With Love from the Ferrells: Updates Galore!

Well the girls are back from Florida after spending 4 weeks with their mom and we're thrilled to have them home! It's always a bit of a rocky transition for them coming back to the "real world" but I'm glad that they had so much fun down there.

Things around the house have been a little crazy lately as we try to add some homey touches to liven the place up a bit (without going overboard and/or broke!), as Nate handles the chaos of having to work 6 days a week as his company's making transitions, as we're handling a custody battle with the girls' mom and the lawsuit against the hospital, and attempting to battle the North Carolina heat of July and August. Luckily, the last few weeks have moved by quickly - and hopefully the same will be true for those to come. The girls start back school on Thursday of next week, where Natalie will be in her gifted classes, trying out for soccer (and softball in the spring), and joining the Ping Pong club. Alyssa will be re-joining FACS (a service-based club), being initiated into the Beta Club, trying out for volleyball later in the fall, and starting out in Chorus Ensemble. Imagine how busy I'll be playing "soccer mom" to all these activities: hope my pregnancy brain doesn't forget to pick them up one day! :-D

Baby boy is getting big very quickly now, and we're attempting to decide on his name (we were positive that we knew what it would be since Nate and I started dating - and he knew what he wanted 10+ years ago, but he's recently started toying with other ideas, too). We've planned the majority of the details for the baby shower (except a few games and the menu), picked out the invitations and decorations, birth announcements, bedding, color scheme for the "nursery" (whether that's in our room or the current "game room" is yet to be decided), finished up the registries, and started buying some cute little miniature clothes.

Catch-up from the last couple weeks:

This week's big noteworthiness is that our little mister is covered in what they call "vernix caseosa" which is a greasy white substance made of lanugo, oil and dead skin cells - a protective covering against being in a 9-month-long "bath"....eeyeuw! I hope he gets rid of all this before he's born!

This week, we're supposed to be halfway through, but since we're hopefully being induced 3 weeks early, it means we have 17 weeks (120 days) left. This is almost how big he was at his ultrasound 2 weeks ago, so I'm thinking he's going to be a big boy (but that's a good thing, especially if they take away his last 3 weeks of growing time). This week's special feature is another nasty one: Baby's digestive system is busy creating meconium (a tarry black substance made of swallowed amniotic fluid, digestive secretion and dead cells), which will fill the first diaper after birth. But his genitals are now fully formed! He's wiggling around all the time and Daddy can feel his acrobats almost all the time now. I can still see my feet (luckily) though the belly's getting quite big. I'm up about 7 1/2 pounds at this point and starting to be more comfy in gauchos and stretchy capris with my ever-expanding (and think pointy-watermelon-shaped) belly!

21 week belly

This week our little mister is sucking down amniotic fluid, getting a taste for all the foods he'll be experiencing after he's born (if only I liked a wider variety!). We've got around 16 weeks left - which doesn't compute to the day of the month as well as I'd like - but about 112 more days. Here's hoping that he'll do lots of growing (since he's already a little big) and be big enough around 35 weeks for them to induce with steroids so we can have him sooner! I feel like we're stuck at that annoying waiting point right now, but I've gotten quite a bit accomplished (see note above). Little Peanut is very active and others can feel him too. I think we're getting to the point where they'll be able to see my belly move - consistently, at least: I was able to get a video of him kicking last night to send to Mimi since he decides to have performance anxiety whenever she's around - when he goes haywire, too, which I'm hoping will make it more "real" for the girls. Alyssa seems a little in shock still, but Natalie is super excited that she's getting a little brother!

So I went to the doctor's office this morning (21 1/2 weeks) so they could run a couple tests (everything seems to be just fine) and Tina - our favorite nurse - wanted to take a look at our little mister since she was out of the office for a family emergency at our last appointment... so we have a few new pictures of our Peanut!

He kept making this pose, and if he was a girl, I'd make a "Gone With the Wind" reference about women and hot spells, but I think he was just trying to figure out how to get that hand in his mouth without the energy from breakfast.

This one makes it look like he's got more arms than he actually does, but he was just waving them around spastically. It's neat though that you can see his eye socket (which we've seen before) but also a pocket of amniotic fluid in his mouth that he'd just gulped down.

Yep, still a boy!

I love seeing pictures of him (this one's kinda from the back of the left side of his head, so you can catch the shape of his jaws (black vertical squiggle on the right-ish side) where we can see his heart and spine!