Week 32

Another big week in Paducah. Not happy to quit our jobs, move across several states, buy a car, go to Mexico, and change the gender of our baby in about three weeks, we decided we'd just go ahead and buy a house of our very own on top of it all.

We have a contract on a great house with more than two rooms and four-digit square footage. It is about 2 1/2 minutes from both my mother and grandmother in a wonderful neighborhood with a nice private location. We really love the big spacious bedrooms and the big open kitchen and den area. Maggie is super-pumped about the sliding glass door to look out of and the fenced in backyard. Nicholas did agree to the master bath remodel (act surprised), which should be finished before we move in. We close on April 17th, so hopefully we'll be moved in before the baby arrives.

We also had a very exciting weekend filled with LOTS of baby-related events and a little mini-trip to Nashville to see Nicholas's brother Benjamin, his wife Ginger, and his sister Pamela. Before setting out we went by BabyFest at one of the local hospitals and boy was it. We entered about a million drawings and got lots of free stuff. Of course, one of the doctors was passing out formula measuring spoons, which sent me in a tizzy but I tried to keep it in check.

Afterwards, we stopped by Surplus City on our way out of town. Now, I can't believe I haven't posted about Surplus City yet, especially since I go about 3-4 times a week. It is a giant warehouse filled with returns, overflow, or slightly damaged goods from major retailers. Apprently, they have recently begun receiving merchandise from babycenter.com, and we are all the better for it. We bought all manner of baby items from clothes to nursing bras to baby carriers to bottles at 60-70% off. It's amazing. The best deal we've found so far was Happy Heinys cloth diapers which retail for $20 for...wait for it...$1.99!!!

Really, I can't say enough about my love affair with Surplus City. Anyway, we'd made an especially fruitful stop before heading to Nashville to visit. We had a really great time at lunch with everyone visiting and sharing stories. Benjamin loves a deal as much as Nicholas so I was telling him all about Surplus City. He said that he often buys stuff at discounters and sells them for a profit on eBay. Well, that was all the inspiration I needed. We went back to Surplus City on Sunday and I bought a brand new, factory sealed breastpump that I posted on eBay the same night. Not three hours later, I had sold that puppy for $100 profit.

And so my love affair with Surplus City continues...

Two Downs:
1. The tiny area between my ribs and my uterus where all my internal organs are all squished up is extremely sensitive and getting more so by the day.
2. I've been having more trouble sleeping or more accurately getting back to sleep when I wake up in the middle of the night to pee.

Two Ups:
1. I've picked out all the linens and furniture for the baby's room - something I had kept myself from thinking about until we bought a house.
2. I've bought some serious boy clothes over the past week (I felt bad for him!) and I have to say there are some pretty dang cute boy outfits out there. It's more challenging but that also makes it more fun.

Week 31

So, this week was consumed with me stressing/freaking/adjusting to the fact that our baby girl is in fact a baby boy.

I woke up on Monday and made an appointment to see a local OB/GYN to hopefully get one more ultrasound to confirm the gender. They couldn't get me in until first thing Friday morning, so I decided my next line of attack would be finding American ultrasound techs to look at the Mexican ultrasound pictures.

I sent the pictures with my mom to show to a friend who had been a tech for 20 years, but unfortunately she was out of town. Then I discovered a community chat room on babycenter.com where techs will look at your pictures. When Mom finally got home with the pics, I uploaded them immediately. Around the same time, her friend called from her vacation and told us to email the pictures to her.

She ended up responding the same time as all the women on the chat room and the answer was a resounding "Yeah, that is for SURE a boy!"

I might have cried...a lot...for pretty much the next 24 hours.

Everyone knows I wanted to a girl, but I have to be honest I was more upset at the way I found out. I definitely don't think my reaction would have been what it was if I had found at at the first ultrasound. As it was, I was told my baby was one thing and I really bonded with the image of that baby in my mind. Then, all of a sudden, I had that image jerked away and was told I had to start over from scratch. It was quite the emotional roller coaster.

So, the rest of the week creeped by at a glacial pace. Friday finally arrived and my appointment was at 9am. Unfortunately, the ultrasound tech couldn't squeeze me in until 3:30. Again, tick tock. Tick tock. Nicholas went with me and we finally got into the room around 4:30. She took her time (unlike the other two) and then finally proclaimed that she was 300% sure it was a boy. Actually, you didn't need to be a tech because once he opened his leg it was pretty clear.

However, the best part was that we were able to have an 4D ultrasound and see his little face. It really helped me to realize that this was my baby and that even if I had some vital information wrong I've known him all along. Oh, we also confirmed that he has the sweetest face EVER. ;)

Of course, this did leave the small matter of the baby shower I had the next day. Luckily, I have some sorority sisters who think fast on their feet and were able to completely shift the theme of the baby shower they were throwing me in Louisville. We drove up that day and met everyone for lunch. The shower didn't start until 3 so we were able to go by and see our dear friends Annie Kyle's new little guy Collin. He had a rough start after being a born a month early and had just recently gotten out of the hospital. It was so wonderful to see his sweet face and to see Annie so happy to have her baby home in her arms.

The now baby BOY themed shower went beautifully. Emily's house was picture perfect and we had lots of yummy treats and fun games. I got a ton of great gear and I have to say now that I've had both a baby girl and baby boy shower my thesis holds true. Girl clothes are so fun to buy that's basically the majority of the gifts. However, with a baby boy, you get a lot more of the gear off your registry. Both have their pluses but it was funny to see how different they were.

We drove back that night so we could go look at houses on Sunday. We didn't start until late in the afternoon so Nicholas could have his first official fishing trip as a Kentucky resident. I met my Nanny and cousins Paige and Micah for breakfast while he was out. We met up with Ron and Mom and set out to look at about 7 houses. We liked several but ended up back at one we had seen previously in the week. It has a great location and is really well laid out with lots of space.

The one deal breaker is the master bathroom. It currently has this shower pod thing, which just will not do. I want a bathroom to MYSELF with a BATHTUB. I'm not willing to budge on this. So, we're getting an estimate on a bathroom redo. If the number is reasonable, then we're set to go.

Again, stay tuned!

Two Downs:
1. Feeling guilty that I was so upset about the whole gender debacle.
2. I know everyone wants to be involved but I'm not enjoying going through the whole "do you have any names picked out?" again.

Two Ups:
1. Seeing my beautiful boy's face. BIG up!
2. He's getting so big I can start to identify certain little baby parts when they poke out one side of my stomach, although I still go with "unidentified baby knot" some of the time. :)

My first baby BOY shower! :)

My first baby BOY shower! from hollandnm on Vimeo.

Meet our baby boy

Week 30

And the week started so well...

On Monday, we woke up and went down to Allen Auto Sales and bought a shiny new Prius! We had talked a lot about it and we basically took it for a short test drive to make sure our stroller fit and we were good to go. About an hour later the car was ours!

That afternoon we drove to St. Louis in our new ride to stay with my dear friend's Aunt Debbie since our flight for Cancun left at 6am the next morning. We got to Cancun safely and hung out on the beach, which was lovely. The next morning we woke up early and claimed a nice little cabana and read and napped and just generally enjoyed the waves and the sun.

It was all going to so well until Wednesday night when I woke up not feeling so great. I'm sure we all know the common result of going to Mexico so I won't go into the gory details. I was fine most of the day on Thursday and I talked to my midwife who encouraged me to stay hydrated and just it pass. However, as it got dark, we both got worried that we should call a doctor since we were supposed to fly out first thing in the morning on Friday. So, a doctor came to our room and said I wasn't dehydrated but that it might be a good idea to go to the hospital to get IV fluids to speed my recovery. He said it would take 4-6 hours.

Well, we get to the hospital, which was very nice, and the doctor came in and said he wanted to admit me. He basically said we had to do what he said or we wouldn't get the Free to Fly form that was required to go home. Of course, it didn't matter because we missed our flight had to reschedule for Saturday as there was only one flight to St. Louis a day. They ended up keeping me until late Friday afternoon and finally let me go after I'd flipped out on several staff members and kept making a stink until they let me go. Our discharge papers described me as "muy delicato."

We made it safely home the next day but alas the babymoon that went bust will not go quietly away. Why do you ask? Because the night of admission, the doctor ordered what seemed like an unnecessary ultrasound. At first I was excited to see the baby again, that was until the tech announced it was a boy.

That's right - little penis and scrotum. A boy.

So, that brings the grand total to two ultrasounds saying it's a girl and one saying it's a boy. Isn't that so much fun!?! Oh wait, no it's not fun. It's ridiculous. But don't worry we're going to hopefully add a fourth to the list on Friday that will hopefully settle the matter once and for all.

Stay tuned.

Week 29

Hmmm...what happened this week? Nothing really stands out in my mind. Oh wait! That's right! We moved home to Kentucky!!!!

We packed up the rest of our stuff (Nicholas will debate how much is "ours" and how much is mine but whatever) on Monday and Tuesday. The movers came on Wednesday.  Nicholas out did himself on researching and finding the best company because they hauled all our heavy crap down three flights of stairs and somehow defied the laws of physics to make it fit into a 17 foot Uhaul in a little under 3 hours. Our cleaning lady came one more time so we wouldn't have to worry about the final cleanup, which was great.

Nicholas's good friend Paul took us out to dinner our last night in town, which was very generous, and we spent a lovely last evening on our air mattress. Not surprisingly, it was a little unusual to see the place all empty but it was also all I had been focusing on when there seemed to be a box every place I stepped so it was pretty nice. 

The closing went off without a hitch on Thursday morning. For months, I had been picturing myself with a big ole belly sitting at the closing table signing documents for months and I have to admit it was a pretty emotional moment to see it finally happening before me. We set out in the Uhaul around 1pm and had a completely uneventful drive to Louisville, where we arrived around midnight.

Our dear friends Tim and Emily (and their little guy John Turner) graciously put us up for the next two nights. We basically just hung out on Friday since we were pretty exhausted from the drive and went to dinner that night with my college roommate Erin and her husband Seth.  I woke up early on Saturday to take the MPRE, which went really well, and then we set out for Paducah after lunch. 

The last couple of minutes of the drive were pretty intense. As we hit the Paducah exits (yes there's more than one!), I almost had to hold myself back from feeling the entire depth of my emotions it was so overwhelming. I have been dreaming and planning and focusing so much energy on moving home for over a year now and to be in the moment where all it all comes to fruition was powerful. As we got closer and closer, I could feel everything that lies in front of us, all the promise our lives here hold and I kept thinking of one of my favorite quotes from The Hours:

It had seemed like the beginning of happiness, and Clarissa is still sometimes shocked, more than thirty years later, to realize that it was happiness; that the entire experience lay in a kiss and a walk, the anticipation of dinner and a book...What lives undimmed in Clarissa's mind more than three decades later is a kiss at dusk on a patch of dead grass, and a walk around a pond as mosquitoes droned in the darkening air. There is still that singular perfection, and it's perfect in part because it seemed, at the time, so clearly to promise more. Now she knows: That was the moment, right then. There has been no other.

Week 28

Well, things are wrapping up. Last week was our final full week in D.C. and I spent a lot of time meeting old friends for lunch and doing final goodbyes. It was definitely sad to say goodbye to the little family I've made here. I look back at all the wonderful friendships I've formed in law school and during my time at Hillaryland and on the Hill and I get a little teary thinking those people won't be just a metro ride away anymore.

Luckily, I had a fabulous prenantal massage on Friday to ease some of my sadness. ;) I went to a spa that specializes in pregnant women, where all the therapists are trained and certified in prenatal massage. That's something else I'm going to miss actually is the resources of the big city. Something tells me such a thing doesn't exist in Paducah.

Of course the big highlight of my week was the big baby shower/law school reunion. Another one of my law school classmates Leslie, who now lives in California, is pregnant and we decided to have a joint shower and get everyone together for a bit of a reunion. My nearest and dearest from law school, Laura Sinrod, arrived on Friday evening. (Nicholas says our friendship is actually just vanity because we're so much alike.) We had major catching up to do and stayed up way too late talking.

Laura and Leslie's nearest dearest Laura (yes two Laura's - try to keep up here people) hosted the shower for us on Saturday afternoon. They did such a great job with great food and sweet "little one" decorations everywhere. They outdid themselves on the game though. We had a "Mom-Off" which included baby care trivia, nursery rhyme completion, name-the-celebrity-baby, and (my favorite) daddy questions. They had quizzed our husbands beforehand and we had to guess their answers a la The Newlywed Game. It was such a blast, made all the better by the fact that I won and was declared the Superior Momma! ;)

After the shower, we met up with all our favorite menfolk from law school and had a big dinner. We had such a great time and it was so perfect to spend my last weekend in DC with all the people who had really defined a majority of my time here - even if most of them have moved out of town since then.

Two Downs:
1. I wish I could eat more because I know I'm going to be hungry again in an hour or two. However, there is just no more room.
2. My lower back has started to bother me, especially in the mornings.

Two Ups:
1. Definitely all the precious precious baby girl clothes we got at the shower. Y'all the cuteness was overwhelming.
2. Oh, let me see, hmmmmmm.... the fact that we're moving to Kentucky in a matter of days!!!!

My very first baby shower!

Joint Shower - February 28, 2009 from hollandnm on Vimeo.