Thrift store score!

 Manly and I went on a thriftstore "hunting trip" for several items that we had on our list.. I am not sure how many things off our list we found but we got some awesome stuff!  Probably our favorite thing we found though was the duck.   The solid, adorable, German made, little pull duck that quacks and "waddles" and turns its head back and forth when you pull it.  

We need a name for it.. ideas??? 

And for you history people,  What does this tell us?

Yep, West Germany, which means that this toy was built some time while the Berlin Wall was up... roughly 1950-1990... its obviously held up ridiculously well!!  

The brand is Haba and is still a viable toy company in Germany which makes fabulous toys! They are still making this duck too!! New its $21-$33.. we paid $10 for it and I could not be more thrilled!

This little piggy went..crazy!

Last night was one of those nights,  Baby Girl was going absolutely crazy!  I have never seen her move that much or that strongly before and it was not the most comfortable thing in the world!   (I may or may not have cried a little bit towards the end) :-P

I laid awake for a few hours while she just pummeled and thrashed around, and honestly I felt pretty bad for her!   There isn't much more room in there and as active as she generally is, she seemed a little frustrated with her shrinking environment.  Mark was out like a light and I tried getting up and walking to see if that would lull her to sleep, but no... she wasn't interested and FYI its really hard to walk a straight line with your whole gut being flung to one way or the other unpredictably!  

Finally I remembered that she likes music,  I pulled up Mathew Burtner "Hear My prayer" on my iPad (Thank you Aunties in WA for that, thank you a million times!!), placed it on my tummy and she went straight over, wiggled around a little and fell asleep.  Praise The Lord!    I could not believe that it actually worked!!  That music always puts me out like a light too, so as soon as she settled down I apparently fell asleep.  Woke up to roll over at some point and the iPad was dead as a doornail... low battery.  Oh but it worked!!

She is still pretty active this morning, but nothing like she was last night! I am sure we will have quite the parties once she is born!! ;-)  

Where's baby?

We have this game we like to play.. we call it,  "Where is the baby?"   ;-)   I'll give you one guess... 

Baby is SO active and all over the place all the time, but she often will just jab out on one place and make my whole stomach lopsided!  It is hilarious and entertains us to no end!      

I have tried video taping her rolling around making my stomach look like a "Boiling Cauldron" to quote one of her Aunties.  She almost always stops though as SOON as I pull out the camera!    I got a little clip but cant manage to upload it, so oh well! 

Setting up the Cradle and an (almost) 33 week update

Due to the fact that a Pack'n Play won't fit in our room and I really want a place for baby to sleep that is within arms reach, I have been looking for a cradle to put in our room.   I finally found one!  Craigslist, nice area of McKinney, use for one baby and in practically new condition and cheaper than any other ones I had seen!   Win win!    She also threw in the most adorable little lamb blanket (which is ironic because as little children both Mark and my special stuffed animal was a lamb!) for free! It is ADORABLE!

Daddy putting the cradle back together because we had to take it apart to fit it in the car (I miss my truck!)

 He also figured out that he can do "cradle lifts" to "rock the baby to sleep"  and work out at the same time!  ;-)  We will see how that works in real life ;-)

And here we have our obligatory 1 day shy of 33 Weeks picture!

I went to the midwife on Monday and baby girl is doing wonderfully!   She moves almost constantly but she was head down the midwife said!   They took a little blood again but it was a tiny bit compared to last time!  We will go in at 36 weeks and then move to every other week appointments! GAH!!   I have been setting up a Target baby registry and it popped up with "Only 51 days to your due date!"   I almost died.    So much to do!!  Mark better be ready for the nesting tidal wave! ;-)    

I will try to update more frequently in the future, between scrubbing everything and sewing my head off.. ;-)

Pregnancy Dreams

Anyone who knows me or my family well, knows that we are dreamers and not just the "I want to conquer the world" type of dreamer... the kind that dreams dreams at night.  The kind that has so many children who dream dreams that he used to say he was charging us for having to sit through hearing about them at the breakfast table!    

I have always had very vivid dreams,but now that I am pregnant.. they have gone to a whole 'nother level!!

So... Last night I dreamed the weirdest dream... First of all: I fell asleep with baby girl kicking the living daylights out of my innards, or what were my innards at least.

  Then I dreamed that she kicked me SO much that she kicked a hole in my stomach and she was actually only held in by 3 pairs of tights.  You know, the white knit ones... ya, so I didn't know what to do about it!
  The hole was too big to sew up and she kept sticking her head out of it so we just took her out.  She was all dressed up in the little polkadot outfit that I posted on facebook yesterday and she kept rooting around looking for food which apparently I had none of.
 So I asked Mark,  "What should I feed her???" and he said, "Oh how about just some baby food!   Sarah feeds hers baby food right away and look how healthy they are!"
 But we didn't have any baby food so I gave her a chunk of cantaloupe and she choked on the rind.. (what sort of mother gives an infant cantaloupe with the RIND ON!!).
 So then I called my sister-in-law Mary and explained via voice mail and text (because she didn't answer her phone) that I had a little problem... I hadn't been in or gone through labor but I had the baby and I didn't know what I should do about the placenta which was still inside me!!!
  She didn't write me back,  so I called the midwife and very patiently explained to her that the baby had kicked a hole in my stomach (all three pairs of tights worth of it) and that I tried feeding her cantaloupe and she was just fine except she didn't like the rinds, and that I didn't know what to do about my placenta since I had not gone through labor and how was I supposed to get rid of it!  She replied very promptly with "You're drunk.  Go back to bed".
  But I really didn't feel drunk because I was HOLDING THE BABY!!  but the more we talked about it the more I started to wonder if I was dreaming and started to freak out about whether or not I had called the midwife in my dream or in real life.
  Mary re- entered at this point and told me that she and Eric were having a good laugh because I was most certainly dreaming...

 Then I woke up.... and guess who was still kicking the living daylights out of my innards.....

I also dreamed about being raided by Indians (feather) and several other things that I remembered when I woke up but I can't remember now.    What a night!!

PS.  That one was free... ;-)

22 Week Update (A day early!)

I HAD to post today because we have had all sorts of fun updates this week and I didn't want to wait!

LOOK how big she is getting. she probably doesn't have old man eye brows like that though...


First of all not only can we feel baby moving around but we can SEE her!!  Big sudden kicks and rolls and we can see my tummy dancing.. or rather lunging suddenly in some odd direction.

 So that is ton's of fun!   But! We can also start to feel little human limbs and head and bottom and such from the outside.  As far as we can tell this child is all knees and elbows but it is SO fun to be able to tell where she is in there!!

I get the feeling sometimes that Manly thinks I have a little too much fun poking around and getting her to move because I am so obsessed with the coolness of it all, but the way I see it, she gets a free ride in my body for 9 months, she can put up with a little poking while still in there! ;-)

Secondly, I gained a pound!  Which ironically enough, baby weighs one pound now so I guess I can blame that one on her and NOT all the bread I've been eating...

So there you have it!  

21 Week Update and our first TX Midwife Visit

We Went to our first Prenatal since being in Texas this morning.  We are using Heavenly Hands Birthing Center if you want to look it up and see pictures of their awesome birthing suites.

It went great, heard baby's heartbeat nice and strong and I successfully did the whole weigh in, pee in a cup, stick a stick in it and see if it turns fun colors, (I seem to remember we would get in trouble for that at home, but you know.. pregnancy.. everything goes!)

We measured in at 21 weeks which is what we will be tomorrow (Thursday)  so baby is nice and on track for that!

She also took some blood... as usual the drooling over my veins was prevalent and she actually called them "Yummy"... Medical people... gee wiz.       I don't handle the blood part so I didn't look at all and it didn't really hurt but after a little bit of the drawing of what felt like vial after vial of my precious life juice,  I started getting a little warm.. and then a little sick... and then she was done, but I still was a little sick.    I wasn't going to say anything but I looked over at Mark and he was turning black and white so I went ahead and just mentioned that I was going to throw up soon, and they gave me some Gatorade.    Bless them.   After a few minutes I felt a lot better and it was all behind us!   Except that I HAD to sleep for like 3 hours this afternoon... I am not sure if that was related at all.

As far as a 21 Week update: I feel GREAT and I feel like I have hit the phase where I want to sleep ALL THE TIME and eat everything in sight.     Honestly, I rarely feel squished inside at all yet,  its like I just built on a little addition for baby to live in and so far so good!

See! Nice little addition.    I still haven't started gaining any weight back but I have sat at a solid 14 lbs below my pre-pregnancy weight for a week now, so I think I should start going up soon!