Week 23

Once again, I need to remember to take these pictures before 10 pm.  Is my face really going to get even bigger than it is now?

visit from brent's family

Brent's dad had a conference in Seattle this weekend so we got to spend some time with his parents.  While his dad was busy in class, we kept his mom busy painting the nursery.  I chose the color "pear" - it's a super light yellowy-green.  The lighting in that room is too bad for me to take a picture of it right now - but here's the color from the online sample:

Brent's parents were super generous and totally spoiled us.  They bought the baby a crib with a dresser/changing table that I am really excited about.  It won't be here for another week or so, but this is what we ended up buying:

I can't wait to get it all set up.  I just have to finish the art work I started for it and purchase some "ugly dolls."  Am I weird for thinking monsters are a perfect theme for a baby's room??  You have to admit they're cute... in an ugly way.

I'm also using some artwork from Maurice Sendak's illustrations in Where the Wild Things Are - so it's an ecclectic mix of monsters.  

Brent's family also threw me an early birthday party complete with Trophy Cupcakes, bought a beautiful new rug for our living room, and bought us "UP" - which will make any person with a heart cry.... a lot.

So we got spoiled, and it was fun.

22 weeks

Please excuse the picture... we didn't remember to take this until I was climbing into bed.  Yuck.

Update on tests

Last Wednesday I stayed home from work to collect all my pee in a huge jug for 24 hours.  I couldn't find a sanitary way to store this jug, walk to and from the bathroom with it, and not to mention get everything where it's supposed to go while at work... so I took a day off. 

I really love Group Health - within 4 hours of having my blood drawn all my tests results were emailed to me.  They were perfect.  My midwife followed up with me that night. Within 8 hours of turning in my urine sample, my protein analysis test was emailed to me. Also perfect.  Another midwife checked-in with me twice that night.  Within this two day period of my prenatal appointment and all lab tests, I had all my results and I received 3 personal emails from my midwives checking in on me - they are all so sweet.  I'm so happy to have good insurance right now - even if it does cost an arm and a leg every month I'm pretty sure it's worth it at this point in my life.  

So basically - everything is FINE.  I'm sure it's not the last time I'll be doing all these tests.  However, to get to the bottom of my blood pressure mystery, I've purchased this little guy:

So now I can keep a log of my blood pressure at home and we can't find out if this is actually white-coat syndrome like everyone is suspecting.  

My hope is using this little guy regularly will also desensitize me to having my bp taken in the office.  So while this may or may not be the end of the blood pressure craziness,  me and the baby are healthy and that's all I need to know right now.

paint advice

I'm not sure how many people even read this blog - as I never sent out an official link... but if you do - I need help choosing a paint color for baby's room!  Here's his bedding (well, I haven't gotten it yet but it is on our registry and we REALLY love it):

 

and here's our paint choices:

we didn't want to paint the room green because our room is already green, blue seems boring but a safe bet and I like the yellowy-greens.  Any input?

Baby update and Happy Birthday Chase

I can't believe my baby brother is 14 today.  Happy Birthday, Chase!

In other news - I had another prenatal appointment today.  I can't believe it's already been 6 weeks since my last one - how is this going by so quickly??  The good news from today:  we went over the results from my ultrasound from 3 weeks ago.  Our baby boy is perfectly healthy - everything in it's right place, he's measuring to be exactly where he should be (not too big or too small), his heartbeat is strong, my weight gain is great (only up 5 pounds!  Maybe I won't be HUGE at the end of this!), and all my blood tests up to this point have been perfect.  The kind of bad news: this pesky blood pressure is still out of the roof and my midwife used the word "baffled."  Great.  It might not necessarily be bad if I can prove it's "white coat syndrome."  The first step - pee into a giant jug for the next 24 hours to do yet another protein analysis (I've already had 2 smaller versions of this test that have come back negative).  If I pass that - I get to keep my very own home blood pressure log - yippee.  I'm hoping for blood pressure log and not the other route - BUT I'll do whatever I need to do. 

I am glad they are keeping such a close eye on me - but am so embarrassed about the thought of lugging around this giant pee jug with me at work tomorrow.  I'm trying to work from home - we'll see if it works out. 

I'm behind on my baby journal - no time for fun photo-editing these days.  The pictures are taken, I just have to get everything into photoshop.

Babymoon

Our Boat - Royal Caribbean's Radiance of the Seas

We're back from the most relaxing vacation I've ever taken.  It was exactly what we needed.  We left from San Diego last Monday and enjoyed 5 nights sailing down to Cabo San Lucas and back.  A cruise is a pregnant woman's DREAM vacation: everything is close by and doesn't require any traveling to get to activities, you never feel guilty taking a nap because there not THAT much to do anyway, there's free delicious food 24 hours per day, and in addition to that free room service is fantastic and I ordered a plate of cookies and milk from them everyday.  We had a great time.  Here's some highlights from the trip:

on our balcony (our room neighbors were actually friends of ours who were taking the same cruise - they were laughing at Brent's baby belly)

accidental picture by the pool - but it captures my belly and our favorite activity of the week: laying in the sun.

Brent with our friends Michael and Lani - they competed in a miniature gold tournament on the boat (Brent took 3rd)

us on formal night

Not a good picture of me - swimming around in salt water doesn't agree with my hair.  But the beach in Cabo was beautiful. 

the water taxi dropped us off a short walk from Lover's Beach so our friends could do some snorkeling before we went out there.  Unfortunately - the man driving the boat didn't tell me it was a treacherous walk from the place we were dropped off to Lover's Beach!  However, Brent and I found this gem of a spot on our way and I didn't have to scale any rock walls.  We told our friends to go on without us and we had our own private beach.  

Leaving Cabo

Sunset over Cabo

Seattle is cold and rainy - we miss the beach.