Week 1 - Everyone's Sleepy

My baby is SO CUTE!!

As most of you know by now, this birth did not come off without a hitch. However, we were at a great hospital, attended by a great doctor, and she's here and she's healthy.  Here are the picks we took of the day.  I know I look great in most of them!! They aren't in order really either because I just realized the pics with the scrubs would probably come before the pic of me holding her...you guys are smart, I'm sure you can figure out the chronology.

Did I mention I'm huge

So, I'm gigantic. I will post the pics Eric took last week tomorrow. I finally found the stupid cord that attaches the camera to the computer so I can download the pictures. This moving business is for the birds. Anyway, I'm huge and sleep eludes me. I'm like a breaching whale every single time I flip over in bed. It's this big production where I'm on my side, I perch myself up on my elbow, throw myself up to a sitting position, shift to the other hip, flop down on the other side. I also simultaneously drag my extra pillow with me which ALWAYS gets stuck under the covers and requires A LOT of yanking to free it. Obviously this is effecting Eric's sleep as well and now he can sense a flip coming and wakes up enough to hold on to the covers so I don't take them with me during this whole production. Every night when I go to bed I think "maybe this is the night I go into labor". I just really want this to be over...it's uncomfortable.

As I write this it is 5:20 PST and I'm still in my pj's. I tried to talk Eric into letting me drive him to work today because I knew that would be my only inspiration to get dressed. In the beginning of this pregnancy he said that you never see women in the very last month of pregnancy out in public. Now I know it's because they're exhausted and napping on the couch. Eric did make me feel better when, as he was leaving, he told me it was just fine to stay in my pj's all day. If the bosser doesn't mind, I don't mind. Don't get me wrong though, I did do a lot of work. I ordered a scanner reviewed the new car inventory at two Subaru dealerships (oh, we're getting a new car on Monday), shredded a ton of old financial documents. I even logged into my work computer and worked on a report that's due before I go on maternity leave (5 short days from now). I'm not a slacker. I'm just exhausted.

Oh, and work just realized that I only have 5 days left. I'm not sure what they thought that countdown on my whiteboard outside my cube was for. It said XX days left. Hmmm...they were in denial. Oh well. I'm trying to transition things as quickly as I can to the most competent people that I can think of. I already know it's going to be difficult to be out of the loop for so long. People say that feeling will change but right now I can't imagine that happening. I'm going to try to transition back a couple of days a weeks after my 6 weeks are up. Eric and I are going to trade days at work so each of us will work alternating days for a couple of weeks. I'll definitely be back at work full time after 10 weeks though...

What else, Eli is almost as big as Joe. It's really hard to believe he's only 9 months old. He starts doggy daycare next week. We needed to get him into something before the baby comes. It's really hard to remember that he's still a puppy because he's so huge but yesterday Eric told me to look out the window and he was running laps around the backyard with an empty plant pot on his head and it really reminded me that he's just a little dude with a tiny puppy brain. We had a HUGE celebration for him last night too. He's been afraid to come down the stairs into the basement and that's where the tv is. So Eric, Joe, and I will all go downstairs to watch a video and Eli will lay at the top of the stairs and stare down into the tv room and let out an occasional whine. Well, last night, Eric carried him down the stairs so he could be with us but didn't want to carry him back up and was trying to show him how to go up the stairs by crawling up them on his hands and knees. Eli would watch him intently and then put his front paws on the first step and then move them up to the second step but he could never get the back ones to move. I was on the landing cheering for him and Joe was next to me watching the insanity. After about 10 minutes of Eric's demonstrating and a bunch of aborted efforts by Eli, Eli took a step back from the bottom step and sprinted up the stairs. It was a major milestone. Eric and I cheered for like 5 minutes and scrubbed the heck out of him. That's where our life is right now...totally nerds.

New House Pics

These are just a few pictures of our new house. We had great news from the sewer scope and the inspection so now we are seriously ready to go with it. In the meantime, we've been working dilligently on our current house to get it on the market this week. It's so cute now that we've done some work to it that we both want to kick ourselves for not having done the work earlier.

We're moving

These are the latest cute pics of my puppies and my awesome husband. I took these this week.

Well, we finally got sick of our neighborhood. It wasn't our whiskey tango neighbors, or the time we were robbed or when my car was broken into or when they stole my maternity clothes...the last straw was when someone entered our yard, while we were home and the car was in the driveway, walked up to our HUGE front window and stole our fichus plant. It was a little too brazen for our taste and we're fed up. We have our meeting with the real estate agent on Tuesday. Eric will be working on the house all next weekend. We have been pre-approved for a new mortgage and we are going to see a house that we're interested in on Sunday (oh, and it's in a much better neighborhood).

If you know of anyone that wants to buy a cute starter home and has the patience to deal with our interesting neighbors -- send them our way. Our house will be one of the cheapest houses available in the Portland market and it will definitely be a good investment!

It's a girl...maybe...could have been a squished scrotum

That's the big news. It could be a girl. But it also could have been a squished scrotum that we were looking at. The kid was not being very cooperative when we got around to that section of the ultrasound and when they went back later she/he had changed position but they still couldn't tell 100%. So what does this mean? This means we won't know for sure until the birth. This is absolutely okay with us. Please restrain yourself when walking past some cute pink frilly thingy in some store...I think that we should all just stick with the neutral colors of green and yellow.

I actually know a woman who has been in a very similar situation. She was told that it was probably a girl and she REALLY wanted a girl. At the birth when they told her it was a boy she cried because she was disappointed. I don't want that to happen to me. I don't want to plan for one and have the other one appear. Of course this also means that we have to decide on a boy's name. The girl's names were easy to agree on and we have narrowed it down to 2 (Ava or Katherine) but we CANNOT agree on a boy's name so we'll have to pick up a baby name book and get crackin' just in case.

The good news is that whatever it is it is healthy and it gave us the #1 with it's index finger so it must already be able to tell it's place in the hierarchy at our zoo. She (he) was just making sure we knew. Heart, bladder, kidneys...all looked good. Brain hemispheres...cool. Spine...in good shape. And now I feel like I can finally get excited about this thing that keeps kicking me over and over and over. We could actually see it kick me several times during the ultrasound and when Eric saw it he asked if I could feel it. I couldn't because like all ultrasounds for this sort of thing I had a completely full bladder that was cushioning the blows.

Sorry people....

I know every one of you (read three) have been waiting for updated pics of my puppy. My puppy who has a serious deathwish this week. Eric and I came back last night from dinner with some friends to a house that smelled like dog poop and spent the next 45 minutes cleaning up my poor puppy's crate and bathing him. It was a messy and horrible job. Today, I came back from work and the same stench, the same filthy cage, the same poop encrusted puppy and the cleaning process began all over again except this time Eric wasn't here to share it. Lucky Eric was still at work. So after I vomited, I got to cleaning. I think the reason they make puppies so damn cute is so that you don't kill them when they do annoying, disgusting shit (like eating kitty roca and trying to lick you when they still have litter clumped on their nose). I love him though...

On the baby human front, let the genetic testing begin!! I give my blood again tomorrow...only these are the real deal tests. We'll find out about spina bifida, down's syndrome...all the fun ones. I'm looking forward to the results so that I can finally get excited about this kid that keeps kicking me. We find out about the rest of the goods (heart, spine, kidneys...) on the 16th and maybe we'll even know what it is by then. In the meantime, I haven't come up with some cutesy name for it (hello, who am i?!) and occassionally call it "the beastie" but mostly refer to it as "it". I do need to have Eric start taking pics of the progression though because those are always good pictures to have later on. In the meantime though, yes, I'm in maternity clothes out of necessity. I get bigger every single day but I only gained 5 lbs in 4 months which is good for a girl starting out chubby. However, my waist disappeared overnight and I'm getting large and there's still 4 months to go...

9 weeks

8 weeks

Joe is absolutely the best puppy babysitter in history. He wrestles with

Eli, plays tug-of-war, and basically teaches him how not to be a totally spazzed out puppy. We can't thank him enough for his assistance and patience. He really is the greatest dog in the world!

Human - 9 weeks

We also found out that in addition to raising a puppy, we will be raising a human of unknown gender. We'll keep you posted. So far, I don't feel pregnant and I told Eric I think maybe the ultrasound was wrong...

6 weeks old

We brought Eli home yesterday and he has already begun to torture Joe by following him around, trying to chew on his toys, and climbing all over him. Joe's been grunting his displeasure but has been very kind to him so far. He's already learned to love to sleep on the couch (big shocker). Eric appears to be holding up well.

5 weeks

And then this morning Eric was walking Joe past the neighbor's house again and the neighbor said that he thought Eli was going to be bigger than Joe! Eric called me giggling hysterically. We didn't really plan on another 100 lbs lab. We thought we'd have a nice normal 75 pounder. I don't think our house is big enough for 200 lbs of excitable lab...

Today we also learned that Eli comes home with us next weekend. He'll be 7 weeks old.

Then Eli was born

Then one day Eric & I were running with Joe and we passed our neighbors house where Joe was born and our neighbor said, "Hey, it looks like you could use another dog" and Eric and I slowed down to hear what he had to say. We decided that although it would be absolutely insane to add another animal to our zoo, we were going to do it. Two days later, Eli was born.

First there was Joe

One morning in late November 2003, Eric and I came home from grocery shopping to find we had been robbed. After calling the police, we decided to walk around the neighborhood to see if the thieves had dropped anything. We circled our block and on our way back towards our house we passed our neighbor. He had 6 black lab puppies in the yard. We stopped to talk to him and Eric asked him which puppy was his favorite. He said "this one" and motioned towards the calm puppy sitting at his feet. Eric and I went home and talked and decided we would take that nice calm puppy. Well, we brought him home and like a week later Eric called me at work and said "You will NOT believe what I just found". It appeared that Joe had worms. We took care of the worm issue and discovered that the worms were actually what was keeping Joe so calm. Joe, originally the runt, grew into a 100 lbs sweetie. He was expelled from doggy kindergarten and 86'd from doggy day care before he was one year old. I went to pick him up from doggy day care one evening and the owner told me that he had literally bounced off the walls...all 4 feet on the wall and pushed off. That's my puppa!