Big and strong

When we're asleep, and Stephs belly is against me, the kid will kick me awake. And Steph will remain sound asleep. So far the little guy is not on our sleep schedule. When he gets here, I plan to just explain to him nicely how important mom and dads sleep is and I'll get his full cooperation. I'll let you all know how that works out.

And the halloween party this weekend. Steph loves anything sacrilegious. (I hope everyone understands that he's just kidding here)

I hope everyone's doing well.

Guess the Stats

Hey Everyone,
OK, so I have a little game for you. My friend Kelly did this before her daughter was born and I thought it was great. So, I am going to be a copy cat. What you do is click on this URL http://www.expectnet.com/index.php and type guessthestats in the box under invited guests. You can then type in what you think our babies final measurements are going to be. OK, have fun, we'll let you know who gets the closest after the baby is born.

Hiccups?!?!?!

Hmm, I may have spoken to soon. So I was sitting at my desk at school and all of a sudden I thought I could feel my pulse in one part of my abdomen and I could see that spot rhythmically pulsing. I watched that spot and thought about it for a second and realized that the pulsing was a little too slow to be my pulse. So I'm guessing it must have been his first bout of hiccups. It was actually really neat, a little hypnotizing. I still love feeling him move, it's just such a connected feeling. Alright, so I guess the countdown has begun. About 4 weeks left!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Excellent

Well, I got the best news this weekend. Apparently Dans trip has been canceled for now, at least until December. That means no worries about him not being here for the birth. Yeah!!!!!! That's basically it for the new updates. My overstuffed glider (Per Kellie's suggestion, thank you) came in this weekend. I was so excited, we picked it up, put it together, and it doesn't work. The glider frame was bent. It doesn't rock forward. Errrr. I was so excited about this chair. We had to reorder the whole chair (they couldn't just order the frame) and wait another week for it to come in. I just can't wait to get it in our room, it's the last baby thing I need to be ready for the baby (well, materialistically ready). Alright, when the chair finally comes in I'll take a picture of the babies area in our room. Nothing very exciting, but it's comfy and it will work very well while he's small.

Belly pics for everyone!

Hello friends and family. Thought I'd get on here and just give everyone what they really want to see.














This is a before dinner pic.











And a during dinner pic when she will not be interrupted. My beautiful 200 lb wife.

It just keeps growing

Of course I am referring to my belly. There are some of you who will be very excited to know that I am going to break 200lbs with this baby. I think it's pretty funny. Especially since I don't feel it, if I did it would probably be a very different story. I do have new pictures, but they are not on this computer so I will put them up later. So, someone recently asked me how I'm doing with everyday tasks, which amusingly enough is exactly what I had been getting ready to post. Of course with my ever expanding abdomen I had noticed that bending was getting increasingly more difficult. Bending over while sitting in a chair is next to impossible. The stomach is just so solid, there is just no give, and it's so protruding there is pretty much no space left between my stomach and my lap. So I can bend forward about 20 degrees, and that's not even that comfortable. Standing up and bending over still happens to some extent, however I have to lift one of my legs out behind me to make this happen. Putting on socks is impossible (although I recently discovered that if I sit on the floor it actually is still possible to put socks on). The days of being able to put my pants on standing up are rapidly approaching an end and I keep hitting people with my stomach because I just don't really have a concept of how big it really is. It's funny though, because I still get very conflicting reports. There are women (mostly women who have been pregnant before) who tell me I'm still pretty small. And then there are women who tell me how HUGE I am. Hmm, who knows. Luckily I'm still really enjoying being pregnant. Other then bending over, I'm still comfortable and able to do pretty much anything I want (that is when no one is looking). People are very quick to help you out when you're pregnant, which is very nice, but they are also very quick to tell you what you shouldn't be doing as a pregnant lady. I know they mean well, but sometimes it can be a little bit of a hindrance. OK, and then the last comment of the day, this little guy never had hiccups. Just in case he ever wants to know. So, have a good day everyone, I'll try to write more soon.

Classes and anniversaries

Did the anniversary thing and now the birthing classes. Man, I can't get outa nothin. At least it's all been fun and I learned a lot. I learned how to be a labor coach. That wasn't so bad. Just do what the pregnant mamma says and help her focus and do the breathing technique. Now, I don't know what most men think about child births before they've ever seen one. I think you take what they show in the movies, and whatever your friends will describe for you, and sort of develope what you think you would expect. But you relaize that there is still a mystique about it until you experience it. We watched a film in the class that showed a bunch of different child births. The first one I wasn't sure exactly what they'd show or how graffic the film would be. I was sipping a coffee and watching intently as one of the women was about to have a baby. Suddenly the sheets lifted up and the camera got right down into the mix. Into the business. All the fluids and more fluids, and then the tiny deformed and discolored baby. I swallowed my coffee a little hard but I knew Steph was watching me to see how I handled it. So I leaned over without even taking my eyes off the screen and whispered to her, "I'm fine honey, no sweat." Which, by the way, is my story and I'm stickin to it. That child birth was followed by four more, complete with labor coaching and helping the mamma through all the contractions. Back births, C sections. I'm glad I got to go to the classes with Steph because we had fun and even met a few couples there that we knew. I'm looking at all these guys who are going to be new dads, and it kind of helped my confidence. I just hope I do as good as I plan to.

Happy Anniversary

Thank you everyone for the anniversary well wishes. We had a very nice day yesterday. My wonderful husband made it home from work before me which is quite rare nowadays and had a dozen beautiful roses for me. I on the other hand had two anniversary cards for him (very heart felt though). I guess I was the slacker this year. Now just to show how long we've been married, we hadn't even decided what we wanted to do to celebrate yet. We ended up going downstairs to our favorite restaurant and had a wonderful time. The cook even gave us a scallop appetizer (the funny thing is, he didn't even know it was our anniversary until after the scallops arrived at our table and we told him). We had a great meal, great conversation, and even indulged in some chocolate cake. We finished eating around 9p and went to bed at 9:30 stuffed and happy :).

Very good news

OK, as a lot of you know, Dan was supposed to leave today on a work trip. Well, he's not. Which means, he will be around for our 6th anniversary tomorrow (very excited about that), but best of all, he will be around for our birthing classes (very very happy about that). That has actually be one of my biggest stresses lately. Dan's travel plans for work are often very unstable, but I was still trying to plan the classes around them. First he was supposed to be gone in Sept. so I signed us up for mid-Oct just in case. Then he was supposed to be gone mid-Sept. to mid-Oct. (stress set in), then it was supposed to be January (stress relief), then is was all of Oct (OK, at least he'll be there for the birth), then it was Nov. (umm excuse me, this kid is not going to wait for him to come back), and now his amazingly wonderful boss has made it so that he is leaving on Tues. and will get back 2 weeks before the baby is due. Everyone pray that this little guy holds on, oh, and that Dan's plans don't change again. This may work out after all.

Not a showboater

I guess I should feel lucky that Dan has been able to feel the baby move. I think he will be the only one to feel him move before he's born. Somehow this little guy knows when I am trying to get someone else to feel him and he just stops moving. He's certainly not a showoff, yet.