WEEK 22

WEEK 22

Christmas morning.

December 20th. 127 days left. Baby is 9 inches long and weights around 13.5 oz During the 22nd week. The skin is getting less and less transparent, so the veins are not as visible as they used to be.  The baby looks like a miniature newborn.  The baby's senses are developing and maturing from day to day, and baby's brain and nerve ending are now mature enough to process the sensation of touch.  Babies at this age start touching the membrane of the amniotic sac, their own face, and reaching and grasping the umbilical cord. Already, he is a small explorer.  I've been been feeling pretty good, a little more tired then usual.  And I really  have to watch what I eat, I get heartburn like crazy and I don't like it. I never even had heartburn before I got pregnant, so now TUMS are my best friends.   The belly is growing everyday  and Mark is moving around more and more everyday, even Toly and mom felt him move already.  What an amazing feeling.  Toly went snowboarding on Monday with some of his friends, so I did some Christmas shopping and hung out with Yelena most of the day.  Tuesday I had a early Dr. appointment, it was just a review of my chart, nothing special.  But i had a yummy breakfast with Toly and some friends at Sunny Point Cafe, my favorite place.  OMG! Wednesday I got this bright idea of bringing all the nieces and nephew over to make Christmas cookies, it was a hot mess!  But at the end of the day we had lots of fun, and they all enjoyed playing outside and watching Christmas movies together.   Later Toly took me out to see Christmas light at Lake Julian and for a movie.  We went to see Little Fockers, which I have to say was very funny.  Thursday was another busy day, started out with an hair appointment with Yelena, she always make me look so good. Thank you so much sis!  Then off to the grocery store to buys food  for the Christmas party at Lilia's house.  It was a lot of fun, we got to eat a lot of good food and open our presents. Alina picked me and she got me some Carolina Panthers PJs from Victoria Secret, some very cute earrings, a matching necklace, and the cutest picture frame ever.  It's for baby Mark to put up his ultrasound picture, so so cute! I wish I could of stayed longer but me and Toly had plans to go to Grove Park Inn and stay the night.  That was pretty amazing, we got a great room with an awesome view. Thanks to my sister Oksana Wells, we also got some Chocolate  covered strawberries and sparkling grape juice. We had such a great night we checked in and went to the great hall for some time at the huge fire place which was so nice and cozy, then back to the room to eat our strawberries with grape juice.  We got a late check out so we got to sleep in till 12 noon.  We checked out and went out to get some lunch at 12  Bones, one of our favorite place to eat as well.  Then we did some shopping at the mall. Toly bought me an early Christmas present, a Hollister jacket which should fit me for at least one more month LOL.  Later that day went to Biltmore Baptist Church for the Christmas eve candle lit service, and then to Serge's house for some dinner.  Christmas day! Woke up in the morning to an all white Christmas, which was a dream come true.  Me and Toly played in the snow all morning long, rode the 4 wheeler, played snowball fights with the neighbors, and of course took lots of pictures.  Then we went to pick up Paul, Irina and Vika and we all went to Oksana house for an early Christmas dinner and lots of presents of course. Dinner was delicious and the dessert was even better.  Irina made drunk cherry cake which was so good, and moms nalisniki were really good too.  Well its Christmas so it only mean one thing, PRESENTS... so we opened all the presents.  Everyone got what they asked for, I think.  The last present was labeled to Irina from Paul and when she open it, its was lots of baby clothes and it took everyone a few second to figure out what that was all about.  It was the best present of all that everyone got, it was finding out that Irina my brothers wife is pregnant 3 months, (12 weeks).   We (the girls) started screaming and crying from excitement, it was such a surprise, we all loved it.  After all the present got opened we all changed into our snow clothes and went out to go sledding and playing in the snow.  It was a pretty nice hill so we all had so much fun sliding down, playing in the snow, and taking lots of pictures.  We came back into the house for second round of food, dessert, and some hot tea.  Then we played Wii with the kids and we all left home around 12 midnight.  It kept snowing all night till morning, so Sunday morning church was canceled.  So i got my Wii hooked up that i got for Christmas from my hubby and we played it most of the day.

Lilia Oksana me and Alina

awesome PJ'S

how cute

I love this picture frame and the earring and necklace too...thank you Alina!

Dessert time... Alina Larisa Yelena Lilia and Oksana

yummy strawberries

Grape juice

Got to love it

View from our window 

Big tree at Great Hall

Snow ball fight

Toly Me Irina and Vika

Mark's Christmas gifts

Opening presents

Just found out Irina is pregnant.

Sledding outside.

The Whole Family!!

From Yelena, got to love it.

 Sunday morning.  

WEEK 21

WEEK 21

December 13.  133 days to go, yay!  Baby is about 8 to 9 inches long and weights about 13 oz, which is bigger than a can of coke.  Not too much moving around but i have to say i do feel a little, and I like it.  The babies head is growing, the diameter of the head has grown by 3 mm since last week.  The hair is growing, and so are the eyelashes.  The intestines have developed so that nutrition can be absorbed from the amniotic fluid which the baby swallows. Baby has almost half its birth length already but weights only 10% of what it will weight at birth. Wow, that kinda freaks me out a little.  On the other hand my waistline is definitely gone, it's hard to hide that I'm pregnant.  I've been putting on weight like crazy, I now weigh at 130 lbs.  I feel so huge its not even funny, I don't know what I'm going to do when i look huge too.  I have 4 more months to grow and i feel like I'm about to pop already.  My belly feels so hard and its weird seeing it all sticking out like crazy, I have never been that big in my life, I guess there is a 1st thing for everything.  My nurse came to see me this week, she is so great, I got some more free stuff from her. I love it when she comes over.  She checks up on me, checks my blood pressure, lets me know how much I weight, and bring me up to date on what's going on during my pregnancy.  But the most amazing thing happened this week, I was at home making Christmas sugar cookies and that's when i felt baby Mark KICK for the 1st time.  It was so amazing I ran to Toly and told him, he was so excited and I had tears in my eyes.  Its was such a surprise, I loved it.  I went to the gym this week with Alina and Yelena did the treadmill for a hour and watched the girls do their abs work out.  Alina and I went to Charlotte this week to see Oksana and do a little Christmas shopping, and I'm glad we did.  We stopped by the Motherhood store for me to try on some prego clothes and i ended up leaving the store wearing their clothes.  They had some really cute stuff and the girls just filled the dressing room of clothes for me to try on.  After trying on all the clothes I just did not want to put mine back on, so i took off the tags, paid for my stuff and wore them that day.  I'm so glad I got me some comfortable jeans and shirts that I can wear and not worry about stupid rubber bands lol... I finally found Toly's Christmas gift, no store in Asheville had it so its was a successful trip of shopping for me.  Later that week, me and Yelena made more cookies and had so much fun and make some pretty awesome cooking.  Not only did they taste good but they look good too.

WEEK 20

WEEK 20

Look at that belly and them chubby checks... lol

for the ones who keep asking for more belly pictures, well her you go! aka Gina

December 6th.  Half way there!! 141 days to go. Baby Mark is approximately 8.5 inches long and weight in about 9 to 10 ounces. The baby can now feel the pitch of my voice.  He can feel what mood i'm in when if i'm upset, he get upset too :(.  At this stage, the outside world get though to my baby, and although it comes only as vague sounds and "taste" of food provided via the umbilical cord, that's quite a lot.  The baby's skin is thickening, it begins to form into more layers.  One of these layers is responsible for surface patterns on fingertips, palms and soles. The pattern, our fingerprints, are genetically determined.  The brain is under intense development.  my baby needs hundreds of millions of nerve cells for its muscular activities.  This development of his nerve pathway means that it can already move consciously and coordinate movement such as sucking its thumb which i have seen him do on the ultrasound pictures, and drinking the amniotic fluid.  To bad i have not felt any  movement yet, I don't know maybe I have cause I hears  its like bubbles and I just don't know it yet.  This week was a bit lonely for me Toly went out of town with his brother Andre for 3 days.  So I kept busy with doing nothing all week, it snowed on Monday but melted by Tuesday.  Friday Toly finally came home, Saturday was the J Crew sale which is always fun. And today I woke up to about 4 inches of snow it was pretty nice.  I got to build a snowman and play in the snow for a little while then church.  I feel like this week has flew by, I am starting to have some back pain at times and my belly get achy and scratchy, I guess because my uterus is still stretching and trust me I see it, and my belly is getting so huge, no joke!  Well I hope I start feeling the baby kick soon its going to be exciting when i do.   Oh and so far its baby Mark for the name!!

 Natalya helping me make cookies. Snow day No school!!

Olexie Drinking some Hot Chocolate... mmm

Kelly ran her 5K marathon 

 Toly with the snowman

 me and the snowman