Due date

Today is my official due date, and here I am, sitting on the computer at home. I have been home for a week as I pretty much demanded being pulled out of work after having bad back pain and swollen ankles. Swollen doesn't exactly cover it, actually. More like elephantitus of the ankles and feet. It was so gross. But now that I can rest more, I can actually see my ankle bones.

We had a run of false labor on Friday, which sent us to the hospital, and back home again 2 1/2 hours later. To say I was sad and disappointed would be an understatement. I snapped at Brad the whole way home, because you know, it was all his fault. Haven't had anything like that since it happened, so at this point, who knows when this little girl is going to get here. Everyone would love for her to be a July 4th baby. It would be very cool, but, I would like her to come any minute now. But apparently, she just isn't ready. Even if she is full term now. So here I sit, and wait, and wait, and wait, and run out of things to do at home.

Being home with Brad and Dominick has been... interesting. A test of patience? A nice change? Depends on the day. I chock up my irritability to massive late pregnancy hormones. However it is nice to have time with just three of us before it becomes, the four of us.

We have had nonstop rain all week and man, are we tired of it. We can't do anything outside, so everyone is stuck inside. I have a feeling this summer isn't going to be much of a summer at all. We've had a handful of truly hot days so far and that's it. Ahhh, New York. You never know what each day is going to bring.

To pass our time, we have been making several trips to the library. We have gotten DVDs, videos for D, books for us, pretty much anything we can get our hands on. Brad and I watched the HBO miniseries, John Adams. It is quite fantastic and I recommend it to anyone. Following that, I am now reading My Dearest Friend: Letters of Abigail and John Adams, at the recommendation of my friend Laura. It's a great companion to the series and is actually quite interesting.

Hopefully the next post will include pictures of a pink bundle and be full of sleep deprived ramblings, but until then, have a happy and safe 4th!

Less than a month and counting

I am in the last month of my pregnancy and let me just say, it has felt like a very, very long haul. Starting out with the extreme sickness, the scares here and there, and now the discomfort, it feels like it's been about five years. BUT, here we are in the home stretch and we are ready for this little girl to make her arrival. Here I am at about 36 1/2 weeks:



I have put on more weight this time than I did with Dominick, but I already have my plan set on how to drop it (hopefully). This weekend we also put the finishing touches on the nursery. I am really excited with how it turned out.

From the hallway:





The "main" shot. I haven't set up the bedding yet as the two cats would get in the crib and sleep all over it and I don't want to wash everything for a second time. So I just hung it to give an idea of where the colors came from. The blanket on the left was the first thing we saw that we loved and the quilt is from the set we got. Yay Target!





And apparently I can't hold a camera straight to save my life, but here is the last shot:



We are really happy with how it all turned out. I bought almost all of the pictures on the walls through Etsy. A fantastic site with lots of great art. We bought these, this, this, and two other ones. It's a great site, I highly recommend it.

It is definitely spring time up here in NY and we've been lucky to not have too many heat waves. I say lucky just because I haven't had to deal with the ridiculous amount of swelling and sweating that I would have to endure come such heat wave. But it has been nice to just wear capris and flip flops, considering no other shoes fit. I have deemed my legs as either elephant legs, or overstuffed sausages and my toes as lil' smokies. Sitting all day at work does a number on my legs. It is all in the name of something great, and hopefully she will be here soon!

Ultrasound

After a last minute stay in the hospital due to contractions on Tuesday, things seem to have righted themselves (for now) with this little one. My aunt is an ultrasound tech and offered to do a 3d/4d scan for us. Since I am in my 30th week, it was as good a time as any. And after such a chaotic week (hospital stay, then bed rest), I needed something good. So we went this morning and spent about an hour and got some really good shots of our little girl...

This is my favorite one. You can see her chubby little cheek and a nice profile of her:



Just a good shot of her face. I love her round little nose:



Her big brother was often seen with his hands next to his face. Looks like she following suit:





It was a good time and my aunt gave us plenty of copies. I am so excited to meet this little girl, but she has to stay in and cook for a bit longer. Being born 10 weeks early wouldn't be a great thing to happen! Hopefully this week will be the last of the scares before the big event!

Things and stuff

Well, considering I started off my last post all excited about Nine Inch Nails and Jane's Addiction touring and coming to our area, I'll start off by WHINING that they backed out of that date. They are now coming nowhere remotely close to us. Unless I feel like traveling to Toronto at 8 months pregnant, and let me say, given my undying love for NIN, that's not something I'm willing to do. And I'm pretty sure that Brad isn't going to allow that either. So, I will suffer the sadness of missing another awesome concert. I just hope they release a DVD or CD, since NIN will be going underground for a while after this. *sigh*

Spring has finally, kinda, arrived here in Rochester. I say spring and I mean that it is over 30. But seriously, it has been in the upper 40s/50s and that is like pure heaven for us. It has been a long, hard, cold winter but we managed to survive. We aren't out of the woods yet, but buds are popping up on trees and some flowers are starting to poke out of the ground, so we can see relief on the horizon.

This weekend Dominick turns 4 years old. I am completely boggled at this idea. Four years ago I was extremely uncomfortable, cranky, enormous, and miserable. And this time, well, I'm just uncomfortable and cranky. I haven't reached sheer misery yet or enormity. But I will hopefully get some pictures up and who knows, maybe even a shot of my 6 month belly, fully clothed of course. Time definitely does fly when the kid(s) arrive. Looking at the clothes we've gotten for this little girl so far, I sit back and realize she probably won't wear some of them at all, if not maybe once or twice. It's really nuts.

Brad is still on the search for a new job. If you aren't sure of how crappy our economy is, trying applying for a new job and try to keep track of how many callbacks you actually get. Or interviews. It's frustrating, but somehow we are making it.

But on the funner side of things, it's been a Bruce Campbell marathon in our house for the past week or so. We watched his latest, My Name is Bruce, and are going to start watching his short-lived series, The Adventures of Brisco County Jr. I am also extremely excited because one of my and Mary's favorite reality shows is coming back, Deadliest Catch. Yay for Tuesday nights again!

Early birthday present to me

Monday is my birthday. I am another year older in my early 30s and break into 32. With Dominick's birthday being at the end of the month, I have been consistently forgetting about my own birthday as I just focus on his. Now that I'm passed the 30 mark, birthdays aren't a big deal until, well, 40. Eek. But to celebrate this "occasion" I've taken Monday off and Brad and I are going to see Watchmen. We are very, very excited.

It has been a very, very rough few weeks in our household. We had a scare with the babe, but after an amniocentesis test, everything came back a-okay, so we will be having a healthy baby girl. Phew! Brad is currently looking for a new job, which has been... difficult, but we're confident he'll find something new. Because it's so easy to be unemployed in this shit economy right now.

In response to my last post, NIN did post some of their tour dates with Jane's Addiction and lo and behold, they are coming to Darien Lake on June 3rd! Yup, I am going to be 8 months pregnant at a concert. Maybe it will get things moving along. This is assuming things are still going normally and I'm not on bed rest for some reason. But, I am way, way psyched and checking daily for when tickets go on sale.

The weather up here has finally started to turn. Well, kind of. We had some frigid weather in the 20s earlier this week, but now we're having a heat wave and are in the 40s and 50s. Doesn't sound like much to most people, but after dealing with frigid temps for several months, it is a much welcome relief. Almost all of the snow has melted and everything looks brown and dirty, but dammit, it isn't white!

Kicking off '09

Well we have survived the holidays and have started another year. Another year of changes, surprises, and who knows what else. I am in my 15th week of pregnancy and things have improved. I am still sick first thing in the morning, but that is it. I can eat normal food, I just have to eat slower and usually smaller meals. But I will take that any time over what I was dealing with for two straight months. Now that the nausea is passing, I can start to feel a bit more excited about this little stinker. I have lost 10 pounds due to the sickness, usually this is something to be happy about, but not so much when you have a little bean growing in your abdomen. I'm pretty sure that I'm doing a good job of putting the weight back on with countless meals of mac and cheese, bagels and cream cheese, and Ben and Jerry's ice cream. Hey, it all has calcium, right?

This time of year starts my movie geek time of year. As I tell my friend Laura, who is the main person I share this geekdom with, this is our SuperBowl. Award season for movies is a challenging, exciting, aggravating, and everything in between. Over the past couple of years, I have tried my hardest to see all of the pictures nominated. So far I have seen Rachel Getting Married (NOT that impressed with it) and today I have seen The Reader, which was really fantastic. I am waiting for the biggies to open up over the next couple of weeks in our area: The Wrestler and Revolutionary Road. I have heard wonderful things about Slumdog Millionaire, but I am not overly attracted to it, so we'll see. Another one I struggle with is Milk. Not because of the story, which looks extremely interesting, but because of my strong dislike of Sean Penn. Hopefully I can get over that to watch the movie. There are lots of favorites in each category, so we'll see what The Globes bring us tomorrow night. That will be a good telling of what the Oscars will hold. Considering I hold The Dark Knight as my #1 movie of 2008, I'm anxious to see if a comic book movie can make the cut for Best Picture. And I believe Heath to be above and beyond deserving of Best Supporting Actor wins as he did such a phenomenal job with ingratiating himself into The Joker. But I digress, and like I said, it's my big geek time of year.

January brings really cold weather and more snow. We are getting several inches of snow as I type and it is holding in the upper teens, lower 20s. I am officially sick of winter. Would it be possible to be snow birds in our 30s? If only we weren't so attached to our home town, I'd love to relocate, because winter has worn out it's charm for us. Dominick loves to be outside in the snow, as does Logan, so we'll suffer for the next few months and think ahead to the beautiful, green, warmer days of spring.

What a week

It has been one hell of a week for me. I'll start with the more happy news. Most everyone in my life knows this by now, but I am pregnant with our second. I am in my 12th week and what a long, horrible, and sick road it has been. I have never been so sick in my life. It was never this bad with Dominick, where I was at least able to function on a daily basis. This time, not so much. I took more time off work then I did all year for myself due to not being able to get out of bed, or hold water down. Everyone says, "Oh, it's all worth it, don't worry, it will go by quickly." Mmhmm. These are the people who a) have never had sickness to this extreme or b) just don't want to hear you complain anymore. But, alas, come Thanksgiving Day, I was able to eat something besides crackers and water, and it has been a very slow, gradual slope from there. Although I still get sick in the morning, I am still able to eat normal foods, just nothing with grease yet. I seem to be back to craving cheese: mac and cheese, cream cheese, whatever. I have a nice list of places I have to eat when I feel back to my normal self again, if that ever happens. Which I'm starting to think, never will. I will always be falling asleep at 7:30 every night and I will never be able to eat from a restaurant again. So, that has been my life for the past couple of months. So far the #1 highlight happened a couple of weeks ago when I threw up in my car after dropping Dominick off at my mom's. Luckily I learned with Dominick to keep a plastic bag in the car, so it didn't go all over. But, still just as bad as you would imagine it to be. That story is definitely going in the baby book! Yay motherhood!

This week has been a sad one for my family as one of my parents' beloved dogs, Orion, passed away on Tuesday. We have had Big O since he was 8 weeks old and died at the age of 15 (almost 16). He has had problems with his hips and would lose control of his bowels, so we knew he wouldn't be around too much longer. My father came home from work on Tuesday and found him in the living room, so my mom came home and they called the vet. My brother, who had a special bond with O, wanted to have him cremated so he could have his ashes, so that is what they did. Their other dog, Sekkara, has been doing fine. She was a bit lost on Tuesday night, but my mom says that she seems to be doing just fine. We got Sekkara when she was 2 and we realized when we adopted her, that from her birth date and markings, that she was Orion's litter mate! Talk about coincidence. So brother and sister were united again. It was hard to explain to Dominick why Orion wouldn't be at Boppy and Grandma's house anymore, but I think his little brain processed about as much as it could, and he has been fine with it since. It will take some getting used to of being at their house and having only one dog there instead of two, but, such is the circle of life. We miss you, big guy.

Today is my last day of work until the 29th and I am so excited. I haven't taken the week of Christmas off pretty much since I started working out of college. Today we are getting hit with our first huge storm of the season: 8 to 12 inches by late tonight. It should start pretty much any time now and just keep going all day. We are pretty much guaranteed a white Christmas this year as this is the first of a couple of fronts that will plow through our area. I will definitely get some pictures of all of the snow as I'm sure we'll all be out shoveling and playing.

So, that is about all of the news that's fit to print on this Friday morning. Stay warm!