So much to do, so little time!

Today Kevin and I are starting to *finally* clear out the guest room to make it ready for the kid. Basically both Kevin and I are crabby with each other, and there's junk laying all over that we don't know what to do with or where to put it. I just posted the guest bed on craigslist, hopefully that will be out of the way soon. My mom is coming over tomorrow to help clean the room and potentially we can start moving the baby furniture in.....so there will be pictures to come of that.

Otherwise, random post. Last weekend my friends Aaron and Edwina were down in the area for a wedding, and we spent the day Saturday with them. Aaron and Edwina are both friends from my first summer research experience - as a HURF after my freshman year of college (2000). Edwina was one of my roommmates at good ol Illini Tower. And I'll never forget the first time I met Aaron - he said to me - "Are you the one from Pocahontas?" and I was floored because no one has ever heard of Pocahontas, but he had apparently seen my address on a list. Ends up his older brother lives very close to my parents and is actually a teacher at my high school. So that was interesting. Anyway, Aaron and Edwina finally started dating sometime in the year after our HURF summer (with some gentle nudging from myself, I believe....). And they've been together ever since, mostly as a long-distance couple. Most recently, Aaron has been in grad school at Michigan State and Edwina in vet school at U of I. I emailed Edwina a few weeks ago to see what she was up to since I knew she was graduating.....and I had a very funny reply.....I think her words were something like "I guess I'm moving up by Aaron, because we went to city hall last week and got hitched." So that was exciting and surprising to learn. Anyway, they were down this past weekend. We had a leisurely lunch outside at Blueberry Hill, then we went to the Gardens where I took this picture of the newlyweds. We spent the rest of the evening sitting in the backyard at our house. Its always so nice to catch up with old friends.



Last weekend I also made a very small wedding cake for a friend's friend's brother who was getting married at city hall this week. While I was in the kitchen trying to get the cake baked, both of my dogs passed out on the floor right in my way, and they were laying almost exactly the same. It was just very funny. When I took the picture, Lucy raised her head, but they're still laying more or less the same.



And finally, a dreaded picture of myself. My friend Shannon who lives in Chicago wanted to see an up-to-date baby bump picture, so here you go....Me at 34 weeks. Getting very big!



And in the amount of time that its taken me to post this, two people have called about my bed on craigslist - so maybe i'll get it out of here by the end of the day!!!!

Good News and Bad News

I can start with the bad news. My best friend Lauren's mom passed away this weekend. She's had a long battle with breast-turned-brain cancer. I'm sure Kathy is now in a much better place, and hopefully life will slowly return to normal for Lauren and her family. But keep them in your thoughts and prayers.
Yesterday I was back at the doctor to talk to her for the first time since we found out the baby was huge and breech. She didn't sound overly concerned about his size, she said at least he wasn't 99th percentile (which was my feeling until the nurse that called me made it sound like 91st percentile was overly big). And we talked a bit about the fact that he was breech, and she said I still had a chance that he could turn around and that at around 37 weeks we could talk about physically trying to make him turn, but before that we would wait. And somehow or another then she decided to go ahead and pull out the ultrasound machine and, lo and behold, the kid turned around! He's now head down! So this is good. Hopefully he's just not able to turn again.... The only other thing from my appt - my blood pressure has been consistently kind of high, so the doctor is having me checked for preeclampsia stuff - with a blood test and a 24 hour urine collection. Yes folks, I have to collect 24 HOURS WORTH of my pee. They gave me a giant jug to store it in, and it needs to be kept cold or on ice. I'm still not sure when I'm going to do this because its an obvious inconvenience.....
Random other things. Last night I went over to Lauren's house for a little bit, and on my way out of Highland I decided I needed a tropical sno and some fried okra from wal mart. So I got my tropical snow, and then was at wal mart waiting at the counter to get my okra, and I look over, and my sister Jessica is standing right next to me. This was just funny and random, because obviously neither of us remotely expected to see the other.
Friday Kevin and I both took the day off work. We went to Wash U's campus for graduation for free food, since it was technically when I would have walked had I wanted to walk. Nothing too exciting about the day, except we found a program from graduation laying on the ground, and my name was in it....so I was excited to add that to the box where my diploma is. We were going to go to the gardens or the zoo for the rest of the day, but it was ridiculously hot. So I think we didn't do anything else for the rest of the day. And the weekend was pretty laid back too. Very very nice.
Tonight we're headed to the Cards/Cubs game with Jackie and Allen, woohoo! Hopefully the Cards will have their ducks in a row and get a win for once....

The kid is a moose

So Kevin and I went back to the doctor's office on Tuesday to have another ultrasound to figure out what I'm consistently measuring big. The ultrasound tech couldn't tell us too much, since obviously she's not a doctor, but based on the measurements she took, the kid is about 4lb 4oz now, which puts him in the 91% percentile. I figured, at least he's not 99th or 100th.....
Then yesterday I waited for either the doctor or her nurse to call me to say that things are for sure ok other than him being a bit big. When I talked to the nurse, she just said that he's big and he's breech. We also knew this from the ultrasound, but I didn't figure it was anything since its still early.....but the nurse made it sound like because he's so big there's less of a chance that he'll move down. I'm trying to tell myself its still early and I've got a lot of room inside myself and he'll be able to move down....I just hope he hurries up! The nurse just said the doctor would talk to me about things more at my next appt (now a week and a half off...), presumably about options for trying to move him down, or preparing me for the chance of having a c-section. Yippee.
The ultrasound itself wasn't too exciting, I guess because he's bigger now its harder to see things (all the stuff that's there now was there before, but we could see it all in context of the whole kid). Kevin seriously says he thinks the kid looks like him (he said the forehead looks like his....) but I don't think there's remotely enough resolution to say. And the ultrasound tech could see that he has hair already. Weird.
What do you think - does he look like Kevin?



I also thought I'd share pictures with you of my two favorite iris....both of which are blooming in my yard right now. Kevin's dad really liked iris and had a lot of fancy hybrids, and my mom and I helped reset the bulbs at June's a few years ago and took some for ourselves. My absolute favorite was this really deep red one, and my second favorite is a salmon color (which might have come from my mom's iris bed, not sure....). But for the first time, I've got both colors blooming at my house! Last year I think I had light purple, yellow, and white bloom...but this year my favorites are the first to bloom! I'm just glad I ended up with some of the red ones, since obviously its impossible to tell when you look at the bulb.
I was going to take a picture of our asparagus patch too because we have lots of teeny teeny tiny asparagus coming up.....but they were so tiny you couldn't even see them. But I'm excited about our prospects of asparagus in the future!

Much Ado About Nothing

Surely there are interesting things that have been going on, but if I don't have a picture to go with them I'm less likely to remember.
Things I do have pictures of and do remember.....
I finally finished Emily's baby blanket. I think its the first girl baby blanket I've made. Its certainly unconventional - when I started it, I had only recently finished Erin's baby blanket. Blankets tend to take forever and be a little boring, so I thought for Emily's blanket I would entertain myself.....so I made a bunch of squares with random patterns of kind of the same size and then sewed them all together. I think it turned out pretty interesting. So now I'm taking a sock break before I start on another baby blanket.


Another recent highlight is meeting baby Max Mignin. He's Erin's baby, and was born in Ohio 7 weeks ago. Last week my mom and I went to see him for awhile, and last night I got Kevin to go over there with me to meet him. He's very sweet, and he has so much hair!!! Although Kevin has been around a number of babies, I think this time was different because it was his first time being around a relatively newborn baby when his being a parent is imminent. He held the baby awhile, and said it made him feel a little better.... not sure exactly what he meant but it was good. Here's a picture of Max chilling in his bouncy seat - don't know why it randomly rotated like this though....


Right when we were getting ready to leave Max got a little fussy....and Erin started flying him around the room, and he loved it!!


Hmmmm what else is new....The garden is looking very very nice. The only problem is that both dogs keep running through it; this is especially a problem considering how much it has rained lately. I have basically given up on cleaning the floor of my kitchen beyond sweeping - its just pointless. Lucy got spayed a week and a half ago. She was nice and calm for about a day and then it was back to business as usual, biting Satchel and randomly running around like a crazy dog. I had my 30 week appointment yesterday, and again I'm measuring about 4/5 weeks too big....so I have to go back this afternoon for an ultrasound to check and see if the baby is just a little big or if this measurement is inaccurate for me. So we'll see!
Happy Cinco de Mayo!