We have a name :)

After months of debating, a change in the baby's gender, and more debating... we have finally chosen a name for our baby girl #2 due this holiday season. Her name will be.... Madelyn Kate Leonards :) It's perfect and we are very excited for Bella's little sister to have a name! I am sure some people will call her Maddie, and that is fine, although both of us prefer Madelyn, it won't bother us for people to use the nickname either. She has been moving and kicking a ton this past week and letting her presence known! Unfortunately, this has also meant that I've had a return in morning sickness symptoms. Not sure why they decided to creep back into my life midway through this pregnancy but they have. Nausea, heartburn and general yuckiness. I started taking my Unisom/B6 combo again and have been wearing the Seabands that my friend Megan loaned me just about everyday. I was super sad to miss a girl's night dinner last week because I felt so bad! So little Madelyn---if you would cooperate and let Mommy feel better that would be wonderful :)

In other news... this little girl, named Isabella is getting ready to start preschool on Monday! I can hardly believe it!




In house news... our house is still up for rent, and we are hoping it rents out quickly. All of the other pieces are complete in terms of us getting into a new home...but we need a lease agreement. So keep your fingers crossed for us!

Changes

Well, here is a shocker that most of you that read this probably know by now. We had our 20 week ultrasound on Friday with the OB/GYN. Baby is growing well, weights a WHOLE POUND already (Bella was only 12 ounces at her 20 week scan), measuring about 7-10 days ahead of schedule and is clearly a baby..... GIRL! No, I am not joking. Seriously. Yep. SURPRISE! Our response??? "Are you serious? Really? No way!" Then laughter. Poor Bella is seriously confused. Baby girl had her legs wide open for us, no pee pee in sight with clear girl parts showing. Here are some pics:




And here is my 20 week progress picture:



SO there ya have it. Not having a boy after all. Goodness, certainly takes an adjustment for all of us. But of course there are no wrong answers when it comes to the gender of your baby ;)

The house stuff is also moving right along. We have decided to build again with Ryland, but we do need some things to line up first. First of all, we need to get our financing completed and find renters for our condo. We are on a time crunch because we really want to move in before the baby is born, and Ryland tells us it takes about 100 days to finish the house, putting us at the end of November/beginning of December for closing--so we are cutting it pretty close. Needless to say, Jerry and I are definitely under some stress right now. The good news is that our condo is freshly painted and very clean, just have to keep it that way as we show it to potential renters. We are praying everything falls into place for us..it's all exciting but scary at the same time. I am also trying my hardest to keep things as normal for Bella as I can. I don't want too many changes to freak her out at once. She will have school,potentially a new home and a new sibling all in the next 4 months. That's a lot. So I just keep giving her lots of kisses, hugs and as much attention as I possibly can.

Another year older

Tuesday was my birthday and I turned 29 years old. While it's not a super special number, it certainly made me sit back and think about where I am today. This is the last year of my 20's. Wow. How did we get here so fast??? While I am slightly sad to be closing in on 30... a number that used to seem so much older to me than it does now, I also can't help but think about everything I've done in the past 9 years. I graduated from Purdue University, I went to and graduated from graduate school. I dabbled in 2 different careers, neither of which fulfilled me or made me happy, until I started my own photography business and have never been happier career wise. I married my husband in 2005, the happiest day of my life until the birth of our daughter in 2008. Bella is the best thing I've ever done. I look at her every morning and sometimes have to pinch myself to realize that I am not dreaming... that she isn't someone else's child... she is my baby girl. I carried her around for 9 months, I went through a long hard labor for her. I encountered many sleepless nights with her and I love her more than I knew I was capable of loving.

We've also have some hard times in the past decade. Jerry unexpectedly lost his job when I was pregnant with Bella....a time in our lives that was very difficult. We've lost family members suddenly, we've spent nights in the hospital, we've learned to cope with my mother's chronic illness (which I am just happy is not fatal). It definitely hasn't always been easy... but somehow we always get through it together, learn something from the hard times and move forward stronger people, and a stronger family.

In my 29th year I hope to make it a great one. We will welcome our second, and possibly last child into our family unit. We will be moving in a new home...one that we hope to make our home for a very long time. Bella is starting preschool and my business continues to grow and shape as I continue find out what I really love to do with photography and grow. I am promising here and now to not mope around being sad that my 20's are almost over..but enjoy the good things that are going to happen in my life in the next year, and vow to enter my 30's with a bang :)

I had a really nice birthday. I didn't schedule any shoots, and I spent the day with Bella. When Jerry got home, we went to dinner and then went for really bad for you ice cream, haha! Jerry helped Bella make me a card and he got me a point and shoot camera for my purse ;)

In other news... this is what my house looks like right now:



Needless to say, I am ready for the work to be done. The painter is still painting, but he is making good progress and the new paint makes a world of a difference in here. The carpet cleaners are coming this afternoon too. We are hoping everything will be done before the end of the week. We have potential renters coming to see our place on Sunday afternoon, and we plan on listing it this weekend as well for rent in case those renters do not work out. Jerry and our realtor are also meeting with Ryland on Friday afternoon to discuss the possibility of building again. We should know more soon. Oh and tomorrow...tomorrow morning...is our 20 week ultrasound! Yay! We can't wait!

And just because she makes me smile, here is a snap of Bella to finish up the post. wearing her princess dress that my mom made her :)

Almost Halfway

It's Monday again--- where. is. the. time. going????! Although, a part of me is very happy the summer is moving swiftly along. Here we are, this weekend I will reach my official halfway point of the pregnancy and Friday is our 20 week ultrasound! I can't wait for another glimpse at our baby and to get some official confirmation that he is indeed a boy after all of the controversy!

We had another wedding of course on Saturday-- we've got one the next two weekends too, and then we have 2 wedding free weekends on Aug 27 and Labor Day weekend--which will be a much welcomed break. After that break, it's another 6 week wedding streak before our next break, then one weekend off, then our last one of the year. When wedding season ends, it's hard to believe I'll be 32 weeks pregnant!

The painter is coming today to get this condo finished up in terms of fresh paint, I am excited for that project to be done so we can move forward in our moving process. We finally found a house we LOVE in Carmel on Friday. It's perfect for us. However, we can't quite make an offer on it until we we have a few things lined up with our lender, so we are busy getting that paperwork finished so we can. It's a beautiful house, and we are worried it won't last long enough for us to have a chance at it...but we want to try. If it goes...we may be very well be looking at building again. We should hopefully have some sort of decision in the next week or two.

The fair started this weekend too and we took Bella yesterday. She had a blast! She pet the baby cows, saw the sheep (and talked to them), saw the pigs (Stinky), horses and rode the carousel and the tractor train. We enjoyed some lemon shakeups too and I was totally planning on having something naughty to eat like an elephant ear-- but it got SO hot towards lunch time, all I wanted to do was go sit in the air conditioning with the old people, haha! So no elephant ears for me this fair trip. Perhaps we'll make it another time ;)

Tough

House Updates

We are so busy in our household these days, I hardly realize it's Monday again until I wake up and look at my calendar, haha! Another weekend flew by in the Leonards' household. Saturday we had a big wedding--worked 13 hours. Yesterday we spent the entire day painting (ok I taped some trim and played with Bella while Jerry painted...;)) .. and looking at houses. I've decided that looking at houses really is super hard and can be really stressful.

We have a price maximum for our loan. We have expensive taste. We like nice stuff, and we have very specific things we want in a home. We want it to be in a good school district (we would like HSE, Carmel or Washington Township schools). We want it to have a basement (at least partially finished preferred because of my business). We want 4 bedrooms and we want it to have a yard big enough for a play thing for the kids--fence isn't mandatory but we would like to be able to fence it in ourselves within the first year if it doesn't come fenced in. We also want space--probably a minimum of 3000 square feet total (with the basement). After walking through a couple of homes smaller than this, even nice ones, we realize that we think we will want more space especially with my business working out of the home.

We've walked through at least 15-20 homes already. We have seen 2 we really liked--both of which had offers already on the table, so they are not options. The rest have just not been for us. Either the floor plans are awkward, they smell (like really bad--one smelled like cat pee so bad we turned around and walked out right away), just didn't feel right or were way overpriced for what they were. It is definitely not an easy process.

We've also revisited the idea of building again. We are *very* choosy if we go this route though because we want to make sure the neighborhood is established and not going to go under in 3 years. We also want it to have really nice builder quality and a decent yard. It's just all a big tough game!

The GOOD NEWS though is that we have very promising renters lined up already. A young couple and their little girl--looking for a place to rent for a couple of years until they move to northern Indiana. They were okay with our price point too. We just want to get the painting all finished before walking them through our place and then going from there. Hopefully that all works out. Jerry finished the living/dining room yesterday--and we are having a painter (the same guy that did our studio) come in next week to help finish things up. Then Jerry and I will just need to do the upstairs hallway, the office and the family room. Hopefully it won't take us too much longer.

Baby 2.0 Updates



Nothing too much new in Baby 2.0 land. I'm now 18 weeks, so we are almost halfway, yay! I am still not feeling super swift kicks and punches as I was at this point with Bella :( I know he is moving around in there quite a bit because I can hear him on the doppler moving frantically. But, my anterior placenta placement is blocking most of it. I still feel flutters daily--but they are still flutters :( I am anxiously waiting for those swifter kicks and more substantial movements and so is Jerry--we have also begun talking to Seth since we know he can now hear our voices.

I am still having a tough time sleeping--I wake up between 3-5 every morning with my back hurting and can't go back to sleep. It sucks! I have my pregnancy pillows all around me. They help a little but don't take it all away. I really need to go back to the chiropractor, but can't right now because of trying to move. I am going to try add pre-natal yoga into my routine this week too to see if it helps.

I made it to the gym last week 4 days--wanted to go on Sunday but we had so much going on in the house and I chose to take an hour nap in the afternoon instead of workout. It's ok, I think my body probably needed it. Back to the gym today....

Bella Updates

She is going to be such a great big sister. Full of love and life. She asks everyday what the baby is doing and puts her hand on my belly. Melts my heart. She is going through this phase right now where she wants to be a different character every hour just about. So I saw "Bella?" and she'll say, "No, I'm Arthur!" or "I'm Barney." or "I'm Super Why". LOL!! It's pretty funny:) She loves looking at houses-- and she really likes our Realtor. She has a start date for school of August 29th. We have her back to school night on August 11th, and an open house on August 14th. So that will be fun :) She is also looking forward to us taking her to the state fair next week :) Here she is with me and baby 2.0 for a few pictures the other day :)