So we're now at 16 weeks! I had another appointment on Thursday to hear the heartbeat again. I was so excited: there is something extremely reassuring about hearing it. I'm growing by leaps and bounds which means the baby is too. Baby Mauldin is now the size of an avocado. The week that it was the size of a lemon, I bought a lemon at the store and drew a face on it. I "swaddled" it in a paper towel and took it to Jared while he was studying and said "It's your turn." He got a kick out of it.
We leave to go on our Christmas vacation this week. I'm so happy I'm showing so that the fam can see. I'm still feeling really well. I had a little bit of weird stomach feeling last week. It started with some indigestion then just strange twinges. The doc said to keep some liquid antacid on hand and that the twinges were probably things just stretching and moving. I figure if the baby is growing faster, then so is my tummy. I've done much better in the past few days. I've also read that now is about the time I may be feeling the baby start to move! I cannot wait to feel it move! I also read that the baby should now be able to hear me talk, so I'm going to start singing and talking to it extra and maybe read out loud when I can. I really love going into the "baby room" and thinking about how I might decorate and just imagining the baby being in there next year. Sometimes as I go down our stairs, I imagine myself carrying the baby downstairs after a nap. It may be silly, but I guess that's the "mommy" feeling that I'm starting to acquire.
Work is wrapping up. I just work tomorrow and then I'm finished for about a month. Jared finished with work/school on Friday. He did great on his exams. We both feel very fortunate to have a lot of time off this Christmas. We will get to see most of our families and spend tons of time together. We are very blessed! Jared has recovered from some injuries so he is getting back into cycling and running, while continuing to swim and surf when he can. I'm still running though, I promise I take it easy. Bernie and I went for a great run today. The weather here was perfect- about 65 degrees. It was beautiful. We went on a run that has a great view and I felt so good! Bernie is a great running companion.
On Friday morning I was baking for hours just to give treats to neighbors and friends and to take to work and the Army/Navy party we went to on Saturday. Jared asked me what on earth I was doing baking so much. I stopped in my tracks and realized that I didn't normally bake that much, I said maybe it was the pregnancy or maybe it was just because I like to bake. I realized though how good I felt and how much fun I was having. All that to say, life is good! God is good!
We'll find out January 14th what the sex is. I'm going to try to figure out how to put one of those polls on here so that people can vote on which they think it will be. We're so excited to find out.
Merry Christmas to you all!
