It's just one of those days...

Sitting here listening to Lana Del Rey Radio on Pandora, playing around with photos and hacking the husbands Facebook account. It's a lot of fun. :-)

Yesterday was Charlie's 9 month doctors appointment and of course Dr. Hubbs didn't tell us anything we didn't already know. Our little bug is perfect :-) She weighs a whopping 22 lbs and is 27.4 inches long. Last Friday she started crawling and then out of no where yesterday she started pulling up to her knees on her toy box. I guess this means she's going to be pulling up to standing position and walking before I know it. I can't believe how fast this is all happening! Make it stop! Just kidding, I enjoy watching her grow, learn and discover things.

She only had to get one shot yesterday so she was pretty happy about that. Here is day 20.

Today is the last day to post my week 3 image for the lyric "It's like you're my mirror, my mirror staring back at me" for The Photographer Within's P52. I had this whole idea planned out in my head that incorporated Charlie but she just didn't want to cooperate with me this week. So instead of Charlie, I completed another selfie.

Day 21. Week 3.

I feel like it was kind of cliche to take a picture of myself in the mirror. I guess I was a little uninspired this week. Hopefully I can have some fun with next week's lyric.

I haven't really talked much about my weightless journey recently. I weigh in again Saturday but I'm currently down 7 lbs. Hopefully I'll be down another 2 by the time I weigh in again. I've really been doing great running and eating right. I feel so much better than I did 20 days ago. I'm not really trying to diet, I'm just trying to focus on making lifestyle changes and not eating crap that I was before. Luckily for me I've got a lot of motivation $$$ and some good friends along for the ride. :-)

Christina Perri's Jar of Hearts just came on. Wow. I love this song, it reminds me of a million different things.  I think I'll go ahead and sign off for tonight and sing this song at the top of my lungs. (Hope my neighbors can't hear me.)

xxx

Ryan

xxx

Ryan

Hey-o friends!

I love saying that I'm going to keep up with my blog only to forget about it for 6 months and then realize that I should write something.

Well....duh dun duh.....I had a baby! Miss Charlotte Leigh Cecil was born on her due date, April 14, 2013 at 12:31 pm. She weighed 8lbs, 2 oz and was 19 inches long. She was totally perfect and had the most hilarious cone head for a good couple of hours after she came out.

The day prior to me going into labor was UofL's spring football game. At this point I was convinced that Charlie was never going to make her appearance and I was already planning her first birthday inside the womb so I decided to waddle my 9 month preggo butt down to Papa John's Cardinal Stadium with Tiff & Fredie and have some fun. After the basketball team was announced during "half time" we decided to split and go get some food. We went to The Cardinal Cafe to grab some grub.  My back was starting to bother me just a little when we were eating so I was ready to get home and relax.

April 13th was opening day of Turkey Season so Ryan had been hunting all morning and he managed to wrangle himself a bird. So he was dealing with that most of the day. We went to bed that night and around 1230 I woke up having contractions. I was always worried that I wasn't going to know when I was actually in labor but I knew that it was going down! I started timing my contractions at 8 minutes apart. By 2 am they were 6 minutes apart and then by 3am they were 4 minutes apart so I knew that we needed to head to the hospital. We put Rexie outside, grabbed our bag and then got on the road.

As we were driving my contractions were getting worse so Ryan started making the phone calls to let our parents know that we were heading to the hospital. When we got there, they examined me and told me that I was going to be having a baby today. That's when shit got real! Yikes!

I got my epidural around 530 am and after that the rest of the morning was a breeze. We had family in and out to visit and I was eating a ton of popsicles so all was good. Ryan took a nap and I played Candy Crush most of the morning. I was too excited to sleep.

My doctor came in around 1115 am and told me we were going to get this show on the road. I was nervous! After an hour and some change of pushing our little baby girl came out and it was the most awesome thing ever. I asked if she had all of her fingers and toes (she did) and I asked if she was cute (she is) haha. After that almost everything else is a blur. I remember hanging out, then being moved upstairs, then eating some food and we had a lot of visitors that day. We have a huge family and some awesome close friends that came to visit us that first day.

We stayed in the hospital until Tuesday and then finally got to come home. But that's worth a whole seprate post. Those first few days were rough.....more on that later. I'm blogged out for the day. I really do plan on keeping up with this....haha.

I'm a tiger. Rawr!

Until next time...........................

Well would ya look at that?

So much for keeping up with my blog last year huh? Let's just say I had A LOT going on over the past 11 months and couldn't really find the time to sit down and tell my little three followers on my blog what was going on with my life. Besides, they know, we're real life friends too!

Since the last time I've posted, one of my baby sister heads got married, I stopped running, and I've gained oh about 30 pounds or so. Yeah....that happened. But at least it's for a good reason. I mean, you can't really grow another human being in your belly without gaining a little weight ya know?

Pregnancy is pretty awesome, it's about the only time in my life I've been able to eat whatever I wanted and not really felt bad about it. I always said that I would have never wanted to be pregnant in the summer but I already feel like that might have been a better plan. It's SO hard to stay active in the winter! Walking outside sucks because it's freezing, walking on the treadmill is boring, and I can't go swimming. Maybe next time we will plan this out a little better haha. And boy do I miss running. I never in a million years thought that I could miss running the way I miss it right now. When I hit the 10-14 week mark in my pregnancy that's when my shortness of breath started and I haven't ran since. The last run I went on was with Ryan and I managed to squeak out a measly 1.5 miles. Some of my friends have become such awesome runners and I'm SO jealous of them every time I see their Nike posts on FB. I'm counting down the weeks until I can run again......sigh.......

So let's talk about this magnificent little human being that is currently kicking the crap out of me right now. First of all, the little bean is a girl and her name is Charlotte Leigh. Charlie for short. I'm so obsessed with her nickname. I should have just named her Charlie but I wanted her to have the option of a girls name and a boys nickname. Kids weren't always the nicest to me since I had a boys name, although now it's more common for a girl to be named Ryan. Not the case when I was 0-15 years old. Anywho, she is due on April 14th and I hope she comes a little earlier than that. I'm so anxious to meet her and I know Ryan is too. Everyday I feel like my belly grows another inch so if she does stay in there another 7 weeks I'm not going to be able to function properly anymore. And that could be a problem considering I plan on working until the minute I go into labor! Yikes!

Miss Charlie has another baby shower this weekend. She's already had one and she is very blessed and lucky to have so many people that love her and can't wait to meet her. Ryan finished painting the nursery a couple of weeks ago and I love it. I think it's so cute and it's exactly what I pictured it looking like. The idea came from Pinterest and Ryan drew his vision for it all free hand. Here is a picture of the progress....

The longer tree branch extends over the crib. My husband is super talented. I'm thinking I should be his manager and rent his services out to others for a reasonable fee. Hah! In all seriousness.....I love this room and I can't wait for Charlie to be in it!

Well, I that's all I have time for today. I do hope to really start keeping up with this more regularly! Thanks for reading friends!

Ryan & Charlie!