Go Go Gadget Goose!

We've spent the past couple of weeks busy with work and appointments and not much sleep. The term 'nesting' has taken on two meanings in our house, the first in the traditional sense of feeling the overpowering need to organize everything to death, and the second refers to the 20 minutes before bed time where I arrange all of the 37 pillows acquired from around the house to form a 'nest' in hopes of actually getting some shut eye that night. Either way, I usually find myself heading to a different room/bed/floor/chair just to get a change of scenery and to give Mark some peace. I feel pretty human during the day and haven't slowed down much yet (although I have been acquiring more crumbs/stains on the little 'shelf' above the area formerly known as my waist, and slipping between the cars in the garage is nothing short of a cirque du soleil act). It's the night time that has me wallowing like a seal trying to get comfortable on the sand - but overall, things seem to be moving right along.

Obligatory belly shot, ~ 35 weeks

This past weekend we took our chances with the weather and headed down to the PGA Tour Golf Tournament at Torrey Pines.  We showed up knowing there would be significant rain delay but we still had a good time cruising around the course and checking out the booths. We thought we were smart posting up at the first green when the first group finally teed off but Mother Nature pulled a fast one and dumped a layer of fog down so thick that we never saw them coming, mostly because it was so bad they turned around and went back inside, never making it to the green. Although I didn't actually get to see anyone swing a club, I did see Brandt Snedeker warming up on the practice green, and I like saying the name 'Snedeker' so all in all I was happy we went.

This picture would have been way cooler if Tiger was swinging in the background, or if there was anything in the background.

No Photography Allowed - 35.5 weeks!

The following morning Mark was running in the Carlsbad Half Marathon like he has done for the past couple years.  He wasn't exactly what you would call stoked that the race happened to follow two weeks of work travel with consecutive 16 hour days, but somehow he pulled it off and made it safely under his goal of 2 hours. Nice job Sponge!

Go Sponge Go!

After cheering him on at the 10 mile Mark, I stopped by the store on the way to scoop him up at the finish and encountered awkward pregnant moment number 163. He had requested I pick up some beer so he could enjoy one while relaxing in the spa after the race.  Before selecting a six pack, the savvy shopper that I am, I realized the 12 pack was a much better deal and switched out my basket for a cart to transport my find to the register.  Feeling pretty proud of myself for selecting the better deal, I suddenly became aware that I was  9 months preggo and pushing beer around the store alone, so I swooped through the produce section and tossed in a bag of spinach on top just for good measure, like somehow that didn't make me look like an entirely bad mom. At the check out line I was of course flanked by race finishers loading up on electrolytes and coconut water and here I stood with beer and spinach, and to add insult to injury, the checker asked 'do you need help out with your beer?' clearly noting that I was pregnant and shouldn't be lifting it, never mind drinking it.  Feeling compelled to explain that it wasn't for me, she said 'well, you never know, some people get those by drinking these anyways' while motioning toward my belly. Needless to say I couldn't get out of there fast enough.

In Goose news, I've been going to three times a week for monitoring to make sure she's still doing her thing in there.  Most babies flip around to the 'ready' position around 30 weeks, but at 35.5 weeks she was still sitting prety in the breech position  To encourage her to flip, Mark gave her a little instruction by equating it to doing a back roll in wakeboarding. . 'so you hold on to the rope (cord) tuck your shoulder and roll!'   Then, the other night  I actually had to sleep in a chair just so she wouldn't kick Mark in the side. He said I was being punished for eating too many yogurt raisins before bed and that's why she was all fired up. Then today at my appointment (36 weeks) we discovered during all her modern dance moves she somehow made the flip - yes! The ultra sound tech was more than surprised when she said 'Yeah, I told you on Friday she still may make the flip, but I didn't really think it would happen - this makes my day!' Just like Mom this little procrastinator came through in the end and I was so happy I just had to celebrate with some  yogurt raisins.

Nurses, Doctors and Babies - Oh My!

In addition to all of the fun, the last few weeks have been filled with a slew of doc appointments and meetings. Since being designated as 'high risk' at 20 weeks I've been averaging an appointment a week, but that will soon be getting bumped up to 3 times a week so I've never been more grateful to have a flexible schedule working from home. First up, Mark and I headed to Children's Hospital to meet with the surgeon who will perform the surgery the day or day after she's born. Understandably, he couldn't give us anything solid by way of details since he won't really know what he's dealing with until she comes out. But he was nice and based on the amount of fancy looking docs in the wall frames it looks like this guy is pretty legit, so we left feeling like we were in good hands.

Yesterday we met with another team of doctors at the hospital where we'll be delivering and to take a tour of the level three NICU (legit!) where she'll be before and after surgery. They were very nice and thorough about explaining everything they could and answering all of our questions, but the moral of the story is there are no guarantees until they can actually see her.  But, it was very reassuring that they are aware of our concerns and want exactly what we want - for us to be able to hold and feed her as soon as possible, although they explained that half of these babies have other problems that can't be detected in the ultra sound  and can be very serious so their first priority will to make sure she is stable.  We've learned that although this isn't the way we had pictured everything going down, we need to be flexible and do whatever it takes to make sure she is healthy and makes it through all of this with flying colors. It wasn't easy coming face to face with the reality of what she'll have to go through in a short couple of weeks, but they tried to gently prepare us for things that we are going to see and what we'll be able/not able to do.  The estimate of how long we'll be there is officially a vague 'weeks or months' but they were able to say that best case scenario would be two weeks at a bare minimum which at least helps up to come up with a couple different plans of what to do and where to stay. Since our experience with NICU's is zilch, I'm not sure if this is the standard or if its due to the heightened level of cases here, but they only allow two people in at a time, and one of those two people has to be Mark or I, and that they'll probably call in the SWAT team if you have even a hint of a cold.  With all of these restrictions I like to think of it as the exclusive 'VIP room'.

So for now, we're trying not to worry too much and just take things as they come.  We really are lucky that the doctors and nurses have pretty much seen it all and really have her best interest (and our best interest) in mind at all times and really want the same things we want.  They said she'll be 'running the show' and we'll all just take her lead, something we might as well get a crash course in now since that's probably going to be the case for the next 18 years anyways. The good news is is that, granted everything goes well, even though it will be a bit of a rough start she should have no issues going forward and will be as normal as you could expect for a child coming from the two of us.

And That's What Christmas is All About Charlie Brown

We kicked off Mark's two week vacation with a trip up to Michael and Tara's beautiful new home for a pre-Christmas celebration with my family. Over the past few years it has been so fun to see that Mark has found his spot in our family traditions that we've had since we were young and running around my Grandma's house, and to no one's surprise that spot just happens to be next to a bottle of Anisette and my brother. They  like to set up shop at the table crimping raviolis while adding their 'colorful' commentary to the goings on around them while the women do the real work in the kitchen.

Minus Anna + Nemo

Next up, we headed back to Cbad and went to Christmas Eve Mass and spent the night at his parents house. To offset the ridiculous amount of food we were about to consume, we headed out to take a walk around the golf course Christmas morning since it was closed for the day.  What started out as a leisurely walk turned in to a grown up style Easter egg hunt with everyone scouring the canyons for golf balls. We cleaned up with 263 balls total which makes me think the course must be pretty tough. . .or some peeps need to hit the range more often. We had a great time consuming everything in sight and opening lots of wonderful presents. The Goose really made out like a bandit on the Christmas present front this year, but we can't wait to see her rip/eat/slobber on all of them next year.

(Our 31 week picture in front of the tree turned out ridiculously goofy so you just need to use your imagination on what we look like. One hint - I'm round).

Even though we're grown up, one of the best things is getting to bust out all of the presents so we still couldn't resist heading to the beach the first chance we got to play with the new toys:

Scuba Steve sighting

We made our way back up to LA for New Year's to ring in 2013 with this crazy cast of characters. We enjoyed some good food, good laughs and a passionate debate about the 'hotness' level of Taylor Swift and Jenny McCarthy (for the record, some of us did not enjoy this). And to everyone's (or no one's since they were sleeping) surprise, I just happened to make it all the way to 1 am, I guess this no sleep thing is starting to pay off already.

2013!!

On a random note, over a year ago Mark was acting as the broker while selling my Grandparent's house for my parents. It turned out to be a cumbersome process (multiple escrows) so he mentioned more than once it would be nice if I had my salesperson's license so I could push papers while he's at work since working from home lets me be more flexible. So, like a good wife I signed up for the classes, but like a bad wife I put off actually taking the test until the house was sold and gone. Whoops. Most people have Europe or other fun things on their baby bucket list but getting this real estate monkey off my back has become a priority before having another monkey on my front comes in to play. So I signed up for the final exam and decided to give it the old college try and in true college form I waited until the last minute to cram for the test. I don't know if taking a big test like this is advisable while pregnant (not sure my brain cell works quite as well as it once did) but by some miracle I passed!  And no, I am not planning a career change, just looking to get a leg up on the next trivia game if nothing else.

The 'Goose Bump'

Mark and I are pretty lucky to have some super talented friends and we pride ourselves on taking advantage of their talents every chance we get  <insert evil laugh here>. So we were stoked when our great friend Stacy was in town for the shower and agreed to take some quick pics of the 'goose bump' (in addition to being an amazing photog she's pretty good at naming bellies too) on our way to the airport and we are so happy she did! Since these were taken a couple weeks ago its pretty surreal to look at them and realize how rapidly this little person is growing, not to mention the horizontal path of destruction my belly has taken in the past few weeks. Enjoy!

28 weeks!