Victory. 22

So today is victory 22. I'm officially 22 weeks and just 2 more weeks til I can start counting down til D day. (If you've read in a previous post I'll start counting down at 24 weeks, which is the legal age of viability and the point at which doctors will try to save a baby if preterm labor happens). So I'm still holding my breath until then.

This past weekend celebrated Justin's grandmother's 80th birthday. It was quite the celebration with people comng and going all day and my absolute favorite part was when Mom Mom said "The secret to a long life is a clean life; no smoking, no drinking, and hard sex". I could have crapped myself when she blurted that out. She cracks me up. The cake was also pretty amazing. It was one made by the Ace of Cakes guy and it was made to look like the game of life gameboard. It was pretty darn cool. Here's a picture that Maggie took of it.

On Saturday we also celebrated our friend Sharon's baby shower. It was very nice and she got a lot of great gifts. One of my favorites was the book Mandy gave her of the pictures she took at the bare bellies shoot. I loved it so much I decided that we would order one of our pictures too. I can't wait.

This friday my sister in law is going to start painting the spare room to officially make it the baby's room. We can't wait! We've decided that the room will be two colors. The bottom half of the walls will be a dark red color and the top half will be a tan color. And eventually we'll put a trim up in between the colors. We've also decided on some furniture. We have a crib and changing table that was given to us, which is really awesome, but the crib does not have multiple mattress settings which depending on how things go, I may need (if for somereason I can't do too much bending, etc.) Justin also really wanted dark furniture. So we decided to get a crib, armoir, and dresser (that doubles as a changing table) in a few weeks. The current crib and changing table will go to either my mom's or his mom's house for when they have the baby. Also, the crib we are getting has the 4 mattress settings and also turns into a toddler bed AND a full size bed, so we're pretty excited about that. We also finally finished updating the registry (I think, lol).

This Saturday is a big day for us as it marks our 1 year anniversary as an official married couple. (We were married at the court house last year on March 7th). This is a great day for us and I've very excited for it.

In other excitement, when I got home from school tonight I wanted to listen to the baby, so I did. When i was done, I laid in bed for a few minutes and actually felt, with my hands, the baby kicking. It was the coolest thing EVER!!! I was so excited I tried to video tape it with my phone but it didn't work because the lighting in our room isn't so great. So, I grabbed the video camera real quick which has a light on it and started to video tape it! Unfortunately the baby didn't like the light so he wouldn't kick when the light was on my belly. So I grabbed the doppler and tried that hoping that pressing down with it would get him to move. The baby still didn't like the light but I did get three minor kicks recorded. I'm not sure if it's really obvious to anyone else who watches it, but we'll see. I really wanted Justin to see it, so hopefully it worked. AND I really hope he can feel it himself when he gets home from work tonight! Hopefully the baby's not too sleepy. Ever since i felt him kick with my hand, I've been feeling him kick from the inside too. It's weird though, because it doesn't feel like a kick at all. It justs feels like my stomach is rumbling. If you can imagine your intestines right up against your skin, it feels like a gas bubble passing through. But it's definitely the baby! FINALLY!!! Hopefully he keeps it up.

And to end the post, here are some 22 week pictures (taken this morning) and a few other random pictures. Enjoy!

The first three are my 22 week pictures.

This is a picture of Carlin and I taking a nap and Carlin using Jackson as a pillow :)

And this is a picture of Jackson's finished letters. My sister in law Wenke painted them this past weekend with the same colors will be using in the room :)

This is another 21 week 5 days picture. This was taken at Mom Mom Waicker's 80th birthday. It's of Maggie showing Jackson some cousin love!