17 weeks

Here's what's new with Lincoln at 17 weeks...

Take a look at your hand. Your baby is about palm-size now, with a crown to rump length of 5 inches and an approximate weight of 5 (or more) ounces. His body fat is beginning to form, but your little one is still quite skinny, with skin that is practically translucent. This week, your baby is all about practice, practice, practice in preparation for birth. One important skill your baby is sharpening now: sucking and swallowing. Your baby's heart rate is regulated by the brain (no more spontaneous beats) and clocks in at 140 to 150 beats per minute (roughly twice your own heart rate).

The past couple days I've had some morning sickness, fatigue, and allergy problems. But today I'm feeling great! I'm still craving sour things like oranges, pickles, mustard, and here's a new one--banana peppers. I'm loving Subway right now because I can get a Turkey sub and smother it with pickles, banana peppers, and lots of mustard. mmmm.... Speaking of food--I made Chicken Tortilla Soup this week and it was soo good. I'll try to post that recipe here soon! My baby bump is still growing over night...as is my hair and fingernails! I will post our weekly belly shot on Friday :)

We ordered Lincoln's crib bedding on Monday. It's so cute! We've been getting ideas for his room and we can't wait to get started!

We've had several people ask how we decided on the name Lincoln. It's a neat story! Chris was watching Good Morning America and the guest on the show was basically a baby name expert. He researches names for a living and how they can effect your success. For instance...Thomas has a greater chance of becoming a doctor than Candy :) At the end of the interview, they asked him what he had named his son and he said Lincoln. He chose Lincoln because his research showed that it conveyed words like trustworthy, responsible, and etc. So when we started looking at baby names, Chris mentioned the name Lincoln and I loved it. I've gotta give Chris the credit on that one :) The name Lincoln was also listed under the names that sound patriotic. Another bonus!

We decided on Everest after we went through a baby name book that consisted of 100,001 names. Seriously. We looked at every name. I highly recommend doing that because it was so funny! Especially when we would come across names like Aelfthryth (meaning "having an elf's strength). I remembered that when we picked Lincoln's name, the meaning was kind of weird. So today, I looked it up today and here it is...

Lincoln Everest
Lincoln "From the village near the lake" Everest "From the highest mountain peak" :)

Everyone keeps asking us if we will call him Linc. When we first picked his name, we didn't like the idea of him being called Linc...at all. But in the one week that we've been able to call him Lincoln, we've both referred to him as Linc, Linc Linc, Linkey, and Slinkey (that one was all Chris). Quick story about that: If I'm asleep when Chris is leaving for work, he will wake me up to tell me he loves me and give me a kiss goodbye. This morning he did that, but he also rubbed my tummy. Then he leaned in real close and said "Bye Slinkey." hehe At the time, I was half asleep...but the more I think about him calling Lincoln "Slinkey", the funnier it is! What I'm trying to say is that we do prefer Lincoln, but were not going to attack you if you refer to him as Linc ;) Oh--the picture is of the booties we bought Lincoln on our date night.