shhh we have a secret

It is looking very likely that we will be moving to Port Huron. Chad is 90% in for a job in the St. Clair School district. It is pending a drug test and board approval. Of course to make this transition we need to (not in any particular order): sell our house, have a baby, get approved for a new mortgage, and find a new house..... plus probably a million other things I am not including. If he does start working out there he can commute for a while until housing is all straightend out. I guess we should have put off painting the baby's room....OH well.
Speaking of the baby's room I now officially HATE Babies R Us. We put most of our stuff on our registry no more than a month ago. Every day we hear from someone who had trouble finding things that we put on our registry. Within a month they put the bedding we picked out on clearance, discontinued the crib, and the playard is out of stock at every single metro Detroit area Babies R Us......how does this happen in one month? I thought we registered late. What would have happend if we registered earlier? Would NONE of our stuff be available there? Target isn't much better, but considering when we registered just about everything in the baby section was on clearance we expected that.
The problem is everyone is trying to be nice and pick out the stuff we wanted. Some things it took us 20 minutes to decide what to put down. But it wasn't because we didn't like anything else it was trying to figure out what the difference was. So many choices came down to "well this has fishes that has dinasours so go with the fishes"......seriously random reasons for picking one over another and in the end we really didn't care all that much.
I have updated my other blog (http://ontheelevator.blogspot.com/) and changed the title for the "Big Game". I work in the media center for Super Bowl XL, so there is ALOT of activity here. I have a digital camera (2 acutally) and I will be updated my other blog. It has temporarly been changed to a Super Bowl centric blog. Check it out, I hope to get some pictures up tonight.

Pictures

This is from Mid-October, you can see the bones in his hands and arms....plus the head? I am terrible at figuring these out and I am looking at the scanned images so bear with me:-)

Another from Mid-October showing the whole body and head.


















This is from November. Since his daddy has a minor heart defect, we had to do a fetal echogram at the hospital to check his heart. Everything turned out fine and we actually got pictures mommy could understand;-)











3D images still freak me out a bit. It is worse on screen because the colors they use aren't natural human colors so the babies always look alien to me. In black and white it isn't so bad. This one it looks like he is sucking







.
Ironically enough, my favorite picture is a 3D picture. This is a picture of his foot which is attached to his long toes. His daddy has long toes...mommy no...so he definitely has his daddy's feet. Although my brother does where size 13 I don't think his toes make up for half of the length of his foot like this little guy.










This is the latest one from early January. He needs to use two screens to get a picture. I think he gets his picture taken more often than other babies because he shares space with a fibroid tumor. The tumor is out of the way on top but they keep on eye on it anyways.








We have a lot more pics....I have some from July, but I only had access to the ones Chad has put up on the baby pool site. There are some more there as well. Hope everyone has a good week. there is a nasty nasty cold going around. Just about everyone in my office has gotten it. I've had it since Tuesday of last week. However I really feel today I am almost rid of it.

Baby Pool

Ok Chad has set up a baby pool to guess the day and time of the birth. Go to: http://kubik.babypool.com

It is $1 to sign up for a block of time (1 hour). You can sign up for as many blocks as you want but only one person per block. Payments are accepted through Paypal or can be given (or mailed) directly to Chad. The winner is the one closest to the day and time without going over. The prize money will be divided up 50/50 between the winner and the baby's college fund. Have fun if you want to participate:-)

If you want to participate without the "gaming" aspect, feel free to leave your guess for free here. You won't win any money, but you may still be a winner:-)

nesting....I guess

Well the baby's room is all painted (just in time for Chad to have two interviews for jobs which would require a move....its all in the timing;-). I am very happy about the way it turned out...here is how the conversation with my mom went:

Me
"so we finished painting the baby's room, well Chad actually was the one painting and I supervised. It is a light sage..mossy green...but we did a texture finish like in the living room. This time we used a different brush and I really like how it came out, just the way I was thinking"

Mom
"So now you want to redo the living room"

Me
"Kind of....but since Chad hates to paint I won't make him...but next time...."

What can I say my mom knows me:-)

Last week someone came over midweek to work on some video things with Chad. Well we still had Christmas decorations up, so before that visit we took those down. This created a mess in the office. So Saturday I spent the morning organizing that room more. Of course painting caused some mess to migrate to the living room on Sunday, the next project is to get that room and the baby's room straightend.
As I explained to Chad's mom "it isn't so much about making things perfect for the baby..in a nesting sort of way, its more realizing....once the baby is born....its just going to get worse....so I might as well organize everything I possibly can because this is my last chance"

I guess anyway you look at it, its nesting.

Yesterday was MLK day, and while I don't get a holiday, the company that I am contracted to gets one. This makes things very quiet and slow around the office (more fun). So I spent some time trying to fix the blog (more nesting I guess). Ok....I spent some time, couldn't figure it out and had Chad fix it for me. Husbands with web skills are great huh? I hope to actually have ultrasound pictures up soon.....really....the office desk is cleared up and I can now see the scanner so it is possible:-)

I have an appointment this week. I hope this goes better than the last one where they asked if I had anything to eat or drink in the last 6 to 8 hours. I guess the test they ran looked like I was starving myself. I took it a little personally, and was grumpy the rest of the day. However later they called to say I had a bacterial infection. I took some medicine so hopefully I am good now:-)

Edited to add:
At home with a bad cold:-( However I did find this odd little thing....I guess my blog is being traded on a Fantasy Stock Market site.....weird: http://blogshares.com/blogs.php?blog=http%3A%2F%2Fparentsafterall.blogspot.com%2F

cute things

Just a list of cute things revolving around the pregnancy"

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A guy I work with asked me one day
"I have a little girl, but I never got to feel her kicking when she was in her mamma's belly, so if you don't mind can I feel it sometime when your baby kicks"
...seriously how can you resist that?


Chad claims he is having sympathy cravings for spicier food.....I think I finally broke him of his "no spice" requests;-)


While bowling Chad's mom and I were talking about how Belle and Tess would be with the baby around, and ways to get them adjusted beforehand and she had a cute story. When she brought Kelly home, Chad was fine with it, but after a while he asked
"Mom when is that baby going back home?"
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We finished up our registry...however remember we are first time parents so don’t laugh to hard at us:-) We left of some of the clothing items the registry suggested; I didn't want to dictate style to much to other people. Diapers and wipes we picked the generic Target brands. I can't decide if I will like a certain brand until I use them. It seems like everyone has their own opinion on those things as well. Also as far as bottles go, we only put some starter packs on (I think).
From the research I have done it seems like every baby is different when it comes to bottles. So I didn't want to pick on brand of bottles and find they aren't liked as much.
We also did some more clean up on the nursery, which consisted of removing the last of the "office" boxes out of there. I am so glad most of our bills are electronic, there is a crazy amount of paper we would collect in one year from paper bills.

Settling in and New Years resolutions

So, still some chaos at work. However most of it revolves around not having the right tools loaded onto our computers so not a lot of work that we can do...although there is work we can catch up on.
I'm not big on making New Years Resolutions however Chad and I both want to make a conscious effort to be more thankful everyday. However......I am excluding myself when it comes to those pesky "pregnancy" ills...that's not cheating right? So here is my current list of "laments":

1. My digestion system simply does not work right anymore. This morning I swear the ham sandwich I had for dinner at 5:30 last night was still in my stomach. At 11:30 today I got hungry and had to eat something....even though there is NO room in my body for more food. If I eat to much I am in lots of pain and feel like I will literally explode.

2. I itch all over

3. I am tired

4. I have a cold (which when I take Tylenol cold I don't feel as tired or as itchy....so its all one big mess I guess)

5. We are starting to get behind on "baby preparations"

Ahh feel better just getting those out of my system. Of course Chad hears them all the time, it doesn't hurt to share more right;-)

Oh....and last week I was in the hospital for dehydration. From what the doctors could figure I had the flu. I was not able to keep much food down (plus I couldn't eat or drink a whole lot to begin with). I was working from home on Tuesday and was getting sharp pains in my abdomen. Thankfully we weren't busy and I was able to nap during the day. However at about 4:00 the pain got worse and I called Chad who wanted me to call my doctor. The doctor figured it was probably the flu but wanted to check out the pain I was having at the hospital. So we went and apparently I was having contractions (hey like I would know what that feels like), but they were the Braxton Hicks kind. I got some saline and something to calm my stomach. I kept hydrated and slept most of the week. It also helps to have a cat who is a nurse (seriously she is one good nurse too).
It was also our first visit with the labor and delivery staff, we had toured the floor before though. It was almost like a trial run and other than me being in pain it was a positive experience. Chad later said he felt bad because he just sat and watched the Pistons game. But I didn't care because:
1. I wasn't actually in labor
2. I really just wanted to curl up into a ball and not be touched
3. He should at least get one payback for when he was in the hospital with kidney stones and I just sat there and played a game on his palm pilot.

I didn't get much done last week and I had a lot of projects planned. However on New Years Eve we did make it to 8 stores in less than 4 hours for returns, exchanges, adjustments, and purchases. We were quite proud of ourselves. We also found some yummy non-alcoholic champagne. I don't always like the sparkling juice, but was leery of trying this stuff. It tasted like champagne. I only had 1 glass, but I was surprised.

I still need to work out details with maternity leave, and child care afterwards. It is nice to have a really good health care plan now, thanks IBM:-)

I'm Here

I was off work for a week and in that time was sick and just didn't feel like updating. I am back at work (in a new company and yet ANOTHER health plan, a good one this time). However there is still chaos with all the changes here that I don't have much time to post. I hope to get back in later in the week.