Progress Report

I was welcomed to the third trimester - literally to the day - by none other than the flu bug. Thank goodness it was a Tuesday and I was able to cancel my piano lessons for the day instead of trying to find 12 hours worth of coverage last minute at work. It was a miserable day. I spent the majority of the day alternating between the recliner and the bathroom trying to hold down saltine crackers. At long last most of the icky part had passed and I was just left with the achy part. I was laying back in the recliner trying to watch a movie on Netflix when the doorbell rang. I had no idea who it would be since my sister had already brought me a giagantic cup of pebble ice from Sonic. (Thanks again Necia!) I pushed the blanket off, maneuvered the dog and laptop from my lap and slowly made my way up the stairs. I am easily winded by stairs as it is being pregnant, but being sick on top of it made for an even slower assent. I finally reached the top, opened the door and looked out into the wide open nothingness.

Door bell ditched.

I couldn't even be angry. I just leaned against the door frame trying to catch my breath and trying not to cry. Dodger scouted out the breezeway and looked through the gate for any clue who it might have been. I am fairly sure I know who it was, but it doesn't matter. We spent a good portion of our summer being doorbell ditched and so we finally unplugged the doorbell. I had only plugged it back in that very day so I would know when Necia came by. After the blood had returned to my head and the breathing came a little bit easier, I descended into the dark cave like gloom of the basement, unplugged the doorbell, and resumed my movie and remained - thankfully- undisturbed for the rest of the day.

But to keep with tradition, I took a picture of myself in all my flu glory, to prove to the world that I made it to 7 months and that the third trimester had officially begun.

I can definitely say that things have been much better since. No more bugs and I am enjoying good health.

29 weeks.

30 weeks. On Tuesday I will be 31 weeks. Frightening how fast it goes! 7.5 months down. Only about 9 more weeks to go. Ahhh!

I have been very lucky to enjoy good health and energy through the pregnancy up to this point, and I hope it continues.

I am still going to the gym roughly 4 days a week. My muse is spinning. I cannot tell you how much I love that class. It is such an incredible work out. I first starting taking spinning classes a year ago in January. I went religiously through the end of May, and then stopped going. I couldn't say why. Laziness I suppose. But I really missed it. Thankfully, around January of this year my friend Corinne asked me if I would want to go to spinning with her. It was all the motivation I needed to go back and haven't stopped since.

Not only is spinning just an awesome work out anyway, it's prefect for pregnancy too because it isn't as hard on your joints as running or even walking. There have been two other girls that come to class that kept coming right up until their babies were due. That is some serious dedication and motivation. I hope to be just like them. In fact, one of my instructors is about a month ahead of me and is still doing amazing. So as long as I can keep it up, I am going to!

The only hiccup I have had in spinning happened in the last two weeks where by chance, two different teachers both played the song "The Devil Went Down to Georgia." I love that song. Always have. Always will. But both times in the last two weeks that they played that song it made me tear up. What the heck?! Not full blown crying, thankfully. But actually tears. "The Devil Went Down to Georgia." Really?! Now Ryan can tell you that I have "overactive" tear ducts when it comes to music, dance, and some movies. I am not actually sad. And I am not really crying. Art sometimes just brings a tear to the eye. And in this pathetic case - apparently those mad fiddling skills. Good grief.


Working out really has been my sanity saver. When I said in my post about Ryan's fly fishing that I don't have an hobbies or do anything, I guess that was a lie. Working out is my number one. And don't get me wrong. I am not one of those crazies that works out for hours at high intensity and eats nothing but lettuce. Good for you if you are like that. I just like the movement and the energy. Typically I do spinning 2-3 times a week and the eliptical 2 days a week. And I enjoy my ice cream afterwards. :)

My back hurts a lot, but not in the way that I expected. It often kills right between my shoulder blades and mid back. I have a hard time trying to figure out how to stretch it out and it keeps me up at night a lot. But it could be much worse.

I was suffering from horrible heartburn, but daily Prevacid has saved me there.

I have no real cravings that keep me from functioning and I have never sent Ryan out in the middle of the night for some food that likely is out of season.

I am not a crazy pregnant lady, thank you very much. Just ask Ryan. He will tell you that I have been about as normal as is possible for being pregnant. (I am confident he will give you that answer even if I am not around, so you can't worry about me telling him better answer the right way or else!)

I am still working 3, 12-hour shifts a week at the hospital and teaching 14 piano students, when I remember. :) (Yes, I did forget a couple lessons last week and thankfully the mom was nice enough to text me and forgive my placenta brain and let me come a few hours late.)

Baby is doing well and moving quite a bit. Feeling and watching the baby move is amazing. I went from not being able to feel him and being totally unsure if those little "flutterings" were really him, to being the soccer ball for kicking practice from the inside. He is very active. On days that he is calm it kind of freaks me out. So when my ribs feel bruised and I am short of breath because he is stretching as big as he can, I am grateful to know he is alive. He loves to somersault and flip around. Ryan is concerned I will need a c-section when all is said and done because the little guy will probably have tangled himself up in there.

I am measuring right on, or maybe a few days small - depends on which measurement you are using. All the ultrasounds show right on if not a little on the big size. By laying down and using an actually measuring tape, a few days shy of my estimated due date. The doc says not to plan on delivering on time - which I never was to begin with - but we can still hope, right?

On the home front... Yesterday was the appointed day for cleaning the carpet. We have a rough goal of trying to do this ever six months, but I think this last time the semi-annual cleaning was skipped. We wanted to get it done before baby came, but before it got too cold so that we could leave the windows open and let the carpet dry. Thankfully we had a nice break from the snow and rainfall last week and instead enjoyed 70s plus all weekend. Perfect for carpet cleaning. My energy however, was not. But energy or no, it had to be done.

Ryan had to work all weekend, so he helped me move the last bit of furniture out of the living room and clean up the floor a bit on Friday so I would be ready to go. I rented one of these guys from Macey's grocery and got going...


I love these machines. They are so handy. About an hour after I started I realized there was an away BYU game and decided to look it up. I was able to find it on KBYU and it provided a much needed excuse to rest my back in between each bucket. Dodger also appreciated these little breaks because I would play fetch with him while trying to stretch out my back and cheering on the Cougars. At each explosion of applause and shouts for joy, Dodger would look at me with his head cocked to one side like he does when he is trying to understand what I am saying. And then giving up, he would pounce on this ball and remind me what we were doing before my fits of "random excitement."

The whole process took me longer than usual with the breaks in between each load, but I got it done. As much work as it is, it is such a rewarding thing. I love washing those buckets of dirty, nasty water down the drain. It's kind of gross when you realize how dirty things get when you don't realize it, but it is awesome to know that you are actually making a difference.

And the bonus to all of this? Not only do I have clean carpet, but check this out!


This is the baby's room during construction. As a matter of fact, this isn't even a true "before" picture because there was a bed in that corner and even more stuff piled on it. Since then, it has gone through several stages of clean up. Right before cleaning the carpets I had it down to just a few boxes lining the wall that had the different sizes of boys clothing we have.

And now?!
Tada!!! This child has a room! No furniture yet, but there is a space for him! Pretty awesome, right?! (Do you love how you can tell where the bed has been for the last 5+ years? No dirt was getting under that thing!)

AND....


Check that out! I have a living room again! Yes, there is still stuff on the couch, but that is because I was cleaning the carpets, and because some of it still needs to find a home. But I am stoked! Look how nice that is. I just want to sprawl out on the carpet and lay there enjoying the space and cleanliness. However - it's still wet and that wouldn't be too much fun.

So things are definitely progressing! And considering our crazy schedules, I don't think we are doing too bad for ourselves. :)

Things we haven't done:

1. Picked a name. No, this is not a point of argument between Ryan and me. We just haven't found anything yet. Probably cause we don't really talk about it. Not sure why. Most couples spend a lot of time on the internet or looking at books, but we haven't. I do hope to have a name before we get to the hospital. I know a lot of couples go with multiple names and just wait to see what the child looks like. If that happens for us, that's not necessarily our intention. It would simply be because we haven't found anything yet. I was talking to the mom of one of my student's the other day and she told me that they didn't have a name for their youngest for 4 months after he came home. 4 months! Wow! I don't feel too bad about not having one any more.

2. Figured out the whole going back to work gig. Ryan is still looking for another job, so that is a big unknown factor. I would love to cut back to part time, but if I am still paying for insurance, that's a pretty big pay cut. So it's a matter of mathematics and timing.

3. Find a dresser and/or changing table that we like. We are searching the KSL classifieds daily. There are plenty of "good deals" but we are really hoping for a "GREAT" deal. Unfortunately, most of those sell really quick and it seems like its always during the hours that we are at work and couldn't do much about it anyway. So hopefully we will figure that one out.

Let see... I am sure there was more I was going to report on, but in case anyone actually made it through this post - I am sure that is enough for now. Besides, little Dodger is giving me a sign that he is bored...


This is new. He jumped up on my lap and put his head on my arm while I was typing. It can't actually be comfortable as it makes his head bob around a bit and he can't actually lay down and stretch his neck that far. I think he knows this post was mostly about baby and not him. Someone is feeling left out...