My crazy week

I was telling my mom yesterday that I felt totally "out of touch" with everything b/c I had spent so little time on my computer the last 3 days. It's sad when you have to say that...lol. The reason I've spent so little time on here is b/c my days have been jammed packed full of stuff going on. First off, I just want to do a little dance about this being my last week of school coming up and then I get all summer to relax and be miserable and then have my baby! lol. Even though we had Monday off this past week, it felt like a really long week once I went back to work. I hope this coming week doesn't feel like that.

So, here's a recap on my week:

Tuesday - pretty uneventful. Went to work, came home, laid around and did nothing.

Wednesday - went to work and got to leave at 3:00pm to go to my doctor's appointment. Everything went well there. I go back a week from Tuesday where she will do her first internal check (I'll be 35 weeks) and decide at that point if I need to start coming in every week or do one more 2 week visit. Everything came up normal except for one teeny, tiny thing...well, I should say BIG thing. I stepped on the scales and I had gained 9 POUNDS this last month!!!! I was shocked! I asked if I could step off and step back on and see if it said something different! lol. She just kind of chuckled and wrote down the weight. At my last appointment I had only gained 3 pounds. This is definitely a record for me of which I was not hoping to break. The only consolation is that my doc promises me that it's all fluid. My ankles and feet were super swollen and she said that just looking at them she could tell that I had about 6 or 7 pounds of fluid retention just in my legs and feet. Phew! If it had been regular weight gain, she said she would know through my blood pressure which would be high and mine isn't. It came in at a whopping 102/70 on Wednesday. :-) I was happy for that. I measured 35cm at 33 weeks which is normal. I still feel like I'm having a big baby though. We'll see.

After the doctor's appointment I had to actually go back to school to help with the cheerleading captain interviews. I wasn't super excited about having to drive back to my school in the awful 5pm traffic, however, it's one of the last things I'll be doing as a cheer sponsor so I did it without complaining too much. hehe. After the interviews we had a booster club meeting to go over all the new cheerleader info. I didn't end up getting to go home until nine-ish. So by the time I got home, I took my quick shower and crashed into bed.

Thursday - went to work. Didn't have to go to cheer practice b/c they were ordering uniforms and I was told there wasn't anything I needed to be there for. I went home gladly. We went over and visited our good friends Stefanie and Jared McNeely to see their beautiful new house they just closed on Wednesday. It is an awesome house and I'm so excited for them that they were able to buy it. It's a newer house and had that awesome new house smell. We hung out with them until about 9 and then came home. 

Friday - went to work. It was "Fiesta Day" which is always a nice, easy day, except for when two of your classes lose their fiesta due to bad behavior and bad grades. What I do for each class period is give them the opportunity to earn their fiesta at the end of each semester. This fiesta is based on good behavior (We have a strike system - 3rd strike and you're done) and their grades (70% of the class has to be passing in the week of the fiesta). Well, my 3rd and 7th periods lost their fiesta due to bad behavior. Not just bad...awful. So all the other classes got a fiesta but 3rd and 7th and they had a fun little worksheet to do. Waylon came up during my 4th period and stayed through my 6th hanging out with us and eating and working on his Spanish homework. He is taking Spanish 1 and 2 this summer towards his degree. He is loving it! NOT! lol. Overall, it was a good day at work. 

After school, I rushed home and showered and then we headed off to a Ranger game with some members of our church. I had an inkling that I shouldn't go because I was already pretty tired, however, we paid $18 for the tickets which included an all-you-can-eat buffet that was indoors and air conditioned so I thought I could probably manage. Well, it turned out to be a little much for me. At first it wasn't bad, we just sat up in the buffet area and ate. Once we headed down to our seats, that's when I started feeling not so great. My feet and ankles swelled up HUGE and I couldn't sit comfortably in the seats. I took a couple of little "walks" around with my mom and ended up having to use the bathroom both times, but on the walks would get breathless and dizzy and have to sit down. I finally ended up just staying up in the buffet area, in a comfy booth where we could still watch the game, with Waylon. We played Sudoku and watched the game. When I finally got home, I felt like my body had been beaten with a stick! My legs ached more than they have in a long time and I just felt exhausted. I literally fell into bed and was asleep probably within 10 minutes. I don't even remember when Waylon came to bed - if he stayed up a while or came right to bed. I'm pretty sure he came right to bed b/c he has to be at work at 6am on Saturdays.

Saturday - Well today has been a busy day for me also. I began writing this blog quite a while ago but was interrupted with a very good phone call from my dad. He informed me that the current renter of the house we'll be living in turned in his keys yesterday so we could get in the house today. So I saved my blog and went on over to take a gander at the house. I took my mother in law, Mitzi, and we met my dad over at what will soon be our home. For the most part, the house is in great condition. The renter who lived there was obviously a pig because he left it a mess and the carpet was very dirty. All the things that were "wrong" with it are easy fixes though that he will be paying for. The current paint in the house is actually pretty decent, minus the "blue room" but we will be repainting most of it with the two colors we got. The grass needs watering and mowing but I love the back yard, it's going to be perfect for Rowf and for having kids. Brooklyn will hopefully be spending lots of time out there playing and swimming in the kiddie pool we will be getting her. I will post some before and after pictures. We will have to wait till they get all the stuff fixed in it that the renter is paying for before we can get in there and start painting so that may bump us back a week as far as getting to get started on it but we have the rest of the month of June in our apartment so there's no rush. This is actually all working out perfectly. It's amazing how God just works things out. :-) We also got a huge blessing with our rent this month. Since we referred Waylon's parents to live here, we got a $300 voucher off the next month's rent. They moved in her in April and with all the little details figured out, we would get our 300 off for the month of June. So Waylon went in to pay our rent this week expecting to pay $244 instead of $544. When he gets there, the lady says, oh now the deal is that you get $500 off so you only owe $44!!!  So we got our last month's rent for $44!!! I would have done cartwheels when he called and told me that if I wasn't pregnant. lol. 

So while this week has been very busy and tiring for me, it has been filled with blessings and excitement at the same time. Waylon will be home in a little bit and then I will head over to the house for the 3rd time today to show it to him. He is very excited about us living in a house also. We both have enjoyed living in this apartment and it was a great deal on a very good apartment but the apartment life is just not for us anymore, especially now that we're having a baby. I could handle it if we weren't going to be adding to the family right now but a house is just a much better place to live if you have a baby. I'm going to be a little sad when we finally do completely move out of the apartment and have to say goodbye to it. It was my first place to live away from my parents as well as where I spent most of my first year of marriage to Waylon. There have been many memories made in this apartment and it's going to be bitter/sweet when we leave it. Waylon said I could be sad for the both of us. He doesn't seem to be sharing in my sentimentality! lol Men...

Well, I'm going to stop here so I can lay back and relax a little before Waylon gets home and I'm out the door again.

32 Weeks and some exciting news!

I hit the 32 week mark this week which means my countdown is REALLY on! I'm really excited to be at this point in my pregnancy and am definitely feeling more and more ready to have this baby. That doesn't mean that I have everything done that I need to have done before she comes because I'm FAR from that. First off, we haven't even started her nursery because we won't be living in the apartment when we have her. That's been one thing that has been a bit of a disappointment for me this pregnancy that I haven't been able to work on a nursery. I really feel like I'm missing out! Anyways, back to being 32 weeks...I feel like Brooklyn is quite large, there just seems to be no way that I'm going to have a small baby. I've had many comments from people lately that I look like I'm going to have this baby "any day"! It's kind of scary to think of how big I will be if I carry her full-term!! That's another 7 weeks and 5 days! I'll be HUGE! I'm hoping I don't carry her full-term though.

So on to the exciting news... my dad called me this week to inform me that the guy renting his house has found another place to live so he will be all moved out by June 1st which means we get the house on June 1st!!! I was sooooooooooooo excited! The thought of having to move at the end of June was slightly stressful since I know I'll be huge and miserable. So now we will have plenty of time to get moved in and settled down before Brooklyn arrives. The house is in great condition and ready for move in but we're still going to do some painting before we move all our stuff in. We've chosen two colors that we will get in 5 gallon buckets. One will be the color for the living room, kitchen and hallways and the other will be the color for the rooms. We've chosen a color called Almond Paste for the rooms because it's a nice creamy beige color that will match anything. We decided NOT to paint the nursery pink so that in the future we don't have to repaint it if/when we have a boy. Plus, Waylon just did NOT like the idea of having a pink room in our house. lol. It doesn't bother me not having a pink nursery either. The color we are doing for the rest of the house will be a light, greyish blue color that's really pretty and we think will look nice with the furniture we have and will be easy to match on decorations. We didn't do much decorating in our current apartment so we will have to slowly buy things here and there to decorate our house. So don't expect any Martha Stuart looking home if you come see us and when I show pictures on here! I do have some ideas for things I want to do though and I think after a few months living there it will start looking very nice. One thing's for sure: it will beat living in an apartment by 1000 times!!! I can't wait!!

So there you have it. I don't have any new belly shots but will try to take some this weekend. I'm thoroughly enjoying my 4-day weekend and when I go back to work on Tuesday we will only have that week and the next week left for school and then I'm home free!! Till August that is...but I don't want to dwell on the negative. :-) I'm so looking forward to not having to get up and go to work everyday feeling the way I have been feeling. The farther along I get, the more difficult everything is and I just need some down time.

Hope everyone is having a great Memorial Day weekend!!

Less than 9 weeks!!!

I'm now under the 9 week mark and I can't believe it. I have to say that time has flown by in this pregnancy. Some of that probably has to do with how busy I was for the first half of the school year with cheerleading added to my plate and all the other new things that are added when you get married AND get pregnant within months of each other. I have realized though that the past couple of weeks have slowed down and I have a feeling they're going to feel slower and slower the faster I want them to go. I have 3 more weeks of school (all 4 day weeks - YESSS!!!) and then I'll be able to relax a bit and get lots of rest. At least that's the plan. I'll be packing things up into boxes for our move at the end of June into my dad's rental house. We are so looking forward to living in a house instead of an apartment. I'm especially excited that we won't be on the 2nd floor of anything! I also have the birth of my cousin Lydia's second little boy to look forward to towards the end of June. They live in Kaufman and we'll be going over to see them when she has little Cooper. That will be a fun time because it will be approximately 3 weeks before Brooklyn is due and it will really kick in my excitement for having her. After that, my cousin Andrea is due at the beginning of July but I won't be able to go see her because she lives in Colorado but I'll be there in spirit and excited to see the pictures of him. I'll be the only cousin having a girl, so far. Phoebe, my other cousin is due in November but it's too early to know what she's having. Maybe she'll have a little girl so Brooklyn won't be the only girl in this gaggle of boys. :-)

Brooklyn hasn't slowed down on her moving around. She is quite the busy little bee in there! Always kicking, punching, changing positions or something. The past few days have been filled with several episodes of hiccups. I just spent the last 10 minutes holding my belly while she hiccuped over and over again. It's a very strange feeling - almost like a heart beat coming through your belly. I didn't expect it to be so fast either. I guess babies hiccup faster than adults.

While Brooklyn is getting more and more active, I'm getting less and less active. I'm getting that 1st trimester exhaustion back and just want to lay down a lot when I can. Since my job keeps me on my feet and I have to be very mentally aware and on top of my students, my brain is also fried at the end of every day. I'm so ready for school to be out! Today was a very busy day for me and I think for the rest of the day I'll be staying in my house and resting. Waylon had to be at work at 6am which means that when he woke up at 5:30, so did I. I didn't get to go back to sleep fully after that. I had to be up by 7 to get to the cheerleading pancake breakfast by 7:30. I was there until 10 and then had to go to a Mary Kay "Muffins and Makeovers" meeting right after that. I ended up leaving that early because I was starting to feel very tired and a bit nauseous and I needed to lay down. Then a little while after getting home, my mom called and reminded me there is a baby shower tomorrow at our church so we met and ran to Walmart to get the gifts. By the time I got home from that I was zonked and in a not-so-good mood. I just got in bed and slept. When Waylon got home from work a little after 3, he got in bed again too and we both have slept until 4:30. He just left to go get us some Chipotle. I better go so I can chow down once he gets here. 

toodles

Happy Mother's Day - and some new photos...

Today I got to celebrate my first Mother's Day. I know it will be a completely different experience to celebrate it next year, when I actually have my baby in my arms, however, it was still very cool to be able to celebrate it as a mom-to-be. Technically, if you are pregnant right now, you are already a mother - you're just putting the finishing touches on him/her so that he/she is perfect when it comes out. I can't wait to be a mother to Brooklyn and hold her in my arms and see what my baby looks like and see what her personality is.

I also am reminded how wonderful my mother is and how much I appreciate her. She has put up with lots from me throughout my life and has always shown me unconditional love. She's an amazing mother and I love her so much and am so blessed that I was born to her. I also now have a wonderful mother-in-law who has been super supportive and helpful and caring since I married Waylon. Mitzi has always made sure I knew that she is here for whatever I need, whenever I need it. I'm so happy to have such an awesome mother-in-law and look forward to the many years ahead we have as a family together. Brooklyn will be surrounded by amazing grandmothers...and grandfathers too! :) We're just focusing on the grandmothers since it's Mother's Day. More on the grandfathers later...

Yesterday, after having lunch with my brother (Waylon was working till 2) I went by Baby's R' Us because I wanted to finally buy the baby book I've been looking at every time I go into that store. It's really cute and I took some pictures of the outside of it for you to see on here. The front has a place to put a picture of the baby in which I put her 3D ultra sound picture until she is born and I have a better picture. While my trip was successful in my purchase of the baby book. I had a dizzy/almost-fainting episode while I was there. As soon as I walked into the store I started getting light-headed and short of breath. So I sat down and rested for a few minutes. Then I got back up and walked over to the section with baby books and got dizzy and light-headed again, only this time the wave of nausea that comes before fainting hit me. I know and remember this feeling very well as I experienced it a couple years ago at a blood plasma donation center where I completely passed out cold at the desk after giving my blood plasma. I fell straight back and hit my head on the floor, further knocking me out. I "came to" to all the workers there surrounding me, holding my feet up, tapping really hard on my chest and asking me all sorts of questions. It was a horrible experience that ended with me being taken to the ER in an ambulance. So...back to Baby's R' Us...I start feeling that same feeling all over again so I scramble to the rocking chair section of the store and sit there for the next 10 minutes holding my baby book that I refuse to leave without purchasing. I call my mom while I'm sitting there, checking to see if they're back in town from their trip to see my grandparents. I was going to have my dad drop her off there if they were close and then she could drive me home. No such luck. So I reassure her that I will stay there until I feel good enough to drive and that I will call my brother to come get me if it came down to that. After a couple more minutes I finally got up and made it to the cash register where I started feeling weak again but made it through paying and got to my car. Once I was sitting in my car, I felt fine. It's the standing that gets me sometimes. Anyways, below are a couple of pictures of the baby book with Brooklyn's picture in the front. I think it's adorable and can't wait to fill it up with pictures and information.

I also wanted to post some pictures of me that I've taken recently. I'm getting quite huge, I feel. I'm 30 weeks and 3 days in the first 4 pictures (they were taken today - Mother's Day)

I like how in this picture, I look HUGE because the shirt billows out. :)

This pic was taken about a week and a half ago with my friend Stefanie. She is 10 weeks and due on November 21st. We are both really excited to be pregnant together as we were both in each other's weddings last year (our husbands were also grooms men in the weddings as well) and our weddings were 3 weeks apart! We are sharing a lot of the same life experiences together and it's been a lot of fun. Waylon pointed out how much bigger than her I am and he didn't just mean pregnancy bigger. He went on to say he just didn't realize how much bigger of a person I was than her! Sometimes guys don't think before they talk...lol. Luckily, I'm not so easily offended and am secure in my huge-ness. :) I know he didn't mean anything bad by it. I'm a big person and she's tiny - it's just life. I also happen to be a pretty gigantic pregnant person too! 

So there you have some newer pics of my "growing and glowing" self. If you're not pregnant and you're looking at these pictures, enjoy the fact that you have a normal feeling body right now. I have to say that the thing I miss the most about not being pregnant is just feeling normal and being able to function normally each day. Small things like bending down and picking something up off the floor are no longer easy. Neither is getting up from sitting on the toilet! It was a struggle this evening at Cheddar's who also happened to have a very low-seating toilet anyways. Another thing I miss is just being able to roll over in my sleep, breathe normally without feeling like I'm hyperventilating, not getting breathless after going up ONE flight of stairs (no, wait, I DID feel that before I was pregnant - that's just me being out of shape!), and many other every day things you do and don't think about how easy it is to do until you're pregnant and there's this huge stomach impeding you from doing them. Poor Waylon has had to help me up from the couch, bed, toilet...etc. more times than I'm sure he ever thought he would have to. Taking a shower is a big ordeal also. I move so slowly in there so that I don't lose my balance and slip and fall. That's more of a concern of Waylon's. He always worries that one day I'm going to fall in the shower and hit my head on the sink and he won't be there to help me. lol.

Well, I hope everything I just wrote wasn't TMI for any of my readers. Sorry I mentioned the toilet so much but I do spend a lot of time there now so it affects my life more. 

I'll leave you with one question that Waylon and I debated about today: when you hear the word "few", what range of numbers comes to mind? I won't tell you what my side was so that there are no partial answers. Tell me what you think though...and try to read my mind and put the same thing I was thinking! lol

peace out.

Happy Mother's Day!!

"Mommy Grace" book give away on my sister's blog

My sister Melissa just recently did an "official review" of a book she was asked to review. The name of it is "Mommy Grace" and it sounds  like a wonderful book, especially for first time moms. Anyways, in order to enter her give away and get a chance to win a free copy of the book, you just need to go to her site and read the "rules" and follow them. One of them is making a post on your blog and linking back to her...which I'm doing right now! :)

Click on this link below to be directed to her blog entry outlining the rules for the give away. It's good through tomorrow morning-ish. 

http://melsmommyblog.typepad.com/momscoop/2009/05/mommy-grace-review-and-a-giveaway.html

Good luck!

Brooklyn's Nursery set

So I know before I had pretty much made up my mind that I was going to do a more "gender neutral" nursery set for Brooklyn. The one I had put on my registry was very cute, called Bunny Meadow. It was a sage green bunny silhouette with brown flowers (I think they were dandelions) springing out of the ground and little bugs flying around on a white backdrop. It would have worked for a girl or boy and I was planning on getting some things to put in there that were pink to add an extra touch of girly-ness to it. 

HOWEVER....

That was all before I knew for SURE that we are having a girl. Once that was made known for sure, the desire to have a really cute girly room starting rising inside me. Pink things started sounding better and better until finally today I deleted the bunny meadow stuff and started from scratch looking for something a little more feminine and pink. That's when I found this set that I totally fell in love with. It's not overly pink but is still very girly and so cute I think! So I went ahead and registered for everything that goes with it. I know I won't get all the stuff for it but I'm hoping to get most of it. It's at Babys R' Us it's called "Poppy".  Here's a picture of it:

So what do you think?? Comments please! Obviously I'm not going to be able to make it look exactly like this one and I probably won't paint the walls pink. Waylon's main request was that the nursery not be all pink. I thought this set was a perfect balance of pink and I don't feel the need to have all pink walls...maybe just one "accent" wall in pink would be cute though....wink, wink.

Anyways, I was really excited to find a bedroom set that I LOVE as much as I liked the bunny meadow one. 

Tomorrow I have a baby shower at work and I'm really excited about it. Is it normal to be nervous about a baby shower simply because it's with your co-workers? I'm feeling nervous and I can only think that it's because it's with people I work with and I don't know just a ton of people at my school so I'm hoping the few I know will come so I don't feel like a loser! lol. Will post pictures of this sometime this week as long as my old camera cooperates with my new computer. 

By the way...I'm still totally in love with my new MacBook. It's so amazing and wonderful...sigh...

The 3D ultra sound pictures are here

So the moment you all have been waiting for is here. You can stop holding your breath! lol. We had our 3D ultra sound this morning and everything was fantastic! We are indeed having a girl which we are very excited about. So Brooklyn can continue to be called Brooklyn and I don't have to return anything or make any exchanges. She was very active and quite entertaining as you will see through the pictures. She made lots of faces including opening and closing her mouth a lot and sticking out her tongue. She's very fond of having her hands up in her face so we had to poke and prod her to try to get her to change positions and get a clearer shot. We were able to get some great video footage and pictures. It was such an amazing experience getting a glimpse of what she will look like and seeing her move while feeling it at the same time. Now I know what I'm feeling and can picture what is going on in there when I'm feeling kicking and shifting around. Her head is down so she's in the right position and not breech. So here are the pictures...enjoy!
One of her yawning spells

This one's a leg and foot - they are perfect!

Sticking that tongue out! She's going to be sassy!

very good profile shot

There she goes with her hands up in her face!

This was actually a video she took of her heart beating

her girl parts!!!

So there you have it - I'm going to try to upload a "short" video soon. I just tried and it was taking forever so I'm going to try it on a separate post. Hope you enjoy our pictures as much as we did. I totally can't wait now to see her in real life, it's going to be so exciting. Less than 11 weeks!!!

Tomorrow is the big morning!!

I wanted to wait until tomorrow to make another post and, most likely, no one will even read this one until tomorrow so it's kind of pointless, BUT, I just want to say how excited I am about my 3D ultra sound in the morning! :)  I know there is a chance that they may discover I'm having a boy, but I'll be totally fine with it, it will just mean a little extra work returning and exchanging some things that we already have. My parents and Waylon's parents are coming in to be there for the ultra sound also. I think my brother might come too. We're going to breakfast afterwards with all the "viewers" and my grandparents to celebrate finally knowing what we are having. I've been looking forward to tomorrow morning all week. 

Right now I'm waiting for my brother to get here to help me out with my new macbook. Waylon went and bought it today. It's going to make things tight for the next month with our money but we will just have to sacrifice going out and eating out a lot until we get paid. My other computer is on the verge of dying and we found this really good deal at a Micro Center where they have a $200 rebate on the white macbooks - which is exactly the model I wanted. So we broke down and bought it. I love it! It's also going to last me a whole lot longer than my other one has so it will be well worth the money.

Anyone else sick of hearing about the swine flu?? I am. That's all my students want to talk about. It's getting very irritating. They WANT someone to get the swine flu so our school can shut down for a week. I got frustrated with one of my classes today when they started making those comments and I was like "Do you really want someone in this school to get a life-threatening illness so you can stay home for a week? Do YOU want to be that person??" UGH!!! I was so irritated. I don't want anyone getting it near me because I'm more susceptible to getting any virus right now and that's the last thing I need right now. Anyways, I would definitely welcome a week out of school, however, I don't want to get this virus nor do I wish it upon any of the students or other staff at my school. 

Well, the next time I post I will be putting up cute little pictures of our baby in 3D (hopefully) and announcing for sure that it's a girl OR announcing that we will be having a boy instead! Either way, it promises to be an exciting blog tomorrow! :) Stay tuned!