17th WEEK UPDATE

The past 17 weeks have been busier than ever in the Guillot household. Here's what we've been up to....

 
FIRST MOTHER’S DAY

Mother’s Day was just a couple weekends ago.  It was a good weekend in the Guillot house, as it was filled with other Guillot’s!  Robert and Leila came to spend the weekend.  We grilled, shopped and had a delicious Sunday brunch.

Since I’m not really a mom yet, I was pleasantly surprised (and choked up!) to receive gifts!   Michael gave me the sweetest card from the baby that had these opening lines: “Hi, Mommy!  Even though I haven’t been born yet, I wanted to tell you that I can hardly wait to see you….”   I tell ya, that Michael is never lacking in the thoughtfulness department!  He also bought the baby two super cute onsies.  One I’ve been eyeing for a long time and another LSU one that’s honey badger-themed!  Should be a perfect fit for our future little tiger fan to view its first LSU games this Fall.

THANKS MICHAEL!  You’re already a great dad!!!

OPERATION DECORATE

Of all of the moving parts in the works finally getting the house decorated (more on that in a future post), one that I think most of you will find most interested is the NURSERY!

Purchase #1 = the crib. It's ordered and set to arrive in the next 2 weeks.

Special thanks to Robert & Leila for their contribution to the first gift for their 3^rd grandbaby!!!!

Other nursery deco plans are to keep it as simple as possible. Should be the best route considering it is going to be gender-neutral. We are thinking oatmeal/khaki colors and white. Stay tuned…

WHAT'S IN A NAME?

Speaking of gender-neutral, as you all know, we are going to keep the sex of the baby a surprise (to both ourselves and everyone else).

On top of that - we have decided to also keep the name selections as surprise.

In the meantime...Macaroni Guillot it is!

For those of you who don't know the back story - we found out I was preg right at 4.5 weeks and had the first doc appointment the day before leaving for Hawaii at 7.5 weeks. On the way home from the doc, I picked up some fun baby reading material for the plane ride..one of which was a baby name book. This kept us busy on the 12+ hour travel day (all day-long morning sickness and too many trips to the airplane restroom to count)!  You'd be surprised at how many horrible horrible names are in that book. Macaroni is legitimately in there! It makes me laugh every time I think of it...and as a bonus, it's gender neutral. So, for now, we've dubbed it Macaroni. TeeHee.

Seriously though, at the rate we're going, the baby is going to have 30 names, because that's about how long our list is! Like most things, we started brainstorming well in advance for this whole baby thing and started making a list of names a very very long time ago. Every day it seems we add 5 new for every 1 we delete.

Some of you (shout out to Jenn Guillot McCollum) aren't exactly thrilled about our plan to keep the baby's gender a surprise, but think about how special it's going to be to come into the room after the delivery and have proud papa Michael do the *big introduction!!!! That after all is what is keeping me sane in the world of the unknown....the picture of Michael telling me the good news just after delivery. I get goose bumps just thinking of it!  Since so much attention is on the mom and how she did/is doing and the baby, I think it’ll be sweet for him to have something special of his own to do on that big day.

*Walker and Russell family - make sure your Skype or FaceTime accounts are up and running!  

A GROWING MACHINE

How’s the little miracle coming along?  To date (5/31/12) the bambino is 17 weeks, 5 days!  Here's what our little butterbean looks like right about now:

 

What’s she/he up to?  Building body fat (and not the only one! I'm still dreaming of that soft shell crab I had for supper last night. Mmmmm), developing fingertips, and the skeleton is changing from soft cartilage to bone!  He/she is about 5’’ long (about the size of the palm of your hand) and should weigh about 3.5 -5 ounces.

By now, the eyes and ears have moved into their permanent locations and the ear bones are fully developed.  Which means, she/he can hear the sound of my heartbeat, voice, music and the sound of Pepper barking:)  He/she can suck its thumb and move its limbs all around.  I should start to feel movement for the first time any day now. 

BABY ON BOARD

How am I doing? For the most part, in disbelief that this is all finally happening!  I cannot believe I’m in my 5^th month of pregnancy.

Most all of you know that weeks 5-11 for me were hell on earth.  It was all day, all night, every minute of every day nausea. It was absolutely terrible!  Pretzels, ramon noodles and ginger-mint water saved me!

The plus side is that once hitting week 11, I have been riding the wave of 2^nd trimester bliss I’ve heard so much about (shout out to Erica Guillermo and Anne Neal!)!    It’s been awesome.  I am full of energy and go non-stop all day.  I do have an earlier bed time that usual, but I’m loving it…and am making it a point to savour every minute of sleep I am able to get in the next few months. 

Fortunately I am still able to do the things I love doing the most – mowing the grass twice a week, tending to our plants, walking my girl Pepper every day, and working out 3-4 days a week.  My workouts have changed a bit already to basically cut out super intense cardio stuff all together, saying so-long to my old friend Pilates (this has been harder than alcohol to give up!), and for the most part just doing different variations of moves (no full trunk rotations in Kickboxing for example).  Like sleep, I am enjoying it while it last. I know at some point, my workout routine is going to involve only being able to waddle Pepper around the neighborhood, so I am enjoying it while I can!

THE BUMP?

It’s a growing let me tell ya!  Mark it in the books that Week 16 (last week) is the week I was no longer fully comfortable in my work pants.  I’m using the ole hair tie trick as well as extenders (shout out Reagan Russell for the two boxes full of hand-me-down maternity goodies she lended me!).  Shopping trip (not-fun!) in my VERY near future.  In the meantime, I’m wearing every dress I own to work every day.  Times like this I envy my buddies in the medical profession…man, how great it’d be to get to wear scrubs everyday!!!

{bump pics to come soon I promise}

WHAT’S NEXT?

This weekend we’re off to Texas for my oldest nephew’s graduation extravaganza.  It’s surreal to say the least.  In my mind, he’s still the little tee-baller scurrying around the bases with that flat footed little run of his!  Due to the era in time, I was fortunate enough to attend more tee-ball and baseball practices and games of Zack’s than I can count. I actually remember witnessing his first homerun – in field homerun that is – even though he ran the bases fast as lightening and the outfielders were basically picking clovers, it was still a homerun.  I’ll never forget how proud I was that while the other kids were completely out of it, he was on 1^st base vacuuming up anything that came his way!   Proud indeed!  

Also on the horizon for this Wednesday is a very exciting doctor’s visit.  We get to have another ultrasound!!!  I’m VERY anxious for the appointment to make sure everything is okay in there, see it on the big screen, and to see Michael’s reaction!  He is coming with me to this visit.  It will be his first view (my 2^nd) of the live ultrasound.  I think he is going to be blown away. 

That’s all for now!  

Until next time….