New pics of the little one :-)

This past week was good. I had another pre-natal doctor's visit and got to see Lulu again!

In the top pic you can see his head and his bent arm bones. During the ultrasound he was waving to us! It's always so breath taking to see him in there and moving! I haven't been able to feel any movement yet but woooow! All is going along as planned, I gained 5 lbs in the past month, which is right on track. I should be gaining one pound per week from here on out. My blood pressure was a bit low 94/45, but she said it's nothing to worry about since I'm healthy and exercising and stuff. Next appointment in October 1st when we find out the sex!

My belly button is slowly turning from an "inny" to an "outy," lol! It's definitely expanding. I actually had a couple of days last week where my body was just sore and I was super tired. It was sore to the point that I was walking awkwardly. I was having some bad cramping pains and pain around my tailbone. Luckily with all the mama hens at my work, they explained that these are normal growing pains and some days will be sore and painful as my bones and joints and organs all move around to accommodate the baby's growth. I also learned a very important pregnancy lesson: comfortable shoes are a must! And I am wearing maternity pants to work all the time now! It's pretty fun.

 My best friend from high school Kathy, has a sister Karen, whom donated about 3 garbage bags full of nice, only very lightly worn maternity clothes to me when I was in Michigan in July. I mailed them to myself and I am so happy wearing them. Many are very nice work pants, button downs, and suit coats for work. It is definitely an entire pregnancy wardrobe. Thank you Caird sisters!

I have also gotten my taste buds back! I have been eating lots of salads and things again and spent an entire day last week cooking!

Above we have veggie crock pot chili with soy crumbles for extra protein, tofu noodle soup with eggs for extra protein, and a butter nut squash/carrot bisque!

 Here we have a vegan mock tuna salad (made with soaked almonds and nutritional yeast), cucumber yogurt and dill salad, and a cilantro yogurt salad dressing as I'm back to doing spinach salads again. Yay!

And here are some lovely organic fruits for my daily fruit salads. Cooking and healthy eating is truly a passion of mine and I am so grateful to have access to these foods and the time to prep them! I know baby is happy and I'm also glad to have my full pallet back! Yes I spent an entire day in the kitchen last week, it was relaxing, and I was able to bring healthy, home made food to work every day last week! So that's a good justification for all the extra ice-cream I've been eating lately, lol.

Speaking of work, it has been going really well lately. I have been teaching health ed classes for almost 10 months now and definitely gaining more confidence and knowledge. Boy was that a steep learning curve though! I am now trained in about 13 multi-session adult health ed curriculums! It's a wonderful feeling to provide positive and healing info to people. I am actually still training as I need to pick up extra hours before January to qualify for full maternity leave benefits. So here we go again, lol. It's honestly great though b/c I feel lucky to have a pregnancy in which I have felt energetic and healthy almost the entire time!

I am still managing to work out 3 times per week. Last week was a dance class, neighborhood walk, and pre-natal yoga class. The pre-natal yoga was so amazing! I seriously love yoga. I am definitely having to modify and adapt a lot of poses to my growing belly and changing body, but it's all good. It's a practice in letting go and being very gentle with myself.

 Hopefully the baby will come out nice and limber too! Hehe. ciao for now, thanks for reading!