37 Week Appointment

So in my last post I said I probably wouldn't post again until after the baby was born, but the appointment I had this last Friday was too fun not to share. I hit the 37 week mark on Wednesday and I am feeling so many emotions at this point. The main emotions I am feeling is nervous and extreme excitement. Our little girl could really arrive any day now and be healthy. At the end of my 36 week appointment they told me that they would like to do an ultrasound to determine if she has moved into the head down position and then also get an estimate on how much she weighs. I was so happy to find out that I would be getting another ultrasound done before she was born, I hadn't had an ultrasound done since I was about 25 weeks along and was curious to see how much has changed.

I have been really lucky to be able to have Brian come to all but one of my appointments this pregnancy. I think he enjoys it despite the sometimes long waits in the office. I think his favorite appointments have probably been the ones where he gets to see our little girl, or at least those have been my favorite appointments. A couple weeks ago at my appointment it was actually the midwife at the practice that we go to that we met with and she showed Brian how to feel the position of the baby. It was really fun to see his face light up as he identified her head, then her back/butt, and then her arms and legs. Again Brian was able to come to my appointment this last Friday and even though he is getting nervous about the actual deliver I think his excitement for meeting our little girl face to face has increased.

So we get to my appointment and luckily don't have to wait long at all to see the ultrasound technician. We go back in the room and for the first 10 minutes or so she was doing the measurements, making sure everything looked good. Unfortunately for me the screen was turned, so I couldn't really see anything, but Brian was able to watch as she did the measurements. After she finished the measurements she turned the screen so I could get a look at our sweet little girl. She is so much bigger than the last time we saw her! Based on her measurements the technician estimated her to be about 6 lbs right now. I am curious to see how accurate the estimate is and how big she will actually be once she is born. She was still head down like she was at my 35 week appointment, which is good, hopefully she wont decide to try to flip around before she is born. As she moved around to show us her face and profile she point out that there was hair floating around her head, so that was really neat. It looks like she will be coming out with hair on her head, the question is how much. We spent several minutes looking at her profile. As we were doing so the technician said "Oh, it looks like she was going to open her mouth, but she stopped." And then a few seconds later she started opening and closing her mouth, she was practicing sucking. It was so neat because we could see her little tongue moving as she was doing this. Here are some of the ultrasound pictures:

Her profile, making duck lips.

Her heartbeat. Nice and healthy.

She is the funniest little girl already. Throughout my pregnancy each time they try to measure her heartbeat she will move away from the device. Her heartbeat will actually become more rapid and then settle back down. So following in her same pattern she had to show her dislike of having her heartbeat recorded, she gave me the biggest kick while the technician was listening to the heartbeat. She is so funny. I can tell already that she is going to have a ton of personality. I cannot wait to meet her face to face. The doctor we met with after our ultrasound appointment let us know that they don't like to go more than a week past the due date, and so it looks like we will have her in our arms no later than February 8th. It feels surreal that this pregnancy is almost over.

River's First Christmas and Disneyland

So much has happened since my last update that it is a little hard for me to know where to start, so I will just start with the biggest event, Christmas. Brian and I enjoyed our last Christmas together with just the two of us. Prior to Christmas we had tried to decorate the tree but each time we added a decoration River decided it was her goal in life to get (even if that meant bending the branches and climbing to the top of the tree). Brian knew I was disappointed that the tree was not fully decorated and so I was pleasantly surprised to find on Christmas morning he decorated it before I got up. Having River around this Christmas made me realize how different Christmas will be with children present. Next year I will definitely have some child/kitten proof ornaments to put in the tree. The funnest part of the morning was having River open her presents. Throughout the weeks prior to Christmas as we've have presents under the tree we have had to watch her and make sure she doesn't open them before she was supposed to. She loved getting to tear away little pieces of paper. Here are some pictures from when she was opening her presents:

Sniffing the present. (Notice the small bits of paper on the ground)

"Why do you take so many pictures?"

 

 

The Prize!

We also got River a new toy with feathers since she had pretty much destroyed the one that we already had for her. The funny thing is that she pulled out several feathers within the first 5 minutes of playing with it, and then now a week later she still prefers her other feather on a string toy.

Smelling her new toy.

"I love feathers!"

After opening River's presents Brian and I opened the gives that we had gotten for each other. I got Brian the new Assassins Creed game, along with another game, and he enjoyed the rest of the presents/thoughts/events I had planned for him for the 25 days of Christmas. Brian surprised me with a new Kindle, since I had accidentally broke mine in the weeks prior to moving. We then headed to my parents for Christmas dinner. All in all it was a very good Christmas.

River under the Christmas tree.

Our little family on Christmas.

A few weeks ago we discovered that River has fleas! The poor kitten has been pretty miserable forgetting what she is in the middle of doing to stop and scratch. We are still unsure where she got the fleas since we haven't seen any anywhere besides her, but to help her out we had to give her a bath using some flea shampoo my dad had given me. As usual the bath was pretty traumatizing for her, but she did a lot better then her last bath. Unfortunately after her bath she wouldn't let us dry her off, even though she was wet and miserable. Me being so supportive decided to snap some photos of her cute sogginess.

This past week has been a lot of fun. Leanna and Doug flew down on Tuesday to go to Disneyland while the Christmas decorations were still up and so we were lucky enough to be able to go with them. Since Leanna is about 30 weeks along and I am now 36 weeks along we knew that making it through a whole day at Disneyland would be pretty miserable. The solution to that problem was renting wheelchairs from Disneyland. I felt like a wimp for doing it, but I am really glad I did. We did not want to cause me to go into labor early since Chloe would still be considered pre-term if she were delivered at this point in time. A big bonus of being in the wheelchairs is that we were able to shorten our wait time for many of the rides because we were able to go through the wheelchair access on the rides. We also got to sit in the wheelchair viewing area for Fantasmic. Brian had never seen it before, and it is now his favorite show at Disneyland.

Us in front of the Christmas tree on Main Street

End of It's a Small World

The lights came on just as we were exiting It's a Small World

This past Wednesday I hit my 36 week mark. I cannot believe that our little girl will be here in less than a month now. I am starting to have appointments weekly now, which could only mean that I am in the homestretch now. This next Friday they have me scheduled for an ultrasound, which is exciting since the last ultrasound I had was at 25 weeks. I am so excited to get at least one more glimpse of our little girl before she makes her arrival. They will be making a guess on how much she will weigh, I am extremely curious about this. I feel like my belly has gotten so huge in the past couple weeks.

Hopefully my next post will include some pictures of Chloe, along with the story of her birth. I can't wait for her arrival, although I know patiently waiting for her to be ready to come is in her best interest.

Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Gardens

So as part of Christmas this year I wanted to do something more for Brian besides the presents that he chose and was already aware of. Thanks to pinterest I had the idea to do 25 Days of Christmas for him. Most of the days consist of compliments, things that I love about him, but some of the days are activities that I have planned for us that cost little/no money. December 2nd we made our first outing. It was to Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden for their Holiday Open House. We have driven past these gardens several times since moving here and I have been curious about what it has to offer. Luckily for us the open house was free so we didn't have to spend a dime to enjoy its beauty. There was a light drizzle going on that day, but not so bad as to make us change our minds. Here are some of the pictures we took at the gardens:

When we first walked in we saw this cute little bunny.

Enjoying the cactus plants.

Crazy looking plant.

This tree was awesome. Because of the wetness from the rain it was this really pretty vibrant red color.

Here is another one of the vibrant red trees.

The base of this tree was huge.

See....it even looks huge next to my baby bump.

Pretty leaf.

The entire bush that this leaf was from was covered with water droplets. 

The pod coming out from this plant was so tall, at least 10 ft.

Funny squirrel with a huge bushy tail.

The leaves from this tree were so vibrant.

Blossoms on the top of the cacti. 

This is the beaver tail cactus.

The rain made the bark on this tree turn to camouflage.

There were only a few bushes of poppies,  and even fewer blossoms, but I love the way the rain sits on this one.

I enjoyed our trip to the gardens. When we were still living in Idaho we would often go on walks to gardens on campus and it was always a nice way to rewind from the week. I am glad we took the time to check out these gardens, it will be nice to check them out during different parts of the year and see how the plants change. I definitely can't wait to go back during a time that flowers are blossoming. It will be really beautiful. I think it will be fun to take Chloe on walks here once she arrives.

Baby Shower

So this past Saturday (December 1st) my baby shower was held. It was so much fun to have a group of people come together to celebrate the life that will be coming into this world so soon. Even though my mom and sister were the hosts for the baby shower I did a lot of the planning since I don't have as many responsibilities to worry about as they did. It was so much fun to plan. When I was younger I used to be such a party planner, but as I've gotten older I haven't had as much time to plan events. For the baby shower I new right of the back that I wanted to have an owl theme since that it what Chloe's room will be, but to make it more festive instead of traditional colors you would think of for a baby shower or owl themed shower I decide to go with Christmas color (reds, greens, whites). I really like the way everything turned out. I wish some things I could have done more with, but there is only so much a pregnant person can do.

Leanna flew out to California a couple nights before the shower and then Brian and I drove down to my parents to pick her up so I could have her around the house on Friday to help me bake the different treats for us to eat at the baby shower. I am so so so glad that I had her around to help me. We were going to make a Berry Cake Roll and a Peppermint Cake Roll, but since neither of us felt confident enough to actually roll the cake we ended up using the same recipe, but then just cutting the cake so we could do layers. The other thing that we had fun making that day was the different flavored popcorns. River did not like the sound of the air popper. We made a Cajun popcorn (Brian wanted something more savory), a Caramel popcorn, and a Heavenly Hash popcorn. I wish I had thought to take pictures while we were baking all day, but it slipped my mind, which is probably good since my kitchen was a wonderful mess. It was funny to have Leanna in the kitchen baking with me since the kitchen is narrow and we both have our baby bumps so we kept bumping into each other and the counters.

Here are some photos of the decorations from the baby shower.

Banner that I made. I might shorten it now and put it up in her room somewhere.

The room where the shower was held. Nice big comfy seats.

The table with things for guests to do when they arrive and  we wait for others.

This was to give each guest an opportunity to write down their wishes for our baby girl. I am putting them all together into a book that I will keep for her.

This wasn't as popular as I thought it would be. We had sharpies for guests to write words of encouragement or a funny message on a diaper. I think some must have thought that what they wrote had to do with poop.....so only about 20 diapers were written on.

The favors that I made, and a sheet for guests to write their guesses for when the baby will arrive.

One of the many cute owl decorations that I made.

Balloons hanging from the ceiling.

 Here are pictures of the food that we served at the baby shower:

The more healthy food.

And the sweets. :)

These pinwheel cookies were fun to make, and luckily I could make the dough in advance and then just bake them a couple days in advance.

Closeup of the Peppermint Cake

Closeup of the Berry Cake

I was really happy with the turnout of guests, I wasn't sure what to expect since I have not been living in California for the past 4 years, but it was great to see people that I hadn't seen for awhile and celebrate the coming of our little girl. First we played "Baby Animals", the guests had to guess the name of what the baby is called for a particular animal, such as "kitten" for "cat" or "gosling" for "goose". It was funny to see how many people were stumped for some of the animals, I guess I made it a little too hard. The next game we played was "The Price is Right". It was funny to have Leanna walking around to show everyone the product because she kept accidentally flashing the actual retail price to some of the guests. Next we had everyone cut ribbon to the length they thought it would take to go around my belly. That was entertaining because as people were walking in they kept saying that I look small, but then many of them made the ribbon too long. But we had 3 people that were so close to matching the correct length that we ended up with a 3 way tie. Originally after playing that game we were going to play a game of "Guess the Baby Food", but because of the demographic of the crowd we decided to skip that so as to avoid having several unhappy older ladies in the room. It would have been fun, but I think it was a wise decision.

Instead of playing the last game we skipped straight to opening the gifts. Honestly I preferred the moments that we were playing to games over opening the presents since I hate being the center of attention, but it was so much fun to open all those presents and see the many cute outfits that I can dress Chloe in in the future. I am really grateful for all the gifts that we were given, they will help out so much. Now I have the fun  task of writing thank you notes. I should probably get on those before the baby arrives so I'm not overwhelmed with all the work. I had so much fun at the baby shower and I hope that those that came had fun as well. It would not have been as much fun if others had not come to show their love and support.

Here are some pictures of people during the shower.

Here's my lovely mother. I definitely appreciate her help.

Leanna cutting the ribbon to my belly.

High school friends

"I have a present for you!"

Flashback to colorguard days.

Not the best picture, but funny because we were joking that she was ready to pop with twins.

Planning baby showers is a little different than planning birthday parties, but now that I have planned one I know more of what to expect of future baby showers. It was so much fun. I can't believe that Chloe will be here in possibly less than 2 months now.