Week 26 Bumpdate

How Far Along: 26 weeks 

Size of Baby: Eggplant, Green Onion, and a Head of Lettuce. Every pregnancy app had a little something different, so try to envision how big this babe is by just picturing all those three foods all smashed into one. The roundness of the lettuce, the plumpness of the eggplant and the length of a green onion. That will give you some sort of idea. Oh and guess what? Baby is 2 POUNDS! 

Developments in Baby This Week: His little eyes are beginning to open and his brain is continuing to develop! 

Weight Gain: 21 pounds! I do have to say it's weird seeing these unknown numbers creep upward on the scale. ha. 

Maternity Clothes: I have three favorite t-shirts from Motherhood that I wish I could wear every day. They are the most comfortable things on this planet. But I guess I've got to switch things up a little bit, right? 

Sleep: Surprisingly really good. Almost too good. I think if I didn't have Taylor there to wake me up I would sleep all day long.  The weird dreams just increase in weirdness as the weeks go on. 

Food Cravings: I haven't really craved anything my whole pregnancy. Who knows if that''s normal.  But green smoothies have been at the top of the list recently. 

My Symptoms: Pregnancy Brain is real. LEG CRAMPS. I woke up yesterday with the biggest badest charlie horse in my calf. NO bueno. My linea nigra (dark vertical line that appears on the abdomen during pregnancy) has started to show up. But the most annoying thing is it's not even centered! How rude right?! It's either the line or my belly button. If it's my belly button than for all 22 years of my life I have had an off-centered belly button. How sad. ha. 

Movement: OH MY GOSH YES! It's my absolute favorite thing in this whole world. Some days he is super active and my belly is constantly bumping around and other days I will only feel some occasional movements. On the busy days  he gets so active at times that I almost begin to feel nauseous because my belly feels like it's literally going to burst. My favorite thing to do is to look at my bare tummy and just watch it bump around. It's quite the sight. I've seen an occasional elbow or knee or who knows what it is... roll across my abdomen. Our little baby boy is inside there! Oh I love it! 

Names: Figuring out the name of your baby is a very difficult decision. There is so much that goes into it. It's not just a baby name.  The baby is going to grow into it and become old with it. So it has to be age appropriate... at every single age. Oh and initials. You got to watch out for those initials. My mom gave me this tip. They almost named my older brother, Austin Steven Smith... but clearly those initials wouldn't have worked out. (hahaha)
I respect those that are so calm about the matter. For some reason I worry  A LOT about naming our baby. But no worries, i'm not going to go into labor quite yet stressing about our babies name because we finally picked it! It was the first boy name we had liked since the beginning. Although we liked others, we always fell back on this one. It just felt right, like that was already his name. So if you are one of the few that haven't heard it quite yet, our little baby boy is going to be Everett Jay DeHart. 

One of many

For the weekend we decided to head to San Fransisco to do a little sight seeing and to stop by and say hi to Tay's brother, who lives in San Fran. One thing that I absolutely love about this place is how close everything is. San Fransisco is only about 45 minutes away! Our first stop was Golden Gate Park. Which is partially deceiving because, although close, you can't see the Golden Gate Bridge. But you can see a lot of other things. For example, ducks. There are tons ducks and geese! I told Tay that we  need to always have a loaf of bread on hand because there are ducks everywhere here. Not only in San Fransisco but near our apartment as well. Feeding ducks at the pond is one of my favorite childhood past times. So from now on you will find a loaf of bread in my purse. ;) We walked around the park and watched all the cute couples row across the pond, listened the the live music being played, and watched all the ducks. 

Funny story: During our walk we came up on several pigeons in the middle of path. Right as they started scurrying out of our way, there was in the middle that darted directly towards my face. I don't think I could have screamed louder. I positively scared the pigeon, Taylor, and the two women walking towards us. I swear it was going to peck our eyes out. I really do not like birds. My pregnant bladder almost couldn't take the laughter that followed. 

The Golden Gate Bridge is absolutely breathtaking. We found the perfect spot on our way to Tay's brothers and got out to view it more clearly. It was a little windy to say the least. Which made it difficult to take pictures together (My hair in his face and all). I regretted not bringing a hair tie. My hair was a tangled mess afterwords. But we managed to get a few so that's all that matters! 

Now this one is a money maker. Real good view, am I right? I mean that bridge is so... so... so nonexistent. 

That's my boy :) 

After almost being blown away out on the coast, we meet up with Tay's brother Zach. We took the Subway to Union Square which is The Time's Square of San Fransisco to eat lunch. Zach had the brilliant idea to go to the Cheesecake Factory, just what this pregnant belly was craving at the time. The Cheesecake Factory downtown is on the top floor of the Macy's building which over looks all of Union Square AND has patio seating. So clearly, we had to sit outside and take in this amazing view. I do have to admit I did think of the movie San Andres a few times while downtown. But hey, it was the most resent connection I had with the city. It's safe to say that we made it out alive. 

 After lunch we continued to walk the city. Zach showed us all the cool sites and we even walked down to the Bay Bridge. That thing is huge. But I think I am still a bigger fan of the Golden Gate Bridge, you just can't beat that red color. Maybe that's what they need to do with the Bay Bridge. Paint it red! HOW COOL?! 

 San Fransisco, you were good to us. We will be back. 

Drivin' the Coast

To finish our amazing weekend, we drove down the coast and stopped everywhere we could. The first stop was Point Lobos. It's right in between Monterey and Carmel along the coast. It was about a mile hike in through tall green trees. These tall trees were very unique. They had this fury green stuff hanging off of them. It honestly looked like the Grinch's fingers (green and fury). We got pretty creative with this stuff and made Grinch mustaches even. It was a little rainy and cloudy but the view was still gorgeous. We hiked around the cliffs for about 2 hours, taking pictures, finding animals, and talking to people from all around the world.

We stopped again and again along the coast on our way to Big Sur. As we drove south the sky began to clear up and sun came out. We stopped at what we thought was Big Sur and took a million pictures. As we were there, we both thought we had remembered thinking Big Sur was a little more magnificent then this semi descent bridge we had been looking at. But we agreed that all the pictures we had seen were probably over edited. So we got in the car and kept driving for a little longer. Then, BAM, we came around the corner and there were cars parked everywhere along the side of the rode and there it was A HUGE gorgeous and magnificent bridge. We both looked at another and laughed oh... that's Bixby Bridge! Everyone at the other bridge was probably thinking why are these people taking so many pictures of this little bridge. Yeah, now we know. 

WOW, the views were absolutely incredible. Driving down the coast we couldn't help but drop our jaws at all the beauty. 

Let's go to the beach, beach, let's go get a wave...

After adventuring around the Redwoods we took off down to the Beach. Santa Cruz is a teenagers dream! An amusement park right on the beach... you could say we might have acted like teenagers again. Although we couldn't ride any of the rides (Little Baby DeHart) we played all those overpriced games that your parents never let you play as kids at Lagoon. Taylor is quite the Archer and won us a little dinosaur. We named him Edwin. Edwin was only with us for about 5 minutes, then we left him on a bench hoping some little kid would take him home. We paid good money for that little guy (haha). Oh and I can't forget the delicious churros we got. YUMMM! We had such a fun time walking around the boardwalk, hearing the excited screams of little kids, and breathing in the smell of funnel cakes. 

After we walked the boardwalk we took a walk down the pier. I think one of the biggest hits of the day was the sea lions/ seals (whichever one they are). There were hundreds of them on laying on the beams underneath the pier. We probably watched them for an hour as they jumped on top of each other, growled at the seagulls, and attempted to jump onto the beams. 

After walking around the boardwalk and pier we were absolutely starving. Needless to say, the churro did not fill us. Next we drove to a local Subway to pick up sandwiches to eat at our next destination, which was the Natural Bridges Beach. We took off our shoes as we ran out onto the warm sand and set up our blanket. Eating everything but our chips, we then went out to the shore to take pictures and feel the cold ocean water. After a short 10 minutes we came back to our blanket. But... something was missing. Our chips were gone!  ...Every last bit of food matters when you are 23 weeks pregnant. ;).  As I shouted loudly, "where are our chips?!" Our nearby neighbors finally informed us that the seagulls took them. They tried fending them off but they finally gave up and the birds won. Right then I glanced over at the huddle of seagulls nearby. I ran over to them, seeing if they had truly done it. And sure enough the dang seagulls ATE OUR CHIPS! We both laughed so hard for some reason over these stupid birds that were smart enough to find our unopened chips and eat them. More hilarious though was  probably the sight of a crazy pregnant lady chasing around seagulls for food. But no worries, we didn't let it ruin our night.