I'm still here.....

...and still pregnant.

I definitely thought with all this placenta drama that I wouldn't still be pregnant by now. Looks like I get my wish of being 25 when I give birth. Tomorrow I turn 25 - and now I feel bitter that I wanted my birthday to arrive before my baby, because I got my wish - and it sucks.

I will be 39 weeks tomorrow, and I've been suffering terrible sciatica for a week and a half now. Every morning when I wake up I feel insufferable pain in my ass region. That's right folks, my freaking butt (and tailbone and left quad). It sucks. I can't walk into work, through the mall or in the neighborhood without being stared at. Yesterday I even got a "Yo Gurl, you look like you gonna pop!" I was like "Yeah, that's what I'm hoping for." Why else would a hugely pregnant girl with a severe limp be walking around the neighborhood for an hour (not to mention walking at the rate of a disabled snail's pace)? I have luckily found some minor relief with extra strength tylenol, but I feel extremely guilty taking it - so I try to limit myself to when I'm in the most pain - like in the mornings, and afternoon and evenings. I just hope and pray that they are right when they say that I will feel immediate relief once the baby is born. I can't imagine having to take my little guy home while still having a hard time getting around the house.

Due to this pain, my house has been a disaster... well until today. I had this surge of energy today and felt the need to vacuum, sweep, dust, etc. most of the day! Thank goodness because the state of my house was really getting to me - and today I felt able to fix that. Granted it took 3 times as long to do it all - but it feels so much better.

I also took tomorrow off work. Last Thursday I was in such immense pain just walking around work that I told my boss I was taking Monday off - due to pain and my birthday. Will happens to have tomorrow off so we figured it would be a nice day to spend as just the two of us - which might be the last time for a while. Labor seems pretty imminent at this point, considering my constant contractions among other "symptoms" - so I better take any chance to hang out with my hubby that I can. We have a day of food and movies planned. I think we're going out for breakfast then hitting up a movie - and we have reservations at Texas de Brazil tomorrow night - and at some point I plan to get a pedicure, you know .... so I'm prepared for those stirrups. ; )

I am seriously just mentally done being pregnant. I know I'm supposed to "embrace" this time - but I can't. If I didn't have sciatica - I could probably last another 2 weeks, but with this stupid pain there is no way! I really really really hope relief will be instant like they keep saying.

And that was my complainer post, folks. Hopefully we can now return to our regularly scheduled programming .... well soon at least.

Baby Showers!

This past week was baby shower central around here! I had a baby shower at work on Wednesday, then a shower here at home on Saturday (hosted by Will's mom & sister). Both were so much fun, and both Will and I are so grateful for everyone's generosity! This little boy is set, and he has SO MANY very cute, adorable clothes that we can't wait for him to wear!

This weekend was awesome for cake as well! We had cake last Sunday at my parent's house, a huge cake at work on Wednesday, cake Saturday here - and we are still eating leftover cake! Its pretty rad.

Cake from party last Sunday @ my parents:

These photos are from yesterday's shower:

Abby checking out the after-math from yesterday

She literally had to sniff everything!

For Wednesday shower at work, it was combined with another girl who is due in less than 2 weeks. We were both STUNNED by everyone's generosity. We are both having boys, and we got the cutest stuff! People were very generous to us. This is my cart of stuff that I had to haul to my car:

Again, once all the stuff from work was home - Abby had to go through it.

I feel so grateful to everyone who participated in my showers this week! We had lots of fun, and I'm probably good for cake for a while. :)

For an update - I had another specialist appointment on Friday (I go weekly to my OB and every 3 weeks to the specialist) - and this little guy is BIG! He is already measuring at 5 lbs 12 oz! This was only at 33.5 weeks! We talked about inductions, etc - but both doctors agree that we will not be inducing for size alone ... so unless I have to be induced due to low amniotic fluid as well (which is what they are expecting will happen with my mature placenta) I am going to have a LARGE baby! I hate all this uncertainty regarding when this baby will actually come - but I'm happy and relieved to know the doctors are watching him closely and everything is still perfect so far. The specialist thinks I'll make it to "term", meaning 37 weeks - but that is only 3 weeks away! Ah! Now we just wait and see.

Today after church @ 34 weeks pregnant:

Our last trip before little one arrives....

Last weekend we got to go to Washington for our last trip before this baby arrives. It was lots of fun (and relaxing) but I will add that I will NOT be traveling that late in pregnancy ever again. The plane ride SUCKED bad ... like real bad. My back pain is already an issue - and sitting in an uncomfortable plane seat did not help. The ride back was definitely better than the ride there, since we left Thursday night and I had already been sitting at my desk all day before the trip - that didn't exactly help. On the ride back, I hadn't been sitting all day already so it was a tad easier, but still not wonderful.

It rained pretty much all weekend - which was nice and expected. Saturday my mom, Will and I headed to the tulip farm in Woodburn, Oregon. It was the last weekend of the festival - but the colors were still pretty vibrant. We were able to see which tulips actually last and which ones don't. Surprisingly, it was still quite colorful. And I was worried considering I didn't have a coat with a hood, and I had just straightened my hair that morning! It rained hard the entire drive there - but wasn't raining at all once we got there and it wasn't muddy at all luckily! (Thank goodness for my hair).

The tulip festival was the only time all weekend I took any photos - and they were all iPhone photos. Friday night we got to go with my parents and 2 brothers/sister-in-laws and my aunt and uncle to dinner at the Skamania Lodge. It was seriously delish! They have a seafood buffet every Friday night - and we ate and ate. It was awesome.

The entire weekend pretty much consisted of sleep and food - which was amazing! Burgerville, Montage, Who Song & Larry's, Skamania Lodge, Carol's Corner, etc. Yum yum! Just what a preggo lady needs! :)

Sunday - Mother's Day - we went to church with my parents, then my mom hosted an extended family dinner at their house that night. It was nice to be able to see a good chunk of my extended family....again, with more delicious food.

We had a great trip and were grateful for my parents letting us come visit. Next time we see them they'll be coming here to see the little guy!

Happy Birthday Will!!

This is almost two weeks late - but on May 2nd, we celebrated Will's 26th birthday! The Friday before Will's parents treated us to dinner at Red Lobster (the usual pick by Will for his birthday) then on the actual Monday after work - he got to pick wherever he wanted for me to take him out ..... and he chose Red Robin. We usually go to Red Robin at least monthly, so this was quite a surprise that he chose RR for his special day. At least it was cheap! : )

We both had to work on Will's birthday - so it was a pretty low-key day in general. We went to work, then after went to dinner - then we came home to homemade cake shared with his mom and sister. I love Will - he is so easy to please. I asked him where he wanted his cake from, and he just wanted a simple homemade cake, topped with cherries (same as last year).

We were supposed to go see Fast Five after having cake - but we were too tired ... so the next day we went to see Fast Five to further celebrate his birthday. Good movie!

I kept reminding the lucky birthday boy to enjoy his day, because this will be his last childless birthday. Birthdays will probably be a bit different from here on out.

I was so happy to share in my hubby's special day. I love you, Will!

Another Baby Post

Honestly, its been a rough couple days. A lot has happened regarding doctors and placentas and baby size - and it all is kinda exhausting. Not to mention I'm cranky, feeling super huge, super emotional and overall just uncomfortable. So instead of telling you the whole long story of being scared by doctors yesterday, then being reassured by more today - I'll just tell you that everything is fine now. The baby isn't really at risk of coming early like we thought, and he's good and healthy and big (almost 4 lbs!). But really, what's more important than photos? So for my sake (cause I'm freakin' exhausted) here's the photos:

Our little guy has grown immensely since we last saw him at 19 weeks!

His facial features are quite prominent now!

His cute little profile

And you can see in this photo why I am so uncomfortable.

I am 29 weeks and 2 days to be exact.

Must last 10-11 more weeks so my parents can make it here!

And this is just a cute photo from a while ago that my hubby emailed me tonight to make me feel better. At least that's what I think he was doing. :)

In other news, I have been working on the yard quite a bit! We also had a tree company come and trim back some trees and chop down an entire large pine tree this past Monday. It was awesome! We actually have a yard now - well, at least more of a yard. I've also been busy digging up and stacking bricks. Yes, bricks. I have pictures of all this ... but I must put them all together, since some are phone photos and some are normal photos and some are my photos and some are Will's - so putting all of them together is going to take some energy, which frankly, I don't have tonight. So that will be my next post. Yard stuff! Yay!

I'm tired. Sleepy time now. Gratefully, its currently raining - which makes sleep even more enjoyable! :)

Nursery Update

So I have been itching to get the baby's room finished - and we are almost there! Well, at least with a lot of it. We have had the crib set up for quite some time now, and it just seemed so lonely without other stuff in there. Will wouldn't let me paint due to "toxins" even though I think it would've been totally fine - since it was low VOC paint and didn't even smell like paint! But either way, we recruited his mom and sister to help us paint last weekend and it was DONE in an hour and a half.

Here are some pictures of the process:

This is the "before" picture with the paint sample on the wall.

Will and Shannon painting the green wall:

Everyone working on the chocolate wall:

Me observing. My husband is ridiculous and wouldn't let me in the room without a painter's mask on. So I got to sit and watch the whole time.

Finished product - the green isn't very strong in this photo, but trust me - it looks good!

We also got a new dresser for the little guy. The nursery theme is "Teddy Bears" with chocolate and sage green accents. Somewhat gender neutral - but we didn't plan it that way.

My mom got us this awesome teddy bear crib bedding set from our amazon.com registry. I LOVE it!! She also got the teddy bear that's on top of the dresser, too. : )

I am so excited for this summer! I can't wait for the little guy to get here. He has been moving a lot more this past week. I haven't been able to feel him a whole lot as of yet since I have what they call an anterior placenta, so its been a padding between my belly and the baby, hiding and any movement I would have felt - but just this past week I felt him shift and I can actually feel his kicks now! Its pretty awesome - and quite a relief actually. I think as he gets bigger I'll be able to feel him more. Its nice because Will can actually feel his kicks now too - which he hasn't been able to before.

I think I'm starting to "nest", which Will loves because I actually accomplish things on my days off. I think he's actually getting annoyed with it too though because I'm constantly wanting to tackle projects - which he isn't always up for. In particular, I'm kinda obsessed with cleaning up our yard now that the weather is warming up. I'm constantly out there "thinking" about what I can do. We cleaned up the entire flower bed in front of our front porch this past weekend (with the help of my nephews) and that was a relief. It will be nice to plant some flowers there, instead of having ugly red bark. I honestly think we may have bit off more than we can chew in regards to this yard - but its ours now, and its up to us to clean it up. Its going to be a few years until its where I want it, but it will be worth it when we have a toddler and we can play outside in our nice yard. For now though we have to convince our neighbors behind us to pay for the tree trimming that is crowding our yard - once that is taking care of it will feel so much better. Oh man, my "to-do" list is ever getting longer!

Yesterday, while Will was at work, I literally cleaned the house from 9am until he got home at 4:30pm with no breaks. I was exhausted but it felt good to tackle so many projects.

I have a feeling this is going to last a while longer, and I don't mind being so productive - since anyone who knows me knows that my biggest problem is not being productive on my days off and constantly feeling "bored" - so I'm really enjoying this! : )

100th Post

Ahem.... since 2008. Only 100 blog posts? Yeah, apparently I don't blog very much. The new goal that I am setting for myself is 100 additional posts in the next year. I figure life is changing dramatically for us in the coming months - and maybe, just maybe, I'll have more to post about! Even if not, I'm sure I can just post pictures of the baby and surely I'll end up with 100 posts in the next year! :)

Today, while Will had to work, I went with Will's family to the Wildlife Sanctuary up North by Fort Morgan (aka, middle of nowhere). It was pretty awesome! Bears, lions, tigers, wolves and other wild animals could be seen. It was such a gorgeous day to boot. Apparently this is the largest real wildlife sanctuary in the United States. They just flew in 25 circus lions from Bolivia to live at this sanctuary. We couldn't see them, since they were being re-habitualized in this big building on-site - but its pretty neat that they are able to save animals in need.

Here are a couple videos from the day.

We were standing on this platform above the animals, so there were lots of shadows.

Also, it happened to be feeding day. They get fed 3 times a week - since that is about how often they would eat in the wild. So the animals were very very anxious since they knew it was feeding day.

And here is our very own "wild" animal:

In other news: I fried my blackberry on accident on Thursday - which totally sucked since my upgrade with Verizon isn't until July which is when I was planning to get an iPhone. Luckily my mom donated her available upgrade so I was able to get my new phone early! I am so so excited! I went into Verizon Friday after work thinking I'd be leaving without a phone, but they actually worked with me and were able to get my upgrade transferred by just calling my dad for approval (since my parents live out-of-state I thought it was going to be a very lengthy and complicated process to take my mom's upgrade). I wasn't even planning on leaving with a phone - but I was so relieved and happy when I did! Woohoo for the iPhone!

Having an iPhone is also probably going to help me in my goal to do 100 more blog posts in the next year. Who knows - maybe I'll do even more than that! :)