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!