18 Weeks

How I am feeling:
Still feel good for the most part! A few headaches here and there but that has been about the worse part so far!

Sleep:
Every day is different.  Not much change with my IT band, but I go for a massage first weekend in August, so hoping she can relieve some of the pain and tightness. Hoping to get on her schedule regularly until baby is born.  She did some amazing things for my quads when I was training for my half marathon, so I am confident she can help relieve some of this pain and tightness in my IT band to help me sleep better.

Cravings:
I still love chicken strips haha Weight gain was a little bit more this week when I checked in with my nutritionist, so am working on eating more veggies to help slow that back down. Overall, she said my food intake is good and she isn't concerned, but of course would like to see me clean up my diet a bit :) I see her again in September, so we will see how much improvement I can make in the next month!

Best Moment of the Week:
We had our 18 week appointment on Monday, I can't believe that marked 3 weeks until we find out what Baby Caswell is! We are getting antsy and excited! Our appointment went well, no concerns from our Doctor, baby's heartbeat initially was 140 but then they squirmed away from the doctor so when she found it again it was 150. I haven't felt much movement yet, sometimes I think I can feel them but I am not 100% sure it is them haha.  She said probably around 20-21 weeks we should feel some definite movement!

This past weekend we spent some time getting some more items done in the Nursery.  I mentioned last post that my friend Cassie and I went to Ikea and I got some shelves to use for books.  On Sunday Tavid got those hung, and they turned out so perfect! I am so glad I choose to go with them vs a bookshelf.  I like how the books are on display, and it just add a different look to the nursery that we both love!  We can't wait to get some more books to put on them, and we love that we could add another shelf above if needed!

We also worked on getting the office cleaned out, which was much needed! We needed to make room to put the baby swing in there to not only store it but so Tavid could use it when he is on daddy duty on his days off when I go back to work. This allows him to play his video games and Baby C can just hang out. That is if they let daddy play his video games ;) we shall see!

I keep waiting for the day that one of our cats makes the swing their new nest haha. For now they just sniff it, but haven't gotten any closer to it.

I also spent some time going through and organizing what baby items we have in their dressers.  I got my inspiration from this post I found on pinterest. Her blog is full of helpful tips, and when I was at Ikea last week i picked up a ton of the drawer organizers. We don't have much to put in the drawers yet, but looking forward to when we get more to use these organizers!

Dresser Organization

I have found a ton of helpful tips on her blog, it is full of information that I hope we will use when Baby C gets here! She also has a ton of stuff on here not related to baby! So worth the read! :)

We are slowly making our way through the nursery, we still need to get a chair, we need to paint the closet and Tavid needs to make a closet organizer, replace the ceiling fan, hang the room darkening shades, and find some decor to hang on the walls! It is really exciting to see the progress and feels good that we have made such progress on it! August is a busy month for us, so we probably wont be getting much  more done until September/October which is why I wanted to get as much as we could done now.

17 Weeks

How I am Feeling:
Still feel good! I can't believe we are just a few weeks away from the half way point and from finding out what we are having!!


Sleep:
Still the same.


Cravings:
Food :) and still chicken strips haha


Best Moment of the Week:On Saturday we went to Rochester with my cousin Tarra to do our baby registries! She is a pro so it was really great to have her there to help us pick the right car seats, and what items we really needed for baby and stuff that was just extra fluff.  We choose to register at Target and Babies R Us, and were done with both registries by 11:30am! Which is amazing, considering our wedding registries took us ALL DAY! haha We are excited to start getting things for Baby C! We have a few things already, but we quickly realized there is some more that we need :)

Saturday night we were heading up to the cities to go to dinner with friends at the Machine Shed! We started this tradition back in January, and decided we wanted to keep going and trying new places! I choose this one, and it as really good! You get a lot of food and it was delicious!

Here's the whole group, we were missing a few though.

On Sunday we were ready to tackle getting some things done in the babies room.  We got a dresser from my cousin Nathan, Tavid has been sanding and is going to repaint, so we wanted to get that done, we needed to go pick up a dresser we had gotten from Ashley furniture and we wanted to get the babies crib put together.  It was a lot to do, but we got it all done and it feels nice to have made some progress on the nursery!

Here is a before and after of the dresser, it turned out great and we are happy with it!

Here is the new dresser we got from Ashley, it is really hard to find plain modern dressers! This one had a design on the top drawers that we removed to make it match the one above.  We figure, once Baby C gets older, if they want the design they can put it back on. :) This is the dresser we will put a changing pad on and use as a changing table.

The beginning of assembling the crib!

And the finished product!

 

We also painted this end table, it used to be black so we painted it green to pull out a color from the quilt on the crib above.  That quilt has been our inspiration for colors for the nursery.

We also had this ruler made by my friend Marne!

We have some touch up painting to do in the nursery, we still want a bookshelf, we need to get a glider for the room, Tavid is going to make a closet organizer and need to find some wall decor but overall we are proud of our progress!

On Friday, my friend Cassie and I headed up to Ikea after work to look for some items.  They are moving this weekend, and she needs some furniture for her middle child's room, as she is loosing her furniture to her baby sister. I also wanted to find some items for the Nursery. It was a successful trip! I picked up some shelves for the nursery, some drawer organizers, some decorative items,  and a shoe organizer for our back door.  It is safe to say, Cassie is hooked and we will probably be going again haha!

16 Weeks

How I am Feeling:
Still feeling good, I haven't had anymore headaches from hell so that's a plus! Hoping that was just a 1 time thing :)

Sleep:
Still the same, some days are good and some days are meh.

Cravings:
Food haha but I have been craving a lot of chicken strips lately, yum!

Best Moment of the Week:
This week was pretty busy! Cassie and I had our garage sale, she is due with her third in September, and they bought a new house so they were purging a lot of items for their move, and we were purging a lot of stuff to make room for all the baby stuff! Overall, the day was really good! We sold a lot of stuff and made a nice chunk of change! The day was hot, but it was worth it to see stuff go! We donated the rest of the stuff to a charity! Bye Bye clutter!

I had monday July 11th off because my friend Marette was home for the week from Phoenix! So we had plans to go to Capella to visit RT and Linds and to head to Augsburg to see Mama B and Shonna.  Unfortunately, RT was out sick so we didn't get to see him, but we got to see everyone else!  It always warms my heart to be back at Augsburg, I have such a special place in my heart for that college and treasure my time there! Sometimes it is hard to believe that it has almost been 10 years since I graduated from there!

Mama B and her girls!

 We couldn't be downtown Minneapolis and not eat The Burger Place! Now, if it had been Wednesday, I would have gone for Allies because they have THE BEST Broccoli Cheese soup! I miss the food options of the skyway a lot! :) 

The girls! It is our tradition to go to Pizza Luce when we get together, and Marette and I always get the Baked Potato Pizza with Ranch, and it was everything I hoped for!

It always warms my heart to spend the day with these ladies! I wish we could do it more, but I always treasure the days that we get to spend with each other!

Friday the 15th was Tavid's Birthday, he didn't want to do much. We have both gotten to the point where it's just another day.  So we had dinner at home.  I gave him a new Vikings Hat and a Sega for his Birthday. I would say, it was a success! :)

15 Weeks

How I am Feeling:
I still feel good, however headaches have been happening more frequently.  My doctor had warned me that they would show up more around these next few weeks, but I wasn't prepare for the monster I had on July 6th. I woke up at 2am with a pounding headache, so I took some tylenol, drank some water and figured it would be gone when I got up for work.  When it wasn't gone when I woke up I figured I just needed to eat, I learned early on that when I didn't eat on a regular basis, then I would get a headache.  I went to work but as the day progressed it got worse and started to move to behind my eyes, so I headed home around noon to try to sleep it off before it got bad.  Unfortunately, it turned into a full blown migraine and I ended up throwing up from it (something I have never had with a migraine). Once I threw up though, all the pressure in my head lessened significantly, and by the next day I felt much better. So far that has been the worst I have had during this pregnancy, I haven't had a headache like that since, and hope I don't.  I do plan to talk to our doctor about it at our 18 week appointment, to see if there are things I need to do to not let them get that bad.  I have read that sometime pregnancy brings on migraines even if you aren't prone to them. So I guess we will just wait and see.  Besides that, I have felt great!

Sleep:
Still decent, some days are better then others.  My left IT band has been bothering me for a few weeks, and when I sleep on that side my leg feels like it is going numb, and it is a feeling I don't care for.  I have been using KT tape (which I used to use a lot when I ran) and that has been helping a lot with this situation.  I also am hoping to get in for a few massages to help loosen up that band. I guess it is common in pregnancy, and my doctor said unfortunately, it will get worse before it gets better. I am grateful the KT tape has been helping, otherwise I would be miserable sleeping.

Cravings:
Food and lots of it :)

Best Moment of the Week:
It was the fourth of July weekend, so on Saturday we headed over to Tavid's mom for the Francis BBQ, it was relaxing and really nice to see everyone, as it had been a while. On Sunday we layed low and home and just enjoyed not having to do much.  Monday was the 4th of July, and we headed to the Gaul picnic over the lunch hour, and then that was the extent of our 4th of July, Tavid choose to switch with someone to work Tuesday July 5th so that he could have Saturday the 9th off, so we choose not to go to the fireworks.  I have Tuesday the 5th off and I spent the day going through things for my Garage Sale with Cassie the next weekend.  I ended up pairing down our entire storage room by half! It is crazy how much stuff I was able to get rid of for the sale, it made room so that when we went through the closet of the babies room, we had somewhere to put that stuff.

14 weeks

How I am Feeling:
After our Maryland adventure, I was exhausted and ended up using the weekend to try to catch up on sleep! I also ended up coming down with a cold which always affects my Asthma. I was hopeful that it wasn't going to move into my chest, but on Sunday it did so I had to resort to my Asthma Action Plan and begin a steroid to get past it.  Thankfully, on Monday June 27th was our 14 week appointment, so I could talk to our doctor about it and make sure everything was going well.  When we had meet with her at our 9 week appointment, she had given me a prescription for prednisone to use if I had a flare up, so I knew it was safe but still just wanted to make sure.  Other then this, I have been feeling well, hopeful the fatigue is exiting soon!

Sleep:
With not getting much sleep on our airport adventure, I was exhausted! I slept a lot for the next few days after we got home, and on the weekend I took quite a few naps. I feel being sick also wasn't helping with that. I feel like I am sleeping much better now that we are home, but still not 100%, having to find a comfortable spot is getting tough.

Cravings:
Just food in general :)

Best Moment of the Week:
This week is pretty uneventful for us, however we did have our 14 week appointment and we go to hear baby heartbeat.  It was beating strong at 155! Doctor wasn't too concerned with my flare up, however she did say that if the prednisone wasn't helping to send her a message so we could look at some other options. 

I also met with my nutritionist.  Since they only want me to gain a maximum of 15lbs, I choose to keep meeting with my nutritionist on a regular basis throughout my pregnancy to keep on top of my weight.  At my appointment we looked at weight gain, and as of that day I have only gained 4lbs, which was really surprising and exciting to hear! I feel like I have gained so much more, so it was nice to see the weight comparison and that I am right on track.  We also adjusted my macro-nutrients.  I told her that I felt hungry constantly in the morning, but once I had lunch I didn't get the constant hunger.  After looking at my tracking on MyFitnessPal, we decided that I needed to add more protein to my breakfast, so hopefully with adjusting that I can help keep my hunger at bay.  I learned early in my pregnancy, that being hungry for too long brews a headache, so I have been trying to stay on top of my hunger. So hopefully, spreading out my protein more will really help! She also wants me to start to build activity back into my routine. Tavid and I are hoping to be able to bike or walk on the weekends, to help me get back into that routine. The nutritionist has really been a valuable experience through my pregnancy, and I am so glad I choose to keep meeting with her.

This weekend we will be getting ready for our garage sale with are having with my Friend Cassie which is the weekend of the 9th, and of course celebrating the 4th of July.  We are both looking forward to a weekend of not having a ton to do, so we can get our life back in order!

13 Weeks

Hello second trimester!

How I am feeling:
Still feeling great! On our flight home, I got a bit nauseous, but it was a bit bumpy and I think that had to do with it.

Sleep:
Sleep is still the same, although I found, I sleep much better in my own bed haha. But I managed while we were on vacation :)

Cravings:
Still eating regularly, this baby just loves food!

Best Moment of the Week:
This week held our 1st Wedding Anniversary! I can't believe that it has already been a year! Time sure does fly.

We spent our anniversary in Maryland seeing family.  We flew into Maryland early on Saturday, picked up our rental car and met up with my family at their Yacht Club to get on the boat and head to Tilghman Island for the night.

This was a salt water pool! 

We headed back towards Baltimore on Sunday to head to my families house in Damascus Maryland.

 

Their dog Crimpett

 Silas

 Patuxton, Crimpett and Silas following Tavid

 Darci (or Barillo Pad as Tavid nick named her)

Tavid, Dillon and Silas

On Monday, we decided to head up to Frederick Maryland to poke around and see what we could find. Our first find, a Waffle House! This was Tavid's first time, and he was hooked!

We also found a restaurant in downtown Frederick that brews all their own beer.  Tavid was in heaven getting to try different beers! I had to just enjoy the food :)

On Tuesday, our flight was suppose to leave around 2:50pm, so we decided to head into Baltimore's Inner Harbor to see the boats and then head to the airport.

We then headed to the airport, which began our 30+ hour adventure of being stuck in the aiport.  There was a rainstorm that came through around 1pm, which began to delay our flight and ultimately cancelled our flight around 7pm. We then got put on another flight home which had been delayed to 10:30pm.  We were told by the ticket agent that we had to go to baggage claim, get our bags and go back through to check them into this flight which meant going through security again.  When we got down to baggage claim and waited for quite a while, we finally asked someone and he said anyone who got re-booked their bags were automatically transferred.  Thanks a lot ticket agent, we ended up going out for nothing! We were hopeful about this second flight because we actually got on the plane.

Only to be told about an hour later that one of the pilots had hit his max duty time and they couldn't locate another pilot. At this point, we were stranded in the Baltimore Airport.  We got off the flight and waited in a horribly long line to see what our options were to get home.  Once we got to the ticket counter, we found out that there were no more open flight until Thursday June 23rd! We both couldn't do that, we had an option to be on standby to try to get to Chicago, but that wasn't even a guarantee.  We looked on our own and found a flight from Dulles Airport (an hour away) that would get us home around 6:36pm, but we had two stops. It was our only option to get home on Wednesday. We looked into cars to try to just drive home, but cars were up to $900 to rent, and the time it would take just wasn't appealing at that point. So once we got our luggage, we went to find a shuttle that would take us from Baltimore to Dulles Airport at 2am mind you.  We finally got to Dulles around 3am, we looked at the boards and could see there was a direct flight to Minneapolis at 8:30am that we wanted to try to go standby on.  A really nice ticket lady helped us get set up, and she even guaranteed our bags to take that flight, so we wouldn't have to worry about where they were if we ended up not getting standby.  We went through security (for a 3rd time mind you) and went to the gate to wait. Unfortunately, everyone showed up for the flight, so we did not get on :( So we headed to our gate to wait the flight we actually had tickets for.  It was the longest morning waiting for this flight to take off, because it ended up getting delayed 40min, due to the crew needing to be off for a certain amount of time before they could fly again.  When we finally got on the plane, it started our adventure of 3 flights home.  We were heading to Rauleigh North Carolina. 

When we got to Rauleigh, we find out that our flight from there to Chicago was delayed and at that point would make us miss our connecting flight to Minneapolis.  We go up to the counter to see what our options were.  Only to find out that she suspected our flight from Chicago to Minneapolis would be delayed, because it was coming out of the same gate that we were coming into.  But just in case, she put us on another flight out at 10pm, but we could still get on our original flight if we ended up making it their in time. We got on flight number 2, and hoped when we landed that we would get good news.

When we got to chicago, we did get good news.  It had been delayed and we have 40 min to get from our gate to the one where our flight was.  We ended up coming into a different gate then originally planned, but thankfully the two gates weren't two far apart and we didn't have to walk to far.  When we got the gate, we had heard from quite a few people that the flight had been delayed two hours at this point (it was suppose to take off at 5pm, but was now set to take off at 7pm). We felt bad for them, but we were ever grateful because it allowed us to make this flight to get home at a semi decent hour.  

We got on the flight, but because there were storms in Chicago (and Minneapolis) we had to wait on the tarmac for an hour before we finally got clearance to take off.  We were nervous that we were gonna get canceled again and would end up stranded in Chicago! Thankfully, Midwest pilots aren't afraid of rain and we took off and were headed home.  It was a bumpy flight, which Baby Caswell did not like but we finally landed in Minneapolis at 9:45pm.  We didn't have to wait for our baggage at the baggage claim, because it had beat us by almost 12 hours and was waiting at the United Airlines office, so we just had to go pick up our bags and we could go wait for our shuttle to take us to our car.  The one plus to getting on different flights, is we were now coming into Terminal 1 vs Terminal 2. Terminal 1 the shuttle comes every 10min,  for Terminal 2 you have to call and can end up waiting for a bit.  We finally got home at midnight, and finally was able to sleep.  We both slept only a few hours here and there throughout the whole ordeal, so it felt good to sleep.

Tavid is swearing off flying, but I feel he might warm back up to it sometime in the future. :) Our trip overall was wonderful, and I am sure sometime down the line we will laugh about this adventure in the airport for our first Anniversary!

12 weeks

Whew! I can't believe we are already at 12 weeks! Soon we will be in the second trimester, it has gone fast already, I can't imagine how it will feel once we are just weeks away from meeting baby caswell!

How I am Feeling:
I still feel really good. I get winded easier, so I have stop and take breaks more frequent but I still haven't gotten sick, minus a few headaches when I didn't eat on a more consistent schedule.

Sleep:
Still the same, trying to find that comfortable position is a bit harder.

Cravings:
Food in general is my craving haha I have been trying to keep myself in check so that I don't go overboard, but I do allow myself some treats.  I am eating on a regular basis, and feel like I am a bottomless pit.

Best Moment of the Week:
I started out week 12 in Chicago.  We got up on saturday and decided we wanted to go to breakfast at Yolk, which my sister in law Jill had recommended, and that we wanted to go on an architectural boat cruise on the river.  Our concierge helped us book the boat, and then we headed out to walk up to Yolk.  It was a bit of a walk, and a bit of a wait, but it was so worth it! It was delicious!

After breakfast we headed to the boat tour.  We spent an hour going up and down the river learning about the architecture, it was really cool! We got to see parts of Chicago that we would have never seen on foot.  But boy, was it hot!

After the boat cruise, we found somewhere to cool off and grab something to eat and then we hit up The Magnificent Mile, which is a ton of shopping! After that we headed back to the hotel to rest before we went to dinner.  We decided to go eat at The Village which is the oldest Italian Restaurant in Chicago.  The food was amazing, I had chicken alfredo!

On sunday, we got up to hit a few things before we needed to drive back to Minnesota.  We went to get Chicago's famous popcorn.

 We also tried the best thin crust pizza according to Oprah. I love thin crust, but this wasn't really my favorite, but glad that we tried it!

After this, we went to pack up the car and head home! It was a great trip, and super fun to get to explore Chicago with some of my favorite ladies!

The rest of the week was work, and getting ready for mine and Tavid's anniversary trip to Maryland! That will be for the next update, but first on Friday we got to celebrate my cousin Kallie's wedding to her hubby Tyler! They got married in January in Hawaii, and this was their reception! It was luau themed, and it was hot! But it was great to see family and to see some old friends!

 Me with Sheena!

My love and I

We didn't get to stay too long, because we had an early flight out in the morning to Maryland. Stay tuned! :)