Thursday thoughts

Here are my thoughts on this fine Thursday:

• Only 14 more days of work provided I make it to the date that I have been thinking about taking off.  I am so ready to be home and rest and prepare for Katy's arrival. 
• In spite of the bad news I got yesterday one positive thing that came from it was I looked up my boss from the Boys & Girls Club to make sure she knew about what happened.  I haven't seen or spoken to her in all those years.  Turns out she is still in touch with the family and is planning to attend the services this weekend.  Even though she was the Director of the Club she was my age and a student at CSU, so we were also pretty close back then and hung out outside of work a lot, so it was nice to reconnect with an old friend.
• We had a book club meeting last night to wrap up our discussion of A Prayer For Owen Meany.  It's funny how your perspective of things changes as an adult.  I first read the book my senior year of high school and loved it.  This time around not so much.  It had it's funny moments, but overall I didn't care for it. 
• I'm really disliking the newer word verification to leave comments for fellow bloggers.  When I did the A-Z Challenge they strongly encouraged everyone to disable that feature, and I have to concur.  I haven't had word verification on my comments in a long time and only once have received a spam comment which I deleted, easy peasy. So come on and jump on my bandwagon and turn off your comment verification if you write a blog that I like to comment on PLEASE!
• This morning when I went to get a shirt out of the closet for Austin I couldn't help but stop and look through the new clothes for Katy.  I haven't organized her stuff yet, so I just put it in the closet, but I just love all the little bitty pink and purple clothes!
• I am ready to hit the pool tomorrow.  Last week I was having some swelling in my hands and legs and the pool took care of it, so I know it will feel good this week too. 
• Conditions for our monsoon are starting to show up.  We haven't had any rain at home yet, but there are clouds in the sky again and it has been windy which are both signs of the monsoon.  I am so ready, bring on the rain!

Doctor Appointment

I had yet another doctor appointment yesterday.  Everything is still good, I can't find my pregnancy journal to see exactly what I weighed last time, but I'm pretty sure I didn't gain any weight this time after gaining 9lbs at the last visit.  My BP was good and Katy's heart rate was in the 140's.  She was measuring right on. 

I actually saw the Nurse Practitioner and she pointed out that she thought my ankles looked a little swollen.  I hadn't even noticed, but now that she pointed it out today I feel like a swollen whale.  It has been super hot here, so it's no wonder that I am having swelling issues.  She said we will watch for other symptoms, but for now she wasn't too worried about it. 

We are back over to the big city on Saturday for our all day childbirth class.

Thursday Thoughts

• I am so happy today is Thursday and I am READY for the weekend!  I have a lot of house cleaning on the schedule, but otherwise fun times planned.
• Saturday afternoon is my baby shower with my in town group of friends who are mostly co-workers of Dustin, spouses of his co-workers, or other Mommy friends who are in the same Mommy circle.  My friend Jess is hosting it at our house, thus the cleaning, and I'm not sure how many are actually planning to come.  Jess said she enlisted the help of our mutual friend Carragh, who happens to own a cake decorating business, so I am excited to see what pretty, amazing confectionery delights they come up with!
• We have been wanting to get a nice set of patio furniture for years now, and just haven't gotten around to it.  I was hoping to get some in time for the shower, and found the perfect set, but won't be able to pick it up until next Wednesday.
• I am almost finished cleaning our office/craft room so we can convert it to Austin's new bedroom.  We have company coming from Iowa at the end of the month, so I need to have it all done by then.  After they leave we will paint it and move him over.
• I'm still not sure what to do for Father's Day.  Dustin loves to hike, so we will probably do something outdoors. 
• Our dish washer started making a funny noise a couple of days ago.  We just bought the thing a couple of years ago, so it's still relatively new, enough so that it should not be making noises yet.  Dustin took off the bottom spinner thingy and it was FULL of calcium deposit.  The water here is so terrible and hard on appliances.  If I knew when we moved in what I know now I would have had a water softener installed because the water here is so damaging to appliances.  I am going to try one more cycle of vinegar to help clear it out and hopefully it will take care of the rattle. 
• My friend Amanda finally had her newest little baby, a third boy.  Her cousin put on Facebook that the name was Zebadia, to which I thought "what kind of a name is that!"  I know that she is very traditional and into strong names, so it seemed like an odd fit to me.  The only thing I could figure was maybe her Marine husband had a colleague who died that had that name. When I looked it up the name actually is Biblical, but when Amanda finally posted the official news his name is actually Jedidiah. 
• I think I have decided that I want to stop working on July 26, provided Katy doesn't decide to come sooner, which means I have 24 days of work left!

Doctor Appointment

I had my 30 week doctor appointment yesterday.  It was the first time that my appointment schedule matched up with my friend Britt who will be 39 weeks tomorrow, so on her weekly appointments and we traveled the 150 mile trip together.  We went to lunch at a Greek restaurant before our appointment and it was a lot of fun.  I think it was a good thing I drove as she was having contractions the whole drive over and back.  I bet she has her baby girl this weekend.

Everything is looking great.  My blood pressure was good, I passed my gestational diabetes test and the fundal height still showed that she is about a week behind the original due date.   The one bad thing... I gained 9 pounds in three weeks!  YIKES!  The midwife that I saw didn't say anything about it, so I guess they aren't worried about it, but it blew my mind.  For a while I didn't gain any weight though, so I guess I'm just packing it all on at once.  Another thing that might have factored a little tiny bit into it is I have been having morning appointments and going straight in after driving the hour and a half over there without eating.  This time we had an afternoon appointment and went right in after I ate a huge lunch, so maybe (hopefully) it was that I just pigged out.  I'm not really that worried about it anyway because I plan to nurse this baby and if it goes like Austin I will lose a ton of weight. 

Make sure you read my 5QF post to find out baby girl's name!

5QF

Phew (wiping my brow in relief), thank goodness it is Thursday night and I survived my crazy week (over 600 miles later) of driving to the big city and beyond three days in a row.  It looks like I may be headed back on Saturday since we had to leave our pickup at the shop for a transmission rebuild, oh yes almost $3,000, but at least it will be back to a great truck again.  And yay, I have a four day weekend since I always take Fridays off and next Monday is Kaibab Paiute Tribal Establishment holiday!!!





1. Did you do anything special for your kids on the last day of school? Or did you parents do anything special for you?

My little man is three and still in a preschool/daycare, so no summer break for him since I don't get summer break. 

I can't really remember anything special or a tradition associated with the last day of school as a kid. 

2. What's your favorite summer tradition with your children?

Definitely going to the pool, there is no better way to beat the heat here in Arizona. 

3. What was your favorite thing to do during the summer as a kid?

I can't think of one favorite thing above all else. I loved summer swim lessons even though we had an indoor pool.  I also loved attending the summer enrichment program that my school district put on in the summer for a fee you could take fun classes like art, drama, reading, science, etc. for a couple of weeks during the summer.  We would go camping and fishing a lot during the summer which was fun.  I also loved helping my Dad in his garden during the summer, and of course eating all the yummy fresh produce.

4. How old were you when you were married? Were you a Bridezilla?

I was 26 when I got married, but my 27th birthday was the following weekend.  I was definitely not a bridezilla, I am very easy going.  

5. What is your favorite girl name? (I'm needing suggestions.)

CONGRATS SANDY!  I am so excited for you even though I know you are proud of your MOB card!  So okay, we have also been working on girl names too, and guess what?  We think we finally agreed on THE ONE! 

Drum roll please.....

Kaitlan Grace

We may tweak the spelling a bit, but we are pretty sure we like it and will either call her Katy or Kate.  It still works in my middle name of "Ann" thus the different spelling.  The other spellings I could see us doing is Kaitlann, Caitlan, or Caitlann, what do you think?

So for you Sandy here is the list we were working from:

Shelby
Megan
Melanie
Miranda
Kendra
Tiffany
Andrea
Hannah
Morgan
Chelsea
Melissa

And even though we of course weren't considering it, Sarah is a great name that is all wonderfully biblical and strong!

Thursday rambling

Baby #2 Updates:

• I am 28 weeks, 5 days now. 
• My next OB appointment is June 6.  I hoped and planned to go with my friend Britt since we are both going to the same OB (80 mile drive) and our schedules have been off until now since she is on her weekly appointments.  But, she is already having some contractions and making progress, so I'm doubting she will still be pregnant by then even though her due date is June 15.
• My physical therapy has really been helping my hip pain and they cut me back to one session per week.  I am also sleeping with a pillow under my bump now for support which helps immensely.
• Still no name, still working on it!
• My friend Jess is planning a shower for me tentatively the weekend of June 16/17.
• I ordered some fun new summer maternity tops last night.  Motherhood Maternity was having a sale, that for clearance items it was BOGO and other tops were buy 3, get the 4th free, so I ordered 6 new tops. 

Austin Updates:

• Austin is 3 years, 4 months now. 
• He is still full of energy and always keeping us on our toes.
• He has been extremely stubborn and opinionated lately, gee I wonder where he gets that from? Some days he drives me crazy!
• At the same time sometimes he can be mild and well behaved, I can never predict how he will be though, it's anyone's guess.
• He still has certain words/terms for things even if we tell him the right way to say something.  Like my Mom is always "Papa" which she is okay with since I think she finds in endearing in light that my Dad passed away so she is Grandma and Papa.  He can totally say the word Grandma, and we always tell him that she is Grandma, but he calls her Papa.  For candy he says something between "can-can" and "tin-tin", and suckers are "Popsicles" which I think he associated with the word lollipop. 
• He loves pretend play right now.  He is always pretending to be a doggy.  Sometimes he will be a kitty, bird or froggy, but mostly sticks with doggy- my poor deprived pet-less boy!
• He loves to play games and is really into Candyland now.  He also loves Mario Kart Wii, and is really getting very good at it now, like scary good for a 3 year old. 
• His transition to big boy bed went way better than we ever anticipated.  He loves it and sleeps well in it.  He seems to not grasp that he can get up on his own because when he wakes up he always calls for us to come and get him.  I'm okay with that though because I don't have to worry about him wandering the house alone, or trying to come in our room and get into bed with us.  The only down side is he wakes me up to take him to the bathroom, but it's really not that big of a deal to me. 

Other life updates:

• We missed out on another job.  This time it was a BLM job in Buffalo, WY.  Dustin interviewed for it, but it was kind of advertised funny, so we wondered if they already had a person in mind for it. 
• We are still looking forward to applying for the Fort Collins Forest Service job, and are now kind of hoping the announcement is delayed a couple more weeks so he wouldn't have to start until after the baby is born in case he gets it.  They actually posted the call for applications, but then pulled it back down as they said there was some problem with how they did it.  We still haven't seen the revised announcement.
• The nice thing about knowing about the Buffalo job is now I can move forward with preparing for the arrival of the baby.  I have been in a little bit of limbo since packing to move and packing up a room for storage means different strategies.  We will be in our current location until at least after she is born so I can proceed with readying our office room for Austin and transforming his current room back into a nursery.
• I am about half way through my current book club book A Prayer for Owen Meany.  I read it back in high school, but it's fun to reread it. 

OB appointment

I had an OB appointment today and everything is still looking great.  Baby girl's heart rate was 155 BPM.  My blood pressure was low, but I gained 6 pounds since my last appointment 4 weeks ago.  The doctor didn't say anything about that, but it just surprised me!

After the appointment I ran some errands before returning to work.  It was fun to go shopping, but it was super hot there today, I'm sure over 95 degrees F.

When I got back to work my boss came in to talk to me about a couple of things.  She asked about the water spots on our floor.  This morning I popped into my office for about 15 minutes before I left for the big city because I had to prep the coolers and ship the water samples I collected yesterday to send them to the laboratory.  I packed them with bagged ice cubes the day before to keep them cold over night and some of the ice melted and pooled in the bottom of the coolers.  Each site has 6 different bottles and they are all together in a plastic bag.  Some of the bags collected the melted ice water, and I spilled some of it on the floor as I was moving around bottles to prep the coolers.  I explained to her what caused the water spots and she gave my co-worker who I share an office with a funny look and he grinned.  He then told me that he told her that my water broke this morning causing the water spots and that I had to rush to St. George to deliver the baby.  I thought that was pretty clever and hillarious!

27 weeks

My bump has really been expanding lately and I am really feeling pregnant now.  Baby girl is very active and I feel her the most on my right side.  These could really be a long 3 months, but hopefully it won't be too hot and miserable.

Here I am at 14 weeks and here I am at 21 weeks.

My physical therapy session have been going good and have been really helping.  I haven't had the intense stabbing pain that I had before.  It still will get stiff and sore if I sit too long, but it's definitely manageable now.

A-Z Challenge: G is for...

I was going to do GARDEN for G since I love to garden, but I have been so busy the last several weeks that I haven't been in my garden yet this spring so not much to talk about.  I did buy some cool weather seeds this morning so hopefully this weekend I will get it cleaned up, tilled, and plant my spinach, peas, radishes, carrots, and mesclun.

My other choice for G is GIRL.  The ultrasound technician said she was 112% sure that my baby is a girl and got multiple looks down there to confirm it.  Everyone keeps asking if we have a name, but we don't yet.  We have a list of ideas going, but nothing we love yet.

We like more traditional names, but nothing too popular at the moment.  We also avoid gender neutral names.
We don't want to go with a J name since all five of my nephews have J names.  We are avoiding A names because of Austin's name, and B's because our last name starts with a B.  We would go with an A or B name if we really loved it though.

We are leaning towards Grace for the middle name because that is Dustin's maternal grandmothers name.  Along those lines we are kind of looking at first names that somehow incorporate Ann because that is my middle name, my Mom's middle name and my sister's middle name is Joanne.  We don't want to go with Ann outright because that is my nieces name.

Some of the Ann names we are considering:

• Andrea
• Melanie
• Hannah
• Morgan

Some of the other names we have been talking about:

• Shelby
• Katy
• Melissa
• Chelsea

The other B

Okay, so originally I had another idea for B for the A-Z Challenge.  I was going to do BUMP and show you my 21 week progress photo:

I didn't want people to think I'm only going to write about Mommy topics though, and I felt like my face was looking so broken out and splotchy yesterday so I skipped a picture and I switched it to BEER.

Introducing...

Our little baby GIRL!

Little arm and fingers

Tiny foot

Top of head and part of face

Spine and ribs

She had a great profile one, but I guess she forgot to hit the print button on it.  Everything looked good and she was actually only measuring at 18 weeks, so 8 days later than we thought before.  They did not change my due date though, so it is still August 12, but I won't be in a big hurry to schedule a repeat c-section if she doesn't come by then.

The technician said she was 112% sure that it is a girl.  She got multiple good looks down there and was very confident.  

Good guessing so far by Briana, Ryan, Misty, Marika, Brandi, Lisa, and Madeline!

OB appointment

We went and saw our OB yesterday for the second regular checkup.  It was the first time we met with the actual OB since the first appointment was with a Nurse Practitioner.   We really like the OB and had an in depth conversation about how my c-section went down and the possibility of VBAC.  He needs to look at the operative report from that procedure, but if it was done correctly he said I have an 85%-90% chance of success at VBAC. 

I have gained about 8lbs so far and my blood pressure was low as usual.  The babies heart rate was 146.

We scheduled our next appointment for March 21, and were also able to schedule our first ultrasound for that same day and should be able to find out what this baby is that day, so I am so excited!

You asked for it

Brandi asked to see my bump, still not too much yet but here is at 14 weeks.

I have another appointment on February 23, so I am looking forward to talking with the OB and making sure everything is still going well.

It's official!

We had an appointment this morning now that I am over 10 weeks and heard the heart beat.  Our due date is August 12, 2012.  While my new OB is 75 miles away I am very pleased with how the appointment went and about how willing and supportive they were about discussing the possibility of VBAC.