My Once Upon a Time...

May 16, 2018 How far along: 27 weeks Baby is the size of a: Bunch of Bananas or a Camping Lantern Total weight gain: 30lbs…dang! Maternity Clothes? Both. Getting a little tired of my choices, but oh well.  Stretch Marks? Haven’t noticed any yet. Sleep? I just read back from my 27 week pregnancy update with Fox and I was sleeping through the night back then. What the heck? Definitely not happening this time around. Fox was super sick last week, so he slept with us most of the days, which made it even harder to get a good night’s sleep. I had two boys, one inside of me and one next to me, taking turns kicking me all night.  Best moment of the Week: Celebrating Fox’s 4 th  Birthday as a family (his big party is still coming up). Movement: Constantly. To be honest, I mostly don’t enjoy baby kicks. They startle me every time and they usually happen when I try to rest. I like seeing my belly move though.  Food Cravings...

Another year has come and gone and it's a hard realization for any mom that your baby is growing up. How in the world do I have a four year old? FOUR! I asked Fox the same questions last year and I love seeing how some of the answers changed and some stayed the same.  1. How old are you? 4 2. Who is your best friend? Dylan and Lyndon 3. What is your favorite thing to do? Play iPad 4. What is your favorite color? Red 5. What is your favorite food? Ice Cream 6. What do you like to do with your family? Go on vacations. Because the only vacation I want to go on is Legoland California. 7. What is your favorite toy? Power Ranger Headquarters 8. What do you want to be when you grow up? Astronaut 9. What makes you happy? Going to the trampoline park 10. What makes you sad? When it's rainy and I can't go outside 11. What is your favorite Show to watch? PJ Masks 12. What is your favorite book?  Super friends 13. What do you love to learn about? What dif...

May 9, 2018 How far along: 26 weeks Baby is the size of a: Head of Lettuce or a Bowling Pin Total weight gain: 29 lbs Maternity Clothes? Both Stretch Marks? Haven’t noticed any yet. Sleep? Not the best. Best moment of the Week: Our San Diego Trip! We had such a great time! Movement: All the time. I don’t know if I forgot about how active Fox was, but I feel like this kid here is kicking way more than Fox ever did. Especially when I try to sleep, he just keeps kicking, kicking, kicking, until I change positions. I always wonder if kicks mean that something is bothering him. Either way, I think we are going to have a wild child.  Food Cravings: Salads and Pancakes. Not together though. Belly Button in or out: Getting flatter. Gender: Sweet baby boy! Symptoms: Still having a rash on my lower back and belly and backaches come and go, but nothing too bad so far. I’ve also been extra emotional lately and getting out ...

For Mother's Day this year, I gave myself the gift of some Mommy & Me pictures with my best bud.  Katie and I constantly disagree about photo shoots, because she thinks Fox hates them and while I don't think he loves them, he also doesn't have a problem with them and it really only takes ten minutes, so I feel like it's not too much to handle.  So when I told her about the pictures I had scheduled and she wasn't a fan of my plan, she asked Fox if he likes taking pictures with Samantha or rather not do it. And you know what he said? He likes it...haha! We walked into her studio and she was upstairs and Fox was complaining about not wanting to take any pictures and he wants to go home. Go figure. The photographer came downstairs and asked "Who is ready for pictures?" and he excitedly yelled "Meeeee!" That kid!  So when I look at these pictures, I see two things. My first instinct was to cringe about all the imperfecti...

We spent the second day of our trip in Sea World. It had been over two years since we last been there and we had plans to meet a very special friend there. Fox's grandparents were tired from the day before and decided to stay back and do their own thing. This is Jack and his sweet Mama. Jack is one of Fox's half siblings and the last time the boys met, they were one and two years old, so we were all excited to see them together again.  The boys had such a fun day together. While we always talk about the half siblings, I think it's too much to comprehend at their young age and Fox doesn't understand what it means, so we don't go into it too much. That morning, we talked about how Jack is part of our family and his half brother (he calls all of his best friends brothers, so this term didn't confuse him at all) and that was pretty much it.  It just melted my heart to see them together and I hope they will always have some kind of bond a...

Happy Birthday to our sweet boy! I keep telling him to stop growing and stay little forever, but he tells me he will still hold my hand when he's 35 and I can come live with him on his rocket ship when he's an astronaut. At least that's something, right? Like every year, I made a little slideshow of my favorite pictures of the last year for him. You can find his past slideshows here: Year 1 Year 2 Year 3

We've been talking about taking Fox to Legoland for what seems like a year and when he recently really developed a strong interest in legos, we decided that now would be the best time to do it, before we have a baby that makes traveling a little bit more challenging.  We stayed at the Legoland hotel in a pirate suite and this was by far the coolest hotel I've ever been in. The room was themed from top to bottom, they had a treasure chest in there where they delivered free sets of legos for Fox every single day, which he loved of course. The hotel itself was amazing, they had lego tables for the kids everywhere, a huge lego pirate ship play structure in the lobby and you could trade your lego figurines with any staff member. I loved the breakfast there every morning and we also had dinner at their new castle hotel next door twice while we were there and the food was awesome there as well.  The best part for everyone was the elevator though. You got in and there w...