Week 31 - A White Christmas...maybe?

As usual there has been too much time between posts... but the news is that things are going very well. We have started our childbirth prep classes which are interesting so far. This week's was cancelled due to the weather in the Seattle area. We have been for the most part enjoying the snow and have been getting around pretty well. Again no new shots of Mady but here is one of our house with all the pretty snow.

Now that the kitchen remodel is officially done we have moved all the displaced items back to where they belong so we have the room to start working on the nursery. We have a crib and changing table all assembled and found a nice little rug that we like. We are working on getting the rocking chair pads recovered so they aren't a hideous orange/red plaid anymore. We are still searching for possibly another dresser or storage unit of some kind that we like and will match the rest of the furniture but the big pieces are there at least.

We are having a fun holiday season with parties and get-togethers with friends and family. I hope you are all enjoying yours as well. I'll try to post again soon with some pictures of the nursery. In the meantime Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Week 25 - She's definitely on the move

Mady has become fairly active over the last few weeks and I feel her moving around quite a bit now. This of course makes sleep a little harder to come by but it hasn't been too bad yet. I don't think I was quite prepared for how different it feels to have this belly getting bigger and bigger every day. I'm pretty well out of most of my pre-pregnancy pants and anything that was fitted at the waist at this point but have been lucky enough to recieve tons of maternity wear from friends and family. I think I may have more maternity clothes in my closet than I had regular clothes! It is kind of fun to have a whole new wardrobe all at once.

We have also started getting offers from friends and family for baby gear type needs and are starting a nice collection down in the basement along with all the contents of our kitchen.

We are in the middle of a total renovation of our kitchen that we have been dreaming about for years. It is the last major renovation to be done on our 1928 house we've been in just over 5 years now and we decided we better to take it on now rather than wait til after Mady gets here when life will no doubt be more complicated and busy. When its just the two of us having no kitchen other than a microwave, toaster and a fridge in the dining room is much less complicated and inconvenient than it would be with a little one in the house...not to mention the mess and the dust that goes along with remodelling. I know this blog isn't about our home renovations but since I don't have any new pics of Mady here are a few of the renovation in progress.

Week 21 - It's a Girl; meet Madelyn Ruth

Wow, time sure flies (sort of)! Sorry for not posting for so long; there was a period of time there where we really didn't get to "see" anyting new while we waited for our 20 week ultrasound to get here so I didn't feel like I had much to tell anyone other than "when will week 20 get here so we get some new exciting news?" Well that was now over a week ago and I'm finally getting around to posting...I'm not that good at this blogging thing I guess.



Anyway, the ultrasound was great and everything is looking wonderful and measuring well. The biggest news to come out of it was that we are having a little girl. She was pretty shy for most of the procedure and I was fretting that we weren't going to find out all the way up until the end when she finally decided to give the tech the view that she needed to say we have a wonderful little girl growing in there. We were both very excited to hear the news; more than anything to know one way or the other.



Here are some images from the week 20 ultrasound (two profiles and a shot of her feet):
I hope to be better about updating the blog from here on out but if past performance is any indicator...we'll see.

Other fun news is that I can feel her moving on a fairly regular basis now and have even been able to help Andy feel her move too if I lay still and hold his hand to help find her.

Now that we know she is a little girl we have finalized her name: meet Madelyn Ruth which has been at the top of our girl name discussions for a while now. It feels great to finally have a name and some direction to start planning the nursery.

In the meantime Andy has been focussing on finishing the kitchen remodel that we decided to take on before Mady will be joining us in February. We (the "Royal We", meaning Andy does the work and I watch and supervise) have the kitchen half demo'd and have a make-shift kitchen set up in he dining room for now. We will have our new cabinets in town in the next week or two and are choosing all our flooring and other finishes now. We are hoping to have the work completed by the end of November so we have a brand new kitchen for the holidays.

Week 11 - Finally, the cat is out of the bag!

Well news travels fast round these parts so most everyone knows that we are expecting now. There are a few friends that we're still trying to connect with to let them know but for the most part we have shared with almost everyone we see on a regular basis. All our friends and family were so excited to hear the great news and I am just so happy to have more people I can talk to about all this now. I am still waiting a few more weeks to break the news at work but that will be soon as well.



As promised last week, we tried to take video of the ultrasound and it turned out OK; not great but OK. Its a little blurry so my apologies but it will give you an idea of how much better it is to see live than the pictures they give you afterwards. As you can see little baby Dandi is waving and kicking up a storm in there. Although I know the baby is only an inch and a half long its just seems crazy that there is that much movement that I can't even feel!

We are coming up quickly on our 12 week mark which will get us out of the first trimester; hopefully that will signal some more energy for my body which has been a bit run down the last few weeks. Supposedly you have more energy in the second trimester; I say bring it on :)

Week 10 - we can't wait any longer to tell

Well we are into week 10 and all is still pretty normal. I am experiencing some nausea from time to time but have been very lucky and have not been very sick. We are getting very antsy to tell friends and family our good news so we have started telling family and will be breaking the news to a group of friends this week. We are excited to let people in on our great news!

We had another ultrasound last week and all was looking great. You could see alot more stuff and there was actually a little form that looked somewhat human so that was cool.

We get to do one more early ultrasound next week at 11 weeks and then we probably won't have another one until around 20 weeks. My mom suggested that we have Andy take a video of the ultrasound machine while we are there because I keep telling her they are much more exciting live because you actually get to see the baby moving and you can see its little heartbeat. These pictures are great but they aren't quite the same. We will try that and then hopefully I can post the video on here.

Ok, well we are just very excited to start telling our friends and family our good news. It will feel great to get that off our chests; it has been very hard to hold it in this long and it has really only been a month!

Week 8 - Time sure flies when you're on vacation

We are into week 8 and all is well. I have had a few bouts of nausea but nothing as bad as I have heard from other friends so I am still counting myself lucky. I am finding that I am very tired (especially at work). I know this is to be expected but it is sometimes tough just to keep my eyes open :) I find that I really want to sleep in the middle of the day; which makes being productive at work a difficult task.

We just returned from a 9 day vacation in northeastern Washington and had a great time relaxing, water skiing, fishing and generally doing nothing or whatever we wanted in mostly great weather. There was a day we decided to float the river and it ended up being the day of a huge windstorm that crept up on us on the river so that was a bit of an adventure but other than that the weather was great and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves hanging out with friends and soaking up the sun. It was a little challenging to hide the fact that we are expecting when most days were spent sitting in the sun with drink (secretly non-alcoholic for me) in hand. But we must have done OK since no one seemed the wiser. We are still really itching to tell our friends and family but want to wait a bit longer to make sure things are progressing.

We have another ultrasound appointment tomorrow to check progress. After that we will reassess where we are and when we want to start telling folks.

Week 6 - So far so good...

These last two weeks have been slow going in the wait for our first ultrasound. The ultrasound was on June 26th and it was an amazing sight! The baby is so small you can't even see it without the tech pointing it out on the screen. What you could see was the flutter of a tiny heartbeat which was the great news we were hoping for. The baby is measuring just right and they updated our due date to February 18th based on the measurements.

In this picture I have pointed out the baby but there really isnt' much to see. It was cooler to see it live on the ultrasound screen because you could see the fluttering heartbeat.

It is finally setting in that we are going to be parents and it really isn't that far off to February. Andy and I are so excited for all the changes coming between now and then.

So far I have been pretty lucky in that I have not been too sick or nauseous. We are praying I will be one of the lucky ones who don't experience horrible morning sickness that lasts all day. So far so good...

Week 5 - Still in a state of shock

I've been meaning to start a blog for some time now and this seems like a perfect excuse to start. We are exstatic to be expecting our first baby in February of 2009! According to the online calculators our expected due date is February 16, 2009 to be exact. I am still in a bit of a state of shock as I had just gotten used to seeing negative test results each month when last week to my surprise and joy the test was positive.

It was just a few days before Father's Day so I briefly toyed with the idea of keeping the news from Andy until Sunday to make for a great Father's Day surprise but that was a fleeting thought as I realized there was no way I could keep this a secret between me and McKinley for 3 whole days. I would have burst at some point so I figured I might as well get confirmation from the doctor and put a little thought into a "fun" way to tell Andy instead. So I got a blood test later that morning and confirmation from the doctor later that afternoon and then stopped on the way home and got a small baby photo album which I wrapped up with a printed card that read "Coming Soon - February 2009" along with the positive pregnancy test and gave to him that evening when I came home from work. He was, of course, so excited and happy to hear the news.

We are scheduled for our first ultrasound on June 26th to hear the heartbeat and hopefully see the little bean for the first time. I haven't really felt much going on but from time to time I feel little flutters and pangs. I have started drinking water much more than I used to so I don't know if the constant peeing is really a result of being prego or just more fluids than my body is used to handling (likely a combination of the two).

We are really struggling with not telling our closest friends and family the great news. We don't know yet when we will break the news but have resolved to at least wait until after the ultrasound to make sure things are all A-OK. When the time comes to tell folks I will share this blog to check in on progress so I wanted to start documenting things so they don't miss all this early stuff just because we were being so cautiously optimistic.