A few things

18 months
I’ve started telling people that Brennen is one and a half. That seems so crazy to me! The biggest change for him the past couple months has been his vocabulary. It is HUGE. He communicates really well and has a really clear voice that’s easy to understand. He’s good at difficult consonants like “L” and he likes saying the names of all his aunts and uncles. The only one he can’t really get is my sisters. Sorry, Christena. Your name is just a little tricky. :) Matt took him to the doc the other day and he’s in the 75% for length and head and 25% for weight. We love him so much, he is a crack up!

Work
I’ve been working full time for a week and a half and I love teaching music. I love getting out of the house and making money for our family and I’m blessed that I get to do something I love. This teacher I’m subbing for just left it all up to me so I’m doing all of the planning, too. I feel like I’m the “real” teacher and it’s been good for me. But as much as I like it you can bet the second 3:30 comes around I’m busting it home to see my little boy (and Matt, too).

Baby #2
I’ve been feeling really good this pregnancy! At this point in my first pregnancy I was about 11 pounds heavier and I don’t feel as big with this one. I actually feel like I have more energy than I did with the first one (for now at least) and I haven’t been very sick. He moves around a ton and I love it! He has the same movement patterns that Brennen did and I’m hoping that doesn’t mean he’s going to be just as wild as Brennen. The one difference is I am WAY more moody. Yikes. It helps with classroom management, though. :) And as usual, the kids at school say some pretty cute and funny things. I’ll have to list those in a separate post.

Time of year
I really get to feeling sorry for myself sometimes and I let negative feelings override the positive ones. Whenever I remember to count my blessings it gets better, though, and this time of year makes it easy to do that. We were having family home evening tonight and I was “teaching” the lesson about the birth of the Savior and when I started reading what the angels said to the shepherds I looked at Brennen and I don’t know how much he was getting but he was quiet and just looking at me with big eyes and I couldn’t hold back the tears. It really is such a blessing that the Savior was born and tonight I was really thinking about how grateful I am for this time of year we have to celebrate that. I’m glad that Christmas is on a Sunday because I’ll get to attend church, partake of the sacrament, and really think about the Savior and what Christmas really means.

Oh Christmas Tree

Matt and I have a tradition of going up to the mountains to cut down a tree every year. We had to wait until after finals this year and I was pretty impatient to get our tree up but it was worth the wait! A couple days ago we went up to the Snowy Range and found our best tree yet. Brennen was happy and excited to see all the trees and then he helped us put ornaments on ours later. He also really loves the Christmas lights and will go up to our decorated tree and say, “tee! lights!” and he’s actually really good about not knocking stuff off of it.

And just because I know you all want to see how large I am,, here’s me at just under 25 weeks.

The return of the fat, random thoughts, and family pics!

I love being pregnant for so many reasons but I still have a really hard time accepting being fat!

I worked my buns off this spring and summer to get my pre-preg weight back and it seems like all that work was for nothing ‘cause I’m just going to have to do it again. It’s hard because I know I’ll never be as gorgeous as my friends, sisters and especially my sisters-in-law. Deep down I know it’s ok and that people who really love me will love me no matter what but it’s hard when I already feel a bit worthless and then I look in the mirror and want to barf ha ha!

And really, it’s my own fault because I can choose to eat better even though I’m pregnant.

All that aside, I’m feeling great! I don’t worry about the baby like I did with Brennen because I have more faith this time that everything is ok in there with this little squirt. I’m not extra tired or swollen yet (except for all that extra fat. HA!) so this really is the “honeymoon” period of pregnancy for me!

I love Christmas but I find myself getting stressed about what to get for people and where in the devil the extra money is going to come from to buy those things. I need to remember that it’s not about the material stuff, it’s about celebrating the birth of our Savior and I just need to chill out.

Matt is almost done with the semester! Today is his last day of class and then he has three tough finals next week. It will be so nice for him to be done but next semester is supposed to be pretty brutal and he’ll be taking 5 more credits than he took this semester. But after that it’s rotations!

We went to Lyman for Thanksgiving and then Brennen got to help decorate the Christmas tree at Grandma and Grandpa’s house. So here are some pics from the weekend.

We also drove to Evanston on Saturday morning to have a girl I went to high school with take some family pictures for us. Brennen was NOT happy and it was probably just too cold for him so we only got a couple of all of us and none of just him but the few we got really turned out great and I think she did such a good job!