It seems like it's been birthday season lately.  We went to 2 super fun ones this month.  The first one was a robot theme at Gymboree for Luna's friend Alejandro.  We had a great time and Luna loved all the fun jumping around she got to do.  We were so busy jumping around that I didn't get a chance to snap a picture in the gym room.

The next weekend, Luna had a blast at her friend Clay's birthday party at the Flight Museum.  Clay is her little friend from her MDO class at CCDC and he is also in our PTA group.  She loved sitting in the Jay Jay plane, running up and down the aisles of the real Southwest Airlines plane and running around with her friends.  Luna enjoyed her party favors of little toy airplanes and was impressed by the suitcase they came in, made by Clay's mommy from recycled cereal boxes! 

I am at 29 weeks as of today! I passed my glucose test, baby is at 50% growth and doing well.  This pregnancy (minus the hardest part of the first trimester) has been a little easier. I'm thinking because my body is already stretched out from the first one, it isn't having as many aches or pains.  I say that now, and I'm sure starting tomorrow it's all going to get worse with 11 weeks to go.  Look at how much bigger I am now compared to before, crazy!

Luna turned 22 months on March 13th.  I can't believe in 2 months she will be turning 2! I feel like we just threw her 1st Year Birthday Party :(

Not much new things to report from last month except she is now obsessed with doors and shutting them. She loves following me around the house and shutting the doors behind us.  She giggles and thinks it's hilarious.

Her vocabulary continues to grow but her favorite words (besides momma and dadda) are 'paci' and 'blanket'.  She also loves to say 'awesome,' too cute!

She still hates all veggies, and I have finally turned her onto Cuties, except she likes to just suck on them to get the juice out and then spits them out.  I need to crack open my Deceptively Delicious Cookbook and start using it more.

With a new baby on the way, she loves coming up to my stomach and pointing to it calling it 'baby.'  It's so cute to see her react to my belly.  She has no idea what will be happening in a couple of months, poor thing. 

Luna is still sleeping well, naps are around 3 hours and she sleeps from 7-7am usually.  We are cherishing these last few months of good sleep because we are going to be awakened soon by a newborn all over again.  Hopefully our new little girl will sleep better in the beginning than Luna did and we won't have to Ferberize her :(

Todd and I took a much needed Babymoon this week!  We realized if we didn't, then we wouldn't be able to go anywhere for almost a year, since leaving a breastfeeding newborn is super hard to do and I am not a fan of pumping.  We decided to go to Fredericksburg, TX for a nice relaxing hill country trip.  Todd's sister Heather was nice enough to come to town to watch Luna.  Luna adores her and I felt comfortable leaving her in such good hands!

We took Hwy 67 and 281 which swears it's faster by 10 minutes vs. I-35 and we both hate the drive from Dallas to Austin anyway, so it was a nice change of scenery.  We stopped for lunch in Hamilton at Central Perk, and yes, all of their sandwiches are named after the characters, the 'Chandler Bing' and Todd got the 'Janice.'

As soon as we got close to Fredericksburg, I spotted one of my favorite candle factories, Circle E and had to stop.  Couldn't pass up on Bird of Paradise.  When we rolled into town, we first went to our Bed and Breakfast and we were so glad we chose the Hoffman Haus.  We researched a lot on Trip Advisor and this one got great reviews.  Nice, and peaceful just a couple of blocks off Main Street.  Each room/building is unique on the property and ours was called the Ivy.  They even have a farm house you can rent that has 3 bedrooms.  They also don't serve breakfast in a main room like most, they bring you a basket of food each morning to your door and you can eat it on your private patio or bring it to their main 'hall' to eat.  We chose our peaceful patio :)

This was our view across the street from the property:  Such peaceful scenery

We walked around Main Street and went into some pretty cool stores.  Todd loved all the fudge shops and the tasting rooms of the homemade sauces and dips.  Of course they are known for all of their wines and I couldn't sample any, maybe next trip :)

This store was super cool. A kitchen shop in an old hospital where every old hospital room has different kitchen gadgets in it (one room was full of aprons, another full of Creuset, etc.)

We ate dinner at the Fredericksburg Brewery and Todd loved the sampler pack, especially the Enchanted Red Rock.  Then we went for dessert across the street to Rathskeller for homemade peach bread pudding, yum!

The next morning we woke up to breakfast at our door (egg frittata, fresh fruit, a homemade muffin and veggie sausage).  We also had a visitor, a little kitty cat wanting in our back door

My husband loves to smerk in all of my photos by the way :)

We then headed  up to Enchanted Rock and I watched Todd climb while I waited in the car and read a book.  Not much a 7 month pregnant woman can do with hiking, but loved the scenery.  We even saw a big chicken on the side of the road that reminded me of the blog post my friend Heather sent me, funniest post ever from Blogess

We stopped for lunch at the Peach Tree Tea Room and had an awesome chilled avocado soup and a sandwich sampler of chicken salad and pimento cheese.  After lunch we went to the Herb Farm and drove around Fredericksburg.

We hated to leave the next morning but I was anxious to get back to my little Luna!  The longest we've left her, but we knew she was in good hands with her Aunt Heather!  We wished we could have breakfast served each morning like this, we could get used to this.  We will definitely be back and would love to stay in the same place again, they are even building new cottages that they gave us a tour of.  Can't wait :)

We had been having such nice weather lately, so we ventured out to the Arboretum on Friday with my playgroup and my mom.  The flowers were amazing!! Dallas Blooms starts there this week, so we went before the crowds hit. I'm so glad we live so close and we can go often, hence the must have annual membership that pays for itself in 3 visits!

I feel bad that I am already neglecting baby #2's blog posts, as I had a bunch on here before with Luna's pregnancy.  But being the superstitious one, I didn't want to post too much before we were in the clear.  I guess you are never in the clear, until the baby comes home (and then I guess there can still be problems), but so far we have received thumbs ups from our doctors, despite some bumps in the road.

Our little baby girl, in utero, does have a minor complication.  She has a 2 vessel umbilical cord instead of a 3 vessel.  I had no idea about these things and had never heard of this until they told us. P.S. don't google it, in fact, don't google any medical issue, so nerve wracking.  We found out during the anatomical sono at 19 weeks, and we also found out the baby had a Choroid Plexus Cyst, but that has since gone away thankfully!

So with finding out two things that were wrong, we had many appointments, level 2 sonograms, additional testing and emotional ups and downs, but thankfully, the baby seems to be in the clear.  And also thankfully the heart looks good after the ECHO we had done too. 

Then what does the 2 vessel cord mean?  Basically that it may not be getting as many nutrients, as it grows it could have interuterine growth restriction, where it does not grow as much towards the end.  So I have a fetal specialist, a perinatologist who is the best in Dallas from what I have heard and researched and yes, Googled.  If you ever need one, I completely recommend him!  His name is Kevin Macgee and is at Baylor.  I have been having monthly sonograms to measure growth and pretty soon will have fetal non-stress tests where they monitor the heart rate when the baby moves.

I am still on track to deliver my baby at the Birth and Women's Center like I did with Luna! I am crossing my fingers that I end up having my baby there as I really had a great experience there, but just in case we also toured the Baylor Dallas Maternity Hospital Unit.  I really like Baylor and they are the only hospital in Dallas that is really into natural childbirth as well, as they have bathtubs to labor in.  They also believe in the Kangaroo method of skin to skin, and only letting the mom hold the baby the first hour to help with bonding.  They have the dads give the baby their first bath but also do not allow a bath the first several hours after birth, so the covering (vernix) can stay on for awhile- apparently it has antibiotic properties to help fight infections.  And the recovery rooms are awesome. They hide all medical equipment because they believe that you are recovering, not 'sick.'  So it looks like a hotel room, no monitors, electronic stuff, etc. yay!

I am now at 27 weeks, and I have my next sono next week at 28 weeks.  There is a possibility I could be on bed rest later to make sure the baby rests and grows, but I am hoping that it grows just fine! Last month she was in the 50% on weight.  Being on bed rest with an almost 2 year old at home does not sound fun, so I am eating more than I should and gaining more weight this time, but it's worth it!

Here are some before and afters with my pregnancy this time versus Luna's. I am definitely feeling way bigger this time and much faster. I was showing at 8 weeks, but they say that's normal for second pregnancies. (and please ignore my sweatsuit look ;)