Baby Shower

I had my baby shower yesterday.  It was sooo wonderful.  I received so many great gifts for Rachel.  Thank you everybody for making it such a perfect shower.  Thank you to Pam, Amanda, Chris, Brianne, and Becky for putting it on and making it run so smoothly.  Here are a few pictures from the shower.

Here I am with my 2 moms.

My mom with her 2 daughters.

I am opening one of the homemade quilts (from Chris) that I received.  This one has Rachel's name sewn in on it.

So, after I got home and Brianne, Heather, and I put all of the gifts in Rachel's bedroom (which currently looks more messy than it did before I started cleaning it...but hopefully will be remedied tomorrow when Becky comes over to help me organize), Brianne hung out with me for a bit.  It was really nice to hang out with my sister and just talk.  As soon as she left, I plugged in my camera to upload pictures so that I could post them.  I decided that before I did that, I needed to pee...then I decided I should change and get into comfy clothes.  By this time, I was exhausted after a busy day.  I went upstairs and changed, put my hair up, came back down to upload the pictures, when I realized that I heard water running.  I walked toward the kitchen, and saw at least an inch of standing water throughout the entire kitchen.  I threw my socks off, and ran into the bathroom to turn off the water.  Somehow it did not flush correctly and within the five minutes I went upstairs, it flooded the entire bathroom and kitchen.  There was so much water that it was flowing out of the kitchen over the 3/4 inch lip of the doorjam and outside.  I did not realize that a toilet produced that much water in 5 minutes.  I ran back upstairs to get towels.  I started sopping up water with towels, but quickly realized that towels were not going to do the job correctly.  I opened the door and started mopping the water over the lip of the doorjam and out the door.  I was pretty much starting to panic.  I had no idea how I was going to get all of the water out.  It was under the fridge and washer and dryer.  I called Tim's mom as soon as I realized that it was too big of a job to do alone.  While I was working, my back started to hurt from leaning over and picking up completely drenched towels and mopping the water out.  After I nearly slipped on the water 2 times,  I also called Tim who was in Ocean Beach with his brothers and a friend (an hour away) and told him what was going on.  Heather got to my house about 15 minutes later and brought a trashbag full of towels.  We spent almost an hour sopping up water.  Tim got home shortly  after we finished getting to everything we could reach and moved the washer and dryer so that they could climb behind them and dry back there.  Our kitchen and bathroom floor has never been cleaner.  I was so glad that I had today off of work because after all of that, I was absolutely exhausted.  I still had not had dinner yet, so I heated up some leftovers so that I could eat and then go to bed.  I am tired just writing about yesterday.

31 and a half weeks

I had a doctors appointment yesterday.  Dr. Langford said that everything still looks good.  Rachel did not want to have her picture taken though.  She was facing backwards the entire time.  He did say that I have already experienced lightening (where the baby drops).  The thing about that is that she has always been low.  He said she will not get any lower than she already is right now, which explains why I feel her on my bladder all of the time.  The other major piece of information that he told me is that he thinks Rachel is on the big side.  He thinks that she will be at least 8 pounds.  I have always hoped that I would stay at work until my due date, but considering my circumstances, the doctor is not sure that I will be able to make it that long.  I now have to talk to human resources and find out how that will work as far as my sick days, if I will need to use disability, if I will get paid for the entire time I am out, if I go out early will I have to go back to work before the end of the year...so many questions.  I have another appointment in 2 weeks, hopefully I will know more by then.

10 Weeks to Go

I am now 30 weeks pregnant.  3/4 of the way there.  Rachel is getting bigger by the day.  I think I have started "nesting" a bit.  I am now realizing how little time we have and how many big thinks we still need to do.

The first major thing on our list was to get rid of the popcorn on the ceiling.  We got that done on Friday.  Since that is taken care of, now we need to get the ceiling painted.  We are hoping to remodel the upstairs bathroom and had someone come out on Friday as well to look at it.  I am afraid that if we decide to get that done, once they start they will find water damage and it will end up being a bigger project than we hope.  A few other things on our list: new closet doors in our bedrooms, new blinds in the entire house, install ceiling fans (which the house is not wired for now), paint Rachel's room, ... and I keep adding smaller things to the list every day.

29 and a Half Weeks

We had our 30 week appointment today.  I am actually about 29 and a half weeks.  We got our first 4D pictures today.  We have some 4D video that Dr. Langford has taken in the past, but this is the first time that we actually got pictures in 4D.  Most people do not get pictures/video every time they go to the doctor, so we are sooo lucky to have that.  It was pretty exciting to get this picture today.

This is the first appointment in quite awhile that she did not have her hands covering her face the whole time, so the doctor was able to get a couple of pictures of her face today.  We now start going to the doctor every two weeks.

I hope that the last 10 weeks of my pregnancy goes as smoothly as the first 30.  Overall, I have no major complaints.  It has brought back my sciatica a bit (which has been mostly gone for a couple of years now), but it has not been too bad yet.  There have been a couple of days where I think that I did too much and then it was hurting, but as long as I am careful, hopefully it will stay away.  On a positive note, my sister was able to come to my appointment today.  It was really nice to have her there.

Emma Rose Stephens

I finally got to meet Emma yesterday.  She was born on January 7th.  I went to the hospital to visit Marie on the 8th, but Emma spent a few days in the NICU and I was unable to see her.  She is home safe and healthy now.  I wanted to go and visit her on Monday but Tim was sick and we did not want to expose her to what Tim had, so I told him we would go later in the week when he was feeling better.  Marie brought Emma by Tim's work on Tuesday and he got to see her the next day.  I was so mad at him that he got to see her before me since we couldn't go on Monday because of him.  Emma is adorable and well worth the wait.

The Crib Has Been Put Together

The crib is all put together.  Tim and his dad worked on it this week and got it all set up in a couple of hours.  It looks so good.  We still need to buy a mattress for it, but the hard part is over.  I am so excited that everything is progressing.  It is making me more and more ready for Rachel to come.  There is still a lot to do, but we are taking care of things all the time now.

So, I have been looking for quite a long time for bedding.  We were originally going to go with an ocean/sealife theme, but decided that we liked a Hawaiian theme more.  We will get accessories that are sealife, but the material that we really like is this.  I think that we are going to try to incorporate both of the following patterns into our theme.  I am still trying to find out if both of these prints are the same size.  The fabric store is in LA, so I have e-mailed them to see if they are both the same pattern.

I have cleaned out most of Rachel's room, this corner is all that is left that I still have to take care of.  

The Furniture Came In

So, the crib and dresser came in and here it is.  Wahooo!  The dresser is all in one piece, but the crib still needs to be put together.  So here it sits, until Tim gets a chance to put the crib together.

Well, I still need to finish some cleaning before there is much room for the furniture.  I actually got a lot done over Christmas break, but there is still some more to get organized.  You should have seen the room before...it was much worse.  Even though it looks like a lot of clutter, I think it will only take a couple of hours to finish.  The cats do not know what to do with their bedroom now that their bed is gone.

They are actually getting along pretty well right now.  They go through stages where they get a little frustrated with each other.  But here you can see, they have found a new place to sleep...Tim's spot on the couch.