Another due date comes...and goes...

We're ready.  This baby's ready.  It's only a matter of time.

That's been the soundtrack in my head lately!

Still having contractions, mostly in the afternoons and evenings.  Pretty good ones, too.  They're worse if I've been walking, and go away if I lay down.  I think next time that happens, I'm just going to keep walking.

Well, we made a point of enjoying the due date.  Abuelita and Hollie and I went to the YMCA in the morning to swim, and we went for a nice lunch at a place right on the beach.  Then in the afternoon, Daniel and I went by ourselves to an NST appointment with the nurse at the doctor's office (doc is still out of town), and then we went to the movies and saw Super 8.  Not typically my kind of movie, but I have to say it was really well done!  It's always refreshing to me to see a really good movie without any big name actors.

Here are the pictures from our boat ride through Deception Pass...

We didn't get to drive it.  :(

Captain Mark took us out.

We could not have asked for better weather or smoother water!  Perfect day.

Deception Pass

Don't know if you can tell here, but the shores were packed.  So glad we didn't decide to fight that!

Our little boat girl.  She surprised us all with how at ease she was.  She loved it when we went fast!

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I have been determined to fill our days with little adventures to A) enjoy the beautiful weather we've been having, B) make the most of my last opportunities to leave the house at all (for a while) and C) just keep active in an effort to bring this pregnancy to an end.

Yesterday morning, Abuelita and Hollie and I went strawberry picking!

More GORGEOUS Pacific NW summer weather!

Someone needed a little guidance...

...but oh my goodness this dirt is SO COOL!!!

The little yellow ones, too.

Sampling.  Shhhh...

Hands covered in dirt and strawberry juice!  

That's how you know it's been a good day.

That giant belly in the white shirt is me.

Thank you again to Abuelita for letting me wander away and completely zone out in my strawberry-picking!

40 weeks, 1 day, and counting.

Went overboard.  A little.  Maybe.

About fifteen pounds here.

Whew!  All done - three bags for the freezer and four big bowls for the fridge.

Worth it.

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Another little excursion in the plans for today!  

Happy weekend, everyone.  :)

A real pain in the...

...fingers.

That's my life this weekend.  My one-hour glucose tolerance test (for gestational diabetes) came back not good.  A little backstory...I took the same test while pregnant with Hollie and failed, then took the more accurate three-hour test and it was completely normal.

But this time around, because it is so late in my pregnancy, and GD nearly always means an induced early delivery...we're skipping the three-hour test and moving right along to the finger-pricking.  I get to monitor my blood sugar all weekend, and if on Monday it's all been good, I think they're going to let me stop, and we'll call that one-hour test a fluke.  If I understood correctly.  Yesterday was a bit of a whirlwind.

Besides meeting with a nurse to learn to use the meter, and a dietitian to talk about how I have to eat now, we had an ultrasound!

Everything looked great.  We got a beautiful view of the heart beating...a more detailed view than I have ever seen.  Got to count some fingers, too.  The face...reminded me instantly of the way Hollie looked in her ultrasound just days before she was born.

Daniel found out the gender...100% certain this time!  He told me afterward that he thinks I'm "going to be very happy" but of course that doesn't give me any clue whatsoever.

The other goal for the day was to determine a new due date, based on the ultrasound.  The plan was to visit our doc right afterward to discuss.  Unfortunately, by that point it was late in the day and when we arrived, he still hadn't gotten our ultrasound notes from the lab...so we left without an answer, and a new appointment for Monday.  :(  GAH.

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We had an awesome trip down to Portland last weekend to see Daniel's brother and his family.  Hollie and her cousin Juliet are so great together.  They are a little more than five months apart in age, and every time they see each other the gap seems smaller and smaller.  They have both learned to hug nicely by now, which is WOW...so cute.

At one point I watched them come across Daniel's brother's hat, and Juliet pointed it out as "Baba's hat!" which Hollie corrected - "No, Uncle T-----'s' hat".

Juliet's little brother Levi, and his enormous eyes, are beyond adorable.  Such a cutie.

The main reason for our trip was Daniel's brother's graduation from the Montessori Institute!  That sure is some cool stuff.  Congratulations, bro-in-law!

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That's all for now.  Happy weekend!

Exploring

We've had an interesting first week in Mukilteo.  Haven't figured out how to convince spell-checker that "mukilteo" isn't misspelled.

Over the weekend Daniel's two older brothers, T and C, visited and taught Hollie all about bouncing tennis balls off the walls and tables.  I guess that's what uncles are for!

While they were here, Daniel and T decided to go out for a jog to see the coast.  Hours later it's getting dark and we get the phone call: "Help!  We're lost!"  A half-hour with Google maps later, C went out to pick them up.  Once they were back at home, slightly worse for the wear, we got to hear the whole story, which involved following a creek into the woods, crawling under a fence into a construction site (despite posted warnings of video surveillance) to try and find out where they were (unsuccessfully; no one was there), Daniel carrying T on his back over a gravel road (T had gone barefoot), and from there wandering residential streets for a main intersection to assist our Google maps search.

Crazy boys.

But wait, there's more.

A few nights later, after the uncles were gone, Daniel went out by himself to run errands at two stores.  He didn't take our GPS because he had been to both stores before.  Deja vu - it's getting dark and I get the phone call: "Help!  I'm lost!"  This time it only took about five minutes for me to figure out where he was, but by then his phone had very little battery life left so I had to give him turn-by-turn directions to the store and just hope that he knew his way from there to the second store, and from there, home.  Thankfully he did.  And when he got home we got a good laugh together when he looked at the map and saw how far off course he had gotten.  Waaaay out there!

To be fair, the same thing has happened to me more than once since we've been here.  Even though the GPS generally stays in my car, I tend not to trust it sometimes...

Anyway.

For Memorial Day, we visited a park on the coast where we had lunch with a few of Daniel's coworkers.  It was a chilly, overcast day (our new "normal", really), but it was gorgeous.  Check these out...

Hollie had a great time at the beach: 

walking into the icy water up to her ankles and throwing little rocks into the waves,

climbing over the driftwood,

collecting sticks and shells,

but the only part she's still talking about today is this train...

 

We walked across this little bridge while a train went underneath, loud and fast enough to made the bridge shake under our feet.  Daniel and I were both caught off guard by the effect and admitted to feeling inexplicably nervous despite how cool it was...but Hollie on the other hand absolutely loved it.  She alternated pressing her face into the chainlink fence to watch, and literally dancing around as if the roar was music to her ears.  

Now, at least once a day I hear,

"Wanna see more loud-loud train, Mommy!'

Pregnancy update time-

I feel huge.  And hungry all the time.  Having a few contractions a day.  Baby's still moving like crazy, trying to break out.

Hollie seems to really be getting used to the idea.  Every morning (and throughout the day) she demands to sit down with Mommy to see and hug and snuggle the belly.  Sometimes she tries to use it as a chair, but that doesn't work out.

We've started telling her that the baby is going to come out to see us soon.  She made it clear how well she had absorbed this idea when we were at our first appointment with the new OB yesterday.  When the nurse came to get us from the waiting room, Hollie stood right up and said "Get baby out!"  Daniel and I were speechless for a second (we hadn't even been talking about it at that particular moment), but this great nurse took it in stride and said, "Hmmm, maybe not today, but soon!"

The new doc is great.  It seems that this office consists of one doctor, one nurse, and one receptionist.  It seems very flexible and relaxed - they squeezed me into their schedule on very short notice, and it was evident  how far they had gone out of their way for me, but they made it work.  They took a quick ultrasound just to check on the heart and see that the baby's head is downward, and everything looked fine.  We'll have a longer, more detailed ultrasound when we go back next week.  :)

Later that afternoon we took a tour of the childbirth center at our new hospital.  Very different from the one in Wichita where Hollie was born!  Smaller rooms with some variation in the layout and amenities - some had showers and some had tubs, most had a couch for dad but one just had a recliner...and the whole place had an overall out-dated look.  "Cozy" is the word that came to mind.  But I honestly, I liked it and have no qualms about delivering there.

I'm going to cut myself off here...more later.

34 and 35 week belly pictures are up!        

Crazy dream...

Two, actually.  Pregnancy hormones are great.

I had another dream that the baby's a boy, but I think the idea was already in my head from that other dream.  It was pretty funny...long story short: I found myself going into labor all alone, in an empty room.  I sat down and after about three [painless] pushes, delivered a baby.  My first thought was that Daniel would be so disappointed that he had missed it, so without giving a second thought to my baby I jumped up and ran out.  When I found him, I told him "Guess what, I had the baby!  We have to get to the hospital."  Someone had taken the baby to the hospital, and by the time we got there my whole family was there, too.  My little brother actually brought the baby out to meet us, all swaddled up, and I asked,

"Is it a boy or a girl?!"

"Boy!"

What's his name?"

I can't tell you his answer, because it's actually a name we've talked about using!

Last night was the other really weird one.  Evidently, we were living somewhere that had bears, because I looked out our front window early one morning and saw an enormous bear walking down the street.  It was huge.  I turned to Daniel and said, "Wow, look at that bear!  Hey, we better call animal control or something."  Then I looked out again, and it had started attacking a woman!  Just tossing her around like a toy.  I yelled to Daniel to call 911 and saw that he was already on the phone.  I started putting on a jacket, knowing that it was stupid to try to do anything and I'd probably get killed myself, but I couldn't just stay inside and do nothing.  I ran to the door and stuck my head out, and was surprised to find that the bear had disappeared.  The woman was knocking on her neighbor's door, apparently unhurt, looking around nervously.  Her husband was with her.  These were NOT people I actually know, by the way.  It wasn't even our real street.  Anyways, I'm still almost in tears because I thought I just saw this woman being killed, so I ran over and said, "Get in my house!  Get inside!  Where did it go?  Are you okay?!"  Before she could say anything, this other woman pops up, and she's apparently some kind of bear expert.  She starts going on about how exciting this is, because, she says, that wasn't a normal grizzly.  It was a lehara, a really rare subspecies, or something like that.  Don't bother googling that; it's an entirely hormonal fabrication.  She's going on and on about the differences between it and a grizzly, and I had to interrupt her: "Where. Did. It. GO?!"

At that point I woke up in a cold sweat, my heart pounding, and absolutely terrified!  Took forever to get back to sleep.  I've had very few dreams that were as realistic as that one.

Other than that...well, we've been busy!  We bought a new tree for the front yard (the last ones didn't make it) and some damaged (but repairable) sections of fence that we found at a huge discount.  Also working on a veggie garden for the front yard, now that the weather's nice and we're not going below freezing at night anymore.

I turned 24 (yikes!) last week and my dad flew in for my birthday - a complete surprise!...for me (he and Daniel were in cahoots).  It was great.  He arrived not twenty-four hours after Uncle Chris left, so Hollie's adoration went seamlessly from one visitor to the next, and they hit it off immediately.  A trip to the zoo (for a friend's son's birthday, ironically!) and some gyros made it a perfect birthday weekend.  :)

Yesterday was the first day of my third trimester!  I'm feeling some biiiig kicks in there.  This baby's anxious to get out, I think!  New photo is up...  

Uncchris!

This has been the broken record playing in our house the past week.  Daniel's brother Chris (Uncle Chris or Uncchris!) has come to see us for a little while before he starts a new job!  Hollie adores him.  She took a little while to warm up to him, especially since he arrived late (after bedtime) and when Hollie woke up in the morning she found him in the kitchen instead of her daddy, but ever since then she has been like a second shadow.

A few updates:

I'm feeling good.  Big, but good.  When I sit too long my legs start feeling super heavy (which I don't remember from last time), but getting out for walks and exercising as often as possible have been helping with that.  And my back huuuurts...but what else is new, right?  It's a brief, shooting pain...sometimes even when I put a foot wrong.  Youch!  I recently started feeling hungry all the time, which didn't happen until much later with Hollie (and when it did I put on weight fast), so I'm like, oh crap!  I'm trying to have healthy snacks, or see if I'm actually just thirsty, or even just wait to see if the hunger goes away in a minute or two (which it does sometimes!)(not starving myself, don't worry).  As far as I can tell, my weight gain has been right on track, so I'm thankful for that.

I guess the reason I haven't written at all lately is because my head has been somewhere else, and I can't write about our mundane family life when this kind of stuff is on my mind.  Wish I could tell you more, but we're waiting to find out something definitive.  All I want to do is sit by the phone and sweat bullets, but I have a toddler who pulls my attention away occasionally.  Daniel has a great opportunity at work.  If he doesn't get it (or decides not to take it) it's no big deal, so don't worry - we're not stressing over anything potentially bad.  If it does happen and I get to tell you about it, then it will make sense why I'm going crazy over it.

Speaking of toddler, we've got a full-fledged one around here lately.  Some days (becoming most days), man, Hollie will fight tooth and nail about something...anything...and then later, fight about the opposite.  Like she really really really wants juice.  And then she really really really wants water.  Or NOOOO I don't want a shirt on!!!   And then later NOOOO don't you DARE take my shirt off!!!  Unfortunately, Daniel and I appear to be slow learners in this game.  We've found that by being patient, catching her in the right mood at the right moment (some pre-planning on our part helps), not fighting fire with fire, and the big one - choosing our battles, we've been able to avoid the meltdown...sometimes.  Still learning, yes, we are.  The not-fighting-fire-with-fire and the not-staying-mad-after-tantrum's-over parts have been the toughest for me, but I feel like I'm learning a little everyday and making improvements (to my own mindset) one step at a time.  I do have all the motivation in the world, after all.  She is sooo loving, when she wants to be!  She even pats your back when she gives a big hug...I love it!

Another big one - we've been making an effort to give her what she wants when she asks nicely (even if it's something that not ordinarily allowed)(but within reason).  I guess that falls under choosing your battles.  It's funny how we complain that her answer to everything is no-no-no! but sometimes we're just as bad.  Hoping this strategy has some long-term effect.  Also, we try to turn our no's into yes's: No, we're not going to have a bath now, but we're going to have one right after dinner.  And 9 times out of 10, she does remember...and reminds you!

Toddlerhood really is amazing, though.  She's become so demanding, but in a cute way!  She completely takes the lead: tells you where to sit, what toy to hold, what to do with it, etc.  She has a pretend blood pressure cuff and stethoscope, and one of her favorite things to do is have you lay down so she can put the cuff on you and "listen" to you everywhere!  It blows my mind sometimes.

Another funny thing:  when we're getting dinner ready, she sees all the food out and tells us she's hungry (hungee!), and we tell her don't worry, dinner will be ready soon!  Then she immediately climbs up in her chair, buckles herself in, and tells us about every 30 seconds that she ready to eat (ready eat!).

Her speech is growing in leaps and bounds.  Starting to string words together and everything!  However, she does tend to repeat things without really knowing what they mean, so it's tough to really gauge what she knows.  She also tends to use the same pronunciation for similar words, like monkey and blanket (mankie) and kitchen and chicken (just chicken, but ending with -on instead of -en: chick-ON!).  Her counting has taken two steps forward and one step back...she started repeating "one" and then weeks later added "two" (and she would sing "one-two-one-two-one-two!") and just recently added "three"...except that now sometimes it's "two-three-one"!  Uh-oh.  She knows and recognizes the music of Glee, one of our favorite TV shows (she calls is gee!).  The soundtrack for season one is the most requested CD in our collection!  Yeah, we might be kind of proud of that.  :)

If we're talking about more traditional kids' music, The Itsy-Bitsy Spider song (neebee spider) is her favorite, with the hand motions, of course.  Second favorite would be the Elmo song (youtube video here), rewritten to include Hollie's song, Mommy's song, Daddy's song, and lately Uncchris's song.  She will start singing that one all on her own!

Long update!  I will try to write more often.  I did add a new belly photo last week, and I'll have another one tomorrow (27 weeks!).

I've got it stuck in my head now: la-la la-la, la-la, la-la, Hollie's song...  

We've got parties set for life

This weekend during Hollie's birthday party, Daniel and I realized something awesome.  Hollie's birthday will always be fairly close to Mardi Gras, mine will be fairly close to Easter, Daniel's is four days after Christmas, and the new baby's will (probably) fall near the 4th of July.

Party themes...check!

So, we didn't really plan much for Hollie's big day...what do you plan for a two-year old anyway?  But with Daniel's parents in town from Lake Charles, and the family friends we invited having roots in Lafayette...it turned out to be a Cajun party all by itself.  

We played French music, had pasta-laya for dinner (that's jambalaya with pasta, instead of rice.  Not exactly Cajun, if we're being nit-picky.  More of a New Orleans thing, I think), and later enjoyed a king cake (carried carefully on the plane by the grandparents)(here's a link).  

The family we invited over had two kids- a three-year-old boy, and a one-year-old girl.  Despite the gaps in their ages, they had a blast together.  Hollie loves to be chased, and this boy, apparently, loves to chase, so there were many many laps around the living room and kitchen, with little sister trying her best to keep up.  It got pretty wild, but as long as they weren't hitting or pushing, we let them have fun.  They all had a hand in opening the gifts, and then the house really turned upside down!     

Trike from Abuelita and Pepere

Bowling set from Mommy and Daddy.  They could not even wait for all the pins to be stood up- they just dove into them!

So, it was a blast.  Everyone slept pretty well that night, I think.  Hollie's check-up with the doctor was yesterday, and she's doing great.  She's 26 pounds, and 33 and 1/4 inches tall.  

New picture up over there!  (Darn soap dispenser snuck in again.)  I know I skipped a week.  It might happen again- you've been warned.

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There are a few bits and pieces from the OB appointment two weeks that I forgot to share.

I've been starting to really feel the growing pains lately, sometimes an ache at the top of my belly but most often on the sides.  I remember that from before, but not this bad, so I asked and Dr. J confirmed that it is round ligament pain, and that it will probably get worse with each pregnancy.  Soooo, I think after this one we're gonna be a family of four permanently!  Just kidding, but maybe not.  We'll see.  :)

When he felt my belly to find the top of my uterus, he said, "Wow, you're already above the belly button!  Normally at 22 weeks we expect you to be just about even."  So, I think- cool, I'm measuring big!  Then he takes out the measuring tape to get an actual number, and says "Hmmm.  You're actually measuring small for 22 weeks.  Looks like your belly button is just really low."  We had a good laugh about that later...I guess you really do learn something new everyday!

Very last Christmas photos!!!

I did it!

Merry Christmas.

Waiting patiently

Another new Christmas tradition:

Pepere reads "The Gas We Pass"

The girls and their Abuelita

<3

(and their Parmesan??)

Yay!  Perfect.

(too bad it took 10 minutes to get one with Hollie's thumb out of her mouth!)

...and by that point they were leeeeaning!

So after all that, gift-opening commenced, and the camera was set down somewhere and forgotten about.  You can imagine.  Hollie had to play with each gift before opening another, so it would have taken all day had we not helped her along!  And we really didn't have all day, because that same afternoon we hopped a plane for...

...Phoenix!  Quite a change of scenery.  As we stepped off the plane, I think all three of us took a simultaneous deep breath of the cool, dry air, and our lungs cleared as the allergies we'd been battling the past five days just disappeared.

But not really.  While we were there, we would occasionally have a good cough, and say, "Sorry, I'm still getting Portland out of my chest!"  We loved Oregon, but we're just not used to all that green-ness.  

PHX kept us pretty busy, as usual.  It's still home to us in many ways, so over our four-day stay, there were a million restaurants to revisit (a few, twice - In N Out!), thousand friends to catch up with, and beautiful warm weather to enjoy, not to mention Christmas dinner, which was postponed a day just for us (thanks again Mom!) and Daniel's birthday (24 - holy moly!).  Poor guy had to make his own cake: tres leches (yummmm)! 

Okay, no more parentheses (I promise).

Unfortunately, the camera got taken out a grand total of ONE time while we were there.  I took what would have been a beautiful photo of my dad and Hollie lying outside in the hammock, but it just didn't turn out.  Sorry, Dad.  :(

So, by the end, we were ready to be home.  Hollie did great on all the flights, even, I might add, on the way home when Mr. Grinch's nasty-wastier twin sister happened to be sitting in the row in front of us.  I'm not gonna give you the whole story here.  Got a little bruise on my mama heart, and someday when I can stop kicking myself for not giving that woman a piece of my mind, then we'll be able to laugh about it.  And maybe wonder if she regrets what she said - who knows?

Sorry to end on that note!  Really, we brushed it off and we're okay :)

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In other news...we did Hollie's FIRST HAIRCUT last night and it was a beautiful success!  There are pictures, but I hear little lady waking up from her nap, so watch for those...later.

More Christmas photos

I think one more post after this one will just about "wrap up" (haha!) the Christmas photos.  If I get it done before the end of January, that's still respectable, right?

So, we had a belated birthday celebration for Daniel's mom, Abuelita, which consisted of an original song written and performed by her three sons...a complete surprise - for her!

They came up from the basement one by one...

(this is how they normally dress...I promise)
 

 Our favorite...but we're biased.  :)

Somewhat nervous (but intrigued) audience.

 

 

Solo!

The birthday girl herself!

Soliciting donations...typical!

One of them was a little more peristent!

 Afterward, as per [new] Christmas Eve tradition, the girls each opened one gift...

 

 Christmas pj's...to be worn the next morning!  Thank you Aunt Bekah :) 

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Sorry for the absence of pregnancy updates.  Over just the last few days I think I have felt a few little kicks!  I feel like since this is my second pregnancy I should remember exactly what it feels like, but at this point they are so few and far between, and nothing more than tiny nudges, so I have to wonder if they're not just gas.  I know that if it's the real thing, it won't be long before they're unmistakable.  I'll be at 18 weeks tomorrow, so it's about time!

I love the second trimester.  :)  Nausea disappeared after Christmas, and my appetite is great.  I'm a little tired, and my back hurts, and I haven't been sleeping well, but all "minor" complaints (haha...minor as in baby...is that too much of a stretch?).

We have an appointment with our OB and our first ultrasound tomorrow!  I'll be letting you know how it goes...