Week 17 & 18..it's a BOY!!

So, it's harder than i thought to write once a week! I feel like the weeks are flying by these days, which brings me to my point of us being almost half way there already!!! we can't believe it either...things started to become really real at our last doctors visit when we got to see our baby BOY!!!! he is healthy and growing at just the right pace :) just hard to believe how much he has changed in 12 weeks since the last ultrasound...we have gone from a peanut to a baby with a profile...amazing!!!

I may not be the one to judge...but i am pretty sure everything about him is perfect already! the pictures of pictures didnt turn out that well on the computer, but im posting them anyways :) in the next few you can see his hands and feet! so cute! i am such a proud momma already.

hands

feet :)

And thanks to my wonderful mother...we found out he was a boy in a pretty neat way. We went to the doctor and had her put the "results" in a sealed envelope. My parents, my sister and her husband, and Richard's parents and their significant others all came up for dinner at my moms house. Since we only had a few hours to get everything ready(my family was leaving for Disney World early the next morning)...my mom had baked two different cakes to "reveal" the sex the night before. One with blue food coloring and one with pink...chocolate icing of course :) We let momma peak in the envelope so she knew which cake to serve, and might i add she was quite afraid of messing this up, kept checking herself before finally serving the proper "blue" cake. Me and richard then cut into it, and as soon as i saw a blue crumb, my heart sank! i have always wanted a boy first so he can protect any little brothers or sisters that come along in the future. Richard is determined we will have all boys anyways :) everyone was very excited, but i think his mom was extremely pumped! she knows just how to deal with little boys since she had 3 herself!! so i know who to call when i need advice :) and dont worry, i didnt let the other "pink" cake go to waste...i took it and shared with my coworkers and they were not upset about it!

So, now for the next big news...i felt him move for the first time two nights ago...what everyone has told me is so true, its an amazing feeling that i cant even describe! i instantly started to cry because i didnt know how else to express myself!! richard actually got to feel a little movement too, it was an awesome experience and glad he was able to share that with me :)

We have already started receiving baby gifts from friends and family which makes me realize how much this baby is going to be loved! it also makes me want to start getting his room semi-ready so i have a place to put his things...sounds like a weekend project for us!! ok, that was a long intro...had to catch you people up on all the amazing things that have happened in the past few weeks!

Stats:

• Weeks preggo: 18 weeks 5 days
• size of baby: about the size/length of a bell pepper; 5 1/2" head to toe, around 7 oz.
• My weight: 129
• Fun Fact: my baby is busy flexing his arms and legs! no wonder i felt him move ;)

How am I feeling?

• Emotionally: overwhelmed with joy from this baby! still sensative, but honestly thats nothing new!
• Physically: tired, but not as tired as before...starting to get my energy back a little. started to exercise again...just walking and a little dancing on the Wii...nothing too strenuous :) i have started to get some bad headaches and backaches lately...im sure more of this to come in the future!
• Cravings: nothing new really...fruit, burgers, pickles...and i have been drinking a lot more water lately...i down a bottle every morning when i get out of the shower. i still need to drink more, but for those of you who know me well, getting 3 bottles of water in a day is pretty much a miracle. Still drinking my cokes, but dont worry, im keeping up with the caffeine intake!
• Fun Stuff: trying to name our little man...and i have learned from my friend Emily that it is best to keep your ideas of names to yourself or you will get discouraged:) just because some people may not like it, doesnt mean its not the right name. so, i will be keeping our ideas to myself until we settle on something. its our baby people, so dont be dissing my names! :) if you know me and richard at all, you know it will be something unique, with character and meaning, but nothing too crazy...we dont want our kid to get made fun of either ;)

Well, i think i have ranted and raved enough for the time being...the Akin family is doing great overall and cant wait to meet my little guy, but we have a long way to go! i thought i would add some pics from our new orleans trip since i have figured this thing out now! hope everyone has a great rest of the week...halfway mark, here we come!!!

Week 15 & 16

So, oops! im a little late on my blog, i know people, i know. I didnt realize that many of you actually look forward to my ranting and raving every week, haha :) so glad to know that now though! i just went thru a few weeks of being purely exhausted and never got around to doing it, work has been really busy and when i get home, i could barely force myself to cook dinner or exercise, much less write the blog..i did start on it the other night and told myself i wasnt posting again until i uploaded my pics to my new laptop...well, it took me (computer illiterate apparently) like an hour or so to figure out how to go back and drop pics into my old posts, but for some reason it kept putting them all at the bottom of all of my blogs and in no particular order..needless to say, i gave up that night. good news is, there are pics up, you just need to scroll to the bottom of the page, i did manage to rearrange them in some sort of "order" at least :) i think it will be easier next time when i just add them in as i type, but i personally gave up on making it look pretty for the past blogs, so i apologize. i dont know if pregnancy brain has kicked in or what, but i was getting frustrated and had been staring at a computer all day anyways...so there is my explanation for being late, ha. now for the exciting news....one week from today we find out if we are having a boy or girl!!!! i cant believe that its here already!! we are super pumped and cant wait for the big news! hopefully it will make the "naming process" a little easier, and its not that we cant think of anything, its that we have thought of too many options...like 3 pages of options...i think when we find the right name, we will just know, kinda like a wedding dress, right???
anyways, we had a great trip down to New Orleans for new years, the saints game was so much fun and a great one to be at, considering drew brees threw like 5 TD passes and i was a witness :) thanks again Alicia for the tickets! now, i have to admit, it was the earliest i have ever been to bed on new years...we did more of a "food crawl" rather than a "pub crawl" and i must say, i think my idea was brilliant! we ate some really delicious food while we were down there, and were back at our hotel by like 10:30 or so...richard had to wake me back up for the countdown, but o well, i slept really well in that fancy bed, so i didnt care! i am just thankful that my husband is not a big drinker or partier, so the night was perfect for all three of us with no complaining! it was the "back to reality" part the following Tuesday that really bummed me out. o well, it is what it is!
Stats:

• Weeks preggo: 16 weeks 6 days, so technically almost 17 weeks!
• size of baby: about the size of an avocado, 4 1/2" long, 3 1/2 oz.
• My weight: 126
• Fun Fact: my baby is growing nails right now, ha...weird to think about!

How am I feeling?

• Emotionally: still crying over the stupid stuff, like OnStar commercials where the kid calls in and saves the moms life cause she is going into a diabetic coma, or having a stroke..things like that. but i think i am a little more adjusted to the hormones overall...maybe.. :) also, just so overwhelmed and excited that we are having this baby and next week i can call it a he or she...which also makes me get emotional. momma...dont you start crying too! (us lofton ladies are criers)
• Physically: i am hoping i am starting to get some of my energy back these days, trying to incorporate my walking routine once again. i was finally starting to exercise regularly when we found out i was pregnant, then i lost all energy and was not feeling well...needless to say, exercising went out the window! im hoping soon enough i will feel like dancing to my micheal jackson on the wii again :) but for now, walking is good enough, at least its something!
• Cravings: still nothing too weird, in my opinion...granted i did eat some chicken casserole for breakfast today, haha. i was so tired of grits or oatmeal!! i have had to have a whopper with extra pickles at least once a week. and may or may not have drank out of the pickle jar the other night, but hey, i pretty much did that before i was pregnant..dont judge me :) other than that, i think i have stayed pretty normal..well at least i thought that before i started typing this section...hmmm.
• Fun Stuff: are you kidding...the only thing i can think about right now is finding out the sex!! and picking out a name :) i cant wait till next Thursday!!!
• O, and i forgot to mention that not only has my appetite increased dramatically, so has my road rage. i literally almost put my car in park and had a few words with a lady on Monday morning..i have never been so serious about getting out of my car to go off on someone as in that moment..just so you all know, i stayed in my car, and just had a "talking to" with her thru my rear view mirror..i may or may not have made certain hand gestures, but i dont care, i felt better after that :)

Well, since i decided to once again, write this post at work, im not even going to attempt to add any pictures in, but we should be caught up on all of my "weekly photos" at this point..hopefully i can keep up with this better once i get more time/energy, etc. to do it at home and add pics as i go..o, and obviously everything went great at our appointment last week! my appointment got delayed at first because my poor doctor had kidney stones :( but all was well when we finally got in. heartbeat was 148 this time, slower than last time...so my doctor said she wasnt guessing on the sex this time..at first she thought boy, then she said it sounded like a girl, now she refuses to guess, haha. guess i have thrown everyone off! so, if you have any guesses...please share! i love to hear everyones opinion!! hope everyone has a good rest of the week, its almost friday, woo hoo!!

kristin