I've officially entered my third trimester! Crazy to think. I'm 28 weeks as of yesterday.  As I look toward my 31st birthday (coming up on Tuesday) and down the road at these last few months of pregnancy, I couldn't help but put together this fun wish list of items that I've been daydreaming about lately! Is it a surprise to anyone that many of these items revolve around comfort and relaxing? ;)

1. Yoga, chiropractic work, facials and massage from Bloom Retreat.
2. A wear-forever maxi for maternity & nursing. 
3. Fresh, soft, sleep pants.
4. Acai bowls and green juices from Nekter, our local juicery.
5. Noise cancelling headphones so I can soak into my Hypnobabies tracks (and later, jam out while baby's napping).
6. Beautiful Cosabella nursing bras.
7 & 8. Anything and everything from Hatch!
9. A pretty and comfortable robe for delivery and beyond. 
10. Storq maternity bundles are just perfect in every way. 
11. A cooling pillow to keep me comfy as the weather gets warm (I can't get enough pillows these days).

Pregnancy Post: The First Trimester

My first trimester already seems so long ago! I'm already at 25 weeks and little Figgy is apparently the size of an acorn squash. I have honestly loved being pregnant and I want to be able to remember all of the fun (and less than fun) details, so I thought it would be fun to recap some memories here. Here's a glimpse at my first trimester!

Symptoms

Nausea. I honestly got really lucky here, and never had to run to the bathroom sick, but I certainly didn't miss out on the infamous "morning sickness" completely (which as you've probably heard or experienced by now, is certainly not just a morning thing!). There were many occasions, especially when in the car, when I was overcome by nausea and had to lie down. Christmas day in particular, I remember driving down Route 1 and enjoying the beautiful curvy drive much less than normal!

Exhaustion. I do not know how folks have 2 babes (though I guess I might see for myself one day), because my only saving grace during the first few months was that I let myself lie down whenever I needed to, i.e. all the time.  For a few months there I relished the early darkness and rainy days and would be in my bed as early as possible, literally at 7:30pm or so on some nights.

Sore boobs. This was my first sign of pregnancy - the sensitivity was intense!! Seriously a brush against them felt like a punch on some days. Noticing this symptom early is what encouraged me to go ahead and take a pregnancy test.

Dizziness. Holy head rush. I never quite got used to how slooowwwly I needed to get up from a seated position to avoid a crazy dizzy spell!

Bad cold. At Thanksgiving I had an awful cold that just didn't seem to go away, and I totally blame Figgy for this one! ;)

Cravings

Flavored soda water, especially La Croix. I DOWNED this stuff. So many fun flavors!

Green freeze from Pressed Juicery. Oh my gosh yum. I loved the tart, healthy, sweetness of this sweet treat. If you haven't had your hands on one yet, you've gotta try it. Does anyone know of a juicery besides Pressed that offers their juice up in frozen form? Can't complain about a frozen treat that provides some green in your diet! 

Food in general. I was just straight up hungry, all day erry day.

Tart, fruity candy. In particular I loved starburst and tangy things like sour peaches. I also polished off a whole bag of old-school jelly beans one week (very different than jelly bellys!) with the help of Jim. I think that was a few weeks after Figgy was the size of a jelly bean and that "suggestion" from my pregnancy app made think of jelly beans every day until we had some.

Poptarts. I'm pretty sure that the magic of suggestive thinking was to blame here as well, because a friend of mine told me that she had craved poptarts during pregnancy, and voilá - that's all I wanted.

Cereal. I didn't eat cereal for years, and suddenly it's all I want (that one has been lasting the whole pregnancy!).

Aversions

Cooking, especially meat. And eggs. But if someone else cooked them I was happy to partake.

Vegetables. What a bummer! I usually love my veggies, and of course I wanted to be eating more than ever to feed Figgy her nutrients, but I just hated the sight of them. Especially ones like broccoli and brussel sprouts (usually favorites). So odd.

Pregnancy favorites:

Reads: I enjoyed browsing through Bringing Up Bébé, What to Expect when You're Expecting, and Expecting More.

Podcasts/Apps: I became obsessed with birth stories for awhile there and found a bunch to listen to on the Pregtastic podcast. And the Sprout app has been my favorite pregnancy app - it has great updates on Figgy's development and I love the visuals. 

Style: When I started popping out a bit but was still fitting into my regular clothes, I found myself wearing my favorite aztec scarf (similar to the one pictured above) on many days because it kept me cozy when I wasn't feeling well, and could be draped in a position to cover my tummy-pudge. Towards the end of first trimester I started wearing my leggings a lot, and using the "hair tie trick" to keep my buttoned pants together without having to fasten the button ;). (See me for more info on the hair tie trick...).

Beauty: I've been religiously using my Bio Oil to help prevent stretch marks. It has worked wonders in the past on scars so I have high hopes! It's also a delicious treat to use L'Occitane's almond milk concentrate. It's smooth and luxurious and super moisturizing. 

Other: I have been chugging water even more than normal during pregnancy, so my Nalgene bottle is a fave!

Exercise

Not much. I put exercise on hold for the most part due to exhaustion, but I did manage a few good yoga classes and walks around the trails nearby.

Memorable Moments

Finding out and telling Jimmy (which I dive into a bit here).

The first ultrasound. Watching the cute little heartbeat flutter and thinking, this is real!

Telling the grandparents. We were lucky to have pre-planned a trip to NJ to visit Jimmy's mom just a week after we found out, so we were pumped to tell her in person. I caught it on video and I'll love looking back at that moment :). On the same day, we FaceTimed with my parents and told them they would be grandparents (Figgy is the first grandchild on both sides). I screenshotted a few moments from that conversation and have looked back at them multiple times already, it's so fun seeing the emotion and excitement in their eyes!

The second ultrasound. Even though she looked less like a baby, and more like a little turd (it's true, she really did), it was so fun to see her moving and twisting all around! It was also wonderful to have Jimmy there for this one. His eyes lit up when he saw her appear in there. 

I'm only a few weeks away from the third trimester, so, more pregnancy faves to come!

Pink or Blue?

We had so much fun with finding out the baby's gender! It was such a special day. My mom was in town from Massachusetts for the weekend and she was able to join Jim and I for our mid-pregnancy ultrasound. I loved seeing our little one in there wiggling all around! Seeing the fingers and toes and cutie little profile was such a fun way to start the day. After the ultrasound and leading up to "the reveal" which we had planned for right around sunset, I got to spend a full day with my Mom, talking about pregnancy and parenthood, baby showers and weddings, traditions and lullabies. I'll never forget the time I had with her throughout that weekend, being able to talk to her in a completely different way - not only as mother-daughter, but as moms :).

We had decided that with Mom in town, to find out the baby's gender it might be worth doing one of those fun fancy, pregnancy reveals that are all the rage on Pinterest. But actually, Mom was my excuse -- I just really wanted to build up the suspense a little bit (I rarely get surprised so I figured I could create one for myself! It worked like a charm.).

We decided to bring the sealed envelope from the ultrasound to a balloon store and have them put colored confetti into a black opaque balloon, then mix that balloon into a bunch of other empty black balloons...so that we'd have to pop them until we found the colored confetti (blue or pink, of course!). But before we went for it with the popping, we called our other parents on Facetime so they could enjoy the moment with us too (which explains the photos of us playing with our iPhones!). There were 6 balloons total...and the suspense was awesome. I popped the first one knowing there was a pretty small chance that it would be "the one". Jim went next. Then me and so on. As we popped we kept thinking that the next one would be it, but we got through FIVE and still hadn't found the confetti-- it turned out to be in the last one we popped! What are the chances??! (No seriously... what are they? I can't do that math and I really want to know...).

We finally popped the last one, knowing it was either going to be IT or that the balloon girl had messed up big time, and the confetti burst out brilliantly. I'll let you check out the photos to find out which color popped out. It was SO MUCH FUN and I highly recommend this method for anyone who loves surprises!

Thanks so much to my dear friend Alexa who was kind enough to document the moment for us! 

Here are some photos if you'd like to see:

If you couldn't tell from the jumping up and down pics, I was pretty pumped to find out that the confetti was pink!  Three cheers for baby girls!

Tiny Living Update

This tiny-living thing is working for me.

It's been about four months since we transitioned into living in a 275-square-foot box-on-wheels. There were a lot more kinks to work out than you might think! We leveled it, then ended up moving it 15 feet over and leveling it again. We figured out how to get the best use of our solar energy, after quite a few evenings of snuggling up by camp lantern and candlelight. We realized that the solar situation we have now can't support the washer/dryer combo we'd purchased, so we moved it out and have been doing our laundry by rolling it down the hill in a wagon. It also can't really support the refrigerator when it's cloudy for 3+ days, so awhile there we lived off campus dining and pantry food. There's been a lot of tweaking and moving and fixing and organizing. Composting and gray water situating. And a lot of thingamabob purchasing (thank you Amazon Prime!).

I can't say it's been without trials but we've had so much fun piecing together this little puzzle of ours. Whether we planned to or not, we have been "nesting" since the day we found out about little figgy. It's been the perfect project to keep us focused on the present, encouraging us to put our energy into our home and ourselves. We're brought closer together each day, by the shared challenges, happy moments, and tight quarters. A productive weekend to us right now means accomplishing a tiny house project or two, and catching up fully on sleep (which makes my pregnant self incredibly happy). In this space that still feels new, we find adventure just by hiking in the nearby hills, watching hummingbirds outside our window, and sitting in our chairs outside the front door watching the deer and owls come out for the evening. We fit so well in this small space, made just for us, like a dreamed up treehouse or childhood fort. It's our teeny tiny home.

I can't wait to continue tracking our tiny home progression with figgy's growth. Found out the gender - got the tiny house wifi situated. Felt the first movements - set up our projector and screen. Maybe next week it'll be: size of a carrot - built the deck!

Thank you, tiny house, for growing with us! I'm so grateful for this season.