Best Surprise Shower Ever!!!

Okay, so I've been meaning to post about this and just haven't had the time to devote to it. You'll notice that the last few posts are very poorly written (what? You didn't? You mean I write all my posts like that? Hmmm) and contain very few pictures (this part is DEFINITELY true). But I have to take the time to tell you all about my A-MAZE-ING surprise baby shower that some friends of mine threw for me!!! It was INCREDIBLE! Just how incredible was it, you ask? Well, let's just say it was "SUPER" incredible. Ha ha, you'll understand my hilarity in a moment. ;) So here's the story:

A few weeks ago my friend, Jenny, sends me a text that says "I want to go to lunch with you! No Babies!" This text came on a day when I was completely frazzled, we had just finished tiling the majority of the Master Bathroom, Sophia had been her little devilish angelic self all day, and I had mounds and mounds of dishes, laundry, and randomness covering my house, so of course I jumped at the opportunity! I told Jon that because I helped with the tiling when I really probably shouldn't have (as it left me unable to walk by the end of each day) that he owed me 1 afternoon of no kids to enjoy lunch with my friend. After telling me all about his study schedule and how much stuff he has to do for school all the time, he finally says yes (not that I gave him much of an option). So the date was set, and I was SO excited to get away from everything for an hour or two (shoot, I was even thinking of sabotaging the whole thing and eating a bite an hour to make it last longer!) The night before the lunch date, Jenny texts me and says when she'll pick me up and that she'll be taking me to a hole-in-the-wall Mexican restaurant with some amazing bean dip. Mmmm....bean dip... Oh, and that another friend might be coming as well, but that she hadn't said for sure. At this point I'm so excited I'm thinking I'll go all out and even straighten my hair for it! But then I got tired...so I settled for going to bed "early" instead.

The next morning I hurry and get Sophie fed and dressed, get myself showered and dressed, take my time putting on my makeup (hey, this is the most excitement I've had in a long time!) and give Jon his instructions for watching Sophie while he rolls his eyes at me and teases me about getting so excited over lunch. When Jenny comes we hop in the truck and go to our friend Emily's house to drag her away from her children and her computer and force her to come relax with us. So we get to the front door and Jenny walks right in (they have that relationship, so I don't think anything of it) and I see a bunch of red and blue and yellow streamers and balloons and think "Oh, maybe it's Cohen's birthday?" (Emily's son). Of course then I see all the people there yelling "SURPRISE!!!" at me, and it still takes me a minute to get it! I'm looking around thinking "Oh crap, I just crashed a surprise party!" when I finally realize it's for me and make the dumb mistake of even asking "For me?" out loud because I was simply confused.

After they all laughed at me for a minutes (which I would have done as well!), we all go in to THE FEAST!

Holy crap!!! Have you ever seen this type of a spread at a BABY SHOWER before???? It was incredible! (Especially since I was expecting to go out to lunch, so I was STARVING!) :) And then I saw the part that just about put me over the edge (I was already on the verge of a pregnancy meltdown of tears and uncontrollable sobs because I was so happy, and this almost did it!)

Um....CUTEST STINKING THINGS EVER????????? I seriously almost died when I saw these! Captain America, Superman, Batman, Spiderman, and Wolverine onsies!!! And then Jenny showed me all of the other things I had missed during my period of shock. If you'll notice 2 pictures up there is a framed picture? Well here's a bigger version of it:

A Batman/Bruce Wayne picture!!! LOVE! And then there was...

The Superhero alphabet! There was also a bib that they had made that said "These Fools Put My Cape On Backwards!" Ha ha, they know me too well. :)

So we ate some food, played some games (we got to shoot the Joker in the face with a Nerf Gun!)

(Why yes, I do realize just how sexy I look in this picture! LOL!) We opened some presents (LOTS more superhero stuff!!!)

And of course, a lot of me making weird faces. (Have I mentioned how much I miss having a chin? At least with a chin I could pull off the weird faces! LOL!)

And what's this? What could Mindy possibly be so shocked/embarrassed by?

Oh it must be good - she's pretty embarrassed!

It was quite possibly the funniest part of the whole day! They had been writing down things that I said while opening presents that supposedly were "Things I said on the night my baby was conceived". I. Almost. DIED! LOL! So without further ado, here is the list:

 Yeah...you can see why I looked so funny in those last few pictures! Ha ha!

Basically, I had the best shower I could have possibly imagined thanks to the wonderful friends I've been lucky to have since moving down here to AZ. They had been planning this for 2 months, and were up until 2AM the night before just decorating! I am one lucky girl to have friends like this, that's for sure! Thanks again Emily and Jenny and everyone who came to surprise me! You're the best!

 Now we just have to wait for the Ninja to make his arrival so I can play with all of his fun new things!!! :)

10 Weeks of Fun Times Ahead!

Ah pregnancy, how do I love thee? Well, not as much as some people do, but I guess I shouldn't really complain because I really don't have a lot of issues that come with my pregnancies. However, as I've mentioned before, this one has been monumentally more uncomfortable and more painful than the last one, so I'll admit to some complaining. 

I hit 30 weeks yesterday, and to celebrate I decided to take a quick trip into Labor and Delivery at the hospital here to get checked out after having about 2 days of some pretty hard contractions, followed by a completely sleepless night where at one point I tried to get up to go to the bathroom and was completely bent over in pain. So after spending the morning soaking in the tub, drinking a TON of water and laying on my left side, I finally dropped Sophie off at a friends house and went in. Now, I had never set foot in the hospital before, even though it's in the same parking lot as my OB. So after painfully waddling around and asking directions, I made it to the labor and delivery area, filled out my paperwork, and got all settled in with my monitors. Ninja didn't like the monitors - he kicked and wiggled, and we had to adjust the fetal heart monitor about once every 20-30 minutes because he would either kick it out of the way or would flip so he wasn't in range anymore. They gave me lots and lots of water and an apple juice to sip one and told me to just hang out while the monitors did their thing. I watched some trashy court TV (unenthusiastic "yay.") and breathed through all of the contractions. Eventually they checked me to make sure that I wasn't dilating or thinning, which I wasn't (thank goodness!) and did a test to see my likelihood of having a premature baby. Pretty cool test in my book - they say it's 99% effective of predicting premature births up to 2 weeks out. Mine came back negative so we continued on with water and monitoring. 

After a while of watching spikes and plateau's on the monitors, they decided that dehydration wasn't the culprit here, so I got a nice little shot (seriously, the vial that the medicine came in was smaller than my thumbnail!) of Terbutaline. And for such a small amount of medicine, it sure has a kick to it! It burned like crazy going into my arm, and then made me so jittery that I tried to send a text (which I would have to type and then put on the side table as far away as I could reach because it was the only spot where I got 1 bar of signal - stupid phone) and failed miserably. Ninja got all hyper too and started flipping and kicking even more! Well this didn't help, so after some time had passed and a quick trip to the bathroom, they gave me another shot of it in my other arm. Now I was super DUPER jittery! Then they ordered the ultrasound (since Ninja kept swimming away from the monitor they wanted to check him out) and while his measurements came back completely fine and dandy (they also saw that he is still head down, which is good), they found out that I have a lot of excess fluid in my uterus. They looked at my chart and asked me 3 different times if I had gestational diabetes, to which I said no. Finally they explained that with GD it's normal to see this amount of fluid in the uterus, but without it, it's not. I asked what the effects of this were and was told (surprise surprise) that it can cause preterm contractions. Ha! The culprit was finally revealed!

You see, the extra fluid in there causes my uterus to stretch farther (makes sense). However, because the uterus is stretching so much, it has decided that it doesn't WANT to keep stretching, and so it fights back by trying to contract down a bit. This, of course, causes painful contractions and massive uncomfortable-ness for me. What does it do for the Ninja? Well, for now it gives him a LOT more space, which he loves. Because there's so much more room and he's not all confined and what-not, he's able to flip and spin and roundhouse kick to his little heart's desire all day long. He's happy as can be right now! However upon doing some reading after I got home, the downside to all of this extra freedom could come back as a negative later when it's time to deliver. For example, he may decide to flip or go sideways or otherwise not be in the right position when it's time to birth him, because he has the room to do it. Or when my water eventually breaks, the umbilical cord can be sort of "sucked" out first, meaning that he has a higher chance at being strangulated or otherwise impaired during the birthing process because of that being in the way. Both of these would lead to an emergency C-section. I'm not too worried - he's been in the birthing position for 3 weeks now, and they say that after 34 weeks the fluid will start to go down in volume a bit (hopefully!) so I think we'll be alright. 

So what now? Well, now I get to go on with life as normal. Regular routine and exercise, no bed rest or anything like that (Yay!) and just keep an eye on things. Oh, and also pray that my stomach doesn't just rip in half from it's insane size...because that would be bad. I'm still hoping that this little guy comes a little early, but when I say early I mean 37 weeks, not before then. In the meantime, you can watch my enormity grow and cross your fingers that we don't have to visit L&D until then! :)

And for your amusement - my giant 29 week, excessively fluid-filled belly picture. (I haven't taken one for 30 weeks yet, so this will do) :)

Biopsy Updates

I just realized that I never really updated on this nasty topic, so I will do so now! :) If anyone was paying attention, in January I had to go to the dermatologist and get checked for weird moles and such and they took 3 biopsies - 2 from my shoulder and one on my leg. Well when the results came back, the one on the leg was normal and the 2 on my shoulder showed some pre-cancer cells (this is the scary word they use - they also call them atypical cells which is less scary, but for some reason people don't know what I'm talking about when I use that word, so yeah...they are the same thing) which are basically just cells that are a little "off" and could potentially turn cancerous if left alone. Does not mean that they WILL turn, just that they could.

Anyway, as a result I had to go back in at the end of February to get more skin chopped out of my shoulder to clean out those atypical cells. When this happens they have 2 options for cutting the things out. The first option is just to cut, which is what happened with the first spot they found on my 2 years ago. They just cut out a shape and try to go deep, long and wide enough to get them all. In my case, my first case of atypical cells ended up with a 3 inch football shaped incision - wasn't pretty or pleasant. They generally only do this if there are a lot of cells in that area. when there are less cells, or the cells are concentrated and not widespread, then they do what they call a punch. You know, like a hole punch...in your skin. Well this is what they had to do to my shoulder was two punches that were then sewn shut, leaving me with two 3/4 inch stitched up lines.

They hurt like a bugger for just over a week (because they were on my shoulder blade so anytime I used my left arm or did something that stretched the skin, it would pull at the stitches) but healed up quite nicely by the time my 2 weeks was up and I was able to get my stitches out. That is, until I had to change the bandages at home. Apparently, I may be allergic to the Band-Aid's with the antibiotic crap on them. I didn't even want to use those ones, but the other ones I had were too small so I had to, and after a day of wearing those my shoulder was itching like crazy! So I took off the Band-Aid and saw that I had a HUGE red rash around both incisions! Yeah, good times just keep rolling with these devil things! Now it's been 5 days and the rash is still there and still itching like crazy, so I have to go in AGAIN to have my shoulder looked at. I know that this is far from the worst thing in the world, but it doesn't make it less annoying.

Anyway, so that is my fun story - hopefully the butcher will have something to make my shoulder look and feel all the way better so I can just deal with the regular scars. And again - WEAR SUNSCREEN PEOPLE!!!

The Joys

Ah the joys of motherhood, wife-hood, pregnancy-hood, grown-up-hood. Honestly I do like it all, but man being an adult and a wife and a mother all while being pregnant it hard! I keep thinking "Remember when you were a child (or even a teenager) and Mom would just take care of everything if you weren't feeling good?" But now - I'm the mom. Definitely makes you appreciate your mother more when you think about it. Anyway, just a quick update on things:

Tomorrow I am 30 weeks pregnant (yay!) and so far this pregnancy has been sore, tiring, sore, and going by much faster than Sophie's did (okay, just seems that way I guess) which I'm okay with. I just can't get over how much more uncomfortable it is this time around though! Aches and pains in every direction! Sure, with Sophie I turned into a memory-foam marshmallow, (and I'm SOO glad I haven't this time!) but I didn't have the aches and pains like I do this time around. People tell me it's from chasing Sophia around, but I'm thinking that it's just my body's way of saying that it's in control of me. But even through the aches, the Ninja is growing up good and strong (as witnessed by the aches in my ribs). His favorite place to kick lately is the belly button, which is odd to feel, but fun to watch. Also, when we turn on music on the iPod touch and put it on my belly, he'll basically stop kicking and just relax, and as soon as we take the music off of my belly he starts freaking out. It's a fun game that Daddy likes to play. :) The other (annoying) thing that's been happening is a LOT of Braxton Hicks and some insane insomnia. For example, last night. Jon fell asleep around 11:30, I followed suit around 12, and then woke up at 1:30. from 1:30-3AM I laid in bed with my eyes closed, except to peek at the clock every now and then. Finally shortly after 3 I fell asleep, only to wake up at 4, at which time I laid in bed with my eyes closed until 6:30 when I finally decided I was hungry enough to get dressed and go downstairs. It's now 7:15, and I'm exhausted, but if I go to sleep then I may never wake up. Oh the joys...

As for Sophia - oh goodness where to start! She is getting bigger, sassier, smarter, cuter, funnier, and just all around more lovable every day! We've really had to start being careful what we say around her because she's finally decided to start talking in sentences. For example, the other day we were having a discussion on what to wear, and I was suggesting a cute shirt and pant combo, while she of course (being the princess that she is) wanted to wear her dress. So after trying to convince her to wear the clothes I picked out for her, she threw herself into her closet and started pulling on the dress she wanted while crying and stomping her feet. I laughed at her and said "Fine, wear the stupid dress." Yeah...it's been 3 weeks and that dress is still the "stupid dress" to her. Whoops! She is also much better at climbing and jumping - which of course is always fun for Mommy and Daddy. She loves to give hugs and kisses, her sleep schedule is ridiculous, we're trying our hand at potty training again, she loves her friends and nursery (note: anyone remotely her age is her "friend"), she still only likes to eat sugar and tortillas it seems like, and she LOVES to sing. Seriously, this kid will sing about everything! She sings about naps, Mommy, Daddy, Colby (Jon's cousin who lives with us), her friends Jess and Lilly, her kitty (pillow-pet), princesses, Sophie, ABC's, monkeys - you name it and she'll sing it! Last night she was sitting on her potty for 30 minutes just happily singing away the whole time! She makes us laugh all the time - even when she's mad. And she's starting to get too smart for our tricks - like when we point at the ceiling and say "What's that?" and tickle her neck as soon as she looks up. Now she blocks us. Smarty pants. :)

And then there's Jon. His study schedule this quarter sucks! I think I may have complained about this already, but I'm doing it again. He has his patient interviews on Thursdays, where he has to do a role-play in front of a camera of him counseling a patient on a new medication (this usually includes getting a full patient history as well), then on Friday mornings he has tests (which he usually has plenty of time to study for this one, thankfully!) and after that he has a test on Monday, giving him only 2 days to study for it. As thus far, the Monday tests have seemed to be harder. Up to this point I have loved everything about Midwestern University - and honestly they still do so much for their students to help them succeed - I just don't like this test schedule! However, the good news is that after this quarter he will be half way done with the academic portion of school! It's still so insane to think about - in most PharmD programs they have 4 years of school, or 8 total semesters, and then a full year of rotations, and here they condense it all into 8 quarters and go year round so they're done with the school portion in 2 years instead, but then they still get the full year of rotations. We love it! But it's definitely hard - most of us Midwestern Wives get to play "Single-Mother" for these years, which is not as fun. I'm lucky though in that Jon prefers to study at home rather than at school, so I get to see him every day.

Anyway, that's really all for now I think. I'm too tired to upload some pictures - maybe I will later. But for now, this is us. :)

26 Week Ultrasound!

I absolutely love that my OB does a 4D ultrasound as part of the regular prenatal care! I never had one of these with Sophia, and I wasn't going to get one this the Ninja, but I lucked out and got one for free anyway! (Well, insurance had to pay for it, but still...) It was so fun seeing his pudgy little face on the screen! He was sleeping so nice and sound so we got some cute shots of his face, until he got tired of getting poked around and covered his face with his arms. It would have been fun to see him making facial expressions and stuff, but I'm glad we got a good shot either way! :) Oh, and after having a dream that our Ninja was actually a Ninjette, I asked the technician to double check that (which she was doing already) and he is most DEFINITELY a boy. Let's just say that Jon is super proud of him already. ;)

Anyway, because he was sleeping all of the pictures look basically the same, so here is his sweet little face for you to see!

Isn't he the BEST???? And his nose looks just like Sophie's - which is good because she has quite the adorable little nose herself. Not sure where she got it from...either way. And as far as pregnancy symptoms go, I am super sore already (WAY more than I ever was with Sophie!), the placenta isn't in place to protect my ribs this time around (didn't realize how much that helped with Sophie until now!), I have very little swelling thus far (yay!), and the only real downside is that I may have SPD (Symphysis Pubis Dysfunction) which is painful and annoying, but so far manageable as long as I don't make any movements that require me to put more weight on one leg than the other. Fun. Times. Oh, and I hear back on my glucose test in a few days, which means I have to make my chocolate cake tomorrow and eat as much as I can before I'm told that I can't...just in case. ;) Okay okay, I'm really not worried, but I'm still making a cake!


Okay, that's all for now bloggersphere. Good night!