weekend at home

Our productive weekend at home is slowly coming to an end. Probably our only productive weekend this month too! Between working and Dusty and Julie's Wedding, our weekends are full and busy for the rest of November!

So here is what we did! Thursday night I worked, and Ed had a vacation day on Friday (which is why he didn't have to work this weekend) so him and Rowan hung out while I slept. Ed swapped out our living room furniture. We had other couches in the basement that were in our living room in Hartland, and our current tan furniture is on it's last leg (the feet are falling off), so we decided to throw them away and bring up the other stuff. Saturday we spent the morning in the basement organizing and cleaning. We moved our totes to a different area and created a play area for Rowan. Now that the weather isn't as warm it is hard to get outside, so we were hoping to get her another place to play. We will see how it works. But we were able to get her tent and balls out, and tunnel, and took her bike down there. And probably more outside stuff once we get around to organizing the garage for winter. This was on our list for the weekend but we didn't get that far. We might have gotten a little lazy today.

 In addition to moving around totes, I decided to go through some of the baby stuff and see what we have and what we might need. Hung up clothes but haven't washed anything yet, we will wait until the date gets closer to do all of that. It looks like we have plenty of clothes, but we are long on onesies and cotton gowns/sleepers, but not really appropriate for Wisconsin in March. So might need to get some fleece sleepers to get by the first few weeks (neutral of course). I don't think I will be at Babies R Us buying clothes a week or two after this child is born (not with 2 kids anyways). Working on picking out paint colors for the nursery as well. I have it pretty narrowed down, but can't decide if I want to do green and brown or blue and brown. I did green and brown with Rowan, so would like to switch it up, but don't want it to be too boyish! So we will see.

This morning, Ed headed outside to try to finish up the swingset area. Meaning pulling up grass, laying down weed barrier and laying down mulch. But we ran out of mulch again. Need a few more bags, and I/we just couldn't get ourselves to head to Home Depot today to get more. So hopefully tomorrow so we can get that completely finished up before it snows or something. While he was doing that, Rowan and I made cookies. Nana shared her Peanut butter cookie with Candy Bar recipe with us. This is what you make when you have too many leftover candy bars after Halloween. Let's just say, one batch of cookies didn't put a dent in our leftover chocolate, and this is leftover from what I bought, not what Rowan brought home! More cookies to come this week! Rowan was too funny with the mixer. She kept wanting me to take pictures of her saying 'cheese'. Very weird for her. So I guess when I want a picture of her smiling I need to get the mixer out!

Oh, the other pictures of Rowan are her watching Snow White (the newest movie obsession) on our portable DVD player in our bed! We did finally replace our dead laptop this weekend too. But I guess since one this is replaced, something else should break! Rowan has been watching movies in our bed the last few days so we don't have to give up the living room television, and yesterday our DVD player in our bedroom decided to fail! So this is our current replacement. But we can't afford for the portable one to give up on us either! So might have to replace the DVD player, unless someone has an extra DVD player they want to give us!

That's our weekend in a nutshell. Now onto Packer game and snacks!

jillian mary

defies all prematurity odds...

Since November is Prematurity Awareness Month, (http://www.marchofdimes.com/prematurityawareness.html)

I find it even more fitting to share this great news! But let me back up...

My dear friend and co-worker, Cora, welcomed her first child (Amelia Pearl) at just 23 weeks and 4 days gestation, over 4 years ago. Amelia turned 4 in June, and is a perfect little woman! After much planning, preparation, education, prevention, and medicine, Cora and Jason were able to welcome their 2nd baby girl into the world today, at 37 weeks gestation via scheduled c-section!

The much awaited Jillian Mary was welcomed to the world at 8:13am, at 7 pounds 7 ounces, and 19.5 inches long! Her family and big sister are so excited to have her here after a long 27 weeks of modified bedrest, and hoping and praying for a term healthy baby! And they got it!

 Jillian Mary on the left and Amelia Pearl on the right (3 Weeks old) with Cora's 6.5 size wedding ring on her arm.

Amelia is so happy to have her little sister here! So happy for the McRunte family!

addendum

Sorry, I did leave out the babies estimated weight on ultrasound:
14 ounces aka 0.875 lbs aka 396 grams!

20 week belly

20 weeks and growing...

The comparison this pregnancy. 20 weeks vs 17 weeks vs 15 weeks vs 13 weeks. And I thought things were looking the same! Definitely not! Since I didn't see the doctor or nurse today, I didn't get weighed or a blood pressure. I stepped on the scale at home, and it says I gained 4 more pounds. Not sure how close that is compared to the office's scale. But probably not too far off! I have come to grips with the weight gain, especially after seeing the belly growing for sure!

20 weeks

Half way done...

This morning we had our ultrasound. For the most part the baby cooperated nicely. The ultrasound tech was having issues getting views of the brain as the baby kept burying itself deep in my pelvis. But otherwise there was much cooperation.

My doctor didn't end up being in the office today as she had surgery recently, but they still wanted me to come in for the ultrasound. So she called me in the afternoon to discuss the ultrasound results. She really had nothing but good things to say about it. My due date based on my last period has been March 21, and based on baby's size they came up with March 19th, so we are staying with the 21st. My cervix is long, placenta looks good and is posterior (NO MORE PREVIA!). Fluid amount is good. Heart has 4 chambers which rules out 60-70% of heart defects, brain structures look normal as well. Heart Rate on ultrasound was 138. The AFP (blood test) that I had at my last appointment (rules out spina bifida to a certain percent) came back normal.

Otherwise, my next appointment is in 5 weeks when I will have my glucose test done as well as seeing the MD.

Ed and I have been discussing the fetal echo that my MD wants me to have and that is currently scheduled for December. It honestly only came to discussion when our insurance bills started rolling in, because part of us feels it to be unnecessary, mainly only because we never had it done with Rowan, and we will pay for it out of our pocket basically because we haven't met our deductible still this year. So I asked the MD her thoughts about us not doing it. She said it is our choice to refuse, and that the only thing the results might change is where I would deliver. If it was a major heart issue, she would have me deliver in Milwaukee so the baby could go to Children's for surgery. But to my knowledge, most surgeries aren't done until the babies are bigger anyway, but it would be the best care for the baby. Also, I would feel extremely guilty if I refused the fetal echo and something did end up wrong with the babies heart. So we agreed that we would move the echo to January so that it goes on next years deductible. If we are going to pay for it, we might as well get ahead on next years deductible right away. (On a side note, if I haven't mentioned this fetal echo before, my MD wants me to have it done because my half brother was born with a congenital heart defect that he had repaired when he was less than a year old.)

Belly pics to come in another post!

trick or treat

 Rowan did an awesome job trick or treating today. We were out for a bit longer than I had anticipated. We started out going house to house with the neighbor girls (5 y/o twins), and they were clearly a bit faster than Rowan, so we only went with them for the first 45 minutes, then headed back towards home and did the houses near us and then were done. But before we were done we had been out for 1.5 hours. At times Rowan wasn't comfortable being at a door by herself, so she wanted me to pick her up. But she said trick or treat most of the time, and always said thank you! Such a polite girl!

This is Rowan when she was done trick or treating, riding her bike and hanging out with McKenna (other neighbor girl, 2 months younger than Rowan) And then of course Dad having a beer with the twins' dad, while Rowan bit it riding her bike! Everyone was okay! 

pumpkins

Last night we squeezed in our pumpkin carving. We had thoughts of forgoing the carving this year, but we didn't buy pumpkins for nothing, and I need pictures to compare in years to come! We didn't do anything with the seeds because I was too lazy, and actually we didn't have a ton of seeds anyway. We actually had one of our four pumpkins with a rotten area, so clearly we waited a little too long. But Rowan had fun, and Ed carved 3 pumpkins to my 1! Oh well!

They looked fun all lit up. Was a chilly night, so we bundled Rowan up for a few pictures before heading to bed.