20 Weeks. Half Way!

Half way done little one! This week brought on a whole new set of challenges as well as a whole lot of love. I remember having some minor pelvic pain while pregnant with Carter, but nothing like this. I've had to whip out the pregnancy belt a few times to use as support all though I am far from as large as I was when I started using it with Carter. We have also gotten a sudden lack of energy and I will happily admit to stealing Carter during naps, taking him to my room and napping together for nearly 3 hours each day, much needed and thank goodness I have such a cuddly little boy to snuggle with.

They say that you are always bigger with your second child and I certainly feel that way, however when I was pregnant with Carter I had already gained 20 pounds at 20 weeks where as I still haven't gained a pound thus far! I am carrying much higher than I was with Carter which is adding to the sensation that I am larger. Seeing all the differences between the pregnancies makes me smile, everyone always says that each pregnancy is different but never in my life could I have imagined them being SO polar opposite. It will be fun to see the differences in personalities between my kiddos as well.

(Left : 20 weeks with Carter | Right : 20 weeks with Henry or Poppy)

Something that I wanted to share that I feel goes untalked about was pregnancy insecurities. Let's face it, we all have them. Pregnancy is life's most beautiful process yet sometimes it can be hard for us to feel like that is the case. I teamed up with some of everyone's favorite Instagram mothers who are also expecting to discuss their own individual insecurities as well as my own:

JuJu (@keepingupwithjuju_)
"My biggest insecurity being pregnant is showing so soon. Having people give me looks and making remarks on how big I am. To explain to every person that I've has twins and my uterus is just stretched out from them is exhausting and honestly, kinda weird. Instead of worrying about strangers and what they say, I just smile and nod back at them with their remarks and say thank you. There should be a law for us pregnant woman, to never be allowed to make any remarks while a woman is pregnant. All you're allowed to say is, "congrats" or "you're awesome!" I know deep down in my heart how proud I am, and how proud we should all be. We carry humans in our bodies. Nothing beats that. No matter how small or big we get.

Brenna (@lifewithaustinandemelia)
My biggest pregnancy insecurity would be getting bigger not necessarily by gaining weight but by just having my stomach get big. I've always struggled with how I look and to have my stomach get big and my clothes not fit always makes me insecure. How I manage to get over them is by knowing my body's growing an amazing little child that some women would die to be able to do. And it's only for 9 months and then my body will be back to normal!

Jewel (@thecomoclan)
I'm on my 5th pregnancy, and each has been different in many ways. So when thinking about some of my pregnancy insecurities it's hard for me to narrow down one or even two specific ones because they were different every time. I remember being so dismayed with how many stretch marks I got while pregnant with Aiden, and worrying about how much extra weight I gained with Brandon. With every pregnancy, though, one very big insecurity has loomed bigger and scarier and become quite the mountain in my mind. It's an emotional insecurity that's rooted in my physical ones. Along with the whole gaining weight, stretch marks, and shrinking boobs, with every pregnancy I feel more emotionally burdened about how the physical changes each pregnancy puts me through changes the way my husband sees me, and consequently our relationship. It's very obvious that 5 pregnancies will change a body, but when all those changes result in something so drastically different from the 'original model' so to speak, is what is left enough to keep us not only together, but growing closer as a couple and family? My husband has never brought up the issue of 'stretch marks' or 'my fat' and he is the sweetest, most caring, supportive and attentive partner through the roughs of our pregnancies (they seem to get rougher physically every time). But it's something that as my body declines my mind cannot put away. In a way it is me putting unrealistic expectations and demands on myself. It's something that I may struggle with for a while until I have the chance to whip my butt back into shape after this baby. I don't know if I will ever completely get 'over it' but I hope that eventually with hard work, and lots of love, I will be able to feel confident again not only physically but emotionally as well. It's about learning to trust in my husband and believe that it isn't only the physical aspects of a person that makes someone love someone, but their spirit, or soul. And that what we had (not to mention 4 gorgeous angels with us now) will continue to blossom and grow and be the foundation of our loving family.

Myself (@dirtydiaperdiaries)
My biggest insecurity is without a doubt how young I look. On a good day I look maybe 18 years old, on a typical trip to the grocery store without getting myself ready I will look about 17 or younger. Seeing the way that people look at me with my son and growing belly is heart breaking. To sit an watch them flip through a story they've made up about me in their heads always gets me going, because I know where they think I am in my life. A handful of times I have stopped to tell them how I feel about their looks and they leave dumbfounded that I am in fact 21, married, educated and successful. When I was pregnant with Carter I went on a hospital tour with my mother and we learned that our hospital offered large double beds for AJ and I to sleep on together during our stay. While we were busy admiring this, a nurse walked up to us telling us to move on with the tour because they don't offer the double bed to minors.. I was no minor. The story still gets to me today. I hate that I look so young, I'm so tired of hearing about how much I will enjoy it later in life because I am not there yet. My kids are getting judged by the face of their mother. It gets to me so much that I try not to go many places without AJ to avoid the judgement. However, that's all that it is. Poor judgement. Walking with my head held high and not bothering to look at those around me is my cure. I am proud of my family, I am proud of our situation, I wouldn't live my life any different and the assumptions of those I will never care about don't matter.

Every pregnancy comes with great joys and big mountains that we must get over. None of us are alone, we all have soft spots. But regardless of how we feel during the experience we all come out with the same prize, beautiful new humans that we are able to love for the rest of our lives. I know that I can speak for us all when saying no matter the stretch marks, the weight gain, the body image, or the looks from strangers.. these tiny little humans are worth it all.

Happy 20 weeks little Henry or Pennelope. We love you so dearly.

-T

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Coco Striped Bamboo Blanket.

Do we love swaddles? Yes. Is there ever such a thing as "enough swaddles"? No. Here is another pre-baby must have by the wonderful Max + Moose featuring their Striped Bamboo Blanket made from extremely soft, high quality bamboo cotton. This 36"x36" handmade swaddle is extremely stretchy which is one of the things that we look for in a swaddle!

I remember attending a course shortly after Carter was born based around the entire idea of swaddling and it's frivolous technique, it is no easy task and no one had explained it to me there for we weren't able to swaddle Carter to his liking. In this course the woman could not stress enough to find a breathable and stretchy fabric to make your lives much easier, and no sooner than that were we able to swaddle Carter with ease! The stretch of the fabric allowed us to wrap him as tightly as he wanted to be wrapped while allowing him a little room to wiggle without coming out of the swaddle itself. This minor change in the fabric that we used is what saved our swaddling lives.

Being so lightweight the Bamboo Blanket makes for a breathable swaddle, which for my kids is necessary. I am the kind of person who sleeps with all of the covers on no matter what time of the year with no better reason other than "just because". My husband and son however are far from similar, they overheat and sweat so easily that they can quickly turn their night upside-down if they get too hot. You get too warm and then sweat and then become cold, talk about a vicious cycle. We found that no matter the time of the year, Carter slept better when swaddled up in a lightweight fabric that allowed a decent airflow, if it was cooler outside or in the house we were able to bundle him in warmer clothes underneath.

I cannot wait to use this swaddle on our little Miss Poppy or Mister Henry, and because I love it so dearly, I wan't you all to bask in this swaddle glory alongside me by offering you a code for 10% off! Use code "MOOSE10" to redeem at checkout, the code will be active through June 29th only. Can't wait to hear your swaddle success!

-T

| Featuring the Coco + Cream Striped Bamboo Blanket | Find it and more by clicking HERE | maxandmoose.com |

Enhance your Eyes.

Just popping in with a quick and easy editing blog that focuses in on making the eyes in a photo stand out. The key to getting your eyes to pop is having a tool that allows you to make adjustments to ONLY the eyes, instead of brightening or sharpening the entire image we want to be able to do this to just the color in your eyes. Explore a wide variety of apps, this is much easier on a platform like Lightroom (what I use) or Photoshop but I can promise you.. There's an app for that! There's an app for everything!

This is the image we started with:

As usual, start with the exposure (brightness) of your photo. Having a bold bright photo will make your page stand out much more than if you have under exposed or dull images. If you feel like it is almost too bright, that's where you should be! Knowing the difference between bold and bright and over exposed, making you look washed out, is key.

Making your photo look professional without needing the help of an actual professional is always an added benefit. In order to accomplished the professional "airbrushed" look you want to bump up the sharpness of the photo, this is where you draw out every line and detail in a photo. Sharpening a photo that is taken with a phone can do WONDERS for the quality. But be sure to use your sharpening tool with caution, oversharpening will make your photo look "noisy" where the photo gets fuzzy creating the opposite of what you wanted in the first place. For every little bit you sharpen, use the softening tool about half as much.

(Image after sharpening 100% and softening 50%)

Now the fun part, adding color to the eyes! We are not changing the color in the eyes, we are bringing out colors that are already present but the camera did not have the ability to capture. THIS is what makes paying for photos so very expensive. Getting our eyes to pop is one of the things that we can do to make a portrait worth so much more money. Start by evening out the light in both eyes, Carters right eye is much darker than the left based on his position from the light source (the sun through the window), so I selected that eye and added some exposure.

After you feel that both eyes look the same in brightness select both eyes and bump up the saturation by a bit, adding too much saturation can make them look unnatural. We want big, bold, wow factor eyes but want to avoid them looking fake and having that take away from the photo itself. Keep them as natural as possible.

(the purple is not the saturation, it is to show you the part of the eye that we selected)

This is then the finished product! A good picture made fantastic that took less than thirty seconds of my time. Small details can make a big difference!

-T

Ultrasound Oops.

(WARNING: You must read from start to finish before becoming too excited about anything. As promised the story will either make you laugh or want to rip your hair out. Reader discretion is advised.)

My husband and I get called crazy all the time for wishing to keep the gender a secret. Truth is, I thought my husband was a big ol' basket of crazy when he told me he didn't want to know what Carter was. I said that there was no way that I was okay with it and there was no way it was going to happen. It didn't take me long to change my mind after seeing how much it meant to my husband, there are lots of sacrifices and choices that we make in a marriage and this was our first one. It was the first time that AJ had told me something that he wanted to do for our first born child, it was his first fatherly decisions and I declined it. What I did know is that I loved this man with every inch of my being and I would do anything for him, and so I agreed. The weeks passed and truly it never got unbearable, we were always just super excited to meet this little person and when the time came it was truly as if time stood still. There is no comparable moment to meeting your child and being told what you've been waiting so so long for. After I got to experience this moment I craved it.. I am an absolute addict to this sweet surprise so it was a no brainer that we would yet again wait to find out the gender of our second child.

The night before our ultrasound with our second child, I dreamed that I saw the gender on the screen. I woke up scared and ready to go into this letting everyone know exactly what the plan was and was going to avoid this at all costs. But believe me.. dreams do come true. Not too long into our ultrasound our sweet and wonderful technician made an oops and there it was.. a straight potty shot right in front of my face as if I was reliving my dream.

Three bright bold white little lines stared me right in the face.

The fact that I saw the parts of my precious little Poppy girl was so much more shocking to me than the fact that I was actually pregnant with a girl in the first place. For some reason, after having Carter I felt as if I was simply a boy mom. A boy making machine. I was incapable of creating a little girl, it was just something that my body didn't do! The tech saw me see Pennelope's parts and also was highly concerned as I turned a horrible shade of white and had to keep asking me how I was feeling.. well.. I was certainly surprised! After the incident the tech was a little less careful and I saw what I think I saw again a few more times at a glance. She never announced it to me because she knew my husband couldn't understand what he was looking at and thank goodness because I wanted the surprise to remain real for him.

The tech left the room and it was eerily silent. AJ knew that I saw something and insisted that I share it with him. I refused because I wanted to hold onto as much of the surprise as possible! It was the most awkward moment of being overjoyed yet sad that I felt as if my surprise was ruined in some way. I spent those quite moments thinking back to Carters birth and reliving the experience and realizing that I was wrong.. it wasn't my surprise that I craved. It was AJ's. I made sure the entire room was silent as our first born was brought into the world and wanted AJ to announce what it was we had waiting so long for. Seeing him start to cry and share that it was the little boy we had been dreaming of and witnessing him become a father was everything that I needed. THAT was the surprise I craved. My surprise was far from ruined!

The day went on and AJ left for work, I spent all day googling girl ultrasound photos and was certain that I saw correctly although the tech didn't include any potty shots to send home with us for me to look back and make sure. That evening AJ came home bursting through the front door saying "Taylor you can just tell me, I saw it too it's okay it wasn't your fault!!" I wasn't sure what he was saying he saw so I insisted over and over again that he share with me what gender he thought our baby was and I knew exactly what was coming..

"The baby has a penis!!"

A what.. the baby has a what??! I started laughing uncontrollably as he begged me to tell him what was going on, I shared that there was no penis that I was aware of and we sat and fought back and forth. Both of us just KNOWING that we saw what we saw and being 100% certain of our genders.

So here we are again.. left entirely confused yet never more sure of anything in our lives. To me we are having a little girl, to AJ it is absolutely another little baby boy. One of us is right we know that much, but God has a great sense of humor and was able to give me back some of the surprise that I thought had been stripped away from me. No more ultrasounds, no more opportunities, just a constant battle for the next 20 weeks as we both gear up to fight to be right. I keep reminding him that we both "swung" for a boy at conception, a boy is what we thought would fit best and so clearly it was a big deal that I was admitting to it being a girl. I kept telling him that the umbilical chord can play mind games and that when he said he saw a penis we were focused on the belly not the butt.. but NO, he saw a penis without a doubt.

AJ.. let me just say this. I love you. But I do not lose. Bets will be made, you will lose and all at the same time we will be overjoyed at the birth of our newest little one and will BOTH be just as surprised and happy as ever. Visit our instagram and let us know, are you thinking we will be meeting #misspoppy or #misterhenry and prepare to endure this long hilarious wait with us!

Bring it on Hubbs.

-T

19 Week and Final Ultrasound.

Bright and early this morning we forced Carter out of bed and headed to our anatomy scan! The night before we get to see you I always lose sleep, I can't help but be overly excited to see how much you have grown. It was so fun watching you jump and squirm and avoid all the measurements all together.. you are still just as stubborn as you have always been and it not only makes me laugh.. it makes me very terrified as to the spit ball of a child we are creating! Something knew this ultrasound was being able to see your sweet little face, technology is amazing in allowing us to see every bit of you from head to toe and if you can keep it a secret, your daddy teared up a bit.

This week we have been feeling exceptionally amazing! I have had some odd middle of pregnancy burst of energy but that has allowed our home to become absolutely spotless as I obsessively clean every inch of this place. I have had somewhat of a harder time staying awake come 4 p.m. so I find myself going and laying in Carters big daybed and snoozing while he plays right there in his room with me. The past few days he has crawled into bed with me and I am certainly not complaining about the extra snuggles!

We have been working with Carter on saying Henry and Pennelope (both of which are terribly hard for any young child to manage to say, let alone a 16 month old!) and while he can't say either of them his responses have made us laugh! Each time we ask him to say Henry he responds by pointing to his head.. convinced we are asking him where his head is. Close but not quite Carter. When we ask him to say Pennelope he responds with "Poppppyyyyy!" so as fate will have it AJ and I now call the baby Henry and Poppy!

Next week is a big milestone in the pregnancy and a rather scary one at that. I cannot believe how insanely fast this pregnancy has flown by and every time I try to wrap my head around the fact that in about 10 more weeks we will reach 30 weeks I have to sit down and grasp that for a moment. There are so many things that I want to do before the baby arrives, things I want to go cherish with my son as my only child and so so much sleeping I want to get accomplished before that goes down the drain again. Despite the fast pace we find ourselves more and more eager to meet this little one each day, as daddy starts to feel the kicks everything really starts to feel real. I will be a mother of two. Two beautiful, wonderful, and undeniably perfect children.

-T

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