as requested

It's belly time.
(although, Miller Time would be more fun)

34 weeks, 5 days

Please, refrain from licking your computer screen. I am fully aware of my mega-hotness; the chubbiness, skilled camera angle (thanks J), lack of makeup and slippers make me the prettiest I've ever been.

showers and such

I had a wonderful shower in Troy :) Lots of friends, lots of family, yummy food and a ton of much need baby loot. Thanks to all!!

Just a few highlights:
* seeing Stephie for the second time in five years :)
* finally meeting Ava, she was very good (and so cute!) and helped me with the presents
* cake from Holiday Market, so good
* my mom knit an outfit for Peanut to come home in, it's so adorable - but it's white and I'm having a hard time taking pictures of it
* the A Team was all there, in one place, and no one had to sleep in a sleeping bag:)

Onto the next shower.

J has started a new crusade - I actually think he is nesting - he is on a home-repair and maintenance rampage.

In Nov we realized our shower was leaking (just a bit) into the crawl space. No big deal, we just use the other shower (even though it's sort of a pain). All of a sudden on Sun night, right after we get home from Troy, he climbs back into the hole and starts working on the shower. This is comical, to say the least. I "help" him, he yells at me from under the house, and I yell back, trying really hard to make sure the message hasn't been garbled too horribly by the 19" of insulation, flooring, supports etc. (You want me turn the shower on? Off? What?!). I have suggested he take his cell phone down and just call me, this makes too much sense.

We make some headway on the shower. He figures out what the real issue is and buys a new drain assembly ($8 at the hardware store), then decides he can finish the job tonight. All is going well until he asks me to stand in the shower, he wants to make sure the weight of a person doesn't mess up the work he's done (or something along those lines).

I no longer fit through the shower door.

Well, I can squeeze through, but the thought running through my head is - "If the baby grows one iota while I am in here, I will not fit back through the door." Which gets my mind off of home repair, and I start creating horrific Gilbert Grape-inspired scenes of cranes removing me from the confines of the shower stall.

If the shower is finally fixed it'll be great, but it'll be J's personal shower for the time being.

much better

Whatever was bothering me yesterday is now gone.

I have about 3.5 million things to do, because I'm heading up to Troy tonight :)

Happy, happy!

i feel yucky

My tummy hurts, and so does my back and I have a headache.

At least dinner is in the crock pot already :)

baby classes

We had our second baby class tonight. One of the other couples had their baby on Sat - she was due two days AFTER me! That scared J a little, I'll admit that it scared me too. But, from all reports the baby is healthy, but small, and they went home on Mon - so I guess that's reassuring.

In other baby-relatedness (like that word? I just made it up.), the nursery is not ready. It is painted, and J installed an overhead light and that is where everything came to a screeching halt. There is still a random dresser in the room. I have been completely unmotivated to empty the dresser out (it has craft supplies in it, most of which are trashable) and get it out of the room. J set up the changing table that his parents bought for us, and I threw all of the other wonderful baby things into the closet. I literally chucked all of the outfits, blankets, diapers, etc. that we received at our Muskegon shower into the closet, it is a mess. I thought I had plenty of time, now I'm rethinking that scenario.

Pictures to follow, and perhaps J will finally take a belly picture for all of you :)

zippity doo dah

Remember zip disks? I just found three of them, and have no idea how to retrieve the information off of them (do I even really need my old college projects?).

Wait. Let me start over.

We bought a camcorder, because it's like mandatory; if you don't have a camcorder your children will grow up thinking they were unimportant to you and unloved, right? So after we bought it we decided it is probably time to upgrade the memory on our computer - the computer J bought in 2001. We had installed XP a few years ago, and added a bit of memory then, but we needed to add more USB ports, and a DVD burner, etc. So we decided just how much money we were willing to invest before we just bought a new computer. Yeah, had we been able to purchase all of the upgrades we wanted we would have ended up spending about $75 less than the cost of a new computer. So we bought the new computer, it cost exactly half of what it cost in Jan of 2001.

Last night was apparently THE night to transfer everything over, hours of burning pictures to CD's (remember, we had a slow, old computer), going through old files and cleaning out the random drawer of floppy disks. Among the gems - my final project from ME 105 (anyone have a copy of Pro-E at home?), a bunch of really basic html web pages, and a copy of my resume from freshman and sophomore years - complete with copies in German. They are all now in the trash, sitting in my driveway - except for my German resumes, I just couldn't part with those, they are sort of fun. Now I'm staring at my small stack of flash disks. I have no idea what is on them (I was apparently not as anal about labeling everything back then), but don't want to trash them until I know. J thinks he might be able to track down a random flash drive at work, if he does I'll let you know what I find.

PS - anyone want a giant monitor?

peppy baby

I had my BPP and OB visit today. The baby has up to 45 min to "perform" all of the things they are checking for; we were in and out in ten minutes because someone was having a dance party in my uterus. :)

At the OB appointment they gave me the results of the re-check on my iron, my level is lower than it was before I started taking the nasty OTC supplement, so now I get some delicious extended release Rx iron.

Oh joy. I'm hoping for fewer side effects.

craft time

I'm planning a wedding shower for J's cousin (remember the wedding I was not going to be in? well, I'm still in it). I love planning these things, it is so fun to coordinate everything :) So here are the centerpieces I came up with:

I was going for a fresh, spring feeling. I'm not quite sure what the wedding colors are, they seem to change every other day, but the dresses we ordered are a dusty lilac, and the other colors she throws around are pink and orange so I figured with these bouquets I'd have all of the bases covered. Plus the tablecloths are a pastel madras so these should coordinate well. I just need to decide on favors - I like candy or cookies because they are clutter-free, but I'm not sure what I want to do yet.

In other craftiness I brought the ancient baby bassinet home from my mom and dad's house. We were trying to figure out how old it is and we're pretty sure it's about 150. My parents had the lead paint stripped off before they used it with my siblings (I arrived too early, it wasn't ready for me), but the paint is now 27 years old and looks a bit tattered. So I'm painting, and sewing new bumpers :) And I have the funnest job ever of trying to find a new mattress that will fit the bed correctly - we have a mattress, it's original to the bed and filled with horse hair. Actually very cool from a historical point of view, but like my mother, there's no way my baby is going to sleep on that dusty old thing. I'll take pictures as the project progresses, in fact I'm thinking of entering it into the January Jumpstart competition over at Blulines.

Fun, fun, fun!

so sad

I just cleaned out my purse. I found a coupon for a free donut; it expired yesterday.

Do you see my tears?

currently

*I am addicted to clementines. They are too delicious. And every time I peel one Zippy starts squawking at me, so I have to share a segment with her. She's so spoiled.

*I have a very hicuppy Peanut.

*Because I have high blood pressure (not toxemia, I had this before I was pregnant) I now have weekly OB appointments and weekly biophysical profiles (BPP). The BPP is an ultrasound where they are looking for 4 things - fetal movement, fetal tone, fluid levels and fetal breathing. So far the Peanut is happy and healthy :)

christmas recap

*Please feel no obligation to read this, it is really long, and poorly written. We had a nice holiday and I just wanted to remember it.*

On Dec. 22 we drove up to Temperance for Austin's baptism. He was super good during the actual baptism part and kept his little eyes right on the priest. And he got an Elvis scarf. We hung out with Stephie and Laura and crew, and had a lot of fun. Stephie and I realized we haven't seen each other in 5 years (the horror!). Then J said it was time to head to Muskegon, so we changed into traveling clothes and left. J says that he really wanted to steal Austin because he is so cute and chubby and happy. :)

We got to Muskegon around midnight and walked directly into my Christmas nightmare. I didn't sleep at all that night, because the surroundings had me so stressed; so of course I was exhausted the next day and utterly useless. J worked his tail off finishing his parents basement, and I decided to sleep at Gramma's house. That was probably the best decision ever. J brought all of our stuff to Gramma's that night and we stayed there.

On Christmas Eve we woke up, ran a few errands and then arrived at his parent's. I wrapped a few presents for my MIL and then asked that a space be cleared in the kitchen so that I could start cooking dinner for the party. I assembled quite a few casseroles, called my mom to verify cooking instructions for the roast and threw meatballs and potatoes into crock pots. And then I was exhausted, so I sat on the couch :) After awhile the boys decided it was time to go to the club for our Christmas drinks, so I put on my cute red Christmas dress and we left. I had a kiddie cocktail with 3 maraschino cherries - I think I have an addiction to red dye #40, it seriously makes everything so much more delicious. We got back just in time to put out all of the appetizers and greet guests as they arrived. Everyone had a nice time (I think), and the food was yummy. MY BIL got a second guitar for guitar hero, so we had guitar hero battles upstairs with all of J's cousins - too much fun! I think we've decided that if we get a Wii we'll never do anything but play games, J will lose his job and it will be the end of everything that is good. So no Wii for us, but we really like playing it at other people's houses :)

On Christmas we opened presents and my MIL got me the santoku knife that I really wanted, she even went all the way to Grand Rapids to buy it at W!lliam-Sonoma. Sometimes she can be really great - I need to remember that more. Then we went to Church and had our traditional post-Mass slurpees. Yum! After that we headed to Gramma's for dinner and hanging out and then we drove back home to Ohio.

Once we got home I assembled a french toast bake from the leftover Swedish coffee bread I had made for Christmas Eve. In the morning I made us hot chocolate and we opened our gifts to each other and then ate yummy french toast goodness. This is the first time we've been at our house between visiting J's family and mine and it was so nice to relax at our house, not have to lug as many presents all over and to open our presents under the tree we decorated. J got me the fluffiest robe ever, he said he picked it out because it looked like the best one to cuddle a baby in... awww.

We stayed home until Dec. 28, I had an OB appointment on the 27th and our neighbors ended up having an impromptu Christmas party that night, so it was really fun to see all of them and hang out with everyone. On Fri. morning we packed up Zippy and headed up to Troy. Zippy likes going to my parent's because she gets so much attention there, I'm pretty sure she had a steady stream of fresh veggies, because she had this constant food coma look. She was one happy pig :)

We went to GLI on Fri night, there was a much smaller crowd of AGD's and DSP's - but we still had fun catching up with everyone that was there, and we got to see Tech win (well, we saw Tech win on the TV's in the bar, we've never actually been upstairs for the game)! On Sat. we opened more presents (best gift ever - Fraggle Rock box set), and J and I went to my Aunt and Uncle's to hang out with them and eat pizza. We were pretty lazy on Sun, I went shopping with my mom and in the evening our whole gang headed over to my Godmother's. We ate delicious pie and opened more presents, it was nice and relaxing.

On New Year's Eve my mom cooked for New Year's Day and I helped. We made coconut cupcakes (yum!) and ambrosia so we would each ingest enough coconut to have a good 2008. Then we went to dinner at a little hole-in-the-wall Greek place and saw Charlie Wilson's War (I highly recommend). We came home in time to see the ball drop and then we all went to bed, I was super tired. On Jan. 1 we ate ourselves silly, hung around for a while and then packed up the car and came home. It was a nice vacation, probably the most relaxing Christmas I've had as an adult.

home again

Christmas and New Year's was actually very nice :)

We got back home late last night, and now I have a billion things to do - #1 is to water the dying houseplants and #2 is to get rid of the things that are growing in the fridge. But I promise to write more later, but post no pictures, because I didn't take any! I guess I'm just a slacker.

Happy New Year!