22 Weeks

At 22 weeks along, Baby is the length of a spaghetti squash (about 11inches from head to heel) and is almost 1lb (about the weight of a bag of tortilla chips, apparently)! Baby's senses are continuing to develop and become refined for use in the outside world; for example, his/her sense of touch is improving and Baby will touch his/her face, suck his/her thumb, and grab/play with the umbilical cord! One website also mentions sense of taste - apparently Baby will experiment with this sense by sticking his/her tongue out into the amniotic fluid and, depending on what I ate for breakfast/lunch/dinner, may make a facial response to the taste...how cool! Tooth buds are also starting to develop in the gums. If we could look in and see Baby, he/she would look pretty wrinkly as there isn't a whole lot of fat developed under the skin yet - that's still a work in progress! Also, Baby now has hair on his/her head - apparently it is white at this point because it lacks pigment....hmm, I wonder what color it will turn? I'm so excited to finally see Baby! Only 18 weeks to go.....

Last post I mentioned how low Baby was sitting - I am happy to report that he/she has definitely demonstrated the ability to move around, including moving up higher in the uterus! Yay! This means I felt more movement this weekend, especially during the day which was super exciting. Tyler still isn't able to feel anything, but I assured him it's coming soon :)

 Not a whole lot of new developments on this end - still expanding to accommodate our growing Baby :) Trying to wrap up some projects on our condo before his/her arrival - repainting, building a mantel for the fireplace, and building a microwave/kitchen storage shelving unit (yes, these are all Tyler's projects, but I guess I'll help him out when I can ;) ). Seems like we still have a lot of time before the baby gets here, but when you think about it, it's coming up pretty fast!

We made a trip back to Indiana this past weekend to say good-bye to Grandma Stiles. It was a hard weekend, but we are so thankful that we were able to fly home and be with family. Everything was beautiful and I think Grandma would have liked the service :) I'm thankful that she is finally at peace and spending eternity with our Savior.

Please continue to pray for our Baby as he/she grows and develops, coming ever closer to the day we finally get to meet! Prayers for Tyler and I also would be appreciated, as we are making more decisions and adjusting more and more to the fact that it will no longer be just the two of us for a long, long time :) We're very excited about this new addition to the family, but we're also trying to really take advantage of and really appreciate/enjoy the last 18 weeks we have together to just be us!

Thanks for all of the love, support and prayers; sorry it's a bit of a short post this week, most of the developing is done - all Baby needs to do is keep on growing!