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Life Update: Pregnancy update (week 12), my book stack, & football

Welcome to my weekly life update where I share about my pregnancy & give you a peek into our life this past week. If you want to follow a lot more behind-the-scenes and real-time updates every week, be sure to follow my stories and posts on Instagram.

12 weeks! And our big news is that we found out the gender this week!!!* Knowing has made it so much more real to me, even though this whole pregnancy still feels crazy surreal and like a dream.

HIGHLIGHTS

I think we actually all may have agreed on a name!! It’s very different having older kids who have very strong opinions about these things! Also, the NIPT test came back perfect. And I had a little more energy and a little less nausea this week.

NOTABLE

I’m pretty sure I’m starting to feel those first few flutters. I didn’t for sure feel movement until 15 weeks with Silas, but I’m almost 99% sure that’s what I’m feeling.

Also, my appetite has increased big time — which has been weird and I’m still trying to adjust. I’m usually the type of person who eats when I’m hungry and then eats until I’m satisfied. But right now, I feel hungry almost 90% of the time — even right after eating!!

I’m so grateful to have the desire to eat, though, because it definitely has been super hit or miss for the last 6 weeks and most of the time I was just making myself eat so I wouldn’t feel worse because my stomach was empty. It’s so nice to actually *want* to eat much of the time now!

CRAVINGS

Oh goodness, have the cravings been intense this week. I feel like all I do is talk about and think about food. (This is SO unlike me! My kids keep saying, “Mom, you are so WEIRD when you are pregnant!”)

Speaking of weird, yesterday and today I wanted a taco from Taco Bell. Y’all, I can’t remember the last time I’ve even eaten at Taco Bell!! But, thanks to Jesse, I had a taco for dinner AND breakfast (he was smart and just went and got a whole BAG of six tacos last night!!)

WEGHT GAIN

4.5 pounds (I usually always gain around 30 lbs. and at the rate I’m going, I don’t think I’m going to have any issue doing that again.)

*At this point, we don’t plan to share the gender before the birth. That could always change, but we kept it a family secret last time and it made it so special so we are thinking we’ll likely do that again.

In other news, I bought this sweatshirt this week and can’t wait for it to come in the mail!

And I was thrilled to once again feel well enough to go to the grocery store for a quick shopping trip!

Silas played both baseball and flag football this season. His first playoff game was Friday night and their team won, just barely! So they move on to the next playoff bracket next week.

What I’m…

Reading right now: I Will Always Write Back and Come Matter Here (My book stack in my room is getting way too high — and then I have three shelves in the library full of books waiting to be read ASAP. I guess it’s a good problem!)

Watching right now: Silas, Kaitlynn, and I have been watching The Masked Singer.

Listening to right now: I finally came up first in line for Atomic Habits on the Libby app again, so I’ve been listening to the last hour and half of it (that I didn’t get to finish the last time I had it “checked out” on the Libby app).

Loving right now: The fact that it was cool enough weather this past week to wear my favorite booties (shown above).

$47 Kroger Shopping Trip

I had a little more energy and a little less nausea this week (YAY for almost being in the second trimester!!), so I did a bit more of a “real” shopping trip.

Full disclosure: We’re still a few weeks away from getting back to our $70 grocery budget and the family is still eating a lot of cereal, snack foods, super quick meals (like scrambled eggs and frozen waffles), and take out. I’m okay with that because we always loosen up our grocery bill and eating out budget during the first trimester of pregnancy. It’s a season and one of the reasons we are so careful and intentional with our finances is so that we can change up the budget categories, if need be.

I hope to be back to our $70 grocery budget and menu planning in the next few weeks, just as soon as more energy returns and I feel well enough to be able to do more cooking/planning/grocery shopping.

For now, I’m just celebrating the fact that I made it to the store with a small plan and was able to get some good deals on groceries and managed to survive without getting sick! Here’s what we bought:

$47 Kroger Shopping Trip

5 boxes of Red Baron pizza — $1.99 each as part of the 3-day deals
4 bags of Kettle Chips — $0.99 each as part of the 3-day deals
Simple Truth Greek Yogurt — marked down to $0.49
Grapes — $0.99/lb. — $1.90
30 eggs — marked down to $1.49
1 bag of avocados — marked down to $0.99
5 boxes of Mott’s Fruit Snacks (40-count) — $1.99 each as part of the 3-day deals
Yoplait Gogurts — marked down to $0.99
Tropicana OJ — $3
Flour — $1.59
Sugar — $1.59
Milk — $2.99
4 cans of pumpkin — $0.89 each
Chocolate chips — $1.99 (I was craving Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins… unfortunately, my stomach quickly decided it did not like them at all. But hey, my family was happy to eat the rest!)
Total with tax: $47.19