congratulations!

yeah for amy and emily at the amily diaries on the birth of their son, daniel. can't wait for more photos ladies!

acting like an adult

feel a bit like poop right now. i have a cold that is making head feel like it's stuffed with cotton. i really just want to go back to bed, not work. even if i was at home though there wouldn't be much relief since we are in a bit of a heat wave for the pacific nw. no air conditioning at home means sweaty uncomfortableness. blech.

we have done some pretty exciting things the past couple days though. we met with a real estate agent on sunday morning. very nice guy. seemed very competent. had the most gorgeous green eyes :) haha. we gave him the general idea of what we're looking for and our price range. he's supposed to send us a list of places today. i can't wait to see it. hopefully we'll tour some homes next week. wow. big stuff.

we checked out a neat neighborhood in seattle sunday afternoon. anna had been talking a lot about the columbia city area, how it's up and coming, good prices, etc. i totally loved it. it has a nice little "downtown" with a gallery, theatre, restaurant, shops. there were public bulletin boards up for people to post events. we found one for a glbt parent group that meets once a month. awesome. we walked a few blocks away from the downtown and really liked the houses. hopefully our guy can find us a house there.

the second big thing we did was meet with a lawyer last night (thanks for the recommendation jenny and stephanie!!). we talked about second-parent adoption for anna, and our wills. second-parent adoption seems like a breeze. the wills are a bit harder. we had to prepare a list of our assets. if you've never done that before, give it a try. basically you analyze everything you own and give it a price. very hard. funny thing, we found out our art values higher than our cars combined! ha :) i'm perfectly fine with that.

the really hard part to decide upon for our wills was who would be the guardian of our kids and our finances in case anything happens. we had decided on one family member to take care of the kids, but we didn't thing of a secondary person. i feel like we winged it a little bit with our decisions, but we can edit things before it's all finalized and written up. we can also change it in 10 years when we have a better perspective of our futures and our kids. i felt a bit like a kid acting like an adult making these decisions right now, but i'm happy we did it. being prepared in some manner in better than nothing.

tomorrow i have a crazy appointment day. i've got acupuncture in the morning, a massage early afternoon, and a midwife appointment in the evening. i decide that i'm not going to really work tomorrow except for between the acup. and massage. last time i had a massage i went back to work afterwards. totally a waste of a massage. so tomorrow, after the massage, i'll go home to our sauna of a house and take a nap probably. i feel like a need a little pampering with this awful cold.

i'm a little be anxious for our mw appt. because last time they did a blood draw. i'm a bit nervous about finding some deficiency, like low iron. i know i can adjust my diet etc. to fix most things, but still anxious. arden is being a good little kicker, so i feel like all is well with her :)

"garage" sale

anna and i got up a bit early so we could hit the REI garage sale by my store before work. we managed to get a BOB stroller and a Kelty baby pack. we had hoped to find a cool bag we could use as a diaper bag, but the only one we found had the strap virtually ripped off.

the BOB had been returned because the foam on the handle was ripping off. barely noticeable, we don't care about that. it was marked down from $390 to $250. the pack had been returned because it hurt the owner back. anna tried it on and i loaded it up with 15 lb sand bags from the regular backpack area. she wore it around the store the rest of the time. she admitted that it did make her back sore, but more because she was using her muscles. it's a nifty apple green that i like. this was $150, marked down to $75. good deal man! :)

these are the first big baby items we've bought. i've been getting a little nervous because we haven't been talking about specifics and doing research on stuff. we don't even know if we'll be in our rental house or in a our own purchased house. that means we can't really plan the nursery. that's one thing i really want to do because that's my kind of thing. one step at at a time. i do feel good having the stroller.

you want pictures...

well, i tried to give you pictures. i tried to embed a slideshow to this post. several times. several formats. i failed. my ass hurts now from sitting on this crappy work stool. i'll try again later. for now look at this cute picture of olive from a hike last summer.

another photo

this is from last night, 20w5d. look at yesterday's post to see the difference in my bump. eek:) hehe

don't cry at work

i'm reading "my sister's keeper". i'm at work. bad news cause the book makes me want to cry. i want to cry for the family, but i also want to cry for myself.

there isn't really a way to know if your baby is going to get sick. of course, there is genetic testing, there's family history, but you don't know. we didn't know my beautiful niece would be deaf due to strep b and the medicine they gave her (this was in '95. just when they were trying to figure out strep b.). there are so many scary things out there we can't control.

i know a lot of these scary things are not the end of the world. my niece is a well-adjusted, regular teenager. my sis-in-law went to school and became an interpreter. i know deafness is not the end of life. this actually isn't something i fear, i'm just using it as an example of the unknown in the world. i'm just feeling that maternal fear, and trying to figure out how to express it. :)

when i posed the question of baby gender to folks, my brother asked me what i am really wishing for. i just want a happy, healthy baby. simple as that.

more photos

i've promised to post so many pictures. this post should remedy most of that:)

the "special" package from cryolab.

anna removing the canister

me preparing to open the canister

the wee little vial

the lovely surprise 2 wks after the "special" package

me at 17w1d, ignore the cheesy tattoo that i got when i was 18 -smacking head-

photos

here are the promised photos. i'll try to upload belly shots soon, and the ultrasound videos. amazing how she's changed.

this one is 12 weeks. we were amazed how much more human than gummy bear this little one looked.

20 weeks

20 weeks with legs over head

it's a girl!!

we had our ultrasound yesterday afternoon, and the baby was good enough to give us the perfect shot right away :) now we know that there is the chance that they're wrong, but it seemed pretty clear to all of us that there was definitely nothing between the legs.

she was a wiggly, squirmy thing yesterday. pulling some amazing contortionist moves. she seemed to prefer having her legs and arms over her head. made some of the tasks for the tech difficult. they were able to see everything they needed though. she is a very healthy, and growing well. they estimate her weight is 13 oz., which is in the 59th percentile.

i had been a little concerned about her growth since i had lost 10 lbs in the first trimester and my gain has been very slow. i weighed myself at the midwives 2 wks ago and was at 166. yesterday, i weighed 169. total weight "re"-gain from my lowest weight is 5 lbs.

we have a bunch of pictures and a video. i know i never did post our first ultrasound. i'll bug anna to show me where she saved these things:)

what will it be...

sorry i haven't had time to post recently. busy with vacation and work :)

so just a quickie: we are having our next ultrasound on monday and hope to find out what the baby is. i thought it would be fun to see if you all have a guess/intuition/feeling as to what gender it will be.

can't wait to see the comments!

movin' munchkin!

the little munchkin moved for us last night and we felt it! when we went to bed, anna laid her head on my belly and was taping her fingers, kind of coaxing the baby to move. it did:) it kicked just to the side of her face. it was so neat. we got her/him to do it a few times. it seemed it just needed to be squished a little bit to be persuaded to kick.

i have felt her/him move a few times today just while sitting here. maybe i just didn't realize what the feeling was until it happened last night. now i can't help but notice it. it feels like little nudges in my belly. eeee:)

here's a photo of me and my friend jess at her baby shower a couple weeks ago. i was 16w1d. we do have belly photos from 17 weeks that i'll upload later.