Baby #2 - 36 Weeks

I was going to do this post at 35 weeks, but...well... blogging is hard lately. So, this probably won't be the most fabulous post I've ever written - but I am determined to get it written and posted today. 

36 weeks! Holy Smokes. Our baby is coming this month (hypothetically). I can hardly believe that in just a few short weeks I'll be holding him in my arms. It makes me smile just to think about it. People have been asking if we are "ready" for this baby to come, and in all honesty - we probably aren't. His nursery isn't even halfway finished, I haven't gone through his clothes - so I actually don't know if we have enough newborn clothes to last longer than a couple of days, and my hospital bag isn't packed. However, we have a bed for him, we have a package of newborn diapers and a package of size one diapers, and we have a carseat base installed in both cars along with a newly washed and ready-to-go infant carseat. Oh, and my mother-in-law just delivered the most beautiful baby-blue-and-grey baby blanket that she made and it's soft and so so perfect! (It's just like Lydia's purple blanket that she loves.) So, technically if he came tomorrow - he would be just fine. I feel very reassured about that and feel like the other final details will fall into place over the next couple of weeks. 

I've been feeling a lot better than I was at 30 weeks. I started taking Iron supplements diligently and it is crazy what a big difference I have felt. Even though I'm getting bigger and definitely feeling 36 weeks pregnant, I don't feel like getting up out of bed/off of the couch is impossible. If I had known that taking iron supplements would make such a big difference - I definitely would have started sooner. (With Lydia they made me a little sick, so I was hesitant to start them up again - but I've been taking them at night before I go to sleep it has helped a lot. I don't notice any nausea this time around.) I'm sleeping pretty well, but I've started waking up several time during the night to go to the bathroom. It's SO hard to pull myself out of bed - and it's ridiculous how little my bladder can hold - but we are managing. I feel pretty good in the mornings, but can barely move my body around at night. (Our stairs are like Mt. Everest at eleven o'clock at night - thankfully David doesn't mind helping to push me up the stairs, or waiting patiently for 10 minutes while I slowly make the ascent.) No real complaints here though, I'm feeling good and grateful for such a healthy and happy pregnancy. Oh, one random pregnancy fact: my belly button is starting to stick out. I've occasionally heard about someone's innie turning to an outie during pregnancy but I didn't really understand and thought it was a weird thing, but my belly button really does stick out - sometimes you can even see it through my shirt. It was completely unexpected because it didn't happen at all with Lydia.

As far as names go, our list keeps getting shorter and shorter - but I don't think that we are sold on any name just quite yet. Austin has really started growing on us, and I wouldn't be surprised if that is the name that we end up with. (Samuel and Curtis are also high-ranked contenders at this point.) I also wouldn't be surprised if we find another name out there in these last remaining weeks. We'll have to wait and see. I think that people think we are crazy because of all of the hoops a name has to jump through just to make it on our list. We are very... scientific about it. Calculating popularity in numbers, comparing pronunciation and spelling, as well as making sure it meets many other criteria. Oh, and in addition to having such a weird last name (because let's be honest - Peaden is a fairly difficult name to work with: all P names are out automatically, and it's hard to pair with any name that ends with "sen" or "son" because it sounds funny), we feel really strongly that we want the middle name to be Scott, which is David's middle name and my dad's name so it's very sentimental but it makes finding a name that sounds good with the middle name Scott just a tad bit more difficult. It's really a miracle that any name has made it to our list. But at least at this point I have hope that our baby boy will not be nameless for longer than a couple of hours. (Previously I wondered if we would ever find a name we both liked that met all of our "standards".) 

On Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood, Daniel Tiger just had a baby sister. (It's a PBS show that we absolutely adore.) I was so excited when I heard that they were doing a big "three-day special" to announce and introduce Daniel Tiger's little sister Baby Margaret. We made sure to watch it, and we both loved it. Also, my dear friend Ashley just had a sweet baby girl, Emily. If you ask her if she's excited about her baby brother, Lydia will say, "Carson and Elsie had baby sister and Daniel Tiger had baby sister. I don't want baby brother - I want baby sister." I guess that everyone else is having baby sisters, so that's what she wants, too. But she will also talk about "Baby Brother" and you can tell that she is so excited for him to come. I don't know how she'll really handle it, but I think that she is just going to love him. One of her favorite books right now is "Baby Bundt" and it's about a sister who helps tuck her baby brother into bed. We talk about how she will be able to help with her baby brother and it's really sweet. Lydia is going to make a great big sister.

Less than four weeks to go! Here's hoping that we can get everything done that we want to. We are excited for this little boy to arrive, but we also realize that everything will change when he gets here - so we are trying to soak up our last weeks of just the three of us and we are enjoying the stage of life that we are at. For now we are happy to be sleeping through the night (for the most part) and getting things ready for baby boy to join us!