32 Week Tummy Shot

32 Weeks!!!

Yay!!! We've made it to 32 wks!!! :) I have only 2 weeks of bedrest left :) I had an appointment today and everything looks about the same. Laura has been doing flips and has spent a bit of time sideways (transverse) instead of head down, which I think has helped a bit. I'm glad most of her time is spent head down though and I'm hoping she settles in and stops flipping soon. She was transverse this morning, but flipped back into position in the waiting room at the dr's office. Her head is super low, but everything else was the same, so that's good. I gained 2 lbs, so my total weight gain so far is 12 lbs. As you usually lose 15 lbs with delivery, that's pretty good :) I'm supposed to be gaining about a pound a week at this point as Laura is gaining about 1/2 lb a week. She's around 4.5 lbs now and very active. She gets the hiccups almost every night and is big enough that you can actually see my tummy move with each hiccup :) My dr says if we can make it at least two more weeks, we'll be in great shape! Three to four more weeks would be perfect :) We're almost there!!!

Megan Turns Ten!!!

First a picture of Eva napping with her baby :) ~

Megan's tenth birthday is tomorrow! We spent the past weekend celebrating :) We started on Saturday. Instead of birthday parties, we let the kids pick a friend and either Rob or I take the two of them to lunch and out to a movie. Megan really wanted to invite two friends, Raina and Paula, so we told her she could skip lunch and take the two of them to a movie if she preferred that to having to pick one of them. She decided to go see Madagascar 3. The three of them (plus Rob) had a wonderful time at the movies! Afterwards, Rob braved the grocery store with 3 preteen girls to do some quick shopping for us and so Megan could pick out her birthday cake. She chose cupcakes instead of a cake. After the store, Paula came over to play for a bit.

On Sunday, things were a bit rocky for me, so Rob stayed home from church to take care of me. Megan asked if she could go to church with Paula instead. She really enjoyed the service, although it was in Spanish so she couldn't understand most of it. She loved that she recognized the story they told in Sunday school - even though Paula is Catholic, the bible stories are still the same :) After church, Paula came over again to spend some time with Megan and join us for Meg's family party. Kiki was able to join us as well (part of the reason we did it on Sunday is that Kiki travels a lot during the week and we wanted her to be able to come). Megan got to pick our menu and chose a roast, mashed potatoes, green beans, and crescent rolls.

After dinner we took a bit of a break before opening presents and eating dessert. Kiki, Beth, and Eva had a blast playing on Kiki's iPhone! Eva loved playing tic-tac-toe and even won a few times (mostly when she took Beth's turns as well as her own).

Megan's wish list for her birthday this year focused primarily on Barbies. She really, really wanted a whole Barbie family with a mom, dad, teenage sister, little sister, and twin babies. I looked high and low (online) to try to find them for her. Laura (my oldest best friend, the one we're naming the baby after) came to the rescue and found a set of four Barbies including everything except the babies. She was even able to figure out what stores in our area had it in stock! She is awesome!

Paula gave Megan a birthday Barbie and an extra set of clothes for her ~

We gave Megan the Barbie set Laura found for her ~

Laura and her husband, Brian, sent Megan a surprise present - a Barbie pediatrician set complete with twin babies!!! Megan got her whole Barbie family after all :)  ~

After opening presents, we had cupcakes. Megan's cupcake had a doll torso in it and the frosting was arranged to look like a dress. For future reference, putting eleven candles in a cupcake with a flammable doll is not the best idea . . . Fortunately she didn't actually catch on fire, but even though I tried to put the candles as far away from the doll as possible, half her hair melted and her hand turned black. It made things interesting :)

Recent Pictures

There are not a lot of opportunities to take pictures while on strict bedrest as photos of the kids watching movies tend not to be horrible intriguing, so we haven't taken many pictures recently. We have a couple though :)

Eva "helping" to make dinner ~

Eva didn't take a nap one day and was so tired out by dinnertime that she conked out on a chair and slept until 8am the next morning (yes, we moved her into a bed) ~

I took the camera with us to the pool yesterday (we had thunderstorms on Friday night, so we had to postpone our usual family outing until Saturday this week) to snap a few shots of Rob and the kids swimming. When we got to Jojo's, Jack had fallen asleep in what we have dubbed his "sleeping duck" yoga pose ~

Before getting into the pool to float, I took a few shots of the kids and Rob. Eva doesn't like actually swimming, she just splashes in the shallow part and scampers up and down along the side, encouraging people to jump off the diving board. Sometimes she climbs onto the diving board, bounces a few times, then climbs back down. We put floaties on her arms so if she falls in, she'll stay up until I get to her and scoop her up :)

Proof that Rob can swim, or at least that he jumped off the diving board into 10 feet of water. As he is still alive, I'd say that proves he can swim on his own :)

Made it to 30 Weeks!!!

I had a dr's appointment today (as I do every other Monday). I officially made it to 30 weeks a few days ago!!! Laura is about 3.5 lbs at this point. She is still head down and has dropped. That didn't surprise me as I could tell :) The dr did another of the tests he does every 2 weeks that help predict labor, although I have to wait for a few days to get the results back. So far they've all been negative (if they are negative, you have a 1 in 20 chance of going into labor in the next week or two; a positive result means you have a 1 in 6 chance). I only have one more left as they do them every two weeks up until 32 wks. He says I'm doing great :) TMI alert, but writing it down helps me remember, the dr checked and I'm about 25% effaced (3cms as opposed to 4+cm). Strict bedrest for another four weeks. He said it was fine for me to leave my bed to hang out at Jojo's pool (all I do is stick a noodle under my arms and float). It's so nice to have somewhere to go that's outside and floating feels so good after sitting in bed all the time!

I lost 4 lbs over the past 2 wks, meaning I've gained a total of 10 lbs so far. A combination of being sick over the weekend and being on strict bedrest caused the weight loss. I eat less when I can't get up and get snacks myself. Plus I can't pick up random things that look good at the grocery store if Rob is doing the shopping. I'm still getting weekly progesterone shots. Usually women get them until 32 wks, but my dr wants me to stay on them until 36 wks or until I deliver, whichever comes first. I don't know if it's the shots or not, but morning sickness has returned. I've never had regular morning sickness in my third trimester. My dr is concerned about it as that makes it easier to get dehydrated and that, along with the force of throwing up, can cause preterm labor. He gave me meds that dissolve under my tongue to prevent nausea, so they work faster than the regular ones. I couldn't hold the regular ones down, so I like this option much better!

Ladies from church are now bringing us dinner twice a week, which really helps out :) They offered to bring it more often, but we've found that twice a week is perfect as we usually end up with leftovers, so it gives us about 4 days of dinners. We always get pizza on Fridays and Rob cooks on the weekend. Betsy watches the kids every time I have an appointment (Ashley's visiting her grandparents for a few weeks).

I'm doing ok. This week has been hard as I got a really bad sinus infection and felt horrible for a couple of days. I get them every so often from the allergies down here. My OB prescribed me steroids to help me get over it faster. I really hate getting sick while pregnant as you can't take much of anything to feel better. I can't even take things like zicam as the zinc levels are too high. I took mucinex and sudafed, but the sudafed and the sinus infection made my blood pressure go up too high (135/94), so I can't take sudafed anymore. Tylenol does diddly squat. At least I had vicodin (which I have for my gall stone attacks) I could take when the pressure/headache got too much to handle!

The kids are doing well. They started going a bit stir crazy being cooped up in the house all the time. Rob started taking them down to the track behind the middle school down the street from us a couple of times a week. He lets them run and scream and jump all they want :) We also are trying to go swimming as a family more often. Rob and Kylie are doing great at swimming! Rob jumps straight into the deep end now when we get there and still grins like a little kid when he does so :)

Laura decided Independence Day was a good day to attempt to gain independence. Around 2am (technically July 5th) I started having contractions. By 2:30am they were averaging 3 mins apart so I started timing them. An hour later, they hadn't stopped, so I got up and moved around a bit as that can help. They stopped for about 30 mins, then picked up again. I woke Rob up around 5:15am and we called the OB, who told us to head to L&D. I called Betsy, who was somehow instantly alert and headed right over to stay with the kids (she later discovered that she had put her clothes on inside out, but none of us noticed at the time).

The contractions slowed down by the time I got to L&D fortunately. They picked up again for a bit, then settled down to every 20-30 mins. For those of you interested in TMI, they shortened and opened the exterior cervix, but the interior stayed closed. A few hours later, the contractions were holding steady at 2-3 an hour, and there hadn't been any more changes to my cervix, so they let me go home.

I am now on strict bedrest until further notice. I'm allowed up to go to the bathroom and to shower. Ick. At least I made it through 14.5 wks of modified bedrest first! I will be 29 wks on Saturday. My goal is now 34 wks, which is only 5 wks away. I'll feel more comfortable once I hit 32 wks though. Even 30 wks would be better, and that's only a week away :)

I feel like a ticking time bomb, which is an interesting feeling. Laura is super active now, so at least I know she's ok. She's head down and posterior, like all of my babies have been, meaning her back is against my spine, so the kicks are all aimed at my tummy.

We also had the transmission go out on our van this week. Well, it didn't actually go out yet, the check engine light went on and we got it in before it failed. It had to be taken out and completely taken apart to get fixed. Oh, well. Who needs money anyway? :)

In other news, I don't think I've posted about Rob's amazing accomplishment yet. Over the past few weeks, he has learned to swim! In just two visits to Jojo's pool, he managed to go from a severe fear of the water and being unable to even doggy paddle to jumping off the diving board into ten feet of water (several times)!!! It was wonderful watching the grin on his face as he mentally checked that off his bucket list :) Kylie has also taught herself how to swim this summer and Beth has decided to remove her floaties and figure out how to swim on her own as well, so I'm sure she'll be swimming in no time (as long as I'm allowed to keep going to the pool - we'll have to see what the dr says)!

Finally, a few facebook statuses from the past few weeks ~

Eva has taken to growling at people when they are trying to take something away from her that she wants to keep.

Recipe for a perfect summer day ~ swim all morning, sonic for lunch, nap all afternoon with a cuddly munchkin while listening to the rain on the windows, dinner out with a friend :)

Rob's going to sleep while I'm finishing up a homework assignment. He just gave a hugely exaggerated sigh, to which I responded by telling him that he got to go to sleep tonight without having his head scratched as I am working on homework. He responded by saying he wasn't thinking of that. He was thinking of "Fiddler on the Roof" (which we haven't watched in several years) where the guy sounds like Sylvester the cat when he's singing "Miracles of Miracles". Apparently Rob would not want to be standing in front of him as he would be covered in spit. He finished his thought by saying he didn't think he'd have to dance in a glen to get his point across either. Huh.

Rob's deep thought for tonight ~
"You know what phrase I find funny? 'Farting through silk'. As if it's a completely different experience to break wind against cotton than silk. Do you think they do tests like taste tests??? I can picture it - 'Nope, that was definitely cotton' or 'Oh, that must have been silk - I feel higher class!'"
Interesting that he never shared insights like this BEFORE we were married . . .

Jack (as we are driving to the movies this morning): Hey guys! We totally forgot our Phineas and Ferb game! Oh, that's right. We can't play it without the Millennium Falcon.

I'm so glad I married someone who still lights up my life when his car happens to pull up behind mine in traffic even after fifteen years of marriage :)

Jack used a pen to decorate himself from forehead to feet. When asked why he matter-of-factly explained "Mommy, I was pretending to be a plane". Of course.

Megan: I've decided I'm going to be a pseudo-vegetarian.
Rob: Ok. What is a pseudo-vegetarian?
Megan: I'm not going to eat certain kinds of meat.
Rob: Like what?
Megan: Rabbit
Beth: What about goat?
Megan: No, I like goat. Oh, and buffalo because they are endangered.
Rob: They aren't endangered anymore.
Megan: Oh, ok. Then I'll eat buffalo. But no endangered animals. And no rabbit.

 One of the best parts about being a parent ~ deciding to go out and get cinnamon rolls at 9pm (with Ashley), then sneaking into the kids' rooms after Rob put them to bed to give them some :)

 Driving home from our wonderful date night, Rob comments "do you think that squirrels pass gas? I was just wondering if small mammals have gastrointestinal disturbances." And they say romance doesn't last in a marriage . . . (ps - according to google, they do. Ah, the classy conversations we have at our house ;) )

While driving to watch the fireworks Tuesday night, Jack piped up from the back seat "Mommy, I wish my arms were longer. Then I could reach up and pick a star out of the sky for you. It would be beautiful!" - This is one of my favorite comments ever!!! I love my little boy!!!

The 4th of July

As usual we did our "big" celebration on the 3rd. Our town sets off fireworks that night instead of on the 4th. We had Kiki, her friend Annie, Ashley, Bret, Kora, and their 4 kids, and one of their daughter's friends over for dinner. We kept it simple and just grilled sausages and hot dogs, and had chips, watermelon, corn on the cob, and soda. Kora brought potato salad as well. After dinner we headed off to watch the fireworks.

Kiki came back to our house afterwards and invited the four older kids to sleepover at her house, which they were thrilled about! Apparently they stayed up until midnight and had candy canes for breakfast.

Kiki brought them back the next morning. We had cake for breakfast - our traditional 4th of July red, white, and blue cake. This year we used only raspberries and blueberries as Eva is mildly allergic to strawberries. Before cutting into it, we took a picture with all five kids ~

We took the rest of the day easy. We had planned to go to Bret and Kora's bash, but our minivan is in the shop with transmission problems and we couldn't all fit in the Avalon, so we stayed home instead. We had leftovers from the night before for lunch and made french dip sandwiches for dinner. Before dinner, we took pictures of everyone in their flag shirts. I think the pictures turned out really well!

A silly picture, of course, was included ~

I figured out how to work the timer on our camera, so we got a shot of the whole family :)

The kids wanted individual pictures as well ~

After dinner, we went out to the backyard and tried to use the sparklers we bought five years ago and keep forgetting about. Lighting them took several tries as the wind kept blowing out the matches, and even blew out the flame on the lighter. We only managed to get three to light. The only picture I got of a lit sparkler was of Beth.

We forgot to buy our usual box of poppers, etc, but we had a box of poppers left over from New Years, so Rob handed those out. Eva surprised us by loving them and enthusiastically participating in this part. 

Grandma's Visit

First a couple cute pictures of Eva ~

I was home very little during my residency, so I wasn't here to remind Rob to take pictures. Friday, after my residency was over and before Grandma flew home, Rob and Grandma took the three older girls to Cabela's. Jack decided to stay home and enjoy unfettered use of the kids' computer. Eva stayed home to take a nap with me. Meg, Kylie, Beth, Rob, and Grandma had a wonderful time!

To thank Grandma for taking care of the kids (and Rob) while I was at the residency, we had Ashley come over on Friday night to babysit the kids so Rob and I could take Grandma out to dinner at the Olive Garden and to the airport. Before we left, we took a couple of pictures with her ~