28 Weeks

Today I am 28 weeks along with sweet little Jaxon. Our little man is growing strong and healthy, weighing in at about 2 and a half pounds and approximately 15 inches long! He started opening his eyes last week and this week he can blink them. Other new talents of Jaxon's include coughing, more intense sucking and better breathing! One really neat thing they've found is that babies dream in the womb. Their brain wave activity shows different sleep cycles including the dream stage, or REM sleep. Jaxon will continue to build fat and build his network of neurons in the upcoming weeks until his birth. This sweet little boy has stolen Mommy and Daddy's hearts.  :)

I had my glucose test done yesterday. I won't get the results back for another week. They gave me an orange flavored drink that was sooooo sweet! Even a big sweet tooth, like me, had a hard time drinking it. Hopefully everything comes back okay because I do not do well with them drawing blood. Speaking of them drawing blood, my lady did a great job yesterday! I didn't get pricked more than once and I filled the tube up quickly! That never happens!! If I fail this one hour glucose test I then have to take the three hour test, which means I'll drink the orange sugar drink again and get my blood drawn every hour for three hours. I'll do it for Jaxon if I have to, but I'd much rather just have good results from this one hour test. Also at my appointment yesterday the midwife measured my fundal height at 30 cm! I had also measured myself the day before and got 30 cm, but I thought it must have been a mistake. But the midwife said that as long as I'm measuring plus or minus 2 cm from where I'm supposed to be then I'm okay. For those who don't know, each cm is supposed to represent how far along you are, so 28 cm = 28 weeks. I just hope I'm not measuring a little big because I have a big baby in there, like a 9 lb 15 oz Jacob!

I have great news though! I will be getting a new OB soon!! Since we are moving further north, I'll be too far away from the naval hospital to deliver there. I switched my primary care physician yesterday by calling Tricare. My new primary doctor is 5 minutes away from our house. I have an appointment with them on Tuesday, Oct 4 just to become an established patient. At that appointment they'll put in a request for a new OB for me that's closer in town. Not only will I have a new OB, but I should be able to get an OB that was recommended to me and be able to deliver at the brand new hospital that's just 15 minutes north of our house!! I'm so excited!! I hope everything works out. I've heard so many people in the Temecula area say that this new hospital's maternity ward is so nice and that they wish they could deliver there, so I will be extremely happy if everything works out.

As for the house, no new news still. The second inspection done by the VA loan people should have taken place already. The thing is that we don't get to know when it happens and we don't get to be there. We just get the results back within 10 days after the inspection. But as soon as that happens and as long as everything checks out okay then we will still be closing on October 11th and moving in October 15th.

I hope you all had a wonderful week and have an even better weekend!!

Jaxon must be hanging out a little higher right now compared to last week's picture.

This is what Jaxon looks like inside of me right now:

love you all!!

Mommy, Daddy and Baby Jaxon

Third Trimester??

Hello again!

So today I am 27 weeks along with sweet little Jaxon Adam Lester! Some people say the third trimester starts at week 27, others say week 28... so I'm just going to say I start this week to make time go by a little faster.  ;)

Not much new development this week besides having a growing baby in my belly. Jaxon now weighs barely over 2 pounds and is a little less than 14 and a half inches long! He's continuing to put weight and fat on so he'll be nice a chubby when he comes out! (Oh how I love chubby babies!!!) His immune system is continuing to mature along with his lungs. Our little man is quite active at night time so I think Momma is going to spend many nights awake rocking baby to sleep and feeding him. I have to go to the bathroom at least twice every night and when I lay back down he goes seriously INSANE! That's usually when I feel his hardest kicks and punches.

Jaxon I think is now starting to learn Jake's voice a little bit. When he leaves in the morning he always kisses Jaxon goodbye a few times before heading out the door. And when Jake first wakes up he puts his hand on my belly and says "good morning buddy!" Well Jaxon must really like Daddy because he always wakes right up and starts punching away at Daddy's hand. It usually takes him a little while to go back to sleep after Jake leaves.

There's an old wives tale that say if you have heartburn during your pregnancy then you'll have a baby born with hair! Well if this were true then Jaxon would come out with a mullet!!! I get heartburn almost every single night and always take Tums before I go to sleep. But I don't think the wives tale is going to be true because both Jake and I were born pretty bald.

I'm in the middle of deciding whether or not I want to get a 3d sonogram of Jax. They do them fairly cheaply out here compared to what I've heard other people pay for theirs. Usually it is about 20-25 minutes long and you get a free CD of all the pictures and hard copies of the pictures too. But Missy told me that the baby really has to be cooperating to get any good shots of him. In the last ultrasound I had with Missy he just kept his hands in front of his face the entire time, so if I decide to do 3d he better be a wiggle worm so we can get all kinds of good shots. (Maybe I'll drink a glass of orange juice before we go)

That's all the updates I have on little man. I went a little picture crazy today so you guys get 3 belly pics!!!

here's a front view of my belly:

A side view of my belly:

And a close up of how big I am!!!

I hope you all are enjoying your first day of FALL! I wish it was cooler here so I could enjoy some hot cider or something.

Love you all and talk to you soon.

Mommy, Daddy and Jaxon

A Tour of our First House

Hi everyone!

We had our house inspection on Monday. There were no major problems with the house, which is great news! There are a few little things that needed to be addressed, like a couple feet of missing base boards in the master, a loose tile shingle on the roof, the front face of the furnace was taken off, etc... They were all just little things that are more cosmetic than anything. Oh and the termite report came back clean, which is always great to hear!

We got more good news yesterday too! The condo we're currently renting out is getting foreclosed on, as you all have heard already. The owners of the condo live in North Carolina and said that we could buy their appliances for SUPER cheap! All their appliances were brand new when we moved in, stainless steel, top-of-the-line stuff! We were able to buy their high efficiency washer and dryer for $200 and the fridge for another $200! I'm not going to lie, we're going to take the microwave too because it's the best microwave in the entire world. (You know how if you press the popcorn button on the microwave and either half the bag is left unpopped or its burnt? Well this microwave has sensor cooking and cooks it to perfection every single darn time!!! hahaha) And all the kitchen appliances match what's already in our house. And the best part about it all is that it's not like an extra $400 we have to come up with out of our pocket, they're just taking it out of our original deposit we put down on the place, so it's like we were never missing the money in the first place. Another bonus to the condo being foreclosed on is that the property manager doesn't care if we clean it or not before we move out since the bank is taking it over. Wahoo!!!

And even more good news! We were able to lock down our interest rate for the house yesterday and you guys would never believe the rate we got!!! Take a guess..... only 3.75% !!! Yes I typed that correctly. And the beauty of it was that we didn't have to buy it down with "points" or any of that nonsense. Mortgage rates truly are at their lowest. We told our realtor our rate and he said that was the lowest he's ever heard of anyone ever getting!! Jake and I were so extremely happy with that. When we went to the first bank we were going to finance through, they were thinking we'd get 4.5% which we thought was good then! So just that .75% difference is going to save us over $800 a year!!

And the last bit of good news we heard yesterday was that our closing date is October 11th!! We will probably drive up to the house a couple times that week and take what will fit in the car to slowly start moving. Then that weekend we will do the big move. Thank goodness Jake has some great friends out here that are willing to help us out since I can't do too much. I'll be 30 weeks pregnant by then! Wow that sounds crazy! So I have a feeling I'll be the director of the boxes, the Nazi lady who tells everyone to wipe their feet, and the cook for the boys.

I'm going to admit, I wasn't as crazy about the house at first like Jake was. It took a little convincing on his part that we could really make this house our home. But now that everything is falling into place and the more we go see the house, the more I like it. One of the best parts of the house is that, yes it's move in ready with some upgrades already made, but there is so much more potential in the house for us to add equity to it. Some people buy the homes that already have the whole house tiled/wood floors, upgraded kitchen, bathrooms, etc... well I realized that they can't add any extra equity into their home because they already bought it completely remodeled (actually I should say Jake made me realize that). Jake and I on the other hand, since we plan on staying in this house for a long time, can add upgrades of our own and get more out of our house than other people, or compared to other houses we looked at. We can add the wood floors that we want later, add the fire pit outside, and upgrade the kitchen to exactly how we want and we get to pick out every single detail of it. That makes me feel much better about our home. From the start, another person's house or the other houses we looked at may look better than ours because that home is already upgraded, but in the end Jake and I will have added a ton of value into our home that we simply couldn't if we bought an already upgraded one. Therefore, I believe this house is the absolute perfect home for us and our family.

I told you all last time that I'd take a video of the house, so I did just that during the inspection. I wasn't thinking straight when I was recording because every once in a while I'd turn the camera on it's side and not realize that when you watched it later you would also have to turn your head to see it right-side up. I apologize in advance for that. Just click on the links and they'll take you to Youtube where I uploaded the videos.

Video Tour of Downstairs

Video Tour of Upstairs

Video Tour of Backyard

We love you all and hope you like our house! You're all more than welcome to come stay with us. We have a spare bedroom and will have plenty of other places to sleep!! P.S.- Jake and I would love to cook dinner for more than just us. haha

Love,

Mommy, Daddy and Jaxon

26 Weeks

Can you all believe there's only 14 weeks left in this pregnancy then Jaxon will be here? I really can't believe how fast each week is flying by! Well this week our little baby boy is almost 2 pounds and 14 inches long from head to heel! All the nerve networks in his body are continuing to grow and develop more and more each day. He can hear pretty much everything outside the womb and startles when there's a loud noise. (I felt him jump about a week ago when Jake's alarm went off in the morning, poor little guy I think about had a heart attack!!!) He's continuing to build fat on his body and his skin is slowly not as transparent as it once was. He's practicing all kinds of movements in my belly. He really likes to use those little arms! Some websites even say that he begins to open his eyes this week. Our little Jaxon is really growing and maturing at a fast pace!

I had a midwife appointment on Wednesday. I know I complain a lot about the care I've been receiving and this is no different. I was in the waiting room for about 10 minutes, got called back by a nurse who took my weight and blood pressure, and then she took me back in the back to wait for the midwife. I saw my midwife for a total of 5 minutes! She asked if I've had any bleeding, I told her no but I had those contractions last week and she just said they were normal and dropped the subject. She then measured my belly, asked about my weight gain and told me I'm doing the glucose test in two weeks. After that she might as well have pushed me out the door because she made me feel like our 5 minutes was up and I had to go. With the huge rush I totally forgot about a few questions I had for her. So I left the appointment kind of upset, but unfortunately there's nothing I can do about any of it. No civilian doctors are going to take me this late in my pregnancy. Another thing the midwife mentioned was that she was going to see me in two weeks (and the only reason it's two weeks was because the front desk people messed up and didn't schedule my glucose test for the current appointment so they had to schedule it in two weeks) after my glucose test appointment she would see me four weeks after that, then four weeks after that, then two weeks and two weeks. I googled last night when most people start seeing their midwife/OB every two weeks in the pregnancy and it usually starts at week 28 and then at week 36 they want to see you once a week!!!! If I went to a doctor that followed those timelines then I would see my doctor another 9 times or so before my due date. My midwife only wants to see me 5 times before my delivery!!! Not to mention, it won't even be the same midwife each time. Oh well, at least I know better for the next time we get pregnant- I refuse to go through the naval hospital!!! Sorry, enough ranting about how horrible they all are. At least Jaxon is healthy and growing stronger each day.


If you didn't see in the last post, Jake and I are finally in Escrow on our house! We should move in my mid to late October! Our home inspection is this Monday at 3 pm. I have a list of everything that the inspector should cover, just to be sure that everything gets checked out. Luckily with the type of loan we are getting, we have to have almost like 2 home inspections. The second one is more of an appraisal, but he'll cover a lot of the same things the first inspector covers. I really can't wait to move in and get Jaxon's room all set up for him. I think this is the perfect first house for us. It's just big enough for us to grow into for many years, but it's not so big that we don't know what to do with it all. It also is move-in ready but has several different projects that Jake and I would like to do to make it more "us". But what matters the most is that it's a great place for Jaxon to grow up. It's safe with some of the best schools in all of California and there is plenty for us to do. I think when he grows up he'll be really happy that we chose this as a place for him to grow up in.

I'm going to brag about Jake for just one minute. He has been at the gun range all this week for work. Each day he shoots pistol and rifle from various distances and various positions and at the end of the week they qualify and get scored. Well Jake shot expert on both pistol and rifle, which is the highest you can get and I don't think he's ever scored below expert in his career in the Marines, but he got the highest out of his group in pistol and second highest for rifle! What makes this even more amazing is that they're supposed to get qualified once a year and he hasn't gone for over two years because he was always busy. Pretty much what I'm trying to say is that he's a top shot!

The other night Jake and I went on a Craigslist rampage and got a couple things. We bought Jaxon's glider for his room and a Dyson vacuum cleaner! And I feel like we stole both of them! The glider that we bought has an ottoman and the nursing stool attached. This Dutailier brand retails new from anywhere between $350-600 and we got it for $130 and it's in great shape!!! And we got a Dyson vacuum for $100 and it's practically brand new and works better than all the other vacuums we have. We figured we'd need a good one with all the new carpet in the house. Jake and I are pretty much just the best bargain hunters around.

Okay, I'm just rambling now. I'll update you all next week on our home inspection and baby Jaxon at 27 weeks!!

Love you all!!

Momma, Daddy and Jaxon

Our New House!!

Well Jake and I went out on Saturday to go look at houses. We looked at around 8-10 houses that day and actually liked the first we one saw the best. We put an offer in at the end of the day on the first house and got a counter offer from the seller Monday night. The seller's counter-offer was more than we were willing to pay so we told him no deal and went back out to look at a few more houses today. Before our house hunting today our realtor said he got another counter-offer from the seller from the first house, he came down in price and said he'd accept our offer on all terms as long as we came up $1000. So we went back to the house to take a second look and realized how much we liked it (since it had been the very first house we ever saw, we forgot a little bit) and decided to accept the seller's offer!!!!! We're now just waiting to hear from the realtor saying "congratulations!!!"

Here's a little info on the house:

• 3 bedroom (plus a huge den that we'll convert to another bedroom)
• 2.5 bath
• 1,735 square feet
• It was built in 1995
• fenced in lot that's 6,970 square feet
• 2 car garage
• formal dining room
• all bedrooms upstairs
• fireplace
• new carpet and paint throughout house
• there's new blinds on every window except the master bedroom

First, I'll explain the layout of the house then if you scroll down you can look at the pictures of it. As soon as you walk in the front door there is a formal living/sitting room to the left and the formal dining room on the right. If you walk straight from the front door you'll go in a little hallway that leads to the living room with the fireplace. To the right of the living room is an eat in kitchen and the kitchen area. The kitchen also has direct access to the formal dining room. On the opposite end of the living room (to the left) is a small hallway that has the half bath and leads to the laundry area and garage. There's also a sliding glass door leading to the backyard right off the eat-in kitchen area. If you take yourself back to the front door there's a staircase on the back end of the formal living/sitting room that takes you upstairs to all the bedrooms. At the top of the stairs you'd be staring straight at the den. If you took a right at the top of the stairs you would go into the master bedroom with connecting master bath that has a dual vanity, walk in closet, separate potty and a remodeled shower. If you went left at the top of the stairs there's two bedrooms and the other full bath. In the wall upstairs there's some built in shelves.

Ok, ok now for pictures!!!

  front of house:

view as you walk in front door to the left:

 formal living area/sitting area and the staircase

view as you walk in front door to the right:

formal dining room with new tile

kitchen looking into formal dining room. Eventually we're going to remodel the kitchen and extend the countertops out into the eat-in kitchen since we plan on only using the formal dining room. We might replace the pantry that's pictured here with just more countertops and then when we add more cabinets and such we'll make a small walk-in pantry or just make a bigger one. 

back side of kitchen. You can kind of see the small hallway that has a storage closet and the stairs just to the left of the closet.

fireplace in living room with the sliding glass doors that lead to backyard (that's why it's SO bright!) We're planning on putting the TV wall mounted above the fireplace.

here's the eat in kitchen and access to backyard. This is where we're planning on extending kitchen by adding cabinets and countertops along the back wall and extend the counters that are closest to us (in the pic) 

view of living room and part of kitchen. the eat-in kitchen is just to the left of the kitchen area.

view of hallway from inside eat-in kitchen/in front of sliding glass door. This hallway leads to half bath to the left and straight ahead through the open door is the laundry and garage

another view of kitchen and looking into formal dining. I'm standing in the eat-in kitchen area

shed on side of house. There's a fence with a gate right in front of where I'm standing so we can block this area off

backyard that needs a little water. It has a partially covered patio. The yard has built-in sprinkler system

master bedroom

master bathroom shower-remodeled with stone

our master bath shower

one of the spare bedrooms

upstairs full bathroom

view of backyard from one of the spare bedrooms

one of the spare bedroom closets- plenty of storage and shelves

I can't wait to show you guys what the house looks like after we move all of our stuff in. We should be moving by the middle of October!! We're very excited to have our first place and have a house for Jaxon to run around in. There's also a park within walking distance for him to go play at. There's no neighbors behind us, it's a big empty lot that people won't be building in and we're close to award winning schools. This house is also on the very south side of Temecula, so it's less drive-time for Jake when he has to go to work. Next time we go to the house I'll try to just record a walk-through of it so you all can watch a video of the walk through to really understand the layout of our house!

I have a doctors appointment tomorrow. I'll update you all on it on my blog update on Friday.

Love you all,

Daddy, Mommy and Jaxon

Another Week Closer: 25 Weeks

Pregnancy has been flying by! I can't believe I am 25 weeks along today. I think after the contractions I had last week, every week that goes by I feel that much better because that means Jaxon is that much closer to his due date. But this week they say that Jaxon is about 13 and a half inches long from head to heel and weighs about a pound and a half! Our little man is slowly gaining some fat on his body and is just developing more taste buds and his sense of touch. He plays with his umbilical cord and sucks on his fingers inside the womb. I am to the point of my pregnancy where I am supposed to start counting his kicks to make sure he kicks about 10 times every hour. I already know this little man kicks that often, it's almost constant except when he's sleeping. It's so much fun watching my belly move when he moves- he makes everyday a great day!

My next appointment is Wednesday this week. I quit my Centering Pregnancy group, so now I see a midwife one on one instead of in a group setting. I think I will like this so much better. I also have a breastfeeding class on Thursday.

My belly button has almost popped out completely. I used to have the deepest "innie" belly button and now part of it is an "outie" and the other part is flat with my tummy. Only a matter of time before it's totally popped out.

Jake and I are going to go look at houses tomorrow up in Temecula. We're very excited to be looking for a real home for Jaxon. He deserves a stable place to live and moving every year when a lease is up is not very stable. I would say 95% of the homes that we fell in love with online are either short sales or foreclosures. The only traditional sales in our price range don't have everything we're looking for- they're lacking a bedroom or a bathroom or are very small. If we have to, we'll move into an apartment after we get kicked out of our current home and live there on a month to month lease until we can close on a house we really love. We just know that we aren't going to be pressured or rushed into buying a home that doesn't have everything we're looking for just because we're getting kicked out of our current place. I'll post pictures of the houses that we look at tomorrow that we like.

I'm not sure if you all heard about it or not, but all of San Diego and even as far as Arizona, Tijuana and Orange County lost all power yesterday. Jake and I thought it was a blackout scheduled by the electricity company and that it'd only last an hour or two, but we went to a friends' house and heard on the radio that it wasn't planned. It was a HUGE deal here in San Diego. None of the traffic lights worked, no a/c, etc... Traffic was really backed up on all the highways and side streets. The power went off around 3:45 pm and came back on around midnight. The bad thing was that it was a very hot day here. It got up to at least 97 degrees in our house. We kept the doggies cool by giving them a cool bath and not drying them off all the way and made sure they had plenty of water and ice cubes to munch on. Originally they had no idea what caused the huge outage and so they were predicting we'd be out of power until tonight! Thank goodness it came back on!! Because of the outage Jake didn't have to go to work today so he got an extra short work week since he didn't have to go to work until Wednesday this week with Labor Day.

Well, I'll update you all next Friday about Jaxon and my doctors appointments. I might add pictures of the houses before Friday though, so stay tuned for an update!

Here's my belly this morning.   :)

Love,

Mommy, Daddy and Jaxon

The Magical 24 Weeks

Today I am 24 weeks, 1 day pregnant with little Jaxon Adam Lester. Our little man has been growing like a weed in my belly! He has gained approximately 4 ounces since last week and measures anywhere from 10-12" long. They say he could gain up to 6 ounces this week alone! In development this week he is growing more and more blood vessels throughout his body and the bronchi in his lungs are branching off into the smaller branches called bronchioles. The air sacs (alveoli) at the end of his bronchioles are also secreting surfactant. To not get too complicated, it pretty much helps our lungs expand and makes it easier for us to breathe. Jaxon this week is mostly working on gaining fat and will continue to do so until the end of pregnancy.


So at the beginning of my pregnancy I had barely any symptoms and was coasting on through it week by week. Well within the past month I've developed some more symptoms that I can blame pregnancy for, such as heartburn! I made some homemade pizza last night for dinner and boy did my chest burn afterwards! Good thing I had some Tums in the house! I also get heart palpitations almost every single time I lay down. I don't think I'm supposed to be getting them this often, so I'll have to mention that in my next doctor visit. Another thing I'll have to mention at my next appointment are the Braxton Hick contractions I had last night! I only had two of them, but I'm pretty sure that's what they were. I just felt tight pressure on my belly and it was rock hard. It wasn't really painful, just uncomfortable.

With my ever-growing belly it's getting harder for me to get up from either a sitting or laying down position. It's funny when Jake helps to get me off the couch. I won't even talk about how hard it is to put pants on in the morning, bending down gets me winded!! But what makes this all worth it is feeling little Jaxon kick and punch me all day and all night.

I've discovered Jaxon really likes to hear music with chimes or bells in it. Yesterday I played him the instrumental version of "All I Want For Christmas Is You" and he went crazy in my belly!! But when I changed it to a song with someone actually singing he just sat there and didn't make a move. I think we've got a little musician on our hands.  :)

Jake and I went to Babies R Us and exchanged Jaxon's travel system for a totally different one. We also purchased a lot of the little odds and ends we'll need before he arrives. Pretty much the only thing left to buy for him is bottles and diapers and we'll be set! I know he's going to love everything you all have given him!

In other news, Jake and I are looking into becoming first-time home owners!! We went to the bank today to get pre-qualified for a home loan, we should hear back next week how much we qualify for. We're going to be moving up north to a city called Temecula. It has one of the top 10 school districts in ALL of California, plus it was voted to be one of the top 10 cities to live in in America! We're very excited to call this "home". It also doesn't hurt that we can get a house for "cheap" up there, at least compared to San Diego city limits. If we were to purchase a home similar to what we're looking at up in Temecula here in San Diego it would cost us about $500,000 or more! In Temecula we can get the same house for $225,000. I feel bad for the current home owners everywhere because when we look up to see what the homes used to sell for they were in the $400k range and the owners are just losing so much money in their houses selling now.... but Jake and I are willing to take advantage of that. We're looking at buying a 4 bed, 2 1/2-3 bath house. I'll fill you all in when we actually go look at the houses ourselves instead of just on the internet.

Well, Jake is calling me saying that dinner is ready. I'll update this later with pictures of my belly!


UPDATE SEPTEMBER 5:::
So last night I'm pretty sure I had some contractions. It was one of the most painful things ever. I was doing dishes after dinner and they happened for about 30-45 seconds a piece and were about 3 minutes apart. It was hard to breathe when they happened. I went to lay down on the couch and had another one, but they stopped all together after that. I know obviously they couldn't have been "true" labor contractions since they stopped, but I didn't think Braxton Hicks were supposed to hurt that badly. The ones I had a few nights ago didn't hurt at all. So I have no idea what it was that occurred last night. I just hope it doesn't happen again for another couple months, little Jaxon needs to stay in there as long as he can!!!

We love you all!!!
Mommy, Daddy and Jaxon

Close up of Jaxon's bedding

I've got a big ol' belly

Jaxon is getting SO big!!!