Okay, it’s Wednesday – and I waited one whole day to update everyone on my appointment yesterday! Did you see that cute little boy, though? Ohmigoodness, with those chubby little cheeks and button nose, he’s going to be the most precious little man on two legs! (We also have a picture where he’s playing with his toes, but it’s not very clear, so I didn’t upload it. But it proves that he DOES have two legs!)

The good news: he’s moved to a head down position! No plans for a c-section, no need to worry about the dangers of turning him, and we probably have another month before we have to worry about his appearance! Of course, he’s only 5 pounds and 7 ounces by the closest ultrasound estimate, so he’s not even a gigantor baby like they were making us think!

In other baby news, I think we’re going to paint the nursery this weekend! What fun, fun, fun! And then the weekend after that is going to be my family and friends shower, and the weekend after that, Wendy and Isaac Van Ryn are coming to Loveland! And the weekend after THAT, I’m either going to have a baby, or I’m going to rest and relax and do nothing! I just haven’t decided yet…

Happy Sunday! I write from the happy exhaustion of someone who has been simply overwhelmed with the generosity of her fellow man. Woman, actually, in this case! My work shower was yesterday, and I can’t even tell you how tremendously it went. Evelyn Perez-Jones, hostess extraordinaire, simply outdid herself! She and Jodi went to amazing lengths to make it one of the most special times in my life!

My mom treated me to a manicure that morning, so I was styling in my fave orange dress with freshly lacquered nails, along with a gorgeous corsage that Evelyn picked up. They had the most amazing food and decorations ever. Part of the beauty of it all was the fact that we were at Evelyn’s new house, which is so gorgeous, that I can’t in good conscience tell you about it, because you’ll want to go tour it without advance notice, and she frowns on that sort of thing!

(Funny story: Evelyn’s home has really high cathedral ceilings, and they lost the balloons earlier in the day to its heights! Jodi had to stand on the top rung of a ladder and use tongs to reach the strings to get them down!)

The girls had two calendars – one for October and November – and invited everyone to guess when Caleb would be here, what time, and how much he would weigh. Also, you can’t read the tags on the little goody bags, and I can’t figure out how to scan it right now, but it would make you cry! It’s a little poem, ostensibly from Caleb, that said he was so glad they could be there to celebrate with his Mommy, and that he wished he could be there, but he’s busy growing, and he’ll see everyone soon.

Now with this sort of precious-ness in mind you can see why my makeup is a little questionable in those pictures, right? I hadn’t been to TOO many baby showers ~ most of my peeps haven’t traveled down that particular path yet. So it’s not like I can say it was the BEST shower of all time, but it was most definitely in the top ten of all time.

With just a few exceptions, every gal I’ve worked with in the last four years showed up, along with my Mom, Jon’s Mom (in from Minnesota) and Alisa. It was so humbling to be in a room with so many people that I adore that gathered to help celebrate the coming birth of my son! We played games, ate to bursting, and spent the majority of the afternoon opening presents – because I work with the most perfectly generous people in the world!

People got us a lot of the things we registered for, along with more adorable clothes than I knew existed, and everything from a puppet duck that quacks three songs to hand-embroidered bibs. And then to top it off, Jodi brought a big bag of hand-me-downs from her son Jaxson. I literally just came home and wept at how benevolent everyone was.

I’m pretty stinking exhausted today, though! When I got home, I got all the stuff unloaded – onto my dining room table, because the nursery is no where near ready yet – then Jonathan came home and we went out to dinner with Mom, Alisa and her boyfriend Chris. Then when we got home at around ten thirty, we realized that Jonathan needed to be out the door at six this morning to get to Chicago! So we ended up getting up around 4:30, and once Jonny left, I couldn’t fall back asleep. So I’ve been working on all the things that need to be done – laundry, cleaning, and THANK YOU NOTES!

The time has come to go take a nap, I fear. I had hoped to get more done today, but if I go into labor with Jonathan gone, he’ll never forgive me…

UGH! I can't figure out how to upload the stupid pictures! You've got to see them, too! But it will have to wait until Jonathan comes home - and at that point we'll probably have new ultrasound pictures as well! Yay!

I'm pulling a "Wendy!" Isaac's mommy was so in love with pregnancy that one Friday, she said, "I am going to miss having him inside me sooo much!" The following Monday, she was singing a slightly different melody...

"This kid needs to come out NOW."

I should point out that her beautiful son was born a mere four days later. Hooray for her!

As for me, I've been going on and on about how I want to wait another month and a half for Caleb to get here because I've been so COMFORTABLE! Then last night, I overdid. A lot. After a very long day at work, I came home and did some heavy lifting in our bedroom, and was getting ready to vacuum when I became so miserable I wanted to DIE! The nausea came back full force, my acid reflux threatened to rip my throat out of my head, and all the Tums did was forestall the inevitable urping. (That, and it made the urp look like I'd eaten nothing but rainbow sherbet for days...)

So Jonathan had to put up with a whiny, blechy preggo wife last night. I swear, there's something chemical released when you gripe sometimes - it really did make me feel better! And he handled it with marvelous grace - even gave me a foot rub to try to make me feel better.

Anyway, its morning now, and things are definitely looking better! I figure I could go another TWO months if I had to!
(Don't hold me to that!)

It's Tuesday again, but no OB news to report. I don't go again until next week, but then I go every week until this gorgeous little man decides to make his appearance.

Which we are PRAYING will be in November! Preferably after the first week! It's weird to me that I've been so okay with the idea of him coming earlier, and now that money is on the line, I don't want him coming a second too soon! It turns out that my Short Term Disability will only pay me for six weeks with a normal birth - whereas I was assuming it would be eight. Not cool. I have enough vacation days to make it seven - if we count Christmas and New Years as a holiday... oy! God's got it under control. Caleb will be born at the perfect time.

To those of you asking, I feel MUCH better, thank you very much! That Sudafed didn't seem to be doing much, but the fact is that I can breathe freely and not hack up a lung every few hours. That's all I'm really looking for ~ I don't have to feel GREAT, I just want to be able to function non-fuzzily!

My work baby shower is on Saturday. Both mine and Jon's mom will be there, as well as quite a few of the gals that I've worked with over the years. I'm looking forward to it, just because I know that Evelyn, the Hostess with the Bestest Parties In The World, is a butt-kicking party thrower. (Hence the title.) She actually hosted a baby shower for me two years ago after an April Fool's Day joke had me giving birth on Labor Day. Not kidding - they bought a doll and everything. Actually, my first stuff for Caleb is coming from that shower! There are some booties with grasshoppers, baby lotions and soaps, and Nuk pacifiers, which are the ones I'm going to use. I'm looking forward to seeing what she does with a REAL baby shower since the fake one was so killer!

Not much else to report - except that I'm still really comfortable, and getting more excited by the day! I got a food processor for my birthday, and I'm going to start looking up recipes for baby food! I know I won't need that for a while, but it's awfully, AWFULLY fun to think about!

Happy Day, all - I write this on a Tuesday, which is my official OB day these days. My appointment this morning went well ~ still not gaining too much weight, I’m measuring at about 37 weeks, and I can take Sudafed for four days! (In order of importance from least to greatest.)

With regards to the weight: I’m at the point where if I can maintain this slow of a gain, I’ll end up losing weight overall when Caleb is born! Not that anyone should think this is that great, because not so many people start their pregnancies as overweight as I do… but it’s still something!

As for the measurement, I have another ultrasound in two weeks to find out if my baby boy is going to be born really early or if he’s going to be born really big! At this point, I’m still leaning toward hoping for the latter. (Give me another month and see if I’m still saying that!) Things are still going incredibly easily for me as far as the pregnancy is concerned, and I’m happy with him staying IN for a while. The only problem I’m having is…

NEEDING THE SUDAFED! I’ve been congested and gross for over a week now, and it’s getting really ridiculous. It’s actually made me really sick to my stomach, so I’m really excited about having it STOP. Hopefully, a few days of decongestant will clear me up, and then I’ll be back to loving latter pregnant life like crazy!

We had our other childbirth class on Saturday – soooo much fun! We got to see a FRESH baby on our tour. Literally, his daddy was bringing him out of the room where his momma just had a c-section to the nursery while we were there. (That baby was nine pounds, five ounces. And my cousin just had her baby, nine pounds, three ounces. See, LOTS of people have gigantic babies!)

And the hospital is exquisite. I’ve been really worried about things like sharing a room, and not having enough space to have people visit and things like that. I won’t have to share a room unless I have a c-section, and then it’s only a possibility for a couple of hours while I’m in the recovery room. And the room I’m in after the delivery/recovery room is really quite spacious and lovely for visitors!

The little weird congestion thing has grown into a full fledged cold-ish thing! Stinky.

On the upside, it generally gets better toward the end of the day before degenerating into complete snotty chaos at the onset of evening. Delicious! It's so hilarious! It started on Saturday afternoon, and it's Tuesday afternoon now - generally, I would have kicked it by now. However, apparently, my body thinks that Caleb is more important than his mom's health right now.

I - and my box of tissues - wholeheartedly agree!

I really didn't write to complain, I just wanted to make sure that I wrote down all the wonderful things that Jonathan keeps doing. I can't think of the band name, but have you heard that song, "Stacy's Mom?" ('Stacy's mom has got it going on' is the gist of it.) Well, Jonny Fashbaugh started singing to me on Saturday morning, "Caleb's mom has got it going on, she's all I want, she's all I'm dreaming of. Caleb can't you see, I'm in love with your mommy..." and so on. He's the most precious and wonderful hoos-band (for me) in the whole world!

By the way, I've decided that everyone should have an online journal. (Or BLOG, if you don't wanna have a cheesy website like this!) It makes a wonderful way to keep up with your friends and family! Of course, it's mostly just friends for me, because not too many of my family checks out my website. Boo...

Not only did our first childbirth class NOT gross me out (too much) but it made me even more excited to bring Caleb into our world! Actually, I sobbed uncontrollably, and it led to some weird allergy and congestion issues that made me miserable all the way from church last night through to this morning! Darn those hormone-y emotional trips!

It was so fun to hear about all the things that would be happening, and we even watched videos that were filmed in the hospital I’m going to be giving birth in! (Rose Medical Center – the official hospital for the Colorado Avalanche and Denver Nuggets. You know, in case Caleb comes out with prodigious abilities…) Jonathan even had a good time. I tell you what, if things could go as well as I think they could, this isn’t going to be as traumatic as I had previously feared. It seems like we might even have a good time!

Not that I expect it to be all fun and games – but honestly, when people were talking about being in labor for twenty to forty hours, I figured they were like pushing and sweating and in constant pain for all that time. Nope! The CONSTANT pain part doesn’t last more than a few hours usually, and before that, there are breaks between the excruciating pain. I can handle anything for a few hours, right?

Plus, it seems like they really encourage the Daddies to be involved! Half of our class was focused on the “birth partners,” and telling them what to do. Massage your wife, tell her jokes, walk with her, and slow dance in the hallways through the contractions. Plus, we get to roll around on birthing balls together. How fun is that?!

One more class next weekend – this one focused on getting through the pain naturally, birthing positions, what to take to the hospital, etc. Next week’s will focus on medical pain relief, c-sections, and we’ll actually do a tour of the maternity ward. I’m looking forward to that the most, I think!