Living the Smith Family Dream

new words, new news

2010-12-10T23:58:00.000-08:00

After my last list of words and new things, jax has learned so much more.

First, Jax has learned a new style of basketball. We currently have bins of christmas decorations in our living room so jax decided that he would put his ball on one, climb on the bin, throw his ball in the baketball net, climb down, go get his ball and do it all over again. Jackson has also learned that if he climbs on the dog food bin, he is the perfect height to reach the light switch in our pantry room (thanks daddy)! He now decides whether or not he wants us to watch tv by turning the tv on and off. And, he has decided that he WILL play with the computer, despite what mommy and daddy say. He has learned all of the clapping parts to "If you're happy and you know it". And He's getting much better at scaling down the stairs and is even trying to come down foreward, holding onto mommy's hand of course. He really is growing before our eyes.

Of his list of words we have a few newbies:
Matt (for uncle matt)
Keys
No No (hmmm. I wonder where he learned this one)
Pee Pee
Niecey (for aunt denise)

and of course, last but not least:
Baby

Now the story behind this one is cute. Jax has been able to say baby for a while now, but recently he met his baby cousin Ben for the first time, who is only a few weeks old. Jax pointed and said baby. When we came home that night. Jax found a baby doll that we keep in our house for our friend's girls. He carried this baby around saying "bay-beee". He gave baby hugs and kisses, and then proceeded to throw baby on the floor. ha ha. But he knew what baby was.

So this is a good segway into our "new news": In June 2011 Jax will be a big brother to baby brother or baby sister! He has no clue of course what's going on, but I'm sure he'll figure it out on D-day. We really think Jax will love being a big brother (once the jealousy goes away) and I know we'll love having a new little one as part of the family. So stay tuned for more updates and keep following us as our family grows even bigger!

Words words words

2010-11-17T21:14:00.000-08:00

Since our last post, Jackson has continued to amaze us on a daily basis. He is such a smart, smart boy. Some of his favorite things are football, playing basketball with his little tikes basketball net (which he's quite good at I might add), climbing the stairs ha ha, playing in his ball pit which he got from grandma and grandpa porter for his birthday, brushing his teeth, playing with the dogs, turning light switches on and off, opening doors, fans (oh how he LOVES fans), and reading. It took him a while to really get into books, and now he loves them. But not being read to (unless PopPop smith is doing the reading). He likes to read the books himself and point at all the pictures to have you tell him what each picture is. And more recently he's started picking up books and "singing" the abc's, as if that is what's written in the book. Only the abc song that he sings sounds more like "d,c,d,c". It's definitely very cute.

Jackson has also become quite talkative, and I fall in love everytime he "talks" to me. He can carry on a full conversation with such a serious look on his face, only everything he says is "Jackson talk". Other than the Jackson talk, however, he has learned quite a few words, which is what I'm dedicating this blog to. Here is what we are hearing our little boy say these days:

Uh-oh (one of his first words)
Wha' sa (What's that)
Ra Ra (This is what the dogs names sound like to him)
Puppy
Poopy (which he will now say during diaper changes, ha ha)
'Nana (Banana)
B-apple (Apple)
Ball (quite clearly, ball)
hoo-ball (Football, very different from any other ball)
Doo-dle (Said carefully in two syllables for Sophie Doodle, a family bird)
Coo-kie (also said very carefully in two syllables)
Mommy (my favorite word of them all)
Da-Da
PopPop
MomMom
Door
Car
Moo (as in what a cow says)
Boop Boop (the noise a train makes when the horn is beeped)
Sissy (what we are calling his Aunt Krista)
Uncle (which he pronounces more German than anything else)
Auntie
Tanta (meaning Aunt in German)
TaTay (which we learned means daddy in Tagala)
Weee (What he says when he spins in circles, lol)
I (as in the letter "I")
Go-gurt (Yogurt)
Peese (Please)
Ca-tur (Water)
Sue (Shoes)
Flower
hot dog
Hi (One of the cutest things he says)
Buh Buh (Bye Bye)
Thomas (As in thomas the train)
Elmo
Bur (Bird)
(he says something to mean airplane, but I can't quite make it out)
Up (and he will point up as well)

Along with all of his words, he is also getting quite good with body parts:
Nose
Mouth
Eyes
Ears
Hair
Tummy
Belly Button
Feet
Hands

We really have been blessed with such a smart, loving, wonderful little boy who has been so much fun to be around. His laugh is contagious and instantly makes anyone smile and his smile alone is enough to make any day better. I couldn't be thankful for anything more than I am thankful for him.

<3

1 year ago today...

2010-07-14T19:25:00.001-07:00

... at this very moment I was holding my newborn baby boy and my little Jackson was surrounded by friends and family welcoming him into his first day on Earth.

It's hard to believe that that was only a year ago and at the same time that it has already been a year. While I can't remember much of how things were without our little boy, it still seems like just yesterday we were anxiously awaiting his arrival.

The past year has been full of so many great memories and so many learning experiences. Jackson has grown so much. We've celebrated his first smile, his first turn onto his belly, sleeping through the night, his "talking", the first "mama" and "dada", rice cereal, baby food, sitting up, his first tooth all the way up to his eighth tooth, his army crawl, and after seemingly forever, his real crawl. We've recently celebrated him standing, his first few steps to Justin or I, his lovely stair climbing and just this past Friday, his first real walking experience all on his own. And now, today, his FIRST birthday, his first celebration of his life up until now.

Jackson has not ceased to amaze me at how fast he grows and how quickly he learns. He is picking up words like Ball (bah), Bye Bye (buh buh), MaMa, DaDa, Doggie (Daw-dy), Bird (Bir), Hi Baby ( Hi BeBe), Uh Oh, PopPop and so on. He has many tricks, his favorites being high five, clapping, blowing kisses, so big, and yum yum (you say yum yum and he rubs his belly). He has also learned where Jackson's nose is, where Mommy's nose is and where Doggy's nose is and now we are working on mouth and ear. Jackson has become quite the little swimmer, paddling hard and fast with fury and excitement. His personality has become so distinct- such a sweet, happy, loving boy with oh such an attitude too, haha. He has learned to love his big four legged brothers, sometimes a little too much, but he is also a gentle boy giving kisses just because and snuggling up with a sweet smile on his face. Jackson has also learned to share which he demostrated so well tonight feeding his big piece of birthday cake to Mommy, Daddy and MomMom.

Jackson has truly become my absolute everything. I know we parents always say that. And we are always used to hearing it too. But until you're there, rocking your baby to sleep, just you and him with his lullabies playing and his eyes heavy with dreams and you're staring at this beautiful little person who needs you, trusts you and loves you endlessly, - until you've reached that point, you never realize just how true that saying is. Jackson has filled our hearts with so much joy and love. He has made the little constant daily problems non-existent and has focused our lives on the things that make life worth it. And it's funny to think that it won't be until he has reached this same point in his own life that he will understand just how much he has changed us and impacted our lives.

Jackson Scott: I love you endlessly. You are truly my world, my everything. I long to hold you and see your smile when I'm away, even if just for a few hours, and I thank God for every moment I spend with you. This past year has been the best year of my life and I am so excited to watch you grow and to be a part of the person that you will become. I pray that we lead you in the right direction and give you everything you need to have the best, most fulfilled life possible. Happy Birthday Baby Boy. May these special days last forever. We Love You.

(Celebrating Jackson's 1st Birthday at the Baltimore Aquarium)

Official Update:

2010-02-08T17:53:00.000-08:00

I STILL hate snow!!!!!!

All 20-30 inches sitting outside of my front door. And I hate the 10+ inches that will fall tomorrow even more. I'm so done shoveling. And the snow is ruining my dentist appt, my doctor's appt, and my cpr resertification appt. Blech. I can't wait until some sunshine and warm weather. My flip flops have felt quite neglected this winter.

The only good thing about this snow is that Jackson has a good routine during it. Out of the crib at 8, breakfast at 8:30ish, nap at 10, lunch at 12, nap around 1:30, dinner at 4, nap at 5 for an hour, bath at 7 followed by a bottle and 7:30 bedtime. Wow, did we just somehow come up with a real routine? Who whould have thought!

We did also have fun with the neighbors shoveling the street, "borrowing" salt from a broken down plow truck, and watching another plow come "clear" our street just after we finished shoveling it. Justin also helped the neighbors and other neighbors and kid build an igloo. I was too tired and cold at that point. And then he joined them for fireworks after.

I've also enjoyed actually cooking all or most of our meals. It's been nice not ordering out (except for during the superbowl of course... way to go Saints).

So I guess the snow wasn't that bad but really, do we need another foot of it :(

In Jackson news, he is quite the mobile child these days. And it's too funny how he does it. He still can't crawl, although he's getting awfully close. BUT he can surely pull himself through the whole living room and dining room by using his arms and pushing with one foot. It's quite hysterical how he does it. He's also figured out how to actually get into his toys. The other day I heard him rustling over in his play area and I look over and he figured out how to open the mega blocks container and pull the blocks out. Clean up will start to get much more extensive soon I'm. His vocabulary of ooohs and ahhs and bah, plah, da da, and ma is becomming louder and much more clear. And his smile... my goodness that two tooth grin. I LOVE it. And his laugh is too funny too. It actually cracks me up when he laughs, which makes him laugh even more. This kid definitely makes me melt :)

Time to upload some videos and pics to my computer. No promises you'll see them here tonight, but maybe on facebook! Goodnight all!

Thoughts of the day

2010-02-03T06:50:00.000-08:00

I OFFICIALLY hate snow.

I really wish my child would take his nap... there's LOTS of laundry to fold and LOTS of dog hair to vaccume (I hate trying to spell that word).

And I wish I could fast forward 6-7 years so I can have my three kids and go and get a tummy tuck because I hate looking at this disgusting stretched out wrinkly blob sitting on my abdomen.

Oh, and I officially hate cold weather. My skin feels like a brillo pad, even after I lotion up. bleh.

Post 11

2010-01-25T20:05:00.000-08:00

Officially accepted the Bayview Job as an RN. And I learned today that some of my classmates are getting their ATT's (the letter that allows you to sign up for the boards). Not looking forward to getting mine because I'm definitely not ready yet. But, soon enough! My official start date at Bayview is February 15th. My first big girl career :)

Jackson was ridiculously cute today. The clothes I dressed him in, the faces he made, the lunges he made toward me with that awnry little face. And, we fingerpainted for the first time. It was a very brief event led by me dipping his hand in pant and keeping his hands away from his face. But still a lot of fun.

Parents coming over tomorrow to cook me dinner :D and visit Trader Joe's with me. And then it's Bayview on Wednesday for a physical and my cousin's house on Thursday for a playdate with my cousin's two boys, my other cousin's son, and my cousin in law's son and daughter. Friday is karaoke and spaghetti at church, Saturday is the Polar Bear Plunge (haven't officially decided to plunge yet) and Sunday is up in the air still after church. Maybe my friend from middle school's daughter's second birthday or a trip to the Eastern shore to see my friend heather and her adorable 2 year old Charlie. What a packed week ahead!

Blog 10

2010-01-24T19:00:00.000-08:00

I have been neglectful the past few days, but also busy, and sick, and dealing with a child with a cold. :(

But other than all that. Justin had a trip to Ohio last week so it was just me and my handsome little man for a few days. I decided to have some of my nursing friends over (and one of their boyfriends) and I made Maple and almond crusted chicken, green beans, and corn. The girls brought salad, plantains, wine, and dessert. It was actually a very nice evening and we all agreed that we had to do that more often.

Last week I was also able to work it so that my Ped Onc interview was on this coming Tuesday rather than the 29th. And then bayview called an offered me the med/surg job and just told me to let them know by Monday(tomorrow). So I decided that I would accept but still go on the other interview and if I was also offered the Ped Onc job I would take that instead but if not I'd have something to fall back on. But then this past Friday Hopkins downtown called to tell me they already filled the Ped Onc position. So it looks like it will definitely be Bayview after all. I already emailed the nurse recruiter to accept the position, but it will officially happen tomorrow morning.

This past Saturday Justin and I took Jax out for his first trip to the playground. He kind of liked the slide a little but he LOVED the swings. We got great pics and video of it (which will be up soon). And then today Justin left again for Ohio for another 3-5 days. Ugh. Too bad he didn't go somewhere nice. Jax and I definitely would have went with.

I don't have any pictures tonight, but I'll get them up here soon.

Til next time!

Blog 9- Jackson 6 months

2010-01-18T15:15:00.001-08:00

Today we had Jackson's six month check up. Of course, shots were included, which is out least favorite part. But, other than that the doc just looked him over, asked tons of questions about what he's doing and what he's eating and how he's pooping. He gave us the go ahead to give him yogurt, all meats, all fruits and veggies pretty much, and wheat pasta and tomato sauces. We also found out that Jackson is a whopping 17 lbs (50th percentile range) and he's 27 inches long (75th percentile range) so he's long and lean like his Daddy. The doc said we might be able to expect him to be between 5 foot 10 inches, and six foot.

We spent the rest of the day with our friends Joe and Rachel and their 9month old Ryan. Rachel stays home with Ryan all day so it was a good day to get out for lunch and walk around the mall with our sleepy boys. Hopefully there will be many a play date, and especially pool dates ahead!

No pics were taken today, but I'm still working on videos. I'll attempt getting those up tonight!

Post 8

2010-01-16T21:51:00.000-08:00

Sorry for the lack of posts the past two days. While 365 consecutive posts might not be possible for me, if nothing else, it will get me to post much more frequently!

The past two days have been busy for us. Yesterday was my share day at Johns Hopkins Bayview. It went really well. I like the nurses on the unit and I really like the manager, and while they said it was "fast-paced", it wasn't as fast as I was expecting, which is fine with me. The nurse manager said she really liked me and that I should expect to hear back from the nurse recruiter by Monday. Since monday is a holiday, however, and the nurse manager probably wasn't thinking about that, I probably won't hear back until Tuesday. This gives me a little more time to try to get Hopkins main campus to move that interview closer, except that the recruiter there will be out of the office Monday and Tuesday. Ugh. I'm really interested in Pediatric Oncology so I would really like to go on the interview and shareday, but if they're not able to move it closer, I don't foresee being able to have Bayview "wait" for me to give them an answer that long. And in that case, my choice will have to be Bayview, which isn't a bad choice at all. But if they do move the interview closer, the choice will be difficult and will ultimately come down to which setting could I see myself working in for a long time. Hopefully it all works out the best way possible. At this point it's not about money or benefits or location, but about the job itself. Hopefully I'll have Someone on my side to help me make the best choice.

After my shareday Justin and I went out to dinner, alone, leaving Jackson with his parents. We went to Tidewater grille and had a great meal.

Today I slept in and it was fantastic. We then went to the store, had lunch, and joined our friends at Bert and Laura's house for a "cook-out" (food around a fire pit, and mostly inside) and some Ravens game action. I actually missed most of the game because Jackson was overtired and was really difficult to put to sleep. He is stuck to me when that's the case and I can't put him down, so we napped on the couch together. While I would have liked to see the game, from what I hear, I didn't miss much, so I'm not too bummed. And now we're home, ready for bed again, and the world is updated on our lives.

As you enjoy your weekend and your holiday on Monday, don't forget to pray for Haiti and the Hurricane victims. May they find safety and comfort and feel great love from all of the world during this time of hardship. Goodnight.

Happy Half Birthday Jax - Post 7

2010-01-14T19:49:00.000-08:00

Happy Half Birthday to my wonderful, beautiful, amazing little man. May you be blessed with more birthdays then I'll be able to count. I love you endlessly!!!!!

Today was my interview at Bayview. It went really really well. And then I get home and find out that Hopkins downtown has scheduled me for an interview and share day on a Pediatric Oncology floor for the 29th. Crazy. So now what if bayview offers the job. Two weeks ago I was stressing about not having even an interview, and now I'm stressed about the decisions I'll have to make. Oye.

But in other much more exciting news to a mommy, today was Jackson's Half Birthday. Yup! My boy turned six months old at 8:16 tonight. I cannot believe where I was six months ago and where I am today, but I've loved every minute (okay, maybe not recovery, but I love jackson every minute of it). We celebrated by having crab cakes at grandma's... Jackson had gerber chicken noodle. Then we came home, had a bluberry muffin (Jax's birthday "cake"), made six month imprints of Jackson's hand and foot, and then went off to sleep. We also found out that Jackson may be teething yet again, but this time with top teeth, YIKES!!! Pretty soon he'll be eating steak and potatos with the rest of this.

Here are some pictures to share. The first two are of Jackson and Justin... Do they not look identical?? The rest are of Jackson celebrating his six month birthday.

Kaplan, Bayview and No sleep, oh my.

2010-01-13T16:24:00.000-08:00

Today was another day of Kaplan. And boy did that review class come quick today. I stayed up watching movies with Justin last night and doing some online kaplan quizzes so i hopped in bed at 12:30. Well Jackson woke up at 2:30 and screamed andcried everytime Iput him down for three hours. I had to get up at seven so it was a brutal night. And this morning he screamed everytime I put him down again, so needless to say, I was late everywhere today. BUT, on the bright side of things, he was good for Oma and Lucas, and I got called for an interview for tomorrow at Johns Hopkins Bayview. I had to quickly arrange some last minute letters of reference and a transcript, but it all pulled through, so we'll see how tomorrow goes.

To end the day, I leave you with no images, just a prayer request for all those suffering from the devastating earthquake disaster in Haiti. May we people of such prosper and blessing find some way physically, financially, spiritually and emotionally to help those who so desperately need it at this time.

Goodnight.

Kaplan day 2 - blog 5

2010-01-13T16:20:00.000-08:00

Today was Kaplan day 2. It seems that this $379.00 class may be helpful after all. I didn't learn a lot about content today because, as a graduate nurse, I should know the content. But I learned a great deal about how to work my way through those tricky NCLEX questions. I'm hoping that tomorrow and the next few days of the review will be just as helpful and that, when the time comes, I'll be confident and prepared enough to pass the NCLEX and become a Registered Nurse.

Images of the day: Kaplan's logo and Stephens Hall, one of the main buildings on Towson's campus in the winter. This is where our pinning was held.

Review day 1 - Blog 4

2010-01-11T20:00:00.001-08:00

Today is my first day of Kaplan Review for my NCLEX exam. It's only 8 classes, but man will it be greuling. And it was sooooo cold in that room AND I'm getting sick :(

But in better news, Jackson's 2nd tooth is finally in and growing strong.

Unfortunately I have homework (graduate college and get homework the next day, ugh) but I wanted to make sure I got this blog in.

Goodnight!

GRADUATION Jan 10

2010-01-10T20:08:00.000-08:00

The big story today was that I FINALLY graduated from college. I gratuated from Towson University with a Bachelors of Science in Nursing. It was a very nice ceremony, yet long awaited ceremony. I truly thought today would never come, but standing in line waiting to enter, I couldn't believe it was finally here. It's amazing how fast time seems to have flown when you look back on it all. I still remember moving into the dorms in August of 2005. Since then, there've been a lot of ups and downs and so many changes to my life. And it's definitely odd to think that that chapter of my life is finally closed.

After the ceremony ended, those who attended and my brother, his girlfriend and my uncle went back to my other brother's house just in time to watch the Ravens beat up on Brady!!! Seriously, what a GREAT ending to a much deserved day.

Below are a few pics from the ceremony and after. My blogger is being weird so I can't space the pics out to add captions, but I'll try to figure it out!!!! Enjoy.

Jan 8th - Pinning

2010-01-09T19:55:00.001-08:00

So today was my pinnign ceremony which officially ends my nursing school career. I still have to take the NCLEX but that is completely outside the realm of actual nursing school. The pin we receive is what distinguishes us as RN's. (Because it's silver and shiny and small and my camera is not equipped for those items, I can't get a great pic of it.) Leading up to today I thought this whole thing was a waste of time and a waste of money for that little pin that I'll never wear. Then I started seeing how much this pinning meant to so many other people. Like the friend who has nurses in every generation of her family, and my friend who is graduating from Towson's nursing program sharing this experience with her sister who is graduating from another nursing program this semester as well. And listening to the speaker, I started to appreciate the ceremony and the pin, and my future title of RN more than I have throughout the program. It's funny though how you struggle for two looooonnnnggg years and have so many trials and tribulations and it all comes down to this one triumphant day and this tiny little pin. I forgot for a few hours how grueling these past two years have been and I truly looked forward to my future. I only hope that in my future, I can live up to the standard that has already been set by so many smart, caring nurses that exist today.

So that's today's blog. Here are a few pictures to share with you my experience.

This was after the pinning before bedtime, but I added this because in this pic Jackson looks exactly like Justin when he was little. I'll have to get a picture of Justin up here sometime for comparison.

And this is during the ceremony when I'm getting pinned.

Below are my four best friends throughout nursing school, the girls I turned to and complained to and leaned on and studied with and cried with the most!!!

Starting with Julie...

and Sarah...

and Emily...

and Melissa.

<3>

December 2009 Pictures

2010-01-08T20:09:00.000-08:00

Here are the December Pictures. Cookie making, christmas Eve, Christmas day and New Years to be added tomorrow, after I've slept!!!

Jackson's first snowfall!

Daddy as Santa

I saw Mommy kissing Santa Claus

MomMom Smith as Santa Claus

His Raven's hat only fits with a beanie underneath, ha ha

Jax and his little girlfriend Anna

Sleepy boy

Snowstorm of 09

Watching daddy play in the snow with the doggies

November 2009 Pictures

2010-01-08T19:52:00.000-08:00

Here is November 2009. My pictures go backwards however.

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving dinner with PopPop and golden spoons

Showing off the new suit to MomMom

Jackson and Ray Rice!

New Year, New Challenge

2010-01-08T19:18:00.000-08:00

It's been a while. A long while. And to no other's fault but my own. Since I last posted so much has gone on. Jackson turned five months, I finished school, we celebrated Christmas, we celebrated the New Year, Jackson got his first tooth, he met Haloti Ngata... okay, so that last one only happened last night, but still. There's a LOT that I haven't blogged about. But here we go...

So I finally Finally FINALLY finished my last semester of nursing school, and quite successfully I might add. After much stress, a ridiculous amount of papers, and a number of annoying exams, I came out with an A, an A- and a B. I was very very proud of myself.

I may have mentioned this before, but at some point we thought Jackson was getting a tooth way back in his mouth. It turns out it wasn't a tooth at all. My mom calls it grissle, but I guess it was a tiny bone fragment that poked through. But, just recently Jackson's first tooth did decide to pop through in the front. And he has another one coming in at a close second.

Shortly after finishing school, Christmas crept up on us. We weren't planning on getting a whole lot for Jackson since he won't really remember anyway, but that definitely went out the window. Not only did we get a lot for him, but so did both sets of his grandparents and his aunts and uncles. He was one spoiled kid this Christmas. All gifts aside, this was truly the BEST Christmas ever. We celebrated Christmas Eve at church, which was my first time, and it was great. I LOVED it and I can't wait for next year. We then went to my parents. On Christmas day we opened gifts at home, traveled to my parents again for more gifts, visited my grandmother as we do every Christmas, then made the trek to Justin's aunt's house to have dinner with his family, open more gifts, exchange gag gifts, and play games. It was definitely a holiday to remember. (In between school ending and Christmas Jackson also got to see 3 different Santa's: Mall santa, Daddy as Santa, and Mom Mom as Santa). A few days after Christmas, we celebrated yet again with my oldest sister and her family.

Somewhere in between this all, Jackson also got to experience his first snow storm. What an event. It was really nice to finally see snow on the ground on Christmas and to finally have snow to go with the cold weather. And of course it was exciting to see Jackson's response to it all. At first he seemed kind of confused. Then he seemed kind of indifferent to it all. I Know that will change when he gets older, especially when snow means school closings and delays, ha ha.

After Christmas came and went and the toys piled up, Justin and I celebrated New Years Eve as we do every year, by working at Ramshead together. So, that meant this was Jackson's first ever 2 day sleepover (since we both worked the next night also) and Jackson's first night at MomMom and PopPop Smith's house. While we weren't there, we can tell from the pictures that he had a blast, and he even came home with a new rainforest bouncer that he LOVES. It's soooo funny to watch him jump in that thing. And we have a feeling that MomMom and PopPop enjoyed it just as much as Jackson did. I got an I-Flip from my wonderful husband and baby boy for Christmas and I've been doing a lot of recording of Jackson jumping. As soon as I figure it all out, I'll put the videos up.

Since New Year's, we've still kept busy. I've started my review classes for my NCLEX exam, with Kaplan starting on Monday, Justin's been working, and Jackson has renewed his schedule at Grandmom Porter's two days a week and Oma's two days a week. I've also been busy busy busy applying for nursing jobs. I've already had one interview (today) and I hope to hear back from a couple more jobs soon. I would love to hold out for an L&D spot at St. Joe's but financially that's just not possible.

Last night, as I mentioned earlier, we took Jackson to meet Haloti Ngata and to get Justin's football signed. He was a really nice guy and we found out that he also has a six month old son. We also recently took Jax to meet Ray Rice and get Justin's jersey signed. He was also a nice guy but MUCH MUCh smaller than Ngata. h aha.

As for my new challenge! A friend and photographer, Mandy Sroka, has decided to do a 365 day blog post with an image captured from each day. I've decided taht I've slacked so much, this would be the perfect challenge to get me back on top of my blogging game. So, from here on out, my challenge is to blog everyday with at least one picture from that day ( or one recent picture). Rather than posting a picture in the blog tonight, I will be posting a seperate blog with a bunch of pictures to get me up to date.

So here's to a happy wonderful new year and an exciting new challenge!!!!

Soon

2009-12-09T20:47:00.001-08:00

Jackson turns 5 months on Monday (14th) and my exam is Tuesday (15th) and then school is officially done for me.

In lieu of all of that, I will give a big grand update WITH pictures once the exam is good and gone!

Soon... I promise :)

Cereal, sweet potatos, and squash, Oh My!!!

2009-11-14T14:51:00.000-08:00

Today, November 14th (4 days before MY birthday), my little man is celebrating his 4 month birthday. Unfortunately he has an icky cough which I'm hearing could be because of his shots that he got this past wednesday :( But nonetheless, he's still my happy, smiling, refusing to sleep little dude.

I last updated about how he is eating rice cereal and eating like a champ. Well last Sunday (Nov 8th) we decided to try out some squash. And the faces he gave were quite amusing. He wasn't feeling the squash so much, but after a few days he definitely changed his mind. Then, yesterday on Friday the 13th, he tried out some sweet potatos and he loved them immediately. I have to say, I'm very happy he's such a good eater. Along with being a good eater, however, he has also become a good pooper of almost normal poops. Not at all like those newborn poops used to be. I can honestly say I miss them.

Jackson is also now 14 lbs 10 oz and he is 24 1/2 inches long. Surprisingly though, he's only in the 25th to 50th percentile for his weight, height and head circumference. At least he's proportional.

In the past few weeks Jackson has done some exciting things. He went to the Poly/City game with Justin and I where we watched Poly win (Poly is my highschool and Poly vs. City is one of the oldest high school rivalries in the nation and the game is played at Raven's stadium), he went to an autograph signing with us where he met Ray Rice, #27 of the Baltimore Ravens, and he had his first sleepover at Grandma's house. He might have a few more of those this month as Justin travels a lot so I'll need the extra help.

Pretty soon, Jackson will get to have his first Thanksgiving, and while he won't be eating our foods, he might get his own treat of fruit for the first time. What an exciting month it's turning out to be!

Halloween and Updates

2009-11-06T19:35:00.000-08:00

So our big update this post is that Jackson is now eating rice cereal. And he's eating it like a champ. He opens his mouth to take a bite, and when you're not quick enough, he's grabbing for the spoon. Speaking of biting, we also think that Jax is teething. He certainly is chewing on everything and his hand has not come out of his mouth for like three days. To combat this issue, we've taken a liking to pedialyte popsicles. The pediatrician said it was okay to give him the juice or some water in between meals, so why not frozen juice. Jackson's definitely a fan. He's also a fan of chewing on my fingers, his sleeves, and books. Oh boy! On top of the cereal and teething, Jackson is now a pro at rolling onto his back, which makes bed time difficult since he sleeps on his tummy. But, our boy loves to fight sleep so as soon as we put him in the crib, he flips over and just lays there and cries until we roll him back over. Oh how I long for the day he can roll back to front!!!

For our annual Halloween party at Will and Brittney's, Jackson was dressed as a Ninja Turtle. For Halloween Night, since he was far too fussy for his costume, he was dressed as a skeleton. I had to work so Justin spent the night with Jackson watching scary movies and handing out candy. Hopefully next year when we actually take Jackson trick or treating I won't have to work!

Jackson has his four month check up on Monday. He's due to get more shots, which I'm not a fan of. And hopefully we'll find out where our big boy is on the growth charts.

Since I'm blessed with a quiet house right now (Justin's working) here's some pics that some people have been asking for. Enjoy!

Jackson enjoying his freezie pop

Skeleton Boy on Halloween with his pumpkin cup

Wondering why there's no candy in his bucket!?!

Getting into Halloween Spirits with Daddy

Auntie Krista at the Halloween Party

Uncle Matt as the ShamWow guy

Doctor Mom and My little Ninja Turtle

2009-10-23T18:54:00.000-07:00

So I realized that there are still pics from September that I haven't put up... so here it is. What you've all been waiting for. Updated pictures :)

First time in the pool... well, hot tub :)

He actually really liked it.

Big boy on his 2 month birthday.

His first of I'm sure many rides on Carl Beans

Hanging with Lauren and big cousin Max on Uncle Wayne's birthday

Playful baby

His new exersaucer

Meeting Auntie Genisse for the first time, lol

Learning how to eat crabs with Krysta and Dan

Bath time at grandmom's

Mommy and Daddy take a day off to see the Ravens kick butt

Jackson's baptism, 10-4-09

All tuckered out from his baptism

Hanging with Uncle Matt

Watching the game with pops and uncle Chris

At Oma's daycare with Delaney (left) and Lucas (right)

Sleeping like a froggy

Another baptism pic... hanging with Aunt Barb during church

Asleep on Aunt Wenke's comfy shoulder

mommy's little teddy bear

baby's first mohawk

hair spiked like daddy's

Happy 3 month birthday Jax, 10/14/09

Wearing mommy's "Towson Nursing supports the cure" t-shirt

"I WEAR PINK"

New coat and hat!

Yay feet

Weber's Farm, 10/23/09

Hope you enjoyed!!!

I'm terrible at this

2009-10-22T05:56:00.000-07:00

I didn't realize how difficult it would be to update the blog once jax was here... once I was back to work... once school started. oye! But alas, here's a post.

A lot has been going on since my 10 week post. Jackson is growing like a little weed. he has finally found his feet which I'm sure will bring him much pleasure as he gets better at grabbing them. He also knows how to blow raspberries now and this seems to be his favorite thing to do. He rolls from side to side when he's on his back, usually because he's trying to get a toy or his feet. His smiles are out of this world. So darn cute and he's always smiling, especially when he wakes up. He's now up to five ounce bottles every three hours and... are you ready for this?... he sleeps through the night!!!!!!! Finally! It's like heaven. He's been taking great naps and when he's done his last bottle between 8 and 9 we take him upstairs and put him in his crib. He usually cries a little but then he goes right to sleep. Now, I know this is taboo these days, I think him sleeping through the night is partially because we let him sleep on his belly. He holds his head really well, turns it from side to side really well and he can even roll over when he tries without getting to frustrated, so we gave in and it has really made a difference. He's a much happier and less fussy baby now. He's so much fun to sit and play with and talk to. He's just a joy.

Jackson is also now OFFICIALLY 3 months old. I cannot believe that time has flown by so much. Just a few weeks ago we had him baptized at Abbott Memorial Presbyterian Church. He wore Justin's baptism outfit from when he was a baby and he was sooooo cute. We were blessed to have lots of friends and family there... it truly was a great memory. Because jax is growing so fast, he's now in 3 month onesies and fitting into 3-6 month pants... he's going to be a tall boy like his daddy. He has finally started noticing that the dogs exist, although he still doesn't bother too much with them. He also does the cutest thing when he's hungry or tired. If you put him close to you and try to give him a kiss, he grabs your cheeks (or hair) and tries to eat your face. It's entirely too funny. Because he's eating so well and he is good at chewing on baby spoons, we are very excited to start rice cereal with him soon.. and then on to the fruits and veggies we go. I can't wait to see all of the expressions and faces we get from these new tastes for him.

Halloween is coming up and we've decided that since one of Jackson's baby shower themes was ninja turtles that he will be a turtle and so will Justin and I. My mom made his costume and it is too cute on him. His halloween won't be too exciting though. He'll be in bed by dark I'm sure, I'll be heading off to work and Justin will be setting up to scare the kids in the neighborhood. But the pictures will be great. We're also going to our annual co-halloween party with our friend will (all of our decorations and his house) so we'll get to show off our family of ninja turtles there. Halloween will also mark the one year anniversary of when we found out about our little guy. It was a shock and suprise but something I wouldn't change for the world. This past year has been a whirlwind for us but we've had so many great memories and our lives are truly better than we ever expected. If things go the way we plan, then maybe next halloween we'll have another suprise to announce. We'll see.

I haven't had a chance to upload any recent pictures, but I promise I will do it soon.

It's been 4 weeks

2009-09-24T05:40:00.000-07:00

Since my last update, making Jackson 10 weeks and 2 days old now. As I continuously say, he's getting soooo big. We had a doctor's appointment when he was 8 weeks and my poor baby got 3 shots. He didn't cry for the first one, and for the second and third he only cried for about 30 seconds. He was so brave. He did run a fever later that night though so he got his first bit of baby tylenol... mmmMMmmm grape. The doctor said he's growing well. He was 12 lbs 2 oz which puts him between the 50th and 75th percentile for weight, and he was 23 inches long, which also puts him between the 50th and 75th percentile for that. The doctor also said he can now have a little bit of water or pedialyte between feedings if he's fussy. Yay! We did give him some pedialyte for a small case of diarrhea he had, and he loved it.

We are also now sending Jackson to my parents two days a week while I'm in school, and Oma's daycare two days a week while I'm in school. Oma (Ms. Robin) is a lady from church who retired to watch her own grandson, Lucas whose birth was mentioned on this blog back in March, and she decided to open her house up to Jackson and Delaney as well, whose birth was also mentioned on this blog back in April. Jackson seems to be doing well with it but I definitely hate leaving him. I miss him all day. And, on days when I'm done early, instead of napping or going to the gym or getting started on school work before I pick him up, I rush over to get him because I want to be with him.

While Jackson usually only sleeps about 6 hours at night and then in 3 to 4 hour stretches after that, he has slept through the night 3 times, which has been about 8-9 hours of pure bliss. :) We also have him sleeping in his crib, which he's taking to much better now. One problem we were having was that he ALWAYS wanted to be held. We could not put him down to play on his own without him crying. This seemed normal to us, but when Oma mentioned that he cried when she put him down, I realized that we needed to work on that. So we have, and now Jackson will lay in his pack and play and watch the animals on the mobile, or on his play mat or bouncy chair. I also just bought a mobile for his crib which he seems to like. And he now has a doorway jumper that he seems to like so I can fold laundry upstairs and have him close by, and he has an exersaucer that I just bought that he also seems to like. He's still a little small for it so I have to put a text book underneath of his feet so he can touch the bottom, but I think we'll get a lot of use out of it. The exersaucer was supposed to make it until Christmas, that lasted one day, ha ha.

In other news, we recently became members of our church, Abbott Memorial Presbyterian Church in Highlandtown. It's a great church and we feel very welcome there, and so does Jackson. He fits in great with the 6 babies born to the church this year. And, on October 4th, Pastor Paul will baptize our little guy, which we're really excited about. We tried Justin's old Christening outfit on him, and it looks sooooo cute, so I really can't wait to put it on him again.

In still other news... we FINALLY sold our pool table. We sold it Champion Billiards, so now we have an open living room/dining rooms which will definitely come in handy come Christmas time. I have a feeling Jackson will very much be spoiled this year. In fact, Pops and Grandmom (my parents) are already finished shopping for him. I'm sure it will be a very fun Christmas.

I believe in my last post, the school year was just starting. Well we are well underway now, and I'm exhausted. By the time I get home, get dinner done (or ordered, ha ha), wash the dishes and bottles, and put the baby to bed, I'm so tired that I seem to have no time for school work. The only thing I can say is Thank goodness this is my last semester. I just have to pray that I'll make it through it successfully. Once I do... I'll graduate with my Bachelor's of Science in Nursing. Finally.

Anyhow, I'm sure there's so much more I could say about how the last 4 weeks have gone, but I dont' want to make the post that long. I definitely have new pictures of Jackson, so I'll be sure to post them sometime soon (hopefully).

Thanks for sticking around and keeping up with our baby boy :)

Some new pictures

2009-09-10T21:10:00.000-07:00

Aunt Diane meeting Jackson for the first time

Lifting his head like a big boy

Hanging out with Auntie Krista

Meeting cousin Mara for the first time

Silly Daddy

My handsome big boy!

One of my favorite things... smiles from my little man!

My big boy's hand print at 6 weeks

And the foot print too!

Meetime my high school guidance counselor for the first time. He's my Poly grandfather.

My guess is that Jackson is thinking it's Christmas already, ha ha.

Hanging out on the Rode's boat at the church cookout

This is his way of saying he loved the boat ride

A great family picture with our little peanut

And just one of his many cute outfits :)

I'll post a real post sometime tomorrow!

6 weeks 2 days old

2009-08-27T11:59:00.000-07:00

And I love him more than anything <3

Time flies....

2009-08-24T09:16:00.000-07:00

...when you have a newborn!

My goodness. It's almost been two weeks since my last update... which means that Jackson will be six weeks tomorrow. Where does the time go? It's amazing how much bigger Jackson has gotten since we brought him home. He is quickly changing from my beautiful tiny baby boy to my big handsome baby boy. And along with getting bigger, he's getting much heavier as well. And,. on the stinkier side of things, his poops are getting much bigger too, ick!

Since I last updated we were finally able to visit mommom and poppop smith's house (who might be called mommom and poppop birdie, ha ha). And I must say, I just love seeing how much poppop adores Jackson. You know in the beginning that grandmoms will love and adore and spoil their grandkids like crazy, but seeing poppops with their grandbabies... that's the best. I adored my grandfather, and with the fathers Justin and I were blessed with, I know Jackson will too!

In the last two weeks, Jackson also spent some time away from us. Justin had a work trip for a couple of days so one night I decided to join my sister out for a few hours, so grandmom porter got to babysit, which I know she loved. The next night, Justin had planned for us to join some friends and a small get together, so Jackson got to spend a few hours at Auntie Krista and Uncle Matt's house, which definitely made Krista happy. I can already see how much she's going to spoil this kid.

Justin also finally got the chance to spend the evening alone with the baby. I went back to work last wednesday and fortunately for justin, I was able to come home early... BUT I worked yesterday (Sunday) and it was a late night for us and of course a late night for Justin. We're trying to wean Jackson from the breast, and he's not so happy about it so Justin had a hard time getting him to sleep.

That's another new occurrence. I've always been a small eater. Now dont' get me wrong, I can eat ALOT in one sitting, but I don't eat often... in fact once a day is sometimes enough for me. I even had trouble eating a lot while I was pregnant. And now that I was breastfeeding, Jackson was getting all the nutrients, and I was starting to get dizzy and feel sick a lot. So I made the decision to switch him over to formula. It's a really sucky decision to have to make. I love being able to feed him and I know it's best for him. And I know my decision is not the only one, but in fact it's the selfish, easy one. But with going back to work and school and my crappy eating habits, it's the decision I have to make. But it surely kills me every night when all he wants to do is nurse himself to sleep and I can't or else my milk won't dry up. I wish I could be home with him all the time so I could have exclusively breast fed, but unfortunately, in today's world, stay at home mom's are getting fewer and far between.

Anyhow, onto happier things. I mentioned already how big Jackson is getting. But I must also mention (or brag about) how advanced he is as well. Everyone who's seen him has talked about how strong he is and how much he moves and how well he holds his head. Well, I decided to put that to the test one night so I put him on his belly for tummy play time. And sure enough, he ROLLED OVER!!!!! He rolled from his belly to almost flat on his back. I yelled for Justin to grab the video camera but I think one roll tired the poor baby out and he wouldn't do it again. (By the way, he was 5 weeks and 1 day when he did this). BUT, the next night, he did it again. It's amazing how fast our baby is progressing. Soon enough he'll be crawling and walking.. and then of course I'll be blogging a lot less than I already do because I'll be exhausted from trying to keep up with him.

Well, right now Jackson is asleep in his swing, which he has a new found love for, so while I have the chance I'm going to shower and then it's off to Towson to get books for school which starts one week from today.. BOOOOOO!

Oh... BUT.. before I do, be sure to visit this website to see the rest of Jackson's pictures. Enjoy (and thank you soooo much Mandy!!!!).

http://www.mandysrokaphotography.com/clients/jackson/

Jackson trying to stand like a big boy

Tummy time on our play mat

One month old, asleep in the bouncy chair

Standing again!

Giving momma kisses :)

And don't be fooled by the cute picture. This kid DOES have some lungs!

The big boy in his new purple boppy chair! This is his Ravens chair for the football games. GO RAVENS!!!

And my little angel, asleep in his swing.

One Month Old

2009-08-14T08:24:00.000-07:00

Today Jackson is officially one month old. He was unofficially one month old on Tuesday seeing as he was four weeks old that day. But today is the 14th and just one month ago my baby boy came into this world. I can't believe it's been a month already and at the same time I can't believe it's only been a month.

In one month we've seen our baby boy grow so much. He is much much bigger than the day we brought him home.... he even has little chubby cheeks and fat rolls on his legs. BUT, he's still wearing newborn clothes. He just won't give them up. Which shocks me because he eats soooo much. He can easily eat 4 ounces every 3 hours and still be a little hungry in between feedings. In fact, I've just started giving him five ounces in his last bottle to hold him through the night. And it definitely works. He will now sleep a five hour stretch and then after his 5am meal he'll sleep until 8 or so. The only downside to that is he really doesn't sleep much during the day. He'll sleep in half hour increments every couple of hours and then he'll take one long nap later in the day for maybe an hour or two. With his eating and sleeping in such a whirlwind, I have NO idea how to start a schedule with this kid. Another new thing is that he won't just fall asleep on his own. No. There is no putting this baby down drowsy. If you want him to even think about sleeping on his own in his cradle or crib, he HAS to nurse himself to sleep. Hopefully that breaks soon or Justin will have a heck of a time getting him to sleep on nights that I have to work.

Besides the stuff that leaves us in questions, there's been some good stuff too. He LOVES bathtime for one, which makes mommy and daddy love bathtime too. He also has started to smile a little. Not really big noticeable smiles, but just enough to get us excited. He also likes to stand when you're holding him. That's an almost immediate cry stopper, along with sitting him up and letting him look around. He's such an observant baby and so wide-eyed. And, he's still so strong and such a wiggle-worm. Yesterday at my dad's, I laid him on a mat on the table and he was kicking away and moving his head to look around. And he seemed so close from rolling from his stomach to his back. It's amazing how strong he has. A little more tummy time and he'll be rolling and moving away. The other new thing that is possibly my favorite are his sounds. His little coo's and ah's are wonderful. I'll give him a kiss and say "ahhhh" and he'll open his mouth real wide and give a little smile. I'll tell you, the good and the cute and the heart warming definitely out-weighs the bad and the crying.

As far as pictures, I haven't uploaded any new one's yet, BUT we did have his pictures taken professionally. Mandy from MandySrokaPhotography, who did our first set of pregnancy pictures offered to take Jackson's newborn pictures as a shower/baby gift to us, and of course we agreed. She came to our house last Saturday and Jackson was wide awake for almost the whole session. I wasn't sure how cooperative he would be but he did soooo well (despite a little bit of crying and fussiness and a lot of eating) and Mandy got some great shots. She is so extremely talented and we are so thankful for her gift. So, with that, here are some of the pictures she took for us. Enjoy!!!

2 week checkup

2009-07-31T12:34:00.001-07:00

Although Jackson turned two weeks on Tuesday, he had his two week checkup with the pediatrician today. I was most concerned about his weight since he lost almost a whole pound when we brought him home. But alas, he not only gained his weight back (birth weight was 7lbs 9.4 ounces) but he also gained almost five more ounces. YAY!!!! He also grew a whole inch since he was born so he's now 21.5 inches long. My baby boy's growing fast already.

My next big concern was his fussiness after eating. Since we've switched to pumping/bottle feeding, he's sooo fussy after eating. I thought maybe it was gas, but I never hear to much gas after he eats. So then I was thinking colic and someone else mentioned acid reflux. And then someone mentioned maybe he's still hungry. So I was so confused. The doctor wasn't too worried and he said he's obviously eating well since he's growing well so he told us to either play with the amount we're feeding him or to try gripe water. So we'll see. We attempted to feed him more today, which he took and did not fuss about at all, but it ended up on Justin's shirt afterwards, ha ha.

Other than that all went well. He had his heel pricked for his PKU test which he HATED and screamed through but everything else was normal and he doesn't need to go back for almost 6 weeks, which then he will start getting some immunizations :(

Anyhow, since I'm sure what you REALLY want is some pictures, here are some more recent ones from the week! Enjoy. ( For some reason my computer will not let me rotate my pictures right now so I'll have even more to post soon)

Pictures

2009-07-30T11:57:00.001-07:00

Since we've been home..

2009-07-27T07:47:00.001-07:00

We've had tons of new experiences, individually and as a family. The first few days home were great but very tiring, especially at 3 am when we had a screaming baby and no clue what to do with him. We had lots of visitors and most importantly when we got home, we were finally able to introduce Jackson to his two fur brothers, Jiff and Carlin. This wen't suprisingly well. The boys were interested enough to sniff him, but that's it. They were more excited to see Justin and I. After the first few days we had our first Peditrician visit, which we were late to of course. It was a pretty routine appointment. They checked his weight and just did a little physical. As far as his weight goes. He was 7lbs, 9.4 oz when he was born, he was 7lbs 0.8 oz when we left the hospital and then at the doctor's he was 6lbs 12 oz. So he definitely lost some weight but the doctor wasn't worried. We're scheduled for a 2 week visit this friday to recheck his weight. If it's not back to his birth weight then he will talk about supplementing with us.

As far as feeding goes, I started out strictly breast feeding. When he said that his weight was down I decided to also start pumping so that we could give him at least one 2 oz bottle a day on top of the breast feeding. It just so happens that this one 2 oz bottle was our key to actually getting some sleep when we gave it to him during one of his night feeds. YAY!!!! Well, then he started getting fussy around 8pm every night and he would want to eat every hour and it still wasn't enough. For some reason I feel like between 8pm and 12 am I don't make any milk. It's really weird. So now we've decided to switch to strictly pumping and giving him bottles so we know how much he's getting and so we're sure he's getting enough. Occasionally a 3 oz bottle doesn't settle him so he'll still breastfeed a little after, but then he's content. Since we've been doing this, he's sleeping much better in between feeds and he's much happier at night. The only problem we've had is me not producing milk around 8pm at night. It's so weird but I'm hoping that the constant pumping every 3 hours will change that.

Anyhow. Since we've been home we've also taken a couple store trips (babies r us, walmart, BJ's, etc.) and while some have gone well, others have made me very anxious especially when he gets fussy. It's made me realize just why people don't venture out for a while after having a baby, ha ha. One of our other trips included having lunch with Justin's family on Justin's birthday, which is just 6 days after Jackson's. Justin's very excited because they're both Cancers and now he can pass down his grandfather's ruby ring to his son. :) Well the lunch trip went well but once it was over I was glad to be home because I was only 5 days into my recovery. And boy they do not tell you how sucky postpartum recovery is. I've taken care of patients after they've had a baby but not for very long, so I never got to see just how uncomfortable and sometimes painful it can be. Especially when you throw stitches into the mix. That has got to be one of the worst parts. Even almost two weeks later it can be uncomfortable to sit down or move around. But it gets better by the day. I've compared it to having the flu: when you're in the middle of it you feel like you've never felt worse in your life and that it's never going to end, but day by day you get better and then once your well you forget how bad it really was. The only difference is, I won't be forgetting anytime soon, ha ha. I'll be keeping this recovery in mind until I'm good and ready to do it all over again, which will be no time soon.

Another one of our outings was to my brother's friends house for a cookout. Lenny and Jess just had a little girl about 4 weeks ago and my brother was excited to get the two of them together. Of course Jackson and Isabella could have cared less. They both slept the whole time. But it was nice to get outside and my brother enjoyed holding his nephew for quite a while.

The rest of our time has been spent at home feeding and changing the baby. As far as changing goes, we quickly learned that with boys, the pee pee has to face down in the diaper, ha ha. We've had a couple of accidents warranting new outfits. I've also had quite a few incidents where Jackson has continued to poop as I'm changing him, or he'll decide to pee once I get the new diaper under his butt. Sometimes I'll go through 3 diapers before we finally reach the finish line. Justin just recently had his first round of pooping during the change and getting sprayed with pee. And here I was thinking that Jackson would christen him first. Oh well. At least he's changing diapers, and that's all I can ask. He was scared to originally because of the umbilical cord and the circumcision. But the circ has healed well and the umbilical cord fell off on Jackson's one week birthday. Now with his very own belly button, Jackson enjoys baby tub baths much more than he enjoyed those cold sponge baths. Bath time in our house is a family event. Justin gets to hold him up in the tub while mommy washes him down. Then, when we put him in the towel and he pees, daddy gets to hold him again while mommy washes him down again. ha ha.

On Saturday night I had my first crying episode since we've been home, and the funny thing is, it wasn't even over the baby. He was doing great but when Justin came home from work around 2:45 in the morning he woke me up asking where Carlin was because he wasn't chained up outside. Apparantly Carlin broke his harness AGAIN and jumped the fence. So Justin spent about an hour walking the streets looking for him, while I fed and changed the baby and cried because I knew how mad Justin was. Carlin eventually came back but it made for a very long frustrating night.

Yesterday was our first trip to church. We were late of course, but we made it, and Jackson slept the whole time. Everyone was excited to meet Jax and we were glad to make him the newest member. Jackson is the fifth baby born this year I believe so the church family is happy to have all of the new additions. After church we made our way to my parents house so that Jackson could meet his great grandmom porter. She has had a rough year and is recently recovering from a heart attack and pneumonia. In fact, it seemed to me for a while that she was just giving up. But when we walked in, she was dressed (she has just been in her housecoat since she was sick) and she was very excited to finally meet the baby. I was worried about her holding him because she's been so weak, but she held him for almost an hour. She even snapped at me saying "I got him" when I tried make sure he wouldn't wiggle out of her arms. It was definitely priceless and I think it made her day, week, month and year. She was a very proud great grandma and she seemed to be doing so much better than she had been just two weeks ago.

That brings us to today. So far we've spent our morning eating, answering emails, and writing this blog while the baby sleeps before his next meal in 15 minutes. Since we've had a busy weekend we'll probably stay home all day and hopefully I'll accomplish some cleaning and maybe even get to take a shower :) Tonight Julie and her boyfriend Nate are bringing us dinner (our 3rd lasagna since we've been home, ha ha) and then hopefully we'll have an early bedtime. I'll keep my fingers crossed for that one. Tomorrow Jackson will be two weeks old already. It seems like much longer ago that I was in the hospital waiting for the Pitocin to finally start working.

Since it's time for lunch almost, I'll post some new pictures later. Until then...

Jackson Scott Smith: The Countdown is Over, Forever Begins

2009-07-18T19:01:00.000-07:00

So I'm sure everyone has been anxiously waiting for this post, but, knowing it would take a while to put together I decided to wait for a bit (which means right now both Justin AND Jackson are sleeping and have time to do it, ha ha).

So anyway, here it goes.
On Tuesday morning Justin and I woke up around 4:30am. We finished getting everything together to go to the hospital (after not much sleep at all and after not eating since 9:30 pm the night before) to start our 6am induction. We got to St. Joe's at 6am and went to our room. I gowned up and waiting to get hooked up to the monitors. Jackson hates those monitors, so it immediately woke him up and got him kicking away. Well, the nurse came in after she got me in the computer system and told me my doctor failed to send my chart and my orders for induction so we had to wait until they got a hold of him before they could start the pitocin. This took TWO hours and was extremely frustrating since he is the one who called and scheduled the induction. Anyway. The doctor came in around 8:15 and checked me (I was still only 2cm) and at 8:30 the pitocin got started and after bumping it up quite a bit I started contracting. The contractions didn't hurt at all. I could only tell I was contracting because I could feel my stomach tighten. Jackson looked GREAT on the monitors and all seemed to be going well. Well, around noon, the doctor came back and checked me (the pitocin was pretty high so I should have progressed) but I was still not feeling any pain and when he checked, I hadn't dialated anymore at all. He then told me that he would come back later that afternoon to check me and if I hadn't progressed we would either stop the pitocin and I'd go home and try again next week (NO WAY JOSE!!!), we could stop pitocin, I'd eat and then start another drug and start pitocin again in the morning, OR we could do a c-section. I was very very disappointed by all of this and really worried that things were not going to go how we wanted. Well a lot of nurses came in throughout the day to see how I was doing (since I just did my practicum there) and the nurse manager suggested asking the doc to break my water. I completely agreed as I'd thought about asking him to do this before starting the pitocin. Well the doc came back around 4 and said IF I had dialated some then we could do that, but otherwise he wouldn't want to since I could ultimately end up with a c-section if breaking my water didn't work (since you can't go home once your water's broken due to risk for infection). So he checked me and i was dialated to 3 (thank God) and he broke my water at 4:15. Immediately the contractions started hurting (mind you the pitocin was nearly maxed out at this point) but I was handling everything very well. Justin decided to go and grab some lunch and by the time he got back 30 minutes later my labor went from painful but manageable to the worst pain in my life. Jackson apparantly flipped and was face up and a face up baby = bad back labor. At this point my idea of an epidural free birth went out of the window. The contractions were one on top of the other and I had no resting time at all. So the anesthesiologist came in and did the quickest epidural ever, thank God because I've seen them take a while before. After about 10 minutes I was pain free and doing quite well.

Anyway. 7pm is change of shift for the nurses and midwives. My doctor had gone home for the evening as he wasn't expecting me to deliver until early morning and so he'd wait for the call. In order to give report the nurse midwife came in to check me around 20 til 7. She didn't say anything at first and then she started laughing. I was only expecting her to say I was dialated to four or five (especially because I wasn't feeling a thing at all), so when she asked if I was feeling any pressure I was shocked and said "Nooooo, whyyyy??" Well, apparantly in 2 1/2 hours I had dialated from 3 to 9 and I was almost ready to push. It was crazy. Well she went in and called me doc and the new nurse came in to greet me. About 20 minutes after the midwife checked me, I told Justin I was really starting to feel the "I have to poop"sensation and to go get the nurse. Well finally the doc came in and checked me again and I was 10 cm and ready to push. So the nurse came in and we started pushing. Everything was going extremely well. At first I couldn't feel a thing and the nurse had to tell me when to push. Then I started feeling pressure and I could tell when I needed to push. Eventually the pressure got so strong, pushing was the only thing that made it feel better. Finally I started feeling the burning sensation and I knew he'd be here soon. So the nurse told me to stop pushing and they called the doc to come in. I wasn't pushing at this point but I could still feel him coming so I started getting worried and asking where the doctor was. He finally came in and in maybe two pushes, his head was out. I could have never imagined what any of that would have felt like. It was extremely painful and then all of a sudden i felt a huge relief. Once his head was out, I was still having pressure from the rest of the body, but they suctioned him first. When the doc told me to push again, I didn't think I could, but one good push later, Jackson Scott Smith was born (at 8:16 pm, less than an hour after I started pushing). I already had tears rolling down my cheeks as a natural response to trying not to push through all the pressure, but when he was born, the tears kept rolling. It was truly amazing. They put him on my chest and let us hold him for a bit before taking him to the warmer, and I don't think there's any way to really explain how it all felt. We were both in awe and amazed by everything. Eventually they took him to the warmer and Justin went with him while the doctor stitched me up and I started texting everyone about his arrival, ha ha. A little while later, the rest of the family was able to come in to meet our baby boy. Since I hadn't eaten in 24 hours, our friend Julie was kind enough to run out to get me and the family dinner, so once I ate, the nurse got me cleaned up and took me over to mother/baby where we'd be until Thursday morning.

The first night with him was very tiring. He went to the nursery for an hour to get a bath while I got settled in and then they brought him to us for his first feed. We held off a bit until feeding him because he was spitting up a lot of amniotic fluid, which scared the crap out of us, but finally I got to breast feed him for the first time, and wow is it painful. After feeding, I was extremely exhausted from no sleep and then pushing, so by 2 am i needed sleep. The nurse told me that they would need to take him to the nursery to get some vitals and check him out around 3am, so at this point I told them to keep him there until he was ready to eat again. So I slept for about two hours before they brought him back. The rest of the day was filled with feeding, diapers, visitors, vital sign checks for me, a visit from the pediatrician (who we LOVE), a visit from my doctor, and complete exhaustion. I was also in a lot of pain from my episiotomy so moving around and heading to the bathroom was very difficult. Later that night we decided that we would send him to the nursery for a bit so I could get some sleep. This helped a lot. Thursday morning was our discharge day so I spent the morning "learning" and signing lots of papers while Justin spent the morning with the dogs at home for a bit and then carrying all of our stuff to the car. Finally around 12:30 we were able to go home.

I'm going to end this post there as it's time to feed the little guy again, and I'll post again sometime soon with more pictures and an update of how home life has been since our special delivery arrived.

A special thanks goes out to my sister Krista who stayed in the room with us throughout the delivery and took most of these pictures to help us remember this forever.

Enjoy! And thank you so much to all of you for the prayers, support, and congratulations throughout the whole experience!!!

And approaching 1 full day old:

6 days late/D-day Eve

2009-07-13T08:50:00.000-07:00

That's right. My little widget is doing an oh so wonderful job of reminding me that today is day 6 that Jackson is overdue. But alas, to much relief, today is the eve of our delivery!!!! Tomorrow, at 6 am, we'll be at the hospital getting stuck with IV's and filled with Pitocin all to welcome this stubborn little guy to the world. And we truly can't wait.

I asked Justin yesterday if we could just skip Monday, but he said no, to which I gave him a sad face, ha ha. But really today will be a great day for us to just be home together and get ready to welcome our new little man into our family. Some last minute cleaning, a good yard clean-up (Justin gets to cut the grass, I get to use my new spiffy weed wacker, and then we mud wrestle to see who gets to clean up the dog poop), a short trip to BJ's to stock up on food for the doggies, and a few homework assignments for me and then we can spend our evening relaxing and imagining just how tomorrow will be.

Anyhow, nothing is really thought provoking right now, so I don't have much to say, but I do thank everyone for their constant prayers and support throughout the past nine months. And I hope you can hang in there with us just one more day to pray that everything goes smoothly tomorrow and that by tomorrow evening, we'll be holding a healthy beautiful baby boy!

4 days late.

2009-07-11T08:14:00.001-07:00

Today I'm officially 4 days late... well, not me, but Jackson. Guess he takes after me though. But, 4 days late means only 3 days to go until Tuesday. We're still hoping he comes on his own to avoid induction meds, but it's not looking promising. It would be completely inconvenient though if he did because so many people are on vacation, including the nurse i want there AND my doctor AND my sister AND my friend Julie. But if he chose to come today, I'd still be thrilled. The newest of our attempts is Evening Primrose Oil. It's supposed to help "ripen" the cervix, which mine is apparantly pretty "ripe" but it could also allow him to move lower which could start contractions. And if it doesn't do that, it could just help the induction process go a little more smoothly.

Anyhow, on the agenda for this weekend: cleaning today and church and a church picnic tomorrow. Monday will probably be spent sitting and staring at the clock and Monday night will surely be spent NOT sleeping.

Anyhow, here's to ONLY 3 days left.

How dare you Baby Widget!?!

2009-07-09T13:32:00.000-07:00

Haha. I find it humorous that the baby widget on the blog counted all the way down to zero and has decided to count BACK up. So if you want to keep up with just how overdue I am, he's doing a great job at updating for you.

So yes, I'm now officially 2 days overdue! Boooo!. We didn't get a firecracker baby, we didn't get our full moon due date baby, and alas, we did not get our 7/8/9 baby! And from how I feel now, it doesn't seem that we'll be getting a 7/9/9 baby either.

I'm pretty much agreed that he will in fact be a 7/14 baby instead if the induction goes smoothly enough to not allow me a 24 plus hour labor (yikes). So we'll be packing our bags this weekend (ok.. go ahead and laugh because you KNOW they've been packed for weeks) and planning for a 6am visit to St.Joe's Labor and Delivery to get things going on Tuesday morning. I'm still planning to have a natural birth (no pain-meds) so we'll see how it goes. I've gotten some responses from baby center from women who've done it so I'm trying to stay positive about the whole idea. Until then, I'll just keep visiting the gym everyday in hopes that something, ANYTHING I do will entice him to come out sooner.

Here's to high hopes :)

40 WEEKS!!!!! And still counting.

2009-07-07T15:37:00.000-07:00

Today, July 7, 2009, is my due date. I am officially 40 weeks pregnant. I have made it to full term completely (although full term is from 38 to 42 weeks technically) and I am so ready to have this baby, but, as they say, good things come to those who wait! I hope that is true for us.

I left off after our 39 week visit. Since then we haven't had too much to update really. Not much changed after that visit. The doc stripped my membranes at that visit, but to no avail. Although he expected a baby over the weeked, it didn't happen. Justin had his hopes up for a firecracker baby, and while I wasn't as thrilled with that idea, I definitely got to the point of hoping that would be the case. Especially after my last frustrated rant of a post. Every single day I've received call after text after facebook message after email asking "Any news" "Any baby yet" "Any updates." And while I appreciate that people are excited to meet this baby and that people have us in their thoughts, when you've come this far and still no baby, it gets kind of frustrating when you don't have any answers for these people. Hence my rant. I've also been given SOOOO much advice about how to get this baby out and it makes it seem like I'm sitting home doing nothing. I've read the advice, I've heard about the tricks and I'm trying everything I can and nothing's working. He's just not ready. And there's nothing I can do about that.

Anyhow, we spent our 4th of July as we usually do, with friends of my family. It was a little more low key than usual, but Justin brought the fireworks this year. He picked some up in Pennsylvania on his way back froma work trip and was so excited to set them off. While they weren't as grand as the people at the store said they would be, he had fun setting them off and the kids LOVED the sparklers that we picked up last minute. In a last ditch effort for the firecracker birthday, I had a glass of jazzberry wine, and still, no sign of Jackson.

On Sunday we finally made it to church again. It was good timing too because Pastor Paul has started a morning greeting where he picks one person or couple in the church to focus on and asks people to greet them. Well another new baby was born last week and, on the topic of babies, Pastor Paul thought he would mention that we would be the next couple to have a baby and he asked people to come say hello to us and to Jackson (in advance). Good thing we were early to church for once. Anyhow, after church, one of the members and her mother gave us a lovely handmade blanket for Jackson. She said it's their tradition to make a blanket for every new baby born to the church, so it was a really nice gift. (Speaking of gifts, I will start working on my thank you's for all of our showers and gifts as soon as my online class is over, so look forward to them by the end of July).

Monday was pretty low key for us. My sister and I went to the gym and then we stopped by the hospital so I could pick up some papers for school from the nurse I did my practicum with. While I was there, I told her that I'm worried most about Jackson getting too big for me to deliver. So, she told me that the midwife there (the one I really like) is really good at predicting weight just by feeling around outside. So I went into the exam room and she felt around and said he feels like a small baby, maybe around 7lbs. This definitely made me very happy and hopeful that she's right. Besides that, Not too much happened besides the building of anticipation for today's appointment.

And that brings us to today and our 40 week doctor's appointment. All of the pre-exam stuff went as usual: weight, blood pressure, checking for the baby's heartbeat, which was nice and strong. Then the doc came in for the exam. And the big news is... no news :( Unfortunately I'm still 2 cm and I'm 80% effaced. So the doctor stripped my membranes again. The only thing different about today was that I lost a lot of my mucus plug before my appointment. This is normal and doesn't necessarily mean anything (as women can start losing their mucus plugs much earlier in the pregnancy) but I'm hoping since it was a lot it will progress things some more. In the morning my doctor is going away for the rest of the week, so he scheduled me to be induced next Tuesday. I really don't want to be induced if he's not a big baby, because the use of induction meds can increase my chance of needing an epidural, which I don't want. But I also want enough time this summer to get us all on a schedule so when I go back to school things won't be crazier than I need to be. So I'm pretty content with the date he chose. It gives me one more week to let him come on his own, but it also means that I don't have to wait more than a week for him to come, which could really cut down on how much time we have together this summer. Anyhoo, if for some reason I go into labor before next tuesday, another doctor will deliver me, which I'm okay with because I've met her already and my nurse instructor tells me she's a great doctor.

In other news (not really other news but a different view of things) tonight is supposedly a full moon AND a lunar eclipse. So while I'm not expecting anything to happen tonight, I still have hopes that maybe I will go into labor. Because Lord knows if the planetary forces can't even get this baby moving, nothing but induction will. So I'm saying my moon prayers tonight! And I'll top it off with another glass of Jazzberry wine. Here's to hoping for a howling baby boy tonight :)

To end the post (which is hopefully my last "pregnant" post) here are my 39 week pictures that I didn't post last week and my 40 week pictures taken today. Enjoy!

And taken today after my appointment are my 40 week pictures!

Happy July 7th! And Happy full moon!!!

General update!!!

2009-07-03T14:21:00.000-07:00

-I'm due on Tuesday, July 7th.
-It's a boy.
-His name will be Jackson Scott Smith.
-No, he is not, and I repeat, he is NOT being named after Michael Jackson. And NO we are not changing his name to Jackson Michael.
-Yes I'm ready. I've been ready.
-I'm feeling fine, thanks.
-No, I'm not having any contractions.
-Yes, I am STILL pregnant. Thanks for suggesting it 400 thousand times.
-Yes, I know I'm HUGE, thanks for noticing.
-No, I DON'T know when he's coming. If I could predict the birthdate of babies, I'd be rich.
-No, my doctor has not talked induction and I don't think he's planning to in the very near future.
-Yes, I want a natural, pain medication free birth (keep comments to yourself please).
-Yes, I've tried everything to get him out sooner, nothing works.
-I know that sex, walking, spicy food, pineapple, accupressure/massage, castor oil (and the list goes on) is supposed to put me in labor, BUT IT HASN'T!!!!! And if you suggest that I try these things I may just scream
-Yes, I know... any day now.
-Sorry, me telling him how bad you want to meet him is NOT going to get him here sooner.

Sorry... been in a sour mood all day and I just keep getting the same questions every day by everyone: people I know, people I meet, random people in the store.
Maybe I won't be so bitter tomorrow!

Baby Widget??

2009-07-01T11:17:00.000-07:00

I just signed onto the blog and for some reason my baby widget countdown was completely white and not counting down anymore. Could this be a sign that today's the day? If so, Jackson has exactly 9 hours and 42 minutes to prove it :)

UPDATE: as soon as I pressed publish post, the widget came back up. So much for that idea!

Countdown: ONE/7

2009-06-30T18:01:00.000-07:00

Okay okay okay. I said I was going to update last week and I totally didn't. And I do apologize. I just wasn't in the updating kind of mood I suppose.

I left off with that I was 38 weeks. I had my 38 week appointment last Wednesday I believe. I went to the doc and after doing the exam he said I was 1 centimeter dilated and 80% effaced. He also said that the baby was head down (yay) and that he could feel the head. BUT, during that appt, my blood pressure was up so he scheduled me for the first appt on my 39 week day (which was today) and sent me off to labor and delivery to have my blood pressure and the baby monitored. Jackson was doing great and proved to be a very happy baby. And, of course, my blood pressure went back down to normal. Go figure. So, 45 minutes, two tubes of pee, and two tubes of blood later I was sent home. It was kind of funny though because I knew Justin had a meeting, and I told him if I texted to just ignore it until after the meeting but if I called to answer, and of course I called to tell him what was going on which made him think maybe that was the day. Anyway, afterward I got my school schedule for the fall, which isn't too bad and is way earlier than we got it last summer so I was very pleased with that. Then my friend Julie and I were off to target where I picked up a shelf to go in our back room which I was excited about, and a fan for the baby's room to circulate the air. Here's my 38 week pics:

My thursdays and fridays are getting mixed up but one of those days my sister and my mom came over and we went to a couple stores. I picked up some curtains for the baby's room which we've been needing to do. My mom used the pattern on the bed set to make valences to hang. Here are pics of those with the new curtains:

On Friday night while Justin was working I decided to try some more natural induction tricks. After my very spicy cheesesteak (with hots AND jalapenos) I went to the store to pick up a big container of fresh pineapple. To much dismay, it didn't work, but it did flush my system out VERY well. I was very tempted to try some castor oil, but I've yet to get that desperate. I've been following a thread online about women attempting castor oil and 400 some odd posts later, not too many have actually given birth after taking it. So I don't really think it's that effective.
I did however start with a pretty bad headache and some nausea Friday so I spent the rest of the night laying down.

At some point during the week, we also had our friend Krysta stop by. She was out shopping one day and found a diaper pail similar to the one we wanted so she bought it for us. The boys (Jiff and Carlin) LOVED having new company. Carlin still thinks he's a lap dog and made himself comfortable climbing all over her.

On Saturday, Justin and I ran errands all day. Our closet door in the hallway is one of those fold open doors and it came off of it's swivel thing (not really a hinge) so we bought some hinges in an attempt to attach it to the closet frame. Unfortunately when we tried to dril the screws in we found that the frame is metal so our project was put on hold. We also bought a plank of wood to put a shelf in the closet that I just installed a new rod in. This actually worked out very well and now I have even more storage space in the baby's room. And we finally put up the Lennox Noah's Arc clock that Justin's parents got us for Jackson's room. We originally had a cross there that his parents bought us, but, lucky us, there are a lot of screws and nails up around the room so we were able to find another place for it by the door. Saturday night Justin and I drove down to Savage, MD to the Ramshead there for a great (and of course spicy) dinner. I've been drooling for one of their burritos and their crab dip so I was in heaven. we had a great meal and then headed off to Catonsville for a small get together that Justin's work friend Damon was having. It was a pretty good night out for us and i was exhausted on the way home.

On Sunday Justin was up early to work the Federal Hill Festival. I had all intentions of going to church but woke up with a HORRIBLE headache. I ended up sleeping in until almost eleven and the headache still wasn't gone. I wanted to go see my grandma who was just getting out of the hospital and I was supposed to have lunch with a friend, so I took the tylenol and ventured out. My friend Sarah and I met in fed hill for lunch and walked around the festival for a bit and then I headed off to my grandmother's house. She went to the hospital on Father's Day for a possible stroke. They said at some point she had a mild heart attack and, after a week in the hospital, she was finally able to come home. She was still pretty upset about being in the hospital (apparantly the nurses weren't as good as she had the last time) and she was even more upset that her feet were so swollen and that my dad, aunt, and uncle moved her bed to the first floor since she wasn't able to move around a lot. But, she was doing a lot better than when she went in obviously, and she was starting to feel better too.

Sunday night when I came home from my parents, my headache was back. I had already taken tylenol twice that day and didn't want to take more. Since I was also feeling sick, I decided to check my blood pressure and of course it was high. I checked it every half hour for two hours and it didn't go down until the last reading which was right before bed. I told Justin I'd check it in the morning and if it was high again, we'd call the doc. Monday morning I woke up with a headache again and my blood pressure was high. I checked it every half hour for two hours again and it stayed elevated so finally we called the doc. I told him about my pressure, the nausea, and the headache and he told me to head over to L&D and that he would more than likely induce me. So Justin and I got everything together, loaded up the car, even took the trash out and headed off to the hospital. When we got there and got all hooked up to monitors my blood pressure dropped back to normal. They did a few consecutive readings (and took more pee and more blood) and because my pressure was fine while I was there and there was no protein in my urine, they wrote me a prescription for the headaches and nausea and sent us home again. So if you're keeping count, that makes THREE visits to labor and delivery for blood pressure and THREE times being sent home, still pregnant of course. We spent the rest of the day at the gym to try to speed things up, I got my toenails painted blue to entice him to come take a look, Justin cut the grass and then my sister in law came over to help me put the closet door back on (she has drill bits and we don't, ha ha). Despite the start of the day, it ended up being productive. I kind of have a feeling that Jackson knows there's things I wanted to and still want to get done before he gets here (like the hall closet, putting the shelves up in his room, laundry, weeding the garden, etc.) and he's holding out until they're all done because every day that I expect him to come and he doesn't we end up marking something else off of our to do list.

Anyhow, on to today.

TODAY, June 30th, marks 39 weeks for us and the last official chance for Jackson to have a June birthday. And if for some reason he was born at 11:59 tonight (which nothing is impossible I suppose) I would laugh so hard I'd pee myself. But I think that's not in our future. In fact, for us today marks a new countdown: our 1 week countdown until Jackson's due date. So were starting at seven and working our way down with high hopes that we only make it to six, ha ha. Today at my appointment my doctor said that I'm 2 centimeters dilated, 90% effaced, and at a -1 to 0 station (the scale is -3 to +3). What I need to be at for birth to be imminent is 10 centimeters, 100% effaced, and +3 station. So, where I am in the pregnancy, I'm right on and progressing well. But well is not quick enough. I'm becomming extremely anxious to meet our little guy and I'd really like him to come sooner than later. My doctor did strip my membranes today, which I looked up and learned that stripping the membranes is done during a vaginal exam when the doctor inserts his finger all the way into the cervix and pushes the amniotic sac away from uterine wall and the cervix. This is supposed to influence the body to release hormones to help the cervix ripen and thin out and sometimes contract, and it can only be done if you're dilated some already. While it caused a little cramping afterward for me, I haven't had any really contractions from it. I actually just started about a half hour ago with a few braxton hicks contractions, but they don't really mean much and are never really consistent with me. The only real contractions I've had came last Wednesday after my appointment. They were pretty strong but they weren't close enough together and they were gone completely by bedtime. Since then, we've been trying everything to get this kiddo out: sex, spicy food, walking, pineapple, accupressure, vacuuming TWICE in two days ha ha. We'd like him to be here within the next day or two so we can make it to the annual fourth of July party that my family attends because there's a lot of people who would like to meet him there. Unfortunately I don't see it happening. Unless something goes on tonight, I think he's going to wait a little closer to his due date before he comes. That would make him punctual like daddy, which is okay. But we are PRAYING that he is not like mommy.... late to everything! We shall see.

Anyhow, I spent the day with my sister shopping for bed risers for my grandma, which made her extremely happy. I bought square ones but the legs to her bed are round and didn't fit. So I told her I'd go out and get new ones. I don't think she thought I'd be back with them today, so when I showed up and we put them under the bed and she saw how she wouldn't have to bend over to make the bed or struggle to get in it since it was so low, she had a huge smile which was worth the headache and nausea I suffered through while out shopping for them. Unfortunately, because I was gone all day I didn't take any pictures for my 39 weeks, but I will be sure to do that in the next few days. Here's to hoping I won't have to take 40 week pictures, ha ha.

To end the post, we must congratulate another couple on their new edition. My brother's friend Lenny and his fiance Jess gave birth to a gorgeous little girl on the 27th. They named her Isabella Christina and she was born just one day before her due date. We have yet to meet her, but we hope she and Jackson will have a great time playing together at future game nights at my brother's house! So congrats to Jess and Lenny and we hope everyone else has a great and exciting week. Pray for some baby news soon :)

Countdown: 2

2009-06-23T09:09:00.001-07:00

38 weeks = just two weeks/14 days left!!!!!!!!! Come on baby Jackson!

Update tomorrow after my 38 week appointment.

Countdown: 3

2009-06-20T19:40:00.001-07:00

It is officially week 37!! Which means I am officially FULL TERM :) yay!!! But actually we're already 4 days into week 37 and just 3 days away from week 38!

I left off the last post on Sunday which was mine and Justin's one year wedding anniversary. We had plans to attend a cookout at his aunts house, and what a cookout that was. It was actually not a cookout at all, but a suprise baby shower for me from his side of the family. There were also a few of our friends there. It was definitely a nice suprise and beautiful day for it. When I got there everyone was waiting on the porch for me and then we were ushered inside for sandwiches and gifts. I got, again, a lot of great things and even a few great homemade gifts. Among the gifts was a diaper cake my mom made, a lennox noah's arc clock from justin's parents for the nursery, a really soft and gorgeous handmade blanket from justin's aunt barbara (the shower was at her house), a very nifty handmade carrier that straps the baby on a couple different ways from Justin's Aunt Sharon and cousins, and so much more. Krysta, the bartender at Ramshead who put together the shower there was also at this shower. She put together a few baskets of things and each basket had a poem for that talked about the things in that basket and correlated to a certain age group. It was a lot of fun to open and it included a lot of great things. Another gift we got was a gorgeous cradle. Justin's grandmother gave this cradle to Justin's cousin Stacey for her son Owen. She decided that she wanted the cradle passed down to all of her great grandchildren so Stacey had a a plaque put on it that is engraved "The Great-Grandchildren of Ruth & Bill Waicker" and another plaque with Owen's name and birthday on it. I'm very excited to use this cradle in our room with Jackson for the first few months and then to pass it down to the next Waicker baby that comes along.

Because it was also our one year anniversary, Justin's mom brought the top tier to our wedding cake which has been in her freezer for a year! (We actually ate half the day after our wedding so it was half of the top tier). We were shocked to see how well the cake held up and suprisingly, the cake didn't taste that bad either. So, I guess the lesson here is that everyone should order their wedding cakes from sugarbakers! The raspberry amaretto is my favorite.

That night we went home and we were so exhausted we attempted to go to bed as early as possible. Unfortunately I had a horrible time sleeping which was a bummer since I had practicum in the morning. Practicum was quite interesting on Monday actually. We had a lot going on and ended the day with a patient who just didn't seem mentally right! I wish I could share the details, but I can't. I can say though, it made for one heck of an experience.

Tuesday was my official 37 week day! I was supposed to have practicum but my preceptor was on call and didn't get called in, so I slept in. I didn't do much during the day, but I did work the Plain White T's show that night at Ramshead. On Wednesday I worked a 92Q talent search at Ramshead which ended up being a talent search for a bunch of kids, so really, I didn't do much. But on Wednesday my headaches started. While I was at work, I started getting a headache and got hot, but tylenol seemed to take care of it. I had practicum on Thursday, which lasted four hours longer than I expected because I felt bad leaving a patient who planned a vaginal birth but had to have a last minute c-section. While at practicum, I started getting a headache again and felt hot again. My preceptor said we'd take my blood pressure but I never got around to it.
On Friday I went to a info/lunch with my mom and Justin's aunt and driving home from dropping my mom off the headache started again and this time it was really bad. I was driving through the tunnel next to a tanker that smelled like gas, so that just made it worse. By the time I got home the headache was really bad and I was really hot and my face was beet red. So I took my blood pressure and it seemed to be approaching 130/100, which is really high for me. So I called my doctor and he told me to go to Labor and Delivery to be monitored. Of course when I got there, my blood pressure had calmed a little to 132/86. They had me lay down and drink water and about 45 minutes later, my blood pressure was back down to 98/68 so they let me go home. It was kind of funny because not knowing what to expect we threw all of our stuff (suitcase, diaper bag, etc.) in the car before we went. But it was also kind of sucky because I felt so stupid going home like I made a big deal out of nothing. The midwife (who actually had the patient I was with the day before) told me to watch my salt, so no more crab dip for me. Unfortunately though, despite trying to stay away from salt, my headache and the hot flashes have come back today.

Speaking of today, my wonderful sister in law offered to come over to help me clean. While she scrubbed the bathroom, kitchen and dog room and vaccumed the whole house, I worked hard on cleaning out the closets in the nursery and trying to get everything in place, and I'll tell you, my lower back is not letting me get away with working so hard! Around 5:30, our friends Jared and Kris brought over their youngest Joey. He's about a year old and so adorable. We offered to watch him for the night while they went to their daughter's dance recital. Joey absolutely loved Justin and he even loved the boys. And even better, the boys seemed quite okay with him as well. After dinner and helping me give Joey a bath, Justin went off to work and I attempted to put Joey to bed. Unfortunately though, he was MUCH more interested in the TV, but it was very cute watching him sitting up watching tv but nodding off every now and again because he was so tired. Speaking of being tired, he's currently sleeping with his butt in the air in the "frog" position. Definitely very cute. Oh, and speaking of Jared and Kris, Kris was at the shower on Sunday too and she made us a very nice anniversary gift (she framed our wedding invite in a shadow box with flowers) and she made us a baby shower gift too (one of our sonogram pictures and one of our maternity pictures framed with a poem). They were both very nice and definitely worth mentioning.

Tomorrow is Father's Day so we'll be celebrating Justin's first Father-to-be day! We'll start with church and then hopefully end up visiting both of our dads as well. He doesn't know it yet, and I doubt he'll read the blog tonight, so in the morning he'll be opening his gifts. The first is a shirt that has the superman symbol, but instead of the S, it has Dad written in it. I also got him a blue t-shirt that says "Like son" and I got the matching 3-6 month t-shirt for Jackson that says "Like father". I can't wait until he opens them because I know he'll love them. Since our first anniversary was technically the "paper" anniversary, I ordered a calendar online for him. It's a desk calendar and each month has a picture next to it that corresponds to that month during our first year of marriage. October has a picture of us dressed as ceasar and cleopatra from last Halloween, November has our first sonogram picture of Jackson, and February has a picture of our 20 week sonogram when we found out that we would be having a boy!!!! Each month also has a lyric from our wedding song or some other words like "It's a boy". It definitely turned out to be a very simple but nice gift.

Anyhow, I wish I had a doctor's visit to update about but the doctor said he didn't need to see me this week. But I do have one during week 38 and hopefully I'll have something exciting to update about, maybe a couple centimeters or so. That would be great!!! Wish us luck.

37 weeks, 2 days in hospital scrubs.

Baby Shower number 3:

The gorgeous cradle!

One of the many games. Guess the baby food...yikes!

A drinking game for the younger crowd: who can suck down a bottle the fastest. Winner: Stacey.

A drinking game for the older younger crowd: who can suck down a sippy cup the fastest. Winner: Aunt Sharon.

Our wedding cake, one year later.

Justin and I on our 1 year wedding anniversary.

Happy Father's Day to all the dads and Happy Sunday to everyone else :)

Mini Update

2009-06-17T20:04:00.001-07:00

Just 20 days left until my due date. Can't wait to meet this little wiggle worm <3

(real update tomorrow or friday)

Countdown 4

2009-06-14T06:47:00.001-07:00

Wow, just four weeks left. But currently Jackson is reminding me that I still have four long weeks to go as he shoves his foot under my rib.

It seems like it has been forever to get to this point and now in just four (or 3 1/2) weeks our little guy will be here and home with us! The nursery's finished, our suitcase is packed his clothes are laid out. The changing table is set, he has toys galore, and he even has a potty. The car seat is in the car, the strollers in the living room, and the pack and play, bouncer, and swing are all put together with batteries already in them. But it's still so unreal that pretty soon, despite all the new things in the house and all the fuss, a baby will be joining our home... forever! I feel him move and roll and kick everyday. I hear his heartbeat at every doctor's appt (and sometimes at home when I'm worried he hasn't moved enough) and yet still, it all seems so unreal. I'm actually typing this while I'm sitting in his room looking around at his crib and armoir, his name above the crib, his new animal pictures, the boppy pillow under my feet, and I know that no matter how I think things will be, I cannot fathom what it will really be like to meet him at last!

I think I left off the last post talking about the baby showers. I finally have most of the stuff put away and ready to go for Jax. This past week wasn't too crazy exciting for us. Justin and I did both work the Beastie Boys show on Tuesday which was quite interesting, and then we hung out for a bit after so Justin could have a few drinks with some guys from security and some of the bartenders. We made it home at, oh, 3am maybe knowing very well we had a 10:30 doctor's appointment. I was up and ready to go, but I could tell Justin definitely felt like crap after the night before, but of course I still dragged him to the doctor's with me anyway. I knew this would be the appointment where the doctor would check me for the first time to see if I've dilated any. And he did check me, but no dilation for me yet. He did say that I'm 50% effaced or thinned out which is good. He also said that the baby is head down (YAY!!!!) and that he probably ways approximately 6-7 lbs right now (YIKES). And then, out of nowhere, he tells me he doesn't need to see me for another two weeks. I was pretty shocked considering this week was supposed to be the start of my weekly visits and quite frankly I was disappointed, but who's to argue with the fact that everything has gone well, I'm right on target, and he doesn't anticipate anything going wrong from this point on. I'm still kind of bummed out though because I was kind of excited to get weekly updates as to when the doc thinks he might arrive. So we went about the rest of our day and that was that.

Thursday was a pretty low key day for us. I had lunch with some friends from high school and then ran errands all day. Friday was another practicum day for me at the hospital and man was it a lot busier than I've been subjected to so far. At one point we had patients in 7 out of 9 rooms and 7 patients in the three room triage and the waiting room combined. Jen and I had two patients to take care of and at some point it seemed like they might deliver very close together. I went to help at triage stripping beds and putting patients on the monitors. Then Jen came in and said our patient was about to deliver. And sure enough, with one push, she had her fourth baby. It was very fast, a little chaotic even, but it was the first girl I got to see delivered and she was probably one of the cutest baby girls I've ever seen. Then, while Jen was taking care of that patient she sent me off to our other patient to be the "nurse" while she was getting her epidural. Thankfully the charge nurse was in there with me, so while she did all the catching up on the charting, I stayed with the patient. After her epidural, we took our first patient over to the mother/baby unit and then I headed off. I had already stayed an hour later than I had planned and I had to work, but I really would have liked to stay until 7 when Jen got off and gotten to see two deliveries in one day (and my first delivery from someone from another culture). Anyhow, I got home quickly, changed for work and relaxed on the couch for a bit, only to get a call about not working. While I know I should have work, I definitely welcomed the night off because I was exhasted.

Yesterday was a day of parties for us. Justin and I had originally planned to go to our friend Mike Maiste's karaoke party and then we found out that friends of the family were having a dual graduation party. So Justin and I decided to split the forces to have one of us at each place. Justin went to Mike's and apparantly had a great time, and I went to the Oberlanders and also had a great time. I can't speak to much for Justin's party, but the Oberlanders had tons of delicious food, volleyball, cornhole, horse shoes, a fire pit, an open pool (which I bought a new belly bathing suit for but it was a little to chilly for me), lots and lots of drinks, and karaoke (by my Uncle Bert). I think it's safe to say it was a good time had by all. The oldest, Rocky, graduated from UMBC this past winter and his younger sister Sara graduated from Bel Air high school a week or two ago. The night ended with a poker game (which I lost my money to my own brother) and I was home and in bed by, oh, maybe 2:30am. It was a good weekend so far.

Today, June 14 2009, is mine and Justin's one year anniversary from our actual wedding day. It's a gorgeous day out but we didn't plan anything big. We're heading off to Justin's aunt's house for a cook out and then, as far as I know, that's where our plans end. With all the chaos of the past few weeks, we didn't have time to plan much or get eachother anything that great. I did at the last minute order Justin a "paper" gift (because that's what I heard the gift is supposed to be for your first anniversary) but it probably won't be here until tomorrow. I wish we would have had more time to plan something (like a nice dinner by the water, a weekend away, or even a picnic with just him and I) but that's our busy lifestyle for ya. Maybe next year?

Anyhow, here's some more pictures to add to the bunch. Have a great Sunday. Enjoy the gorgeous weather that June 14th seems to grace us with annually :) And pray for a baby in the next week and a half because we're ready to have this little one with us!

New shelves in the baby's room!

Animal pictures that Justin's mom painted for the baby's room. Justin's dad made the frames.

Belly pics: 36 weeks 2 days!

BabyShower #1 at my brother's house (from the last post)

Countdown 5...Finally

2009-06-07T12:19:00.000-07:00

So I haven't updated in a LONNNNNGGG time but it's been for good reasons. We've just been soo soo busy. Since I last updated we had our first infant care class on the 28th. It wasn't really what we expected actually. I was hoping for more of how to change an infant, how to feed an infant, how to hold one, etc. But we mostly watched videos about SIDS and swaddling. I didn't learn too much EXCEPT that you cannot put sunscreen on an infant. We had our second class this past week and we watched more videos about baby proofing the house and learning what each different cry means. We also did infant CPR which Justin and I both knew already but was good to get a refresher. Justin did learn some from this class so it wasn't so bad. He also said he wants to practice swaddling and diaper changing which makes me happy.
I've also started my practicum at St. Joe's. I'm on the labor and delivery unit and I get to follow a nurse around for a total of 84 hours. It's generally 12 hour shifts but because of work I'm going to be doing some 8 hour shifts instead. I've only had three shifts so far but I've done a lot already in those shifts. I've seen a regular vaginal delivery, a vaginal delivery with forceps and twins being delivered vaginally in the OR in case a c-section was necessary. I've also been able to experience triage nursing and I've learned a lot of new and practiced a lot of old skills. And I finally saw a delivery with a midwife which I think was great. It was on a slow day so she was able to stay the entire time she was pushing (the vaginal delivery I saw during OB the doc came in just before the baby was born) and she was just all around amazing. I still have about 50 hours to go but it's pretty awesome so I'm not too worried. I've established that no matter what I'm delivering at St. Joe's. While GBMC is okay to deliver at, I just love L&D at St. Joe's and I know we'll be well taken care of there. And one of the other doctor's has already said that if my doctor is at GBMC that day, she'll deliver me because she does him favors all the time anyway :) so I'm pretty happy about that. I've yet to see a patient deliver without pain meds, but I really hope I do get to experience that before I attempt it on my own.
Aside from my practicum, my online class started on the 26th. It's not really too much work right now, but it is difficult remembering when i have to log on to get my assignments in. We also have 3 papers to do for that class, one of which is due this Friday, so it's a little more time consuming that I originally thought. But I'm gonna go ahead and say that if I had to take this class next semester I'd not be too happy because it would be a lot more time consuming then.
So far, I'm still working too. In fact, my first day of practicum I left at 5 and went home, ate really quickly, and went straight to work for the Legwarmers. It was an extremely long night and by the end of the night I was exhausted. So exhausted that I slept in REALLY late the next day and we missed church yet again. I also worked this past sunday and I plan to work on Tuesday (for the Beastie Boys) and on Friday. I'm on the schedule for next week as well and after that it will be a play it by ear type deal.
As far as the countdown goes, I was officially 35 weeks last Tuesday. This is definitely a triumph because 35 weeks is the point at which they will not try to stop your contractions if you go into labor because the baby will most likely be fine. My 35 week appointment was pretty uneventful but the doctor did inform me that my check ups will now be every week (starting this week) and that he will start checking to see if I'm dilating at each visit. I hear this is kind of uncomfortable, but I'm still kind of excited to see if anything is going on. He should also be able to tell us if the baby is head down and how big he is. So I'm even more excited. And I say us because Justin is taking off of work for this visit so he'll be with me :) Justin has also started leaving his phone at the desk when he goes to the gym at work with the instructions to get him if his phone rings and it's me calling.
More on the baby front, he's definitely running out of room in there. I can feel him poking out everywhere and his movements are so strong now that sometimes it's painful (he's busy shifting around as we speak). The acid reflux is also back with full force. Twice in one week I woke up as I was about to vomit, but I was able to control it. I'm eating probably WAY too many TUMS these days. but I'm not tooo concerned about that. My stretch marks are also stretching more which is disheartening, but I know it's for a good cause. It's just going to be really tough post delivery when they're still there. I'm at the point now where I'm confident in saying I'll probably never wear a bikini again. It's amazing how much this stuff changes you.
In more news, my family's baby shower was this past weekend. It seemed like forever ago that we started planning it and it seemed like it would be forever until it got here but alas June 6th arrived. After rain all week, we were blessed with some sunshine and warmer weather for the big day. We had a great turn out, lots of food, and got some great gifts. We got tons of small things like lotions, bibs, cotton swabs, medicines, toys etc, we got all of our bathroom stuff including a tub seat for baby, a tub side seat for me and justin, AND the potty :), and we even got a few big items like the swing and infant seat and of course the stroller and carseat. Justin's mom and dad made pictures for the nursery (hand painted and the frames hand made) of the animals on his bedding set, and we got a lot more gifts that my mind is just blanking on. It turned out to be a GREAT day overall and we are so thankful and blessed to have everyone there to support us and to help us prepare for this next step in our lives.
On Sunday we finally were able to get to church, and I'm glad we did because we got to see our friends Rob and Sharon have their little guy Lucas Ryan baptized by Pastor Paul. It was amazing how good this baby was and how wide eyed and content he was when Pastor Paul took him around to introduce him to the congregation. We were glad to share this moment with them and we were also glad to see some of our friends that we haven't seen in a while. When we came home, we made a trip to Babies R Us to return a few things that we got doubles of (and I must say this was much easier than people have told me.. we had no problems at all) and then we headed home to relax for a bit. While at home, my brother called and invited us over for dinner that he grilled up and we of course couldn't turn down a good skewer meal :) So when we finally got back, I had to head off to work and Justin was able to relax for the rest of the day. I got to work and when I came in, one of the bartenders Krysta told me to shut my eyes. She led me into the venue and up to the main bar where all of the bartenders were waiting to yell surprise. They all had gotten there early to set up so they could use the hour before doors opened to throw me a surprise shower. I totally was not expecting it (and if you were there you'd know because I turned tomato red) but it definitely put a HUGE smile on my face. They had gotten us gifts (the pack and play, a diaper bag, the baby sling for me, two memory frames, and a onesie that says ' I take my bottles shaken not stirred') and even had a cake and flowers there. Krysta definitely put a lot of effort into it and I'm sooooo thankful for it. It definitely made my day!! The best part is, Justin knew the whole time and didn't slip once. He even made up a story earlier that day about how it was supposed to be bad weather late last night so he wanted me to take his car to work, meanwhile it was sunny out with not a cloud in the sky, but I still fell for it. AND while we were in babies r us, he spotted Krysta there getting the gifts and hid it really well and even had a story planned if I questioned why he jumped in front of me the way he did and why he wouldn't let me look around. ha ha. I was truly impressed.
Today I put the pack and play together and organized some of the baby shower stuff but our house is still a wreck with things everywhere (after I spent two days cleaning last week.. .like literally scrubbing the floors). We again put the pool table on craigslist hoping for a buyer because will all the stuff we have now, we definitely could use the room. Tomorrow I'll be 36 weeks (so just four more to go and just 28 days at that) and I'm definitely keeping up with the countdown.
As far as pictures go, they're at the top but it's late and I have to be up early so I'll organize and label them on Wednesday or Thursday. I'll also add this week's picture and pictures from the baby shower when I do.
I hope everyone has a great week!!

Pictures from the O's and Nat's game at National's Stadium

34 week pictures.

35 week pictures

I promise...

2009-06-02T16:01:00.000-07:00

I will update soon!!!! I've been a slacker, but for good reasons.

Countdown: 6

2009-05-26T16:08:00.000-07:00

Today marks 34 weeks officially so now we have just six weeks or 42 days left. This weekend was a long weekend, thankfully, but still pretty busy for us. On thursday we spent the night hanging out with my brother and all his friends for game night. We ended up watching American Idol most of the night before even starting a game of Taboo.. and I must say the Kara and the bikini girl were hilarious!!!! Friday was a work night for both of us. I got home earlier than usually (maybe 1 am) so I went to bed while apparantly Justin hung out at No Way Jose's for a bit with some of the other security guards until maybe 4am. tisk tisk tisk. I say tisk because he knew we'd be busy all day Saturday.

Anyhow, Saturday Justin and I joined Wayne and his friends again at his friend Lenny's house for a cookout. Lenny's fiance Jess is also pregnant and due just one week and some change before me with a little girl. The cookout was nice, and hot, and afterward about 14 of us took the drove to college park and then took the metro to DC to watch the O's vs. Nats game. And man do I have a lot to say about that. First of all, the metro was crazy scary for me. And at the metro station there was only one bathroom that they were only letting one person at a time use.. and it was really GROSS! Then, when we got to DC we waited in line FOREVER to get our tickets from will call. We ended up missing 2 1/2 innings. When we finally got in, we found out our seats were on the OTHER side of the stadium and a few floors up (we were in the 300 section) and none of the escalators were working. Just GREAT for two 8 month pregnant chics!!! We finally got to our seats in the middle of the 3rd inning but I was starving at this point so then Justin and I waited forever to get food. We finally get food and sit down when everyone else decides to go get food... and would you believe that at this point (middle of the 4th inning) the stadium had run out of Nachos. What stadium runs out of nachos in the middle of the fourth inning, really???? So anyway, it was a pretty quick game and when we go to leave the metro is PACKED!! We finally get down to the track and they tell us the green line is not taking passengers and told us the other one was switching to green so we get on it. We get a few stops and then they tell us there's technical problems that we have to get off of the train and it might be a while before the green line is back up and running. We finally got back when it was well past 11 I'd say. I of course had to pee again and the security guard wouldn't let me until Justin says "uh, she's pregnant". Oye!!!
Despite all the issues though, it was a good day.

We woke up late on Sunday, thus missing church, and spent the day running around. We went to Gold's Gym and Bally's trying to find a gym to join. We also went to the mall for a bit and to Home Depot to get some things so I can put a new rod in the closets to get more use out of the crazy A-framed closets. Because they're A-framed, what I bought didn't work so well so we went to walmart to try to find a different piece, with no luck, but Justin did find a Ravens shirt that says # 1 Dad on the back :) It was very cute but I told him he couldn't wear it until after the baby is born, just so we don't get jinxed or anything.

Anyhow, yesterday we decided to head to Lowes to find the piece, which apparantly doesn't exist, but we found something else that we were able to use. We then were headed to Bally's because I liked it better there, BUT before we went in we realized that White Marsh is kind of a drive to get to the gym, especially when Gold's is almost right up the street. So we changed our mind's and headed to Gold's, which of course was closed for the holiday. So instead, Justin went to blockbuster and I got a pedicure, which felt amazing by the way. We spent the rest of the night at home cooking dinner and watching TV and Justin packed to leave for his trip today. I had to pick up my sister and her boyfriend at the airport (they went to Vegas for the weekend for Matt's birthday) and didn't get home until after one, but when I did I went right to bed and Jackson started right up with a crazy amount of kicking. I woke Justin up to say goodnight when I went to bed, and I'm glad I did because he got to feel him going nuts in there for a good 10 to 15 minutes. It was great.

Anyhow... on to 34 weeks. This morning Justin left early because he's leaving for Pennsylvania today and i slept in because I woke up a good 3 or 4 times last night to pee. Then my sister came over and we went to Gold's Gym. I mostly did walking and cycling but my sister showed me this thigh machine that I know I'm going to become really good friends with. In fact I may go back tomorrow just because of that machine. Oh.. and a great part about today was when I got the mail, there was a check from patient first for $164 that I wasn't expecting. That's always the start of a good day. Today officially starts my summer classes as well (woo hoo... right!) which are thankfully just my practicum and online class and I installed the car seat base in Justin's car today :) Tonight I plan to watch Bride Wars, if I don't wanna watch House instead, and retiring early because I'm actually pretty tired.

I didn't take any pictures today (I'm trying to wait for sunlight) but when I do, I'll post them and the pictures from the O's game. Stay tuned!!!!

Pictures

2009-05-21T16:29:00.001-07:00

So I didn't take pictures on Tuesday but I did take a few yesterday and today. Aside from taking pictures, I got some more windows cleaned, all of the baby's clothes washed and put away, and we got our washer looked at. Apparantly it wasn't broken but the guy things our main drain may be getting clogged. GREAT!!! So I ended up doing laundry at my brother's house all day yesterday for no reason. But while I was there, I spent some quality time hanging out on the hammock. Here's a few pictures of 33 weeks and 1 day:

Last night I wasn't feeling so great and for some reason I felt like I was going to be sick. So we went to bed around 10:30. I didn't get to sleep until almost 12 and then at 1 in the morning I woke up just as I was about to vomit. I was able to hold it back and I went to the bathroom to camp out for a bit with my water and TUMS. After a lot of concentrating, I was able to prevent myself from vomiting, but I still had the taste and smell of it in my mouth and nose. I ended up hanging out on the couch for almost two hours before I finally was able to fall asleep again... propped up on pillows of course. When I woke up this morning, I still felt kind of crappy, but was able to get some stuff done. Carlin broke one of his toenails yesterday and he was in pain, so I wanted to take him to the vet to get them clipped properly, but apparantly you need an appt for that, so off he goes tomorrow. But I did manage to give him a bath outside today. Jiff, of course, caught on to what I was doing and escaped the bath today, so he's doomed to the tub sometime this weekend. After that, I finished the rest of the laundry and felt like crap the rest of the day. But I did manage to take some more pictures. Here's 33 weeks 2 days:

I must also add that Justin came home with roses today, just to make me feel better. He's certainly very good at that.

Countdown: 7

2009-05-19T16:16:00.000-07:00

Starting today we have just seven weeks or 49 days until baby Jackson greets us (hopefully not even that long).

And the way my mind works, in JUST 20 days (which is like no time) we'll have ONLY 29 more days left which is practically right around the corner, ha ha.

I didn't take pictures today because.. I just didn't. But I will take some tomorrow.

Instead I ran errands all day and will be doing the same tomorrow, starting with washing clothes at my brother's house since our washer decided to crap out on us this past weekend. Someone is coming tomorrow night to look at the washer though, so hopefully it's fixable.

On the pregnancy side of life, I've been feeling really crappy today. Comfort no longer exists, and neither do normal knees and ankles. At night I sleep with 5 pillows (two under my head, which is normal, one to squeeze, also normal, one between my legs and one wedged under my side/back). Walking is not soo fun now that my entire pubic bone hurts pretty much and when I turn in bed, I can hear my bones pop. FUN!!! My feet are tingly sometimes b/c of the extra fluid around my ankles and my legs are all together restless. Underneath the left side of my ribs is constantly uncomfortable (foot? hand? uterus? who knows). And Jackson's pushes/punches/kicks are definitely much stronger. They're not really painful, just strong and not what I'm used to. Oh.. and the stretch marks continue to be itchy and painful and the acid reflux has returned with a vengence. I'm not sure that over-dosing on TUMS exists, but if it does, I'm probably very close to doing so (or at least it seems that way with the ridiculous amount of TUMS I chomp down each day to control the reflux). I never really understood what people meant when they said the end of pregnancy is sooo uncomfortable, but I totally get it now!

On a good note (for me, not for Justin)... let the nesting begin. ha ha. Yesterday I told justin I wanted to repaint the living room/stairwell/upstairs hallway. He disagrees COMPLETELY. I also got his car washed on Friday. I cleaned all the upstairs windows yesterday (and will probably do all the downstairs windows tomorrow now that I've gotten some more window cleaner). I also folded lots of baby clothes yesterday and will fold more tomorrow after I wash them. On the "to buy" list is curtains for our room and the baby's room and some shelves for the baby's room. I also want to look into putting more rods in our closets (which Justin will probably also disagree with unless I just do it.. becuase I KNOW he'll like it afterward) and getting new bath mats. I'm hoping in the next month or two I can scrub the bathroom and kitchen, but I have to find someone to unhook the gas from the stove first because I REALLY want to clean under there because I KNOW it's gross. And finally.. the pool table just sitting in the dining room is driving me NUTS because we don't ever use it, but Justin wants to keep trying to sell it until the end of June which leaves us barely any time to find arrangements for it if no one sells it, which is what I'm anticipating.

So that's that. The nesting's begun, now I just need that nesting energy to get everything done!

Okay, that's all. The 50 day countdown is underway so look forward to a lot happening in the next 7 weeks!!

HOLY COW!!!!!

2009-05-18T13:59:00.000-07:00

I totally JUST realized that TODAY starts our 50 day countdown :)

I'm completely tired after cleaning windows and folding baby clothes all day, but looking at the blog and seeing the big 5-0 definitely perked me up (even if just for a few seconds).

This past weekend has been good, but tiring. Friday night was a work night for the both of us (after finally having a morning off to run errands) and then it was up at 7am on Saturday to get ready to make the 2 1/2 hour drive to Frostburg for my sister's graduation. My sister's boyfriend Matt met us here and then we picked up Wayne and Wenke to make the trip together. On the way up we stopped at the Hagerstown outlets to potty and to return my Coach purse :/ So I did and I got a wristlet instead which was about $45 cheaper than the purse. I didn't really find anything else I wanted but Justin ended up finding quite a few pair of pants for work that were pretty cheap. We then finished our drive, which was very long for me since I was so tired.

We got to see Krista graduate with her master's degree and then they were on to the Undergrad degrees, so we dipped out for a bit until they finished. After graduation, we all went to eat and then Wayne, Wenke, Justin and I started the drive home. We again stopped at the outlets to potty and so Wayne could get some shoes. I ended up getting an outfit from Motherhood Maternity but it was definitely not cheaper than the regular store. Ugh. After we left there, it POURED the entire way home, which sucked because I have a really hard time seeing the lane lines in the dark so I pretty much drove the entire way using the reflectors between the lanes. Justin and I both crashed when we got home and even slept in late, missing church.

We then had to run some errands before my sister's graduation party at Wayne's house. It was soooo crazy cold out yesterday (and today) so I spent most of the party in doors. But despite the weather, it was nice to see some of the family and friends there. One of the best moments was with Gavrielle, the flower girl from our wedding. We were sitting there and she asked (she's three mind you) if I ate a lot of food would baby Jackson come out. I said no because he needed to get bigger still. Then she asked if I had a hole for him to come out of. I said yes and her response was "Can I see it." ha ha. So I looked at her mom and told her that was for her discuss with her. Then she asked when she came out of her mommy's belly. Well Gavrielle is adopted so I turned the question over to Nancy again, and her response was "You didn't come out of my belly, you came out of my heart". This was very cute, I thought, and very pleasing to Gavrielle as well. All in all it was a pretty good day.

Today I slept in again, as I've been pretty sleepy latey, and apparantly pretty swollen according to everyone else who looks at my knees and legs. But then my mom and sister came over and my mom cleaned all of our carpets (which isn't so bad since we only have carpet upstairs) while I cleaned all of the upstairs windowns and sorted through TONS of baby clothes.

On the menu for this week is plenty of relaxing, plenty of sleeping, lots of cleaning, and hopefully getting our washing machine fixed.

I'll leave with a pic of the graduation:

Countdown: 8

2009-05-15T04:47:00.000-07:00

Better late than never! Hopefully Jackson doesn't take that frame of mind and decide to hang out longer than expected before he greets us! I just realized last night that I was in a crappy mood last week and NEVER posted any pictures. Shame on me. I was also very busy last week so that's probably the bigger reason. There's been a lot going on these days and it's so easy to lose track of time.

Last week started exams for me. I had two back-to-back presentations, an exam last Wednesday and an exam last Friday.. yikes!!! I want to say that I worked Friday night, but to be completely honest, I don't remember, ha ha. Regardless, the weekend was spent cleaning and studying and running errands. We FINALLY got all that card board off the porch this past weekend (you know... the HUGE boxes from the baby furniture that we got MONTHS ago). AND, I even weeded the garden a little while Justin cut the grass.

This past Sunday was my first mother's day-to-be celebration!!! We started out the day with church where we learned how mother's day was created and all the ladies received a carnation (the Mother's Day flower). Then we headed to my parents for lunch. It was practically a meal fit for Thanksgiving and it was quite yummy. I got cards for Mother's Day and we gave gifts to my grandma and my mom. (Our mom's got a great gift from Jackson this year: a sketchbook picture frame with a belly note from him in it).

My favorite thing about being there though was having my grandma there and seeing her eat an entire plate of food!!!! It's been difficult for her since her stroke but she even had an extra serving of bread afterward. :) After lunch we scurried off to Justin's parents in Havre de Grace to give his mom her mother's day gift. We had dinner here (grilled burgers and hot dogs... which was great because I'd been smelling people grill near our house and it makes my mouth water). We hung out for a bit and came home bearing some new plants/seeds. I got a Hasta root so I can attempt to make a yard destroyed by dogs presentable and she gave us some Black Eyed Susan seeds, which I plan to plant next week sometime. When we got home, I had some studying to do for my Monday exam and we had a few episodes of Harper's Island and Breaking Bad to catch up on.

Now... my Mother's Day gift from Justin: We had originally decided that instead of a gift, he might take me shopping for clothes, which seem to scarcely fit me these days. Well, he decided to get me a gift anyway, and after some advice from a female co-worker he picked up a very nice, compact coach bag for me while he was out on travel. This is the gift that all girls love.... All girl's except me. Unfortunately I think I'm the one girl in the world who is NOT a coach fan, mainly because of their prices: I just don't think that it's worth it! The bag is very nice, and I feel terrible about it, because most guys probably would not just go out on their own and get a girl a coach bag, but we decided we would try to take it back to the outlets this weekend. I'm hoping to find a wristlet instead (which I think will be easier to shove into a diaper bag or to take out to nice places) or we'll just return it and get something more practical for me (like a $20 purse at american eagle or something). Either way, he tried to make this day special for me, and i totally ruined his suprise, but it was special no matter what.

On to this week. I had three exams this week on Mon, Tues, and Wed and i also worked Mon and Wed night. On Tuesday, we had my first HUGE emotional pregnancy breakdown. We've been trying to let the dogs have run of the house when we're not home, yet despite the fact that we close all the doors and pick things up, they always seem to get a hold of something, and it usually ends up being something of Justin's. Well he decided that we would have to start locking them up again. When we lock them up, we put a baby gate up so Jiff has run of the kitchen, but Carlin needs to go in a cage because he jumps the gate. But, Carlin is severly running out of room in the current cage we have and Tuesday morning I just felt sooooo bad leaving him in there (especially when I knew I was going to be gone from 9 am until 6pm) so just as I was about to leave the house, I picked everything up and let them have the run. When Justin realized I hadn't put Carlin away, he was furious because "I never take into account what he says." I felt really bad because I knew he'd feel that way, but I also felt really bad about leaving Carlin in such a small space, so I just sat on the couch and cried. This of course made Justin feel bad and so we decided to look for another option. So... we will either have to buy a bigger cage from petsmart (which is crazy expensive) or we'll use my brother's method of putting up a plank of wood so that the gate can be high enought that Carlin can't jump it, which will give him run of the kitchen with Jiff. While at petsmart, we picked up the Kong (the rubber chew toy that you can hide treats in) to hopefully give them something to chew that's NOT the remote, or my Dr. Scholl's inserts, or Justin's work stuff, and so far, they love it.. but we definitely need to invest in another one so they don't fight over it.

Anyhow, after a long three days, it's needless to say I was pretty tired Thursday. We also decided to hang out with some of the other Ramshead crew after work this past Wednesday (the B-52's played) and Justin had quite a few drinks involving the new iced tea vodka. I wasn't sure he'd make it to work the next day, but he most definitely did! I had a doctor's appointment yesterday: my 32 week check up! And the doctor says everything is right on still AND I've not gained any more weight yet. I'm hoping to keep that up for another couple of weeks :) After the doctor's appointment we had some errands to run and some Hastas to plant outside, then Justin joined me to take a tour of St. Joe's Labor and Delivery and Mother/Baby Units. While we were waiting for one of the nurses, Justin started asking TONS of questions about how would they know if something's wrong, could they tell if he has this or that at this point. You could tell that just being in the hospital right outside of triage where a woman was being admitted because she was in labor made him REALLY nervous. More nervous than he's let on this WHOLE time. It was pretty funny. We also got to see the nursery which made him smile a little :) After our quick tour we grabbed dinner and headed to red box and home to watch Taken. And I must say, it was a very good movie. I questioned a lot of things after, but it was good.

Anyhow, so this past Tuesday was 32 weeks (and I did take pictures) which leaves us with just 8 weeks to go before Jackson. I'm hoping that I can get my practicum done as soon as possible, but I'm not to worried about it seeing as I'll be following a nurse who works at St. Joe's on the labor and delivery unit. So, if anything goes wrong, I won't have to go far :) This weekend is surely another busy one for us though. We'll be traveling to Frostburg tomorrow (after working tonight) for my sister's graduation from grad school and for a hopeful stop at the outlets. Then, it's back to Baltimore tomorrow night and then to my brother's house (about 4 minutes away) on Sunday for my sister's graduation party. On Monday we are excited to start our 50 day countdown (finally) and hopefully I'll be able to start my practicum next week as well. The next two weekends will just be work focused and then we have our baby shower on June 6th.. which I can't wait for. It's really hard to NOT buy things that we need but I know that I need to wait until after the shower.

All in all, I've been feeling pretty good, although increasingly more uncomfortable, but despite the discomfort, we are anxiously looking forward to July 7th!!!!

Here's some 31 and 32 week pictures! Enjoy the weekend!!!

31 weeks.

32 weeks, 0 days

Wednesday at 32 weeks, 1 day!

5/7/09

2009-05-07T09:03:00.000-07:00

Today's May 7th which means exactly TWO months until Jackson's due date: 7/7/09. And according to baby widget on the blog, just 61 more days to go!!!

It still seems far away, but I have a feeling when I'm just 4 weeks away I'm going to gasp and realize how close we really are!

Countdown: 9

2009-05-05T19:34:00.000-07:00

Just nine more weeks until baby Jackson is here :) Of course I'm hoping for only 7 more weeks, but we'll see if he's on time like his daddy, late like his mommy, or early... like the milk man?? ha ha.

Anyway. Not too much exciting going on today. Justin left for Pittsburg on Sunday for work and he won't be back until tomorrow. So it's just been me and my destructive doggies for the past two days. It's funny though... they assume that just because Justin's not home, they have a RIGHT to sleep on the bed. Last night I was barely in bed before they jumped up and laid down. I don't mind them sleeping there, it's actually more comfortable with them there, but man.. give me a chance to get comfortable first.

Today was my presentation for my Research class that I've been fretting over for weeks. And thank Goodness it's done. Now I have a heck of a schedule ahead of me: exam tomorrow morning and another presentation immediately following; ERI nursing exam on Friday morning; work Friday night; Exam on Monday morning; Class and online exam on Tuesday; Exam on Wednesday; Doctor's appt. on Thursday and I think our first baby care class AND the hospital tour; Friday = Freedom (and work of course). Then it's off to Frostburg for my sister's graduation from grad school and back to Baltimore for her graduation party next Sunday. Phew. I don't know how I do it!!!

I also paid for my summer classes today. $1500 for TWO classes. It's a rip off if you ask me, but what are ya gonna do!

Today was also a fed up kind of day. First... I'd like to say that one of my LEAST favorite thing about this whole pregnancy is my stretch marks. It looks like a tiger clawed my sides, seriously. AND now I'm getting them on the front of my stomach!!! And the one's on the front not only itch, but they actually hurt. I will take acid reflux daily for no stretch marks (heck.. I have acid reflux daily anyway).

And then, as if stretch marks aren't bad enough, I'm completely breaking down about this whole body thing. I'm not one to complain about weight, my body or anything like that. And frankly, it annoys the crap out of me when people do (mainly because many of my friends are ridiculously skinny and complain that they're fat... which makes me feel huge even without the extra person inside of me). But today, when NOTHING fit except for the one pair of jeans that no longer look good and the big puffy maternity shirts that I'm not a fan of, I was a little more than disappointed. I feel HUGE. Even my maternity jeans are tight, especially around my thighs which has always been a problem area, so when you pair that with really tight shirts that seem to be shrinking length wise on me, I look horrible. I can't stand it anymore. I just want my old body back. I was looking at our honeymoon pictures from last summer and was amazed that I ever thought I had a tummy or waist issue then. I looked great... and tan... and that didn't help. So while I can't wait to meet and hold this little guy, I'm saying now that it might be a while for baby number two. It's extremely difficult to go from being not super confident but never worried about my body to the extreme I'm at now. I've done really well at being composed about it this long, but today I just need to vent. The stupid rain and cold weather don't make it any better. If I can wear dresses or skirts and tank tops, I might feel better, but with this weather I have no choice but to wear jeans and it really sucks when they don't fit!

Okay.. that's my vent. I was going to post pictures but it took me forever to even sign on because for some reason it wouldn't let me. So I'll save them for another day!

Goodnight!

Pictures

2009-05-04T00:30:00.000-07:00

So here's a sneak peak at some of the pictures that Candace took!!!! I'm so excited to see the rest. I can't wait :) She's so amazing and we can't wait for her to be able to take pictures of Jax when he's here!!! We love you Candace!

Updates!

2009-05-02T08:53:00.001-07:00

I finally updated the last post (Coundown: 10) with a 30 week picture for comparison. It's all the way at the bottom.

In other news, I had my 30 week check up on Thursday. Everything went well, the baby sounds good, I'm measuring right on, my blood pressure is great as usual, and I LOST 2 LBS!!!! Yay! The doctor was very impressed with that. He told me if I stay right where I am weight wise for the remainder of this pregnancy, then I'm set! ugh. How on earth am I going to do that??? Oh well. I also asked him when he will check to see if Jackson has flipped yet (since he was breech at my anatomy scan sonogram). He said he could check now, but it wouldn't matter because he'll probably flip multiple times in the next month. So he said he will wait until the last month to check on that.

When I was done, I had a lovely soup, salad, and breadsticks lunch with Julie. And then Justin came home from work early so we could go meet the Pediatrician. We decided to go with one of the doctor's in the Pediatric Partners practice right in Towson. The doctor was great and Justin and I were both very comfortable with him. So we can check that off the list. Another plus is that when we met with Justin's cousin Candace later that night to take our 30 week pictures, she told us that she takes her son Tyler there and that Ty LOVES him!! So we are super pleased.

Now on to the pictures. We loved our first round of belly pics so much we knew we wanted to do more when I was much bigger (the first one's were taken at 20 weeks by Mandy Sroka... there's a link to them somewhere on this blog). We also LOVED our wedding pictures that Justin's cousin Candace took (Candidacephotography.com) and I was set on having her do some belly shots for us. So we finally got to do them this past Thursday as our 30 week pictures. We spent a good 3 hours taking pictures and I'm sooooooooo excited to see them as she uploads and edits them.

Friday was pretty relaxed. I started the day with school, as usual (but I must throw in that Friday was the LAST lecture of the semester for my Peds class, thank goodness), and Justin with work and then we came home to enjoy a Friday night off work together, which is the first in a while. We decided to head to Arundel Mills Mall so Justin could go to bass pro shops and I REALLY wanted some chili cheese fries and a chocolate strawberry shake from Johnny Rockets (which was delicious by the way). We then went to Sorrento's for our real dinner and to see all of my family that works there. We headed home late last night and crashed on the couch! It was a good Friday night :)

Today Justin is off playing kickball (after waiting up all morning for Comcast) and I have school work! We both have to work tonight, then it's church for us in the morning. Justin unfortunately leaves for a work trip tomorrow afternoon so for the next 3 or 4 days I'll be home with the boys studying for exams.. which start next week by the way! Then it's FINALLY summer time for me (minus my practicum that I'll be starting soon). Maybe I'll finally get to relax. Anyhow, here are some pictures to end the post with!

This is today, 30 weeks and 4 days!

And these are a few last minute pictures that Candace took with my camera as we were wrapping up the shoot on Thursday! I did the color and tinting adjustments... Candace's version of the night will be MUCH better!

Countdown: 10

2009-04-28T19:02:00.000-07:00

That's right!!! The new title to my weekly posts will be countdown, and we start at 10: just 10 weeks left until the expected arrival of our much awaited little man, Jackson Scott Smith. I mentioned this before, but I say we have 10 weeks but really, we have 7-10 weeks because who knows if he'll decided to be early! But hopefully not any earlier than that. But regardless, 10 weeks is amazing. We had a hunch that there was a baby on board at just about 5 weeks, so for 25 weeks we've known and been waiting for our little one. It's been a LONG 25 weeks, counting up to this point. And we are finally ready to start to countdown. With the school semester winding down, and baby shower invites out, I'm expecting everything to start setting in mentally very soon. And then I say... let the cleaning begin. Justin thinks I've been nesting all along, but I assure him I have not been. But I'm anticipated that will come very soon too. So anyway, here's how things have laid out:

I've actually been sick since last Tuesday, but I'm pretty sure it's an allergy thing. I wake up hacking up lots of mucus and phlegm and blowing my nose. I haven't had a voice upon waking up at all in the past week. Things progressively get better throughout the day and then in the late afternoon/early evening it all comes crashing down again with sheer exhaustion and a bad sore throat. I know I've had this before, it just sucks to have it now. But hopefully it will be gone before finals.

With that said, I was sick all day Thursday and Friday (during my exam) and then I spent my Friday night putting a poster together for my group project. UGH!!! But I got it done. (It wasn't due until today so I give myself MAJOR credit for getting it done early AND on my own). On Saturday we relaxed all morning (I laid in the sun for a little bit) and then we both worked on Saturday night. This went okay until my sore throat started kicking in. My feet also felt like lead, but that has since subsided. On Sunday Justin worked at the Federal Hill Festival on Cross Street downtown. For him this meant a day checking ID's in the hot sun, but he's worked it before and it's pretty decent money. I slept in because I was still sick and feeling like crap. When I finally did get up, I took my time getting my day started and when I finally ventured out, I visited my dad and watched some of the O's game with him. It was offered to me to go to the game with some friends, and after watching, I wish I would have. It was a great game to be at Camden Yards. I then visited my mom and then joined Justin at the Fed Hill Festival. I wanted to stop by to pay him a visit and to see what it was all about: my account of it was that it was WAY too crowded and hot for me to be there. I just don't understand the concept of ALL those people crowding on one small street to stand around (practically shoulder to shoulder) just to drink beer. I'd honestly rather go to a friend's house, lounge around and relax and drink then be there all hot and sweaty and bumping into people It just doesn't make sense. But I celebrated being there with a funnel cake and some lemonade :D THAT was worth the visit. Then it was off to work for me!

On Monday I had my evening clinical. I'm still sick at this point and don't have a voice, yet I still managed to get the difficult patient: a 2 yr old with a trach, a pacemaker, acute renal failure and a slew of other problems. It was very sad to see all the tubes and wires he was hooked up to and how tired he would get just from us having to move him around to give him his meds, suction his trach and do some other things. He seems like such a sweet little boy and unfortunately those tubes and wires is all he'll ever know. But this is the stuff I have to get used to. It ended up actually being a very boring night because the morning group gave him his bath and changed his trach, which apparantly takes a LONG time to do both, but I'll be lucky enough to experience that tomorrow morning since I'll have him again. Speaking of tomorrow morning. We decided that tomorrow would be our official last clinical day for the semester, and, instead of going to clinical Monday, we'd go as a group to the Cheesecake Factory! Fine by me :)

Anyhow, that brings me to today. I woke up very early (5:30) even though I didn't go to bed until 12, because I was coughing and blowing my nose. Seems to be how I wake up every hour these days. I decided to just stay awake since I had to be up early anyhow. Today was Scholarship Day at school so basically all nursing students go to this and listen to teachers and speakers talk about the NCLEX exam and their nursing experience. Then they give out scholarships. I of course didn't get one because I didn't apply. Unfortunately all the applications were due around exam or paper time and I've been sick a couple times already so I just wasn't able to take extra time to write essays and try to find references. Oh well. Anyhow, a portion of the day was set aside for our Poster presentations. Last year the speakers were the ones who walked around to observe the posters and ask questions, but this year the students did it, and it was pointless. Most didn't care to even look at the posters and nobody except for our research teacher asked us questions. All that hard poster work for nothing. The real presentation that counts for a grade is next Tuesday, but still, the poster isn't part of the grade. Oh well. Anyhow, a lot of the speakers used to talk about the nursing shortage and what a great field nursing was. But this year they talked about the fact that nursing is still a great field and will be in HIGH demand again very soon, but pretty much there's a job freeze for nurses because of the economy. Nurses that were going to retire can no longer afford to, nurses who did retire came back, and so on and so forth. This is not good news for us, but hopefully things will change soon. There's also a lot of issues with our summer practicum which I want to get done as soon as school ends, but the person in charge is having trouble even finding hospitals to accept nursing students this summer. Hopefully that works out sooner than later though because I'd hate to have to wait until August to do this.

After scholarship day was over, I had lunch with Julie, made a quick walmart run for scar cream and cocoa butter (for my ever expanding stretch marks which have indeed become my LEAST favorite thing about pregnancy) and then it was off to my night class. I successfully slept through half of that though because I decided to take a benadryl right before class started. Oh Well. At least I gave the professor a heads up in the beginning of class.

So two interesting things. In the other half of my class (the group who finished Peds and are now taking psyc, which I took the first half) there's another girl who is pregnant. She's maybe a month behind me but she has this perfect round basketball shaped belly. She's much taller than me, but I'm slightly envious. Then, in my night class there's a girl who's only two weeks behind me (if that) and she barely looks 20 weeks pregnant. I'm not quite as envious of her because weight is an issue for her.. she's just naturally very thin and tends to lose weight when stressed and her doctors have identified the need for her to gain more weight. But it's just interesting to see how three people very close in gestation are sooooo different.

Anyway.. without further adieu, here are some pictures:

This is 29 weeks!

And a LOVELY view of my hideous stretch marks!

This was today at 30 weeks. Me and two classmates in front of our poster

Melissa and I today at Scholarship Day.

And one of my BEST friends from middle school who is a semester behind me in the Nursing Program at Towson. (Also at scholarship day)

This was tonight as I was typing the blog!

And Justin and I celebrating the start of our countdown with a quiet night at home!

And, just for fun, here I am at 10 weeks.....

... and again at 20 weeks...

And once again at 30 weeks!!!!

Goodnight!

My son's future!

2009-04-23T08:39:00.000-07:00

Sorry.. no pics yet. But I thought it was important to share that I've decided that Jackson WILL be a soccer player someday. I swear to you, it felt like he was kicking a soccer ball against my side today. It didn't feel like feet, more like a miniature ball (of course I don't know what feet feel like yet). And it didn't hurt. It was just really funny to watch AND see. But of course as soon as I reach for my phone and flip it to video, he stops. What a character.

And.... Justin's grandmother decided that he will be a Preacher as well. He LOVES church. Every time Pastor Paul is talking, he's bouncing and moving away. He was even pretty active when we went to Justin's parents church for Easter where Justin's grandma got to feel him going nuts in there. I don't know what it is, but the kid loves it!

So there it is. My son will be a future Soccer playing Preacher! How about that!?!?

Victory. 29

2009-04-22T19:52:00.001-07:00

I had every intention of posting this on Tuesday, but after a long day of working on my group project at school, I came home feeling like crap, and it just progressed throughout the night. It started with that phlegmy taste in my mouth, then a sore throat, then itchy ears. UGH! So I thought maybe I was getting the throat infection Justin just got over. Anyhow, needless to say, I didn't feel like doing much of anything, including updating.

So I once again stayed home from clinical today. I woke up around 1 am and my throat was really sore so I reached for the throat lozenges. I was able to sleep until about 5 am. At this point it was acid reflux time along with hacking up mucous and blowing my nose... oh.. and peeing! So I finally got back to sleep and slept until probably 10:30/11am. It was definitely much needed. I still woke up feeling like crap, but at this point my headache had gone away (thanks to my 5 am tylenol). I had plans of calling the doc if I started with a fever or if the sore throat got worse. But no fever, and the sore throat got a little better and then just kind of stayed the same throughout the day. After my shower I felt a lot better and was able to get some laundry and cleaning done. I guess around 8 pm tonight is when I started feeling crappy again, but definitely not as bad as last night. So I'm attributing this much un-welcome illness to weather change and I'm hoping it will be gone as quickly as it came.

Anyhow. I had mentioned in my previous post that we finally met Maeby. Bert and Laura were finally able to bring her home from the NICU on Sunday, so we stopped by after church. She is incredibly adorable! She was wide awake just about the whole time we were there and she even kept up with the baby tradition of letting a load of gas out while I held her. I must bring it on somehow. Anyway. We are extremely happy that they finally have their family complete and we are thrilled to have been able to share that special day with them.

In other news. Monday was just another typical Monday. I had my night clinical at Mt. Washington, but this time I was able to observe the first floor, which has mostly the older peds kids. The design of that unit was pretty awesome, but the chaos of the floor (and 2 and six year olds running around constantly) was not appealing, ha ha. It's so much easier to deal with infants confined to their crib and swing than 2 year olds who have so much energy and nowhere to get it out except for running around the unit. Observing that floor also made me wish some people chose not to have kids. To see some of the injuries and burns that were, as the charts stated, "NON- accidental" meaning their parents inflicted them on the kids on purpose, was just not something that's easy to deal with. It's just kid after kid in foster care or awarded to the state and it's just a really sad thing to see. While I'm enjoying my pediatric rotation, I'm not so sure it's the path that's right for me. I think I would have a really hard time leaving my feelings out of work and not bringing work home with me.

Anyhow, I already talked about my Tuesday.. but I left out the part about Tuesday being my official 29 week day. It's crazy to think that I only have 11 week lefts, and even crazier to think that it really means I only have somewhere between 7-11 weeks to go. 30 weeks is quickly approaching and then I'll begin my 10 week countdown. I can't wait.

Today, while trying to get all my dates lined up, I managed to finally get ahold of St.Joe's to sign up for the infant care class. Justin and I will be taking this class (a two day class) on May 28th and June 4th. A little later than I had hoped but it was all they had available. The lady adamantly tried to get me to sign up for the birthing class as well (where they teach you all the relaxation techniques and what not) but I'm not sure that we will do that one. Mainly because we really don't have much time and because it's so freakin expensive. I also failed to mention to her that I'm a nursing student and learned a lot of this stuff last semester in OB, so I'm not really sure that, even though I'm a first timer, I really need to spend 85 plus dollars on a class that's just going to reiterate what I've learned. I'd rather just get into the baby care class so justin can get some experience in there. I'm also opting out of the breastfeeding class, despite the fact that I have every intentions of using that as my main feeding form. I followed the lactation specialist around last semester and learned a lot from doing so and if i took the class, it would be with her so I'd be hearing much of the same I've already heard. Besides, she comes around to all the moms after they deliver anyway, so what's the point of spending the money yet again.

Anyway. that's my week thus far. I'm off tomorrow to study all day and then I have yet another exam on Friday.. then more group work. And then Justin and I will both be working our weekends away so that we can do it all over on Monday. We then have our 30 week visit with the doc next thursday followed by our meeting with the pediatrician later in the day and hopefully some picture taking too ;)

I did take pictures this week, by the way. In fact, I took them today, BUT I'm ready for bed so I'll try to get them up here tomorrow. Until then...

Mini Update

2009-04-19T23:16:00.000-07:00

It's kind of late for a real update, but I just thought I'd mention that we are officially in the 70's! Just 78 days until Jackson's debut.

I also wanted to mention that our friends Bert and Laura and their daughter Mackenzie brought their new little one, Delaney Mae, home today. Justin and I got to share in that excitement with them. I'll update more on it later this week (maybe on time on Tuesday... maybe!) But I just wanted to throw that in and wish them luck and prayers for their first night home! Congratulations Rode Family!!

Victory. 28

2009-04-16T18:08:00.000-07:00

So it's again few days late but I figured since I had a doctor's appointment today, I would wait to update.

I'll start with the weekend. This past weekend Justin was sick again, as I mentioned on the last update, so he didn't work Friday or Saturday. But I worked Saturday and didn't get to bed until 4 Am. Yuck. But needless to say, we woke up early Sunday morning, as it was Easter, and headed to my parents house for breakfast. There my mom gave me some more stuff that she made for the baby, like Thomas the Train shorts, Mickey Mouse shorts, and another stuffed book (Humpty Dumpty this time). After breakfast, we headed off to Churchville to go to church with Justin's parents. They were becomming members of their church that day hence the reason why we skipped the Easter service at Abbott. After church we went back to their house, where some more of the family later joined us for Easter dinner that Justin's dad cooked. While the family played games, I slept on the couch (being 28 weeks pregnant and ONLY sleeping 3 hours does not go together well). We got some more goodies for Jackson there, like some bowls, Jackson's first Saw (It's actually a book but it's shaped like a saw... Justin's dad has been doing a lot of woodshopping lately which is the significance of the book), some disposable bags for diapers, Justin's old book of Peter Rabbit, and of course Justin's Christening outfit that jackson will wear if it fits. Jackson also got a bunny that dances when you press his ear. His collection of toys is definitely growing. We ended the night by taking Justin's grandmother home and coming home to our boys to get some much needed sleep! I was hoping that Jackson would be very active on Easter so both sides of the family could feel him, but I guess because of my lack of sleep, he was also pretty sleepy, so he didn't move once while we were at my parents. But, once we got to church he was on a roll, so Justin's grandmother got to feel one kick.. and just one before he got shy again! Maybe everyone will just have to come to church to feel him for now on. h a ha.

On Monday I had clinical again. My patient was a very big 3 1/2 month old with big eyes. He is definitely very cute and eats A LOT. He was pretty easy to take care of, as not too much was going on, but I did get to see something new. Some babies develop with the intestines and sometimes other organs not forming inside of their abdominal cavity. So when they're born, their intestines are outside of their body. This requires surgery to put the organs back in place and to cover the area over. Well, my patient was born with this condition and I assume he had the surgery pretty early on. But on his stomach he had a huge lump that was pretty much healed, but where his intestines were still too large to fit. I read that when the intestines are exposed to amniotic fluid for so long, they swell and don't always fit perfectly back in the abdomen. Eventually with growth his intestines will probably go back in and you won't be able to notice it much, but it was definitely pretty neat to see.

Also on Monday we heard the news that our friends Laura and Bert had their little girl, Delaney Mae Rode. They were expecting to be induced later in the week (I think today) but Delaney decided to come on her own. Unfortunately Delaney has had a little trouble adjusting to the outside world, so she's been in the NICU since shortly after she was born. Bert and Laura expect her to stay there a few more days, but they update their blog frequently and it seems as though little Maeby is coming along very well. I plan to stop by tomorrow to drop some food off to Bert, Laura, and big sister Mackenzie, but we all are anxiously waiting until we can meet the new little addition to their family. We are definitely keeping her and the rest of our family in our prayers.

Tuesday was just another Tuesday... which for me is a long day of school, but it marked me officially at 28 weeks. On Wednesday I had clinical and took care of the same patient. This time he was a little more irritable than before and he managed to christen me with my first large poop from one of my patients. It was definitely very gross, but I managed. I was also given my first opportunity to give a patient a vaccine injection. It was in her thigh, and it was pretty easy to give, but she definitely was not a happy baby afterwards. Later that night Justin and i worked the Black label society/Sevendust show at Ramshead. We got off work around 2 Am and decided to go out for food with some of the other bartenders at Sip N' Bite in Canton. It was pretty crowded for being a small place and we had to wait a while. But we finally got to eat and had a good time. Jackson even decided to be social and one of the bartenders, Krysta, got to feel him. It's so cute how excited she is for us. She said she goes into baby sections all the time now! ha ha. And if anyone remembers, she bought us a very cute, soft baby blanket pretty early on so I'm glad Jackson finally said thank you! Anyhow, the food was very tasty, but man was it late. It was probably 4:30 before I actually went to bed. Yikes!!! We won't be doing that too much!

Today was my day off from school, but I had a doctor's appointment this morning. Once again they didn't say anything about my glucose test, so I'm still assuming I passed. One big thing that happened though had to do with the scale. :( I stepped on and didn't like what I saw too much... and the sad part is, neither did the doctor. Apparantly I gained more than I should have this month and he didn't seem too happy about it. So he told me to watch what I eat and limit my salt. The funny thing is I don't really eat THAT much. I'm really thinking that maybe jackson's gonna be a big baby. I sure hope that's the reason for the weight gain, ha ha. But anyhow, I'll be watching what I eat for now on. Despite that, everything else was fine. The heartbeat was fine, my blood pressure was great! and I assume I'm measuring right on. For now on, thought, I'll be seeing the doctor every two weeks until 36 weeks I think, and then I see him every week. That's crazy for me because it means everything is getting so close. Two weeks tends to fly by A LOT faster than 4 weeks so I know the last 2 1/2 months are going to seem pretty quick. The Doctor also gave me a paper about when to call and when to go to Labor and Delivery. Most of the paper talks about signs of pre-term labor but there's a small part that talks about when to call in the last month and about counting kicks and contractions and what not. This is difficult for me actually because I don't always feel him. In fact I don't feel him more than I do feel him. I think it has to do with my placenta still, but he's just not a regularly active baby. Or he is and I can't tell. So they say if I'm not feeling him, I should try eating and that after eating or right before bed I should feel him ten times in one hour. I don't know that I ever feel him that much, except when we're in church (apparantly he LOVES church) so I really don't know what to do here. I think, just because of all this, I'm going to go ahead and hang onto our doppler heart monitor just to be on the safe side. I go back to the doctor on the 30th I believe, and later that day Justin and I go to meet with the Pediatrician, which I'm kind of excited about because I've heard lots of good things about the practice. Apparantly Rob and Sharon take Lucas there and if I remember correctly, it was recommended to them by our other friends Stacie and Dustin (they take their son Ian there). Jackson won't have the same primary pediatrician that they use, but it will be in the same practice and location. Tomorrow I'm going to try to set up for Justin and I to take an infant care class at St. Joe's and I'd also like to try to hop on a tour of GBMC just in case we have to go there. Anyway.. we ended our night with a huge making of lasagna which was wonderfully delicious and now I have a paper to write :(

It's been a pretty busy week so far and it will continue on that way. Justin has to work tomorrow and I'll be doing school stuff and stuff with my mom. On Saturday we're heading to Cecil County to celebrate my niece's 13th birthday ( which is actually pretty frightening that she's 13 already) and we'll end the weekend with church on Sunday and maybe work for me.

Monday will kick off a busy couple of weeks with the first of my last three projects/papers due. Then I have two weeks of back to back presentations and exams. UGH. School ends in mid may for me (which will be here before I know it) and my sister graduates on May 16th from her grad program at Frostburg (which Justin and I will be making the trip for). She graduated from Frostburg last year with her undergrad degree in Biology and she immediately started her master's program for a degree in education. So pretty soon she'll be teaching. The next day is her graduation party. Then I get about a week or so off before I start my practicum: I have to follow a nurse around for 80 hours (so roughly 2-3 weeks). I'm really hoping I'll get a pediatric or labor and delivery rotation and I'm hoping even more than that that I will be at St. Joe's just in case Jackson tries to come early. Then we get to celebrate our little one the first week in June with our baby shower at my brother's house. And maybe a week or so later I will start my summer class online (which should be a breeze). And then FINALLY, before we know it, it will be Jackson's turn to make his debut and our family will be complete (for a good 2 to 3 years). I really can't wait, and while I want things to slow down a little, I'm also ready to fast forward everything.

Anyhow. here are my 28 week pictures with my new wonderful camera. Just 12 more weeks to go!!!

The two scars on the next picture are the enter and exit holes of my belly button piercing that I got a few years ago. I haven't worn it in forever because the hole didn't heal well, but it definitely didn't mind stretching.

Oh, and this finaly picture is my ever disappearing belly button. I used to have a very deep belly button but NOT anymore. I have a feeling that very soon I may have an outtie!

The writing's on the wall:

2009-04-10T19:17:00.000-07:00

That's right. I finally put the letters on the wall above the crib. It definitely took many tries to get them almost right... and in the end, I settled with almost right. A few are a little too close together but overall, it's not too bad for a 1 woman job. (Oh.. and here's that better picture of the cube shelf I was talking about.

In other news, yesterday Justin got his new phone finally. He settled with the Motorolla Krave. It's a flip phone but the top part is hard see through plastic and the phone part is all touch screen... no buttons. When you close the phone the see through part also acts as a touch screen unless you lock it. I thought this would be convenient for him: when he's at work, he the hard plastic will protect the screen. AND.. because the earpiece is in the hard plastic, when he's talking it will fit his head better than the smaller dare or voyager, which is what I have. I must say it's a pretty spiffy phone.

In still other news, Justin wasn't feeling well at work today. So my dad and sister took me to SSA so I could drive him home. We stopped by Doc Express (which we both really liked by the way) and the doc said Justin has a throat infection basically. He gave us information on pharyngitis (which says it can spread through the family.. hopefully not) and he gave Justin a prescription for the Z-pack.... which I call the miracle antibiotic because it works so well, so quickly. We're both thankful it's not another round of the flu, but we're both holding our breaths until he's better to make sure I don't get it.

Other than that, there's not much of an update since yesterday. Enjoy the pics!

Victory. 27

2009-04-09T16:00:00.001-07:00

Okay, so it's two days late, but hey.. can you blame me much! I'll have to keep it short though so I can get back to studying.

Since last thursday we've had a few things worth mentioning. For one, I still haven't heard from the doctor about the glucose test, so I'm going with the "No news is good news" thing. We'll see. This weekend was kind of another busy weekend. I can't remember completely everything we did, ha ha, BUT I can remember that Laura's baby shower was on Sunday. It was a very nice tea party theme and she got a lot of good things. It was a gorgeous day for a shower and I can only hope that mine turns out just as nice. I also found out that Laura will be induced a roughly a week to two weeks early, so we'll be getting to meet Maeby around the 16th. Yay!! I also got to meet baby Anna, who was the first baby that I mentioned that was born to someone at church. She is incredibly cute and sooo tiny. But her mom, Kristen, gave birth naturally, no pain meds, and she's a pretty tiny girl, so I'm holding her as my inspiration for now.

On Monday I woke up extremely early with the taste of vomit in my mouth and the smell of it in my nose. I hadn't gotten sick, but man my reflux was so crazy I couldn't stand it. I eventually got up and got ready for my two o'clock clinical, but decided there was no way I could function so I stayed home. I really felt like crap allll day! And jackson didn't really care because he continously did flips the whole day. ha ha. Anyway. Justin took off work that day to go to the bars by Camden Yards with some friends for Opening Day. He said he had a blast, despite not actually going to the game, which I might add probably would have been an AWESOME Opening Day to see (the O's beating the Yanks!! GO O'S). I eventually started feeling better around 6pm (a good 12 hours after I first woke up) so I headed out to get a new camera!!! I'm super excited about it and can't wait to use it with Jackson. Anyhow, here's my team spirit for Opening Day sporting my new Roberts jersey shirt that Justin bought me :)

Tuesday was officially 27 weeks. Yet another week closer (and only 13 more to go.. but I'll let him come in 11 if he wants!!). Anyhow, on Tuesday I had a LONG day of school (2 hours early just to get parking) which didn't end until 6pm for me. Then Justin and I headed out to dinner with his family to celebrate his cousin Maggie's 18th birthday. It was a very nice dinner and very weird for Justin to realize that his little cousin is 18 now. Unfortunately for me, that was my first day of serious discomfort. I could only fit half of my meal in my squished stomach, and even after only half a meal I was physically miserable. I didn't feel better until I came home and laid down for bed.. at 10:45 mind you. I'm hoping that I don't have too many days like that, but I'm pretty sure that the discomfort only gets worse from here.

On Wednesday I had my morning clinical (at 6:45 am, ugh) but it was pretty okay. I had a very sleepy baby who didn't need too much care, especially since her mom was there for a good part of the day. She was very cute though and, like the other baby I had, she had tons of hair. I did get to suction for the first time though, even though it was only her stuffy nose (but i'm sure she was thankful for that once she could breathe better again). Another one of the girls had a premie baby that was only about a month old and she was born at just 28 weeks. She was sooo tiny and so cute. But for me it was interesting to see what Jackson will look like in about a month (since she was born just one week past where I am with Jackson). It was also interesting to see the size she is now and to try to imagine fitting her in my belly. Even though it's getting much bigger now, it's still crazy to think that an entire full term baby will be in there in 11-13 weeks. Yikes. Bring on the discomfort.

Finally, there's today. Not too much exciting going on today though. I have an exam in pediatric nursing tomorrow so I've been studying all day and will continue to do so until well into the night (until I pass out on the couch I'm sure). BUT I would like to add that we are now in the 80's count down range. As my baby widget shows, we have just 89 days until the expected arrival of our little Jackson. I think when we hit fifty, I'm going to make a paper countdown pad so Justin and i can rip a page off everyday... just to make things even more exciting.

Anyhow, that's my update. And here's my 27 week pictures, my new hair cut, and the cube shelf in the nursery. I took better pictures of the cube on the new camera so maybe eventually I'll switch them out. Have a good weekend.

New Hair:

The Cube Shelf

27 weeks!

Hair, Cubes, Glucose, oh my!

2009-04-03T19:10:00.000-07:00

First I'll go for the glucose! That's right. this past thursday I had my 1 hour glucose test. I had to take it at lab corp and because I was so tired I didn't wake up until about an hour before I wanted to be there. So that took care of the food thing. I was told to eat light by my doctor, so i had a few handfuls of peanuts and some water before I want. When I got there it took a good 20 minutes to even have my name called... who would have thought Lab Corp would be so busy on a Thursday morning. Well then I told the receptionist that I was there for the glucose test and she pulled out this tropicana sized bottle of red stuff. I was kind of horrified because it was more than I was expecting to have to drink. She told me I had five minutes to drink it. So I sat down, read that it was the "fruit punch" flavored one, and started drinking. And suprisingly, it was not that bad. It tasted like normal ole' regular fruit punch, just a little bit sweeter. I ended up drinking it in about 1 minute. Then the waiting began. You have to wait for an hour, no food or drink (including water) before your blood can be drawn. This wasn't too bad because I had my text book, but for some reason I was really tired (despite the sugar) and I have trouble reading when I'm tired. So I ended up just sitting there staring at the clock. :/ And I had to pee, but what's new, right! So finally an hour was up and I went back to have my blood drawn, which is always fun. All in all though, things weren't too bad. I'm not sure when I'll get my results back, but I'll probably call my doctor on Tuesday or Wednesday to see if he's heard anything yet.

Anyhow, I was busy all day after that. I had to hurry off to seeds of wellness in hamden immediately after for a school project and then, I had to hurry home to get to my hair appointment on time. That's THIS part of the blog. I don't normally get high lights, but I did the last time I had my hair cut. Well, the bleach stuff made my hair kind of dry and recently that's been bothering me and has been really making me want to get my soft hair back. My layers were also growing further apart and so I wanted to get my hair cut. So, I made the appointment and off I went. I decided to get my hair dyed back to the dark brown that I had it dyed over the summer. She used a low-potency dye so I wasn't worried about it. Then I had the dye washed out ... and they used this new shampoo that was like heaven. I mean having your hair scrubbed by someone else is heaven anyhow, but when it smells good... ten times better :)
So anyway, I decided to have my lower layers cut off, which made my hair a lot shorter than it was. But I'm completely okay with that because it's back to it's dark brown softness that I missed oh so much!

So on to the last of my post title updates. A week or two ago Justin and i bought a set of cube shelves from target to kind of match the color of the furniture in the baby's room. Well, they've been sitting in the box waiting to be put together, but I haven't had time or energy to do it. Well I finally decided to put them together this week. It's nine cubes that when put together is kind of like a book shelf. We were planning on hanging it above the changing table, but unfortunately it doesn't hang... in fact it specifically says to not hang it in the instructions. So we set it up next to the crib and are going to use the cubes for toys and books. And I might mention that it looks FANTASTIC. It fits perfectly with the room and I'm so excited about it. Of course I don't have a picture yet though. I should have taken one today while it was sunny but I spent my sunshine breaking down the HUGE furniture boxes sitting on our porch, sweeping the porch, and picking up dog poo! What a great day, ha ha.

To finish the night, I just finished making my shower invitations, and they really turned out great. I'm definitely going to have to keep one to put in a scrap book.

Oh... and I have to mention that Jackson was going a little crazy last night. He has recently starting kicking up high (or punching if he's still breech). It's not in the ribs so it doesn't hurt but it's definitely new. Anyway, he was moving away last night as we were going to bed, and he finally let Justin feel him again. Justin was pretty happy about this but I think I was more happy about it. Justin commented that his movements were pretty strong, so we're hoping that means he's growing well and is nice and healthy.

Anyway. That has been my week. I have a Friday night off and I plan to possibly go to bed early. How strange!
Oh.. and my sister-in-laws birthday is tomorrow so... Happy Birthday Wenke!!!

Happy April Fools Day

2009-04-01T13:45:00.000-07:00

Although I didn't have to deal with any April fools jokes today, except for one I pulled on myself, I did have an interesting day.

I had clinical starting at 7 this morning at Mt. Washington Pediatric Hospital. I had the same patient as Monday, who is this feisty almost two month old with a FULL head of crazy hair. She's as cute as can be and sooo spoiled (she LOVES to be held ALL the time). And she's a SCREAMER!!! When my partner and I attempted to get vitals on her she screamed the entire time (mainly because she was hungry and had a wet diaper). Then we had another screaming episode during her bath ... which halfway through she decided to pee on the pads we had under her. ha ha. But all in all, she was a pretty easy patient.

Near the end of clinical, however, my unstructor asked us if any of us wanted to put an NG tube in. I immediately said that I did, so my partner Jess and I both got to put NG tubes in babies. What I wasn't expecting was for the baby to be a premie who was born about a week and half ago at 31 weeks gestation. She was soooo tiny, but so so so cute. It made me really nervous... and for those who don't know what an NG tube is, it's a feeding tube that is placed into the stomach through the nose.. and for babies, especially premies, it's a REALLY small tube. I couldn't get it in quite right, as I'd never even done this on an adult, so my instructor started me off a bit, and I placed it the rest of the way. The gorgeous little baby did such a good job, which made it a lot easier and made me a lot less nervous. Then, after lunch, I got to watch Jess put hers in on an equally as small baby who was also extremely cute. She also got to take vitals on her and change her diaper to help out the nurse, which was interesting to see on a premie because she was just so tiny. So it was a pretty good clinical day. Monday night will be the first time I have a pediatric patient on my own without a partner, and all the patients on our floor are mostly under a year old, so it will be interesting.

As for the April Fools Joke I pulled on myself: I walked to my car and grabbed my keys, and for some reason my car key and alarm button were missing from my key ring. My car was still there, thank God, but i couldn't find these keys anywere. So I went back inside to the room where we keep our stuff and they weren't there either. So I asked the nurses at the nurses' station and it wasn't there either. So FINALLY on my way out (which at this point I was going to call Justin to tell him I needed to be picked up and taken to my dad's to get a spare key) I stopped by security to turn in my card and asked if anyone turned in keys. They did, thankfully, and he said that the other security gaurd found them in the parking lot. Not what I was expecting, but I'm glad they were at least found.

As I said yesterday, we finally got the chance to go see Sharon, Rob and baby Lucas last night. We went in to be greeted by Oscar, their very hyper boxer puppy who reminds me a LOT of Carlin. He was really excited to get some attention from Justin and I. Then we got to hold baby Lucas. He is sooo darn cute and makes the greatest faces. Rob and Sharon seem to be doing great with him, but you can tell they're definitely tired these days (mainly from the 9pm yawns already). But that's to be expected. Sharon seems to be recovering very well from the c-section and they both seem to be enjoying parenting very much. I definitely took advantage of the time to ask Sharon lots of questions about things like her feet swelling, the contractions, the nurses and rooms at GBMC (just in case we end up there instead of St. Joe's) and some others. Lucas was awake for almost our entire visit and was very entertaining. I can't wait until he and Jackson can become buddies :) While I was holding Lucas though, Jackson felt it necessary to kick Lucas, which I thought was funny as that would definitely be a little boy's way of saying hello. haha. It definitely made me anxious to meet our little guy.

Finally. Since I wasn't able to do this yesterday, here are my 26 week pictures (not too much different from the last pictures I posted, but here they are anyhow).

Victory. 26

2009-03-31T08:41:00.000-07:00

Officially 26 weeks today. Not too much to update though since I just updated a few days ago. I'll probably have my glucose test this week so I'm sure I'll update with how gross it was shortly after.

The only new thing is that I'm starting to feel Jackson a little more frequently. He's stingy though!! He'll kick and I'll put my hand there and then he'll stop. He especially likes to do that when Justin tries to feel him. He just isn't having it. SOOOOO.... with that said, if you haven't felt him move, don't take it personally. I usually don't even let people touch my stomach because there's no point. He doesn't like to be touched yet I guess. When I notice that he's more regular, and when Justin has actually had more of a chance to feel him as I think HE should have the first dibs on that one seeing as Jackson is HIS son, I'll start letting people feel. Until then, hold your horses. I'll let you know when he's ready to share! For now, this is my time to enjoy him. It's just starting to get more frequent so I haven't had much time myself to even experience it yet. And I'd like to have a little something to myself before I share... and I'd especially like to have Justin get some one on one time before the rest of the world does.

That's all for now. Maybe more later (seeing as it's only 11:48 am and I still have the whole day to go through). We are planning on finally visiting Rob, Sharon, and Baby Lucas tonight so I'll update on that as well!

FINALLY!!!

2009-03-29T19:02:00.001-07:00

Alright! So FINALLY!!! I have had good sunlight and decent time to take some pictures. I was planning on doing this yesterday, but we worked Friday night and didn't get home until almost three am. So on Saturday morning we woke up early because justin had a harford alumni lacrosse game to play in. Justin really wanted me to go so I went (a little after him) and, despite the cold and the mist, I watched the "old" guys play like they were still in college. Well, clearly they weren't because they ended up losing to the younger old guys, but they still had a lot of fun. Here's two pictures from the game. I circled Justin.

After the game, Justin and I and a few of the other guys went to bull on the beach in Aberdeen for some lunch. It was good seeing Chris Fielder again and Justin enjoyed seeing some of the other guys. I left shortly after to go to the baby shower for Joe and Rachel. Joe works with Justin at Ramshead and Mothers and we went to their wedding two summers ago. It was a very nice shower and I got some more ideas for the registry from it. My favorite was the wee blocker...it's something you put over your little guy's wee so you don't get sprayed during diaper changes. Our friends Dustin and Sandi told us we'd be getting one from them because they thought it was hilarious.

Immediately after the shower I had to rush off to work for another LONG night with the same band from friday. My feet were still hurting, so I picked up some slippers hoping that would help. Unfortunately it didn't. I put the slippers on around 10 or so and around 10:30 I noticed that one side of each ankle was swollen. FUN!!! Well work lasted until.. oh... about 2 something in the morning and I didn't get home until well after 3!!! I was exhausted. So today.. we woke up around 8:30 and decided there was no way either of us could function, so we went back to sleep and woke up again around 11. Because we missed church and were still just drained, we decided to go to IHOP for breakfast with Emily and Danny. It was fantastic :) and very much needed. So we came home and then decided to enjoy the gorgeous weather by walking around the avenue at white marsh. This seemed like a great idea but about halfway through our ventures, I noticed BOTH sides of each ankle were swollen now. yay!! We went over to the mall and I ended up buying new, very comfortable flip flops that instantly made my feet feel better. They didnt' take down the swelling but my feet didn't hurt as much. When we got home I decided to make home-made lasagna with Julie's recipe. And now... I'm finally sitting down watching Breaking Bad with Justin.

Tomorrow starts my first day with patients at my pediatric clinical. For this part of the semester I'm at Mt. Washington Pediatric Hospital working with the birth to 3 year age group. Most of the patients are less than a year old and they're all very sick. Last wednesday was the first time I've ever seen a baby with a trach! It was definitely eye opening that someone so small who's supposed to be so healthy can be so sick. So this part of the semester should definitely be interesting for me.

Anyhow, before we went to white marsh, I was able to take some pictures of the room and some 25 week belly shots that I hear people have been anxiously awaiting for. So here they are. Hopefully it was worth the wait :)

25 weeks 5 days!!

Definitely getting bigger!

Side shot (and trying to cover some new and very UN-exciting stretch marks)

Carlin wanted to give Jackson some lovin'.

The crib.

The bedding set.

A couple stuffed animals and a stuffed book of nursery rhymes that grandma made for Jackson (my mom).

And the GIANT elephant that i just HAD to have... but it didn't end up being as giant as I thought. ha ha. He's still cute though.

The armoir and the lamp and diaper stacker that match the bedding set!

... and already full of clothes and blankets.

The rocking chair!!! I LOVE it. Hanging over it is a soft mickey mouse blanket that Justin loved and wanted for Jackson. And next to the rocking chair is the rocking horse that I posted about before.

The dresser/changing table. We're starting quite the collection of toys there. A lot of them came from Gavrielle (my flower girl) who was so willing to share with Jackson :)

Oh... and the THREE containers of clothes sitting next to the dresser!

And last but not least, my two newest buys... The Tale of peter Rabbit and the cutest shoes ever :)

Happy Sunday evening!!!

EDIT: I almost forgot. We can now OFFICIALLY start counting down from 100 days as the baby widget on the blog just reminded me. YAY!!!!

more update!

2009-03-28T00:06:00.000-07:00

Went to school.. came home to let the doggies out... went back to school.. took my exam... went to work.. just got home (at 2:45 am)... checked my email.. got an 85 on the final! THANK GOD!!!!!!!!!!

So now, full force ahead for the next half of the semester: Pediatric Nursing!

More update tomorrow.... and maybe some pictures. I'm tooo tooo tired now!

Goodnight!

update

2009-03-26T17:29:00.000-07:00

The crib is up and the bedding set is on... but the lighting in the room is no good for pictures until it's sunny out :( I tried taking some last night but they didn't turn out great, so I'll try again tomorrow since it was cloudy out all day today. Boo for that!

But I promise.... pictures SOON!!! I've been told some people are anxiously awaiting them :)

Oh... and just three more days until I start counting down from 100 days :) Craziness.

And finally... wish me luck on my make up psychiatric nursing final tomorrow!!! YIKES!

Victory. 25

2009-03-24T17:32:00.000-07:00

... and just 15 more weeks to go! Not too much has happened since the last visit... BESIDES turning in that 25 page group paper I've been stressing over. Today was THAT day, and I didn't sleep much at all last night because of it. I went to bed relatively early after working on the paper for 8 long hours with my group but for some reason I couldn't sleep and I kept thinking about that da-gone paper. So, after turning it in I used my break time to write two small papers that were also due today. So I've been pretty much going since 8 am, nonstop. But, today in my alternative therapy class we had a guest speaker who is a Reiki master. She also has psychic abilities and she works with energy to help heal people. Well we wondered whether or not she could determine the sex of a baby, because she mentioned that she has worked with energies to help people conceive. So, I volunteered to have her do the reiki thing on me and she didn't mention anything. But when I asked her about it, she said boy rather quickly. The skeptic in me thinks that she made a great guess because of how I'm carrying since she asked me to stand up before she answered me, but she says that while she was doing the reiki thing she heard over and over "He". So it was kind of interesting.

On my way home today, I gave Justin a call and he told me that he and Jared would be going to pick up the crib tonight instead of tomorrow. This of course made me happy. So we made our way to babies r us and now the crib is sitting in the box in the baby's room waiting for some free hands and tools to set it up :) Julie and i plan on doing that sometime this week. While we were out, though, we stopped at Walmart to return some things and I decided to look at their jewelry. We had talked about getting me a "fake" bling ring to wear in place of my engagement ring and wedding band because they're getting kind of tight and I'd hate to have a swelling incident where my rings would have to be cut off. So, I found a very pretty three stone ring for about $50 and we decided to get it. It was definitely worth it. My finger can now breathe and it still looks pretty.

Other than all of that, today makes 25 weeks. And, as of now we've had 4 babies born and doing as well as can be expected on the July 2009 birth board. It's really scary to know that women about as far along as I am are already having their babies, but it's comforting to know that these babies have a fighting chance and are indeed being little fighters. Despite this small comfort, I still pray for each day to come and go with ease and each week is still a victory. The more time Jackson has to grow right where he's at, the better for him and us. I'm eager to meet this little guy and see what exactly we've been preparing for, but I'm just as eager to make it to 30 weeks and beyond. As for being 25 weeks today, I have not yet taken a picture. I hurried to get ready today and get out of the house and I'm just too tired and look too tired to smile at the acmera today. SO, when I do take that picture, I'll post it. I'll also post pictures of the baby's room as soon as the crib is up. I can't wait, but I have to, so you will have to also :)

Happy Tuesday!

3 pieces down, 1 to go

2009-03-21T11:49:00.000-07:00

So we picked up three out of four of our furniture pieces today. It took two trips and taking stuff out of one of the boxes to bring it all home. Wayne and Justin did all the lifting and carrying and it wasn't easy!!! When they got the two big boxes in, they realized that the boxes were too big to take up the steps, so we decided to open them and carry the pieces up to the baby's room. Well, when they ripped the boxes open, the dresser and the armoir were both already put together inside the boxes!!! Craziness. This didn't make their job easier, but gave me a lot less to do!!! Once we got those two pieces upstairs, and two boxes, a lot of styrofoam, and 6 trash bags later, all I had to do was put a few pieces together for the rocking chair. So now, with the dresser, armoir, and rocking chair ready, all we need is the crib (which is currently sitting at babies r us waiting for us to show up with a pick up truck). I will have to put that together, but I hear it's really easy! Yay for that.

The 3 pieces that we do have together look great and I can't wait to organize it all. Thanks a bunch to Justin and Wayne for working so hard today (and to Justin's dad for getting some things to the dump for us today). What a productive... tiring day.

On the school front, my group is ALMOST done our group paper (14 pages later). We're still waiting on a small part from each person, but now the light at the end of the tunnel (for just THIS paper) is visible. I still have two minor papers to do by tuesday, but they shouldn't take too long... maybe the better part of Sunday afternoon! I'm sooooo ready for the middle of may to get here, and FAST!!!

I am glad, however, that Spring is finally here. Now if only we had Spring temperatures. :) Oh boy I can't wait!!

And to end the weekend, we plan to maybe visit Sharon, Rob, and Baby Lucas tomorrow after church. We're both healthy again (although I still have a cough that made me sick a little today, but I think that's here to stay for awhile, no virus attached) so we won't be spreading our germs to the family. We're very excited to meet him and to congratulate the new parents in person.

Well.. that's all for now... I'm pooped. So maybe a quick nap before lunch/dinner and work (Booo work!!!) Enjoy the weekend.

24 week doc visit

2009-03-19T19:51:00.000-07:00

Today was my 24 week, monthly check up. More of the same really: pee in a cup, weight check (144.2), blood pressure (110/68), heart beat...

At this point of the visit, the doctor usually checks fundal height by pressing on my expanding belly. This time he whipped out the measuring tape though, which was a little exciting. Usually around 22 weeks or so, they can start measuring you with tape. The distance in cm from your pubic bone to the top of the uterus should correspond to how far along you are, so at 24 weeks I should measure 24 cm. The doc didn't give me a number, which I assume means I'm right on.

I don't go back for another month, but I did get my lab form to take my 1 hour glucose test, which means I get to not eat all morning, go in and drink some really sweet, nasty orange stuff and wait an hour to have my blood drawn to see if I have gestational diabetes. YUM!!! I will probably go in two weeks to do that. When I go back to see the doctor, it will be for my 28 week visit and will be more of the usual. After that, I don't think I go back until I'm 32 weeks and then I start to go every two weeks until I think I'm 37 weeks maybe, and then I believe I go once a week.

Now, while it seems like things are going pretty quickly, it doesn't feel that way at all. In fact, all day I've been extremely irritated, seemingly for no reason at all. I think it's mostly due to the crappy weather that we've had... makes for a heck of a spring break. It's also due to the school work I have to do. I'm beyond irritated with this, because of this stupid stupid group paper I have that is going NOWHERE and is due tuesday. I'm so tired of stupid busy work that takes up way too much time and causes way too much stress.. and for what.. TWO lousy credits. It's complete BS and I'm so irritated that I can barely focus on the paper. I've gotten nothing done all day. And when I have school work that's NOT getting done, that means I have house work that is ALSO NOT getting done. Laundry piling up, hair balls growing in the corners. I can't possibly do that when I have school work, so I get nowhere at all!!! ARGH!!!

Seeing how irritated I've been today, it has made me completely bored/tired of being pregnant. Sounds bad, I know!!! But it's been six months.. nothing really goes on for another 2 months... I can't really do anything until we get our furniture in and by that time I probably won't have time to because of school! There's a lot of things I can't do and things just seem to be drawing out!! I know this is common, but it still makes me feel bad that I feel this way. I'm PRAYING for a sunny day tomorrow so I can get back to normal! It really makes me miss going tanning. It used to be that if I was having a crappy, rainy, gloomy day I would go tanning and it would make me feel A LOT better. But of course I haven't been able to do that! That would make me feel a ton better.

Really.. I just need a spring break that's really a break. No school work, sunny warm weather!!! But, for me spring break is over. Group project tomorrow, work saturday and sunday and back to school on monday. AND I still have to make up my final. I wish school would just end already. I'm so so tired of it!!!! I feel like I've been going to school forever (because I have). I have no clue how I'm going to make it through another 2 months of this crap!

That was my vent for today.

Babycenter Birth

2009-03-18T03:11:00.000-07:00

So I'm up at 6 am because my acid reflux is TERRIBLE this morning. I woke up to potty around 5 and the acidy, bubbly grossness just won't let me get back to sleep. So I ventured down to the kitchen for some tortilla chips (which tend to make me feel better) and to check our mega millions tickets! Sorry.. we didn't win.

But I happened to stroll over to babycenter.com onto my July birth board to find that the first of our July mommies-to-be had her baby this morning! She was 24 weeks 5 days (so, now, just 4 days past me) and she had been told around 21 weeks that she had almost no amniotic fluid left. She's been in and out of the hospital for weeks and the doctors told her they wouldn't be able to do anything until she was 24 weeks. Maybe a week or two ago they told her she had absolutely NO fluid left and the baby's chances were slim to none! Well this past friday marked her 24 week day and she started steroids to help the baby develop... and she held on until this morning. But... this morning she had her baby boy Christian via C-section. He weighed 1 lb 5 oz! AND... he's got a 70% chance of survival!!! He's currently in the NICU and doing well!

Just a little miracle I thought was worth sharing!

Victory. 24: Let the Countdown Begin!!!

2009-03-17T18:37:00.001-07:00

Today, 3/17/09 marks my OFFICIAL 24 week day!!! Happy St. Patrick's Day to that. It's great to be able to breathe a bit knowing that if something were to happen at this point and Jackson decided to make his debut early, his chances of survival are much better and the doctor's will make attempts to actually keep him alive. YAY!!!

Last night was my first night that I went back to work since being sick. And, when I got home at 1:30 am I was ready for bed. BUT.. Jackson had other plans. This was the first night he actually kept me awake with his kicking (more because I enjoyed feeling it). Then, as soon as I woke up this morning, he started kicking some more. AND he's been going crazy in there all day! I think he's rested MAYBE 1 straight hour today. And this is all perfectly okay by me. It's really nice to be able to feel him move so I'm hoping this continues to be a daily thing.

Also today my brother and his wife brought home their new puppy, Bailey (well, maybe Bailey). They bought a little girl Puggle and she is the cutest little thing. She LOVES Justin already as she took a nap with him on the couch while we were visiting. It definitely made me want another puppy, mainly because Puggles are so darn cute, and it made Justin miss his old Pug, Spike Dietz. But no puppies for us anytime soon. They still haven't really named her yet. They're stuck between Scrappy, Lucy, and Bailey. I said they should definitely name her Bailey seeing as Bailey's is an Irish Cream and today IS St. Patrick's Day. Wenke and Justin agreed, so now we just wait for Wayne's consensus.

Other than that, it's been pretty low key today. I was planning on running some errands today, but this tail end of the flu made my stomach feel pretty crappy for a better part of the day, so I stayed on the couch watching Law & Order SVU and NCIS all day! Oh well!!!

To celebrate our 24 week victory, I took plenty of pictures. The first two were taken yesterday and the last three were taken this afternoon. Enjoy!

I figure also since it's a pretty big day, I'll update with what babycenter says about this week:

How your baby's growing:Your baby's growing steadily, having gained about 4 ounces since last week. That puts him at just over a pound. Since he's almost a foot long (picture an ear of corn), he cuts a pretty lean figure at this point, but his body is filling out proportionally and he'll soon start to plump up. His brain is also growing quickly now, and his taste buds are continuing to develop. His lungs are developing "branches" of the respiratory "tree" as well as cells that produce surfactant, a substance that will help his air sacs inflate once he hits the outside world. His skin is still thin and translucent, but that will start to change soon.See what your baby looks like this week. (Or see what fraternal twins look like in the womb this week.)Note: Every baby develops a little differently — even in the womb. Our information is designed to give you a general idea of your baby's development.
How your life's changing:In the past few weeks, the top of your uterus has risen above your belly button and is now about the size of a soccer ball.Most women have a glucose screening test (also called a glucose challenge test or GCT) between now and 28 weeks. This test checks for gestational diabetes, a pregnancy-related high-blood-sugar condition. Untreated diabetes increases your risk of having a difficult vaginal delivery or needing a cesarean section because it causes your baby to grow too large, especially in his upper body. It also raises your baby's odds for other complications like low blood sugar right after birth. A positive result on your GCT doesn't mean you have gestational diabetes, but it does mean that you'll need to take the glucose tolerance test (GTT) to find out for sure.Finally, if you don't already know how to spot the signs of preterm labor, now's the time to learn. Contact your caregiver immediately if you notice any of the signs mentioned below.

And here's a picture of what babycenter says our little guy looks like this week:

That's all for this week! Hopefully soon I'll be able to update with a pool table sale and the delivery and set-up of our nursery furniture. Stay tuned.

Baby Buys

2009-03-15T18:56:00.000-07:00

The other day we were searching Craigslist and came across the cutest rocking horse being sold for just $20. I emailed the seller and it was still available. So today we took a trip to Jarrettsville (a good hour drive) to pick it up... and I LOVE it. It's just as adorable as I hoped.

As we were pulling out of the driveway, the couple came out and told us they were getting rid of a bunch of other things and asked if we wanted them. So we ended up bringing home a car seat and a pack-n-play which they wouldn't take money for. The car seat will end up being a travel seat for grandmas (if it checks out) and the pack-n-play will be our travel one when we go anywhere. We're still keeping the one we had on our registry as it has the built in bassinet and changing loft and will be awesome to keep downstairs rather than running up and down the steps all day.

All in all, it was a great day and we're glad we made the trip!

Money Saving Deals: furniture

2009-03-14T14:15:00.000-07:00

So during one of my many babycenter.com browsings since I've been sick, I came across a post of somebody talking about babies r us coupons. She wasn't using them, so she was going to give them away, but then another woman commented that the coupons could be found on the babies r us website. So I went on and I found some coupons. Three that were of particular interest were the ones that said save $75 or $150 or $250 dollars on nursery furniture. I decided to print them out just in case, and since they didn't cover the glider and ottoman we wanted, I cut out the 15% off any item coupon that I got from a babies r us catalog.

Well the coupons expire in a week or so, so Justin and I decided to go to the store today to order our furniture (despite me hacking up a lung). We picked out the furniture and sat down to order and it came to a whopping $1700 plus some odd amount. YIKES!!! Because it was so much, however, it made us elligible to use the $250 off coupon for the furniture. So we applie for the credit card which would give us another 10% off and then made our way to the register. When we got there, she rung up the furniture, took our two coupons and then did our 10 % off from the credit card application and.... ba ba ba ba.... we ended up paying $1300 something instead, saving a total of $528 I think. CRAZINESS!!!

Justin high fived me a couple of times for that :)

So, without further adeu, here are pics of what our furniture will look like:

The wonderful Babi Italia 4 in one convertible crib

The dresser/changing table

The armoir

And the glider and ottoman (but I believe we ordered the one with a dark green fabric)

I am extremely extremely excited about all of this and I can't wait until it gets here in 7-14 days :)

And I finally took my 23 week pictures. They're not the best, but considering I've signed my life over the flu temporarily, you'll have to forgive me.

update: new babies

2009-03-13T12:54:00.001-07:00

Sometime last night I checked facebook again and saw the posts that Sharon and Rob had their baby boy. They named him Lucas Ryan Taylor, which was exciting to hear because they were keeping the name a secret until he was born.

He looks perfect from the pictures, and we can't wait to meet him (when we're not flu-ridden of course).

Congratulations Rob and Sharon, and welcome baby Lucas!!!!

New Babies!!!

2009-03-12T12:03:00.000-07:00

I just read the blog of our friend's Bert and Laura (who are also expecting) to find that a couple at church had their baby girl this week.

AND, I just checked facebook to find that Rob and Sharon are having their baby boy TODAY!!! How exciting. I wish we weren't so sick so we could actually go visit. But we'll wait for pictures instead.

Congratulations Kristen and Tim and good luck Rob and Sharon!!!

Still sick..

2009-03-11T18:05:00.000-07:00

And not getting ANY better. Actually, now I'm battling a fever, horrible cough, sore throat, and sore ears. :( I feel so crappy I can't even study. All of my words kind of just blur together and no energy to write.

Now we're just hoping this doesn't lead to an emergency room/labor and delivery visit. The only thing I can take is extra strength tylenol, robitussin, my ear drops, and throat lozenges. The doc said there's nothing else he can do besides that (since I can't take real meds) but if my temp goes up and won't break I'll have to go to the hospital. :::sigh::: What a fun week of exams!

Justin is still sick as well. He went to the doc today and the doc said no work for the rest of the week OR weekend for him. Justin got the flu shot a while back so he wasn't sure how he got the flu, but the doc said he got a mutated version of it and has since developed a sinus infection. Justin is now wondering what the point of the flu shot is and I tried to explain that they create the vaccine based on the strain that starts in other countries and makes it's way around to us. Unfortunately, going through so many people and places, there's always a chance that the virus can mutate enough to still get people sick, even if they were vaccinated. Yet another reason I don't get the flu shot.

Hopefully this will start to taper off tomorrow so I can study and be ready for my final on Friday. Please oh please!!!!

Victory. 23

2009-03-10T18:21:00.000-07:00

Today marks the victory of week 23! Just one more week to go until the countdown to D-day begins AND just 19 more days to go until we start counting down from 100 :) I can't wait.

In this weeks news (that I haven't already updated): my poor hubby has been sick with what we're thinking is the flu. He'll have a fever of 100 one minute and then like an hour later his temp will be normal at like 98.5 or so. It's definitely frustrating, seeing as he's had to stay home for 2 days already and another day tomorrow so he can go to the doc.

We've been faithfully using hand sanitizer and washed all of our couch blankets today to keep me from getting sick. I even studied at Julie's ALL DAY yesterday partially to stay out of the house... but to no avail! I ended up starting to come down with something today. I have a cough and a sore throat from the cough. And anytime my throat bothers me, my ears start and that's the worst. Unfortunately I also started with some ligament pain in my side late last night that continued into today. So instead of taking robitussin (the only thing I can really take) I opted for ear drops and pain pills that I got the last time I had bone and ligament pain.

In other news, I'm one exam down and three more to go this week. Then 3 papers over spring break. What a JOY. I'm hoping to make it to the ocean at some point over spring break just to relax for a day.

In Jackson news. Julie made lasagna last night and he loved it. He was moving all around and even gave me a painful kick (he kicked me in my sore ligament). AND in the BIG Jackson news. While we were pitifully resting on the couch tonight he started moving around. Usually when Justin tries to feel he stops. BUT this time Justin actually got to feel him :) I was so super excited. It was great. And he's been moving ever since. Unfortunately most of his movements are right on top of my bladder, but I suppose I can deal with that.

This Saturday we will hopefully order our furniture for the room which I'm also excited about.

Beyond that, it's business as usual around here. Work, school, no sleep, lol. But I'm still making it! I haven't taken a picture yet this week, but hopefully I'll feel well enough to do so tomorrow. Until then, happy 23 weeks. Thanks for all thoughts, prayers, and following up until this point and in advance for the next 17 weeks. :)