Nadia

Here we are in week 23 of pregnancy. This little girl is a kicker! She moves around all day every day. Last night, Lydia was in bed with me, and I woke up in the middle of the night to find Lydia's leg stretched across my belly. I carefully moved the heavy appendage off of me and rolled over. The baby seemed to thank me with a few back hand springs. She likes to have room to move. This might get tricky as she gets bigger and the living space becomes more and more crowded.

I've found it interesting how much I don't like to eat this time around. I seem to remember swearing off Taco Bell while I was pregnant with Lydia, but this time my list of dislikes is extensive. Just about any meat gives me a queasy feeling, and sometimes the only thing I want to eat is Fruit Loops. I try to make myself eat other healthy foods. For instance, I had a nice salad for lunch today, so I'm trying to gain my protein by drinking lots of milk in lieu of eating meat. Steak always seems to agree with me, though.
On that note, some things I am craving during this pregnancy are...
*Chocolate Malt
*Watermelon Slushies
*Rainbow Sherbet (although I learned I do not like the Life Savers kind- just standard Lime/Orange/Raspberry)
*Peppercorn Ranch dressing for salads
*Fruit Loops (without which I wouldn't eat anything for breakfast)
*V-8... I could drink a gallon every day - although I try to stick with just one or 2 small cans because they will inevitably give me heartburn if I drink too much.
*Steak with A-1, baked potatoes, and salad is my dinner of choice right now. But if there is even a small piece of fat on the steak I will likely be ill...
*Strawberries
*Oranges
*Bananas

And some of the things that I usually eat but can't stand the thought of...
*Eggs (trying not to gag as I type the word...)
*Spaghetti sauce - I'm eating my spaghetti with butter and salt instead. Boring, but it works.
*Hamburger - yuck.
*Hot dogs - really yuck
*Chicken nuggets - really really yuck
*Anything spicy- sometimes I want it, but I will regret it at night as I down a bottle of Tums.

I am truly ready for winter to be over as I feel the need to get out and move, with my energy levels increasing steadily, but the cold is paralyzing for me. I can't stand the cold. I didn't let that stop me from going sledding a few weeks ago, however. Against my mother's and husband's wishes, I decided if I was careful, there was no reason not to sled with Lydia, so we had a good time. The only problem with that was the climbing. I was too exhausted to make it back up the hill too many times, but at least I didn't totally miss out on it. So daddy took over from there and I stood, watched, and caught my breath the rest of the time.

And as for her name... we still have time to change our minds, but we may have already settled on a name for our new little girl. It was really funny how we came to Lydia's name. After exhausting every name in the baby book because one of us had a problem with it for one reason or another, we both agreed that we liked the name Lydia a couple months before she was born. However, we could not come to an agreement on her middle name. I really liked the sound of Lydia Grace, and Elliot loved the name Lydia Wenona (Wenona is Sioux for 'first born daughter'). She was about 3 days old, and neither of us would give in, so we decided to go with both, a compromise that we now love. So our little Lydia Wenona Grace Hill seemed to open up a new possibility of names for the new baby. This time, I had the idea to use family names for her middle names, and they would have a similar 'flow' to them as Lydia's middle names. My grandmother's name was Fern Neoma, and of course the Hill family has passed down the name Rose for a while now, a variation of Elliot's grandmother's name. So we thought Neoma Rose would make a nice middle name. We were still shooting down all the first names we thought of, until one day we were sitting around watching 24. One character from season 6 was named Nadia. I looked at Elliot and said, "that's a nice name. what do you think about Nadia?" He said, "Yeah, I like Nadia." And so, as of now, we are planning to name the baby Nadia Neoma Rose Hill. Nadia is a Russian name that means 'hope'. What a nice meaning, and although it's a mouthful, and we run the risk of making people think that we are really big Judds fans... who can't spell... I think we may have a winner. Stay tuned to find out if we have a change of heart before June. :)