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Baby #2 On The Way!
I am excited to share that I am currently pregnant with baby #2!
…..8.5 months pregnant, to be exact! 😁
Better late than never for my pregnancy announcement blog post, right?
I tell ya, it is a totally different ball game documenting everything when you also have a toddler too! I worked full-time for nearly all of this pregnancy, with Brynnley home with me and a husband who is out of town 4-5 days a week. So yes, I’ve been slow to keeping up with my blogs and vlogs. BUT as of this month I am now a fulltime stay-at-home-mom & I am soaking up my last couple of weeks with just Brynnley before this baby arrives.
Yesterday I was able to put together a vlog with the pregnancy highlights, including our positive test, sharing with our family, the gender reveal, our nursery, and a few other fun moments.
Finding Out
To rewind and recap in a little more detail, we found out that we were pregnant in late October 2023. Brynnley was 1.5 years old. Unlike the first time around, I didn’t surprise Zeb with the positive pregnancy test. We decided to look at the results together and were SO excited to find out that Brynnley is becoming a big sister!
Another difference this time around was telling my family much earlier. With Brynnley, we waited until after our 8 week doctor appointment to confirm the heartbeat and get an ultrasound to share the news. This time, we would need someone to watch Brynnley for us while we both attended the first appointment and we decided to share almost immediately. I picked a super cute “BIG SISTER” t-shirt for Brynnley to wear when my parents came over for dinner. My mom noticed so immediately that my dad didn’t even get a moment to see it for himself before her reaction, haha!
Gender Reveal
Again, we opted for the NIPT genetic testing blood work which confirms if everything is chromosomally normal for the baby as well as their gender. We didn’t do a gender reveal the first time around; Zeb and I just opened the results together in our kitchen one morning. I said I’d be happy to do a gender reveal brunch with our close friends and my parents….if I could be the one to find out first and plan it all. I was too impatient to know if I was having a son or another daughter! The results came after a horrendous week of Zeb having the flu and me being terrified of catching it in my first trimester.
I opened the results and immediately did some online shopping for our baby……
BOY!
Little girls are SO fun to shop for and to dress up, with all their fun accessories and bows. But honestly I have been really pleasantly surprised with all of the boy clothes options nowadays too. I’m not the biggest fan of dressing my baby boy in all dinosaurs and dump trucks. Thankfully baby boy style has many options now. Although I’m not used to not incorporating a bow or a headband into every outfit!
When we took our family vacation to San Diego in February, I found a family photographer to take our photos on the beach while I was 20 weeks pregnant. It was the perfect time for maternity photos for me. It’s more common to wait until you have a larger, more pronounced bump, but I don’t find my body type particularly flattering in the final trimester and I preferred to document my bump while I was still in that beginning stage!
Pregnancy Symptoms & Highlights
Now that I have two pregnancies to compare to each other, I can say that there have been definite differences between Brynnley and Baby Boy! Both were thankfully very mild. Brynnley gave me no morning sickness, but this one had morning nausea from weeks 12-20, occasionally throwing up first thing in the morning but feeling fine afterwards.
My skin has been much better this go around! I can only assume it is gender-related because I had hormonal acne on my face and body with Brynnley but clear skin this time with no major difference in my skincare routine.
I’m carrying this boy much lower, which is another welcome difference. Brynnley was so high up in my ribs that they felt bruised for much of the third trimester. This little boy is so low that it does mean he’s constantly jabbing my bladder but it’s more comfortable having him inches away from my rib cage!
I had more anxiety about doing something wrong with Brynnley than this time. My first pregnancy, I was obsessive about Googling if any ingredient was safe – from self-tanning lotion to Listerine to coffee creamer and everything in between. This time I’m more confident that I know what products are off limits (although I didn’t realize that the immunity vitamins Airborne weren’t pregnancy-safe until I’d already finished a bottle during Zeb’s aforementioned winter flu).
This time, my main anxiety comes from the fact that Brynnley is two years old and isn’t always the most gentle on me when she wants to sit or lay with me. I have to constantly remind myself that women have been having babies while also caring for toddlers since the beginning of time, and he’s not the first fetus to get a few sharp elbow or knee jabs in there. I hope my ice cream trips are giving him a nice little cushion from her, but I’d be lying if I said it didn’t cause me to worry throughout the last few months!
Nursery
I had a ton of fun putting together this nursery! It was a long process, because we had to redo our front bonus room in order to make room for the nursery. The bonus room used to house a nice 7ft x 7ft playpen for Brynnley that was my saving grace for independent play time while I was working full-time. But we needed to move our guest bed and treadmill out of the room that would become the new nursery, so unfortunately the playpen had to go. Once the bonus room was transformed into our new guest room, the nursery was ready to put together. It was already painted a nice pale bluish-gray so we decided to keep it.
Zeb added white crown molding along the ceiling to hide some of the paint line blemishes which added a nice touch. We used the same crib as Brynnley’s, and we moved in the dresser/changing table and bookcase from Brynnley’s room as well. She was ready for a big girl dresser, and her new kitchen play set for her second birthday took the spot of her bookcase anyways.
I liked the vintage travel style of the canvas map I found, and started searching for similar neutral decoration pieces. The wooden train, white truck (Hobby Lobby), globes, suitcase boxes and Etsy art prints all tied it together. His crib sheet is a world map, and his crib mobile is crocheted airplanes and hot air balloons. The final touch was a custom wooden sign from Etsy with his name on it, which I’ll be sharing after his birth!
Final Countdown
Now is the waiting game! His due date is July 7th. Brynnley came 1.5 weeks early on her own, and statistics say the second child comes around the same or earlier but of course that’s not guaranteed. It’s normal for babies to come two weeks before their due date all the way til two weeks past their due date. I’d obviously prefer to meet him sooner than later, as long as he’s fully developed and healthy! We’ve completed the nursery, installed the car seat, upgraded to a double monitor and double stroller, put the bassinet back up in our bedroom, washed every piece of linen he’ll come in contact with, sterilized every pacifier and toy, and read lots of books with Brynnley about becoming a big sister. We are READY!
Next week I’m attending a meal prep cooking class that will supposedly stock our freezer with 40-60 dinner meal servings for the postpartum weeks. I’ve never attended it before. You sign up online for a two-hour class and pre-select up to 10 different meals to put together. Each meal makes 4-6 adult servings. All for $160. You do all of the cutting, mixing and prep work, then package them up into freezer-friendly portions and take them home with instruction cards for cooking them when you are ready. It sounded worth trying to give us a nice dinner stash for the month of July. I’ll report back on how it is!
I’m excited to share this news and can’t wait to introduce him very soon! Let me know if there’s anything else I forgot to cover :)
Brynnley Turns 2!
Somehow, my tiny little baby is now two years old! Brynnley Alyse celebrated her second birthday on Friday, February 23rd and we had such a fun family day.
This little girl is one Chatty Cathy. She always impresses me with her vocabulary and memory! She has been able to spell her eight-letter name and recite the alphabet (plus or minus a few letters haha) since she was 18-months old.
For the past couple of months, she’s been narrating our day. “Mommy make coffee,” “Brynnley read a book,” “Puppy so cute.” She’s recently starting asking “What’s that?” and “Whatcha doin’, Mommy?” She loves to talk and talk, and becomes a little performer when she’s in the bathtub, making up her own songs and melodies. She keeps me entertained constantly!
Brynnley has also grown quite a collection of stuffed animals that she’s attached to. We can usually persuade her to leave most of them at home, but she can take a quick inventory and spot a missing turtle or bunny within seconds of being in her crib. It’s like Brynnley’s bedtime roll call, making sure all her furry friends are accounted for before hitting the pillow!
Earlier in the month, we went on a family vacation to San Diego (which will be recapped in my next blog post!) and had a very toddler-friendly and Brynnley-focused itinerary. She got to explore Sea World, the San Diego Zoo, the beach, Birch Aquarium, and some parks. After all of that excitement, we decided to skip a big birthday party and just have a family day celebrating together on her actual birthday.
My parents always had the house decorated for all of our birthdays, and I want to do the same for my kids. After she went to sleep last Thursday night, Zeb and I stayed up to hang balloons and decorate our dining room with some “party animals.” I found adorable miniature party hats with adjustable straps on Amazon, perfect for all of her stuffed animals. I also made Brynnley a pink strawberry cake with cream cheese frosting and used a “2” cookie cutter as a stencil to pour sprinkles into. It was simple but Brynnley loved it! Well, mostly the sprinkles. I think I could have skipped the cake entirely and just gave her a bowl of sprinkles.
On her birthday morning, Zeb and I took Brynnley to the Children’s Museum in Meridian, Idaho for the first time. I think it is PERFECT for her age. I would say 2-4 years old would be about the sweet spot for this interactive play place. It has a variety of rooms, themed with different occupations and lots of hands-on props for the kids to play with. There’s a farm, where they can fish with a magnetic pole. They can even milk the large cow.
Another section had a doctor’s office with an X-Ray machine and a life-size game of operation, complete with scrubs for the little kids to wear. There was an airplane with a cockpit full of buttons, a pizzeria, and even a Trader Joe’s full shopping experience. They could be a customer or a cashier, which of course included a Hawaiian shirt.
There was even some outdoor exhibits, like a car mechanic garage and a garden. Brynnley had a blast and it was a great concept for little ones with big imaginations! We came home to have our usual smoothie lunch and get in Brynnley’s regular 1-3pm nap.
Brynnley Girl is still a ball of infectious joy and energy! She’s got “happy feet” that she can’t control when she’s excited, like a dog wagging their tail. She’s obsessed with most forms of potatoes, puzzles, and her current favorite show Not Quite Narwhal. She also loves getting to spend time with her Gigi & Pop Pop who she has wrapped around her finger.
The last two years with Brynnley have shown me how quickly her little mind grows and changes, and how much she’s absorbing all the time!
Happy Birthday, baby girl!
Tiny Toast
Happy Spring!
We experienced the nicest day in Idaho in over 180 days on Easter. The Boise area actually broke a record from the 1800s about most consecutive days under 60 degrees. Even when it did start to creep into the upper 50s, intense wind always made it less pleasant to spend time in! You don’t know how APPRECIATED that sunshine was! Brynnley and I celebrated Easter with a beautiful brunch at my parents’ house and then spent as much time outside as we could.
On Saturday I had a girlfriend come over for a little brunch together while we watched the newest episodes of Love is Blind. I have to say, I am not a reality TV junkie. My TV is typically always just rewatching Friends and Gilmore Girls episodes on repeat. But there is something about the (totally ridiculous) Netflix show Love is Blind that always hooks me. My friend Nicole and I bond over our mutual love/hate relationship with the cringy show that we can’t look away from.
I’ve had a wheel of French Brie cheese in my fridge from Costco for a bit and I needed to find a use for it. Obviously I took to Pinterest and searched “brunch recipe with brie.” I found some really pretty crostinis with melted brie, apple butter and honey. Then I remembered a recent photo I’d seen from a restaurant that used shredded hard boiled egg on top of avocado toast and I immediately wanted to recreate that as well. I decided to just make both, using crostini as my base for a few different tiny toast varieties.
French baguettes are less than $2 at the grocery store. You can slice them into whatever thickness you want your toast, and lay them out on a lined baking sheet. I sprayed them with olive oil and popped in the oven at 350 for 10 minutes. Even if they don’t have quite as much of a golden glow as you’d like, I wouldn’t cook them longer than 10 minutes. They really crunch up. A few of mine were overcooked and we joked that we needed subtitles on our show because we couldn’t hear the words over the sound of our chewing!
For our tiny toast toppings, we had mashed avocado, sliced cherry tomatoes, shredded hard boiled eggs, thinly sliced apple, cherry jam, brie cheese, honey, balsamic vinegar, and everything but the bagel seasoning. I made one of each variety and went back for seconds! You have to try this brunch idea for your next girls get together. They were SO CUTE and tasty and it really wasn’t much effort to throw together.
I’m currently in the middle of two intriguing books. April is my turn to host book club, and I picked Someone Else’s Shoes by Jojo Moyes. I loved Me Before You, which is a movie now if you aren’t interested in reading the book. As you know, I’m always in the middle of an audiobook and a physical book at the same time. Somone Else’s Shoes is my audiobook right now, which I usually listen to on 1.3x speed to get through it a little faster. Sometimes they just talk so slow! But the narrator is British and one of the characters has a THICK cockney accent which I already can’t understand so I have to put it back to normal speed. It’s so funny that she is speaking English, my native language, and it is still so difficult to grasp what she’s saying. Sometimes I’m listening in my car and I just giggle because it truly sounds like someone speaking a foreign language haha.
The physical book I’m reading right now is The Younger Wife, which my friend Rebecca sent to me in her birthday present for Brynnley which was so sweet! The next episodes of Love is Blind don’t come out until Friday so I should be able to get in a few more chapters tonight and tomorrow ;)
It’s almost time to pick out my seeds and plant my vegetable garden again! This will be my third spring/summer growing a little veggie patch in my backyard garden box and I’m excited for Brynnley to be old enough to come water it with me and watch everything grow. She will at least be able to share some fresh picked blackberries with me! Those are my mini updates for this spring so far, and I will leave you with some Easter cuteness until my next post. :)
