I think we'd better get a post up before Christmas! Today in church, I found myself with time to think by myself. As crazy and uncertain things in life are right now, I'm grateful that I've been able to count our blessings and be filled with absolute joy and gratitude for what we have, what we've gone through in the past, and what we have to look forward to.
Today was the first week Jimmie got to go to Nursery at church, as babies have to be 18 months in order to go. (Happy 18 months to this kiddo as of December 1st!) I can't believe how old he is.
He did wonderfully, of course, because he is an awesome kid who has absolutely spoiled his mom and dad with how great he is at things. (Truthfully, I think we could be in for a rude awakening with this next little one!)
No crying on Jimmie's part. On the other hand, I was a little sad. I didn't actually cry, but I'm not gonna lie. It choked me up a little. I'd been looking forward to Jimmie going to nursery so that I could spend some time just listening to lessons and participating in class again. Suddenly I found myself without my little sidekick and not really sure what to do with myself! I realized we've left him with someone else on very few occasions and never with complete strangers to him. If we did, he was already asleep in bed when the babysitter would come over. It was strange! It was stranger to realize that very soon he will not be my only baby very soon. He'll have to share the spotlight and be okay with Mom not being there every second. While I have always known that, this was a bit of an eye opener to me.
So right now, I'm going to enjoy our time snuggling together on the couch. He hasn't let me hold him while he sleeps since he was little. But today when he woke up from his nap, he was miserable. He just wanted Mom. He snuggled up on my left side and wrapped his arm around my belly while Lorelei chimed in happily with her kicks and flips on my right side. There's no greater job in the world than being a Mom and I'm so grateful to be able to experience it.
We've been busy with some Christmas festivities recently, but first I'll backtrack a bit to November. Honestly, I can't remember a great deal of what happened. It came and went so quickly.
After taking the 1 hr glucose tolerance test on Halloween and failing, I got to schedule my 3 hr test. I was, however, not expecting to fail that one too. I didn't like MAJORILY fail where my numbers were off the charts in all draws, but out of 4 blood draws- 2 of them came back a little elevated and were considered abnormal. SIGH. What a fun diagnosis to get near the Holidays, ha! But thankfully, my doctors have been rock stars about understanding and being flexible with me.
As much as being on a restricted diet while pregnant with a sweets craving little girl is not the most fun, it's been a great experience for me to help me grow in understanding. I have always felt like I "know" what eating healthy means, but now I have a better knowledge of what and how much I'm putting into my body and what it does or doesn't do for me. Because I have fairly tame gestational diabetes, if all continues to go as planned, it will be controlled and perfectly fine with diet and exercise. Currently I am on a carb-counting diet and test my blood sugar (yup, the finger prick) 4 times a day. As my numbers show similar patterns and stay under control, I may be able to reduce the times a day that I test. That'd be nice.
My favorite little tool..
It's funny. I've only really been doing this for about 3 weeks and I can already feel a difference. The other day I allowed myself to have a bigger than normal night time snack (okay, I really just made the mistake of taking the bag of chips to the couch instead of putting some in a bowl. Ha!) Anyway, the point is, as soon as if eaten too many, I could instantly feel it. My body started to overheat, I got a headache, and just felt miserable. It's not because of the diabetes, but because I had changed my diet so drastically that I am just literally not able to handle that kind of eating anymore. It was frightening to have such a drastic reaction but awesome at the same time. Made me think I must be doing something right.
This boy loves to stack with his Megabloks now and is getting really good at it!
And he loves to roll…
…or do anything dangerous and daring (yes, he's wearing a diaper, ha!)
And he even sometimes still likes snuggling with Mommy. Sometimes.
18 month check up… he loved jumping on the table while we waited :)
And taking selfies
Later in the month, Jimmie and I got to drive up to Idaho to visit my family for Thanksgiving. Jim stayed home as he needed to work. I don't know why, but we didn't take many pictures there. Nonetheless it was awesome to be able to stay with my Grandparents and Megan and visit with all of our other family members there. It was a bit daunting to be very pregnant and doing this trip with an energetic 18 month old alone. I think I will not be undertaking that task again alone for a little while now. Hopefully Jim can come next time!
You can tell we had a little bit of fun :)
Grandma was so nice to let Jimmie come help get the paper in the morning with her. The kid just loves the outside no matter how bitter cold it is!
We got to help put up the Christmas tree and decorations.
Jimmie loves those green rocking chairs.
Grandpa with his new truck that he bought a few weeks ago!
Most likely waiting for a snack :)
All dressed up for church!
As Christmas is approaching, we have been having a lot of fun with Holiday activities. Lots of Christmas music to dance to in this house. We don't have a TON of Christmas decorations, but just enough for our little apartment. It was lots of fun to be able to decorate together. We opted to put ornaments on the top half of the tree after seeing how Jimmie treats ornaments while in Idaho. It's a little funky looking, but it's our tree and we love it. Jimmie doesn't really understand what's going on and will have no idea if you ask him where the Christmas tree is. All I know is that he loves the tree and did NOT want to go to bed that night after setting it up. He would just stare at it for days.
He also is trying to transition to one nap a day… it doesn't always work but I think he's got it mostly.
One of his favorite things to do. Now that he can climb he LOVES to look out of the window and sometimes even climb up here to his little perch to watch the cars go by.
And of course, he loves being silly with us.
Jim and I also did a very fun tradition this year of decorating a gingerbread house. Each year, Jim's Aunt Kim and her whole family do a gingerbread decorating contest and post
pictures on Facebook (without revealing who did what) and people vote for their favorite. Kim is so sweet and sent us one of the kits this year so that we were able to participate too! The only rules being to use the kit and whatever you can find in the kitchen. Well, we must not get out much, because we just had the best time working on this together! Like, top at-home date of the year. It was just so hilarious to see how things came together. Surprisingly enough, Jim was the one who contributed the most creative genius to the project while I suggested details, came up with a lot of what we could use to complete the task, and refined our execution of it all. I think this will definitely need to continue as an excellent tradition in this house!
Some people have asked what it's made of.
Here's what a few of the parts of the house are made out of:
Roof: Honey Smacks (or generic brand of "Wheat Puffs" cereal)
Deck: Twizzlers with cookie sticks fence
Ocean: Yup, that's mayo that we turned blue…can you say tasty?!
Christmas Tree: ½ banana with icing piped and green sprinkles
Santa's Sleigh: Dorito on gummy worms pulled by scotty dog cookies
Fire: Honey Roasted Peanuts. Which turned out to literally be roasted as Jim was insistent we light the fire! I'm just glad we didn't burn anything down
Beach: I don't even remember. A large crushed concoction of pretzels, nuts, flax seed, cookies, graham crackers and I'm sure a lot of other things we could find that were the right color.
We just had so much fun with it.
This weekend, Meg and her roommate came down to visit and see some friends here. Yesterday we went to the Festival of Trees in Sandy. For those who don't know, it's a large festival of over 700 beautifully and creatively decorated Christmas Trees on display that are decorated and donated by volunteers, generally on behalf of someone. The entire thing is organized and put on by volunteers and all proceeds go towards the Primary Children's Hospital. There are Christmas boutiques, live performances by kids, Santa to visit, decorated wreaths, elves workshop, quilts display and a bunch of other fun Christmas things for the kids. You can buy the decorated Christmas trees that you'd like and all of that money is donated as well. We didn't buy them because they're generally very expensive and we just wanted to look :) it was extremely busy and almost everything was already marked as sold when we got there. It was very cool to see all of the talent and unity come together for such a great cause. One of the reasons why I love Christmas.
Inverted tree of cones and ornaments
Super hero tree! We thought James and Alan would like this one. Especially the Ninja Turtle peeping out the bottom.
We struggle getting decent pictures together...
Meg and her roommate Sariah
Meg and Sariah's brother Jackson
Jimmie is loving doing his chocolate advent calendar and would like to open several boxes of chocolate a day. I don't think he understands even a bit what is going on and will probably be shocked when he gets to open a bunch of presents in a few weeks. It's so fun to watch him experience all these things even if he is very confused :)
Love looking at your posts. Thanks for letting us see things we have to miss because we are so far away. I have to tell you that little Jimmie church picture just melted my heart. :)
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