Week 33 OB Appointment

I had an OB appointment yesterday and now I'm wearing compression socks to combat the swollen ankles and feet.  It's keeping the itching to a minimum so I'm thankful for that.  My belly did grow from 31 cm to 35 cm in a span of two weeks so that will be watched carefully to make sure Johnny doesn't get to big for my britches.  My doctor's 95% sure everything is normal, but if I have another belly burst she'll have us do another ultrasound to make sure Johnny has enough room.  If he does...fine, if not, we may need to get him out early.  But it sounds like there's only a small chance of that happening.  We'll find out which direction to take on our next OB appointment which is April 9th.

Sable's Birthday Party

On Saturday, we went to Sable's birthday party at the Seattle Aquarium.  Most of the group was following Sable's speed throughout, but Holiday was just as tenacious as ever and is clearly in control of her destiny.  So we tried to check in with the main group as much as possible while Holly led David and I around the Aquarium.  She really liked to touch the tide pool critters, it was hard to get her to use one finger, she wanted to splash so badly.  Holly had fun playing in killer whale exhibit (no killer whales actually there).  I think her favorite part was seeing the Harbor seals, one of them got out of the water to sun himself, she liked that.  We got to see a little of the otters being fed.  Those guys are vicious eaters, keep all limbs out of the way if there's a hungry otter in the vicinity.  Then we had lunch in the cafe there which the food was actually pretty good.  Then we had birthday cupcakes and party favors.  Holiday can't get enough cupcakes, we had to watch her so she wouldn't jack a second cupcake.  She also thoroughly enjoyed the bubbles amongst the party favors.  The weather was perfect too so it was a really great weekend.

Funny stuff

Last night Holly did something new...we were having tacos for dinner and she took her beans and mixed cheese with them and actually ATE it.  Holly usually doesn't like mixing food and in this case only tolerates it if she's the one that gets to do the mixing.  After dinner, she put on her mittens and hat and declared her desire to go play outside so David took her for a walk in her pushcar.  They saw a dumpster that was jutting out into the sidewalk and Holly asked what that was.  David told her it was like a big garbage can and Holly exclaimed, "Oscar!" 

32 weeks and 4 days - Living Large

Well Johnny at least has moved again because yesterday I felt pretty awful and then today I feel fine.   My belly button had been hurting due to the stretching which was weird but normal.  When I'm getting stretched out like that it messes me up for about a day, then I equalize until next time.  I'm not sure if he's dropped yet but it wouldn't surprise me if he has.  I think I need some new shirts because I'm not quite getting coverage out of the ones I have.  If I wear yoga pants my stomach is always partially revealed, like Winnie the Pooh.  My ankles and feet have been swelling pretty bad.  Probably because I sit a lot at work, then by the time I get home I'm so tired I pretty much just sit on the couch.  When I get a decent walk in during the day everything deflates.  Walking also helps my psyiatica and helps me sleep at night.  I usually take walks on my lunch hour.  I'm really looking forward to my baby shower coming up a week from Saturday, mostly because there will be a lot of people there I haven't seen in a while.  They are probably going to be pretty surprised at how big I am...Johnny is riding pretty far forward right now.

Busy Weekend

So about 10:00 am on Saturday morning I realized it was snowing and showed Holiday.  She immediately got way excited.  "Snow!  Shoes, come on Mommy, outside!"  She couldn't wait to get outside.  She wanted to go for a walk in her pink pushcar.  They were really wet, fat flakes so it was like taking a walk in the rain.  We were dressed for the weather though.  We stopped by a new Italian cafe that we've been meaning to check out.  Holly and I had gelato and David had a cappacino.  Holly kept saying how she, "Loves chocwate!"  They had other things like wine, beer, smoothies, breakfast menu, lunch/dinner menu along with the gelato.  They even had a Guiness gelato, since it was St. Patrick's Day, only the owner made certain to us that he didn't recommend that.  Not every flavor is a success.  We really liked the place, it even appeared family-owned.  There's not really any cool places to hang out in our neighborhood so it was great to see something new that our neighborhood had been lacking.  Holly did a ton of puddle jumping on the way back home and had a total blast doing it.  While Holly napped, David and I prepped and painted the nursery to look like a boy's room, and did it under two hours.  Now we just have to put everything back in there and hang the curtains.  When Holly got up from her nap the weather was fantastic so we went in the back yard to play.  Daddy knocked down more of our invasive bushes and Holly and I helped as much as we could to put it in the green bin.  Yesterday we did our usual grocery shopping and laundry.  But we also went to the Seattle Center to watch Anna dance in her dance group at the Irish Festival.  They do traditional Irish folk dancing, think Riverdance, no arms.   Anna did really well and apparently the dance school also participated in the St. Patrick's Day parade downtown Seattle as well the day before.  Holly LOVED it.  She told us all about it over and over all the way back to the car and the way home.

Latest OB Appointment

I had another OB appointment yesterday and everything's going great.  Last Thursday I woke up with all my ab muscles so entirely achey that it was pretty agonizing, a hot shower made it feel better, but everything felt different ever since.  I thought either the baby's head is down or grew an inch.  My doctor took a look and sure enough, his head is down.  That's four weeks earlier than Holiday did.  He probably did it because he's so big, it's not likely he'll be coming sooner.  It's kind of funny because I felt it when Holly put her head down too, it messes me up for about a day and everything feels different after it happens.  They had a finger poke for a glucose check too since my previous test was borderline.  She said if it had read over 120 she'd be concerned but I registered at 74 so I'm way in the clear, I probably won't need any more lab work done.  So NO gestational diabetes, just one big baby boy.

Surgeon Appointment Yesterday

We had a consultation appointment yesterday with the doctor that will be my surgeon.  Basically, we were able to ask a bunch of questions and I'm still convinced I should go the route of the C-section even though I've been told I'd be a good candidate for a VBAC.  So at 35 weeks I can schedule a C-section date, at 38 weeks I go in for a pre-op appointment and sign all the necessary papers, and sometime during week 39 (May 7th - 11th) I go in for my C-section.  In the meantime I'll continue seeing my regular doctor for my OB appointments which I have an OB appointment today at 4:30 pm.  I suspect my appointments will start running every other week after today.

Also, we bought new shoes for Holiday last weekend since she's gone up a size so I've updated her sizes and clothing counts on the blog for everyone's information.  Oh yeah, and I got my hair cut last weekend.  It was getting too much so it's pretty short right now, but I'm much more comfortable.

Settled on a name

It took us a while but we've finally settled on a name for our new edition.  John Thomas Anderson.  I'll probably will be calling him Johnny, David said he'll probably refer to him as John.  I suppose if our little guy wanted to go by JT in the future he could, but we probably won't be calling him by that nickname unless he absolutely insists.  'John' is in reference to his paternal grandfather and 'Thomas' is in reference to a good friend of David's.  He was one of the best men, if you remember, from our wedding.  So, John Thomas Anderson, kind of sounds like a founding father to me.  I know it's not so out of the box as Holiday Rose, but we're happy with it.

For those of you planning on coming to the baby shower, please remember to call Kelly to RSVP so she has the most accurate head count as possible when arranging for refreshments.

More Pictures

Holly and Big Bird going for a horsey ride.

Seriously coloring.

Holiday coloring with Daddy.

This was me a couple of weeks ago...it really looks like I have a basketball under my shirt now.

Holiday loves to play dress up.

Holiday and Mommy (trying desperately to get comfortable on the couch).

Mad Drawing Skills

That is absolutely a discernable face.  It's Holiday's thing right now...drawing faces.  She draws kitty faces too, only without the ears but with definite whiskers. 

New Pictures

Here's Holiday eating with Mommy and Big Bird.

Holly is playing a board game with Daddy.

This was during the January snow storm.

Just look at that big smile.

Daddy had fun too.

Making snow castles with Mommy in the front yard.

Holly loves playing with her bucket and shovel.

You can see how much snow we had by looking at the car.

There's some tough fish that live in those ponds.  I think we still have them all.

It was hard to break Holly away from playing in the snow she loved it so much.

And here's Mommy again.

The snow was about 6 weeks ago, so I'm much bigger now.  Some days it's difficult just to walk around, but other times I'll get a burst of energy to get something done.