A Good Sign?

So Daisy has always been a cuddle bug.  When we first got her, she used to sleep across my neck like a scarf (waaaaay to heavy to do that now), then for a long time, she slept curled up by my head.  I have always been a stomach sleeper, but due to the insistence of my dog (a cold nose incessantly nudging your face in the middle of the night is good encouragement), I had been sleeping on my back a lot so she could sleep in her lately preferred place in the crook of my arm.  She's always been a hot little dog, so she would sleep with me or Chris for a bit, then jump down and sleep under the bed for a while to cool off.

Since I've been pregnant, however, her sleeping habits have curiously changed.  She now will dig at the blankets until I lift them up for her to go under, and then she curls up right against my bump.  At first, I thought it was because I had a pillow between my legs and she wanted to lay on the pillow, but she does it if the pillow is there or not.  I wonder if she can feel it when he kicks at night.  In any case, she is already cuddling with her little brother (yes, we are those kind of dog people...I'm probably going to get her a shirt that says Big Sister.  Unfortunately, Daisy is not one of  those kinds of dogs.  We will put it on her, take a picture, and then have to take it off before she rubs up against every wall in the house trying to get it off.  It makes Chris proud).

I hope this bodes well for when John gets here.  Hopefully she will like him and not be too mad at us when the level of attention she gets drops (luckily she is too small to drop her ball in the crib for baby Johnny to throw to her).  And for those of you who fear I may be slightly crazy, no, I will not allow the dog to sleep with an infant.  I may love my dog, but I'm not dumb.  She will get supervised visits, though.  And once John is big enough, they will be best friends.  Especially once he learns to throw that ball.

22 Week Belly

I think that's the same shirt I had on for last week's picture.  My maternity wardorbe is not varied.

22 Weeks

Another week down!  We think I'm getting bigger every day, which I suppose would make sense, as the little guy is growing leaps and bounds.  He's a kicking machine these days, and he's definitely starting to follow a schedule -- I know for sure certain times of the day when he's going to wake up and have a party in my belly.  It seems, too, that one of his favorite places to kick me is right in the cervix (sorry if this is too much information for some people).  I was reading about it online, and apparently it happens to a lot of people, but let me tell you, it is not the most comfortable thing in the world.  It kind of feels like he just might fall out.  But I've been assured that that won't happen (and the fact that it has been happening for weeks now and he is still where he should be is a good sign).

I've started to notice my belly getting in the way a little more, too.  I'm misjudging spaces that I would have normally fit through (like between the table and chair) and end up bumping my belly against something.  And if I'm sitting and bend down to put my shoes on, I can't quite reach as far as I could before.  I wonder when Chris will have to start putting my socks and shoes on for me :)  I already asked him if he would paint my toe nails when that day came.  He said he'd just pay for me to have a pedicure, which works just as well for me!

Another thing that seems to be getting worse is the pregnancy brain, also known as I can't remember anything anymore.  I wasn't bad in the beginning, so I thought maybe I would escape this particular pregnancy side affect, but whoa, has it arrived.  An example...Monday, I was supposed to work out of a different location.  The company was doing a drill to see how functional employees were at a location that they did not normally work at.  I was really excited to participate because the location I was going to was about 15-20 minutes from my house, as opposed to my approximately 1.5 hour commute I slog through daily.  But guess what.  I totally forgot.  I went to work as normal and didn't remember that I wasn't supposed to be in Chicago, but rather Downers Grove until I was digging through my bag for my key card and felt my little container of paperclips that I had brought home with me on Friday so I would have them on Monday.  I was so embarrassed.  I had to call a few people to let them know that I would not, in fact, be participating in the drill because I have no memory.

This week's belly picture coming soon...

End of an Era

For those of you who converse with me on my cell phone, you are quite aware that I am capable of about a 3-6 minute phone conversation before my phone dies.  And then, if I have access to a charger and an outlet, it takes about 6 more minutes for the dang thing to turn back on.  And when it does turn back on, it usually has a full battery, only to die again after another 3-6 minute conversation.  Oh, and don't even try pulling up a website or having an extended text message conversation.

This is because I have had the same phone for 3 1/2 years.  Chris got it for me for my birthday in 2008.  Props to RIM for making my little Blackberry Pearl so resilient (seriously, I have put this phone through hell) because seriously, how many of you out there have had a phone last for that long.  And really, I think the problem is not the phone, but the 3 1/2 year old battery.

Anyway, this brings me to my point.  Hallelujah, I have finally gotten a new phone...or at least ordered it.  Yes, friends, I am finally going to be the owner of an iPhone!  An iPhone4S, to be exact.  So very soon, I will be able to communicate and browse the web (maybe even at the same time!) without fear that my phone will poop out at any second.  No longer will I have to preface all phone conversations with, "if I suddenly am gone, don't worry, my phone just died" or "I'm going to call you back from my house phone in two seconds before my phone dies"

So Pearl, as of the 28th, or somewhere thereabout, you will be retired.  It has been lovely.

21 Weeks

Only 19 weeks left! I'm for sure getting bigger and kicks are getting more frequent and stronger.  Still feeling good, although my hips are starting to hurt more at night (sleeping on my side all the time is NOT comfortable).

Exciting baby news, but not our own.  Our friends Mike and Liz had their baby today!! Now baby Matthew just has to wait a few months for his best friend Johnny to be born. 

And here's this week's belly picture...I know, my CTU sweatpants are hot.  

A Beautiful Bride

That's what Kelly was this weekend!  In addition to the excitement of finding out we're having a little man, one of my best friends, Kelly, got married! 

It was an excellent weekend for such an event.  We had the rehearsal on Friday and the rehearsal dinner at this cute Italian restaurant.  The meal was served family style, which was excellent.  I got to have a little of everything, and as much of it as I wanted.  Sadly, the as much of it as I wanted didn't match up with how much my stomach can hold :)  We had penne with meat sauce, fettuccine alfredo, meatballs, chicken parmesan and salad. Yummmmm :)

After that, the bridesmaids went back to Kelly's hotel room.  We watched Bridesmaids, ate snacks and just enjoyed Kelly's last night as a single lady.  I brought the snacks -- word to the wise, if the pregnant lady gets snacks when she is hungry, watch out.  We ended up with chocolate and cheese: Milano cookies, little chocolate donuts, cheese pringles, tortilla chips and pretzels to dip in cheese dip....and grapes.

The next morning we all met back in Kelly's room to get our hair done.  Her immensely talented cousin did all 5 of our hairs, and everyone looked beautiful.  Mine felt 60s-ish to me and I was loving it :)

Saturday was sunny without a cloud in the sky.  Kelly was so stunning and her now husband, Patrick, was quite handsome (but Kelly wins :) ).  It was an outdoor ceremony with a pond and forest preserve in the background.  The reception was just inside in the Greenbelt Cultural Center.  We had a mexican buffet for dinner and dang was it good.  But I think my favorite part of dinner was the sweet table :)  Kim, the other pregnant bridesmaid, and I led the way to it :)

And some photos that I took from other people, since my camera was in attendance, but decided to die.  Awesome.



Before the ceremony



Oh, beautiful bride!





The Wedding Party



All of Chris' dreams have come true

That's right, it's a boy!! (For the record, my dreams would have come true either way -- I want one of each, so I would have been thrilled with a boy or a girl)  We are so excited!  We already have a name, too. Our little man will be named John William Collins -- John after my dad and William after Chris (if you didn't know, Chris goes by his middle name).  Chris is already planning camping trips :)



This is the best profile pic she could get -- you can see his little mouth open



Not gonna lie, this one is a little creepy -- the white blob in the middle is his face -- the dark circle in the white blog is one of his eyes and you can see half of the other one toward the top.  The c shaped thing is his little hand up by his face.

And here is the proof he is a boy :)  The white curved line just below the arrow is one leg -- if you look above that you can see the other leg and right in the middle where the arrow is are his little boy parts.

He was kicking up a storm, rolling over, covering his face and just being difficult for most of the ultrasound (signs of what is to come??).  However, she was just scanning around, looking for the next thing to measure, when bam, little one kicked his legs wide open and all three of us were like "WHOA!" and our tech was like, "Well, you saw that, too.  It's a boy!"  The picture doesn't do justice to what we saw at that moment.  It was so clear, you had to laugh.  You could clearly see his legs, feet, toes and....his, you know.  Then the rest of the ultrasound, apparently he was totally flashing us (that part we didn't see, we just took the ultrasound tech's word for it).  He heart was at a strong 150 beats per minute (we got to see all 4 chambers of the heart opening and closing...so cool).  I can't wait to see his little face in real life!

A technical note -- I know some of you have had issues posting comments...the issue should be fixed now, so commenting shouldn't be a problem.

20 Weeks 1 Day

Please excuse my sleepy expression -- it was 6:45 am and I hadn't put on any makeup yet.  And I promise I don't wear white socks with black pants -- it is raining today and I wore my rain boots.  And no worries, I have appropriate footwear at work :)

Half Baked or 20 Weeks

Well folks, we've made it to the halfway point in this pregnancy.  I am 20 weeks today!  I'm feeling good, but also feeling like I'm getting bigger every day, which I guess I probably am.  That's a good thing, for sure, but it's still a little sad to see the scale say a number I've never seen before.  Ah, the sacrifices we make for our children :)  What to Expect When You're Expecting breaks down your expected weight gain and I was astonished to see that by the end of the pregnancy, a woman will have gained an average of 4 pounds of blood!  Really, of the 30 ish pounds you gain, only about 7 pounds of that is fat -- the rest is all baby stuff, like the placenta, enlarged uterus, amniotic fluid, etc.

Other changes occuring -- I think my belly button is getting ready to pop out.  I feel like it could be a little early, but I also have a feeling I have a funny belly button that is just made to pop out -- it is an innie, but there is a part in the middle that is an outie within my innie and that outie is just itching to pop out.  We shall see.  I will spare you all a picture since some people think belly buttons popping out are gross (cough *Gina* cough), but will, no doubt, keep you informed of its status.

I didn't get a chance to take a belly picture yet, but we will do it tonight.  Two days....

Chris' First Kick

But let's first start with our late night visitor last night.  I went to bed early (as usual) and Chris stayed up to finish watching the Bears game.  When I go up to bed, Daisy usually comes with me, and then when Chris comes up, he gets her and takes her out before bed.  This all went down as usual.  But instead of them both coming back up to bed, Chris is suddenly yelling to me at the top of his lungs to get up, that I needed to come help him.  So I fly out of bed without my glasses on (for those of you who don't know, without my glasses or contacts, I can legitimately run into walls), thinking that somehow Daisy has escaped into the night and is lost forever.  So I'm completely disoriented from being woken up, I can't see, and am yelling to him trying to figure out what is the matter.  Finally I hear him say there's a big dog in our house and he needs help with the dog and Daisy.  What?!?  And barrelling up the stairs come a black lab to say hello.  In my unseeing, sleepy state, I'm 90% sure it is Dexter, our across the street neighbor's dog.  So I call him and he totally responds, but then decides to explore our house a bit.  He was just sniffing around in all his black lab excitement.  Daisy was terrified.  Every time I tried to put her down to try and corral Dexter, she would freak out.  Finally I just carried her upstairs with me, put on my glasses and then sat on the steps where Dexter came for some love.  I was trying to remain calm for both dogs' sake, but Daisy clawing her way up me was not helping in the least.

Chris is all, what do we do?  I was like, well, I bet Ben, Dexter's owner, is looking for him, so why don't you go out front and see if he is outside.  And he was.  Apparently Dexter was out for his before bed potty as well, but saw a rabbit and was gone.  Good thing he came to say hi to Daisy!

And on to the kick.  I've been feeling some good ones lately, ones that I was certain could be felt from the outside.  They were so sporadic, however, and usually only happened one at a time, it has been hard to get the timing right for Chris to feel it.  This morning when we woke up, we were laying there before actually getting up, I felt two good ones.  I grabbed Chris' hand and held it to my tummy, and not 5 seconds later, we got another good one!  Yay!  He finally got to feel the baby :)  It was a good little kick and he said it was stronger than he thought it would be.  I told him I think it may have been a foot, since that can probably deliver the strongest nudge right now.  I'll leave it up to your imagination as to what he decided it was :)

One Year of Wedded Bliss

This Sunday was our one year anniversary!  Since I'm pregnant and supposed to be taking it kind of easy until my ultrasound on Friday, we couldn't really do anything crazy, but we had a great weekend all the same.  We started our celebration a little early -- Saturday night we went to the Blackhawks home opener.  Lucky for me, Steve had un-missable plans, so I got to go in his place.  Chris likes to be at the games early, but Saturday we were so early that we were literally the first people in our section.

A little lonely...

We had a great time and the Hawks won.  However, it looks like Chris and Steve may have inherited a new season ticket holding neighbor who is, quite possibly, the most annoying person ever.  And he screams like a girl.  Have fun with that one, boys :)

Since the game didn't end until about 10:15, I was struggling as it was waaaay past my normal bedtime these days of about 9:15.  I think I was asleep as soon as we got in the car.

Sunday, our actual anniversary, was a beautiful day -- the weather was about exact to that of our wedding day -- hotter and sunnier than we ever expected.  We decided no gifts (we're saving for a kid, here), but we always get each other cards, so we had our card exchanging.  Then it was off to church.  After that, we went to Kuiper's to get apples and, most importantly, apple cider donuts.  We also got some apple cider (one of my favorites!!) AND in their little cafe, they had apple cider slushies.  Can we say delicious?!  We didn't actually pick our own apples.  The line to do that was waaaaay too long, and we figured that was more walking than I'm supposed to be doing.  But we had a nice time all the same and both of us accomplished our goals -- for me, tasty treats and for Chris, we we didn't dawdle.

These apples are so good!  Nice and crispy.



mmmmmmm......

 We came home, ate some lunch and then watched football/took a nap.  We wanted to go to the Roundhouse for dinner, the same place we had our reception.  It was recently sold to new owners and is now called Two Brothers Roundhouse.  We were pleased to see that the inside hasn't changed much (we were afraid renovations would take away its charm) and dinner was good, too.

Then it was back home to attend to the time honored tradition of eating year old cake from the freezer.  Our cake topper (well, half of it, since we ate the first half the day after the wedding -- I didn't get any chocolate at the wedding and I didn't want to miss out!) held up pretty well.  I took two bites for tradition's sake.  It didn't taste as bad as I had anticipated, but it was, after all, year old frozen cake.  Chris ate a bit more than I did, but we still ended up throwing most of it away (and it completely fell apart as it completely thawed)

Fresh out of the freezer...still pretty!

Ready to eat

It was a great weekend together and we look forward to many, many more!  Four days 'til the ultrasound!

In one week...

In just one week (Friday, October 14 at 8 am, to be exact), we have the big 20 week ultrasound.  Needless to say, we are pretty excited.  In addition to getting all its vital organs checked, fingers and toes counted (we're hoping for 10 each!), measuring, etc, we also get to find out if the peanut is, as Dustin so eloquently put it, a sitter or a stander :) (thanks for that one Dustin, I laughed out loud when I read that).

It's a big day.  If it's a boy, Chris will promptly buy out the Hawks store of all their children's clothing.  And probably all other Chicago sports teams (except the Sox).  If it's a girl, he will buy her the pink jerseys instead of the normal team colors.  Also, my mother will promptly buy every little girl outfit she comes across.

I know some people secretly hope for one or the other without really admitting it, but at this point, I really don't care.  I see little girls and I have little fantasies of the fun little girl things we could do.  But I see little boys and think the same thing.  I think Chris is less scared to have a boy than a girl, but when it comes down to it, he doesn't care either way, he just wants that little baby.  It will be fun to know, though.  Then we can start planning!  Like decorating the baby's room (which still needs to be cleared of all the junk that is in there).

Seven more days...I think Chris is counting the seconds :)

19 Weeks

It's a little blurry, but you get the idea :) Can you spot Daisy?

This Weekend plus Monday (and Doctor Visit #5)

This weekend was quite adventurous.  We had a lot going on, and some things going on that we wish wouldn't have gone on, but all worked out in the end.  Here is a run down:

Saturday morning I walked in the Mutual Ground walk.  It went great.  There was a wonderful turnout, a lot of money was raised for a good cause, and we all got a little exercise and a very tasty hot dog at the end.  However, this turned out to be a little too much exercise for pregnant Kristina, as it seems to have led to spotting.  This occurred after we had already headed out to Indiana for a wedding.  I called the office, but they were already closed for the day, so I talked to the on call doctor, Dr. Patel (a very nice woman and who I think will become my doctor after mine retires).  Since the spotting had resolved itself in about 4 hours and was not anything crazy (nothing like what I had at 10 weeks), she told me just to take it easy and call my doctor, Dr. Rao, on Monday to see if she wanted to see me Monday instead of my regularly scheduled appointment on Friday.  I asked her about the wedding, and she said I could go, just no dancing.

So we headed out to Shane and Trisha's wedding.  It was a beautiful outdoor ceremony at an arboretum followed by a great reception.  I followed the rules and did not dance.  Chris had a great time visiting with his IU friends (maaaaaaybe a little too much fun...I'll leave it at that).  We followed up the reception with a trip to Denny's, where Chris insisted on going to get some fried cheese meal (we saw like 6 commercials for it before the wedding).  Once it was time to order, he only got an english muffin.  Really?

Here are some pictures that I stole from others -- thanks Dustin and Britt :)  I actually brought my camera this time, but left it at the hotel.

Chris and Dustin



Me, Liz (her eggo is preggo, too, but she's due anytime now) and Brittany



The next morning, we joined friends for breakfast before heading home.  It was really great to see so many people that we don't get to see very often.  We didn't really do much the rest of Sunday except watch the Bears game, which was nice.

I stayed home from work Monday morning in case the doctor wanted to see me.  Chris stayed home with me just in case we ended up getting an ultrasound.  He didn't want to miss finding out what the baby is :)  She did want to see me, but I couldn't get in until 1, so I just stayed home from work all day.  My Aunt Cathy and Uncle Andy are in town, so we had lunch with them and my sister before I went to the doctor.

The appointment went well.  She checked me out and everything looks fine.  We heard the baby's heartbeat again, at 150 beats.  She also measured my uterus (how much do you love hearing about my internal organs -- I could so go into more detail, but that would embarrass Chris, so I will refrain).  The general rule is one centimeter per week you are along.  I will be 19 weeks tomorrow, so that would mean 19 cm.  I am at 21 :)  I may have a big baby in there, although the chart I looked at after said +/- 2 cm, so I'm still technically measuring on track.  We'll see where I am in a month.

They also gave me a flu shot.  I've never had a flu shot before, and I didn't really want one, but it was probably smart since I take public transportation every day.  The nurse made me feel good, though, when she told me I had no fat in my arm :)  I didn't realize that shortly after you get the shot, you can develop flu-like symptoms.  Super fun.  I did NOT sleep well -- I was achy and had the chills and a not so nice headache all night.  Luckily, I am feeling better this morning, so the effects are short lived.

Overall, things are going well.  Aside from my two bleeding episodes (which in retrospect were quite minor), I would say this pregnancy has been fairly easy.  I'm not overly emotional, I'm not having any crazy cravings yet or demanding things from Chris.  I am feeling the baby already, which is so exciting.  I just can't wait for Chris to be able to feel it, too.  And can I mention again, I freaking love maternity clothes.

18 Weeks 2 Days

Taken last night.  P.S. cutest maternity shirt ever...one of Jessica's :)

My mom said I wasn't standing up straight in my other pictures, so I made a conscious effort to stand up straight.  Am I doing a better job?  I kind of feel like instead of standing straight, I'm just sticking my boobs out.