oh, i still have a blog.

i haven't had a lot to blog about really. i had some recipes i was going to blog, but i didn't like the photos i had to go with them. this is most likely because i've been really grumpy lately. i blame the progesterone. (which is also the reason i can't sleep...)

sam is doing well. his little heart checked out ok with the doctors in st. louis. we watched him hiccup. did i write about this already in a blog? it's been over two weeks, and most days i can't even remember what happened the day before. (progesterone again.)

sam is a kicker. an acrobat. a spaz like my little brother was - if this womb movement is any indication of how he will be in the outside world, that is. right now i can see my stomach wiggling all over, and i guess he is mad because i called him a spaz, because i think he is digging his elbows in. thankfully he isn't big enough yet to hurt me very often. every once in a while he will smash something that doesn't want to be smashed and it will hurt, but most of the time it just feels like a two pound baby is wiggling like crazy inside of me: weird, awesome, and a little bit like i'm going over a hill too fast and my stomach drops.

he is getting quite big though. he can stretch all across my stomach and kick/hit/elbow/roll/punch/flip in two places at once. at night he likes to kick and punch at the same time so i can feel him on both sides of my belly.

new aches and pains have also settled in. my hips and back frequently hurt, and apparently i'm having some contractions sporadically. if i walk too fast, everything inside me feels smashed, sam feels like he weighs about 40 pounds, and i get dizzy and see sparkles. so the doctor said for me to keep track of them and make sure they don't happen too often, because that wouldn't be good. otherwise i just have to do a better job of taking it easy when i go to work (which seems to be the only place i have them). i also had my first charlie horse last night, and that wasn't fun.

i finally chose a baby book for sam and ordered it ($10 off any baby purchase coupon in this month's parenting magazine!) and it is adorable. it made me cry, of course. (i cry in the baby clothes sections of stores. i think i cried when we registered for a changing pad. i just never thought it would be me, you know?)

justin is currently applying the second coat of paint to sam's room. it is light green, and i think we are going to go with dark brown accents. [i love the color, but unfortunately i cannot recommend olympic paint. the coverage is terrible. buy kilz. (olympic isn't even VOC free - by the time you add the COLOR to the paint base, the VOCs are about the same. very nice "safe" advertising, olympic!) so if we run out of this can of paint, i'm going to get the same color from walmart in kilz.]

i am still looking for ways to decorate his nursery. i have some jungle things and his name to put up, but i'm ready to get everything in there and set up so we can see what we need to add to make it super awesome.

so that's that. 25 weeks tomorrow. exhausted as ever, so i'm going to lay down and rest.

pray for wyatt

i love my baby boy. i have never felt his soft baby skin. i have never kissed his face. i have never touched his fuzzy baby hair. i have never felt his fingers curl around mine. but i love my baby boy in a way i haven't loved before. i want to care for him and protect him.

i say these things to tell you this story:

this is wyatt. he is 16 months old.


on march 4, wyatt had a seizure. he had no history of health problems, no warning signs - it was totally unexpected. i can only imagine the fear that gripped his mom and dad as they waited to find out why. they stayed by his side as he laid in the hospital bed, tubes and needles and oxygen attached to his little body. after several hours, they were told that wyatt had had a febrile seizure, induced by a fever.

they were then sent to st. louis childrens hospital for further testing and monitoring. febrile seizures can happen with no serious cause and can be so minor that they cause no long term damage, and it looked like that was what had happened to wyatt.

but then they were approached by three doctors who told them that wyatt had no neutrophils. neutrophils make up more than half of the human immune system, and a healthy person has more than 1500 of them. they had to stay in the hospital in total isolation for wyatt's safety.

the low neutrophils and low white count, which he also had, could be indicative of several things, ranging in severity from a viral infection to leukemia. they are waiting for more information when they meet with the doctors again on friday, and in the meantime, wyatt has to stay isolated at home, and when he goes out to go to the doctor, he has to wear gloves, a coat, and a mask. wyatt's neutrophils have yet to come up. at their lowest they were 84, and at their highest they were 200.

wyatt's mom said that they feel afraid and helpless. i know they are hurting and their lives have been completely turned upside down. i know they want to make everything better, and they can't. i know they want to protect him from this. i know they love their baby boy so very much.

God is above the impossible. five months ago i desperately pleaded with you to pray, pray for us - pray for the baby that probably would NOT be to be, pray for the implantation that likely would NOT happen to happen, and pray for the baby to live and thrive and be healthy. against all odds, i am five months pregnant. God worked a miracle. God gave us a baby. God was above the statistics, God was above - and still is above - the impossible.

so now i plead with you to lift up wyatt and his family in prayer now and to continue to do so. pray that little wyatt is healed by the Almighty, above-the-impossible, loving God who created him. pray that good news comes friday as they go to st. louis again to talk to the hematologist/oncologist. pray for the doctors to have wisdom as they analyze wyatt's test results and to help him in the best way they can. pray that there is no cancer in wyatt's body, and that if there is, that God would take it away as only He can.

pray for wyatt, his twin sister, paisley, his dad, will, and his mom, rachel, as they go through this trial. pray that they are given peace and that they have answers soon. pray that wyatt is healed.

"spring" break monday

justin and i had to go to st. louis today to get sam's fetal echo done. everything went well and his little heart looks just fine. he was very cooperative and held still and was in a perfect position for her to get all of the ultrasound pictures she needed.

the weather was interesting, though. in about nashville, it started to snow. between nashville and fairview, we saw six wrecks...one was possibly deadly. :( it was cold, soggy, slightly slick, and just nasty.



i really couldn't believe it was march at some points.



we went to the childrens hospital to get the ultrasound done. what a sad place - sad that it has to exist. my heart broke for the families that spend months there hoping for cures.

after trudging through lots of slush, being 40 minutes late for our appointment from weather and sad wrecks, seeing too many flags at half mast on the way, and walking through the halls of the hospital, we were very happy to have our good news that sam is healthy and doing fine. we headed back downtown for a lunch date.



we went to a restaurant on locust called rooster. i ordered a three cheese crepe and justin had a breakfast burrito crepe. both were delicious.



i thought the place was rather cute, and i would go again.

sam's quilt, part 2

i finished sam's quilt probably the day after i posted the first blog, but it seems like we have been endlessly busy since then. we are still, but justin is staining our new bedroom door, so i have some time to finish this.

after i did all of the quilty things in part 1, i trimmed the edges of the quilt. i cut off the excess batting and evened out the fabric.



i ironed the folds (note: NOT the creases, but the folds from being in the packaging) of the bias tape, then i stitched together my two pieces of bias tape by overlapping the ends, stitching, and trimming the excess. this made the tape into one long piece instead of two.

i began to pin the tape onto the back side of the quilt.



then i stitched the tape - just the one side - onto the back of the quilt.



after that was all done, i pinned the other side to the front of the quilt and stitched it. this process was harder than i thought and i should have taken more time and care with it, because it is easy to mess up. thankfully it ended up being fine.



so there is the quilt. i'm pretty happy with it.

march 8 and 9, 2008

three years ago in hawaii blogs: the final two.

march 8

hawaii is the freakin most beautiful place ever. i just watched the sun rise. by myself, of course, my husband is still passed out in bed because it's only 7am here. but it feels like 11 to me. the flights weren't bad - i read most of two books and watched the in-flight movie, and made small talk with old men, and i was here. tadaaa. minus those three hours sitting in lax bored to death, watching people run through the hall to catch a plane. hahaha. i giggled.
there are lots of birds awake, because i hear them all singing. it's so pretty. i wish i could describe the perfection of the temperature, and the way the sunlight hits the mountains, but i can't. pictures can't capture it, words can't capture it, you just seriously have to come.
kristy tagged me, so i have to write ten things...ok here goes.
1. i hate flying. the landing part is worst, it makes me sick and dizzy.
2. i burp a lot. it's the truth. don't get around me when i have any kind of cola unless you don't mind some belches.
3. i take an inappropriate amount of pictures. i might shoot the same thing 10 times just to get the right exposure, when i really needed to just do about 3.
4. i grind my teeth at night.
5. i cry easily.
6. i currently have an oat stuck in my throat, and it's annoying.
7. it bothers me that justin doesn't want to go hunting. i know it's so petty and hick of me, but it bothers me nonetheless.
8. i enjoy fishing, not just for catching fish, but for relaxing in the quiet. i also like to clean fish. not wash them, but fillet them.
9. i am a very fast reader.
10. i'm very messy. seth tells me that i'm so messy, justin will get tired of picking up after me. little does he know, we are both messy, so just don't come over to the apartment after may. hahaha.

march 9

630am, justin is still sleeping. we are going to church this morning, early service. i'm not sure whether we are going to hike or snorkel/swim today.
yesterday, we went down to hanauma bay and snorkeled. it's kind of tough to navigate in places, not because the water's too vast and deep, but because the coral is everywhere. you have to walk across it in some places. of course, this is after the eight minute video you have to watch that tells you not to touch the coral. it also tells you not to feed the fish, with a song in the background singing, "don't feed me, there's enough in the bayyyyy!" weird. i was cracking up.
so we rented fins, masks, and snorkels, slathered on sunscreen, and got in the water. we walked on the rocky bottom for about five minutes before we decided to put our fins on, which makes the going slower, but less painful. of course, proper fin locomotion is walking backwards, but i can't walk backwards on coral. i doubt anyone can. so we were stomping through the rocks, climbing over coral, and finally got our masks on and swam. snorkeled.
i bought a TEN dollar underwater camera (to go with the TEN dollar sunscreen) at safeway, so i was excited to take pictures of the fish. we didn't get far before we had to climb some coral again, and this guy by us said, "hey look at that eel," and there it was, like five feet from me, longer than my arm, looking slithery and awesome. it had some sharp teeth, or maybe i imagined it. justin was more scared of it than me at first, but i let myself think about it and i wasn't much of a fan either. i'm not even sure if an eel would do anything to a person.
we saw a GIANT red fish, i swear it was as big as my torso. it was enormous. little blue things, parrot fish looking things, and a scary camouflaged spiky fish just sitting on the bottom, waiting for something to eat. there were black fish with white stripes and white fish with black stripes. there were yellow fish, yellow and blue fish, and a big long white fish with shiny eyes. one fat little white fish followed me, and i'm not a fan of fish just hanging out by my legs, so i kicked at it with my fin. i'm not sure when it left, but i didn't like it being in my space. haha.
we finally decided to go back up, after i decided i didn't want to get bitten by a reef shark, or whatever else might have been out there farther, and after we were tired. i'm not a chicken. anyway, we went back up, checked our equipment in, and walked to the car. the car belongs to one of justin's friends, which is great because we don't have to rent a car. sometimes.
the key has a button on it. we had pushed the button when we left the car, messing with the key, but not knowing what it did. later someone would tell us it was a panic button, which i'm not sure i believe, but you never know. when we got back, the driver's side door wouldn't unlock, which happens sometimes apparently. my side would though. so i got in and unlocked the door, justin put the key in the ignition, turned it, and HONK HONK HONK HONK HONK HONK HONK HONK HONK HONK HONK HONK...i think you get the picture.
alarm. finally it went off. by then, justin was on the phone with the owner of the car, who said to try again. i said, "no, that's what made it start in the first-" HONK HONK HONK HONK HONK HONK HONK HONK..."UGH!" was my reply to the alarm. i messed with the so-called panic button, and happened to push it right at the same time the alarm stopped going, which was purely coincidence. justin decided it would be good to try the key again since "we had figured out how to turn it off" ahem. "i don't think it worked, i just think it was time for it to-" HONK HONK HONK HONK HONK HONK HONK. imagine my mood.
i told him if he did it again i would murder him right there in the parking lot. it finally went off, and i asked someone for jumper cables, but of course every car in the lot was a rental and nobody had any. finally the previous owner of the car called us, and told us to lock it, unlock it, and then turn it on, because he once had a car that worked that way. apparently the car we were in had never actually done whatever it was doing to us. so we tried it. i braced myself when justin turned the key.
and it worked. the car started. sigh. so we went to bubba gump's to eat. it was delicious but we spent too much and ate too little. still very good though.
i think i went to sleep around 4 yesterday afternoon, woke up a few hours later for papa john's pizza, slept again until 1030, watched tv while justin did homework for about two hours, and slept until 5 this morning. apparently jet lag and snorkeling are good for sleeping a lot.

sam's quilt, part 1

i decided before we knew sam was sam that i wanted to make a quilt for "the baby." as soon as we found out he was a boy, i chose some fabric for his quilt.

i bought a yard and a half each of the argyle and the light blue. the light blue is for the back of the quilt (30% off at hobby lobby). then i got batting. i got poly-fil, fairly good quality (from what i could tell) in the crib size, which was just big enough to fill the 44" x 54" material (i think the crib size batting is around 45"x64") and that was 50% off at joann fabrics. i also got pins, brown thread, and bias tape (not used yet).

saturday night i decided to start on the quilt. i ironed the material because it was a little wrinkly and i didn't want that to affect the quilting. justin vacuumed the floor for me, and i laid down the backing, then the batting, then the argyle top. the batting had some overlap, so i just tried to get it even from side to side and top to bottom.

after smoothing and straightening for several minutes, i started pinning. i started from the middle of the quilt and worked out to the edges. the pinning alone took me 45 minutes to an hour, which was a combination of that being how long it takes and being halfway to my due date. i would pin every few inches just to be sure it stays together the way you want. you don't want to put that much work into it and have it not stay in place.
(most of the photos were taken with my lensbaby with its 5.6 aperture because that's what i had on the camera.)



i chose the material partly because i liked it and partly because there were lines to follow when i would begin sewing. i have trouble keeping those lines straight, so i need all the help i can get. i began sewing down the edge of every third diamond, which ran my stitching diagonally across the quilt. i worked from the middle to the side, and then back to the middle to the other side, just in that one direction.



after that was done, i did the same thing in the other direction, every third diamond, working from the middle to the sides.



i must mention that you need to be careful of a few things. first, those pins will stab the crap out of your fingers and arms if you aren't careful. i had to get a bandaid when i was wrangling with it on the first few passes across the quilt. second, read your manual if you aren't familiar with the sewing machine. thankfully i adjusted the tension because it had been set to something i didn't need it set on. third, no matter how smooth and beautiful the front of the quilt may look, your quilt backing can pucker and make ugly little folds that get sewn right in. i have considerably less of those than i thought i would, so i am happy, but just be sure you are keeping everything smooth as you sew and remove pins. and last, if you want to get it "perfect," go slowly. i'm not a slow-goer, so my stitching isn't as straight as it could be, but that's ok with me. just a word of warning.

and here is a non-lensbaby photo of the finished little imperfect, puffy diamonds.



i still have to trim and tape and sew the edges. i'm pretty satisfied with the progress so far. :)

it's a boy!

which everyone knows by now, but i haven't gotten to share all of my photos and info yet. ok, most of my photos...i am not posting ultrasound pics of his junk. i can't do that to him. lol.

the ultrasound lady told us that everything looks good. we looked at his heart, his stomach, his kidneys, his spine, his nasal bone, his arms, and his legs. she squished the thing around when she was trying to tell us if he was a boy or a girl for a long time, and she didn't say anything. i got worried that she couldn't see it. i said, "...it's a girl?" (not for any reason but to get her to respond.) she didn't reply.

she prodded around some more. she finally froze a photo and typed "baby boy." i couldn't believe it. justin was really in shock because for two weeks he had assured me that it is a girl. for the rest of the time we were in awe over everything we could see and how healthy he seemed to be. we watched his heart beat and saw its four chambers. we watched him yawn. our incredible little gift from God.

and now for some ultrasound fun:


here you can see his good little spine. his face is turned away.

facing the wand. yes, he does look like a skeleton monster, but that's because the ultrasound isn't a real photograph. lol.

just baby sam, hanging out, looking skeletal. :)

with his arm bent and elbow touching his knee. look at that little nose.

sweet little profile and hand under his chin - you can even see his four fingers and thumb.

so we are, of course, very, very excited. we are very, very blessed.