Baby Mama(s) Drama

Today is the day

2012-02-01T11:06:00.000-06:00

We check in at 5pm today to start inducing to hopefully get Jude here. We are both excited and nervous. I think that pregnancy makes you SO VERY ready to not be pregnant at the end that it is a little less scary to think that I am about to go into labor. I am way over being pregnant. I want our little award for all this, our baby boy in our arms.

Liz and I thought maybe we would not be able to sleep last night. I did get up a few times because there was some bleeding, but overall, we slept like we usually do: like the dead. I am hoping that the bleeding was the “bloody show” and that it means the cervix is open some. Yesterday when I had an exam, he was still high and the cervix was still completely closed. The Dr. informed us this might not work. We were like, “exscuse me?!!?” We have big plans of coming home with our little boy, but she explained that if all of this after 12 hrs does not open the cervix, there is not much they can do other than a C section, so they would just send us home and I would come back early next week. Oh my gosh, if this does not work and I come home pregnant tomorrow, I am not going to be a happy lady!!! Here is hoping it does. It usually does, so it probably will.

My Dr, now that we are inducing, is talking about doing all the things I don’t want her to. She said she will usually break the bag if it is not progressing fast enough and has a vacuum if he is not dropping properly. I was very unhappy to hear both those things, but Liz reassured me that we can refuse anything she wants to do. That made me feel a little better. I am just hoping that these things don’t happen because they don’t need to because with a little coaxing, Jude and I can do it on our own.

I am not as nervous as I thought I would be, but maybe I will be at the last minute. I am just so ready to have him and not be preggie, that I am pretty excited about that prospect of having him in the next few days. I just hope I am strong enough to let him come naturally after being induced so that the painkillers don’t make it even slower than it probably will be. Honestly, I just want him here and to be safe and sound, so we will see what the future holds. Hopefully next time I write, there will be pictures of our beautiful squished face man:)
-S

One more day

2012-01-31T08:38:00.000-06:00

Last night, we were watching Downton Abbey and I think I forget I was pregnant for about an hour. Then, I got up and saw Jude’s little sleep in our room crib and went, “why do we not have our baby?” Liz said, “soon baby”. Yes, very soon. We check into the hospital at 5 pm tomorrow night to hopefully coax the little man out. Crazy. We will have a baby by the end of the week. It feels like we have been waiting forever for him. What you have to realize is that we have been planning and getting our lives together for a child for 10 years now. Both Liz and I have always wanted children, but the timing never was quite right. I know that everyone says that the timing is never right, but honestly, I don’t think it could be any better timing for us at this point. Finally, we were emotionally, mentally, and financially as ready as a couple can be and so we went for it. Now, our little dream is almost here to be held. How amazing!

I am scarred for him thru this whole birth process. A baby releases more stress hormones during birth than any other time during their life. I just hope inducing doesn’t add to an already intense process for him. I just want him here safe and sound. Liz and I were joking that when we are stressed out about work or something in the future, we will say, “man, this is nothing, I was more stressed out when I was born!” We’re are weird;)

I have been having contractions on and off this morning. Nothing to get excited about yet, but they are stronger than any I have had in the past. A few nights ago, I had contractions off and on for about half the night and then they just stopped. This baby is not coming on its own. All the baby e-mails I keep getting talk about how most late babies are not truly late, they are just off on the due dates. Well, we know the exact day we conceived since we were inseminated. Our baby is just late!

I am happy to get him here! He is so big now that when he goes crazy, I worry he is going to injure me in some way. I have heard about babies breaking and bruising ribs, and fortunately, he never put his feet up that high, but it is not comfortable when he really starts moving around at this point. I can tell you, he is a full grown baby in there now. Time to come out Jude!

I really hope that all they have to do is ripen the cervix a little and my body will take over from there. I feel like I have failed him in some way since he has not come yet. I know it is silly, but it is so strange to get to the end and nothing to happen. It feels like we are in a little baby stand off with both of us wanting to make the next step, but nothing happening. I have tried thru this whole pregnancy to do everything right and now at the end, I don’t know how to get my body to go into labor. If I had a crystal ball, I would see when he is going to come and wait until then if it is not too late, but since I don’t we will induce tomorrow and hope that all goes well.

We spent 12 weeks learning about natural childbirth and all that, so it does feel a little strange to go and get induced when they recommend not doing anything like that. However, it is time. I can just feel it. It is time for Jude to be here. I wake up worried about him in the mornings when I was not worried about him before. Is he still thriving in there? Is he still okay? I will feel a huge sense of relief when I have him in my arms.

Insane to think we will have our baby boy in our arms so soon. We are so very ready for him to be here. It feels like we have been waiting forever for him. Send us some good labor thoughts for tomorrow and safe travels for Jude into this world!
-S

Full Nursery Reveal and Virtual Tour!

2012-01-28T14:52:00.000-06:00

Seeing that we are spending a lot of time right now just waiting for little dude to make his arrival, I thought it was time for a full nursery reveal! I know you all have seen lots of bits a pieces by this point but we haven’t shown any pictures of the whole alphabet wall or some of Jude’s new art. We also got a video camera around Christmas time so I thought I’d also try my hand at it and make a virtual tour! It’s probably a lot more exciting to me than it will be to you all, but I thought I’d share anyway.

And of course, the virtual tour, as promised.

Hope you enjoyed the tour/photos and that everyone is having a good Saturday!
-Liz

Jude’s womb days are numbered

2012-01-27T12:37:00.000-06:00

I called today to schedule being induced. I will be induced on Feb. 1st at 5pm if he does not come before that. I will be 41.5 weeks along at that point and I think that is enough! I truly hope he comes this weekend, but we will see.

I have been having some contractions last night and today. Probably 20 between when I went to bed last night and now. Not even one an hour at this point, so I am not really betting on it. Everyone else seems to think today is the day. I agree that 27 is a good number and today is a good day to be born. Right now, Jude is just shifting around in there, so we will see if it happens. I got a call from work from one of my managers. She said our psychic massage therapist was feeling strange and had to sit down. She then realized that she felt like she was having contractions. So, my coworker calls and goes, “Where are you?!?!” I simply stated, “in my living room, why?” And she laughed and told me the whole story. (This did happen after I scheduled the induction, so maybe she was picking up on that.)

I called my mom and told her about the date being the first and she said she would get here a few days early and bring her dog to leave at our house while she was in the hospital with me. Good thing we had this chat because 1. No, you are not expecting friends of ours (who are kind enough to take care of our animals while we are in the hospital) to babysit your dog while you are here 2. The only person that will be in the hospital with me before Jude gets here is Liz. Two very important things to clarify obviously since we had very different ideas about her trip here! She was a little stunned, but I was not about to back down on either of those points. Now we are on the same page. She is going to fly in on the 1st and hang out until he gets here.

I have had about 5 people tell me he is coming today. I am still waiting on him to get on that page:) I guess he still could technically, but it would have to be a short labor considering it is already 12:30pm here. I would love him to come today or this weekend since my Dr. is on call, but I am not going to place any bets.

I did a strange thing yesterday and baked. I made rolo stuffed chocolate chip and pecan cookies. I wrecked out the kitchen and just cleaned it this morning, but it was a nice distraction. I was pretty upset all yesterday thinking about being induced. I feel a little robbed of the whole, “oh my gosh he is coming” moment that I have been looking forward to for a long time now. I mourned it yesterday and feel better about it today. Honestly, when I see his little face, I think I will be long over missing that moment. I also did a lot of reading on being induced and quite a few people were able to have natural vaginal births after being induced. It makes me feel better. I really did correlate being induced with having a C section, so I was glad to read so many stories where that was not the case.

I sure hope he comes before Wed, but if not, we should have a baby boy in our arms by late next week!!
-S

Maybe he’s teaching me patience…but c’mon!

2012-01-26T03:42:00.000-06:00

I had a Drs. apt today. The Dr. did the vaginal exam and exclaimed “he’s still in Oklahoma!” AKA I am 40 weeks and 4 days and he is not even dropped. For those reading this that are not baby crazy, the baby has to drop in order for the cervix to start to open and thin out and kick in labor. Thus, there are not visible signs that Jude is anywhere near coming here as some babies drop weeks before they come. On the plus side, some don’t. He could move from "Oklahoma" to labor any minute. My mom even said that neither of my brother or I dropped and that 2 hrs from entering the world, she was not even fully dilated with me. I however, would like some sign that he is coming here.

To induce or not to induce. That is where I am. They also did the fetal stress test and a quick ultrasound on him to measure the fluid around his body. Both tests to make sure he is okay in there at this point. Both came back fine. Not as reassuring as I thought it would be because my Dr. explained, “yes he is fine right now, but we cannot predict the turning point or when he won’t be okay in there”. Well, that’s true. I have no way of knowing when he really should be here. I really wish I did. My Dr. is willing to induce anytime. I don’t want to be induced, but if he is just going to hang out there until I am, let’s do it now! But, how do you know?? You don’t-thus my problem. He could come this weekend, he could stay in there until Feb. 6th when they will force me to induce. I just don’t know what to do or think at this point.

It comes down to healthy baby, healthy mama. I just wish I had the equation or crystal ball that would get us both there. I wish I truly knew how he was doing in there. Is he happy and waiting for something? Is he ready to be here, but doesn’t know how? His movements are big. I am officially carrying a full grown baby in there. When he is active, it is a little intense. So why has he not made his entrance?!?! I want to wait on him, but my patience is waring off. More importantly, I am not so sure he is doing great in there. He does not seem to be gaining much weight (I am losing weight at this point and the stomach growth has stopped) and his movements are like he is trying to plow out the front of my stomach.

Patience. I don’t have much. I never have. They say that babies teach you what you need to know. Is this my first lesson as a mother? I decided after the disappointing Drs. appointment that I needed to just get out of the house. I put on some of my birth play list (relaxing spa music) and went for an hour long walk to relax. Then, last night, we went to see Hook at the Alamo Drafthouse. It was one of those events where they feed you movie specific food while you watch the movie. We ate (an insane amount of food was served) hamburger pizza over a bed of curly fries, a turkey leg larger than any I have ever seen with a citrus salad and mashed potatoes and then multicolored mousse with a cinnamon spoon. Can you say YUM! I think the second course went mostly untouched because when they made the courses, they forget to make them “mini” but it was a really appropriate menu with a movie that I love at the theatre that I love with the love of my life. Something I don’t think we will have the ability to do again for a long time. Liz said I watched the whole movie with my big kid eyes. I noticed that quite a few people in the theatre had that look while watching the movie. I bet Jude will get that same look when he is happily engrossed in childhood things. (that is only if he ever gets here!) (Side note: we joked that if Jude came during the movie, we would rename him “Jude Rufeo K” in honor of it) Ruf-e-o, Ruf-e-o...

On a plus note, all grandmas are behaving. My mom sent me "hang in there” flowers the other day and made a little e-card basically saying the same thing. My dad’s girlfriend has said nothing back to my response. Liz’s mom finally got her whopping cough vaccine and has not said much otherwise. We are still getting texts from people asking about Jude’s arrival, but they all go to Liz now. I think people have realized that I am not in the mood for them. I feel bad that Liz has to filter them, but right now will take it if it means I am not getting them. Liz’s back is doing better also. We are a sad pair with my tailbone and hips being on and off during this last month and her back going out. Both of us are hanging in there:)

I think the final decision for the whole thing is to wait and make one next week. I am going to move my Drs apt from Thurs to Tuesday, see where Jude is and go from there. If there is still no progress, I think I will induce that week. If there is some progress, I might push it the last 4 days and let him try to come in on his own. Personally, I would love to have this baby right now (well a month ago if I was being honest), but I just don’t want to force him out if he is in there for some reason unknown to me. I do feel that being induced leads to C-sections, (I know not all the time, but the study is there) and that is not anywhere near what I would like as a birth plan, but Jude does not seem to be making any plans of entering on his own. It does rob us of the whole, “oh my gosh this is happening” excitement of birth happening on it’s own, but I am starting to think that we were not going to get that chance and on Feb. 6th, we would just be forced to go to the hospital and induce anyways.

Here’s hoping he comes this weekend on his own and puts both of us out of having to make a decision. My Dr is even on call all weekend Jude!
-S

Still....No Baby

2012-01-25T10:01:00.000-06:00

I’m back at work today after taking two days of sick time for my back. And while my back is still sore and sitting here in this uncomfortable chair isn’t helping, I’m so grateful that baby Jude hasn’t come yet. I mean, he can come any time now (Seriously, Jude, let’s get this show on the road), but I was really really scared on Sunday night when my back was at its worst that he would come. And that I wouldn’t be physically able to be there with my wife, that I wouldn’t be able to help her and see my son born. Because that is how bad it was that night, I couldn’t get up out of bed pretty much at all. I hate having a bad back and this was the worst time for it to act up. But thankfully S didn’t go into labor that night and I’m slowly getting better.

I’m also glad that S didn’t go into labor last night. We had a crazy thunderstorm last night that woke us up from bed around 2:45. The lightning was so constant and bright that our room seemed to glow and the house was shaking from all of the thunder. S and I went into the living room to see if the dogs were ok and to look out the windows and the rain was coming down so hard. S said, “This is the closest I have ever been to being in a hurricane.” And it really was. And it would have been terrifying to try to drive to the hospital in that weather. Austin has been really dry and we need all of the rain we can get, so I hope it continues.

The nice part though about having my back go out is that S and I got to spend the last 4 days together. In a normal month our schedules don’t mesh up very much and so it’s pretty common that we only have 1-2 days off together in a month’s time. So four whole days off together is very uncommon. So even though we mostly spent the last two days in bed watching movies or on the couch watching movies, it was really nice. I feel like during this waiting time it’s important to take naps, smile lovingly at each other, eat good food, take long showers, and relax over all as much as possible. And so we did.

Today S has a doctor’s appointment where we will possibly have a few tests done to make sure Jude is happy in there. I believe they are going to do a fetal stress test and an ultrasound to measure him to make sure he isn’t getting too big and that he has enough fluid left. I’m not sure if they are going to do both of these tests today or not, but I hope so. We worry about our little man! I think that we are also going to talk about inducing. I don’t think that we will want to induce before February 6^thunless our doctor thinks it’s necessary but we will see. I also want to get her opinion on sweeping S’s membrane, but I suppose it will be a moot point if S still isn’t dilated at all. I’m sure we will be back later today or tomorrow with an update.

One last thing, congrats to all of those new babies out there! We have loved reading your stories and seeing all of your beautiful photos. Thank you so much for sharing your little ones with us here in blogland!

-Liz

Last baby standing

2012-01-23T09:12:00.000-06:00

No Jude yet. No real signs of him coming yet either. His due date (or at least the last one) is today. Happy due date Jude! I read on What to Expect that 50% of pregnancies go past their due date, which makes me feel better. It also said of those, only 10% truly need to be induced and the rest of the babies come in the weeks between. I really don’t want to be induced. Honestly, if I was willing to be induced, I would probably have done it by now.

Liz threw out her back yesterday, so it is a good thing that he is not coming today. She is having trouble moving around, so I don’t think that she would be up to being a labor coach today. Plus, I didn’t do the dishes yesterday, so I will be able to get to them today.

We are still hoping he comes this week. We want to meet him and start that phase of our lives. We had a great weekend sans baby. We went to 2 different farmer’s markets, a baby fair, played some games with friends, and then had brunch with those same friends. They helped our dog problem by screwing in the fence that the neighbors crappily built. I am hoping we do not have any more problems with the neighbor dogs. Moving forward, I am going to just call Animal Control, but I don’t want it to come to that.

Everyone is wondering about if Jude is here. We are getting tons of call, messages, and texts. I think it’s funny. Most of the people are on our first to contact list, so I don’t know why they are worried that they won’t know. Plus, unless labor comes on like a tornado, I imagine we will post a short thing here and on facebook for everyone. I understand them being anxious. No one is more anxious than we are.

Speaking of anxious, I had a few small issues with anxiety a few night ago. I felt like I couldn’t get a full breath. Being pregnant, you don’t get full breaths, but it has never been a problem before. I got up and shifted around and eventually went back to bed. It was not very fun! I think he was laying on the right side where he usually lays on the left, so maybe he somehow was pushing on things differently. Hard to tell.

Being off work means that my feet are less swollen and my back hurts less. I am getting used to the idea that being off work is okay. I felt guilty about it, but I think I am pregnant enough that it is actually a good thing to stay close to home and get as much rest as possible. I have been sleeping it up. Granted, I wake up every hour to pee, but I sleep at night and usually take a nap in the afternoon. It’s been nice! Having Liz around this weekend helped me not be bored too. It was crazy to be at home on a Saturday AND and Sunday.

Overall, we are just in a waiting game. I have been having a few contractions everyday, but nothing major yet. Yesterday Jude was really low, but today, he seems to have moved back up. I am just waiting for the contractions to become something, but so far, they are sporadic and not too strong. I guess until he gets here, I will just rest as much as possible, take nice walks, and eat good food! Who knows how much I will be able to do any of that in the first bit of his life!
-S

Maternity leave Day #1

2012-01-20T13:16:00.000-06:00

My last day of work was yesterday until April 23rd. I don’t think it has fully hit me yet. I get great satisfaction out of having a career and being the bread winner, so until Jude gets here, it will take some getting used to to not have the calls with questions on how to handle or do something and be one of the main leaders at work. Once he is here, it will be a whole different adventure and I am sure he will occupy my time without even trying. It is just until then that I am worried about.

I have worked weekends, especially Saturdays, for probably 10 years now. The only reason that I would not work a Saturday is if I am on vacation or something. I am SO excited to run around and go to the different Farmer’s Markets around town tomorrow. Not something I ever really get to do. I have the whole weekend off with Liz which doesn’t happen often without there being a plan or travel involved.

I went and got my oil changed and a burnt out bulb replaced, walked the dogs, finished a book I’ve been reading, napped, and did little things around the house. Not bad yet, just a typical day off. The nice part is when I woke up in the middle of the night, I didn’t have to be worried about the 6am alarm clock. I got up, and putzed around and went back to bed.

We are still having trouble with the neighbors dogs breaking thru the fence. I am stalking my neighbors car to go and have a talk with her. I am 3 days away from my due date and don’t want pit bulls breaking into my yard, no matter how nice they are. We have been pretty cool about it for 5 years now as they have done nothing to prevent it, but I am to the point that I guess I will have to call Animal Control if after the talk they still don’t find a way to restrain the dogs. So annoying, but I am unsure what to do otherwise.

I think Jude is officially all the way down. Still no other signs of labor happening. I have had some cramping and small contractions, but that is a normal thing at this point. I got an hour of reflexology yesterday. Her track record is she brings babies in 48 hrs, so we shall see if he comes tomorrow:) I also ate pineapple, mango and kiwis and we walked around Whole Food and Book People for an hour the other night. It was a nice change from walking around the neighborhood. Last night we had spicy wings. I have been bouncing on the ball and doing squats and some dancing, but nothing yet.

The public is getting anxious. We are getting all kinds of text messages and voice mails and e-mails wanting to know if Jude is here. Liz and I are convinced he is not coming for a while, but I think we have just been so excited, we are tired of being over excited about it. At the VERY latest, I will be induced in 17 days. I really hope he comes before that, but honestly he has not shown any major signs of arriving. Our friend said Jude is a “Divo” as in the male version of a diva and will come in his own time. Yes, yes he will.
-S

Pineapple juice and a stubborn baby

2012-01-18T13:53:00.001-06:00

First of all, go to breaking into blossom and give them some love. Poor girls have been laboring their little rabbit for 38 hrs. Please help the little guy get down the rabbit hole with some positive thoughts!

On our baby front, no progress. He is down a little more, but the cervix is just as closed and unripe as ever. We are going to go and walk around Whole Foods for a while today since we have a huge, really nice one. It sounds nicer than the mall. Liz is also convinced that pineapple will help, so I drank 46 oz of pineapple juice today. We are going to get some fresh pineapple from there when we go. I love fruit, but there are 2 fruits that I do not like: pineapple and watermelon. When I was a kid, I ate both those things and then threw them up and have had an aversion ever since. If Liz really wants me to do it, I will. I understand her wanting to feel she has some control over when Jude will get here. I feel the same way most of the time.

I think I am secretly the baby bringer for my Dr. This is the 3rd appointment in a row that she was almost not there because one of her patience is in labor. It’s pretty funny. I am a good luck baby charm to all babies but mine it seems:)

I had some drama with my dad’s girlfriend and my mom this week. I think that babies make people crazy! Twice this week I have received a “is the baby here?” texts from my mom. Since everyone and their dog is constantly asking us about it and we would like nothing more than to have him, it is getting annoying. She will be one of the first ones to know when he is on his way, but apparently is not clear on that point (even though I have stated it multiple times). And then there are the “Are you okay?” texts. Not, a “how are you doing?” text, but an “are you okay?” text. My mom is always worried the worse thing possible will happen, so she does not even have the ability to just ask how things are going. Instead it is always dramatic. So annoying! Last night when I received the text, it took all of my being not to write back, “oh, yes, Jude is here, I forgot to tell you” just to mess with her. What answer is she really looking for??

My dad’s girlfriend (remember the one I have met twice) wrote me a facebook message asking if Feb. 13-17 works for her and the kids to come and see Jude. Without my dad it turns out. Considering if Jude goes as far as the Dr. will let him (2 weeks past his due date) he would be born on the 6/7 of Feb, that is a little soon. Lady, I DON’T KNOW YOU! Quit pushing yourself upon me! You want to be there the first week of his life with your kids (15 and 18 yrs old) WITHOUT MY DAD?!?! No ma’am. I wrote her back as nicely as possible and said no, that 1. it was too soon 2. wait until you can visit with my dad 3. I will keep her posted as to what dates will work out best.

I think I might stop working after this week. I am exhausted and bored at work. Also, I am terrified of trying to have a natural childbirth after getting up at 6am, driving and hour to work, working 9 hrs on my feet, and driving an hour home. I think one of the main things that are important in going into a natural childbirth is that you are rested and fed before you go into that marathon. I won’t have that luxury if I go into labor at work. I am so torn about it though. It seems like time wasted to spend up to 2 weeks at home without Jude here. If only I had some indication of his arrival, then I could just take a few days off before. If he goes to 42 weeks, then I will only have 10 weeks at home with him. I don’t know, I am still mulling it over.

I am going to get some reflexology at work tomorrow and Liz is going to do some tonight. She studied up on it last night and is going to hit the points. I asked my Dr. at the appointment about natural methods to get him here and she only suggested walking and reflexology. She did not like the idea of castor oil (which we don’t either). I have gained a bunch of weight this week, bringing my total to 32 lbs. Everything is so swollen and I have been starving, so I am not surprised. Either way, at this point, I am not really concerned. She said Jude is probably 7.5-8 lbs. That seems like a good weight to enter the world at little Jude!

My next appointment is on Wed. of next week. Here is hoping we don’t make it that far!
-S

Let's Go to the Mall!

2012-01-17T15:27:00.000-06:00

Thank goodness I'm teaching a class this week at work. I don't think I could spend this week just sitting around in my office, googling various ways to naturally induce labor. That would be a long maddening week. This week already feels like a long maddening week and I have plenty to do at work to keep me busy. I'm grateful that our little Jude has made it past 39 weeks and I know that 50% of women go past their due date and it's not set in stone. But at 5 days till our due date, I'm going a little crazy. Today I've tried to make peace with the fact that Jude probably won't be here till sometime late next week. That it's not a 5 day count down but more like a 10-14 day count down till he gets here. It doesn't help that at work everyone keeps saying things like, "No baby yet?" and more annoyingly, "Tick tick tick!" Yeah, no baby yet, obviously or I wouldn't be here talking to you jokers. I know that all of this is SOOOOOO much harder on S. The whole world it seems like is watching her for signs of labor and I can't help but do it too. Everyday, "Any contractions?" and every time she makes a funny face or sucks in her breath a little bit too sharply, "Was that a contraction?" It's annoying and frustrating and I'm trying to stop. This baby will come when he is good and ready to and not one minute before.

In the class that I'm teaching this week there is a girl in here who has 2 kids, a 1 year old and a 3 year old. She told me all about how with her last pregnancy her baby hadn't arrived by her due date and so she went to Walmart and walked around for an hour and bought some caster oil and then she went and walked around the mall for 2 hours and then she went home, drank a shot of the caster oil, ate dinner, and started having contractions a hour later and gave birth early the next morning. Then, we read about one of our fellow baby bloggers, Breaking into Blossom, and how they started having contractions while walking at the mall. So now S and I are determined to get ourselves to the mall this week! I'm not sure yet if we are going to go do some mall walking today or tomorrow, but we are going to give it a shot. I keep singing this song from one of our favorite shows, How I Met Your Mother.

But I doubt the mall experiment will work. S walks All.Day.Long. at work, goes up and down stairs and is as active as anyone 39 weeks pregnant could possibly be, so I don't think that a few laps around the mall will do much. But at least it gives us something to do, something to focus on, so it's worth a shot.

Fingers crossed that this baby is born soon.

-Liz

Blueberry pancakes and false alarms

2012-01-15T09:04:00.000-06:00

Yesterday I came home early from work. I was having what I called “tiny contractions”. They felt different than the cramping I have been having for the past few weeks. They were not strong, but I was having 4-5 per hour. They were not "call the Dr. worthy", but since I live an hour away from work, I did not want them to get to that point and then try to get home or to my hospital. I had some once I got home. Then they stopped, then I had 2 more, and now I feel fine. I don’t know if my uterus is just practicing or if maybe Jude is going to make his appearance soon. I am 39 full weeks today. That means he could come anytime or at the VERY latest in 3 weeks. I am rooting for anytime, but I do have some Holiday days I need to use up next week, so maybe right on time will work for us. I just really hope he does not go 2 weeks past and they have to induce. It does not seem like a good idea for natural childbirth if you can avoid it.

So, what do you do when you are waiting to see if your contractions are going to amount to anything? For me: EAT! I was starving all yesterday. I could not get enough food. We had some of our friends over last week and made blueberry pancakes, and I have demanded them a few times since then. Liz has obliged and we went and got some more blueberries and Bisquick and she made some for me last night. Liz is an amazing cook, but pancakes defeated her in the past. She is now a pancake pro! She can make big ones or little ones and they turn our round and cute! She also made us fettucini alfredo for dinner. (yes my pancakes were the 2nd dinner of the night) I also took a nap when I got home from work. So, while I waited, I slept and ate. Not too bad of a day I say.

I am a little disappointed our little man is not making his appearance and it was all just my uterus playing around. He has dropped down pretty low, so maybe I was just feeling him in a new place, but some of them were contractions. He was very active thru the whole thing, which I am not sure if that is normal or not. I could not tell if he was using his little head to cause pain or if the uterus contracting was making him move around a lot.

He is large enough now that he does not kick as much as try to escape out the front of me with his butt and feet. He will sleep with his little butt pushed out the center of my belly and a foot shoved out the side. It’s pretty funny. It makes me think he has some long legs because of where he stretches them out.

My belly now sits on my lap since he squirmed his way down. I think he likes the space because even being lower, some days he takes and sticks his tiny feet out the top of my belly near my ribs. Fortunately, he is kind enough not to play in my ribs. I hear that hurts really bad.

Liz has thru all this become a huge advocate for natural childbirth. We had some of our friends come over last night and watched the Happiest Baby on the Block video and then they showed us how to swaddle a baby on a doll she brought over. We were talking about what we wanted to do as far as the labor and you should have heard how into natural childbirth Liz is. When I originally wanted to do it, she was of the mindset of “well, if that is what you want to do”. Now, she is the main cheerleader for Jude and me to try to have a natural childbirth. She was explaining all the reasons why and excited to talk about it. She is going to be such a great coach!

I am ready to not be pregnant anymore. Fancy that at 9 months and 3 weeks pregnant! Not really shocking I think. A few days ago, my hip was about to give out and I had to get Liz to get my exercise ball for me to sit on to try and work it out. Then, I got shaking cold for no reason. So weird. Liz grabbed a hoody for me and a blanket and had me take deep breathes and then I was fine. It was strange, but pregnancy does such weird things to the body. I think I was just hungry honestly. My right arm is almost constantly numb at this point. I think it is pregnancy induced carpal tunnel. It is all doable, but not the most comfortable I have ever been. I keep telling Liz that I used to be a dolphin and I am now a whale. This comes up when I am in bed trying to turn over mostly. I don’t feel large and different other than when I am trying to switch sides in bed. Between the belly, the wacky hips and the 3 pillows I have myself propped on in different places, it is quite and ordeal just to switch sides.

I am excited to only work 3 days next week and then hopefully little Jude will be here! If not, then I will go back to my regular 5 days a week work week. I am thinking that I will work 1 week past my due date and then leave if he is not here yet. That will only be 1 week of my maternity leave wasted without him here if he goes to the full 42 weeks. I just don’t want to take it now and possible waste 3 weeks of the time without him. I want as much time at home with him as possible. On the other hand, I want to be rested for his arrival. If I am going to go natural, it will be much better if I have not just worked a long 9 hr shift at work when I go into labor.

All in all, we are ready and excited for his arrival. I have today off so we are going to go to the movies and eat some spicy Indian food and just spend the day with each other relaxing. Hope you have an excellent Sunday also!
-S

Everything In It's Right Place

2012-01-12T14:47:00.000-06:00

Everything is done. Finally, I checked off the last thing on my to-do list for before Jude and it feels good. This week has been really productive. I’ve gotten my oil changed, my flu shot and my whooping cough vaccine, I finished the rest of the background check paper work type stuff that we needed for the adoption, I cleaned out what is basically our garage, went on a massive grocery shopping trip to try to stock up the house as much as possible, and have managed (with S’s help) to keep the house pretty clean. Oh and the hospital bag is packed, the nursery is done, the clothes are washed, and everything is set on that front as well. Now there really isn’t much of anything left for us to do other than wait for the little dude to make his appearance. It sort of feels like now that we are as totally prepared as any two people could be for a newborn that it will jinks us. I almost wanted to not get some of these things done in hopes that it would encourage the universe to “punish” us by having Jude be a bit early. Isn’t that silly reasoning? I am glad that it is all done though and there is nothing left to worry over.

Can you believe that there are only 10 more days till Jude’s due date? I can’t believe it. Even 9 months later, with 6 ultrasounds, 3 baby showers, and a million kicks and nudges, I still can’t quite wrap my head around the fact that we are having a baby. And it’s so intense, this love that I have for him already and this longing I have to hold him in my arms. I never imagined that I could feel so strongly for someone I haven’t really met yet. But then of course I do feel like I’ve met him and that I know him. He seems to already have great timing, comically speaking. S and I will be talking about him or about something else and he always seems to kick at the right time. It feels like he is voicing his agreement or disagreement each time and I love it.

Of course, now that I realize how close we are to the end of this pregnancy, I have been snapping pictures of S’s amazing belly left and right. I want to make sure that I’ve accurately captured it because it hit me the other day how much I will miss it. I love S being pregnant. She is so beautiful with that big round belly and I love how tenderly she looks down at it and smiles. I am truly in awe of the life she has created and feel so blessed to have been even a small part of the process. And though I’m sure S is looking forward to some of the less than pleasant things that go along with pregnancy going away (like the numb arm and the hip pain), I know she is going to miss being pregnant too. She said just the other day that it is going to be weird to not have him with her all of the time, knowing that he is safe and content.

And because I love bump shots like I said, here is the newest one. S looked so cute yesterday that before she could even get in the door after work I made her stop and let me take pictures of her in front of our house. So cute.

Congrats by the way to all of the January mommas who have given birth recently! I can’t wait to hear all of your stories!

-Liz

I’m a widdle waddly

2012-01-10T13:45:00.000-06:00

I am usually a very fast walking, straight from point A to B person. At 9 and 1/2 months pregnant, I waddle and take my time getting around. It’s pretty funny I think and I read somewhere that it helps get the baby’s head into the pelvis, so it is not a bad thing. I feel the same way about it that I do about my stretch marks. Fine with both. I think when you want a child for a long time and finally get to create and carry one around, all the things he does to your body are just fine.

On the Dr front, I am sure you read Liz’s post yesterday. Jude needs to drop 4 more inches according to this Dr. Mine was baby catching so I saw another one from the practice. She was loud and boisterous and the funny thing was her vaginal exam was just the same. My Dr does it and I am always like “maybe I can push out a baby, this is not so bad”. This lady did it and I was like “hello there, nice to meet you! whoa mama” Intense. She thought he might be breach, but I was never concerned. He likes to stretch out his little feet out the side of my belly and his little butt out the front, so I know what position he is facing. Still nice to confirm on an ultrasound.

I just got back from a walk with Jude’s Aunt Lulu. The dogs are loving our new routine of regular walks. I like it too. It is hard for me sometimes after being on my feet at work all day, but most days, it feels good to go on a slow waddle of a walk:)

I am still working my 40-45 hrs a week with 10 hrs on the road to get there and back. Most of my staff is shocked that I am still doing it. If I could, I would cut back, but that is not really an option at my company, so I push thru and it’s fine.

I am so ready to start the new phase of our life with our little boy. It is going to be so different and so exciting! I want to meet him and see his little face and personality. I am excited for the challenge of having a newborn and all the surpises and joy he will bring to our lives. I have been trying to really spend some quality time with Liz and with myself. On my days off, I lay in bed, dozing and watching shows or reading. Every minute I get with Liz I value. I know that when Jude is here, he is going to be the main focus and there will not much laying around time, so I am enjoying these last few weeks. At the same time, we (mostly Liz) are knocking out projects around the house and keeping it clean. I want to come home to a clean house when he gets here, so I am trying to keep up with the dishes and such. Liz has been organizing and cleaning rooms of the house.

This belly is officially big! Everyone keeps seeing me and going “whoa!” Yes, whoa. I still think it’s pretty insane that there is a a child in my belly and that we can do that at all. I value these last weeks with him. Feeling him move around in there and knowing he is safe and happy inside. I have still only gained a little under 27 lbs, so he is all belly, which I think makes it look bigger.

I feel really happy and settled about everything at this moment. I know labor and having a newborn will be challenging, but I am excited for both to happen. My biggest fear right now is how crazy our moms have been lately. My mom texted me at 12am the other morning an “Are you okay?” I got the text the next morning and sent her, “yes, why?” She goes on about how the only reason she could think of for us to be so excited for Jude to be here is that something is wrong or I am miserable. That is the only reason you can think of?? I can think of 200 fantastic reasons why we are pumped to meet our son. She is so pessimistic all the time. I had a small freak out about her being here when he is born because I don’t need the extra stress of managing her fears and emotions at the same time I a trying to learn to breast feed and about our new baby. It will be fine, but I don’t understand why people are not just positive and excited about the whole thing. We have told everyone who wants to come in that they have to stay in a hotel. I think that will help out tons not having them underfoot.

My Dr will not let me go 2 weeks past my due date, so no matter what, we will have a baby in the next month! I have to say that is the most exciting thing ever!
-S

Cozy Baby Isn't Going Anywhere

2012-01-09T11:16:00.002-06:00

Well this baby is not coming any time soon. Sigh. S had a doctor’s appointment this morning and they confirmed that she is not dilated at all and that the baby hasn’t dropped yet either. S’s normal doctor was off “catching a baby” so she saw another doctor in the practice. According to that doctor Jude needs to come down another 4 inches to be fully “dropped”. And the doctor freaked me out by thinking that Jude was breach. So they sent S in for a quick ultrasound and saw that no, he is not breach, he is head down like he is supposed to be. That is a relief. We really want to avoid a C-section if at all possible and with a breach baby you don’t tend to have many choices unless you can get the baby to turn. So I guess he will continue to cook up a bit cuter in S’s tummy for the time being. I keep teasing her that he isn’t going to be born any time soon because she has made him too cozy in there. So the cozy baby will probably be staying at least another week if not longer in the tummy. I’m just hoping at this point that he will be close to on time. I think it would make us go crazy for him to be more than a week a late, so fingers crossed that he will be born in January and not February!
-Liz

While My Wife Gently Sleeps

2012-01-05T16:07:00.001-06:00

Today is a bonus day. S and I were up this morning, me getting ready for work and her up having some breakfast on her day off. And she asked me, “can’t you call in sick? Take the day off?” And I looked at her and realized that yes, yes I could take the day off. So I called into work “sick” (I really didn’t have much going on at work today anyway) and we have spent the day together. We went back to bed for a while, went out to breakfast with a lovely friend, wandered around Central Market (which is a fun grocery store), went to the movies (we saw Hugo, it was magical), stopped and got ice cream, and now my sweet wife is taking a much needed nap. I love golden days like this and seeing as how they are numbered at this point, I value them so much more.

And while the days without baby are numbered, don’t worry dear public, they are not literally numbered. I think with our last post a few of you worried that with our impatience we would do something drastic like induce S to get the little dude here early. But I can promise you that we will not induce until 42 weeks. It goes against everything we want for him and for S and a natural child birth, so don’t worry. When we say we are going to do things to get him here I mean things like go on long walks, eat spicy food, drink apple juice, bounce on the exercise ball, that sort of stuff. We arn’t going to do anything weird/dangerous either, no caster oil or other drugs/herbs to speed things along. So if Jude gets here any time soon I promise you that it not because we forced it, but because that is just what happened. And I’m pretty sure wishes and hopes never induced labor, so we will keep hoping he comes soon. I’m hoping for exactly 10 days. In 10 days we will be at 39 weeks exactly, which seems to be the magic number in terms of development, but we shall see. After all, unless doctors force them, babies tend to do whatever they want.

Hope your day is as blissful as mine.

-Liz

PS- I always enjoy looking at our stats, especially how people found our site and search words they used. And I just noticed that this week 4 different people found our blog by searching for the phrase “cute stuffed zombie”. How strange and random is that?

Are you ever going to come??

2012-01-04T12:59:00.000-06:00

Okay, so I am being dramatic. I was totally convinced Jude would make his appearance this week. I am only 37 weeks, but I woke up a few days ago just feeling off. Then, I started having cramping, which I have not had much of before. He seems lower and is moving around differently. I even left my keys and passwords at work for people just in case I was not at work on Friday. Well, I went to the Dr. and am not at all dilated. Frown. I was really ready to not go back to work and especially ready to meet our little man. He is just too comfy in there I guess. No plans on arriving. My Dr. even said, “you need to tell him to come this month”. I have been, but like a baby, he is not listening.

I have been having tons of baby dreams. I am dreaming about labor, delivery, him, all kinds of baby things. Usually, it is about labor and it is a little stressful. Nothing crazy, but it feels like it does when I dream about work. The most recent one I had was actually neat. He was pushing against my stomach and I could touch and see his little toes and fingers. I was playing with them, then I just pulled him out of my stomach. Weird, but there he was!

I plan to go for a long walk today and bounce on the exercise ball a bit. Liz is obsessed with me doing all kinds of things to bring him here. She has a list of 10 things she is demanding I do next week everyday if he is not here yet. I tend to cramp up on long walks, so I am going to try to take a long walk, but stay close to the house so if it hurts too bad, I can come back.

The good news is the uterus is practicing. I feel like that is a step in the right direction. I have not had any regular or really strong contractions yet. Only twice has it been take my breath away intense. Mostly, it is like a medium period cramp. I have awful (as in crying on the bed) period cramps, and have not had any contractions that have felt that bad yet. I am sure they are coming, Jude and I are just not at that point yet.

I have been very “putsy-putsy”. I have been cleaning and organizing all over the place. My desk at work is immaculate, I have organized his clothes by size and even scrubbed down our bathroom a few days ago. Not an easy task for being over 9 months preggie, but I just needed to do it right then.

At the Drs, by blood pressure was normal and I actually lost .6 lbs. Not too bad considering I have been gaining 2 lbs a week for a few weeks now. Takes my overall weight gain to 25 lbs even. I hope to stay around there or put on a max of 5 more lbs. We will see.

Send us all your get your baby here thoughts! We are dying to meet our baby boy!
-S

Maternity Photos!

2012-01-03T20:49:00.000-06:00

Just wanted to share some maternity photos a great friend and photographer took for us!

Isn’t she the cutest?!

-Liz

2012 is Here! (But Jude isn't)

2012-01-02T11:43:00.000-06:00

I can’t believe it is 2012 already. This year has flown by. But I think that these next few weeks as we wait for our little dude to make his way into the world will crawl by. We are just so excited to meet him!

We had a great New Years Eve. One of my BFFs and her husband threw a great party that we went to. The little lady worked the next morning at 8, so she didn’t stay too long (plus being 9 months pregnant keeps your partying at a minimum) so she went home around 10:30 and like the sweet wife that she is, she came back to the party to pick me up around 2. Luckily we only live about 1 mile away, so it wasn’t too far. We had so much fun. Almost all of our favorite people were there, the house looked beautiful, there was a lovely fire in the fire pit, the spread of food was amazing, and everyone looked great. At the party we had a great white elephant gift exchange, an awesome 2011 trivia game (my team won by the way) and we played a really fun game called Cards Against Humanity, which is sort of like a dirty version of Apples to Apples. Throughout the night everyone wrote down their resolution and then at midnight the resolution cards were all tied onto balloons that we released into the night. It was really cool and I think possibly a new tradition for us. We had 2-3 extra balloons that we just wrote nice messages on the cards for the people that will find them, stuff like “Everything is going to be ok” and “You are beautiful”. It was a great idea. Now a few pictures to feast your eyes upon.

S and I at the party

Me looking festive

S's New Years Bump

In other news, no baby yet. Another one of my Oklahoma friends who was due in January had her baby last night. That makes for 3 out of the 4 pregnant people I know who were due in January. I know it’s still a little bit early for Jude to come out, but we have somehow convinced ourselves that it will happen on Thursday. S normally is pretty intuitive, but we will see. Her last guess was the 15^th so maybe she was just right about the 5 part. Either way, I think we will be eating lots of spicy food and taking some long walks these next few days!

-Liz

Amazing

2011-12-31T13:23:00.000-06:00

If I had to describe 2011 in one word, that is the word I would use. This year has been amazing for us and I can’t believe it is almost over. At the start of last year we were thinking about having a baby, getting our finances together, becoming serious adults. And now at the start of 2012 we will be days away (OK possibly weeks) from the birth of our first son. I cannot believe how far things have come for us this year and I couldn’t be more excited for what 2012 has in store for us.

I was really wanting Jude to be born in 2011 and I guess he only has a few hours to make his appearance if that is to happen. I don’t think that it will, but we are still hopeful that he will possibly come sometime next week. I know he isn’t due till the 23rd but babies are being born all around us and I’m getting so jealous! A couple in our birthing class ended up having to be induced and they had their baby on the 28th and then yesterday a high school friend whose baby is due a few days after Jude went into labor and had her baby. And seeing how both of their babies were over 7lbs and everyone is happy and healthy it makes me think that he should just go ahead and make his appearance too. We have been trying to get S to go into labor by feeding her lots of spicy food. I told her to do some jumping jacks to shake him loose but she just won’t. She had 3-4 contractions yesterday and 1-2 the day before, but that is all that has happened so far. I’m very curious to find out next week at her doctor’s appointment if she is dilated at all.

Happy New Years Eve and see you all next year!
-Liz

dr n hips

2011-12-28T02:38:00.000-06:00

I had a Drs. apt today. I never did get to see the Dr. even though we did go to the office twice. She got called into surgery and then to catch (aka deliver) a baby. The nurse did all the usual things, checked my blood pressure, listened to Jude’s heart, weighed me, so really I only missed out on an exam to see if I am dilated at all. I go back next week, so she can check then. I have been gaining weight this last month. My total weight gain at 9 months along is still only 25.6 lbs, but I have been gaining about 2 lbs a week for 4 weeks. now. Jude’s house is large:)

I am at the point where I am ready for him to be here. I figure at the end of this week, I will be 37 weeks, so he can come anytime and he will be fine. There are no signs of him coming at this point. Granted, I did not get to see the Dr, so maybe I am dilated, but I doubt it. He may have dropped a little, but he is not fully dropped and no other signs so far of him wanting to come on out. We even ate spicy food tonight, but all that did was send him into a frenzy when it hit him. He is still very active in there and we ate dinner about 7 hrs ago. I think he either really likes or really dislikes spicy food!

My hips have been killing me! I know the hormone relaxin is loosening everything up, but they hurt! It makes it hard to walk sometimes they hurt so bad. Liz did massage them earlier and this is the best they have felt in a week. I think I am going to have to have her do it nightly. I am not a person that is is pain often at all in my body and it is constant at this point. It makes it hard to sleep. My right arm and hand also keep going numb. All this is very normal pregnancy related stuff and I am happy that I made it this far without any of it until now, but I am pretty uncomfortable in my body at this point. I also think it is not fair to be 9 months pregnant and working. It is not easy. Honestly, I don’t know what I would do if I was off work, but maybe I could just work half days?? Not going to happen, but is a nice thought:)

I am lucky to sleep for 3 straight hours during the night. I wake up every 1.5 hours to pee. Honestly, it has not left me very tired during the day. Not any more tired than pregnancy has made me in general. Most days I would like a nap, but I think being pregnant, you just need a nap in the middle of the day some days. I think this is baby training as far as waking up every 1.5 hrs and feeling accomplished if I sleep for 3 hours straight at any time during the night.

I want to see his little face. I also want to see his little toes and feet and bum and etc. I am just so excited to meet him. I do wish this labor thing happened when you actually felt good and not when you are tired and your hips hurt, but either way, I am ready for it. I am going to stick to my original prediction of I will go into labor on the 15th and he will come here on the 16th. That means 3 more weeks, ugh! He actually could take up to 6 more weeks before my Dr will induce. Here is hoping he comes early!:)
-S

Christmas Bump!

2011-12-25T19:49:00.000-06:00

Merry Christmas from our family to yours!

So much advice

2011-12-23T17:02:00.000-06:00

It’s funny when you are pregnant. People love to give you advice. I think it is a time to share your stories about your child and your experience since most people don’t walk around and ask about your birth or your first days with your child. Liz and I have both had the philosophy of listen, and thank people for their advice. I feel the same way about birth as I do about having a child. Prepare as much as possible and then wing it when it happens. I feel birth and caring for a newborn is not something you can read about and control. It happens when and how it happens and Jude really is the one on control. He may be an angel, he may cry every second of everyday, he may take to breastfeeding like a champion, or we may spend the first 2 months trying to both learn how to do it, etc. There is no book on Jude specifically and I think that part of being a parent, and a part I am very excited about, is you learn about your child along with your child.

All this came about today because Liz’s mom is here and a comment she made earlier. She said, “yeah, I was talking to someone and said my daughter in law thinks she is prepared for a newborn. Man is she in for a surprise.” She then proceeded to tell me the story of how when they got Liz home from the hospital, she was crying and that her and her husband handed Liz back and forth to each other not knowing what to do.

To say the least, the comment took me by surprise. It also hurt my feelings. It made me feel like she already thinks I am a bad parent and my kid is not even here yet. I have not at all expressed how awesome I am going to be with a newborn to her. I have no idea how I will be with a newborn since I have not raised one yet. I am sure that birth is exhausting and having a baby that does not let you sleep is exhausting and if I for some reason knew I was really amazing with newborns, which I do not, I might still not be very great at it since I will be sleep deprived. Honestly the only real skill I have to offer my soon to be here baby is love. I have babysat since I was little kids of all ages, but I of course have never been the main caretaker of a baby or breastfed or anything like that. Yes, I can change a diaper and we have everything Jude will need and then some as far as equipment and such, but there is so much more to caring for a newborn than that. I think with anyone who has a child, there is a huge learning curve and that every single child is different outside of their basic needs and that Jude will teach us what we need to know. Will it be a breeze, NO, will there be times we will need help, YES, but fortunately we have a huge support system that will be happy to come over and give us a hug if that is what we need at the time along with tons of other support and help.

My mom was the same way about the birth. I said a comment about how I wonder if I will no longer gag thru the day and puke once a week the second he is out or if this is something that will linger or if I will always feel this way. She went on a tangent about postpartum depression and how I would need to exercise right away but would be too tired. What does that have to do with puking??

Liz made the comment earlier that no one ever has anything good to say about the birth of a child or raising a child and it seems to be right! We are both SO excited for the birth of our little boy and to raise him. I just wish some of the advice givers could be excited too!
-S

Waiting for my Baby...

2011-12-22T08:55:00.000-06:00

In almost one month exactly, Jude’s due date will be here. But the real question on our minds is will he be here? It’s killing us not to know when our little boy will come into the world. I feel like we are so ready for him to be born, to join our family. S is also really ready to not be pregnant anymore. Poor thing has been in some pain the last few days. Her hips hurt, her back is sore and now that Jude has dropped some what, her pelvis is under constant uncomfortable pressure. I hate seeing her feel bad and it’s hard to imagine that this level of discomfort could last another month or even longer. I just hope that we don’t have a Christmas baby. This week is too early, but 2 different friends have warned us that we better not have this baby while they are out of town, and the superstitious side of me thinks that because of this it is now a possibility. Eeek!

S had a doctor’s appointment on Tuesday. The doctor says that she isn’t dilated yet and that while the baby might have dropped some, he hasn’t dropped all of the way yet. Everything looks great and it’s a matter of time now. I feel really grateful how healthy S had managed to stay through this pregnancy. In our birthing class one girl who is due around the same time as S is in the hospital right now. She has been on bed rest for about 3 weeks and in the hospital for about 2 weeks now. Her blood pressure has been high and she has been in tons of pain for ages. Yesterday at birthing class our instructor told us that she now has developed preeclampsia and will be induced on the 27^th. I’m so grateful that this isn’t S’s situation. She has managed to avoid all of that stuff along with gestational diabetes and still hasn’t gained even 25 lbs. S rocks and I’m so proud of her! She makes this baby making business look easy (but I know that it isn’t).

Speaking of birthing class we had our last class yesterday. I’m sad that it’s done, I really enjoyed it and feel like I learned a lot. I would really recommend anyone who is interested in having a natural child birth check out the Bradley Method. Our instructor is amazing and I’m so glad that her and her husband want to be friends with us in real life outside of the class. I’m also excited that all of the other couples in the class seem to really want to start our own little baby play group once all of the babies are here. That will be so much fun.

Is everyone ready for Christmas? I still have 1 million things left on my list to get done. My mom and my youngest brother are coming into town tonight and so I’m hoping to get out of work early today so I can finish some last minute cleaning and wrap their presents and what not. I’m really excited to have them here for the holidays. I’m also hoping to cheer up my little brother while he is here. He sent me a text yesterday that he wanted a recommendation for a book. He said he wanted something funny because he has been really bummed out and lonely lately. Makes me so sad!

So with family in town we probably won’t be posting again until after Christmas, so everyone have a good one and safe travels!

-Liz

What is family and Jude’s drop!

2011-12-19T03:19:00.000-06:00

When asked if I have a big family, I always say no. I have one brother a total of one cousin, 3 Aunts, on Uncle, a grandmother on my dad’s side, a grandfather on my mom’s side who is remarried and that is about it. Honestly though, I have a HUGE family. We have so many friends that I would consider family. A huge network of people that we love and they love us. I have never felt lacking in my “family” although I am not really close to any of my blood family other than my immediate family. We have the most amazing family here that has nothing to do with blood.

This all came to mind because my dad’s girlfriend asked for me to confirm as “daughter” on facebook. I know, I know, all this over facebook, but it really caught me by surprise. I invited her to the baby shower in Tulsa and her and her daughter both came. I thought it was a nice gesture on both our parts. She did get us “grandma” bibs, to which I thought was a little presumptuous, but shrugged it off. Realize, the baby shower is only the second time I have ever met this woman. And now she wants to be identified as my mother on facebook? No way lady. My own mother may drive me crazy 99% of the time, but she is my mother thru and thru. She quit her job and stayed at home and raised me and to this day, we are still working on our relationship, but she will always be my mother. I appreciate that my dad’s girlfriend is excited about a baby since her own kids are teenagers and probably at least a decade away from having any, but I think it is crossing a line to expect to be welcomed as my mom and Jude’s grandma. She is really nice, and I don’t want to hurt her feelings, but I am unsure of how to make clear that I have only met her twice in my life and although I am very happy she makes my dad happy, she cannot just assert herself into roles in our lives. I think for right now, I will just let it lie and see what happens. My dad said the other day, “let us know when we can come, I know [his girlfriend and her daughter] will want to see Jude when he gets here”. Not that he wants to, but that they want to. Men are goofy.

On a more positive note, Jude has dropped. He is riding low now. He is on top of my bladder and I ate a huge meal last night for the first time in a long time. Liz made a roast with Yorkshire puddings, mashed potatoes, carrots and mushrooms, so it felt very much like a celebratory dinner:) I have been telling people at work that Jude is almost here. I feel like he will be here in 3 weeks tops. Everyone keeps laughing at me. I didn’t have any hard proof on this matter, but I just know, he is ready in there and he is coming. I had a massage with one of my what I call "energetic therapists" yesterday and she agrees. She also said some other interesting things. She said he will be here in 2 weeks and 6 days. She said he is big and ready to come here. The strangest thing she said is that he has a surprise he wants to show us. I asked her what that meant and she said that it is something like he has 2 different colored eyes or something like that. I think all of these readings my therapists keep giving me and thinking about him coming is so much fun!

I know Liz and I are really excited for him to come, but I suddenly feel like there is quite a bit to do. I am not sure what since his room is set up, but I am starting to feel the pressure. It is actually 3am in the morning and I am awake because I was laying there and realized I have not set up the little device that helps track diaper changes and nursing that Liz’s mom got us. I have not thought or worried about that the whole time we have had it, but suddenly, I need to make sure there are batteries in it and it works. I also realized there is not food in our bag for the hospital and woke up hungry and worried about that. I am telling you, Jude is coming in the next few weeks! None of this stuff has worried or been a single thought on my mind until right now!

Am I ready for labor? Can you be ready for labor? After 12 weeks of classes on the subject, we are as prepared as we can be, but can you really prepare for your first labor? My whole philosophy has been that I want to try to have a natural childbirth, but Jude will do what he wants to do. If I have a C section and he is healthy and I am healthy, then we accomplished the goal. I do not want a C section, but I feel like labor does what it does sometimes and you have to be able to go with the flow. I feel flexible about it, but will I be in the end? Will I even be in the right mind to think about any of this during labor? I just have to remember to relax as much as possible.

Well, I better eat something and put some batteries in the device so I can get a few more hours of sleep before my alarm goes off for work!
-S

35 Weeks Bump Picture!

2011-12-14T11:39:00.000-06:00

I can't believe that S is in her 35th week. Only 5 more weeks (or less!) till our little man is here. It is starting to sink in to me that we are going to go into the hospital, S will give birth, and at the end we will have a precious little baby that they will actually let us take home with us. I'm so excited and so nervous and so ready and so not ready that is a whirl wind of feelings and emotions. So much that at this point I come home everyday and I'm just exhausted from thinking about it all. Of course at this point no amount of thinking will get me as tired as poor S is after a long day of working. Poor thing, I wish we had the means for her to stay at home these last few weeks of pregnancy so she could prop her poor swollen feet up and take it easy. She is doing a great job though growing this baby and is such a trooper about the whole thing. And look at how cute that belly is!

So I still haven't managed to get together any pictures from our shower or any of the other million pictures I have promised you (I'm a naughty blogger), but I do have one more picture to share with you. Several years ago before we were even thinking about having a baby, S and I went into one of those photo booths they have at game places where they combine your pictures and show you what your future baby might look like. And randomly my friend Brandon ended up with the picture. Before the shower he was doing some organizing and found our picture of our "future baby" and framed it and gave it to us as what is for sure the funniest baby shower present we have gotten to date. Here is it for your enjoyment:

Doesn't he look creepy? Ha ha ha. And a lot like a young Rick Perry if you ask me. Hopefully Jude will NOT look like this kid, but it is funny.
-Liz

Social worker and such

2011-12-12T12:05:00.000-06:00

As I sit here, my belly is resting on my legs a little. It it pretty funny, and I am leaning forward for it to happen, but still pretty funny.

We had our 2 hour interview with the social worker. I feel mixed about this whole social worker thing. I feel angry that my partner of over 9 years is being scrutinized about a child that is hers as much as mine in my opinion. She is the one quitting her job to stay at home with him and honestly if in the end, they deny us the adoption, that will not change. I then feel happy that this can even happen as there are some states that it is not even an option. All in all, it makes me mad to have to go thru this because one of us does not have a penis, but in the end, it will totally be worth it.

Back to the interview. It is funny that both our lawyer and social worker are a bit quirky. Strange birds they are. I expected from both positions for them to be type A personalities and it be more like an interrogation whenever we meet with them. Not the case, and honestly, I think that is a good thing. She was very casual and asked a lot of questions. In the end, both her and the lawyer do not see any reason this would not go thru, which makes it all worth it. We are going to Bexar (pronounced Bear) county for the adoption, but Liz and I like San Antonio, so no biggie. (this will not be until Feb. at the earliest) We like to go there and stay at the Emily Morgan hotel. They have HUGE bath tubs and it is one of our romantic get aways. I am sure with Jude that will ruin the romance part, but it will be a nice little escape to go there and spend the night and take a bath and sleep in their really fluffy beds.

She asked us about our families, our lives together, our beliefs with Jude as far as the donor, etc. It was interesting to me what she did ask and what she didn’t. Overall, it was pretty painless and Liz got the most questions thrown at her. She had much better answers than I did and I think the social worker asked some of the questions out of sheer curiosity. I am just glad that all is left is the home visit. Our friend B will come and clean up the yard before they come and I think we will hire someone to come and clean the house and that will be that. There is nothing here to hold us back.

On that note however, I woke up to our little guard dog Emma losing her mind. It turns out the young girl dog from next door was in our backyard and Emma was not having it. We have had this ongoing thing with the neighbors and their dogs. They have 2 pit bulls. Both are friendly, and both hate their yard and want to live with us. However, both are excitable and jumpy and with a baby strapped to the front of me, I like them less and less. We split the cost for a new fence between our yards. I thought that would solve the problem. Instead, now they break thru the back of their fence and come in thru another neighbors rotting fence. sigh. I am so over this! I do not want that big excited dog coming over and jumping on me or coming over when Jude is hanging out in the backyard with us. I am at a loss as to what to do. I am to the point where I might just start calling the pound when she is out, but that seems like it would punish an already unloved dog and not the owners. What do I do?? This morning at 7:30 am on my day to sleep in, I decided to wake the neighbors and ask them to get their dog out of my yard as I have many times before. Maybe that will make them more into fixing the problem, but I doubt it. I am going to go to Home Depot today to try to get chicken wire or boards to patch up the current holes. I would need 10 whole boards to patch up their fence, which is why I am leaning towards some kind of wire I could just attach a sheet of. Either way, what a pain!

The pregnancy is still going well. I am starting to slow down a little. I have a rule at work that I climb the stairs 5 times before starting to take the elevator, but lately, I have leaned towards the elevator. I am tired most of the time and my tail bone has been giving me some pain. This belly is a little hard to shift around at night and Jude rather enjoys hitting me in the bladder. Fortunately, he does not kick my ribs yet. That is something my mother “hopes for me” as payback for when I bruised hers as a baby. I feel like I am doing really well for being 8.5 months along if that is all that is bothering me.

We took our animals to all get vaccinated the other day. (one of the social worker requirements) and it was quite an adventure. We have 2 dogs and 2 cats. We got the cats in crates and the dogs on their leashes and loaded them in the car. PJ, Liz’s cat, meowed the whole ride there, while he was there, and the whole ride back. He got the other cat, Malcolm, all worked up and then Pedro the pug started whining. It was a 30 minute drive to and from the place. Then on the way home, Malcolm pooped in his crate! Yuck! The poor guy was just stressed, but my preggie nose, was not happy about it! I am glad to have that adventure out of the way. There is a place that does full vaccinations for about $40 an animal, so it was not as expensive as going to the vets.

5 more weeks. wowsa. I need to start packing a bag for the hospital today. That is on my to do list for Wed. We only have 2 more birthing classes and then, it is just a matter of dr visits and the holidays. I am so very hungry. The other day, I ate breakfast, 2 lunches, 2 dinners, a slice of cake and 4 cookies. Yesterday, an employee of mine was talking about how she thinks a pizza place made her sick and I just go, “man their pizza and bread sticks sound so good right now”. She ofcourse just looked at me like I was crazy. I figure this is the time to eat, so I am. Now if I go to my Drs. apt on Wed and have gained 5 lbs, I might reconsider, but for now, I am going with what my body is telling me. I made a 12 hours play list of relaxing songs for the birth. Liz is going to make a more upbeat one for the birth in case that is what I decide I like.

We finished decorating the Christmas tree yesterday. It looks so nice. Hopefully I can get Liz to put some belly pics and tree pics on here for you to see. You know I am technologically unable to do such things:)

I hope all of you are enjoying this holiday season!
-S

Baby Shower!

2011-12-06T08:48:00.000-06:00

Our baby shower on Sunday was, in one word, amazing. Just amazing. We had such a good turn out, almost everyone we expected to come did and those that didn't either lived too far away or were sick. Our hostess, Aunt Lulu as she's like Jude to call her, did a great job setting everything up. We had pretty baby blue cup cakes with fancy toasted coconut, olives, bread, hummus, a spinach artichoke dip that everyone raved about, nuts, fruit, veggies, summer sausage, crackers, cheese, lots of Mimosas and other yummy things that I'm sure I'm forgetting. The house was decorated with pretty turquoise, silver and white balloons and the table was set in those same colors. It was really lovely. I didn't bring my camera but several other people were taking pictures so I'll hopefully post a few later this week.

After some mingling, we played a baby trivia game that Aunt Lulu and Uncle Duck made for the shower. There were questions on Old Wives' Tales, celebrity babies, songs with the word baby in it, facts about babies and things of that nature. It was so much fun. After each round there was a bonus challenge. The first round we had to have one person on each team cut a piece of string that they thought would most closely wrap around S's waist. The second round was a blind taste testing of 5 different baby foods and the third challenge was who could drink 9 ounces of water from a baby bottle the fastest. Everyone had a blast and out of 4 teams, my team won!

After trivia we sat down and opened presents. We got so much cute stuff that I think we officially have just about everything we need for sweet baby Jude. The generosity of our friends and family is just mind blowing, seriously. We got several hand made blankets/quilts that are so sweet that I'll have to post pictures of them soon. We got stuff to organize his room with, a great dinosaur cross stitch that I'll also have to post pictures of, a chair that buckles onto one of our kitchen chairs to use for a high chair, a big frog thing to put all of his bath toys in, lots of cute clothes, and so much other stuff. I won't bore you, but let's just say his room/our house is now stuffed with baby things and we have a LOT of thank you cards to write!

So all in all a wonderful time. S's mom and brother also came down for the shower and it was really nice to spend some time with them and have them there for our special event. While S's mom was in town we also went and had one last 3D ultrasound. I can't believe how much bigger and cuter our little boy has gotten in the last 6 weeks! I'll be posting pictures from that as well. We got one really cute one where he is sticking out his tongue! So cute!

Alright well obviously our next post is going to picture filled. Till then!

-Liz

8 weeks to go!

2011-11-30T13:30:00.000-06:00

Can you believe it? 8 more weeks until I am 40 full weeks. I told Jude he can come anytime after January 8th. That is when one of my managers gets back from vacation and it is far enough from the holidays that his birthday will not be overlooked by anyone:)

I had a Drs. apt today and gained .6 lbs over the past 2 weeks. I am unsure how considering I feel like all I have done is EAT! I am starving all the time. I eat and then 30 minutes later, I eat some more. The total weight gain at this point is 17.6 lbs. Liz said, “I just don’t know how you can be so huge and only have gained that much?! No offense.” Thanks babe;)

This belly is large and in charge. (I just like that it rhymes) I must say, there are certain things that have made this pregnancy good and I suggest if you are pregnant, that you get them:
1. Cheese and nuts. Quick, easy protein that is delicious
2. A “boat ramp” as Liz calls it. I have these little wedges that are for pregnancy massage that go under preggie bellies. Life saver on comfort. You just lay it under the belly when side lying and it feels so comfy.
3. A body pillow, or monkey. I use a large monkey and arrange him comfortably, but most normal people would probably prefer a body pillow. (Liz is really embarrassed that I want the monkey to go to the hospital with us. I figure if I am going to have tons of people staring at my private parts, she can carry a large monkey thru the hospital. She can always tie a bow on him to make it look like he is for Jude)
4. An exercise ball. No, not for exercise, but to roll your poor confused tail bone around on so it goes back to the place where it doesn’t hurt you:)
5. A fan on my side of the bed. Poor Liz was freezing, so my own personal fan makes it so that I am not burning up all the time.

Everything is going fine as far as Jude goes. The dr, who is very laid back anyways, usually comes in and as long as my blood pressure and weight are fine, she measures the belly and says, “see you in 2 weeks”. After my appointment in 2 weeks, they will start having me go to weekly appointments. Crazy, right? how did we get this far along. Liz and I still marvel at how we are about to bring a bouncing baby boy into this world. We wanted a baby for so long and it took us a while to get to the right place in our lives to do it, and then he took the first time and here we are. 8 weeks away from having our squirmy, poopy, amazing son here with us. Amazing!

The weather has been amazing. I finally let Liz turn on the heat at 66 degrees last night. Our house has been getting down to 61 degrees at night and I have been loving every second of it!

We have our Austin baby shower this weekend and it is going to be a blast! The hostest with the mostest has made a trivia game with 48 baby related trivia questions with 3 baby related activities between rounds. There are going to be cupcakes and mimosas and lots of people there to shower little Jude with gifts and love. My mom and brother are even coming to town for it. I get to show my little brother, whose birthday is today and he should be 28 today, my spa. Right now, they put up all the Christmas trees, which are amazing, and he is excited to sit in the steam room and swim. My mom is excited to get a massage when she is here.

I am feeling moody lately. Teary eyed about different things. Most of it is from being excited and joyous, which is good. Yesterday I was mad at all the stuff we have to do for the social worker and today, I am happy to run around and get stuff done all day.

Speaking of the social worker, jeez. 21 pages of questions, 2 hours of interview, a measurement of our house, references from friends and family, the list goes on. All because Liz does not have a penis. Sheesh! We are scrambling to get it all together before Jude gets here, along with all the stuff we need to do before Jude gets here. We have a lot of his stuff done, which is good. I am going to install the base of the car seat today. It looks simple enough:)

Well, I better get back to cleaning before my mom and brother get into town. I hope you are all enjoying this cold weather as much as I am!
-S

Sick

2011-11-28T10:40:00.000-06:00

Ugh, I'm sick. I've been sick since Friday and I'm really tired of it. I can't tell if it is allergies or an actual cold, but either way, it sucks. Being sick while you are at home isn't too bad, lying on the couch, watching movies and taking naps. But being sick at work is the worst. I'm sniffling, coughing, my head feels fuzzy, my throat hurts and I feel hot and then cold. And it's just too busy at work for me to call out and take a sick day. Also, medicine wise, nothing is helping. I'm taking combos of allergy medicine and cold medicine and in the end I just feel dehydrated and weird. I'm hoping that this funk I'm in is allergy related and goes away soon because I have so much to do this week. Our Austin baby shower is this weekend and so my mother in law and brother in law are coming into town to go and are staying with us. Which means that I've got to get the house cleaned, go grocery shopping, work, get over my cold, go to birthing class and pick up a few last minute things for the shower all by Thursday because they get here Friday right after work. Too much to do when all you want to do is lay in bed.

But I am really looking forward to our baby shower. It's going to be so much fun. S and I went and got 12 bottles of champagne last week for Mimosas along with prizes for our diaper raffle. I'm also looking forward to our last ultrasound on Friday. We are taking S's mom to do a 3D ultrasound since she wasn't here to go to the last one. Of course, now that we have done so many and already booked and paid for our last one is when we get flooded with information from our birthing class and what to expect emails about the dangers of ultrasounds. I'm not too worried about it, but I wish I had known there was any sort of risk/issue with them before we went and had 6 of them. Of course, 4 of them were with our doctor's office so we couldn't control that. Oh well. I'm still looking forward to seeing our baby boy.

Hope everyone week is starting out a bit better than mine!

-Liz

Very Thankful

2011-11-23T09:07:00.000-06:00

Because tomorrow is Thanksgiving and I'll be cooking all day, I thought today would be a better time to write my Thanksgiving post. I'm so excited for tomorrow, I love Thanksgiving. I love to cook and feed people, I love gathering the folks I love. It's stressful, but also so peaceful, and fun and delicious all rolled up and baked into one giant turkey, which I have named Frank. It's Franksgiving at our house tomorrow. And I'm also excited because I'm making not only a 15lb turkey named Frank for 5 people (one of which is a vegetarian), but also because I'm making not one, not two, but three different potato dishes. At first I thought, no, I won't make that third dish, three potato dishes at one meal is ridiculous, but then I say, hey, it's Franksgiving and if there was ever a meal that could get away with three different potato dishes, it's this one. So I'm totally doing it. There will be mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, and funeral potatoes. YUM!

Enough about the food though. I wanted to say that I have so much to be thankful for this year. I have an amazing wife who is doing a great job growing our little boy. I am so lucky to have her and so lucky that even after almost ten years together we are still so happy and so in love. I am so thankful for my baby boy, who joins us in just about two months! I am so excited to meet him and love him and have our family grow. I am so thankful for all of our friends and family who are so supportive and loving. We wouldn't be having this baby without them, it takes village afterall, and our village is pretty extraordinary. And last, I have to say that I am thankful for all of you who read this blog, who follow along on our adventures, who support and encourage us. We started this blog for us, just something to document our life and this process and we have made some great friends along the way and really feel like we are part of a larger community, which is not something we ever expected. Thank you for reading and being a part of our life. I hope that your Thanksgiving is happy, full of good food and most importantly, full of love.
-Liz

Out pour of love

2011-11-21T12:52:00.000-06:00

The spa had a baby shower for me. I was pretty nervous about it since I am a higher up boss and didn’t want anyone to feel weird about it. It ended up being perfect. People made my favorite foods and all were so excited to give me baby gifts! Then, the whole week, I got more baby gifts from people who were not able to make it to the shower. We were so touched by the out pour of love from all of my employees! We got tons of cute outfits, gift cards, some of the practical stuff and just really nice cards and thoughts. One of my employees took a huge box and made us a first aid kit so we have little baby medicines and stuff for Jude too.

I then spent a few hours fussing with Jude’s stuff. We got a toy box, so now all his toys are in it. I took the tags off of his clothing and cleared a cabinet in the bathroom and in the kitchen for his stuff. It really feels like he is coming soon to me now. I don’t know why the fact that he has a cabinet in the kitchen and bathroom makes it feel more immediate, but it does.

I don’t think there is much left on the registry at this point. We still have our biggest shower, the Austin shower, and we have so much of what we need for Jude already. People were even smart about it and got him larger sized clothes, not just newborn, so he has outfits thru 6 months at this point. I am very excited to go on a baby shopping spree with all the gift cards we received at this point. Liz and I have not bought much baby stuff, so it will be fun after our last shower to go baby buying crazy and get the last of what we need for our little man. Speaking of, have you seen the new Gwen Stefani line of stuff at Target. So very cute!!

I am starting to feel really pregnant. I don’t think the next month or two will be very fun for me to run around the spa. My feet swell, my hips hurt off and on and this belly is now something to be reckoned with. It takes a bit to get up and down and I can no longer really bend down and pick stuff up. Fortunately my spa family is very supportive not only in their gift giving and love, but also in helping me with stuff. I have not had a single person complain when I ask them to move a box and have even had people get mad at me when I do things they believe I should not be doing at this point.

Jude is active as ever. We went and saw Breaking Dawn last night and he was kicking thru a large part of the movie. There was one scene when the wolves were running and howling and he went nuts. I think that makes him Team Jacob like me! :) I think between the milkshake and the loud noise and I was sitting still after being on my feet all day, he was ready to do somersaults thru the movie. I thought the movie was okay. I liked it the least out of all of them, but am still happy we went and saw it. There are only so many movies left until Jude is here and it will be harder to go then.

I think they are going to start a pool at work on when Jude is going to get here. I am happy for him to arrive any time after January 8th. He is not due until January 23rd and my psychic at work said he would come on January 27th. We will see. I just hope he makes it in the oven thru the holidays as no one likes to have their birthday around a major holiday. I just really don’t want him to go all the way thru February since that means he will be late and I imagine the bigger he gets, the more I will want to take off work before his arrival. I am trying to work until he gets here so I have the full 12 weeks with him. I don’t see the point in staying home and waiting on him to come, but I imagine that will sound really nice as I get bigger and bigger.

All in all, I am to the moon in love with this little boy. I am so excited to make him and meet him when he finally gets here. He recognizes Liz’s voice and goes crazy for her. She has been laying on my stomach and talking to him and he kicks her face all over the place. It is really cute. This little man is going to turn our world upsidown and I am excited for it! I have no doubt he is going to run this household once he gets here!
-S

31 Week Bump Picture!

2011-11-18T09:55:00.000-06:00

OK so it has been a while since we posted a bump picture and honestly, it's because we haven't been very on the ball with taking belly shots recently. So here it is, in all of it's roundness, S at 31 weeks.

Behind S you can see some of the letters for our alphabet wall. All of the letters are in and hanging up. They are so far just put up with push pins because we are still waiting to get them just right before we hang them up with nails. But they look great. Hopefully I will get them up and take some pictures to post next week.

And as of last night, I think it is official, S is finally nesting. So far with a few exceptions I have been the one doing all of the nesting around the house but this week S put together the stroller and last night spent an hour or two putting things away and cleaning out cupboards in the kitchen and bathroom and filling them with baby stuff. It's cute to see her nesting and wanting to get stuff done. And now that the stroller is put together, we let our first "baby" take it out for a test drive.

This is our pug, Pedro. Pedro thought that the whole thing was pretty weird. He didn't really get what we were up to and was nervous the whole time he was in the stroller. Oh, and what is the deal with strollers being so very hard to open and close and car seats being so confusing? I swear our car seat has at least 10 different buttons on it and I have no idea what most of them do. Better start practicing soon!

Also, a big congrats to our friends Kayan and Marc! Their baby girl was born yesterday and boy oh boy is she a cutie!
-Liz

Peaceful Saturday Night

2011-11-12T21:40:00.001-06:00

It’s 9:30 on Saturday night and I’m drinking a glass of cold, sweet sangria in my living room. The windows are open and there is a slight cool breeze coming in. The house is so quite, the little lady went to bed five minutes ago, I have a new book downloaded to the kindle and Saturday Night Live is on in an hour. I spent the afternoon making delicious carnitas and then after dinner curled up in bed with the little lady to watch a movie in bed. It has been a wonderful, quiet, peaceful Saturday night and I couldn’t be happier.

I’m really making an effort to treasure this time, as it fully hit me earlier today just how little of this time we have left. And don’t get me wrong, I couldn’t be more excited to have this baby on the way, to be a mother in ten short weeks. I can’t wait for everything to change and get flipped upside down by my little Jude. And it’s happening so soon that I can’t help but feel like my days like this are numbered and not to be squandered.

Ten more weeks till our little one is here, ten more Saturdays like this one. It also freaks me out that I still have so much left to do around the house before he is here and I don’t actually have ten Saturdays to do it all, I actually only have six. Between Thanksgiving, a baby shower, Christmas, and New Years, all being such busy times, I’m crossing them off the list of potential days to get anything done. So tomorrow it’s time to crack the whip and get to work. So that is the plan, to get started tomorrow.

But tonight, tonight is for drinking sangria, enjoying the breeze, and crossing my fingers that Saturday Night Live is actually funny tonight.
Hope your evening is as pleasant as mine.
Liz

Baby shower-yeah! Contraction- Ouch!

2011-11-08T20:28:00.000-06:00

We had our first baby shower this weekend. It was great! We caught up with old friends and got tons of great baby stuff! People cannot resist buying outfits for Jude! We got tons of REALLY cute outfits for him. Along with a bunch of other things. It was great to see everyone that was there and there were 4 babies and some kiddos in attendance (not including another preggie that was there too!). The babies ranged from 5 days old to 2 years old. So cute and so many different personalities and all of them were chill thru the shower.

We also went to the lawyer today and signed all of our documents from Wills to Rights of Attorney to who Jude goes to. Crazy! I think I was more nervous for the second part we did, which was Liz is officially on my account and closes her account this week. After 9 years, we finally have joint accounts! Money makes me nervous and I am very intense about it, so it is good to combine now and work out all the kinks before Jude is here on top of that.

On a negative note, it was a long drive home. It was raining the whole way back and I had my first major contraction. It was weird. I had a belly ache all day (which I don’t really get) but figured it was from Jude’s feet being in my belly or a burger I ate earlier. It hurt off and on the whole drive, so I made Liz drive and stretched out. It felt better, so I volunteered to drive and blam-o, insane pain. The strange part was it was my stomach, not low down, so I knew I was not in labor, but that was about all I knew. I got off the highway as quickly as I could and paced, cussing and confused until it passed. I called my Dr. and she said it was “false labor” and that it it fine unless it starts to happen at regular intervals and then I would need to go in for monitoring. I was not happy with that since I was on my way back from Oklahoma in the middle of nowhere Texas. I was crossing my fingers it would not continue. It felt fine and then we stopped to get gas and I threw up for what felt like forever, right there at the pump. Yuck! After that, I felt fine. The Dr said to hydrate and relax, so that is what I have been doing. I feel fine today and we ran around and took care of all kinds of things, so I think it is just going to happen sometimes. What sucked about it (well on top of it in general) is is hurt to breathe during it. There was no way I could do stomach breathing thru it when it hurt to breathe during and after it.

Jude is non the wiser. He is crazy kicking around in there today. He gave Liz a good kick fest for the past few hours and is still going at it. Crazy baby! Or as I like to say: “cwazy baby!”. He even got the hiccups earlier. This week he practices breathing, so he is more likely to get them due to that. How cute is that?!

Thank you everyone who came to Jude’s first party! I just hope in the future he does not party so hard he has contractions the next day!
-S

Getting Excited

2011-11-04T10:28:00.000-05:00

As soon as this boring work day wraps up, the little lady and I are hopping in the car for the drive to Tulsa, and we couldn't be more excited. It's going to be a long drive, a little over 8 hours of road trip fun, but the last few hours of the drive we pick up my brother who will graciously drive the rest of the way for us. Hurray for baby showers and hurray for seeing everyone! It's going to be so fun and we have a lot of good times to pack into this short weekend. Saturday night I'm really excited to go see my little brother play in the Tulsa Symphony. I haven't ever gotten to see him play before and he is really a talented musician. We are also meeting up with my childhood BFF for pizza at the restaurant where S and I met (not the exact one, but one of them), the Hideaway. If you are ever in Oklahoma, the Hideaway is some seriously great pizza. And then on Sunday the main event, our first baby shower. We've got friends, a sister in law, family, childhood BFFs, and even a friend flying in from Colorado who are all going to be at the event. It's going to be epic.

We have also gotten a lot of great stuff for Jude this week. I wish I had pictures to show you all, maybe next week, but we got all of our letters for our alphabet wall. They are all so amazing, it's going to be the coolest thing ever. And also a guy that S works with got us these two little paintings made by a local artist that are really cool and match Jude's room. Then yesterday we got home and there was the sweetest package from one of our friends who doesn't live in town. She sent us the cutest hand made dinosaur onesie, along with lots of other cute clothes, these awesome baby books that have art by famous artist, along with some other fun baby toys. It was like mini Christmas opening up all of the fun stuff she sent. It is just amazing to see all of the love that our friends and family already have for little Jude, who they haven't even met yet. It really touches my heart to see it. He is going to be so happy and loved!

I'll post updates about the baby shower next week, so stay tuned and have a happy weekend yourself!
-Liz

Halloween Fun

2011-10-30T20:45:00.000-05:00

I think that our party last night was a success. S even stayed up until 1:30 am! Pretty darn good for a lady who is 7 months pregnant. Not much to say about it other than it was a blast. Here are a few of my favorite pictures from the night.

S was Gumby and her friend Cam was Pokey. It was pretty much the funniest thing ever.

I was a plant/Mother Earth, which was really just a lame excuse to buy the pretty green flowery dress that I wore.

Our spooky bathroom. The giant bug's name is Frank, he is creepy.

There were lots of other great costumes, but I don’t feel like I can post pictures of them without asking everyone’s permission. We also on Saturday got almost all of the letters for our ABC wall, we are only missing a few. They are all so amazing, I can’t wait to show them all to you. I’ll have to reveal it one letter at a time, because they each deserve their own blog post.
Happy Halloween everyone!
-Liz

Pushy Little Baby

2011-10-28T15:08:00.002-05:00

We learned this week a little trick that our sweet baby Jude will do. If you push lightly on S’s stomach, if Jude is awake, he will kick/push you back! It is so crazy that he is now aware enough to respond to something like that. And his baby kicks keep getting stronger and stronger. I can pretty much always feel him know if he is up and at it, and I just love it. I can’t wait to meet this little baby!

Our Tulsa baby shower is next week and I’m getting excited. I’m hoping that the turn out will be alright, we haven’t gotten very many RSVPs back yet. And we are a little less than 5 weeks away from our Austin baby shower, which is going to be even better than the Tulsa baby shower. So much to look forward to, I’m feeling very blessed.

We are having a Halloween costume party tomorrow night and I have LOTS that I need to get done tonight and tomorrow before it happens. It’s weird to think that this will be the last big party we have for quite a while. We normally every year throw at least a Halloween and New Year’s party but this year New Year’s Eve will be so very close to Jude’s due date that it would be just craziness to try to have a party. It’s even possible that he will be born by then or close to then (He would only have to be about 2 ½-3 weeks early for that to happen). I’m hoping he will be a little bit early, but not that early, more like a week early, just because I’m so excited to meet him. I’ll post pictures from our Halloween party on Sunday or Monday.

Have a happy weekend!

Liz

Yesterday's Tiny Scare

2011-10-26T15:24:00.000-05:00

We had a small scare with Jude yesterday. S had called the doctor to ask about a few things for her next appointment and at the end of the call she mentioned how Jude sometimes felt like he was shaking really hard and was wondering if that was normal. They told her they’d get back to her and little bit later a nurse from the office called and said that they wanted her to go in for an ultrasound that afternoon to be sure there wasn’t something wrong with Jude, which naturally freaked S out. Luckily I was able to get off work and go with her and her work was accommodating enough to let her come in late after the appointment. We were so scared. The thought that something could be wrong with our little boy had us both in tears at different points. We went in and they did an ultrasound and measured everything again on him and everything looks fine. Whew. Totally normal looking according to the tech and no issues. He is weighing in at 2.5 lbs and is the perfect size for his age. I could not have been more relieved. It was nice after we realized nothing was wrong to get another look at our boy. I was joking with S afterwards that if Jude could talk he would say, “Can’t a guy get any privacy around here? Geez,” because including yesterday’s scan we have now had 6 ultrasounds and still have one more, another 3D/4D, scheduled for December, which will bring the total to 7. I’m pretty sure most people only have 2-3 ultrasounds for a normal, non-issue, no multiples sort of pregnancy, so it has been nice to see our little dude so often. They only gave us one picture this time though and honestly it doesn’t look like anything at all so I’m not going to bother to post it. I think in the end S and determined that the shaking she is feeling is probably him coughing or hiccuping. Just so glad he is ok!

Hello 3rd trimester!

2011-10-24T16:42:00.000-05:00

Come one, come all to feel the amazing acrobat Jude! I am unsure of what he is doing in there, so I have to guess he is practicing his acrobatic and tumbling skills or doing baby aerobics. About 3 days a week, he goes NUTS! I mean, rippling and popping out my belly. It looks like my belly is under attack! People can now not only feel his little kicks, but also can feel him shifting around. He will punch and kick and go crazy and then he does a crazy shaking thing that feels kind of like he is having a tiny seizure in there! It it nuts. Liz got to feel it last night and this morning. People at work have been able to feel him moving all around now. The reactions are funny. I thought a few of them were going to cry and then a few of them just looked at me like I had an alien in my belly. New flash people- there is a little dude in my belly! :)

I have been busy with baby prep today. I called my insurance agent about life insurance rates. Not something I have ever thought about, but our lawyer suggested it and it makes sense. At least enough to cover the mortgage if something happened to one of us. I also called about signing up for a breast feeding class. I have still not found an infant care class that is at the right time for us, but I am working on that too. I am almost done with the first bit of lawyer paperwork for our will and such. So much to think about!

Our first baby shower is in a few weeks and I am super excited! Not only do we get to go and celebrate Jude, but it is in Oklahoma, which means seeing a lot of our friends that we do not generally get to see on a regular basis. Liz’s mom just bought us our car seat and stroller combo. We are working on getting the invites out for the Austin baby shower.

Latest craving- Dijon mustard! Yum! I love tangy flavors still. I also had a bowl of broccoli cheese soup yesterday that was delicious, so I guess that still tastes good to me. I also have wanted salty fries lately. I am not really a fries person usually, so it is strange. I have only given in twice because I am sure the salt is not good for my swollen feet.

My poor little feet are so swollen after work! They are fine when I am not on them, but when I am for 9 hrs, they become fat little feet and ankles. Liz gave me a nice foot massage yesterday because they were so big. It made them feel so much better!

The third trimester is going to be a doozy I am sure. I am so very tired all of the time already. If I don’t get a short nap in the afternoon, it is hard to survive until 10pm for me. Unfortunately, most days do not come with a nap, so I drag thru the last part of the day at work. When I work until 10pm, I am fighting to keep my eyes open. Working an hour away from home is not great right now. I feel very unmotivated most days. I am currently working up the motivation to do the dishes:)

I have my bathing suit at work so that I can swim after work, but most days, I am just dragging my feet to the car to go home! Building a little human is hard work! I think he stole all my energy since he seems to not have any problem doing his baby aerobics in there!

My belly is big! Well, it feels big to me. I will have Liz add a photo soon. It is only going to get bigger. I am also starving all the time! I guess it is time for Jude to grow. It is strange the days I am starving, but nothing sounds good to eat.

I told Liz that I am unsure of this whole birth thing. She said I have 3 options: 1. I can stay pregnant forever 2. He can burst out of me like in the movie aliens or 3. I can give birth. I guess the 3rd option is the best one on the list:)

We are having our annual Halloween party on Saturday. Last big throw down until Jude is here. i will be Gumby. My friend and I got matching Gumby and Pokey costumes at the sales last year. I guess I will actually be pregnant Gumby, but the costume is big, so it should not show all that much. I will have Liz post pics of our costumes too because it is sure to be funny.

-S

3D Ultrasound

2011-10-22T11:28:00.000-05:00

This has been a baby filled few days around here. My mom came into town late Wednesday night to spend a few days with us and it was great. We went on Thursday morning with her to a 3D/4D ultrasound to see little Jude. It was really cool, but of course he wasn’t being very cooperative and was breach, meaning his face was turned towards S’s spine and he had his hands up on his face just about the whole time. I guess his hands are the most interesting thing in there right now. The lady doing the ultrasound was funny, she tired really hard to get some good shots of him. She had S lay in a few funny positions, jiggled and lightly smacked S’s belly and had her get up to do some stretches and had her eat tiny piece of chocolate. He moved some eventually and we got 1-2 shots of his face. There is only really one though that looks all that great in photo though. We got a CD of the pictures, a few printed out and then a DVD of the whole thing. The DVD is pretty cool. Here is the best picture from it.

Isn’t he a cutie? We have another appointment set up for the beginning of December when S’s mom will be here for our Austin baby shower. He will be pretty big then and the ultrasound lady said that then we will get some really good shots. Very exciting.

While my mom was here we also did some baby shopping. We got S some new maternity clothes and a few outfits for Jude. We also tried to get a glider but were unsuccessful. They are just either super ugly, uncomfortable, or $800. I think that we are going to keep our eyes open for something used for the next few months and if nothing comes up I think we are just going to get a rocker chair from Ikea and have my mom get us the travel system instead. Also it was annoying to go to every baby store ever pretty much and they just don’t have much cute boy stuff. It was all so full of girl stuff, but the boy stuff was either nothing or just pastel blue sports themed or pastel blue cars and trucks. I want a few more crib sheets and our nursery is all about bright colors and there just isn’t much of anything out there that is bright. I think that’s weird too because babies can’t really see pastel colors, they like bright high contrast stuff anyway. I think I’m going to have to just make my own crib skirt and possibly learn how to actually sew and make my own crib sheets. I have a sewing machine, I just don’t know how to use it (also not sure if it works, it’s old and I’ve never looked under the case).

Our Tulsa baby shower is only two weeks and a day away, I’m so excited! It will be so nice to see everyone we love and have a quick weekend away.

Time to clean the kitchen.
-Liz

Fall is here!

2011-10-18T12:28:00.000-05:00

The wind is blowing and the weather is cool. Fall is officially here. To Jude fall means he is rearranging his house. That’s what Liz and I say when he is moving around all crazy like. The past 2 days he has been moving my whole belly around, doing multiple kicks or punches and just moving in new ways. I think he flipped upside down, decided he didn’t like it, moved back and then decided he did like it and moved upside down again today. He has been testing out his space. He usually hangs out on my left side with his feet down low. The past few days he has moved to the right and then the middle. I do not know what has prompted all this movement, but I am loving it!

I am currently obsessed with cherry lime gum. It is so tart and delicious! I did forget to get some more if it at the store today…sad day:( I am currently out because I keep sharing it…I need to stop doing that;)

We met with the lawyer this last week. She is a little goofy, but seems to know what she is talking about. We will set up a “Partner package” in the next few weeks. This includes wills, rights of attorney(i think that is what it is called), and all kinds of legal stuff for not only the house and such, but also little Jude if something were to happen to one or both of us. We then will start the adoption process for Liz to be able to adopt little Jude. It will not finalize until after he is here, but we can start gathering papers and get set up with a social worker. I think that is a little freaky to have a social worker in on our babies life at all, but it is a necessary step for Liz to be able to adopt him. I think my fear stems from the whole lesbians in the state of Texas fear. I always assume the legal system will blast us for that fact alone. The lawyer knows the different social workers, so I am sure she will not set us up with one that will care about that. She also said we have to go to San Antonio court as the are more likely to pass it. Here, it just depends on the judge and after all the work, we don’t want to take the chance to get one that is move conservative. Sigh..such work just because we are both women!

I have been starving lately! I think he must be growing in there because some days I cannot get enough to eat! On the flip side, I have thrown up 4 times in the past few weeks. I am not sure why my belly is unsettled again, but I am pretty used to it at this point. People at work are already starting to try and feed me. A girl came up to me and said that a group of them were talking and decided that baby Jude and I needed a cookie an employee brought in and put it on my desk. It was cute and strange at the same time.

Guests are starting to notice I am pregnant. I still have not had anyone come up and touch my tummy when I don’t know them, but I think I will in the next month. My belly feels so big! Liz says it is still small, but it is a change for me and feels huge some days. It is so packed full! It is funny how firm it is.

Jude is going to be here so soon! Granted, I am not even in my 3rd trimester yet, but the next few months are packed full of stuff and will fly by! Liz’s mom is coming into town this week and shopping for baby stuff. We are going to do a 3D ultrasound while she is here and I am so excited to see our little boy’s face! Hopefully he will cooperate. He is known for being stubborn about things like that, but we will see. We will have our annual Halloween party at the end of October. Then, our first baby shower is on Nov. 6th in Tulsa…that is only a few weeks away! Then it is Thanksgiving. Our second baby shower is on Dec 4th here in Austin. Then it is Christmas and New Years and Jude’s entrance!! Packed full last couple of months before Jude gets here.

I am really loving our birthing class. It is so focused on Liz being a huge part of the birth, which makes me feel so much better about the birth process. I always looked at it as a very independent thing that I would have to go thru. Now it seems like a process we will both be a part of. I feel much better about it knowing Liz will be there supporting me and encouraging me every step of the way!

-S

Photo-palooza

2011-10-15T15:11:00.000-05:00

It seems like I have so much to update you all on, our second birthing class, our visit with a lawyer about estate planning and second parent adoption, S’s pregnancy….but instead, because it’s Saturday and because I’m in the middle of making a birthday cake and cleaning my house for a small dinner party tonight, I think I’ll just share some pictures of what we have been up to this week. Oh, and S officially has less than 100 days till Jude’s due date! Can you believe it? I was telling S last night that it seems like just yesterday that it was May and she was telling me she was pregnant. Time is going by so fast, I just can’t wrap my mind around the fact that she is almost 7 months pregnant and I’m going to get to see my little baby boy’s face in less than 100 days. Yay!
Back to pictures. I’ve been wanting to hang a mirror in the nursery to open it up a bit and reflect some of the light from the window, but I’ve been having a hard time finding anything that wasn’t like $150. Then I realized I had the perfect mirror already hanging in our guest room. The mirror actually used to be my friend Brandon’s in high school and then when we lived together I ended up with it. It used to be black and I spray painted the frame red to match the room better.

Another awesome update to the nursery is my friend Jason made an amazing lamp for Jude’s room. Jason has a knack for lamps and I couldn’t love the one he made for us more, it fits the room perfectly.

In case it’s hard to see, it’s covered in plastic dinosaurs! Jude’s going to love it! I also made some more art for the nursery last night that I think turned out pretty good.

Lastly, I will leave you with a picture of S this week, looking very cute and pregnant!

-Liz

Baby Shower Invites!

2011-10-11T15:30:00.000-05:00

My mom is throwing us a baby shower next month in Oklahoma where I mostly grew up and where S and I met and went to college. It's going to be filled with lots of old friends and family and I am so excited. My mom ordered our baby shower invites last night and I thought I'd share a sample of what they will look like. Of course, this is an edited version with all of the exact details taken out, but you can still see how cute they will be!

I love them!

-Liz

Jude’s kicking debut

2011-10-10T11:27:00.001-05:00

Jude has now kicked 2 people other than Liz and me. The other night, we were at a friends house when he had a good kick fest, so I laid down and let her feel him kick. She was delighted and he put on a good show for her. A few nights later, she kicked B-man 2 solid times. It was really funny because each time he did it, B-man jumped back like he was burned. I think he was really shocked by how well you can feel the little guy. He was kicking like crazy earlier when I was debating on taking the dogs for a walk and is even kicking now. Note to self- maybe not take dogs for a walk on trash day. The whole neighborhood is stinky. We even got behind the trash truck at one point and yuck!

Jude is a very active boy and he is growing! There is no doubt that I am preggie any more. My belly is always out and round:) We have been doing a relaxation technique at night where I tense a muscle and then release (part of our Bradley training) and Liz always says, “now tense Jude’s house” meaning my belly, but honestly, at this point, my whole body feels like Jude’s house! This little baby has taken over. The other night, I had my first charlie horse…that was not fun and my calf is still a little bit sore. My feet have been very swollen at the end of the day, my breathing is restricted if I eat a full meal, and my belly is out a proud:) My whole body is taken over by baby Jude. I am 6 1/2 months now, so I am 2 weeks away from the famous 3rd trimester. I think it is going to be a doozy with how nuts it gets at work and me already feeling pretty full of baby.

The only craving I have been having is salads (I think for the tangy dressing) and pumpkin things. Liz let me pick out any recipe I wanted and she said she would make it. I picked out pumpkin bars from Joy the Baker, and man o man, they are delicious! They are like pumpkin pie with a delicious crust and chocolate chips on top. I am at the point where I am starving all the time and cannot get enough to eat. I did gain 2 lbs. this week. It is time to grow, so I am not too worried about it. That brings my total weight gain to 15 lbs. now. The dr. at my last appointment said I should gain an average of a pound a week at this point. Oh little Jude-you are going to get so big! Right now he is about 2 lbs. It is very strange to carry his 2 lbs. self and all his stuff on the front of me all the time!

I really like the Bradley class. It is very informative and I like the exercises. It makes me feel like I am doing something now for the birth later on down the road. I have been pretty good about them, but did slack off a few days because I was just too tired after work to do anything other than put my feet up. Liz says I am still doing more than I was, so it is good:)

I am not looking forward to my next Drs. apt. This is the one where they do the diabetes test. I am not worried about the test, but I have to fast from 12pm-10am the next day. I go in and they make me drink a sugary drink and then I have to stay there for 2 hours and they draw blood every hour. I am not going to feel very good not eating for that long. Plus, I am not excited to hang out in their waiting room for 2 hours! I guess once this one is done, as long as the results come back fine, I won’t have to do it again, so that is good. I am going to bring the computer with some shows to watch, so I am hoping the time flies!

I am still enjoying being pregnant. I love his little kicks. I am happy to grow our little baby inside of me. Liz is a good partner and gives me foot rubs and thanks me for growing our baby all the time. She is encouraging and sweet and loves me pregnant. She even likes how forgetful I am and says it makes her feel more together which is funny. I am looking forward to our baby showers and Liz and I are both excited to meet our little boy. I keep telling her to quit telling him that so that he stays in for a few more months, but I am just as excited about his arrival as she is.

I am a little nervous about the birth, but the Bradley class is helping by educating me on what is going to happen. I also had one of my employees the other day say that by the end, you are so ready to not be pregnant, that birth becomes less scary. I still have time to settle into the idea of how he is going to enter the world:)
-S

Bradley Birthing Class and A Belly Pic!

2011-10-07T08:34:00.000-05:00

Wednesday was a big day in our pregnancy filled world. Wednesday morning S had a doctor’s appointment, the last monthly doctors appointment. Dang, can’t believe that starting next month she will be in her 3rd trimester and going to doctor’s appointments every other week. It all goes by so fast (yet at the same time, not fast enough). This was the first one that I haven’t been able to go with her to, which made me a little sad. She got to hear Jude’s strong steady heartbeat (this time he did not kick the machine) and they did all of the normal measuring the belly sort of stuff and everything looks good.

Then Wednesday night we had our first Bradley Birthing Class and it was awesome! If you are unfamiliar with the Bradley method, here is a tiny quote from the Wikipedia page, “The Bradley Method emphasizes that birth is a natural process: mothers are encouraged to trust their body and focus on diet and exercise throughout pregnancy; and it teaches couples to manage labor through deep breathing and the support of a partner or labor coach.” So basically, there are 12 classes and we meet every Wednesday for two hours each time. In order to be a Bradley teacher you have to have had a “Bradley” birth yourself, do tons of academic work and go to a week long Bradley teaching seminar amongst other things. One exciting thing about it is that just by coincidence our teacher (who teaches out of her house) lives about two blocks away from us. We drove to the first class just to be sure we knew where we were going, but I think that weather permitting (and it’s Austin, so I’m sure the weather will allow) we will walk to and from the rest of the classes, which is cool. We don’t get to walk to anything, we live in a rather suburban part of Austin, so the only thing we could really walk to is a gas station, which isn’t that exciting. There are 3 other couples in the class (but only two of the other three were there for this first class) and so far everyone has seemed pretty fine with us being in the class. We really enjoyed the class, it was fun to hang out with other couples expecting their first baby and of the three of us couples that were there this week we are all expecting boys. This first class was more of an introduction, so we didn’t do too much but we got sent home with homework- mostly exercises for S to do and a few relaxation things for us to practice each night together. Over all I think it’s going to be a really good thing for us and I’m excited to keep going.

And I’ve been meaning to post a new belly shot of S for a week or two now, so here is her most recent photo, though it is a few days if not almost a week old at this point. Gotta love that beautiful round belly!

-Liz

Jude’s Jams

2011-10-04T20:07:00.000-05:00

Well I’ve been working on a mix CD for baby Jude for quite a while now and I’ve finally made it. I was feeling a lot of pressure (from myself) to make the perfect mix and have just the right songs with just the right messages and it was too much, so I went a different direction. I decided to make a mix of some of my favorite songs, after all the point of this CD is to introduce Jude to the music I love in hopes that he will love it as well. So I just sat down and pulled up what I have today available in my itunes and this is the mix I came up with. I’m sure it’s not to everyone’s taste, but I really only made it for one person and well, he can’t exactly complain about it yet.
Jude’s Jams
1. Lucky Star- Madonna
2. Sparks- Coldplay
3. Wonderwall- Oasis
4. Home- Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros
5. Hello Goodbye- The Beatles
6. Flashdance- Irene Cara
7. Fortunate Fool- Jack Johnson
8. Young Forever- Jay-Z
9. Stay (I Missed You)- Lisa Loeb
10. Cherish- Madonna
11. Kids- MGMT
12. Clocks- Coldplay
13. Sweet Surrender- Sarah McLachlan
14. Bitter Sweet Symphony- The Verve
15. A Rush of Blood to the Head- Coldplay
16. Hold On- Wilson Phillips
17. Hey Jude- The Beatles
So there you have it. And by the way, did anyone watch Glee tonight? The end with them singing Coldplay- Fix You totally made me cry. Anyone else?
-Liz

Confession

2011-09-30T16:12:00.002-05:00

I have a small confession to make; I’m addicted to the show Teen Mom. I know, I know, it’s a ridiculous fake reality TV show and they are making money off of these poor teenagers who got themselves in this bad situation. But, I can’t help but enjoy it. You see, when we first found out S was pregnant, I went and put EVERYTHING even slightly baby related into our Netflix watch instantly queue and have watched all sorts of silly (and some great) movies. So far I/we have watched (from what I can remember): Look Whose Talking, Babies, In The Womb, about 5 minutes worth of Baby Geniuses, Junior, Making Grace, For Keeps, Accidentally on Purpose, Nine Months, The Object of My Affection, The Business of Being Born, Science of Babies, and now Teen Mom. And while I’m totally into Teen Mom, it is making me a bit nervous about being a stay at home mom. I think that it’s given me at least a little bit more of an idea of what it will be like to be at home alone with a baby, and frankly, it looks hard. It’s been a really long time since I was last around a baby for more than just an hour or two, so I’m starting to think that I’m not remembering all of the crying and diapers and stress a baby can bring quite a clearly as I think that I do. Hopefully little Jude isn’t a colicky baby who cries all day and hates life, hopefully he will be the happy little joyful boy that I’ve imagined him to be. And if not, well at least I’m not a broke, futureless18 year old with a looser boyfriend who I fight with all of the time and who doesn’t help with anything. And at least I won’t be crying on TV if I am crying at all (it’s one of my goals in life to never be on TV crying). So, anyone else a Teen Mom fan that will admit it? Oh and by the way, S thinks I’m totally ridiculous and refuses to watch it at all

-Liz

Who’s belly button is that and the ninja inside

2011-09-27T10:27:00.000-05:00

There are a lot of things that change when your pregnant. The one I find the strangest so far is my belly button. It used to be a huge cave and is almost flush right now. I imagine I will have the “turkey’s done!” belly button before the end of this pregnancy. I always think those are so cute (and hilarious) on people, so I am not really worried about it.

Yesterday, I was a little worried about Jude. He only gave me 2 tiny kicks, that could have been something else, before about 1pm. He usually has 5 good kicking sessions by then. I decided the best thing to do was get a massage and relax, so in the middle of my work day, I went and had a preggo massage. What was funny about it was that the woman that massaged me was also pregnant, so we talked babies thru most of it. Jude decided that it was the perfect time to high kick me, so I felt better. That night, we were laying around watching Modern Family (brilliant show I might add) and Jude started really kicking. I laid on my back with the belly towards Liz and let her feel the craziness going on inside me:) I do love his little kicks, but the cool part was Liz felt each kick clearly. She even said he moved her hand a few times. He was kicking so hard that she is a little worried about what he is going to do once he weighs more than a pound and a half! I have to admit, I am a little scared too as some of his kicks take my breath away already. I love it so much though, that I am more excited then anything!

On a negative note, I got a message from my mom a night ago that really upset me. She said she was probably going to skip the baby shower. I felt so hurt that she would not be really excited about her first, and honestly maybe her only, grandbaby’s shower. With my mom, there are 2 ways to do things. 1. I can spare her feelings like I have for years and just say, “okay, it’s fine” or 2. my more recent approach of being honest with her. She has not taken the 2nd one very well, but as Liz pointed out, I should probably be honest with her even if it is not always great. So, I called her and told her I was very surprised she was not over the moon about going to the shower. She broke down and explained that she does not do social gatherings very well and it would cost a lot of money. We finally agreed on her coming to the shower in Austin instead of the one in Tulsa. She feels like she knows my friends (??) and would feel more comfortable there than at the one with people she doesn’t know. Okay, that’s fine. I thought it was a good conversation and then she sent me an e-mail being her usual dramatic self. Sigh, and then she wonders why we don’t jump on the chance to come for a visit.

All in all the pregnancy is going well at this point. I do keep staring at this big belly in the mirror. It is so funny to me. Liz is taking good care of me. The other night, we were going to go to a movie, but I was too tired and then I was upset I was so tired. She suggested we just rent a movie and make a cozy palate to cuddle up on. We did that and then she rubbed my shoulders and feet and read me to sleep. It was a nice, preggie chill, date night for us.

I did weigh myself this morning and have lost a pound and a half. Not intentional, but I think between my stomach not feeling great most of the time and being busy, I am just not eating enough. I even packed in some high calorie foods this week, but it did not seem to be enough. I am not really all that worried about it since I was overweight to begin with. I know that Jude is getting what he needs and I am the one missing out. But still, at 6 months pregnant, weight should be going up, not down.

I am really enjoying little Jude being with me all the time. I am at the point where I am feel pretty good, and he is active, so it is pretty amazing and fun right now. I am really excited that Liz is starting to clearly feel him move around too. I don’t think it will be very long until others can feel him also. I have a whole bunch of people at work just dying to feel the little guy. I think work is going to throw me a baby shower also. That will be 3 showers! Already little Jude has so much love around him!
-S

Nursery Progress

2011-09-24T11:19:00.000-05:00

As S said earlier this week, I’ve been making some progress on the nursery. I’ve been working on a painting for the nursery for a while and I finally finished it. I showed an “in progress” shot of it earlier this month, and here is the finished product!

Sorry about the glare, I must have taken a million pictures of the painting but I just couldn’t get one without the glare. If you couldn’t tell, the painting is of the lyrics of one of my favorite Beatles songs, Hey Jude, which is what Jude is being named for.

The second thing I finished for the nursery this week was a mobile to go over Jude’s crib. I’ve been looking at mobiles online for what seems like forever and nothing I could find was just right. I found a few on Etsy that I liked that were made of paper but I couldn’t justify spending $80 on something I could make myself. Here is what I came up with!

While it did take forever to make, it was pretty easy. I used the outside of a wooden embroidery hoop for the top circle and two wooden dowel rods for support. I epoxied the dowel rods together and then to the inside of the hoop. For the circles, I used two different sized circle punches to cut out tons of circles and then used some of my other craft punches to make the umbrellas, whales, rabbits, etc. Then I used a sewing needle to poke a tiny hole in the center of each circle and then used fishing line to string them together with knots between each circle to space them out. Here is the view that Jude will see from his crib!

I’m really happy with how it turned out and the bright colors look great against the gray nursery walls. I also took a few longer shots of the nursery so you all could see how this is all coming together.

And then one last picture because it makes me laugh, here is the little monster suit we got for Jude from Target the other day. S put it in his crib and we have been joking that it looks like the rapture got him.

-Liz

Jude’s new trick

2011-09-20T08:00:00.000-05:00

This little guy is very active. He only moves around for short a amount of time, but he moves around often and he starting to pack a punch. He surprises me sometimes with how intense he is being. He has learned a new trick. In line with the rebel he seems to be, he is pushing on the boundaries. Considering I am his boundaries, this feels very strange! He woke me up the other night because he pushed himself against on the front of my belly. It felt intense and weird and in my sleepy state, I just tapped him a few times and he shifted. That was the first time. Now, he is not only giving me little kicks, but he is pushing against his current home. It feels totally different then the little jabs he usually delivers.

I love it. I will probably not like it as much when he starts waking me up on a regular basis (like him, I like my sleep!) but it is so cool to feel him moving around. He was being so crazy last night. I was laying on my left side, the side he likes to hang out on, and he was going nuts, so I had Liz come and feel. He was not only kicking hard, but he was pushing the limits of his house and then kicking hard. It felt amazing and strange to not only Liz, but to me too! She could clearly feel him continually while he shifted around.

It is strange to be in the middle of a conversation and he starts moving around. I am excited for other people to be able to feel him. Liz is going to be glued to my stomach:) She is so excited to be able to feel our little boy! Even people I work with really want to feel the baby. Right now, he is mostly my little secret without anyone really being able to feel him but Liz at this point.

Liz loves me pregnant. She loves him moving around, she loves my belly, and she is taking good care of me. I was exhausted after a hectic day at work last night and she made a meal plan for the week and made a list and then took my list of stuff and went shopping for us so I could go to bed at 8:30pm last night. So sweet! This was after she took care of the trash (a chore I normally do) and worked all day and then came home and made a roast with mashed potatoes and carrots. She has been a powerhouse! Hopefully she will post pictures soon of her finished projects. She finished the mobile and the painting for the nursery and they both look amazing! I barely have the energy to go to work and come home, but she has been nesting and getting all kinds of stuff done!

On a negative note, I threw up last night. I have not actually thrown up in a while, but I have not felt great for a few days now on the stomach front. I still gag in the mornings, but for about 3 days now, I have felt nausea thru the day too. Last night, I felt great when I ate dinner, but afterwards, went downhill fast and threw it all up. Yuck! I think that is part of the reason that Jude went crazy last night. It must feel like and earthquake in there when I throw up!

All in all, I am at the point where I am really enjoying this. There is nothing like feeling him moving around daily and feeling his new feats as he gets bigger and explores more. I start my 3rd trimester in a few weeks, so I am sure I will feel him more and more!
-S

Nursery Dresser DIY Project- Reveal!

2011-09-16T11:53:00.000-05:00

I am so excited to finally have Jude’s dresser make-over completed! Last night our friends Lauren and her husband Jason came by to help me move it out of my studio and into the nursery (I couldn’t move it alone and S couldn’t help me in her delicate state). It looks so perfect in there with the gray nursery walls, it gives the room such a bold pop of color; I just love it so much. It makes me really glad that we painted the nursery gray. I emailed a picture of the finished product to S’s mom last night and found out from her that this dresser was not only S’s as a little girl, but it was her mom’s dresser as well, so this dresser will be used by three generations of kids! I think that is pretty cool, I like that this dresser has some extra history to it.

Here is a before shot of the dresser. I forgot to get one right at the very start, so this picture actually shows it after I had started sanding it and prying off the little green flower embellishments.

So the first thing that I did was remove all of the green flower embellishments. I was worried when I first stated that they were attached to the dresser in some sort of weird way, like hidden screws or that they were actually a part of the wood on the dresser and that they wouldn’t come off. So I was really nervous to mess with them and ding them up when I could just paint over them and hope that they sort of blended in better once the dresser was one solid color. But I got lucky, and when I took a screw driver and butter knife to the edges of them, they all popped right off. It looks like they were stapled in some way to the dresser. Here is a detail shot of one of the dresser drawers with the flowers I’m talking about.

Once all of the flowers were off, I removed the original hardware on the drawers. Quite a few of the pulls were missing, so I didn’t really have any option on keeping the old ones, which weren’t very cute anyway, so out they went. The next step was sanding. I wasn’t sure what sort of paint had been used originally on the dresser, so I wanted to make sure I at least got the clear coat off of it and I wanted to rough up the paint a bit so primer would stick better. I borrowed a hand sander from a friend and went to town. I did a rough sand first and then went back over it with a finer sand paper. I wasn’t trying to get down to the raw wood so in all removing the flowers and hardware and then sanding probably took me about an hour.

Next it was time to paint. Originally I had planned to use a separate primer and then paint, but somehow the guy a Home Depot talked me into using the Behr paint with added primer, and I went with it, despite my poor results from using it previously to paint the nursery gray. The color I used is called Mermaid Treasure, which is actually just a little bit more of a turquoise color than the after photos below really show. I got it in a flat, so that it would again stick a bit better and also to help the polyurethane to stick. I used a 2 inch paint brush that I had bought when we painted the nursery gray, along with a mini foam roller. I put the first coat on just as is, being sure to get as even and thin of a coat as possible.

For the second and third coats, I added a product called Floetrol to the paint. Floetrol is really cool stuff, its only about $6 for a big container of it and what it does is keeps the paint from drying as quickly and helps keep the paint level, which means that you don’t have the same brush marks and roller edge marks that you normally will have with latex paint. The stuff is genius and it totally worked. The dresser had a bit of texture to it from how the wood is, so I don’t know that you would have seen a lot of brush marks on this wood anyway, but adding Floetrol guaranteed that there weren’t any. If you are painting a particularly smooth piece of furniture, it is worth the money. Now I didn’t use it with the first coat of paint because I was worried that it might affect the sticky “primer” part of the paint and keep me from getting the paint to really stick, but I’m not sure that it really would have made a difference. Also, Floetrol doesn’t effect the color of the paint at all, in case you were wondering. It does however, make the paint feel a bit more watery, which again helped to get thin even coats, which I think is key when painting.

After about 24 hours of letting the paint get really dry, I added several coats of polyurethane to make it nice and shiny, and also to protect the paint from dings and scratches. I used a product called Minwax for this, the water-based version. I used the water-based version just for the sake of clean up, I didn’t want to have to pull out the paint thinner, soap and water is just a heck of a lot easier. Now according to the directions, you need three coats to get the most even coverage and you are supposed to lightly sand it after the first coat. I skipped the sanding part, mostly out of being lazy, and I put three coats on everything except for the top of the dresser. I put four coats on that, because I figured that it would be the part getting the more wear and tear.

All that was left was putting on the new drawer pulls. I got these from Target. But annoyingly enough, the screws that they came with where too short and the old screws were too long (plus because I was missing some of the original pulls, I didn’t have enough even if they had fit). So I was off again to Home Depot to get the screws that would fit just right. I was like Goldilocks trying to find one that was just right.

So that is the whole story of how I DIY-ed our dresser. And now the picture you’ve been waiting for, the finished product!

-Liz

Hosptial Tour

2011-09-15T09:30:00.000-05:00

Last night we went on the hospital tour to check out the maternity section. It seems a little early to be doing stuff like that, but the tour at our hospital is only Wednesday nights and with our Bradley Birthing class starting in just two or three weeks which will also be on Wednesday nights, it was either do it now or wait until the first week of January. And with S due January 23^rd ish, that seemed a bit late, so we decided to get it done. I’m glad we went, we learned a lot of good information about where we are supposed to go, and how the whole big event is going to work.

We were on the tour with three other couples, all of whom where much further along than S, all of the women were between 28-36 weeks, and all of them were expecting girls. In many ways, we were the odd couple. For two of the moms, this will be their second child, so they both each had a little girl with them, both little girls were probably about 3 years old. And before we started walking around and seeing the rooms and such we sat and talked and asked questions and the whole time the two little girls were running around like crazy giggling and chasing each other. It was pretty cute, but it did make me nervous for my future as a parent because they whole time that they were running circles around us shrieking, I was thinking, “Dear God, someone shut these little monsters up or have them play some where else.” They were loud and distracting and the nurse giving the tour wasn’t a super loud talker.

We learned during this talk a few surprising things. I think that the thing that surprised me the most was that in the state of Texas your baby has to be given a Vitamin K shot to aid in blood clotting, and an antibiotic eye ointment to prevent eye infection. If you refuse to let them do this, then they have to call CPS and CPS will at the very least start a file on you. I think that it goes without saying that as a lesbian couple in a state like Texas, we just cannot risk having CPS get involved with our child in any way. They also said that their C-section rate was about 30%, which I guess is ok, I don't have much to compare that to.

Next we got to see the rooms. The rooms weren’t that exciting, especially after our previous tour of the Birthing Center, where each room was nicer than even any hotel I’ve ever stayed at and nicer in some ways than my own house. Each room did have it’s own bathroom and a cot for “Dad” to sleep in along with a glider, a TV (and I have my fingers crossed for room 12, which randomly gets HBO even though it isn’t supposed to) and all of the other stuff you would expect in a maternity hospital room. They did say that S would have to been in the bed when it came time to start actually pushing, but that they can lower the bed almost all of the way to the floor and have a bar she can use for support if she wants to be squatting or on her knees or anything like that. They also told us that we can video tape the birth if we want, but all of our video has to be waist up sort of stuff, no actual videos of the baby coming out. Not that we want a video of that, yuck, but I thought it was weird that it is a state law that you couldn’t take video of it. The nice thing about the room is that it is set up so that once the baby is born it doesn’t leave the room hardly at all. I think she said that they have to do two basic tests on the baby before it leaves but other than that, it is in the room with you the whole time, which is nice. They seem to really encourage skin to skin contact with the baby and breastfeeding and establishing a bond with your baby right away, all things I support.

The other thing that the nurse really seemed to stress was that they will do whatever they can to let you have the experience you want for your birth. So if you wanted to bring in fans, aroma therapy, music, or whatever, you can do it. The pregnant ladies discussed playing music for a minute and one was wondering aloud what song she’d want to give birth to. I suggested Salt-N-Pepa’s Push It, which no one thought was very funny, to my surprise. I think that would be a hilarious song to give birth to. But I guess they were all thinking that they wanted something soothing and soulful like Enya or something like that. Well, that is just so not us.

And lastly, the most exciting part was when S asked the nurse if I could be on the birth certificate, and she said yes! She said that we would have to fill out some sort of form/paper work to make that happen, but that I could be on the birth certificate too! I’m so excited, I didn’t think that it was even possible for that to happen, because again, we are in Texas, but I guess it isn’t a big issue. Yay! So excited to be one of baby Jude’s official parents!

**After some basic googling on this issue, I just don’t see how what the nurse told us about being able to put my name on the birth certificate is true. It doesn’t appear to be legal in Texas to do this from what I can find, so I don’t know what she is talking about. Erg. We should have asked more questions. In the end we need a lawyer anyway, so hopefully we can get the ball rolling on this and find out for sure one way or the other.

-Liz

In Progress (and Belly Shots!)

2011-09-13T14:00:00.000-05:00

Right now, everything seems to be in progress. S is now more than half way through this pregnancy, so our baby is defiantly “in progress”. Everyday our little boy gets bigger and stronger, I’ve felt him kick and move around probably 3-4 times now, but only one really big kick so far. And everyday my beautiful wife’s belly gets rounder and rounder. Here is her 22 weeks belly shot. And guess what? S is going to be showing her cute little face around here now! Yay!

The nursery is constantly in progress, though a lot of good progress has been made. I’m working on a really cute “Hey Jude” painting to hang over his crib. It’s getting close to done and hopefully I will finish it up this week. Here it is so far, with the lovely S posing with it.

I’m also mostly done redoing the dresser that will go in the room. I cannot wait to finish it, move it into the nursery, and mostly, show it off to you guys! The dresser was an old one that I’ve always disliked that S had as a little girl. It was cream/off white colored with green and blue accents and little blue and green 3D flowers on it. All I have left to do on it is attach the new knobs and put at one last coat of polyurethane and it will be all done! Again, I hope to have it done today or tomorrow, so you can expect a post later this week about the whole process, including before and after pictures!

-Liz

Ninja baby!

2011-09-09T08:39:00.000-05:00

We had our regular Drs. appointment a few days ago. My favorite part is hearing the heartbeat. Turns out, this is not Jude’s favorite part. The nurse took the little machine around my stomach, searching for him. When she found him, he had a good solid heartbeat. We were listening to it when he hi-ya kicked the machine. He kicked it so hard, it interrupted the reading we were getting. Much like his moms, Jude does not like his sleep interrupted!:) The tech seemed shocked and Liz and I thought it was hilarious.

On another note, I got my first stranger smile. You know, the “hey, you’re pregnant” smile. I officially look preggie to the general public. I have not had unsolicited tummy touches, but I am sure they will happen soon enough.

I also finally broke down and bought some new bras. The ones I have are no longer fitting. I hate bra shopping, so Liz had to coax me thru it. I do officially have 2 new bras! Neither of them are nursing bras, so I will still have to buy those, but I am have some time.

I also had a major preggie moment at work. I feel at all times like my brain is in a cloud. It is not very fun for this type A, but people at work think it is hilarious. I was at the front desk(the only one up there) and some of the staff wanted their paychecks. I popped in back to get them for them and then totally forgot about the desk! About 10 minutes later, I am eating and jump up and run up front. Fortunately, one of my employees was up there and I asked her if she was there when I went back and she said yes. The good news: I did not actually leave the front desk unattended. The bad news: I totally thought I had and then could not remember if my employee was up there or not! Aw jeez!! I keep forgetting what I am supposed to do and getting distracted easily. My concentration is not what it used to be! It is frustrating for me, but my whole staff just thinks it is such a riot since it is so different from things I would normally do. Oh well, not much I can do about it.

I also made one of my employees stop and get me a scone on the way to work yesterday. I just needed it bad!

I feel Jude moving around all the time. He is an active little guy. It’s really neat! He loves it when I eat. He always wakes up for meal time. I am starving all the time too! I went from being sick all the time to wanting to eat the house down! It seems like it is going fine though as I have gained a little under 9 pounds at this point. I just have to be sure to swim and do my yoga or walk the dogs as I am so very hungry all the time!

We also signed up for a Bradley class! I am very excited!! It is 12 weeks, which is quite long, but I am one of those people who takes as much training as possible for anything, so I am happy to take it. It is right around the corner from the house, which is nice and starts October 5th.

Well, off to work I go to forget things!;)
-S

Back from the Coast

2011-09-06T22:40:00.000-05:00

We got back yesterday from our mini vacation to the coast. It was really nice and we had a lot of fun. We went with my BFF Brandon for his 30th birthday. We went to Corpus Christi which is right on the gulf in Texas. Corpus doesn’t have the prettiest beaches, but hey, a beach is still a good thing in my book. Brandon has only been to the beach once when he was a kid, so I think it was a fun experience for him, despite the less than sparkling water.

We did run into a bit of danger while we were there though. The first night I went outside our hotel to a little grassy area to sit with Brandon while he smoked (don’t worry, S was in bed) and I accidentally sat in a fire ant hill! Holy Jesus the pain. I ended up having to strip down and shower to get them all off of me. I have about 20 bites on my right foot, 7 ish on my left foot, and 6 on my right hand, including one really annoying one in the center of my palm. I’m feeling better now, but my poor feet arn’t looking so good. The next day we were trying to find a particular beach and we were using my iphone to navigate and I ended up taking us to a military base. It was very incognito and we didn’t realize right away what it was. S couldn’t see the guy at the guard booth at first and there wasn’t an actual gate or bar, so she almost just zipped right in! I can just picture the military police going crazy coming after us. Luckily she stopped and the guards were just as confused as we were. There was a sign asking for id, so S asked, “Do I need to show you my id?” And the guard just looked at her, clearly waiting for her to state our business. After an awkward silence, he said, “Ma’am, this is a military base.” Oooooh. “We are just looking for the beach!” He gave us complicated directions on how to get to a beach, which none of us could really follow, and we high tailed it out of there. Close one!

Once we did get to the beach, we got in the water and were having a great time until something bumped S’s hand, making her shriek. She thought it was a fish at first, but then we saw that it was the top of a jelly fish. And it wasn’t alone. We took that as a sign that it was time to get out of the water. Luckily, S did not get stung. That would have been horrible.

In other news, I felt baby Jude kick last night! For the past two or three days I’ve been feeling little flutters that I thought were him and then last night he kicked really hard and I could feel it! It made me laugh with joy, it was such a cool feeling. I haven’t been able to feel it since, but I’m hoping that I will again soon.

Today S and I both had off work and we went and registered for baby stuff at Babies R Us. It was really fun, but a bit overwhelming. I think that we did a good job of not being silly and just registering for everything we saw. We also started looking into birthing classes at our hospital and are also considering taking a Bradley method class for natural child birth. It looks interesting, but it’s 12 weeks long so we need to pretty much start this month or at the beginning of October, so we need to decide pretty soon here. Anyone taken a Bradley Method class? Any feedback would be appreciated. Wow, it makes the next 19 weeks seem so short when you think about not being able to finish a 12 week class with enough time to be sure you will get through it all before the baby. S is now more than half way to the finish line and has more time under her belt than she has left! Crazy town!
-Liz

Jude is a Republican! The Horror!

2011-09-02T10:11:00.000-05:00

I can’t believe that in 1-2 more days (depending on what tracker I’m looking at), S will be 20 weeks pregnant, which means, she is half way to the finish line. I can’t believe my sweet wife is 5 months pregnant. It still seems like such a dream and such a shock. S told me the other day that she still wakes up half of the time wondering if this whole pregnancy has just been a dream and that in reality she is just getting fat. But she isn’t getting fat, she is getting more and more wonderfully pregnant with our baby boy. And I couldn’t be happier. It feels like every day I fall more and more in love with my beautiful, strong, amazing wife and more and more in love with the little boy growing inside of her. Truly, what a miracle all of this is.

Yesterday, I think I might have felt Jude kick. S has been feeling him moving and shaking (and lots of kicking) for the past three weeks or so, but every time I put a hand on her tummy, nothing. But last night we were laying in bed reading and I think I might have felt it. It was just the tiniest little flutter, and if I just had my hand on her and wasn’t actively hoping to feel him, I don’t know that I would have noticed it at all, but because I was looking for it, I felt it. I hope that in the next two weeks our little Jude packs on some weight so there is a bit more heft to his tiny kicks so that I can feel them. I can’t wait.

So now that we know that we are having a boy, we have been speculating on what he will be like. My BFF Brandon said that he pictures Jude as being a really smart, liberal, jock type, where I have been picturing him as a witty, sarcastic surfer type of guy. S and I have also been joking over the last few weeks about what he will be like. You see, for the last month I’ve been working this weird schedule where I don’t go in until 11:15, so I have been able to watch morning daytime TV, including The View (not a big fan though I must say). And S has a few mornings off too, so we have been watching it, joking that Jude is really conservative and how much he really loves Elizabeth (the conservative, right winger cast member) on The View and how he thinks she has some really great ideas/points. It has been just cracking us up, but we are pretty weird. We also decided (again, jokingly) that he is going to be a really annoying baby and not like the stuff that we like. For example, one of the things that I am looking forward to (among lots of other things like mostly being around my baby all day) about being a stay at home mom is getting to hopefully watch The Ellen show (which I almost never see now because I’m at work). And so we joke that he will really hate the Ellen show and make lots of grumbly sighs while I try to watch because he hates it so much. Again, this cracks me up.

In nursery news, I put up the mini blinds this week. Man, what a pain in the neck (literally! My neck is so sore!) putting those stupid things up were. But they do block some light. Though, even with the blinds and the curtains, it still isn’t terribly dark in there during the day. I’m wondering if that will be a big deal as far as daytime naps will go and if so, should I add a layer of room darkening material to my curtains. Any thoughts?

Happy Friday!

-Liz

Updates and Pictures!

2011-08-29T14:37:00.001-05:00

I feel like I am behind on blogging right now, with so much fun baby stuff going on right now! Of course you all saw that we had our ultrasound last week where we found out we are having a boy! We couldn’t be more excited. I really thought up until the moment we found out that I wanted a girl but honestly the minute the tech told us boy, I had tears in my eyes and was so happy I thought I’d just explode from the joy. It just feels so right. And all along we’ve felt really strongly about the name Jude and kept changing our minds about our girl names. Here are some of the ultrasound pictures for you.

First one, the junk shot proving his boy-ness:

I think that in this one he looks like he is flashing gang signs and is getting ready to party:

Face shot. We couldn’t get any profile shots because of how he was laying. The tech poked S quite a bit trying to get him to move into another position, but he didn’t want to.

And look at that perfect spine and head!

All in all, the tech didn’t find any problems what so ever and he is progressing along nicely. Of course, the bigger Jude gets, the bigger S’s belly gets! Here is her 20th week bump shot.

Now that we know it’s a boy, it feels like we really have the go ahead to start putting this nursery together. S and I put together the crib the other day. It was much harder than I thought it would be, and easier than S thought it would be. Either way it was time consuming, it took us about 1 ½ hours to put together. I think it was the attached changing table that really made it take forever. We got a sheet for it and I’m going to be making a crib skirt soon. We’ve decided against crib bumpers for the safety reasons, plus no point in registering for a big expensive crib bedding set when all we really need is the sheets. I think it looks pretty cute so far. Here is it:

I also made curtains for the room. The pattern is different colored dinosaurs if you couldn’t tell from the picture. I think I’m going to use the same material to make the crib skirt so it all matches some. Here is a shot of the curtains:

It’s all coming together and it’s looking so cute that I can’t help but go in there at least once a day to look around and smile. It’s a really happy, peaceful room so far I think.

Next up on the agenda is getting registered. We are going to be doing that next week once we get back from a little mini vacation to the coast. I asked on Facebook and got a lot of great information, so I’ll ask you folks as well, any advise on what to register for? Specifically, if you already have kiddos, anything you ended up really loving or anything you got and hated and never used?

-Liz

It’s a...

2011-08-25T16:39:00.001-05:00

BOY!! Little baby Jude is moving around and being stubborn in there. I wonder where he gets that from? He would not help out the technician by turning over. He is hanging out facing down with his head at the bottom. He is laying on his belly in there. How weird!

What an exciting day! Not only did we did we find out about Jude, but it also rained today (it has officially been 70 days over 100 degrees here, so it was awesome to get some rain!) and, the Ellen show is the Mother’s Day show where the whole audience is preggie.

We put the crib together last night and so we bought one crib sheet and one little outfit today. Liz will post pics for you guys in a few days. We bought some dinosaur material to make curtains out of. We are just overjoyed. Little Jude is looking about 19 weeks and 2 days and is only halfway thru the 18th week, so he is growing big. I still don’t look preggie to the general public, but to people that I know, I am starting to show on a regular basis.

We are just so happy to know it is a boy. We would have been really happy with either, but it is just really nice to know.
-S

One BIG Crib

2011-08-23T21:18:00.000-05:00

Our crib is here! Now that we have the crib, things are starting to feel real. It struck me last night when I was picking it up, hey, we are actually going to have a baby to stick in that thing, and pretty soon at that. Wow, still blows my mind.

Picking up the crib yesterday was quite the ordeal. We ordered it from Walmart and did the ship to store thing so that we wouldn’t have to pay for shipping. Yesterday I got the email that everything was in and so I went after work to get it. S was working till 11 last night so I couldn’t really wait for her. I got there and the crib was in two really big boxes. They had to call someone to help me out with them because they were on this big dolly and I obviously wasn’t going to be able to put them in my car by myself.

Fast forward to twenty minutes later (Walmart is always so slow) and we were loading them into my car. I drive a small, compact car with a hatchback, and figured with the seats down, surely the boxes would fit. Wrong. One of the two boxes was about 2 inches too long to fit into my car and close the hatch no matter how I moved the seats around. At this time, it’s 9:00 on a Monday night and S was still at work and I couldn’t get a hold of my BFF, and I just couldn’t come up with any solutions other than to just wedge the boxes in as best I could and drive really slowly home (I tried to tie them up with a zebra scarf I had in the car, but that didn’t work).

Luckily we live about 1-2 miles away from Walmart, so it wasn’t a long drive. But I was freaking out that the boxes would slide out of my car, not only messing up the crib but also causing a car accident. I put my hazard lights on and drove slowly home. Somehow, I made it home with both boxes intact and inside of my car.

Once I got home, I realized that I had to figure out a way to get these out of my car. Because I couldn’t close the hatch, I couldn’t just leave them where anyone could steal them, plus it would have killed my battery to leave the hatch open for three hours while I waited for S to get home. So I got crazy and slid the boxes out of my car on my own, which was no easy feat, as they are like I said, big boxes that weighed at least 40-50 lbs each. And then I somehow carried them to the front porch where I left them so that S could help me move them the rest of the way when she got home.

An hour later, I started thinking, these are too heavy for her to move and I don’t want her to strain herself moving them, so I gathered up my strength again and somehow by the grace of God, moved them into the nursery. Now they await being put together, which I will hopefully do tonight.

Yesterday we also got a package from our dear old roomie who is now living in the UK. She sent us the cutest onesie, which we realized is the first piece of baby clothing we have gotten. One of S’s coworkers also got us this really cute monkey toy to clip onto the side of the crib, which I will do once it is put together.   It’s what is on top of the boxes to give you some perspective of the size of the boxes.
-Liz

EXPLOSION #1! (and hopefully the last)

2011-08-19T19:32:00.000-05:00

Okay preggie hormones, here we go. I had an EXPLOSION yesterday. We were in the car, driving to swim at a friends house and I was in stop and go traffic on I-35 (per usual) and I lost it. I whipped the car around and drove back home. We were on the road for an hour in what should have been a 25 minute drive and I LOST MY MIND!! I was so livid…red faced, breathing fire. I get home and tear into Liz. She is confused and hurt and unsure of what to do and I am screaming at the top of my lungs. What was I upset about….nothing really, but I was beyond reason and beyond upset. WHOA! That was intense for me and I was the one doing it. I eventually calmed down a little and we went to the movies. We saw Crazy Stupid Love and it was really cute.

My poor wife. I cannot believe I acted like such a crazy, raged, lunatic. We have been together for 9 years now and we hardly ever fight. This was not even a fight, it was just me yelling at her for no good reason. (side note- sorry baby, you are amazing and wonderful and beautiful and I love you so much! I don’t know who was yelling at you yesterday, but I will kick her butt!!!!)

Neways..emotions sometimes get overwhelming for me in my preggie state. It is not only anger, I have also been intensely sad for a few hours and happy as all get out. It is quite strange. In the moment, it is like a roller coaster and you cannot filter or think straight, just pouring of emotion.

On another note, I think I have a craving: Broccoli cheese soup. Yup, this lactose intolerant girl cannot get enough! I love it!! I think Liz is going to make me some homemade so I can quit stalking restaurants for their soup. She also made a delicious roast with parsnip mashed potatoes and Yorkshire pudding with gravy last night….yum. Can you tell I am preggie and food is always on my mind:)

Here is to hoping for calmer mood swings….
-S

Pretty Young Thing

2011-08-16T15:28:00.000-05:00

It seems like things are finally starting to get moving and a shaking with this whole having a baby deal. The crib/changing table combo and crib mattress are picked out, ordered, and on their way to the house. The nursery walls are painted (though I need to get some touch up paint to fix where I scratched them last night moving furniture out of the room, erg!), and thanks to one of my wonderful BFFs, last night we got the base boards painted and are finishing doing the rest of the trim tonight. On Wednesday we are having the carpets cleaned (yay for not having to do it myself!), and we are hoping over Labor Day weekend to get our registry together because by then we will know if the baby is a little bean or a little beanette. Of course there is still plenty left to do, but now it feels like we are almost half way done now that most of the big projects will be done soon. I can’t wait for the whole thing to come together. And thank goodness for my friend Rex for helping with painting the trim. I quickly realized that I am terrible at painting trim. I’m hoping that it will be a bit better tonight doing around the window and doors. Also, the people who lived in this house before us painted the trim green. I cannot even begin to say how stupid looking green trim is. It’s so nice to have it be a pretty glossy white.

Poor S is still not having a fun time being pregnant. She hasn’t been feeling very good the last few days and last night she got really sick, which was the first time since we were in Mexico, so she has been doing better, but not great. This morning her eye lids look a bit funny and I think it’s from how hard she was throwing up yesterday. Boo. But, her belly is getting really nice and round and I just couldn’t love it more. She just looks so dang cute!

This week according to all of our this is what your baby is up to websites, the baby can now hear what is going on outside of the womb. So it can hear us talking, loud noises, music, you name it. Also, on the In The Womb documentary it said that babies in the womb can hear music and if they hear the same song often enough they will be able to recognize it even after they are born, which is too cool. So that said, I’m starting to make Baby’s first Mix CD. Any suggestions for songs? I’ve gotten a few funny suggestions so far like Michael Jackson’s PYT.

-Liz

17th Week Bump Picture!

2011-08-13T12:29:00.000-05:00

Here is this weeks bump pic, as promised:

Isn't it looking awesome? I'm guessing in just one or two more weeks she will look pregnant enough that people who don't know her will realize she is pregnant!

-Liz

Doctor's Appointment and Updates

2011-08-12T13:49:00.000-05:00

S had a doctor’s appointment yesterday. Everything looks good. She is gaining the right amount of weight, isn’t having any problems, and is doing great! She is still having a few bad days here and there being nauseous, but hasn’t thrown up since we were in Mexico. We also got to hear the baby’s heart beat (strong and in the 150s). When they were looking for the heartbeat they found S’s heart beat first and we were both worried, thinking oh no! Why is the heart beat so slow! But, nothing to fear. And everyday she is looking more and more pregnant. We’ll post a belly shot tomorrow I think.

We have been so jealous of all of the other January 2012 baby mommas finding out the sex of their baby already that we seriously looked into going to a 3D ultra sound yesterday. But the one we liked the best said that they could start doing the gender stuff at 17 weeks, and S is just a day or two shy of that. But I’m glad we didn’t do it, because we asked at our appointment how many ultrasounds we had after the anatomy scan on the 25^th and they said, to our surprise, none! So unless there is some sort of problem/complication with S before delivery, they won’t do another one the entire rest of her pregnancy! I could have cried I was so sad to hear that we wouldn’t get to see the baby for almost 4 full months. That means that I’m really glad we didn’t run out and pay for an ultrasound yesterday because we will for sure want to do that in a month or two to check on the little bambino/a! But it is killing me, not knowing. I’m starting to think that the baby is a boy right now. I don’t really know why, but that is what I have been feeling, though S still thinks girl. Hopefully we will find out either way on August 25^th!

In other news, we ordered our crib! I’m so excited for it. In the end, even though we liked the Ikea cribs and my brother even offered to build us a crib (he worked as a carpenter/furniture builder for a few years), we went with the Graco Lauren crib. We ended up getting the one that had the changing table attached. I was originally going to use a dresser that I am painting for the nursery as a changing table but a few people have commented that the dresser is pretty low, so in order to save our backs, we went with the changing table. It should be here by the 24^th, so that week is going to be really baby filled! Now all we need to do before the crib gets here is steam clean the carpet and hopefully paint the trim. I can’t wait for it all to come together. I started a new painting last night to hang in the nursery, I think it’s going to be really pretty once it’d done.

Happy Friday!

-Liz

Baby movement??

2011-08-08T11:17:00.000-05:00

I think I have started feeling the baby move some. It started when I was in Mexico. Sometimes it feels like flutters and sometimes it is one swift hi-ya kick. It never lasts very long or repeats itself around the same time I felt the first one. Since I have never been preggie before, it is hard to tell, but I know my body well enough to know it is not my usual inside workings moving around. Everyone says that when you feel the baby move for the first time, you will know, but I have not had the feeling yet of, oh my that was for sure the baby. I was listening to techno on my way home last night and don’t think the baby is fond of it. Either that or it is really fond of it. It felt like it was moving around. It also tends to move around quite a bit when I am laying down to go to bed. I have a feeling that this baby is going to rock and roll all night while I am trying to sleep once I start feeling it on a regular basis. I am excited to feel it move on a regular basis in the next month.

This week is week 17…the baby is growing TONS in the next few weeks. I am excited to start really showing. I think by week 20 there will be no doubts I am truly preggie, but we will see. Right now, I am just extra padded in the middle:)

We have a Drs. apt. on Thurs. No sonogram in this one. Our big sonogram is on Aug. 25th. This is the one where they measure the organs and such. Or, as Liz likes to call it, “the one we find out the sex of the baby”. Yesterday when I was blowing out my candles (we had a small b-day gathering for me) Liz said, “wish for a girl!” I did not wish for a girl…I am happy to be carrying either:) I keep teasing Liz that I am going to find out the gender without her so that I don’t have to see her disappointment when they say, “it’s a boy!” at the next sonogram. She better practice her happy face just in case:)

I am feeling sick on a regular basis again. It depends on the day. Yesterday I felt okay. The day before I was nauseous all day long. I was hoping it would go away completely, but no such luck yet. I may be one of those women who is a little sick thru the whole pregnancy. Yuck!

I feel like the worse pregnant woman ever. People keep asking me if I am enjoying being pregnant and I keep saying, “not really”. Right now, I don’t know if I am feeling the baby move and mostly I just feel sick. Not the most enjoyable thing ever. Totally worth it for my little bundle of joy, but honestly, I can’t say it is all that enjoyable. I enjoy watching my tummy and my baby grow. I enjoy getting stuff for the baby and planning the nursery. I am looking forward to all the love this little baby is going to get from not only us, but everyone around them, when he/she gets here. I am dying to feel the baby move around on a regular basis and know that is what is happening. But, right now, being sick is the main thing telling me I am preggie. I feel kinda jipped at this point. I wanted to be pregnant for over a decade. I thought it would be this amazing experience where I would feel great and glow and dance around happily with my preggie tummy. I am still waiting on that part:) Right now, I am tired of puking and gagging and feeling exhausted all the time. I am tired of my feet swelling from standing on them 9 hours a day. I want to truly look pregnant instead of just looking fat. Oh well, all in due time. I think I will feel different once I feel the baby moving around and when baby Jude or Lily is born, I will look back on all of this and go, “it was great!” and not remember a second of feeling sick:)

Here’s hoping the baby starts jumping around soon:)
-S

Mexico!

2011-08-04T22:59:00.000-05:00

   Holla! We are back from our wonderful and much needed Mexican vacation. We went with my family, which included S and I, my mom and step-dad, my brother and his wife, and my youngest brother. We had way to much fun. We stayed in a really nice all inclusive resort right outside of Playa Del Carmen. All we did was drink (not S though, don’t worry), eat, and float in some sort of water. Paradise. Luckily for S, she felt pretty good I’d say about 75% of the time we were there and didn’t get sick on the plane. She did get sick on her 30th birthday though, which was Sunday. Boo.

   While we were there, S thinks that she felt the baby move. She thinks that she has been feeling it a bit for the past week now, but its just little pings here and there and a few flutters. She doesn’t seem too look very pregnant yet, which I know is frustrating her, she wants to look pregnant now! But she will be getting there soon, I think.

   On the way back into the US, we got our carry on bags searched in customs. The guy searching S’s bag found all of her snacks (she was worried about times between meals at the resort and brought a ton of stuff to hold her over, which ended up being a good thing) and saw that she had a bunch of peanut butter crackers and asked if he could have a pack, “for security purposes”. Too funny. Of course she gave them to him.

  Not a lot of other fun stories to tell, we mostly relaxed while in Mexico. I’ll leave with you with a few pictures.

My feet and the beach

More of the beach

So pretty

Our feet in the sand

Here is the 16th week bump!

Jealous?
-Liz

The Crib Conundrum

2011-07-28T12:29:00.000-05:00

We are ready to buy a crib for our sweet little gray nursery, but alas, are having a hard time with it. The problem is that we are cheap. If we were willing to spend $400-$500 on a crib, well we would be set. But we don’t want to spend a ton of money on a crib, so that limits things.

I’ve been looking online at pretty much every store available and reading reviews and what not and just can’t decide what is best. My MIL had the suggestion of looking on Craig’s List, which I really hadn’t considered because of changing safety regulations, but she didn’t think that having the most up to date crib was that important and somehow convinced me. So I found a few things that I liked and even emailed a guy about a pretty white crib. But it turned out to have drop sides. The guy was an idiot and told me that the sides aren’t drop sides, but one side can be dropped down lower to pick the baby up and such. Well buddy, hate to break it to you, but that is a drop side.

So after looking into it more and reading up on what exactly has changed with crib safety and why, I definitely disagree with her on getting a used crib and want to buy a new one. I don’t mind getting a used changing table or a used glider or any of the rest of it, but the crib is the one place that I should be confidant that my baby will be totally safe, especially seeing as how I won’t be watching the baby sleep every second of the night.

I think now we have the crib we want pretty much narrowed down to the Graco Lauren Crib, which is what the picture here is. But we are going to make a trip down to Ikea next week once we get back from Mexico to look at their cribs before we fully decide. It makes me crazy though that you can’t look at their cribs online at their website. How silly, everything else at Ikea is on their website. Erg.

So my questions for you all: anything you really love/hate about your current crib? Anything suggestions on cribs in general for people looking to spend less than $200?

-Liz

15th Week Belly Shot!

2011-07-26T09:08:00.000-05:00

I’m in love with S’s beautiful baby belly, which is totally not shrinking by the way, that is all in her head. It’s getting bigger everyday and I can’t wait until she is just popping out of her clothes, though I’m sure she isn’t looking forward to that with the same zest that I am. Here is her 15^th week belly. I couldn’t decide which picture I liked best, so you get both today J.

Later this week I think that we are going to buy a crib! It looks like unless you buy an expensive crib that you can’t really just go out and buy one, all of the stores around here seem to just sell them online and ship to the store or your house. And it also looks like at least on the lower end, which is what we are looking for, Target, Walmart, and Babies-R-Us all carry about the same stuff for about the same price. So I guess we are going to go to Babies-R-Us to look them over and then compare prices at home and pick one out. I’m really excited for this! Having a crib in the room is going to make this all seem very real. I’ve been looking at bedding and have a few things picked out that I like, but I don’t think that we are going to buy really much of anything else (other than the crib) until after the baby showers and after all of the hand me downs come in from friends and family. It’s really hard to resist though, it’s all so dang cute!

Next week is Mexico time, and it just can’t come soon enough. I want to be sitting on the beach or in the water, sipping a tropical drink while the sunsets over head. It’s going to be wonderful. And I’m really looking forward to spending some quality time with both S and my darling family. We leave Saturday morning, at the crack of dawn, literally, and then are in Mexico till Wednesday night. Yay!

-Liz

shrinking bump

2011-07-25T09:20:00.000-05:00

I feel like my bump is shrinking! I was not showing that much and I feel like I am showing less and less! I was hoping to actually look preggie for our Mexico trip starting on Saturday, but I don’t think I will. I see everyone else's bumps and I feel inadequate!:) Oh well, all in good time. I have noticed that if I sleep a lot, it shrinks and as I eat it grows. I have been sleeping and not eating a ton, so I think that is it. I am sad to not even hear the heartbeat for another 2 weeks. It seems like a long time to trust everything is progressing well, but I guess it is what everyone does.

On another note, I feel better quite a bit of the time. I am currently a little sick to my stomach, and I threw up last night, but overall, I am feeling better. It is a welcome change. I no longer freak out when I feel better, just enjoy it for the little spurts it is there. I was really nervous to go to Mexico, but I think I can survive that plane ride and rides from the airport now. Good thing, because I am so excited to go!! I have 4 days of work and then am Mexico bound! We did it last year too. We are going with Liz’s mom and step-dad, both her brother’s and her one brother’s wife. It is always so relaxing and so much fun. Liz and I are pasty enough that we are packing about 6 bottles of sunscreen because last time we had to buy some and it was outrageously prices on the resort. The resort is all you can eat and drink, so I plan to partake in quite a bit of the first while I am there! Other than that, we will just bob in water, switching between the pool and the ocean.

I guess we are doing the big rage… the “baby moon”. I have read about it in quite a few places. Since this is the last few months I will feel better and can travel and the last few months without a baby, it is hyped as the last great vaca:) Personally I am still excited to one day take our kiddo to Disney world, but I understand what they mean.

Alright, off to work I go!
-S

14 Week Bump Pic

2011-07-19T18:40:00.001-05:00

Here it is, this week’s bump! I think that S is really starting to show! It looks rounder in person and feels different than a non pregnant stomach feels. I love it!

Also, very exciting news. S made the doctor’s appointment yesterday where if the baby cooperates, we will found out if it is a boy or a girl! The appointment is for August 25th! I can’t believe we will know so soon! It STILL all feels like a dream. I’m sure S is tired of me saying that, and I’ll probably still feel that way until the baby is 3 years old! Or 22! Hard to tell. But it really does still feel just unbelievable that we are really doing this. I just couldn’t be happier at this point.

One more pic to share with you all. I’ve been working hard on my letters for the alphabet wall in the nursery. I finished the W the other day, it is so cute and wrapped in yarn, pictures soon to come, I just haven’t taken any yet. And one of our dear friends came over the other day and made her & sign (‘cause you know, x, y & z!) and it is yellow and covered in different colored buttons. I will post some pictures of that one too. And other people have finished theirs, I’m so excited to get them all done and hung up together! Anyway, here is the picture of my H, isn’t it cute? It’s made with mega blocks, which are the big size of Lego's for little kids. I got them along with a bunch more (with a farm theme, random) at a second hand store here for $10. I still need to glue them all together (the ones that arn’t snapped on), but I just love it. It’s about 10-12 inches tall and 7-9 or so inches wide, so it is a pretty good size. Next I need to start thinking about how to make the K, our last name starts with a K, so I want the K to be really big and really cool.
-Liz

Coming out of the closet #2!

2011-07-18T18:35:00.000-05:00

I told work yesterday that I’m pregnant. I was so, so very nervous! I was dropping stuff at the front desk while I waited for someone to finish talking to my boss so I could go in and shut the door. I took a deep breath and told her. She was great about it! She congratulated me and told me about her being pregnant and other people she knows who are trying. It went way better than expected. I then told a few of the supervisors who work for me and they were excited. One of my estheticians almost fell over she was so shocked and excited! People are so shocked. I am unsure if they are shocked because I am a lesbian, shocked because I am one of the top managers at the spa, or shocked I kept it a secret for the first 13 weeks. Either way, I must say, it was fun to shock people. I told about 6 different people and then ran out to go see the new Harry Potter (which was great!!) and then had today off, so I am guessing everyone knows by now and I won’t have to tell anyone else. I feel so relieved to not keep it a secret anymore!! Me and my baby bump are out to the world and it feels great! I am feeling better today, which is really nice. Still gagged a few times, but overall, I feel better than I have since morning sickness set in. I am hoping it keeps up, but not betting on it:)

In other news, I got a really cute preggie shirt and bathing suite from Old Navy.com There should be another shirt coming. I also bought a book and a rattle today. I have been anti buying anything for the baby, but went for it today. Liz got off work early and we went and got manis and pedis and shopped a little. All in all a very nice and relaxing day off for me. Back to work tomorrow, so I am very excited to come out with bump a blazing tomorrow. I have been wearing ridiculous clothes to hide it for so long, it is going to be a shock to everyone. I feel like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders and not very pukey…good day!
-S

3 Coats of Paint Later...

2011-07-16T15:16:00.000-05:00

Last night, my BFF Brandon and I finally finished painting the nursery. We ended up painting it a Valspar color called Elephant Gray. What a royal pain painting this nursery has been. When I went to go buy the paint at Lowes I knew that because the color was so dark that I would need a primer or possibly have to paint it many times to get the color even. But it isn’t a really big room and I figured two gallons of paint would be enough to coat it twice. So we got one gallon of the Valspar paint plus primer and one gallon regular paint, both matched to the Elephant Gray color. In retrospect I should have gotten both gallons of the paint plus primer, but at an $8 price difference, the cheap part of me won out. So about two weeks ago we put up the first coat of paint, using the primer. I couldn’t believe how well it covered, one coat looked pretty much perfect, there were only two or three tiny spots that needed touch up. But the next day once it was dry, I figured, well, I’ve already got the second gallon and there are a few spots that need another coat, might as well roll a second coat on the whole thing. And so I did. Much to my total horror, the next day I discovered that the primer coat was just a hair lighter than the non primer coat. Meaning that you could see that all of the edges all around the whole room needed to be redone to match. Also, it was streaky in many many places. Ugh! I didn’t know what to do because we didn’t have much more than 1/4 of a gallon of paint left. So yesterday I went and got a THIRD gallon, mixed it with the paint I had left (because I’d go crazy if this new gallon didn’t match), and put a third coat of paint on the whole room, edges and all, with the amazing help of my dearest friend Brandon. Needless to say, it was annoying. This morning looking at the room, it still isn’t perfect, but after three coats, it’s as close to perfect as its going to get. Now all I have to do it paint all of the trim (erg that is going to suck), put up the new ceiling fan, paint the dresser and side table, get all of the stuff we still need, and yeah ok we still have a lot to do. But, progress has been made! Even though this isn’t the chair that will go in the room, and I’m going to paint the side table, I took a picture to share with you all of the progress so far.

I really like how the color turned out. It’s a nice gray and looks sort of blue depending on the lighting. You might be wondering about the cute stuffed animals and the amazing baby blanket. You are? Good, here are the details:

The green doll is an ugly doll I got for my birthday a few years back. Never really had a use for it till now.

The other doll is a stuff animal snow monster my little brother made for me. It’s really really cute and pretty amazing considering he doesn’t make stuff like this and he did it all by hand. The really cool part about it is that he told me he put a felt heart inside of it that has a secret message on it for me, but I can only find out what it is if I basically kill him. Funny and cute, I think. Here is a close up of him:

And the baby blanket is a gift from one of S’s coworkers. She took us to the store to pick out all of the fabric for it and she just finished it earlier this week. We are totally in love with it, it is so much cuter than the pictures really show. Here is a close up shot of it:

So those are our nursery updates so far. Isn’t is well on it’s way to being the cutest nursery ever? I certainly think so! Well, time to go to the store and get stuff for dinner, we are having a Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 dinner and movie night with some friends in preparation for going and seeing the new movie all together tomorrow night. Should be really fun, I’m making Butter Beer!
-Liz

12 week wrap up

2011-07-13T16:47:00.002-05:00

So I am going to write a 12 week wrap up of how it was the first trimester for me. Future S is bound to be preggie in the future going, “I don’t think I was this sick the first time”(with Liz rolling her eyes), so I better remind myself of how it actually was , so I better document! Here are some facts!

1. Threw up 18 times in the past 6 weeks.(yes, I counted) Threw up 2 times a day twice, threw up at work probably 5 times, but mostly threw up at home. Threw up my thyroid pill once and had to take it again, but other than that, I kept pills down.

2. Took tons of pills. 2 nausea pills, one hormone pill (that was inserted, not swallowed), and a prenatal, DHA, and thyroid pill. sheesh! I took all of the pills except the thyroid pill in the evening with dinner since you can’t take your prenatal with the thyroid pill.

3. Tums and ginger ale is a girls best friend! If you are preggie, forget about diamonds, Tums and ginger ale help more.

4. Even on the days I did not throw up, I gaged at least 5 times daily. Fortunately, I have an office where I could do this at work. I did once in front of guests in the locker room, but kept my head down and ran out. I could just smell something, even purfume and feel sick and gag.

5. Getting up and down=gagging. This sux because I pee at least 200 times a day and getting down to the toilet and getting up from the toilet=gag. Getting in and out of the car= gag. Walking into 100 degree weather (which it has been for months)= gag.

6. Not many cravings, mostly aversions, but the one thing I always want and has always sat well in my stomach is pasta with meat sauce. I am crazy for Italian food. I want bread with a little bit of meat. I just woke up from a nap where I dreamt I was eating tons and tons of Italian food. Pasta and pizza and bread and so preggie and happy:) (I figured I better get up and eat something if my dream was all about eating!)

7. Fruits are still easier to eat than veggies at this point. I eat a piece or 2 of fruit, but only really get a salad from work down on a regular basis. Cooked into things and I might be able to eat it, but my usual veggie eating has not yet returned.

8. Lots of things came up even in the first trimester. What kind of mom am I going to be? How involved do I want my parents? My mom and I had a few all out wars. Turns out I found my voice now that I am with child. Not sure if that is a good or bad thing. How is my relationship with Liz going to change? Will I be able to juggle career and baby? So many questions. It is funny with the hormones that some days, I feel overwhelmed by it all and then other days I am so euphoric that I am crying with joy….um okay preggie hormonal girl:)

9. We have the most supportive group of friends. People are so supportive and encouraging and just loving. They all want to already hold the baby, or make things for the baby or just be excited for us. It has been amazing and I am only 12 weeks!:)

10. Sleep, sleep and more sleep. Some days I go to bed at 6pm and get up at 6am and still could go back to bed. It’s crazy. I read somewhere that you are doing more in your sleep that you usually do awake internally, so it makes sense, but jeez, I slept and napped and laid around as much as is humanly possible to do and still work 45 hours a week an hour away!

11. Work has no idea. I am so miserably sick, but I have a new boss who doesn’t know that me eating 4 tiny meals a day is not normal. Plus it is slow right now, so when I feel miserable, I sit at my desk for a few. I think now I am going to tell them on Sunday when my new boss gets back from California.

12. I still feel sick. Still gagged a few times today, but not as sick feeling as before, so I am hoping to be on the up and up soon!

13. Honey nut Cheerios and pretzels saved my life! I ate those things when nothing else would stay down. I keep a bag of pretzels in my car and a bag of honey nut Cheerios at work. Life saving.

14. Baby brain!! I was about to dial a number I dial at least 5 times a day from work. I could not think of the number for the life of me. I am constantly loosing things. I am also very clumsy. I am not at all a clumsy person, but I drop things, bump or run into things, ALL THE TIME. It drove me nuts for a while to forget things and run into things, two traits I never had before. I am also dizzy a lot. That is also strange.

15. This is the weirdest thing I have ever done. Something has totally taken over my body, my reason for doing everything, and my heart. I am so very sick that I feel like this was the worse idea I have had, but at the same time, I have wanted to experience it since I was 15 years old. Here’s hoping that it gets better. I cannot explain what being preggie is like. The way your body changes almost right away. The way I look at food differently. The way the hormones feel. How it feels to have tons of blood flowing thru you. How it messes with your whole being. It’s crazy and amazing and just plain strange and cool.

That’s all I can thing of right now! Here is to the first trimester and the next 2!!
-S

The Jerk and the Fortune Cookie

2011-07-13T10:12:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I was really excited about getting to see the baby on the ultra sound. I texted a few of the pictures to my mom, my brother, my dad, and one of my best friends, Brandon. Everyone was really excited and happy to see the little one. When I sent the picture to Brandon he was in a meeting at work, but had his phone with them. Right after I sent the picture he asked me if we had found out if it was a boy or a girl yet, as he knows that I was hoping to find out at the appointment. I texted him, “It’s a boy!” and followed it up 20 seconds later with, “Just kidding, they couldn’t tell.” I thought that this was hilarious (I’m mean like that) but what I didn’t know was that in the meeting Brandon got that text and shouted a big yes, because he really wants us to have a boy. Then he had to explain to everyone why he had shouted. Then, he got my text that I was just kidding and cursed aloud and again, had to explain. So now not only does he think I’m a jerk, so do all of his co-workers. L Then last night, S’s dad is in town and he took us out to P.F. Chang’s for dinner and towards the end of the night I told them both this story. S’s dad afterwards asks us, well, do you want a boy or a girl? I of course respond that I want a girl, and as S is opening her fortune cookie, she says that she doesn’t care either way. But at that moment she opens up the cookie, and this is what she sees:

Crazy, right!? It has to be a sign. I’m taking it as a sign. And the fortune wasn’t too bad for a pregnant lady to get, here is it in case you were wondering:

So needless to say, I kept the fortune and if the baby ends up being a girl, you can bet that this little slip of paper is going to end up getting framed and put up in the nursery J.

-Liz

12 Week Ultra Sound Pictures!

2011-07-12T13:05:00.000-05:00

This morning S and I went in for her 12 week NT scan, where they do an ultra sound to check for a few disorders and take a few drops of blood. Everything so far is within the normal range but we should know more in 7-10 days. It was so exciting to do this ultra sound, the little bean actually looks like a baby now! It was pretty amazing to see it move it's little arms and legs around and twist and just jump about! I could hardly believe it. I can't wait till we can do our next one, but I'm sure that won't be for another month or two. I tried to get the tech to make a guess of boy vs. girl, but she said that she couldn't even begin to make a guess for our baby because of the quality of the picture and the position and what not. So, sigh, I will have to wait some more. In the meantime though, I've made a poll that's on the right side of the blog, so be sure to vote if you think boy or girl! I'll leave you with a few pictures:

Here is the baby's profile and that thing sticking up is an arm with a wee little hand.

Here is another profile shot.

Here is a little hand and arm waving hello at you!

And then this one is my favorite, it is the little legs and feet!

In other news, S has reached that magical 13th week and still feels crappy. She has been going longer and longer feeling better but the last two days have been puke city for the poor thing. She has an appointment this afternoon with the doctor and we are really hoping that they will tell her that she can stop taking the progesterone, as we think that this extra boost of hormones is what is keeping her feeling so sick. We will see.
-Liz

Madame Zaritska's Prediction

2011-07-07T09:02:00.000-05:00

As of today, there are only 199 days until our baby’s due date! It seems crazy to be under 200 days. I’m so excited to meet the little bean. Next week S has her NT scan and 1^st appointment with the new doctor. I’m really excited for NT scan, just because it is another chance to see the little bean. I’m hoping that the tech will be able to tell us a possible guess about boy vs. girl. That’s what I’m the most excited about finding out. I really want a girl, but everything seems to be pointing towards boy. Or at least the mystical signs are- the Chinese gender predictor chart said boy and then yesterday I went on Madame Zaritska’s baby gender predictor and it guessed that we would have a boy with black curly hair- but that doesn’t even seem possible considering that no one in either S’s family or our donors family has either black hair or curls. So I was thinking that maybe some of my guess answer’s for S were wrong, so I redid it with more accurate answers and here is what the Madame says: The day you deliver, outside will be dark. Your baby will arrive in the early evening. After a labor lasting approximately 19 hours, your child, a girl, will be born. Your baby will weigh about 13 pounds, 11 ounces, and will be 22-1/2 inches long. This child will have light brown eyes and barely there blonde hair.

And I think that all sounds pretty good, other than the 13 lb baby. That is one big ass baby! So maybe we are having a girl. Maybe we are having a boy. Chances are good that we are having one or the other!

In other pregnancy news, S is still feeling sick just about all of the time. She is getting worried at this point I think that it won’t go away ever and is getting worried that she will be too sick to go to Mexico at the end of the month. I hope that because the trip is still another 3 weeks away that she will have plenty of time to get to feeling normal because if she stays as sick as she is, there is no way I’m going to be able to get her on a plane! Fingers crossed that this morning sickness stuff goes away soon!

-Liz

C’mon 12 weeks!

2011-07-05T15:49:00.000-05:00

I will officially be 12 weeks on Sunday. That means I no longer have to take the hormone pills, (yeah!!), I will be out of the “danger zone”, and hopefully, fingers crossed, will start to feel better. I am still very nauseous and threw up not once, but twice yesterday. The mornings are really hard…I feel so sick to my stomach, but the afternoons, I tend to feel fine. I am guessing this is a good sign that maybe I will feel like a human again in the next few weeks. It is strange. I am either sick to my stomach forcing food down so I have something in there to throw up or I am ravenous, starving and eating like crazy. I am hoping once I keep food down on a regular basis, my appetite will even out. I hope I don’t feel fine and ravenous all the time because I really don’t want to put on any more weight than necessary. Currently, I weighed myself and have lost a pound. I am showing now, so I have to wear baggy clothes to work. I am rotating thru 5 different outfits, but am going to tell work on the 14th, so I only have 4 more days of hiding. I work the next 4 days and then have 4 days off!!! My dad is coming to visit and I am excited, but hope I feel better for his visit. I am not a very fun person to visit right now;)

On another awesome note, the guys just came and delivered our new KING SIZE BED!!! I randomly decided I needed one stat, so we went bargain shopping on the 4th of July weekend and scored an amazing bed! I am laying on it right now and it is so soft and amazing. It is huge, but I am sure with us and animals and eventually a toddler jumping into it on Sunday mornings, it is just right. I am so excited to sleep in it tonight. I think I may take a nap right now in it actually. In case you were wondering, pregnant women are allowed to take naps during the day…actually I took naps when I was not preggie too:) All in all, I am feeling optimistic that 12 weeks will bring my energy and steady stomach back to me. If not, I at least have a big cozy bed to take my naps in:)
-S

She’s got a Bump!

2011-06-30T10:07:00.000-05:00

S and I have been taking pictures of her stomach for the last 3-4 weeks to document her growing belly. For the most part, if you weren’t looking really closely, it didn’t look like much of anything. But last night we took our week 11 picture, and she has got a bump! It’s so crazy to watch her body change and grow with our baby, it makes me so happy. Also worth noting, for the last 2-3 weeks if you feel her stomach you can totally tell what side the baby is on at that moment. I just can’t hardly wait to be able to feel the little bean move around in there! Here is S’s week 11 bump in all of its wonderful glory:

In other news, S is starting to possibly see the light at the end of the nausea tunnel. She is now going for 3-4 hour long stretches everyday not feeling awful. Yay! She even felt well enough yesterday that we went to the gym last night and worked out. Granted we only walked on the treadmill, but it was more than either of us had done for the last 11 weeks. So it felt good to be active and do something other than watch TV on our beautiful big TV, though that is nice too J. All of this gives us hope that in the next two weeks or so, the “morning” sickness will go away. It’s hard to believe that S is almost done with her first trimester! I think that she is going to tell work once she is out of the first trimester, which means it won’t be long till we can tell everyone! That will be a lot of fun.

-Liz

Nursery Letters

2011-06-29T08:42:00.000-05:00

On Monday S and I went to Anthropologie, which is now my favorite store, and got our first few letters for the alphabet wall in the nursery. Even though they were a bit expensive, they are so cute! The other letters are still going to be crafted, but I thought that these were too good to pass up. Here they are in all of their glory.

Our other exciting purchase were some Eric Carle Animal alphabet flash cards. The little bean won't be able to use them for quite a while, but we love Eric Carle stuff and weren't able to pass them up either.

So do you guys love Anthropologie as much as I do now? They have so much cute stuff! Of course, I really can't afford any of it and I for sure can't fit into any of their clothes, but dang, I'm in retail love!

-Liz

How Much Longer Can We Keep The Secret?

2011-06-27T13:43:00.000-05:00

I don’t think that S’s pregnancy can possibly be kept a secret for much longer, despite her anxiety to keep it under wraps a few more weeks. After all, as they say, loose lips sink ships and far too many people around us have loose lips. At this point probably about 25 people in real life know about the pregnancy, but certainly not everyone. And we have had a few slips- two slips on Facebook that were hastily deleted, two slips of people making comments about it in front of people who weren’t supposed to know (though those people didn’t catch on), and then this weekend at S’s work a girl pulled her aside to talk to her because she had heard from folks at her other job (where S also used to work) that we were trying to get pregnant (she had some useless advise for S), and also at work S forgot that she was wearing maternity pants and bent over in front of a girl who had a baby recently and she probably saw the belly band part of the pants. And then stuff keeps happening like at two different parties we have played games that S could not participate in and had to be sneaky about getting other people to participate instead (one involved chugging beer and the other involved popping balloons between two people’s stomachs). To top it all off, S is sick so constantly it really has just been pure luck that she has been alone at work each time the sickness strikes; and she is for sure sporting the tinniest baby bump that is only going to get bigger. So I’m thinking as S is going on her 11^th week this week that she probably only has about two more weeks tops before the news needs to be told.

And speaking of telling people, I told my boss today. Now my boss is a 65 year old man who used to be a preacher. He is a great boss, but me being gay is something that I think he probably has a hard time with, though you’d never be able to tell. In fact, I have known him the whole 7 years that I’ve worked here and he been my manager for about 5 years now. In all of that time, I have mentioned S many times, have pictures of her on my desk and even introduced him to her AS MY PARTNER at a coworkers wedding, and it still wasn’t until about a year ago that he finally figured it out and asked one of my coworkers if I was in a relationship with S. Duh! So I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that when I told him he had zero reaction. No congratulations, no questions about due date or boy vs. girl, nothing. Just an ok. And when I went on to explain that I wanted to go to S’s doctors appointments whenever our schedule would allow, he was just like, ok, we can work on making that happen. So it wasn’t a big deal, and I’m sure he had no idea how to react and so neutral was best. Still, somehow, I expected more.

-Liz

A B C Easy as 1 2 3!

2011-06-24T10:21:00.002-05:00

I started my first nursery craft this week, my wall of letters. I’ve seen a few nurserys that have alphabet letters up on a wall, all painted/crafted differently and it is so cute. Here are three amazing examples for you to feast your eyes on:

And because I’m a crafty girl, I decided to make a wall of my own. The best part about my wall though is that my crafty artist friends are all helping! I sent out a message to about 10 of my artist friends asking them to pick a letter or two and everyone jumped on the chance. S and I are of course making a few ourselves- S is making the S and U and I’m making E, F, H, W, N, and V. And then our wonderful helpful friends are making the rest! We went to Hobby Lobby and Target and got a few of our letters to get started on. So far it has been lots of fun. I’m hoping to also make a few of my letters out of alternative materials- for example I’m thinking of making the V out of two rulers or something like that. And I know one of my great friends who is a sculptor is going to be making her letters from scratch using wire and fabric, which I’m very excited about! I’ll be sure to post lots of pictures as letters get finished and once the wall is up.

In other news, we have a busy busy weekend ahead of us! Tonight we are going to a going away party for some good friends and then tomorrow night we are going to a 30^th birthday party for another dear friend. And one of S’s friends is coming into town for the weekend and staying with us to go to the birthday party. It’s going to be fun but I’m worried about poor S being able to stay awake and make it through all of these activities when she is used to going to bed these days at 8 ish. Also, hopefully her morning/all the time sickness won’t be too bad and keep her at home. After all, she is currently the best designated drive ever J.

-Liz

I feel great! Oh crap!

2011-06-21T12:37:00.000-05:00

I have felt awful everyday for weeks. I described it to someone as waking up hung over everyday of your life. You’re tired, sick to your stomach, and have a slight headache. It has been crappy and I have been wishing the awful feeling away. Then today, I feel great! That scared the hell out of me! Plus, I fit into my jeans. They have been tight for weeks which means I don’t have a baby belly currently either! I have been freaking out all morning, just sure I was no longer pregnant. I called the Dr. and talked to the triage nurse and she assured me unless there is bleeding and cramping that everything is fine. I am so glad I switched to this Dr. The last one took a week to get back to me about anything and this one answers the phone when you call! Just her saying that was such a relief. She said it like every preggie woman has called her about the same problem, so I feel so much better about it.

My emotions are all over the place this week. I am not surprised all of this freaked me out, because I have spent the last week worried about every thing. Money, my job, the baby, parents coming to visit when the baby is here, etc. (yeah, I am jumping the gun on all of it) I read up on this week and the main thing it said is there will be some major mood swings. Yikes, watch out Liz:) Fortunatly, Liz does not have a worried bone in her body, so none of any of this has fazed her AT ALL. She is currently setting the date for the baby shower and I am panicked that we should wait until I am 12 weeks along! That is how we are though. I worry enough for the both of us and Liz thinks of all the fun things;)

On another note, I have made all the organs and am now working on bones and cartilage. My aversion to milk has suddenly gone away, so I should be calcium filled for the process. Not being sick to my stomach means that I just ate a big slice of lasagna and am hoping to not get crazy sick to my stomach after eating it. Maybe this feeling good is not so bad;) I have 2 blood draws today and my poor little arm just quit bruising from the last 2. I feel like Drs. are suddenly vampires, they all want my blood all the time:) At least it means my thyroid and hormone levels are going to be checked. Here’s hoping everything is fine!
-S

Nursery Inspirations

2011-06-20T14:30:00.000-05:00

Another dull day at work which leads to blogging. This weekend I went with one of my good friends and her husband to a little town in East Texas to visit her folks and other assorted family members (of her family, not mine) for the weekend, while the little lady stayed at home, feeling pukey. I had a great time, even though it was hot as hell. But to be fair, all of Texas is hot as hell right now. It was fun to see some of the wild life- on the way we saw probably 10 deer, some cows "making love", a huge opossum outside a grocery store, what I think might have been some sort of wild pig, plus the chickens that her parents raise along with dogs dogs dogs. While I was having a good time, S was sick. Poor thing is so tired of being sick. She is religiously taking her anti-nausea pills and eats lots of small meals and chews on wint-o-green mints and crackers and drinks ginger ale and nothing seems to help that much. She really hasn't been craving anything, but has some serious aversions. Right now she has no interest in bacon, can sometimes drink milk, is funny about meat right now in general, and is not into veggies. The only thing she has any real interest in is pasta, garlic bread, and blueberry muffins. Oh and S totally has a tiny baby belly! If you weren't looking for it, you probably wouldn't notice, but of course I'm looking for it, and it is very very cute.

Decorating the nursery has been on my mind this weekend (well more than this week, obviously). I'm hoping to get it painted in the next two weeks so that maybe we can move to phase two in the next month or so, which is getting a crib and other furniture type stuff to go in the room. S and I agreed that we really love gray for the nursery and have picked a color (it's pretty close to the color of the 6th picture posted below) and agreed that a white crib will look best. So the fan will be going back this week (today or tomorrow I hope?) and the quest to find/make fun art and mobiles continues. Here are some photos of great gray nurseries I found online last week to serve as inspiration for us. Enjoy. Oh and be sure to notice the super cute bedding in the 5th picture! I want!

-Liz

Ultrasound #3 and The Baby Whisperer

2011-06-15T13:08:00.000-05:00

Baby, baby, baby, that is all that is on my mind right now. It was pretty amazing going to S’s doctor appointment on Monday. Seeing the little dude on the ultrasound, and having it actually look sort of baby shaped was cool, but hearing the heart beat was amazing. The picture that we got sent home with isn’t great, and isn’t nearly as clear as the ultrasound pictures we got from our RE, but I think you can still get the idea. On the actual screen S and I could both tell without being told which end was the head and which end was the “rump” as they like to call it and we could see the arm and leg buds waving around. I think we could even see a bit of a profile, but that might have been more of us seeing what we think we should be seeing rather than what was there if you know what I mean.

In other baby news, our work on the nursery continues. We were supposed to get it cleared out yesterday, but alas, S felt too sick and I felt too lazy to get anything done. We did however get a new fan/light fixture and get a few paint samples to put up on the wall. Right now we are talking about painting the room either an aqua color or a gray. I love the idea of doing a gray, it really makes the other colors pop, but I think to pull it off, we would need to get a white crib, and S wants something cherry wood. I think cherry wood would end up being too dark. And if we did go the direction of a white crib, then we’d probably have to take back the cherry wood colored fan and get something white instead. Decisions, decisions. Here is an example of what the gray would look like, in case it sounded totally awful to you.

And lastly, I am getting more and more convinced we are having a girl. I’ve had two dreams now about the baby and in both dreams we had a girl. Also, my dad and his wife were visiting us this weekend (and while they were here my dad got us a 42 inch plasma TV!!) my dad told us that he thinks we are having a girl. My dad is the baby whisperer, apparently, he correctly predicted me and both of my brother’s gender correctly (my mom was wrong all 3 times) and again he correctly predicted a co-worker’s child as well. So maybe he is correct? Only time will tell.

-Liz

The good and the nauseous

2011-06-14T08:08:00.001-05:00

Let’s start with the good: Yesterday Liz went to the Dr. appointment with me and saw the baby for the first time. We even got to hear the heartbeat! It was pretty amazing. The baby looks like a baby now. On one of the sites I go to it said the baby is a fetus this week. I am unsure of what makes it such, but very exciting!! The little heartbeat is beating 162 times per minute! Go baby go!

The nauseous: Self explanatory. The good part is that for the past 3 days, I have been able to eat and hold down one normal meal. I have been eating little tiny meals all day long because otherwise I don’t feel very good, but the past few days, I ate at least one normal sized meal a day! I even ate a bowl of fruit and drank some juice, so I am coming along! The Dr. yesterday said that my hormones won’t peak for another 2 weeks…I AM GOING TO FEEL WORSE THAN THIS…AHHHH! Okay, I’m better now. I keep telling myself that it is all worth it and honestly, I would take baby nausea over food poisoning any day, but when you are hugging the porcelain god, it is hard to keep that perspective.

All and all, things are going well here. We are still elated by seeing the baby and hearing the heartbeat. (I will have Liz post the pic for you guys once she is out of bed.) My next appointment is not for 4 weeks, which seems like a long time, but everyone does it this way:)
-S

Procrastinating

2011-06-12T09:54:00.000-05:00

I need to be cleaning right now, but I am having a hard time getting moving today. My dad and his wife are on their way to town for a quick over night visit. They were in Houston for a wedding and are driving up to Austin to say hi. I’m excited to see them, but I wish I had managed to clean the house yesterday. I was pretty worthless yesterday. I had a fun vodka drinking night with one of my BFFs on Friday and thus Saturday was a waste of sleeping and being lazy.

In other news, S and I both also have Monday and Tuesday off together. S has an appointment with our new OB that we graduated to Monday morning. They should be doing an ultrasound so I’ll get to see the little baby for the first time. I’m really excited! Luckily the appointment is early the morning so hopefully my Dad and his wife just sleep right though it and then we can spend the day together.

On Tuesday S and I have big plans to make some headway on the nursery. We had previously started cleaning the room out (it was a unused office before) and on Tuesday we are going to finish that task, buy a new ceiling fan/light and get a few paint samples to put on the wall. I know it’s a bit early to really do much of anything to the room, but I’m just too excited not to. Also, we don’t know if its going to be a boy or a girl yet, so I’m going to keep everything neutral for now. The color I’m leaning towards right now is a light sort of aqua. For a boy it can be paired with greens and browns and for a girl I want to pair it with corals and yellows. Pretty either way. Any of you other January due mamas started working on your nursery yet?
Happy Sunday! I’d better get cleaning!
-Liz

Melt Down #2

2011-06-10T10:48:00.001-05:00

S had her second melt down last night. It was pretty intense, to say the least, but with how terrible she has been feeling for the past two weeks, I can’t say I wasn’t expecting it. S went to the doctor on Wednesday and they were supposed to do another ultrasound but the machine was broken (lame!) and so they just took some blood. And she got the call on Thursday that her progesterone levels went down, from a 1900 to a 1300 and so they wanted to put her on two week proscription for progesterone to balance it back out. And I know that a lot of you have done the progesterone thing during TTC and some of you during early pregnancy, but S doesn’t have the time that I do to follow all of your lovely blogs (she reads a few and knows from me what most of you are up to J), so she doesn’t know anything about it and felt like a failure over the whole thing. Any words of wisdom you can give her or just a “Hey, I’ve had to take that stuff too and it sucks” message would be really helpful for her right now.

So the melt down was over having to take this stuff along with her thyroid med, her prenatal, the fish oil stuff the RE recommended, and the two anti-nausea meds is just making her crazy. If you recall, S is the sort of person who I normally have to coerce into taking an ibuprofen when she has a headache, so to her all of these meds make her feel like her body can’t do this whole grown a baby thing on it’s own and so maybe it isn’t meant to be. Plus yesterday she didn’t feel as pregnant as usual (and by pregnant I mean totally terrible feeling and exhausted) so she convinced herself that she wasn’t pregnant anymore. Also she doesn’t think that she has her tiny little baby bump anymore, which wasn’t much of anything to begin with. Poor lady, getting herself so worked up over all of this.

I guess what it all boils down to is that neither of us really understood just how hard the first trimester would be and how constant the sickness and exhaustion and whatnot would be. And I know that if you are reading this and have had/are having TTC troubles that it seems like we should be just thanking our lucky stars that S gets to be this miserable, that some of you are desperate to feel this miserable, and I totally get that and we are very grateful and happy. But when you are puking everyday and dragging yourself though life and really hungry but everything sound disgusting, I can understand how it’s hard to see past that. I think I’d melt down too. Hopefully things will get better soon and before we know it, S will be in that mythical second trimester where all of her sickness will magically disappear.

Fingers crossed.

-Liz

Happy Anniversary!

2011-06-07T14:28:00.000-05:00

Today is our 3 year wedding anniversary. Happy anniversary baby! It’s hard to believe that so much time has passed. It’s been a great 3 years, and an even better 8, almost 9 (in August it will be 9) years that we have been together. I can’t imagine not having S at my side. And 3 years later, as we grow our little family from two to three, I love her even more today than I did that day 3 years ago, which I didn’t think was even possible.

Thank you baby for being my comrade in mischief all these years! I love you!

-Liz

Proper nutrition= eat something

2011-06-06T20:38:00.000-05:00

Today was not a great feeling day for me and baby. All kinds of things seem inedible to me today. I mostly ate toast all day and then finally got something else in my stomach later on only to throw it up again. This baby seems to be able to only handle toast, pizza and red meat at this time. Weird. Not really nutritious, but at least I am keeping something down. I am hoping the next trimester brings better feelings back and I get to shower my baby with fruits and veggies and swim in the heated lap pool after work. Right now, I am just eating what doesn’t offend me just thinking about it and sleeping every chance I get! The things that are constant no thank yous are eggs and milk. However at any given moment, I can be offended by all things except one choice item. For part of the day today it was blueberry muffins. Even crackers made me turn away, but blueberry muffin, de-lish! It is so strange!
On a happier note we had a great time with our visitors. It was not a very adventurous trip, but we had a very awesome, delicious and relaxing trip. We mostly ate yummy things and played on the Wii. It was a blast. Liz and I decided that for our 3 year wedding anniversary tomorrow we will purchase Mario Party and hang out at the house. She is going to overcook some little pieces of steak for me and we will play on the Wii. Once again, not adventurous, but it sounds really nice right now!
-S

So very pregnant!

2011-06-03T22:10:00.000-05:00

I threw up for the first time today. I woke up and felt great. Ate some breakfast and started to feel nauseous, but nothing major. Then it attacked me and I went into the bathroom and threw up. I felt better once I did, but then felt nauseous later too. Sheesh! I went ahead and filled the prescriptions that the Dr. gave me yesterday for nausea. I was very happy to have them today after yesterday being so skeptical:) We also went and bought some maternity clothes today. I know it is a little early, but my work pants are already a little tight and I want to start rotating them in so that it is not obvious when I start to show and am trying to hide it from work. I showed Liz my baby bump and she said that it may be hard to hide since it is higher than if I was gaining weight. We shall see! I feel extra preggie today since I got some clothes and have felt both sick and moody all day. Fortunately our visitors are very accommodating and we plan stuff around how I am feeling.
Liz thinks all the sickness is so great! It’s kinda cute and kinda annoying when I don’t feel great. Either way, she is being sweet and taking good care of me. I am very excited to feel so pregnant, but sometimes it doesn’t feel so great!:)
-S