14 weeks, 2 days

Your baby can now squint, frown, grimace, pee, and possibly suck his thumb! Thanks to brain impulses, his facial muscles are getting a workout as his tiny features form one expression after another. His kidneys are producing urine, which he releases into the amniotic fluid around him — a process he'll keep up until birth. He can grasp, too, and if you're having an ultrasound now, you may even catch him sucking his thumb.In other news: Your baby's stretching out. From head to bottom, he measures 3 1/2 inches — about the size of a lemon — and he weighs 1 1/2 ounces. His body's growing faster than his head, which now sits upon a more distinct neck. By the end of this week, his arms will have grown to a length that's in proportion to the rest of his body. (His legs still have some lengthening to do.) He's starting to develop an ultra-fine, downy covering of hair, called lanugo, all over his body. Your baby's liver starts making bile this week — a sign that it's doing its job right — and his spleen starts helping in the production of red blood cells. Though you can't feel his tiny punches and kicks yet, your little pugilist's hands and feet (which now measure about 1/2 inch long) are more flexible and active.

We had quite an eventful weekend. We stayed with our friends Melissa and Thomas from Wednesday night until Friday afternoon. Thursday Melissa and I went to help with a Thanksgiving dinner the church was putting on for the homeless, but basically our entire congregation was there. Which is great, but sometimes too many hands just makes more mess. We stayed for about 10 minutes and then left. I think they should’ve had people sign up for shifts, rather than all show up at once. So we went home and got our dinner started, then went down the road to Melissa’s Grandparents house. They had some family drama, but I told Melissa that we were avoiding ours this year and we’d much rather watch theirs! We stayed for an hour or two and then went back to their place. We had our dinner late in the evening and Melissa’s mom and her boyfriend came over. It was very nice and relaxing.

Friday I had to work but my boss let me leave early. I went back to M&T’s and we hung out for a while, then Nathan and I packed up our stuff and took Lily (our basset hound) back to our house. Then we met up with M&T and went to the big Christmas parade in downtown Fort Worth! It’s an awesome parade—definitely the biggest this small town girl has ever seen! After the parade they light a ginormous Christmas tree right in the middle of the city. We received an unexpected blessing in the way of 4 tickets to sit! The planners or whoever line the streets with seats but you have to pay to sit in them—which is expensive! But this lady was driving along next to us and just offered us tickets, and she had four so we could all sit! How cool is that? (Disclaimer: I did not take these photos. I found them on the internet--thanks Mr. G.oogle!)

Saturday we went out to Nathan’s parents house so he could work on his truck. He wanted to go back out there Sunday after church but it was raining, so we went back to the house and sat around for the rest of the day. And I found out that Mellissa and Thomas are moving away.