27 weeks

This week Gray weighs a little over two pounds and has grown about another half inch since last week. Although his lungs still have a long way to go, his survival chances if he were born now increase to 90% around this week. It's a relief to have gotten this far but we are still praying every day that our sweet boy will continue cooking for quite a while longer. Gray now has a more normal sleeping pattern and he is opening and closing his eyes. He is still the most active at night. Almost the minute I get in bed he goes to town. His movement becomes more distinct by the week but it isn't keeping me awake at night yet so I'm not complaining about it one bit. I still just live for the evenings when I can finally be still and feel our active little guy practicing his soccer moves inside of my belly. I got to experience him having the hiccups for the first time last week. Paul and I were in bed watching American Idol and he was dancin and scootin all around. All of a sudden we noticed a constant, kind of jerky movement and as hard as it is to explain, we knew that's what it was. It was so exciting that Paul was able to feel them too. Have I mentioned how amazing this all is to me? I mean seriously, every day I am in awe and find it harder and harder to fathom. What an amazing God we serve!

I don't think I'd say I'm feeling great these days, but definitely still pretty good and have very little to complain about. I've had some pretty bad back pain for about two weeks now. I went to the doctor last week and they gave me a muscle relaxer. After almost a week, I can tell it is helping some, but it's still pretty painful. I am on my feet for at least 10 hours every day and by lunch time I am in quite a bit of pain. I go back to the doctor next Friday so we'll see if there is anything else they can give me or recommend for the pain. My guess is that they will just say it's due to this ever-growing front load I'm carrying around and that I might as well get used to it for the last 10-12 weeks. I've had such a great pregnancy though and feel blessed that this is the worst I've had to experience so far.

And now for the reveal of this week's heavy front loader...


Paul and I had a super busy weekend getting ready for the nursery furniture. We didn't stop moving from the time we got home from work Friday until about 9:00 Sunday night. We cleaned out closets at our house Friday night and loaded the car down with things to take to our storage unit my mom's garage. Saturday morning we were up early and in line at 7:30 for a local preschool children's sale. It was well worth the sleep sacrifice! We got a car seat and base that look brand new for 40 bucks! It wasn't the car seat we registered for but one we'd looked at and later that day we stopped by Bed, Bath and Beyond to take our car seat off of the registry and found out it had been discontinued. That made our car seat deal even more exciting! That my friends is not a "coincidence", rather a straight up blessing from God! At the sale we also got an exersaucer, bouncer, Baby Bjorn, two pairs of shoes, and a pair of pants and shorts...ALL for 100 bucks (including the car seat)!! We were so excited about the good deals we got. Then we headed to Babies R Us for a one day only diaper sale and stocked up on some Pampers. I become more like my Gram every day-good deals get me almost as excited as eating and going to the beach! The rest of the day was spent taking every. single. thing. out of my mom's garage and re-arranging it to make more room for some of our stuff so we can make room for this little person that will soon come to live with us. Paul and my mom wouldn't let me do much so I mainly supervised and ran to Target a few times to buy more storage bins. We got the last of our stuff back in there about 5 minutes before the storms came Saturday night. Now we have room to move a little more of our stuff this weekend to make room for the nursery furniture, which I can hardly wait for!

Sunday I went maternity clothes shopping with three other preggo friends at Concord Mills. I didn't have much luck with clothes but it was fun and I got a few good deals for Gray. Carter's was having a huge sale and I could have easily gotten everything they had. We've bought very few clothes for Gray because we are getting a lot of hand-me-downs, so I can't resist buying some things for him here and there.

I promise that everything he has and wears will not be elephants, but dang they are so cute!



Paul and I had seen and loved this little outfit in Babies R Us but they didn't have a newborn size and we are pretty sure this is what we want to bring him home from the hospital in.


Okie dokie, I guess this is more than enough blogging for one day.
Y'all have a good week!