Ok, ok, ok, ok,ok.......sorry!!!

Right, it's finally 4/15. Tax season is over. I still have a couple of returns to file but they're on extension so no big deal.

Yes, it's been a crazy month (and a few days) since I last blogged. Things are going well with baby and I'm feeling pretty great too. The hormones are leveling off and the only food still bothering me is anything deep fried and onions....so those are a no go and will probably not come back till long after pregnancy is over....if ever I guess. Which of course makes it hilarious when someone offers onion rings...hahahahaha!!

I went to my first mom 2 mom sale with Carrie this weekend and purchased my first baby item. I got the Fischer Price papasan swing in excellent condition for $25. That's a steal when they're listed at Target for $139.99. Chris seems to think I shouldn't buy stuff when I'll be having showers, but I try to explain there's more than enough to register for....just wait till he gets to do that with me!!

I'm still wearing my regular clothes and not having any issue. I'm afraid one day my pants just aren't going to fit anymore but since I can still get the jeans on without even unbuttoning them, that day should still be kind of far off.

Angie and Rocco's wedding is fast approaching. The shower and bachelorette parties were so much fun and Angie really had a great time, so it's nice to have those over and done with. the boys are having their bachelor party this weekend and the girls are going to assemble boxes....wait, how does that seem fair? hehehe

Graduation is 4/27 and I picked up my tickets yesterday. I still need one more so hopefully when I go back next week they have a few extras. My brother volunteered to step out if I can't get another ticket, but said it would suck to not see me walk. He's sweet. For as much of a pain in the ass we were for each other for a lot of years, I'm very lucky to have him around.

I also got a new car in my time away from the blog. It's a 2007 Montego and I really love it even though it's the same "old lady" burgundy I was making fun of my mom for having earlier this year on her new Taurus. It all comes back to bite us in the butt, doesn't it? Chris had enough with my old Taurus and it was over 120,000 miles already....I think he was nervous about me and the baby on the side of the road waiting for AAA and it was keeping him up at night, but he swears that's not the case. He's not fooling me.

Also, Melissa had Lexi, her newest bundle of joy. Check out the Mueller family page for pics and info on her delivery. It was a close one there....I had visions of Scott delivering the baby in the trailblazer, but they made it to the hospital with enough time to check in, get to a room, get checked out and deliver in just about 1 hour....holy whirlwind!!

Well, the next doc appointment is on 4/28 and the big ultrasound where we'll find out whether our little one is a boy or girl is scheduled for 5/7, so some big things coming up. We're not entirely sure we're going to share the results or keep them to ourselves just yet, but you know how I am with exciting news, so we'll see.

Wow, that long really?

I have to get better at doing this....work has just been SO busy!!

Thursday 3/6 was an appointment at the OB and I lost a few pounds, so she was happy with that kind of progress. She couldn't find baby's heartbeat using the doppler - which is not uncommon for women with size - so she wheeled in the ultrasound machine and got a picture externally. I'm not kidding Baby K was waving hello....s/he also had a nice case of the hiccups and the sadist in me thought it was so cute the way his/her entire body FLUNG across it's little sack.....hehehe.

My BP was a little high and they're having me go back this week. Doc agrees I shouldn't have any more 3:30pm appointments after having been at work during tax season anymore, but she just wants to make sure.

Otherwise things are pretty fine. Melissa should hopefully have her little one any day now. I spent the evening with Ava last night while mom and dad went to the hospital, but today they are home to hopefully get some serious contracting and dilating underway before they have to go back!!

Chris and I went to IKEA on Saturday and we may have found a solution to the organization (ok, storage of all my crap) issues....those Swedes really know how to pack in the storage, I tell you. So hopefully we can get that sorted out and squared away soon.

My last spring break?

EMU is on spring break this week. And where am I? Yes, working. I am spending my last spring break as a college student at work. The weather is snowy again to boot. I chose to drive the surface roads this morning because I don't think I can handle the highway drivers any more...I know it may seem like fun to some reeling along the icy highway at 85mph, but the second you're off the road it's not so fun anymore....though it's never happened to me, I'm not in favor of giving it a go.

My boss asked me today why I don't seem excited or even indifferent about this happy occasion. Really? I think every day I wake up giddy to the hilt but by the time I walk in the door of this place for another day of droning over tax law and calculations, I'm ready to go back to bed. Not to mention I think I'm seriously coming down with a work allergy.....I'll sit down at my desk and sneeze a few times every morning. Maybe it's my body reminding me where I am? Who knows. Kind of silly though isn't it?

Carrie announced she's leaving the bank to be a stay at home mom. I couldn't be happier for her cause I know this is what's going to make her feel better. It's also kind of scary cause I don't want to feel sad about going back to work when it's my time....despite my current allergic situation I really enjoy what I do for most of the year, just these next couple of months are kind of boring is all. Luckily my employer is very family oriented and flexible so I don't envision myself falling prey to a super demanding schedule or anything like that, which is a nice feeling.

The 12-week mark is approaching and even though I'm too read to think that gets me out of the danger zone, certain people can start to feel happy for us too and celebrate the impending joy...maybe that will take a little piece of the load off my mind.

I've also decided a month is a long time between doctor's appointments. A lot can happen in a month and it just leaves me anxious for the next time to get another glimpse of this little person flailing around in there. It's kind of like when I'm baking something for the first time....I'm too impatient to wait till it's done so I have to turn the oven light on so I can see what's going on in there without opening the door.

President's Day

Amazingly it's been a week and a half since I last posted....oh how the time flew by!! That's probably a good thing except I've made practically no headway in clearing out the guestroom, but I guess I have time, right?

Thursday was the first Valentine's Day where Chris and I actually went on a special date in probably 7 or 8 years. My company always had a fancy dinner at Laurel Manor in Livonia the weekend before or after so I pretty much let him off the hook for planning a special evening in exchange for his attendance at the work dinner. This year we no longer have the work dinner so he was back on for planning and boy did he do a nice job!! First, to my surprise and joy, Chris presented the baby with his/her first Valentine's day gift. He ordered a set of They Might Be Giants items so he and the baby can share in something they will love...sweet eh? For dinner we went to Leon's Diner in Dearborn so that I could have soup bar cause I've also been really digging soup and it was delicious there. Our final destination was The Henry Ford to see the U23D movie which is a U2 concert performance shown on the IMAX screen in 3-D. Wow. That's all I can say. It was as if Bono was singing to me. It was awesome and amazing.

On Saturday Aunt Sue, Laura, Gram, Rosie, Sam and myself packed into Sue's car to head for my cousin Katie's baby shower in Grand Rapids. There's nothing like 6 hours of driving for a 2.5 hour shower, is there? It was a good time though and it was nice to see Katie and Deb and spend some time with my aunts and grandma. Sue and Laura's kids made me a Congratulations card and they are all excited about the arrival of our little one.....I'm excited too cause they're going to cover a lot of babysitting years, hahahhahahaha!!!!

I'm still having meat aversions and onions are entirely off limits. I still have an apple or something apple related every day. I still haven't gotten sick at all (and both Sue and Gram seemed happy about that since both were sick the entire time they were expecting).

Even though today is technically a company holiday, I write this while sitting at my desk for the department "mandatory" 8 hour work day....at least parking was easy cause so many people are off today and the traffic was a breeze on I-94, even past State Street, which is a treat.

First OB appointment, the dentist and other niceties

Baby K measured in at 8 weeks, 4 days yesterday at our first OB appointment. Dr. Davies was very excited to see us and had a lot of nice things to say and talk about. Her first comment was how pleased she is with the amount of weight I managed to lose between our visit last March (when I was gearing up to start seeing the reproductive endocrinologist) and yesterday.....I lost about 46 lbs total....not bad at all....

Other things we talked about were how much weight I should expect to gain during pregnancy. She said she surely doesn't want me to bring back all the weight I've lost, so she'd like to keep it around 10 or 15 lbs. Honestly, from all the reading I was doing I was almost afraid she was going to tell me to try and gain nothing or 5lbs max, but she said 15 was well within her acceptable range and even if I got up to 20 she wouldn't be mad at me, so that was a good feeling. She said of course the baby plus fluids etc will weigh more than 15lbs and I'll just end up even lighter afterward....losing weight from pregnancy?? Sweet, I'm in.

She said all the bloodwork that came back from last week's nurse's appointment was fantastic and I don't need to change a thing. She also said after next week (10 weeks along) she wants me to stop taking the metformin, which she put me on for a couple of reasons....one being that insulin resistance is a major component of PCOS which is the condition I have that made this whole thing harder in the first place and the other being most women with this condition perform better on fertility therapy medications while taking it than without it, so it would serve a good purpose. She said of course we'll again evaluate the glucola test once I'm off the metformin for a few weeks, but she doesn't anticipate any issues between having lost some weight and the fact my sugars were never out of control prior to all this.

I couldn't get another picture as she was having difficulties with the ultrasound machine (I swear at one point she almost chucked it clear out the window....or wanted to anyway) and was maybe a little flustered since I had waited a while for her to get to the office from the hospital where she ran over on a surgery. I tried to explain to her being out of work for the afternoon was fine with me, even if it meant I was sitting on the table with the gown open in front and a sheet draped over me reading pregnancy magazines for half an hour. I think she appreciates my easy-going demeanor and sense of humor about the whole thing. And seriously, I wasn't at work so everything was good.

Baby K has a strong heartbeat and is at least double the size of last week...I think my exact words where "holy crap! it's like twice as big as last week!" to which she chuckled and said "yes dear, that's kind of the point....they grow exponentially right now." Of course I started having visions of this gargantuan child the guys at the plant used to accuse my dad of deviously formulating by "allowing" his daughter to marry "Big Chris"....hahhahaha....the gargantuan race to take over the world....awesome.

I did have 2 specific questions for her before leaving. The first was this feeling I get before every appointment....almost like some anxiety or a subconcious way of bracing myself if there's bad news to be had. She said it's perfectly normal for any pregnancy, not just the first one, and that I shouldn't feel bad about it. She said I read too much stuff online and I'm too smart for my own good but that keeping calm and healthy is all I can do. The other question I had for her was if she thinks I'm at greater risk of C-section because of my weight. She said that while many overweight women do succumb to a C-section, a good deal of the time it's because they're not mentally or physically prepared for the work and endurance this is going to involve. She said that thus far I have done everything I've been told perfectly and that my job now is to gear up for a proper healthy delivery without surgery since it's better for everyone in the long run. Ok. Good answers. She's kind of mom-ish and authoritative and encouraging without being patronizing or condescending...maybe that's why I like her so much!!

Afterwards I had a dentist appointment (which is seriously about 200 yards away from the OB office, also highly convenient) but it wasn't until 5pm. I stopped by to see if they had an opening or maybe someone had cancelled and boy were the girls happy to see me! I was the next appointment yet it was only 3:40. Stephanie was thrilled. The dentist himself was out of the office (on a cruise with his wife no less) since the week was so light, and now they might get to go home early! They too were excited to hear the news since they knew I had been trying at this for some time. They made sure to leave Doc a note for when he gets back so he can share in the joy. I'm sure he'll love another patient derived from the Gates family.

My next stop was taking it out to Brighton for some good eats and company....met up with some old school peeps (Annette and Katie Cooney along with a recovering Noreen) for a little dinner and chatting, which was nice. Then it was back home to watch some tele with the hubby and off to bed. What an exciting day!!

Paczki Day

I'm still eating and loving apples like crazy. At least one a day plus applesauce and other appley things I can get my hands on. A co-worker was kind enough to bring paczkis today and I even got an apple-filled version, how fantastic! My meat aversion has kicked into pretty high gear and the only tolerable meat at this point is chicken....and I don't want to see it raw, just cooked. Spices also seem to be giving me troubles so I'm off those for a bit; luckily I like pepper and it's still tolerable otherwise I may as well eat boiled mush.

It was made abundantly clear to me how excited my mom is over all this....I called the Parrott family on Sunday to make sure they had heard the good news - and of course they had. I talked to Devon for a while with Dennis talking through her a bit to pass on his congratulations. The funniest part (to me anyway) is that they knew about the baby but they DIDN'T know I'm finally graduating with my BBA in Accounting in April!! Is that messed up? The baby won't be here till September and she's so excited she's completely skipped over what is also a very important accomplishment for me and sure as heck took a lot more work than baby making.....ew, maybe that was too much.....hahahahhahahaha, sorry.

Anyway, luckily I have lots to keep me busy and time will continue to fly by. I'm getting ready to marry Jenny Grigg and her fiance Nathan at the end of May and both Chris and I are standing up in Angie and Rocco's wedding at the beggining of May. So with those big events, plus school and graduation, tax returns, doctor's visits and getting the house ready for our little one, September will be here before we know it!!

Seriously, apples

Ok, so maybe saying I would only update weekly was a stretch. I want to come out here and talk about this every day just cause I'm so freakin excited, you know? Today I had my nurse's appointment at the office where my OB is now located. They go over things like family history and what I should and shouldn't be eating.....to my surprise I'm actually more strict than they expect me to be, but with all the other issues I need to combat it's probably not a bad thing to walk the cautious side. They also did blood work and I tried to stress that the specialist I had been seeing did most of these tests in September but they didn't seem to care. And the woman taking blood was terrible....both arms were fished and bruises are on their way. They also had me do the glucola test where you drink a sweet beverage, wait an hour and they test for how prone you are to developing gestational diabetes. They don't usually do this test till 28 weeks along but with family health history and whatnot I'm sure it's not a bad thing to tell right away.

All I've wanted to eat today is apples. Applesauce and apples. Luckily I had an apple in the car and it tasted so good I think that's what prompted the further behavior in seeking out apple products. Luckily dearest Christopher had the foresight to help me purchase sensible snacks for my desk so that I could easily avoid vending machine junk. Peach medley applesauce and Granny Smith applesauce from the "healthy harvest" Mott's line....mmmmmm