18 weeks

I am currently in my 19th week, and things are progressing well. We went to the doctor on Monday, and he said everything looks good...my weight is good, my blood sugar is good, and the baby is growing well. We got to hear the heartbeat again, which is still one of the coolest things I have ever heard. It took him a couple of tries to find the baby (which made me nervous for a second), and we heard the baby moving while he was looking. I still haven't felt any movement yet, and I can't wait!!!! It still just completely amazes me that there is a person growing inside of me, that was created my Brad and I. Wow. Here's a photo of me at 18 weeks. Can you tell that I am pregnant? (You totally can when I have my shirt up, but I am not so sure how I feel about posting that out in cyberspace on an un-protected web page!)






So, we were at Tracie and Matt's wedding in Cleveland this past weekend. (Tracie was the honoree for the bachelorette party in Austin when I first found out I was pregnant.) It is our fifth and final wedding for this year. It has been exhausting! 5 weddings in about 2.5 months!!! But they were all super fun. I just love weddings. Brad was in the wedding, and I was a program attendant. It was so great to see some of our close friends all in one place! All 6 of Brad's friends that were in our wedding were there, which was great because it's rare that all 6 of them are able to get together in one place. All the girls were just amazed at my stomach, which is definitely hard to the touch (that's where my uterus is!) This baby is going to have lots of aunts and uncles who aren't related to my parents! I am very excited about that!

The funniest moment of the night was when we walked into the after-party and Rich was sitting there in his tux vest and tie with no shirt! He looked like he was from the VIllage people or something. Here's a photo (sorry Jen!!)

There were two other pregnant ladies at the wedding, which was nice!! One of them is the wife of one of the ushers, Jaymin, and she is due on the same day that I am. What are the chances?!?! And the other is one of the wives of one of Matt's B-school friends, and she is due about a month after me. She was in Austin as well, so it was good to see her again! Jaymin told Brad that he kisses his wife's stomach every morning, so Brad has started doing that, too. It's pretty cute! I just can't wait to meet this little person!

So, I am definitely starting to pop out and get the bump! It's pretty exciting!!!! I am still not big enough for a couple of the maternity shirts that I bought, but I am sure I will grow into them! The only other thing that I have noticed is that my hair is a different texture, and is thicker than when I am not pregnant. So I have two things now that I have never had in my life: boobs and thick hair! How exciting!!!

Dead Battery

So, we went to the doctor yesterday (and he said everything looks great....but more about that in another post!). We walked out of the doctor's office, and I tried to start my car, but nothing, not even an attempt to turnover. Not good. (Thank goodness Bradley was with me!) So, we tried to jump it unsuccessfully because the jumper cables were not sturdy enough. (I called my dad to get his take on things!) And then we called Allstate Motor service, and they sent a dude over to jump my car with a portable battery charger thing. All paid for (thank you Allstate.)

He said if I noticed my lights getting dim while I was driving home, it was probably because my alternator was bad and I should pull over before the car died in the middle of the road. He also said not to use the A/C or the radio to make sure the battery got a full charge. So, I drove home with the window rolled down, no A/C, watching the lights to make sure they weren't going dim!

I made it home safely, and tried to turn the car back on right after I turned it on. Nothing again, so it must be the battery! (Brad and I had already decided to carpool today, thank goodness.)

At work today, McKenna (my local car guru, not to be confused with my out of town car guru, my dad) said if it wasn't the battery, it was probably the alternator. What the F!!! The car only has 50,000 miles on it, you would think the alternator would last longer than that!

We really should have taken the battery out last night so I could take it to Pep Boys during work today to have it tested and if necessary, buy a new one. But we aren't that bright apparently. So, we came home and Brad took the battery out and we took it to Pep Boys and they said it was a bad battery, so we bought a new one, got some Applebee's car side to go on the way home, and then Brad replaced the battery. And the true test....the car started perfectly once it was complete! I am so proud of my husband!! His first car part replacement! Good job!!! Thank goodness it wasn't the alternator, since we just got the brakes and all these hoses replaced on Brad's car. The last thing we needed was another big car expense!

BTW, Applebee's Car Side to Go was great! We ordered and as soon as we pulled up, the brought our order right out. We could definitely be doing that again in the future!

On another note, our deck materials have arrived, so hopefully if the weather is good tomorrow, we could have a frame in our backyard tomorrow afternoon!! I will keep you posted.

Deck in process

So, finally after about 2 months, it looks like our deck is actually going to be built. We were hoping for the end of May, but the end of June will work! We will still have July, August and September to enjoy it.

We went through a lot with the permit office. They didn’t approve it because the contractor didn’t have a license (he is insured and bonded!!), so the contractor had to go up to Newark or Trenton or somewhere and apply for a license, which was approved, but he didn’t get the number until last Friday. He submitted the number to the permit office yesterday and we were approved. He is coming tonight to go over the plans (and get paid for the materials) and then hopefully dig the holes on Thursday!

The kind of bummer part of it all is that we are heading the Cleveland this weekend for a wedding, so I hope they don’t build it all. I need to be able to take pictures of the progress.

I am excited that we will be able to grill out for July 4th!!! What would July 4th be without a BBQ???

Things are blooming!

An update on our garden: It's coming along well (for the most part.) We had to order a few replacement plants, but my mom said my aunt had trouble with the same sort of plant, so I think the plants are defective, so that makes me feel better! And this week a couple of the plants starting blooming!

Very exciting!!! And some of them are getting pretty tall. I think we may have to move a couple of them because they are sort of over-crowding each other.

I am also blooming! I have started wearing maternity pants all the time now because I can't button any of my normal pants. But I have decided that I kind of like it because it's much easier to go to the bathroom (and I have to go a lot more frequently than I used to!). But ask me again in a few months, and I might have a different opinion.

We went to the doctor on Monday, and we both heard the heartbeat, which was so AMAZING!! It was very loud and very fast. It is just so amazing to me that there is a little person growing inside of me. We watched "Conception to Birth" from the Discovery Channel last night (Brad's sister sent it to us, thanks, Sarah!). It was pretty amazing to watch and think about how amazing the whole process of two cells turning into a baby. It all happens in nine months, and somehow all the cells know what to do and how to form the heart, the brain, the fingers, etc. Absolutely amazing! I can't wait until I can feel the baby moving...should be soon!

We also went and registered at BabiesRUs today. Oh my goodness, that place is so overwhelming!!! Babies sure do require a lot of gear! It was very exciting to think that in about 6 months, we will have a new little miracle in our house to use all of that stuff. We sure to have a lot to do to get ready for this baby. First order of business is to clean out the nursery.....

Driving in New Jersey is the worst!!!!

So, I just have to go on a brief tirade about how ridiculous driving in New Jersey is. We had to go drop off Brad’s car at the Audi dealership because the brake pad sensor light and the check engine light came on last week. (I could go on another tirade about that, but I will stay on point with my current tirade!!!!)

In New Jersey, some brilliant person decided that in order to help traffic flow, they should create jughandles, which basically means that you have to turn right to turn left and you can’t turn around easily if you figure out you are going the wrong way. (It’s hard to explain, and I didn’t really understand it until I had been here for a couple of weeks, but basically you can’t turn left from major roads onto minor roads, so you make a right hand turn and go around a circle kind of like an exit ramp and then you are at a light where you can either turn left to get on the same road you were on going the other direction, or go to straight to be on the road you could have been on if you COULD TURN LEFT!)

So, we are driving west down 70 and the Mercedes dealership where the Audi dealership used to be is on the other side of the road, so we have to do the jug handle only to figure out that the Audi dealership is ½ mile further west down the road. 15 minutes later, we arrive at the Audi dealership, because of course we could only turn right out of the parking lot, and we turned on a road that we thought was a jug handle, but in fact it was not because all of a sudden we were driving around in a neighborhood. We finally get back on the road the way we were going originally and of course we have to do another jug handle because the dealership is on the other side of the road, but the stupid jug handle is too far in advance of the light, so we just turned around in a parking lot. I was so FRUSTRATED!!!!! If it was a normal place we would have been able to turn left out of the first parking lot and then turn left into the dealership, but NO, they have to make it so much more complicated.

And this from the same state where people are actually complaining about the possibility of self-serve gas even if it would lower the price of gas 5 cents. Um, hello, everywhere else (except Oregon) people pump their own gas every day!!!!

GRR!!! Living in New Jersey drives me crazy sometimes.

Ok, end of rant, I just had to get that off my chest.