35 weeks and 6 days

Well my last prego update was ages ago, I'm ginormous in comparison and still have a month of growth to go. We have decided on a name for our little lady after much back and forth on things like the number of syllables or the meaning of the name in foreign languages. We've decided to call our daughter Coralie Hope. I love it. It sounds sweet and feminine.We'll probably call her Cora for short. Jon chose the middle name which I think fits perfectly, We hoped for her :).

I'm feeling good these days, starting to get a little uncomfortable and feeling enormous but at the same time really enjoying having a big tummy that strangers want to rub and that my husband can almost not reach completely around. She gets the hic-ups a lot, either that or has very rhythmic kicking. If she comes at the same point in my pregnancy as Logan did she'll be here at 39 weeks, or December 9th. I think I'd prefer her to wait till her due date or a little past it. That way Jon's 2 weeks off will overlap Christmas and New Years, plus it would give us more time to get ready. I don't feel ready yet. I haven't really nested yet. We've got the main things we'd need for her, and since this isn't our first I feel like the millions of things you think you NEED for a baby, we've realized aren't so hard to go with out, or hard to run and grab if you do need them after she comes. She'll have her mommy, daddy and brother. She'll have plenty :)

I have started working on her bedding. I found a set that I loved but there was no way I was going to plop down 500+ buckaroos for it, so I've bargain shopped for fabrics and so far have made a crib skirt and partially recovered the glider cushions. Still need to do the arm rests on the glider and a crib bumper and quilt. I'll hopefully do a big nursery post once we've moved everything into her room and gotten things settled, as long as we do that before she shows up!

I starting to remember some of the glorious and not so glorious things about having a newborn. I've been around a few little ones lately and it's reminded me how mesmerizing they are. I'm remembering when Logan was under a week old, we'd just stare at him fascinated by every little facial expression, every little sound and coo he'd make. It was better than television. And seeing my husband become a father, become what he's always wanted to be more than anything else, that of course was glorious. But that's not all I remember. I remember feeling a tired like no other tired I'd felt before. Exhaustion, extreme emotions and physical recover are realities that you don't realize going into this the first time. Jon and I are different people now, we've done this before and yet we're still in for a big change, something we haven't handled before. We haven't parented two. In some ways I assume it should be easier. We have almost 5 years of parenting experience that may or may not help us out :) Adding another person to this family excites and scares me. In my pregnant emotional roller coaster mind, I've drifted between these two extremes:

What if this never gets better? What if it's too hard? What if it only gets harder? What if we can't recover? What if this is what does it, this is what ends us? What if this baby is just too much?

or

What if this defines our love all the more clearly? What if this glorifies God? What if this is what pushes us off the edge of comfortable and sends us soaring on a passionate adventure? What if this baby is just what we need?

I cling to the latter. I cling to the belief that God is big enough to guide us through this and that he's good enough to litter it with incredible joy while at the same time kind enough to use it to push us out of where we've gotten stuck and loving enough to do it because it's what's best for us. I believe God is God and I am not. But since He promises to never leave, I'll be ok, I'll be better than ok. I'll be better.