19 weeks - Half Way There!

As you can see, Bean's still growing...and so am I. I never imagined my belly could have such a large bump, which has already swelled more than the picture shows from a week ago. I even have maternity jeans that I've outgrown, and to imagine continuing to expand one centimeter a week for another 5 months ...let's not think about that.

From my weekly report, I learned that Bean is about 6" and 9 oz., has teeth (still in the gums of course), is sprouting hair, and can hear me. I have to be careful of what I say now and make sure every song I sing sounds beautiful.
**Stay tuned for April 8th when we find out if Bean's a boy or girl!

Croatia - Dubrovnik

We took a trip to Croatia during our February break. Here are some pictures of just one town we visited, Dubrovnik. We also ventured to Split, Hvar, and Cavtat.

17 Weeks Pregnant

This is how our baby, Bean, is growing...
"Your baby is now nearly 5.5 inches/ 13 centimetres long from crown to rump and weighs approximately 5 ounces/ 140 grams. Her skeleton is mostly rubbery cartilage, which will harden later. A protective substance called myelin slowly begins to wrap around the spinal cord." (http://www.babycentre.co.uk/)
This is how I'm growing...
"You may be gaining weight rapidly at this point, even if you're not eating much. Experts say that the amount of weight you put on during pregnancy is dictated primarily by your genes, so don't necessarily blame yourself if the weight's accumulating faster than you'd like." (http://www.babycentre.co.uk/)

I'm glad I don't have to blame myself! It is pretty strange to have my body changing so out of my control, but it is for a beautiful reason. I haven't felt a flutter, yet, which should happen soon. I'm looking forward to that. It's still hard sometimes to actually believe that Bean's growing in me. I've only had a few hormonal moments with tears and they started because I was laughing too hard at the fact that there was too much ice for my water. Talk about ridiculous. It wasn't even funny, but I couldn't stop laughing and then crying cause I was laughing so hard and then crying cause I couldn't stop. When Chris brought up the topic of ice the next day, I really had to control myself not to start laughing and crying again. I don't know what it is about ice, but I need to stop writing about it before I have another attack.

Guess who this is . . .

Baby Chong!

Due to be born on August 12th, which makes me 13 weeks and 2 days into my pregnancy. It was so amazing to finally see the little body that's growing inside. I kept having strange thoughts of my belly being empty, but it's not!

I know the ultrasound images sometimes look like blurry shades of gray, so I labeled some of the body parts. Hopefully, they will help you see the little Chong.

As of yesterday, the baby is 7.03cm long, has arms, legs, hands, feet, a spine, a brain, a stomach, and maybe some other parts that I can't think of right now.

Christmas in the UK and OC

We celebrated the beginning of the Christmas season with friends and co-workers in England and finished it with friends and family in California.