33 weeks! And lots of catch-up stuff.

I almost typed ketchup on accident.

Hey everybody! Guess what time it is? That's right! Time for another one of these:

The official subtitle to this picture in the email it came in was: "Your baby is losing that wrinkled alien look." haha

My belly button is trying really hard not to be an outie. Right now, it's just all stretched out and flat. So I read a little while back that right about now the baby's so cramped that his movements are supposed to be a little less vigorous and a little more muffled.

So not true.

He's more cramped all right, but that just means that he tries harder when he pushes and kicks and moves around. He was pushing so hard the other day it felt like he was going to tear something. No kidding. And usually when I push back (gently) on the hard little mounds that are his feet and knees and etc. poking out of my stomach, he relaxes. But not anymore! Now he just pushes back! He's getting so strong. On the one hand, it's exciting, and really cool to feel him so well. On the other, it's not always so comfortable when it feels like he's trying to break out early ;)

In other news, I had a migraine yesterday! And honestly, it scared the heck outta me. I'd never had a real one before, and so I didn't know there was more to it than just a headache from hell. Here's how things progressed:

1. Noticed there was a little blind spot in my vision. Weird. It just looked like one of those spots you get when you look at a bright light, so I wasn't too worried at this point.
2. Blind spot gets bigger and eventually takes out my peripheral vision on the left side. I start to worry a little, call my doctor and leave a message for a nurse to call back. 
3. Look up 'vision' in the index of my pregnancy book and realize I can't see well enough to read. Finally find it, look it up, and skim it the best I can. Don't get anything out of it, because I'm too freaked out now. Hold my left hand up in front of my face and realize there's no arm attached. Freeeakyyyy. 
4. Chill on the couch for a while, text Chad and freak him out too. Vision starts to get better as huge blind spots are replaced with a budding headache. 
5. Left hand goes numb. Numbness moves up to my elbow. Left side of face goes numb. Both of these last a few minutes (long enough for me to convince myself I'm having a stroke at age 25). This goes away, then lips, tongue, and top of mouth go numb (yep, it's a stroke for sure).
6. Chad comes home early; I've sufficiently scared the heck outta him too. He hangs out with me while I freak out.
7. Nurse calls! (finally!) and says that everything I'm describing sounds like a classic migraine. She looks at my records to make sure it's not preeclampsia, and then calms me down and reassures me she's pretty certain it's a migraine. 
8. I calm down enough to go and sleep for two hours while Chad recovers in the living room. 

Scary, right? Unless this has happened to you and you knew what was going on (unlike either of us). The headache's mostly gone now. Now I'm just tired and feel like I've got a hangover. I was sooo glad Chad came home. I didn't want to die alone.

:)

But really, I was super scared, and so glad when he came home early to make sure nothing serious was going on.

I now need to mention further how awesome Chad is. I dropped my classes because it didn't feel like a good idea to be relying on the baby not coming early. If he did come early, I'd miss my finals and fail my classes. Then we'd have to pay the government back for a wasted Pell grant. There was too much riding on his due date, and I wasn't totally comfortable with it all. However, dropping my classes = I lose my job. But fortunately, Chad is the most amazing, hard-working, and loving person on Earth. We found out he could drop one of his classes and still keep enough of his grant to cover the one class he kept. Then he went and talked to his boss and got more work as his research assistant helping him with something complicated in Arabic. THEN he took my old job working mornings at the Bean Museum! See? I told you he was amazing. But if you already know him and still needed to be told that he's wonderful, then shame on you.

And, as a very late tribute for Father's Day, here's a quick bunch of my favorite photos of my Dad.

Dad with Nevil Shed 

Take one

Take two...

Take three :)

Navy hunk!

I love old pictures, so here's my Mom too (a few years before they met :)

Cutie, huh?

It took a few tries to get my Dad to be able to hold his mean face for this one :D

And since I can't find any stick on tattoos this time around, this is the best I can do: 

My personal, all-time favorite:

Sorry for the weird quality of this one. I can't find my scanned copy, so I took a picture of my hard copy. Back from the days when I had old school photo skills. Sigh...

Thanks for being so awesome Dad. Love you!

And I can't let Father's Day totally pass without Chad. This was his first real one!

Obviously not our baby. This was a couple years ago when we went to Texas for Christmas, and I snapped a photo of Chad and Sarah, my sister's littlest. She's SO FUN. Such a cutie. And Chad just loves her. Well, all Erin's kids actually, which isn't hard to do. Chad's going to be a great dad. I can't wait :)

Have a great day!

32 weeks

Hey everybody! Sorry for the lack of stuff on here as of late. I've gotten lazy. But guess what? Only 8ish more weeks til our little guy gets here! Bahaha! I can hardly believe it. I get a little giddy thinking about it, in case you couldn't tell.

This morning at work, Clark the woodshop guy asked me how far along I was and laughed when I said a little more than 7 months. He said I didn't look it, and then proceeded to animatedly tell me how huge his wife got with all their kids (imagine ballooned cheeks as he drew a big half-circle in the air over his stomach with both hands and outstretched arms. haha). 

But he's right, and I'm grateful. I haven't gotten very big with our first baby, and that's saved me a lot of grief in the discomfort department. I've had sciatic nerve issues, but they've mostly gone away since we hit the third trimester. Weird, huh? Guess who's not complaining. Yesterday and today the sciatic nerve thing hasn't been cooperating as well, but I'm hoping it'll settle down again. If not, only 8 more weeks. 

So here's the customary naked illustration of what's going on:

And here's my 7 month belly shot we took last night (actually, 7 months and 5 days if you care to know):

In other news, Chad went on a sweet hike last weekend with a couple friends from our ward. They went up to the Y first, then left the trail and blazed up to the top of the mountain next to Y Mountain. Cool? Yes, most definitely. Then they came back down Slate Canyon, after making their trail again to the start of the canyon. They were soooo scratched up when they got back. Luckily, Chad was in jeans and tennis shoes. The other two guys were in shorts and one of them was wearing Chacos (which I have wanted for SO LONG! But I digress). Poor fellows were in even worse shape than Chad after all was said and done. 

Pics from Chad's hike:

Chad's really got an eye for pretty vistas :)

Cody and Jordan

Can't imagine why they'd be all scratched up.... Apparently the way down was even more dense than this:

See the rattlesnake? Chad almost stepped on it! He had to jump aside at the last minute when he saw it moving across his path. Scary!

More snake, a little easier to see in this one:

From the top:

Still snow up there:

I'm so glad he got to go :) He'd been wanting to do that for a long time, and Jordan and Cody wanted to go too, so it all worked out. And I sure can't do it right now. Looking at all those briars, I don't think I'd want to do it even not pregnant. They gained 4000 feet in 4.6 miles! Good job guys. 

30 week ultrasound!

Prepare yourself for some truly awesome pictures.

Orientation:

Now the unlabeled profile:

We were so glad to finally get a good profile pic! He was being a little stubborn ten weeks ago and smushing his face up against things :)

The ultrasound tech took 3D pics too! These are SO COOL. I wasn't always a fan of 3D ultrasound pics cause they sometimes turn out really weird, but holy moley. These are so cool.

So first, to orient yourself, you're looking at him face-on:

The big blobby thing coming up from the bottom right and covering part of his face is the placenta. Sorry.

Ok, now that you know what you're looking at, here's the next one:

He smiled!!!!! I basically melt into a big goopy puddle every time I see this picture. That's to say nothing of when we saw him smile during the actual ultrasound. The tech was getting pretty melty-goopy herself. She was great :)

Isn't he so adorable?! Ah! I can't wait for him to get here. He was being super cute during the ultrasound too. For part of the time he was chewing on the cord, then puckering his lips, then he started sticking his tongue out. Hehe :D

Best doctor's appointment ever.

29 weeks and 6 month tummy pictures

29 weeks! Haven't done this in a while, but here you go:

Little guy's gettin' big, huh?

And here's me at 6 months and 10 or 11 days:

I need to work on my posture.

Things have been just fine around here. Spring term is almost over, which means I have to go back to school in like a week and half. That is going to be sooo hard. I've gotten used to doing whatever I want with my time. D'oh.

Anyway, I'll get back into blogging more regularly. Pregnancy actually does make you tired. Weird. I have another sonogram coming up in about a week, so hopefully we'll get more pictures from that. If it seems like I've had an unfair number of ultrasounds, you're right. The first one was to figure out how far along I was (9 weeks and 3 days to be precise); the second one was to find the baby and make sure he was ok (the nurse couldn't find a heartbeat; that was a fun few minutes); the third was my 20 weeker; and this next one is to make sure I don't have placenta previa, because the nurses were worried about that. During my 20 week ultrasound, the placenta was low-lying, but that usually clears up as the uterus expands. However, the main sign of placenta previa is bleeding right around the start of your third trimester, and low and behold, I went to the hospital last week for a little bleeding. Here's hoping it was a fluke. Everything looked fine on the monitors and I've been just fine since. 

Change of topic: Chad has officially passed the hiring process with the Austin PD!! Whoopee!! So unless the class size in December is 20 people or less, we'll be in Austin in December. We're pretty dang excited. We've been looking at apartments and budgeting and planning and all those fun big adventure things :) Texas ho!

And tonight, we should have a crib picked out and maybe even bought. I'm so excited to set that thing up. 

Have a nice Thursday everyone!

PS. A police officer ran through our parking lot a little while ago. See? Provo is exciting.

PPS. Yesterday morning at work, Cosmo asked me where the bathroom was. That's right. I have actually spoken with Cosmo the Cougar. In the Bean Museum. At 9:30 in the morning. How weird is that? He was very polite.