Thursday, December 30, 2010

37 Week Appointment...

BP: 104/70
Weight: 163 lbs. (I actually lost 2 lbs., and over Christmas no less!)
HB: 138 BPM
Dilated: "a good 3 cm"

I had a non-eventful appointment yesterday...my doctor is on vacation so I saw one of the other doctors, which I always hate, just because I love my doctor. I signed my induction consent, which was good :) We'll see what she does with me at my next appointment - last time she said that there's a possibility of her breaking my water in the office and sending me over, and with me dilating at least 1 cm each week I could see her doing that. It all depends, I think, on how worried about the size of the baby she is. We'll just have to wait and see :)

Thursday, December 23, 2010

36 Week Appointment...

Weeks: 36
Weight: 165 lbs.
BP: 106/70
HB: 140 bpm
Dilated: Almost 2 cm and baby's head is low!

I had a great appointment yesterday! She was double-booked a it was her only day working this week, but she still took the time to sit and talk with me about our upcoming baby. Thankfully my body is getting ready to evict this little thing! When she checked me she said "the baby's head is nice and low, but you probably could have told me that" and she was right! I have had so much pressure and pain that I hope something was going on in there!

We have set an induction date, which is very nice...1-11-11!! So if nothing happens sooner, I will go in that morning to have my baby...less than three weeks away!!!

Thursday, December 09, 2010

34 Weeks...

I had my 34 week appointment yesterday...here are my stats:

Weight: 163 lbs (that means a 45 lb. weight gain so far)
BP: 110/70
HB: 145

I had heard from my sisters-in-law who had just delivered at the hospital that I normally deliver at their husbands had to leave the room when they got their epidural. This is a huge deal for me because I HATE needles, and John really helps me through any shots/ivs that I need. So I talked to my doctor about it yesterday and she said that my hospital has had a lot of changes lately that really take control away from the doctors. The hospital now has policies on how much pitocin they will give, how long they will let you labor, etc. This really ticks me off because I want my doctor making those decisions, not a hospital that knows nothing about me! So We will be touring another hospital next week, and I'm thinking I might deliver there because my doctor said that they still let the doctor control everything. I talked to my friends last night and they all seemed to have good experiences at this other hospital, so I'm not too worried, but as with anything, change does stress me out a little.

But either way, I will have a baby in the next 4 - 5 weeks, which is really just freaking me out because I'M NOT READY!!! Yeah...still no girl names...

Tuesday, December 07, 2010

Christmas Shopping...

I have great memories from when I was younger of going Christmas shopping. The malls were always decorated like crazy and there was loud Christmas music playing everywhere. I probably didn’t like being dragged from store to store when I was younger, but thinking back, the shopping was a huge part of Christmas.

Over the last couple of years I have tried to do as much online shopping as I can. With so many kids and working, I just don’t have the time and energy to drag everyone out and about and with free shipping deals, I often get better prices online. But I get sad that I miss, and that my kids are not experiencing the Christmas shopping.

So last night I decided that we needed to go to the mall. There were three things that I needed, and really, the only way for me to find them was to walk around the mall, so I thought this would be perfect! We loaded up the kids, dropped something off somewhere, and headed to the mall. I should also mention that I decided to do this on one of the coldest days/nights so far…the high yesterday was only 25 degrees, so I’m sure it was much colder at 6:30 last night.

The first thing we did was go to the food court and get Chick-fil-A for dinner. We had such a great dinner! We sat at a table way off with no one around us, and we all talked and watched the people shopping. I told John that I was so surprised at how empty the mall was for being this close to Christmas.

After dinner we started walking. I was having such great luck finding the gifts I needed (I needed 2 sets of white elephant gifts and I needed to get my “expecting” ornament for this year). We all went into the Apple store and all three of the kids played on everything. Josh planted himself in front of an i-Pad and played football the whole time, Kylie jumped between the i-Pods and computers, and Ryan just ran around and played with the computers.

When I was getting my ornament (which happened to be right by Santa), no one was waiting to see Santa, so he motioned for the kids to come over and even Ryan ran right up to him and jumped on his lap! We walked around some more, and the boys had a blast in a couple of sports-themed stores. Finally, around 8:20 we decided we should leave so that the kids could get to bed.

I told John on the way home that while I had a lot of fun, I was so disappointed in the “Christmas shopping experience.” There weren’t a whole lot of decorations, and I could barely hear Christmas music at times. And like I said, the mall was pretty much empty.

I know times are changing, and with the economy things are crazy, but it still stinks when re-enactments don’t live up to the memories.

Monday, December 06, 2010

A Great Weekend!

This past weekend was busy, but a lot of fun!

Friday night we had house church. Our topic was “discipline” and it was good hearing other parents talk about what they do with their kids and what we can all do to raise the kind of kids we want to raise. We had so much fun talking afterwards that a couple of the families didn’t leave until 11:30! I love it when people stay long…I always have so much fun hanging out with everyone!

Saturday I spent the day doing laundry and taking care of the kids. John had to work at Holidays in Powell, so it was just the kids and I all day. Around 3:00 the kids and I headed over to Holidays in Powell. The first thing the kids did was drop their letters off for Santa in the huge mailbox. Then we went in and they sat on his lap. We had been prepping Ryan for this for weeks and he told us that he was not going to cry and he was going to tell Santa exactly what he wanted for Christmas. But as it was our turn, and Mrs. Clause was talking to each of the kids, Ryan did not want to get out of the stroller! Josh sat on his lap first and talked to him, and then it was Ryan’s turn. Thankfully John came over from his booth and helped me out :) He had Santa play tug of war with the candy cane with Ryan and pretty soon Ryan was laughing. After that Ryan was comfortable enough to give him a hug and then sit there and talk to him. After that I got a picture of all three, and then Kylie sat on his lap.

Once we were done with Santa, we went into the craft room and the kids did a ton of crafts! It’s such a fun time…everything is free and the kids always have such a blast! After they were all done, we headed home and I fed the kids dinner and let myself sit down for a little bit.

John came home around 6:00 and we started getting ourselves and the kids ready. We had our house church date night and all the kids were going to one house where we had two baby-sitters lined up. Then the adults were heading out for a great dinner. The kids got showers/baths and put on/packed up their PJs and we headed out. The two sitters that we had are girls from church that the kids and parents absolutely LOVE! The one girl we had nanny for us a couple of weeks this past summer.

So the adults all headed out (there were 8 of us). The restaurant was really good (J. Liu’s)! The only downside was the seated at the table next to us right after we were seated were two women and 3 little kids (ranging in age from probably 5 months to 3 years). Of all the times and all the places! Of course I love kids, but when we are out for an adult dinner, I don’t want to sit next to toddlers throwing fits. And it’s weird because this was not a child-friendly restaurant, so I’m surprised they even brought them in there (besides the fact that it was 8:45 at night!).

After our two-hour dinner, we headed over to Jenni’s ice cream and had a great dessert. Our entertainment for the night was one of the guys pumping his French press coffee and then complaining about the pieces of coffee grounds in his cup. We were still joking about that at church the next day :)

We finally got the kids at 11:30 and they were so exhausted! We got up and went to church and then came home for Joshie’s first playdate with a kid from school. After his friend left we spent the afternoon cleaning up/cooking/relaxing. Our church was having a potluck dinner/play that night, so I had to make food for it.

We left before dinnertime and headed to church. The potluck was amazing, as usual! The food was fantastic and the kids were really easy this year (compared to prior years with Ryan in a stroller, etc.). I asked John what in the world we were thinking going back to a baby again when things were getting so easy! After dinner we headed into the Rec Center theater where our church had bought out a special performance of a one-hour special “A Christmas Carol Musical.” It was cute and the kids had a lot of fun!

Afterwards we headed home and the kids got ready for bed. John and I watched some TV and hung out with Ryan who was being cute as usual.

It was really a fun weekend and not too stressful! Hopefully the next couple weekends are the same way…I don’t want to let the stress of this time of year get to me :)













Wednesday, December 01, 2010

Thanksgiving 2010...

This Thanksgiving was a wonderful and relaxing time! I decided to take off Wednesday, so I only worked two days last week, which was really nice since I hadn’t had a day off since the beginning of September. I had our nanny come a little later that day, and she got the kids breakfast while I made my shopping list and went grocery shopping. After that, Ryan went over to see my dad and the nanny took Kylie and Joshie to Chuck E. Cheese’s (she had promised them this before I decided to take the day off), while I did laundry and got the groceries organized.

I got a little bit of cooking done and before I knew it John had come home and my sister had arrived from Michigan. We ordered pizza and got to work on making noodles and the crust for the apple pies and getting the sticky buns ready. I actually got to bed at a decent time, which has never happened! I’m usually up pretty late cooking.

Thanksgiving morning I woke up and got ready to watch the parade. I put out a bunch of cut-up fruit as well as cooked the sticky buns. My sister ran in the turkey trot that morning, and as hard as she tried, she couldn’t convince John to join her (it was cold and rainy). After the parade, and after my sister got back, we started right in with all the cooking. We ended up eating dinner around 5:00 and it was fabulous despite some cooking snafus (but Suz and I pinky swore that we would never tell anyone about the burnt noodles and the quadrupled corn soufflé recipe :) ).

After dinner my other sister and brother-in-law came over. We ate dessert and played some games (catch phrase, rummy and BS (or “shenanigans” as we called it for the kids). We all crashed pretty hard that night!

Friday we hung out (there was no way I was going to go shopping after having been on my feet all day the day before), watched football and just played with the kids. We went to a sporting goods store to get Joshie a football that he has been wanting, and John left there making comments about what great deals they had. Apparently he really had no idea how great Black Friday was :)

That night we went over to John’s sister’s house for Thanksgiving on the other side of the family. The kids had a lot of fun playing football and playdough with their cousins.

Saturday was the Ohio State Michigan game, and my sister and I made our annual sweet potato chips. We LOVE these things and look forward to making them anytime we can! After the game I went out with my dad and got my poinsettias and candles and John brought up all the Christmas decorations. We got the tree up that night, but no decorations. The kids were disappointed, but we promised them that Sunday we would get everything done.

Sunday we had a communion service at church and then we came home and finished decorating the house. The kids got to play with the neighbors a lot, and it was just an overall relaxing day. Unfortunately my dad and Suzie had to head home late that afternoon :(

It was such a nice weekend and Monday was a hard adjustment! I had gotten used to going to bed late and sleeping in a little bit. But at least I know that in a few weeks I’ll have a whole week off for Christmas, and then 3 months off after that :)


Ryan playing "ipad" while we decorated for Christmas:




Aunt Suzie and Joshie during the OSU/Michigan game: