Button is Popping!

Written September 14, 2013.

It's been a whirlwind couple of weeks with the start of school, and all my energy has been devoted to getting to know my new students, making sure I'm doing a solid job of meal planning for the week, and--of course--growing a human. There's not much energy left over for this mama--which is why you're getting a 2-for-the-price-of-one post.

On the first day of school, my Button bump became decidedly harder and more fixed; instead of taking all day before I looked pregnant, there were noticeable changes right from the time my alarm went off at 6AM. Of course, that also means my school clothes aren't fitting as well as I might hope, so there's been a lot of Bella band-ing to get me through the days. At 17 weeks in the evening (as you can see above), the bump was quite substantial, which is why 18 weeks (taken in the afternoon) looks perhaps a bit less obvious.

Actually, that would be 18 weeks, 2 days. It was quite a job to get my photo done this week! The first attempt was on Thursday night, the actual day I turned 18 weeks, when I had a 14-hour day at school, thanks to Back to School night. When Jeff came upstairs to get my photo, this was all he found:

So, 18 weeks exactly was a bit of a bust. Instead, we went for 18 weeks, 1 day, on Friday night, before we went out to dinner with friends. I'd just bought my first maternity dress--which I was super-excited to wear--but the amount of primping and preening I did made us run late, so all we managed was this shot:

And so we arrived at today, 18 weeks, 2 days, and the photo at the top of this post. It's quite a milestone--I'm wearing my first ever pair of maternity jeans, and I love them! I was trying to hold out until after our anatomy scan, but Button didn't really get on board with that plan, so I caved. Oh--and we have one more photo to show from this week (one that we're planning to repeat in the weeks to come!):

It's hard to believe that the next post I write will be the one after our anatomy scan, after we (hope and pray to) see our healthy little wiggly worm, after we find out whether we've got a little boy or girl on the way in February. And it will finally be the post where Button goes public in the world.

Such big steps for such a little one.