finally had to hold my stomach with our hands in certain places so that the baby would stop moving and so that the tech could get a clear picture. After what seemed like forever the tech finally showed us the body parts we had been waiting to see and told us that it is.... a GIRL! I was so so so happy and could not contain my grin for the whole rest of the day. Seriously, I walked around with this slap happy look on my face. Right after we left the doctors office, Kaleb (yes Kaleb was the one) asked me if I wanted to go shopping to buy some girl things. Uh, heck yeah! We may have been jumping the gun, but I don't care! There were sales going on, and I wanted to buy some girl stuff! I couldn't help but notice the whole time we were shopping Kaleb kept finding the shirts and onesies that said things like "Daddies little girl" and "Daddies princess" while he had a goofy smile on his face. Yeah, he is happy we are having a girl too :)

In other big exciting news Kaleb has a new job. His job at BYU-Idaho was great and has done well for us for over 3 years but it was time for us to move on. He now has a job with the church again working in Salt Lake City. This is exactly where Kaleb wants to be and has always loved working for the church. He will also have more opportunities to shine and to eventually move up into a position he just loves and wants to be in for the rest of his life, which is not something he could have done at BYUI. We will eventually move down to Utah but for now he will be working from here in Rigby at home until we can sell our house. And in this economy it could take a while to sell it and still get a reasonable amount for it. The biggest thing is that we do not want to lose money on our house so we are willing to stay here for as long as it takes to get an offer we can live with. We haven't put our house on the market yet so we will see how it goes! I have never had to sell a house before and it seems like this huge effort that I really don't want to have to deal with but you gotta do what you gotta do right? Right now I have already started packing up little things that I have no need for anytime soon or other things that are in the way and look messy. We have also started to clean up our yard so that it looks ultra nice for any potential buyers... If anyone has any tips on how to make a somewhat empty house look more welcoming and cozy I could sure use the suggestions!

The last big thing is that Carter just started preschool a few weeks ago. He is still pretty young, not quite 3 years old yet, but I knew I would be going to school this fall and I wanted him to learn while I was learning too and preschool seemed like the best choice. Carter just loves it! He is always telling me something new that amazes me and constantly talks about Miss Jaime and all of his friends at school. He is growing up way too fast for my liking and sometimes it makes me sad. He seems so big already although it doesn't feel like too long ago that he was just a twinkle in my eye. I know the next 18 years are going to go by in the blink of an eye and I want to savor all the little moments with him as much as I can. He is soooooo excited to be a big brother. He has wanted a sister for as long as I can remember even before I was pregnant. Words cannot even describe how happy he is that it is actually a girl in my belly! He talks non stop about it and his favorite thing to do it yell at my belly (He doesn't think the baby can hear him if he simply talks normally) and tell his baby sister all the things that he has done in the day or about Jesus. He is too precious for words! And I know I will feel the same about this little girl too so I feel so overwhelmingly blessed for all that I have. Its been a whirlwind the past few months and everything seems so new and different. We have all of these new adventures beginning in our lives and I can't wait to get started!