2 weeks till Christmas!

It is two weeks till Christmas and a week and two days till we fly home for the holidays! Time seems to fly by! It seems like it was just Thanksgiving!
Today we had our second OB appointment. We met the head doctor of the clinic, Dr. Valentine. He was really funny and really nice. We hopefully will not be seeing him at all during the labor though. He was very pleased with the progress of the pregnancy and said that i was very healthy and the baby was very healthy. I am ten weeks and 4 days today. He said that we would try to hear the heartbeat, but not to be worried or disappointed because the baby was still very little. He had Ryan hold the "wand" or whatever it is called and let him find the heartbeat. We were able to hear it right away! The Dr. was very surprised! He said that it was a very strong heartbeat and he wondered if i was actually farther along than i thought. It was so crazy to hear the little heartbeat. It was beating so fast! Ryan was pretty excited. I only wished that we could have heard it a bit longer! I am also very happy to hear that we are both super healthy!
I am going to try to finish up my Christmas shopping this week and try to get my house clean! It is a much bigger ordeal than it used to be. After working all day, the only thing i want to do when i get home is lay on the couch! Thus, my house and shopping has suffered!
I am so excited to head home and to enjoy Christmas with snow! It was 76 here yesterday. It seems odd to hear Christmas songs when you need to have your air on... I am ready for the snow and for the fun!

Giving Thanks

A week ago Thursday was thanksgiving. We spent the day with our church home group. We do not know them very well, but we figured this would be a good time to get to know them. We got there by noon and left around 9pm. I was so tired! We ate, watched football and played games. It was nice. I was only able to eat mashed potatoes and gravy, stuffing and a few rolls. My stomach was just not feeling that well. We really miss our families on holidays. It is hard to live so far away.
I still have quite a bit of nausea these days. Mashed potatoes, whole wheat bagels with apple butter and root beer are my favorite things to eat. Ryan has been doing all of the cooking these days. I either don't want to eat, or get bothered by the smells of cooking. My sense of smell has been incredible these days, and not in a fun way. Poor Ryan. He is the one who gets to prepare everything now! Food is still not my friend.
I have started to notice that my lower belly is starting to get harder and stick out a bit. I am still able to wear all my old clothes, but it is starting to look like a "Fat" roll. I guess this is the awkward stage were i don't look pregnant, but i am starting to put on some weight.
Tomorrow is the first day of December. We are so excited to head home. I still have lots of Christmas shopping to do though! My prayer is that i will be feeling back to normal by than. I will be 12 weeks along, and almost out of the first trimester, so i am ready to stop feeling sick all the time!

The little peanut

We went to our first OB appointment on Tuesday. We are going to a doctor's office that has two drs, two midwives and a few nurse practitioners. The midwives will be delivering the baby unless there are any slight complications, and than one of the drs will be on hand. It is really a great set up. I will have the benefits of a midwife with the safety of a doctor.
When we arrived at the Dr's office, we were the only couple in the waiting room. I felt kinda bad for the other ladies that did not have anyone with them. The nurse who took my blood pressure/vitals told Ryan that we would have a beautiful baby. She said she could tell from just looking at the two of us. I hope that is true!
We sat down with one of the nurse practitioner and went over all the questions we had. She told me that i was only 6 weeks and 4 days along, not 7 weeks and 4 days that the website had told me. Man, i did not want to still be in my sixth week! my due date is still the same, but i thought i was a week closer to getting out of this first trimester sickness stuff!
The nurse said that she might be able to squeeze us into the ultrasound room to see if we could see the baby's heart beat. She warned us that i am very early along and that they may not be able to see the baby at all. Since i am so early in my pregnancy, i was going to have to have a vaginal ultrasound.
We were able to get in to the ultrasound room. Ryan was able to watch the monitor while she tried to locate the little baby. She did notice that my bladder was about to burst. Ryan said that it looked the same when she said she saw my bladder and when she just started out. He thought for sure we would never be able to see the baby. She was able to find the baby and the yoke sac! We were able to see the baby's heartbeat. It literally shook the whole tiny little body! The baby looks more like worm on the ultrasound, but we were able to see it and we were able to see the heart beating. It was so amazing! Ryan got so excited! He was happy before, but once he saw his "little peanut" he was ecstatic! He kept staring at our ultrasound picture and talking to the baby!
The drs were very happy to find out that we saw the heartbeat. It is a great sign. We have a 90% chance of keeping the baby full term when you see a heartbeat. It is so crazy to see the little heart beating and know that it is inside of you growing and becoming more and more like a baby everyday.
Today the baby is developing brain cells at about a 100 cells a minute. Ryan is praying that the baby develops extra and is extra smart! The baby's little tiny limbs will start to sprout soon.
It is amazing how life develops so fast. We are very excited to meet our little peanut!

6 weeks= sick week

I am now in my 7th week of pregnancy. Tomorrow is my first OB appointment. I am hoping that we will be able to hear the baby's heartbeat! This last week has been quite interesting. I wake up feeling great but by noon the nausea hits and it lasts till i go to sleep. Food is no longer fun. It is more of an necessity. I don't really like food. I am eating though, i just don't like to and i don't want too. I don't have any aversions at this point, i just don't really like food. Too bad this wont continue when i am trying to shed the baby weight! I am very grateful that i have not had any vomiting though. I feel lucky to just be tired and nauseous and not puking sick.
At this point, my favorite foods are anything to do with mint, Sprite, peanut butter and granola bites,and whole wheat bagels. My non favorite foods are anything not on that list.
I hear that most of these symptoms will go away in a few more weeks. I am excited about that.
I am excited to see how the baby is doing tomorrow at the doctor's appointment!
Until then...

Great EXPECTtations!

October 26, 2007. My world will never be the same. I couldn't sleep all night. I awoke at 4am to use the bathroom. I could not get back to sleep. It was just me and Oscar the cat hanging out. Ryan was still away in Baltimore. We both stayed awake until 7:20 till i had to use the bathroom again. And than, one single word off a digital test shook me. Pregnant. The test stick read "pregnant". I was in shock. I started to cry. Oscar became alarmed and started to cry as well. I am having a baby! I confirmed it with an already scheduled yearly physical dr.'s appointment. I am going to have a baby the first of July. July 4th is the actual date.
The complete and udder exhaustion i had been experiencing all week now made a bit more sense. Ryan flew in that evening. I wrapped my "pregnant" test sick up in tissue paper and put it in a little gift bag. I than promptly went to sleep for the next 2 hours, waiting for him to come home. He came home and found me sleeping at 8pm. He crawled into bed and i told him i got him a present while he was gone. He smiled,not too surprised because i tend to shop when he is away, and began to open it. When he read the stick, he smiled the most amazing smile. He asked if it was true between laughing and wonderment. I still cant believe that we are going to be parents!
Our family is ecstatic. This will be the first grandchild on my family side. It is also the first great grand baby. My grandmother told me that she had begun to give up hope! My dad knows that it will be a boy. He has pretty good odds of it being a boy, 50/50 isn't too bad!
It is still sinking in for me, a week or so later. I am still very tired, i use the bathroom ALL the time and i just don't want to eat certain foods. Ben and Jerry's Mint Cookie ice cream is the greatest thing that man has made, though i am still working on a pint i got a week ago. And so, the joys of pregnancy has begun. It will be quiet an adventure.

Missing...

My life is gone. I feel completely lost. My motivation is also at a loss. Ryan is in Baltimore this week for work, and i miss him. I am the one who is usually gone for a week or so at a time. It is much harder to be home than to be away. Oscar misses Ryan too. He will cry on the bed for a bit. Ryan will return tomorrow and things will be right again. Although, at this point, something else is missing that might change things.

Celebrating One Year of Pure Happiness!

Ryan and spent our one year anniversary in the Shenandoah Valley and the Blue Ridge Mountains. We stayed in a little hick town called Luray (lew-ray). It was interesting. We loved our drive up to the mountains and took our time, as we missed our campground a few times. Upon finally arriving, we picked out a tucked away campsite that only had one neighbor. The site was tucked into the woods and was the best one on the campground. Little did we know that this private campground did not have any supervision. So, our one neighbor turned out to be 4 completely high and drunk 40 yr. old men who listened to their stoner music very loud and swore even louder. The sheer volume of their idiotic conversation dominated our attempts at a normal conversation. Luckily, by 11:30pm they passed out. Unfortunately, at that time some local teenagers decided to arrive at the campground and walk around and talk till 5am! We did not get much sleep that night. After talking with the campground owners in the morning and assured that everyone was leaving, we decided to stay. We went on an amazing hike that was surprisingly challenging at parts. We basically climbed up a side of a mountain and the view was amazing. We have plenty of pictures to prove it.
We took an amazing drive through the Shenandoah National Park on Skyline drive. The Valley is breathtaking! We enjoyed the day so much!
That evening our new neighbors also decided that it is o.k to bring a BOSE sound system into the woods. I guess they thought that everyone wanted to listen to their music. They also decided to turn up the bass. They took their system into their tent, turned up the volume and went to sleep. Awesome. So, after Ryan asking them repeatedly to turn it off and after they turned it off and than back on again, we left. We decided that we wanted to just spend time with each other uninterrupted by inconsiderate people. So, at 1am we packed up our site and drove the 5 hrs home. We actually enjoyed the drive back and crashed in a nice soft bed.
We were surprisingly happy the whole time! We have fond thoughts of our trip and we throughly enjoyed our days.
Marriage has been a wonderful adventure. Each day i fall more in love with my husband. I am so excited to see what our future holds.

My Favorite Boys

Go easy on me...

Having never blogged before, and wanting to enhance my writings skills as well as inform friends and family, i have decided to give this a try. A good friend of mine, Andy Black, told me he blogs to keep up his writing skills. My writing skills are no match to the fine Mr. Black, but are in desperate need of tuning. Writing for the ear and writing for the eyes are so entirely different. I have found that when i write, i tend to elaborate. When i write for the ear for work, i tend to "talk too much" in my scripts. So, here, i am going to try to find a happy medium of writing for the ears and writing for the eyes. Another discipline i would like to work on is proofing what i write. I tend to get an idea or an inspiration or just need to get all the words out in a hurry and leave it just thrown down on the paper. It drives my husband crazy! He hates when i misplace a word and forget to fix it. If i would proof what i write, it would not be such a mess.
SO, after much to much talking, i am writing my first blog.
I just returned home from Nashville. In the period of a year, i have spent somewhere between 6 and 7 weeks in Nashville. A high majority of that time was spent in a large dark studio off of Dickerson Parkway. No matter the temperature outside, North Star Studios is frigid inside. I always have on a few layers that ends in a sweater of sorts. I am still cold. Pride has prevented me from bringing in a blanket. Well, that is not all true. Pride and professionalism. Band members and their entourage would not likely trust my professional opinion if i was swaddled in a blanket. So, i walk around a lot and try to stay by the lights!
I know need to go proof read on of Ryan's papers. He is in the middle of his first semester as a MBA student at Regent University. He is pretty much brilliant, but he likes when i read over things. My wifely duty is calling.