My Roach Story

I was just looking back on my blog posts, you know, just looking to see if anyone commented on anything...which you haven't. Sorry, I had to throw that in there. Anyway, I was looking back on the blog posts and I noticed that since we found out I was pregnant there has been pretty much nothing but pregnancy posts. Now I know you all love reading about my pregnancy complaint of the month but who wants to be a bragger? Not I. So as promised, here is a blog about the roaches.

As you all know, we live in the country. Like, full out, can't see the neighbor's house, have to stop and let the deer cross the road country. (OK, so it's not that bad. It's actually a community where everyone has 5 acres...but still country!) So as expected, there are many different...shall we say life forms...that we have to deal with. The fore mentioned deer, raccoons, fox, bears (Seriously, a bear stole our garbage one time! Nick found paw prints on his truck where the bear was looking in the windows) frogs, snakes (scary!) and apparently roaches. We had the house sprayed as it was being built and the company comes out every year to spray again as part of their guarantee. So nothing to worry about right? Wrong. Two weeks ago we were upstairs and saw a roach. It was in the unfinished bonus room so my thought was as long as they aren't in the actual house, no big deal. Plus, it was the first roach we've seen since moving in. Well a couple days after that, again while in the bonus room, another roach. OK, that was weird but again it was upstairs and both roaches were right by the opening into the actual attic. Well...in the past week there have been two roaches in the house!!! Nasty! I hate roaches, I think we should coordinate a world wide effort to kill them all (along with toads and alligators. Snakes are working their way onto that list too). And these weren't little roaches either. They were big, fat, black roaches and they looked like they could probably fly. Thank God Nick was home to get them because they are the one insect that I will run screaming in the other direction. Actually, for the first one I jumped on the couch, curled up into a ball, and put two blankets over me (including my head). Hey, they look like they could fly, remember? And the second time I took the dogs and ran into our room with them, closing two doors between us and the roach. Needless to say, Nick is calling the bug people this week. Any other insects or spiders, I kill with no problem. Lizards I pick up and put back outside. But roaches. I just can't handle that.

For Katie (and Tard)

I'm figuring (is that a word?) that I'm going to have a once a month blog because that's what it seems to be anyway. I think of things to blog about but then I either have to go to work or I get distracted by something at home or something like that. Plus, I feel like there hasn't been a major event in the past month that I really want to share my thoughts and feelings with the whole blogging world about. But, Katie asks for a new blog, therefore Katie gets a new blog. And everyone thinks I'm the spoiled one.

I suppose I'll start with pregnancy stuff. I'm 24 weeks now and finally looking like I might be growing a child. I feel like the past month has gone by really fast, but I realize more for reasons that have nothing to do with the pregnancy. I can feel her kick a lot now and I'm starting to call her Alexa or Lexie instead of "the baby". (That's her name and I'm sticking to it!). When I first found out I was pregnant all these people told me "just wait until you feel the baby kick, it's the best feeling in the world..." Let me tell you, I've been feeling her move around for probably about two months now and at first, I was not impressed. It feels like gas bubbles, I do not understand what's so exciting and wondrous about feeling like you're going to fart soon. I actually didn't tell anyone that I felt her at first because I didn't want to fake through the whole conversation about how cool it is to feel the baby move. Now that she's bigger (the size of a papaya?) when she kicks it's more like a nudge or poke from the inside and a lot of the times I can actually see my belly pop out and shift as she's moving around. OK, now it's cool. Now we can talk about it. I suppose I'm getting more pregnancy symptoms too. I didn't think I was getting cravings until Nick pointed it out. And if I don't eat often I get cranky and don't feel very well. My butt is huge (even more so than it used to be). Who gets pregnant and immediately grows a ghetto booty?!?! Apparently, I do. Not that there are any of my male relatives reading this (especially after the butt comments) but if you are, I suggest you stop now because I'm about to talk about my boobs. THEY ARE GIGANTIC!!!!! You know, for me. I want my little boobies back. I realize I'm not going to get them back for a long time but I don't care, I want them back now. At first I was excited that there was a crease under them or that they kind of bounced when I ran. (Katie and Britt, I know you can appreciate that) But now, it's getting old. I've always enjoyed my freedom of being able to walk around my house in a t-shirt with no bra on but now it's just annoying. And they're not even super perky! If I'm going get boobs I should be able to get nice ones!!!! Plus to top it all off there are two stretch marks on them!!!!! Gross! I know! I realize that might not be completely appropriate to write on my blog but you can't say I didn't give you fair warning. On a more positive and less bitchy note, I do enjoy my shirts fitting better. And I really like bragging about them to those of you who still have the boobies. I guess it's more of a lesson in being careful what you wish for because what I had before was just fine, thank you very much!

George came up for a few days so that he and Nick could paint the nursery and it looks awesome! Nick was all about painting stripes or dots or something like that. Me...not so much. But I decided that he is usually good about choosing paint colors and it was essentially a battle that I didn't really care to fight. I eventually talked him into toning it down by painting a pale green on the bottom part of the room and then doing light pink and slightly darker pink stripes on the top part. Yes, that is the calmed down version. All I have to say is thank God for George and the patience and expertise he had to tape off all the stripes. I love my husband very much but if he had tried to do that alone, every stripe would have been a different width and they would all be crooked. And anyone who knows me well enough to read this far into this blog knows that those are two things I just can't handle. I have to say, even with it all symmetrical and perfect, I was slightly overwhelmed by all the color until we started to put the dark furniture in. Grandma's chair looks perfect in the room along with my old bookshelf and one of the dressers dad found at a garage sale a few years ago. Mom and Grammy came up last weekend to return the dogs and ended up buying the rest of the furniture we needed. Mom got us the crib I wanted and Grammy got the changing table (thanks mom and Grammy!!!). They are supposed to come in sometime next week so I'm getting pretty excited to put it all together. Here's a picture of mom and I in Grandma's chair (and Wolfie)

And one of Grammy and I in the nursery.

Katie, I hope this has been enough blogging to hold you over for a day or two. Maybe if we are slow at work (wishful thinking) during the next few days I'll blog about more exciting things like our current infestation of roaches (there have been two!) or our most recent trip to the vet's office for check ups (Wolfie thinks he owns the place). I know, you can't wait. Get excited.

20 Weeks, It's a girl!!!!!

A lot has gone on in the past month. Katie graduated college, which meant another family trip to Disney World!!! Kim, Steve and the boys came up here to visit for a weekend. Amanda graduated high school and the Dance Explosion recital was last weekend. And...we found out that it's a girl!!!!!! It was all very exciting! Dr. Dixon took me (and Nick) to his office on a night where I was working and he was on call. At first he didn't sound too confident that she was a girl but after he looked at a few other things (which were all fine) he kept on going back to check and finally by the end of the ultrasound he said that definitely it's a girl. Now, this made me a little nervous about saying anything because what if he was wrong. I mean, it looked like a girl to me, but what do I know?! So we went to our official scheduled ultrasound with Dr. Willis last Thursday and he (and the ultrasound tech) said it was a girl too. That made me feel a lot better. I could not even imagine if they had found boy parts and we had already told everyone it was a girl!!! Josh (Nick's cousin) would have never let Nick live that down! I realize the next question asked is "do you have a name yet"? Well, I think we do. I'm just a little nervous to say that it is definitely the name. Nick really wants the middle name to be Lynn, for his mom. He won't actually say that but I know it's true. And I'm OK with that, I like Lynn as a middle name. As for first names...Nick likes more common names and I like more not so common names. We had a little list of ones that we both liked and we keep going back to Alexa. Now, I realize that there is a particular small red headed child that I did solos for named Alexa. But, I don't really care. I just really like the name. You can shorten it to Lexie (or even Alex if she wants), which is super cute. It's in the top 100 names for 2009 but it's number 65 or 70. So it's common enough (people with more common names are generally more successful in life) but not too common that there are going to be multiple Alexa's in her class in school. And while I know that it's the name of a dance girl...guess what? So were all the other names on the short list! Like Bailey, Katie and Leeza for example. Let's face it, with me being a dance teacher and Nick being a 5th grade teacher, there weren't many names that we haven't come across before. The only thing that I don't love about it is when you put the Alexa and the Lynn together. Say it fast. Alexa Lynn. It kind of mushes together weird. Hense, no final decision. Let me know what you think. Oh, and here's a 20 week picture. Still more butt than belly! (Glyniss wanted to be in the picture too!)

Nick, his garden, and his hoe

I think that about says it all.

16 weeks and dance conventions

Well, today we are at 16 weeks. According to "His Boys Can Swim" our baby is about the size of a small stud finder, or if you want to go with the food thing, it's about the size of an avocado. I'm still not having many pregnancy symptoms, which I am definitely not complaining about! I'm still a bit more moody and emotional and I'm still pretty tired all the time but other than that, nothing. Not even a belly. Here's a picture of my belly today. Please excuse Nick's old shorts that I'm wearing...I just woke up a few hours ago and haven't made it to the shower yet. :)
While I will admit that my belly is noticeably larger then it was pre-pregnancy, it still looks nothing like a 16 week belly. It is also at what I feel is the annoying state of a pregnant belly where none of my jeans fit anymore (with the buttons done) but if I walked into a store to buy maternity jeans they would look at me like I'm crazy. Also, I can't do some things that I could do before. For example, we went to Jump, a dance convention, last weekend. I was pretty excited to take class from Doug Caldwell and Mandy Moore amongst others. When I was taking class I felt retarded because I couldn't do some things because I could feel my skin stretching. It's not like anything was pulling inside, I could just tell that my range of motion with my back was less and the skin on my abdomen wouldn't let me go as far back as I'm used to. It was no big deal in the student rooms but in the teachers room, where there are only 10-15 people dancing, I felt like saying "I'm pregnant people, I normally can do much better then this, I swear!" Oh well, I know it's not a big deal at all. I'm just saying that a little bit of a belly would have explained the situation. The rest of the convention was fun. It was great to watch real competition again. I still feel like the people up here have no appreciation or even an understanding of what I do... but I suppose that's a whole other blog entry.

Here's pictures of my two side kicks. Daisy and Minnie have been following me around nonstop for the past few weeks.

13 (almost 14) weeks

It is now 13 (almost 14) weeks. Since the last update we have had another ultrasound which was part of the first trimester screen for downs and Trisomy 18. They look at the nuchal translucency which is pretty much a space on the back of the neck. If the space measures above 3mm (at 12 weeks in a pregnancy) there is an increased risk for downs, etc. Our baby measured 1.95mm which is slightly above average but still well within normal limits. Together with my age and family history they calculated that the chance of having a baby with these genetic issues went from 1 in about 750 to 1 in over 10,000. Now the cool part was the super high tech US machine they had. Nick said it looked like a space ship...I'm not too sure about that but it was definately way more intense than the one in the regular OB's office. The only thing that they saw that could be a potential problem is that my placenta was posterior and low lying. Apparently this is very common in the first trimester. As the uterus grows, the placenta should migrate up and away from the cervix. They just said that they wanted to keep an eye on it just in case it migrates down instead and turns into a placenta previa. The heart beat was 159 bpm which is one of many reasons why Nick thinks it's a girl. We go back to see Dr. Dixon at the begining of May and then to see Dr. Willis at the end of May. That's the appointment where we will do the mega ultrasound and where we'll be able to find out the sex. I asked why we were going to the high risk OB's to get the mega ultrasound and Dr. Dixon's partner said that once they see you (even if it's for an optional test like what we did), they like to see you back for that one to follow up. Plus, he said that Dr.Willis' machine was much more advanced than the one at Dr. Dixon's office so we'd be able to see more. Works for me. Well, that's it so far. Still not much of a belly, just feeling kind of chunker.

I feel great.

Recently, a lot of people have been asking how I'm feeling. I always tell them that I'm feeling great because for the most part that's true. Other than the occasional bout of nausea, I really am feeling physically fine. About two months ago Nick and I were reading part of a pregnancy book that talked about moodiness and that some women feel like they are having PMS times ten. Well let me tell you....I kind of laughed at that at the time but this is ridiculous. I feel like the ongoing theme of my third month of pregnancy is "Really, why are you still talking?" I was always moody (in case you haven't noticed) but I'm going to go ahead and correct What to Expect When Your Expecting and say that it's like PMS times 100. And the sarcasm has reached all new heights (now who would have thought that was possible). Oh, and it's not all the time either, it's completely random. I could be sitting here happy as can be and someone will say something or do something that triggers some little switch in my brain and all of a sudden Bristin (Bitch Kristin) is out full force. I just get annoyed with people. And I feel bad because most of the time it's people I really like. Sometimes they don't even say anything that should be annoying but for some reason I just have a problem. For example, we went to competition last weekend (which was a lot of fun). The girls did great, everyone scored well and I had a great time with Hayley and Katie, the other two teachers I went with. I really like 99% of the parents too (you know there has to be that one or two that means well but drives you crazy). However, by the end of a day and a half if I heard one more country accent I was going to scream! I usually kind of like everyone's little accents, especially the kids. But seriously people, your not fixin anything and it's a car, SUV or truck, not a vehicle. What else am I annoyed with? I'm annoyed that my patient is on 60mcg of Fentanyl/hr and 3mg of versed/hr plus the additional 2mg of versed and 2mg of Vec I'm giving him every hour and he's still trying to come off the bed and extubate himself. That is super annoying and now I'm getting annoyed with everything else around me too. Oh, and I'm irritated that I don't have a belly already. I'm almost in my second trimester, I want a freaking belly! And not the 'this is Kristin chunker, have to wear my fat jeans but you can't tell I'm pregnant at all' belly. I want a real pregnant belly or no belly at all! I know that that's not realistic but I don't care, that's what I want. Also, it's always that right when I wake up or at 7am after working for 12 hours someone asks me how I'm feeling. Really? Do you really want me to tell you how I'm feeling? Because let me say, I am feeling fan-freaking-tastic. I've been awake since yesterday at noon and I've been in an ICU avoiding all these nasty germs and dealing with all these nasty parents for the past 12 hours plus I have a 45 minute drive home ahead of me. How exactly do you think I'm feeling? That's why I always say that I'm feeling great. Just focus on the physical, it could be a lot worse I suppose. I could be puking my brains out but I'm not so that's good. I feel bad, I'm trying not to be mean but I feel like some of it kind of just slipps out. And it's not all the time either. I'm going to go ahead and say that 80% of the time I am perfectly happy. And I know that when I'm being crazy, I'm being crazy, but I just can't help it. So if I've been mean to you in any way, I'm really sorry. Please accept this glimpse into the psychotic mind of a pregnant woman as a heart felt apology. It's all I can muster up at the moment. Hopefully this won't last for the next 6 months. I am totally looking forward to the promised bliss of the second trimester. We shall see.