20 weeks...halfway there!!

I am posting this a little bit late as we are actually almost to 22 weeks now, but we have been pretty busy for the past couple of weeks! Here is a little bit of what we have been up to.
We had our 20 week ultrasound, which was great! It is always a wonderful experience to see our little guy as he grows and develops. We did have them confirm again that it is a boy, and sure enough it was very clear on the screen :-). They said right now he is measuring to be about 7 1/2 pounds at birth if we make it to full term, which seems pretty reasonable to me (considering Tyler weighed over 9 lbs at birth, I will consider myself lucky that he isn't taking after him in this way)! His vital organs all appeared to be functioning perfectly, and he was once again very active throughout the entire ultrasound! They were a little concerned by how thick my placenta is, which is a sign that it is working harder than normal to provide the baby with the nutrition he needs. They are assuming this is probably because the placenta implanted in an area of the uterus that doesn't have as many blood vessels to carry the nutrients to the baby. Right now he is growing at an adequate rate, but there is concern that closer to the end of my pregnancy the placenta may quit providing enough nutrition causing him to quit growing and we will have to be induced a little early. Due to this fact we will be getting monthly ultrasounds to track his growth. While this is not what we had ultimately hoped for, we are looking at this as a chance to see our little guy grow every month and we are being positive that we will make it to full term before needing to be induced! That news did give us a little incentive to get a move on preparing for the baby since we have been slacking a little thus far. So over the last week we registered, bought our crib, dresser, and changing table, cleaned out the room that will be the nursery, and this weekend we will be painting! Below are a couple of pictures from the ultrasound...we think he is pretty cute!

I (Danielle) celebrated reaching 20 weeks by taking a trip to visit my cousins in Minnesota. We rarely get to see each other so I jumped at the opportunity to spend some quality time with them before the little one makes his appearance. We had a wonderful time catching up, and as always the trip was way too short! Here are a couple of pictures from my trip. I love these girls!

Tyler's younger sister Erica went to prom last weekend, so we went by and helped her get ready and took pictures with her and her date before heading to the Sounders game. She looked gorgeous! When did she grow up?! I will try to post more pictures when I get them (hint hint Erica)!

We will be sticking with our theme of being busy this next month. Tyler is heading to Arizona this weekend to spend some time with his good friend Joe, and then in a couple weeks we will be off to Hawaii for our babymoon, and what is sure to be a fun trip with great friends! Stay tuned!