exodus31three

Wednesday, May 8, 2013

18 weeks

How far along are you?

18 weeks - almost halfway!

I feel like my belly is finally "rounding" out a little more

How big is Baby?

He's as big as a sweet potato - Weighs between 6-7 ounces and measures 5.5 inches long - He's busy flexing his arms & legs, yawning, hiccuping, rolling & twisting

Weight Gain?

+3 lbs.

Gender?

a sweet baby boy!

Maternity Clothes?

Still just shirts...although I need pants the worst. I have a few capri maternity pants, but have not worn them yet. I can "fit" in my normal jeans if I leave them unbuttoned! I'm hesitant to buy maternity jeans since I'll be pregnant throughout the summer. I put up all my winter clothes last weekend and now my closet is pretty empty because I wasn't able to take out but about 1/3 of my summer clothes.

Stretch Marks?

Sleep?

Terrible - I wake up so many times during the night now and can't go back to sleep. My legs always feel restless which drives me crazy and I can never get comfortable. A few nights ago I felt like I was awake half the night because I couldn't stop worrying about the crib we pick out and if it will deliver in time. So random, but it made me lose some sleep for sure!

Symptoms?

I think my symptoms list is growing, but I still feel really good despite all of it.

leg/foot cramps at night - acid reflux that began last weekend. yuck. - (less frequent) headaches - back pain - round ligament pain

Movement?

Yes - I feel him so often now and I love it

Food Cravings/Aversions?

Still no aversions - I've been craving grape juice for some reason. I never drank it pre-pregnancy, but it's been so good lately. Will went to the store yesterday before I got off work and bought me regular grape juice AND sparkling grape juice. Delicious. Still craving salsa.

Labor Signs?

Belly Button in or out?

What I miss?

Sleeping good and through the night :(

I've been looking at the body pillows, but haven't bought one yet. I keep telling Will that we desperately need a king size bed...especially if I get a body pillow AND we have the two dogs sleeping with us! I think part of the reason I don't sleep good is because I feel too crowded...but I feel too bad kicking the dogs out! Priorities, right? Ha! (P.S.-why can't money grow on trees?!)

What I am looking forward to?

Painting his nursery

Best moment of the week?

I THINK we picked out the colors/theme for Crew's nursery. I still have this fear that I'll get tired of whatever we do before Crew actually even arrives and I'll want to change it! Hopefully that's not the case. We also picked out the crib (I think). We are going to try and go register this Saturday which I'm pretty excited about. It's overwhelming thinking about all that we need to register for!

Daddy’s feeling?

"Can't wait for Crew! Cleaned out some more stuff from the baby room yesterday getting ready for his arrival!!"

12 weeks 15 weeks

13 weeks 16 weeks

14 weeks 17 weeks

Monday, May 6, 2013

Weekend Recap - Mexican Food

I'm coming out of this weekend with only two pictures to show for it. That's a big change for me. Nonetheless, it was a great weekend and I'm a little upset it went by so fast.

Friday night we stayed home for dinner and then made some brownies to celebrate Will passing his second Praxis. I'm sure we watched reruns of Big Bang Theory that night.

On Saturday morning we got up to help Tyler and Amanda move into their new place. It was fun helping, but it sure wore me out! They treated us to our favorite Mexican restaurant for lunch too!

After running a few errands that afternoon we came home and napped until about 6pm. Told you I was tired! We went to dinner with our friends Mark and Brooke at Frida's in Midtown...which also happens to be Mexican food. You know I'm a sucker for Mexican and salsa so it didn't bother me at all! Yum!

Saturday night was terrible on the pregnancy symptom front. Remember those round ligament pains I told you about? Saturday night was the worst it's ever been. I've had these pains about 3-4 times so far and it's always on the left side. Usually I can lay on my right side and that helps, but for some reason nothing was working. I stood in a warm shower for a while hoping that would help. Come to find out, all of the extra activity of our Saturday morning made the ligament pains worse. Oops.

Sunday morning we slept in since I had been up so much the night before. We missed church, but thankfully we can listen to it on the podcast later this week. My parents brought over some clothes for Crew that afternoon. I think they went a little crazy over some sales at Dillard's and a few other places. Fine with me! This was Will's favorite outfit so far. He says Crew can wear this when they go running together. Looks like we'll need to register for a running stroller!

After couples group last night, we had dinner with some friends at Young Avenue Deli in Midtown. It was our first time there and we really liked it. Their sweet potato fries were amazing. And that's coming from someone who absolutely hates sweet potatoes! I think I liked them so much because they were covered in cinnamon and sugar and you couldn't even taste the sweet potato.

Overall, a great weekend with so many great friends!

Friday, May 3, 2013

a good day + a proud wife

My day was made before 10:00 this morning! Will called me to say that he passed his second Praxis test! Some of you may know that he is about to graduate from seminary so there's a chance you're wondering why on earth he was taking the Praxis. Let me fill you in:

Will graduated from University of Memphis in 2010 with a Bachelor's degree in Communications & Management. He did this because he already felt called to pursue seminary with an intent to work as a youth pastor someday. So he started at Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary in Bartlett in the Fall of 2010. In 2011 he got hired at a local church to be their youth pastor. We loved (and still do love) those teenagers and just enjoyed being a part of their lives. Will is so great with teenagers and that is something I love about him. He has such a gift of communicating and teaching that I think they really love too.

Last August we felt God was calling us to join a church in downtown Memphis. (Island Community Church) This church sees that there's a big need for outreach and ministry in the downtown area and we are so glad to now be a part of all that they are doing. We are both passionate about missions and outreach so we feel like ICC is perfect for us. Though Will is not on staff at this church, we know this is where God wants us right now.

As Will started his senior year at MABTS in the Fall of 2012, we began to pray and talk about what was next for us. Were we going to pursue working on staff at other churches? (either in Memphis or possibly out of state) Neither one of us knew what the next step was. Will had talked about teaching high school off an on before (for about the past year), but it never went much further than just tossing around the idea. We would not talk about it for a few months and then he would randomly mention it again. It was obvious that God was trying to get our attention with this teaching idea. Will began to look into what the requirements were for teaching high school and we quickly found out that he would have to get ANOTHER Masters degree in teaching/education. I think that was a tough pill for Will to swallow for a while. He loves school, but he couldn't help thinking that he went to seminary for nothing and that the past three years were all a waste of time. I tried to encourage him as much as I could, but still wanted him to decide for himself what it was that he felt God calling him to do without my nagging.

After many, many months of praying, he finally decided that he does want to teach high school. I was so excited for this decision because I can see how much potential he has with so many teenagers. If you know Will already, you know the sense of humor he has. He's such a goofball and so hilarious. He's going to make a great teacher!

Will took his first Praxis test at the beginning of April and took the second one today...and passed them both! He's now certified to get a temporary teaching license and has 3 years to complete the next Masters program. I am so, so proud of his accomplishments and his willingness to follow God's plan for his life no matter the cost (or amount of school!) He is an amazing leader for our family and is going to be such a great dad to little Crew.

If you live in or around Memphis you know of the situation with the school systems right now. Basically there's just a big mess with the city and county school systems trying to merge. We had someone tell us that it's a terrible time for Will to be searching for a teaching job (not very encouraging!) because they are cutting a bunch of teaching positions. Will and I both know and feel strongly that God led us this far and that He has a plan. Of course it's scary not knowing what's going to happen with the school systems and if there will be a position open for him to start in the Fall, but we are fully confident that God is going to take care of us. If you think about it, please pray for us and for Will to have the opportunity to teach this next school year. I get so excited thinking about how influential he could be as a teacher and I want more than anything for him to have the opportunity to do that this year. He still would love to teach full time and work/be really involved with a church here in Memphis. I know God didn't have Will go to seminary for no reason. He's had a plan all along and we're trying hard to follow in His footsteps instead of making our own path.

Thank you so much for your prayers!

P.S.-If you're in Memphis and have any connections with high school principals with Memphis City Schools or Shelby County Schools, please let me know!

Thursday, May 2, 2013

what's in a name

We had so many people ask us how we chose the name for our baby boy so I just thought I'd share with all of you also!

When it came to picking out names, I had a running list of baby name ideas on my phone since probably before we got married. If we were having a girl, we would have used a name that we've both loved since the day we got married. The boy name was giving us some problems though. I had several "cute" names listed, but none of them really stuck out to either one of us. A few months before I got pregnant (my most recent "baby fever" days), I was browsing the internet for boy names - again, because I felt we were destined to have a boy - and I came across the name Crew. I loved it. I thought for sure there was no way that Will would ever go for this name though. Will is a traditional kind of guy. He likes old-fashioned things. MUCH to my surprise, he loved the name too! I couldn't believe it.

Ok, fast forward to becoming pregnant and the name game begins. We had to choose a middle name for our sweet Crew. The day that we told Will's family that we were pregnant, one of the first questions was, "Are you going to name him William?" At first we said no. (And kept saying no until two days before the party actually!)

Side note: I had been searching thebump and babycenter for name ideas and came across a message board that was discussing the name Crew. About 95% of everyone who commented said that it was an awful name and 'why would anyone ever name their kid that?' Usually something like this would have convinced me to instantly choose another name, but that just shows how much I still loved it. AND that message board was in 2009-2010....soooo 3 years ago!

Every middle name we came up with just didn't "flow" with Crew as the first name. It was so frustrating! There were a lot of names that sounded good with Crew as the middle name, but we didn't want that. We wanted him to have Crew as his first name and go by his first name.

Last Thursday night, our ultrasound day, we were at dinner discussing names. We had already given Kelly the envelope with the gender in it so she was waiting on the name decision from us so she could prepare the name reveal chalkboard for the party too. We had been going back and forth a thousand times on whether or not we were going to use William or not. I asked Will if he wanted the baby's name to have William in it if he were a boy...and he said it didn't matter to him. Still getting nowhere with deciding, I asked him by approaching the question differently. "Say we have all boys one day, would it be important and meaningful to you that one of them has William in their name?" And he said yes. Finally! A decision has been made. That only took forever. Men.
And so his name would be Crew William Kassner.

Side note #2: Before our gender reveal party on Saturday, I really regretted telling people that we were going to do the name reveal then too. I take things very personally and am so sensitive to what others are thinking so I was dreading revealing the name we had picked out. Crew is definitely not a "normal" name so I was scared that when we pulled the paper off the chalkboard that I would see people making faces at it. Actually, I don't think I even looked at all 60 of our friends and family standing there because I didn't want to see it if they made a face! Luckily, everyone was so supportive of our name choice. Whew!

I'll admit, I've never been one to care too much about carrying on family names, but something about thinking about our son and the meaningfulness of William in his name kind of makes me a little emotional! (Blame it on the hormones!) Of course, his daddy is a William...and if our baby gets just his daddy's character alone I will be so thankful. He's got a great role model to look up to!

But does the name William go past just my husband's name? Ohhh boy, does it!

First of all, my dad's first name is William...another great "William" for Crew to look up to!...and he's quite the jokester too!

My maternal great grandfather was Willie, or Dadaw as we called him! (If you remember, I got my tattoo in memory of my great grandmother, Willie's wife...aka Mamaw) So you already know I've got such an emotional connection thinking about Mamaw and Dadaw.

Now onto Will's side of the family.

(I'm mostly typing this out in case we ever lose the actual piece of paper with the family history on it...at least it'll be on the blog!)

William F. Baker, born 1789

interesting fact: William F. bought 800 acres of land in 1848 on what is now Lamar Ave. in Memphis

William Rufus Baker, (son) born sometime between 1810-1820

William Robert Baker, (nephew of William Rufus) born sometime between 1860-1865

William Franklin Baker, (grandson of William Robert) born 1918

William Elton Baker, (son of William Franklin; my husband's maternal grandfather) born 1941

William Elton, Jr., born 1964

William Stephen Kassner, (my husband; William E. Jr.'s nephew) born 1988

Crew William Kassner, coming 2013

Wow, that's over 2 centuries of William's in the family. Amazing!

17 weeks

How far along are you?

17 weeks!

How big is Baby?

He is as big as an onion - Measures 5 inches from head to bottom (legs don't get measured yet) and weighs 5 ounces - His skeleton is hardening and he's developing "baby fat" and sweat glands - He can also move his joints now

Weight Gain?

Somehow still just +3 lbs. at my 16 week appointment. Don't know how because of all the food I eat, but hey, I'll take it!

Gender?

IT'S A BOY!

Maternity Clothes?

Still just a few maternity shirts, but I don't think I really need them yet. I've been wearing a lot of dresses to work with this Spring weather. I still have not bought any maternity pants, though I know I'll regret waiting so long once I do!

Stretch Marks?

Nope

Sleep?

Sleep has gotten worse in the past week. I get up in the night to go to the bathroom and it's been taking me 1-2 hours to go back to sleep. I wake up several times tossing and turning because I can't get comfortable. I know I shouldn't be sleeping on my back anymore, but now it's so hard not to! It may be because I'm not supposed to that makes it seem so tempting. I've never been a back sleeper, but now it feels so comfortable.

Symptoms?

Let's see...more acne on my cheeks beside my nose and on my nose - back and neck pain at the end of the day - Every few days when I'm eating I get a 'wave' of nausea but then it goes away a few seconds later. Weird. - What I thought was bladder pressure last week actually turns out to be round ligament pain according to my doctor. Can I just say OUCH?! He also said that the left side (where I was hurting) stretches more than the right. It happened again this afternoon and hurts just when I'm standing. It's ALL worth it for our sweet Crew though!

Movement?

YES! I felt him first on Sunday night, but still wasn't sure if what I was feeling was him moving or not. Monday I felt him a lot and have been feeling all his movements ever since then. It's such a surreal feeling...just knowing there's a tiny life inside of you kicking around! I told Will that the only way to describe how it felt was like popcorn popping in my belly. Crew (so far) seems to be active in the mornings and when I go to bed. On Monday night I tried to get Will to feel him moving, but as soon as he put his hand on me the kicking stopped. Will says he was able to feel it last night. It's so exciting!

Food Cravings/Aversions?

Ice cream! - specifically from Chick-fil-A

Salsa - this is nothing new for me. We love Mexican food. Love it. So when Will asks what sounds good for dinner, 9 times out of 10, I say "salsa"...not necessarily the Mexican food, but just the chips and salsa. I'm sure my Mom is laughing as she reads this because her pregnancy craving was Pancho's salsa.