I won!!!

So, two blogs in one day is a little crazy, I know, I know... but I would like to share with you all the totally awesome prize I won!

It was a silly little contest... you know, you enter, fill out your info, and never expect to hear about it again... but, I won!!!

An at-home, foot massage and pedicure. Compliments of Daddy P. You see, I was nagging a little about how little he's blogged. He has this whole "I only have one hand" sob story going about most things I nag about that he doesn't feel like doing at the time. That works for laundry, and dishes, and cooking, and... well, I'll cry if I keep going... but it doesn't work any longer for anything typing oriented.

You see, my gracious father bought him some very awesome voice recognition software called Naturally Speaking . It's a little eerie actually. He'll be in the office working on something and I just hear him talking to himself. I have to be careful not to yell up at him in these moments otherwise he ends up with random things in his paper. He said that the other day he forgot to turn the microphone off and the computer tried to type the dog barking. It didn't really work very well, but at least the dog can feel literary at times as well.

So, back to my pedi. I was all about typing out an entry for him, but he said he'd do it later yesterday. I told him that was bunk, and he wouldn't, and he insisted. So, he told me if he didn't blog he'd give me a full-on pedicure. Since bending over is getting more and more uncomfortable, and I do love pretty toes, I took him up on it. I could hardly stand the anticipation this morning as I crawled out of bed to log in and see if there was an entry!

Jackpot!

So, I'll have pretty toes for a while longer. Or at least, I'll have painted toes. I have a feeling that "pretty" might not be quite where Daddy P's toenail painting skills are at yet, but I'll take what I can get!

Desensitizing Doggy

So, our most awesome dog trainer in the whole world recommended buying "Preparing Fido" to get our mutt ready for a baby. It's a CD of all these different baby noises: baby crying, baby giggling, baby spashing in the bath, baby screaming... So, we've been playing different tracks in small intervals to get her ready. Each time, she is startled, walks around looking at each of the speakers, and then eventually hides. So, I guess as far as reactions go that isn't too bad. You can tell in the video exactly the moment the crying starts (I was covering up the mic on the camera... sorry!).



And then, her final position. This is her new favorite place ever since P&T came to visit. T always sat in the chair there, and Elly would crawl underneath him. I think she misses him...

Baby G in motion

So, we had a follow-up ultrasound yesterday (everything is fine, no worries!), and Daddy P decided to video some of it so you can see the squirmy girly in live motion. So, here you go!

This is a picture of her head (and jaw moving around) in case you get disoriented.

Flat on my back

So, I've wondered about this "can't lie on your back" thing. I've been lying on the couch and haven't noticed anything. (And worrying that I'm really doing some secret damage and can't tell.) Last night, I'm vaguely aware that I'm dreaming about lying on my back, and seconds later, I wake up, and sure enough! Flat on my back. So I roll over and go back to sleep. I woke up with the vague recollection of all this and figured it was all just silliness. But then today, at the doctor's visit, I was lying on my back and they were checking everything out and I was getting crazy dizzy. And dizzier. I had to ask to roll over. So, I have learned that: 1) you really shouldn't lie on your back for a long time, and 2) that my body (or the baby) won't let me do it.

The Beach

We went to the beach last weekend and it was gorgeous. Cool enough that you could lie in the sun and not sweat. Which was a very good thing, I might add, since the water was arctic. Daddy P dared to go in a bit, but we all watched and deemed him nuts. I discovered that lying at the beach is much trickier when you are pregnant since you can't lie on your back or your stomach. And now that the tummy is getting bigger lying on my side without support is getting less fun. So, the boys took care of me and rented me a chair to sit on for the day. Here is a scary picture for you, and possible foreshadowing. We all four sat there (four expectant parents) watching the families pack and unpack as they came and went, and marveling in all the supplies needed to take a child to the beach. Particularly impressive were the large tents that were popped open to protect the little ones from the sun.

Block Island

So we journeyed across the waters to Block Island (in Rhode Island) last weekend with the 'rents for a restful and relaxing weekend. It's teeny (10 square miles) but cute, relaxing, and very "I'm in New England and at the beach"-ish.



We walked almost everywhere and ate at some yummy local places, and sat at the beach. It was very very relaxing and a wonderful break from reality! I would definitely recommend spending a couple nights there to anyone looking to just get away a bit.

New Belly Pics

Added a couple new belly pictures... :)

Photos from our block island trip to come... Daddy P goes to the specialist today to help figure out the cast vs. surgery question. We shall see when I get a husband back!

TKO

Things are a little inbalanced in our house in the gender arena. With a female partner, a female dog, and now a female offspring, Daddy P has to try to defend himself. And he's failing...

Last night, Cletusella (Grandma suggests "Little Lulu" as a pseudonym which seems kinder but less funny) kicked him. She'd been rocking and rolling while I was lying in bed, and so he put his cheek to my belly to listen. He heard her swimming around and then &#$*! POW *#*@! she kicked him in the cheek.

She's going to give us a run for our money I think...

Crunching the numbers

Wow, baby budgeting is not only crazy expensive, but hard to do. If you google baby budget, you will get estimates on price ranges like this one I found:

Crib and Mattress: $250 - 250+
Stroller: $100 - 800

It just gets worse, trust me... So obviously a frugal parent can make this happen without breaking the bank... I just have to make sure I budget us for my amazing high chair that I cannot live without that will be more expensive than the crib... You guys aren't even curious about it are you? Man, you have no sense of suspense...

But, my main goal in this was to figure out how much it would cost us to use gDiapers. It'll be more, but I think Daddy P and I have decided to try it out and try to spend less in other areas to compensate. My super duper rough estimates (for 3600 diapers for the first year only) put disposables around $900 and gDiapers around $1200. So, that's a lot, but it's distributed over the course of the year, and I think since we can probably handle it financially then I will happily do it for our baby girl's future world.

Plus, they sell gDiapers in Austin supermarkets, whereas out here on the East Coast you can't find them to save your life and we'd have to have them shipped. (No thanks.)

Plus, with an estimate of $2000/yr of formula costs, if we can convince my body and this baby to breast feed we can figure we're offsetting that cost as much as possible.

Oh, the idealistic talk of a first time pregnant woman.

We will, of course, use disposables for when relatives and babysitters have the baby since there is no reason to subject others to our diaper changing madness if they don't have to be. :)

As for Daddy P... he saw the specialist and is in a cast. The plan is for him to have a catscan to confirm what things look like. Then, the doc will x-ray his wrist every 6 weeks or so to see how it is healing. They don't take the cast off until they see in the x-ray that it's totally healed. They are estimating 2-3 months...

Inside of Daddy P

So, as long as we are looking at my insides, I figure, let's look at Daddy P's insides, too.



So, you see those little bones in the wrist? Well, those two bones stacked on each other on the right side...? They're supposed to be ONE bone. Yep! Daddy P broke his wrist! He is in a temporary cast after 3 hours in the ER Friday night after landing on his wrist when pretending to be super volleyball man. Tomorrow he goes to a hand surgeon who specializes since this apparently, is a very tricky and special break. Leave it to Daddy P to be special!

Luckily, he will get the cast off just in time to hold his little baby girl. Granted, he'll miss out on, oh, three months of cleaning, and packing, and unpacking, but he will be ready to change poopy diapers.

So please send your condolences his way. He is rather upset about the whole thing and is having a rough time adjusting to being a one-armed man...

Top Secret

Sorry folks... we're keeping this little girl's name close to our chest. I don't want to let it loose and then hear about the bratty girl in 3rd grade who pulled your hair who had this name, or the girlfriend of your brother who stalked him for two months and stole his clothes who had this name... so unless you can trick us, or until Daddy P slips up... this one's a secret.

Hey, be happy. You know she's a girl!

It's a...

We had our second ultrasound yesterday, and this one is the one that counts... Ladies and gentlemen say hello to our little girl!


She was certainly putting on quite a show for us yesterday. We saw her sucking her thumb (her little jaw moving even!) and yawning. And she gave a warning out to all the boys... (I'm looking at you Aiden...) This little girl is no floozy. She crossed her little legs as soon as we started peeking inside. (Her knees are to the left and her body is off-picture, her little feet are on the far right.)

If this baby's a dancer, is it a b-boy or b-girl?

Daddy P's right. This baby is getting its groove on! But I don't know about those descriptions. Everything says it feels like "fluttering" or "popcorn"... This baby doesn't feel like that at all. Well, I think I probably missed the fluttering and mistook it for other bodily sensations. Now the baby feels more like muscle twinges if you ask me, and poking. I guess there is the occasional pop-ish feeling, but it's more like what it would feel like if you were water and had a bubble rise to the surface and pop in you. Not that I know what water would feel like if it were a being with powers of perception, but that is what I would imagine it to feel like.

But, yes, the baby likes SYTYCD. Doesn't everyone? And, this Friday is the big reveal...! Will this baby be a b-boy or a b-girl? Or maybe just a gender neutral popper or krumper. We'll see... To better understand our future child, tune into the next "So You Think You Can Dance?!"

The baby is moving!

We were watching Mamacita's favorite show, So You Think You Can Dance, on Wednesday, and Mamacita jumps a little and says, "the baby just moved." This was the first time that she has felt the baby without any doubts. If you've ever watched SYTYCD with Mamacita, you know how excited she can get, and I'm guessing that Cletus was feeding on the giddiness. Either that, or we have a little dancer in there. Either way, we are getting more and more frequent fluttering announcements with every day.