Sensational Summer, Crazy Clara, Baby Boy, and Life!

Good Morning!! It's been forever since I created my last Botbylstyle blogpost, and due to the fact that I've been extremely overwhelmed with the amount of material I have to share, It's taken me a considerably long time to creatively organize it in my noggin and transfer it all into a blogpost about summer, Clara, my 3rd trimester of pregnancy, our latest home decorating projects/updates, you name it!

However, here I am, Thursday morning, less than 5 weeks remaining until baby boy is due, sitting somewhat comfortably in the only thing I can wear to bed at this point, my husband's green boxers, and a stretched out baby tee...my precious kitty by my side as always (more so since I've been pregnant), just an unpredictable matter of time before Clara wakes up and is calling for her "mommy"then falls back asleep after tossing a turning a few times (I know what that's like), which will probably happen about 5 more times within a half an hour.

Let's get into it - Summer has been fabulous so far! This passed school year has been trying to say the least, which helps me to appreciate a little R and R. For the passed 4 weeks, I've been working part time with helping to run the summer band program, for which we just had our concert at the Deptford mall last Thursday. It went exceedingly well and my continuous nightmares about my water breaking during the cadet band performance have subsided, since it's finally occurred to my brain that the concert has come and gone, and I still have yet to go into labor, Thank Goodness. Call me crazy! Call my paranoid! Call me whatever you want but I'm so much more cautious and completely "on-my-toes" this time around, after experiencing delivering our 1st child between 5 and 6 weeks early, and not having what I consider to be a typical birth story, although I've come to find out that no birth story is quite typical, and some more insanely painful, unexpected, wild, and unique than ours, and that's ok.
I'm thankful for how smooth our experience actually did go the 1st time, and I'm looking exceedingly forward to going through it again, just differently, and hopefully (fingers crossed) much much closer to our due date, September 3rd. At this point, I'm already passed the day equivalent to when my water broke with Clara! Well, since I'm already on the subject of pregnancy, let's continue with that. The 3rd trimester has been a little rough compared to the 2nd, which was somewhat smooth sailing. I feel that the belly is bigger this time than it was with Clara, and I've gained a little more weight this time - Just a couple more lbs, not too many. Here's a photo of me taken this passed Sunday, and believe me, I'm not taking advantage of too many photo opps. However, it's nice to have some!

Here I was with Clara around the same time (courtesy of Kelly Lynd). In fact this was taken the day before we gave birth to Clara (little did we know at the time)The photo after that was taken a week before, and yes I'm wearing the same shirt, which my awesome husband bought me! Doesn't he have great taste with maternity clothes? He should experience being a pregnant woman and model them!

Totally different season and clothing style so it's hard to tell but I just feel like I'm carrying further forward this time if that makes any sense. Overall, things have been going quite well, although I feel like the baby has been literally beating me up, which surprises me because I have an anterior placenta, which usually shields you from feeling as many punches, kicks, rolls, quick tantrums of insanity from psycho botbyl baby in belly, whatever you wanna call it, but no, as of week 20ish I began feeling everything, for which I'm extremely grateful since I had been disappointed that I may not experience all his little kicks and punches!

I've been having a little anxiety lately, just thinking about having another child. Things are just so uncertain right now, as far as when he's planning to make his grand entrance, how in the world is Clara going to react when he finally does, what is our routine going to be like? Am I going to be able to handle working full time, teaching lessons, keeping our house sparkling clean manageable, while cooking wonderful dinners for my family...oh yeah, I've never done than before, so that won't be expected...there's also many other commitments Jon and I have made that require so much time and energy...Will something have to go? The fact that I'm ultra organized to the point of paranoia definitely helps keep clutter at an all time low...Everything will be fine and I know that, but it doesn't keep you from worrying, and wondering.

Onto Clara, who's the happiest-go-luckiest kid in the world, she's been enjoying wonderful activities every day either with daddy while I've been working, or with pop-pop and mom-mom, or with Jon and me...Here's a couple of photos of Clara enjoying July! One of my goals is to enhance and develop over 1,000 pics of her from the summer...as of now, these are the ones I posted of Facebook, which I've had a chance to enhance and brighten a little. Like I said, I'm don't enjoy being in many pictures right now. Here they are in no particular order :

 

Well I hope you enjoyed my little "Catch-up" blog post! Thank you so much for stopping by & God Bless! Enjoy the rest of your week! Stay tuned for my next post about home renovating and a couple new exciting updating/decorating projects around the Botbyl home!