Zoe and Nora are here!!

I will post a real post soon.....but we are still here, doing great!! Our girls were born Monday April, 22nd and are perfection. Zoe was 7.2 and Nora was 6.8. It has been the best week of our lives. It's very surreal and we are so thankful for them. We are also a tad tired and working on getting this nursing two babies every couple hour thing down. But I will post tons of pics of our little munchkins soon! Life is good!!!

So cute!!

I saw this on a site today and thought it was so cute! Sometimes I wonder if we should "set her apart" with things like this. But honestly, this is just too cute and sweet to pass up. Plus, she was/will be born in Africa so why not acknowledge it right? Anyway. I am thinking this design in pink and gray. And of course arrows from Ethiopia to Houston. Crazy that we will be doing another little girl nursery soon. Like, truly crazy in my opinion. I'm sitting here while my two "belly babies" seem to be trying to jump out of my body and do a little dance, and dreaming about my little Jane Jordan and her sweet self curled up in her bed. It's very surreal. Yet, also all starting to seem very real in a wonderful, terrifying, exciting, blessed way!

34 weeks pregnant and officially lopsided! :)

I saw this on a friends blog and though...why not? So here are some preggo updates on little Zoe & Nora

How far along? 34 weeks 3 days

Total weight gain: not sure.....I don't look! But I think almost 50 pounds...wow!

Maternity clothes: I love my maternity clothes. I actually went and got some really cute spring maternity clothes and then got put on bed rest and don't get to wear them. It actually makes me really sad....sporting the big preggo belly was so fun and it got cut a month short!

Stretch marks: I have a few, not too bad at all. We still have some time left though so I'm cautiously optimistic!

Sleep: Oh my. Sleep is not great. I can't really lay flat anymore unless I haven't eaten in at least 5-6 hours because of heartburn. Turning is really very difficult too! However, I have developed a new "sliding" method for turning over at night which consists of a lot less drama! But generally I wake up about every hour with heartburn, drink some milk, take some TUMS and then can go back to sleep until the next hour when it starts over again. Fun fun! But since I'm on bed rest it doesn't matter too much since I can sleep during the day. But I am SO excited about being able to sleep "un"pregnant soon!!

Best moment this week: Wednesday doctors appointment when we got to see our little girls! They looked perfect and it made me very happy! Plus, the doctor is my only outing each week so I really look forward to being able to walk around and get out of the house for a few hours!

Miss Anything: Sleeping, eating, exercising, and just being able to move around with ease. Worth every second no doubt....but it's gotten a little bit hard. Probably made a bit worse by being forced to sit all day. But this to shall pass and we will have TWO baby girls!!

Movement: Yes....these two love to squirm around. Nora's little head is literally up in my right rib cage and it wiggles around all day!

Food cravings: I've been craving sweets lately, but food has unfortunately lost it's appeal all together. Its really hard for me to keep anything down and the heartburn following meals is just too bad.

Symptoms: Each month has brought it own little challenge but aside from the heartburn thing....it's be wonderful!!!

Happy or moody most of the time: Happy I would say. I feel like a broken record....but aside from all the throwing up that comes from eating now....I'm just so happy and excited!!

Have you started to show yet: haha....I'd say so!

Looking forward to: seeing the girls faces!!! I really CANNOT wait!!!

In other general preggo updates, the girls are looking great! Since I am being monitored for preeclampsia we go in every week for non stress tests and ultrasounds to make sure the girls are doing ok and to make sure my blood pressure is still ok. So far so good. However, 37 weeks is the absolute longest we will be. So we won't be pregnant for any longer than about 2 weeks from now. But hopefully we make it to 37! At exactly 34 weeks we got to see them both breathing and everything looked great. They estimated them to weight 5lb10oz and 6lb2oz which seemed huge to me for 34 weeks. Especially since hypertension in pregnancy often results in low birth weight (so they told me). But I guess that's good because if we make it to 37 weeks they should be a good size!!

Anyway. Looking so forward to saying goodbye to pregnancy and hello to our little munchkins!! It still feels SO far away!! I know two weeks isn't far...but it seems like I couldn't stretch another ounce. But I'm sure I can!

For those of you who think I look "small" it's because you have only seen pics from the side. But it's actually huge when you look straight on! Both girls are transverse meaning both heads are over by my right rib cage and stretch across my body and I am TOTALLY lopsided! It's really funny/extremely uncomfortable! :)

These pics represent my days right now. You will find me sitting on the couch. Chilling. Counting down the days! And please take not of the lopsided belly!

Cloth diapers

Bed rest has given me some time to readdress our decision to do cloth diapers with the girls. We decided a while back we were going to do it and then I kind of stopped thinking about it with all we have had going on the last several months. But now I have nothing going on and figured I would be a little more productive while on bedrest and give The Office re-runs a rest for a while! :)

So not that anyone probably cares too much...but hey, why not blog about it right?

I have been crunching numbers and doing budgets for months now looking to see where we can cut costs. I hope to only work 2 days a week and am motivated to really do my best to make our money stretch as far as possible. From a financial standpoint I found that most people spend about $800 on diapers in the first year of their child's life, which would equal $1600 for us....woah! Add in our little Jane in the next few months and well you can do the math, lots of money of little booties! :)

After reading about lots of different diapers it looks like the only thing that would really be a change for us is that some parts of the diapers need to be hung to dry. I am not a hang dry kind of person. It all just goes in at once. However, luckily I married a man that seems to have an odd love for laundry so I think figuring out the whole line drying thing will be a perfect job for him.

Anyway, from what I can tell there are newborn cloth diapers and then one size adjustable cloth diapers that will last your child throughout the entire time they are in diapers. We have decided to skip the newborn cloth diapers and do disposable. It's looking like our girls are going to be preemie anyway and I didn't want the added expense of getting tiny diapers that would hardly be used and I didn't want them in cloth diapers in that super newborn phase when they poop a million time a day. So our plan is to implement the cloth diapers around 3 months or so. I'm also planning to mainly use cloth when we are at home. I don't think I am going to take wet bags on play dates or road trips and stuff. I think I will also use normal wipes. So I guess we will be a hybrid cloth diaper family. :) However, my plan is to use them at all times if we are at home or just on short errands. The more I read the easier it looks. You just stick in the insert, dump out the poop and wash. There is special detergent and I figure we would just do a few extra loads of laundry a week for diapers. To me a few extra loads is worth it if it gets me more hours at home with the girls! Over $6000 saved on diapers over the course of having 3 in diapers for 2-3 years is motivation enough for me!

Ill post again once we get going on this and let you know how we are doing. However, I think it will be ok! Oh, and the ones I am getting are called Bum Genius. I have heard great things! If you are reading this and do cloth diapers please feel free to comment! I would love any advice! :)