Introducing our little Sweet Pea!
Born March 15, 2010 at 2:31 am

7 lbs. 1 oz, 20 inches

My due date has come and gone...March 11. I thought for sure that I would go into labor early, but this little girl appears to be a stubborn one and will come out when she's good and ready! Because I do not want to be induced, I will try anything to get this party started.

On Friday, I went to an acupuncturist for treatment to induce labor (I had been to an acupuncturist before when we dealt with the IVF). She used the needles on me, but she also used some other things. She put some burning incense stuff on my hands and feet. She called it Moxa. She sent them home with me and said I could do it at home as well. (Poor RT & Jannu--the smoke was very overpowering!).

Friday night came and went. Absolutely no contractions happened.

Saturday has arrived. We figured we would get out and walk as much as possible. We went to the local farmer's market. We also went to the natural food store and bought some Evening Primrose, raspberry leaf tea, and eggplant. All these "remedies" are old wives' tales that people swear got their labor started.

My labor did in fact begin tonight, but who's to say what started it. Was it the eggplant parmigiana? The Moxa? The birth videos we were watching? Or, did our little one finally want to meet us, too?

The Land Conservancy is an established organization with a 25 year history. In all of its 25 years, though, no employee has every been pregnant. My first official day on the job, as I met with our Executive Director to go over HR policies and such, I also had to let him know that I was pregnant! TLC has never had to deal with pregnancy, maternity leave, FMLA, etc., so in a sense I am their pregnancy pioneer!

It has definitely been a treat for me to witness the growing excitement throughout the staff as my due date has gotten closer. Last week, they surprised me with a luncheon in honor of the baby. It was very low-key and fun, and I was very touched!

I work with a bunch of great people. It's definitely a smaller staff than what I was accustomed to when teaching, but the family-feeling is still there and that's what counts when you work in a positive environment!

We sure have gotten busy this past month or so. In my second trimester, RT and I had started a list of things that we wanted to get done around the house before the baby was born. During the holidays, we looked at that list and realized we had NONE of it done!
We knew January was going to be a busy month, but we really had no choice. All of a sudden our weekends were filled up, but in between those times, we managed to get quite a few things accomplished:

• Scrape the popcorn off the hallway ceiling downstairs


• Paint the ceiling


• Sell the Mini Cooper


• Buy a bigger car


• Install a new front door


• Paint the front door


• Clean out the downstairs bedrooms


• Have a garage sale


• Change out light fixtures


• Change out light switches & plates


• Paint the nursery


• Install new curtains in the living room


• Build a shed in the backyard (work in progress)

To do:

• Stain and glue postcaps on stairway


• Replace and install new door to the garage


• Paint kitchen cabinets and change all hardware


• HAVE A BABY!!!

Last year, I started a book club with a friend. It started out really great with quite a few gals--in fact it seemed like there may be too many. After the first couple of meetings, things fizzled out and some started dropping out. I really enjoyed the club and the gals in it, but things in my life were just too hectic at that time. I went to Florida for a month, got pregnant, and just had too many things on my plate. I stopped going, even though I was keeping up with the reading, and finally just lost touch on it all.

One day at work, my boss and I started chatting about books and she suggested we start a book club. Since I still wanted to be involved in a book club, I was all for it! We invited all the other girls in the office to join, and after a few weeks, it was down to Wende, Kaila, and me.

We met for the first time at our house last week. I chose the book, The Help. We had such a good time! We all agreed that we wanted to read books that were more on the "lighter side" but we ended up having some pretty deep discussions about a lot of serious issues that night! So, it looks like a new club has been born!

Now, with the upcoming birth of our baby, I hope life doesn't "get in the way" and I can commit to this club. It feels good to have some female companionship again!

August 31, 2009 and February 9, 2010

The countdown is definitely beginning. The other day at the gym, a lady looks at my trainer and me and says, "You're definitely slowing down, but you're form still looks good." As the pressure in my pelvis increases, it is harder to walk longer distances. Overall, I feel pretty good. It is getting more difficult to eat; as soon as I eat something it feels like it has no where to go, so I haven't been eating so much. The baby seems to be moving around a lot, but she's supposed to be less active soon with less room to be squirrely. Our doula says to mentally change our due date to March 25 rather than March 11, that way if she's "early" we'll be pleasantly surprised rather than frustrated if she's past the 11th. I think that's a great perspective to take. It alleviates some pressure because we're feeling the time crunch with so many things to still take care of.

Well, the logical choice after we sold the Cooper was to get something practical for our "growing family". Now, you could take this two ways. First of all, the obvious--with the baby coming a 4-door car with lots of trunk space is a must-have. Or, to add to our VW fleet--we've got the '66
VW single cab, the '71 VW bus, and now our VW Jetta!

Since we were in Fresno for the two baby showers this past weekend, we thought it would be ideal to buy a car while there and return the one we were borrowing from my parents. How convenient and ideal would that be? After much research and debate, we looked at a couple cars after the first baby shower and did some test driving. We were really sold on one, but thought we should sleep on it, do MORE research, and come back with a strategy and a firm price.

As RT dropped me off to the second shower, he went back for negotiations. I was enjoying the baby shower and dreaded going back to the dealer for negotiating, haggling over a few dollars, and paperwork!

I called RT to come pick me up when the shower was finished. He and my hostesses loaded up the shower gifts. I walked out to the parking lot, and to my surprise and delight, there she was! RT did a great job with sticking to his guns and getting a fantastic deal. One more major thing off of our checklist.

She drives like a dream, and there is so much room, it's amazing to us after all these years with a smaller car! BONUS: The seats have a pneumatic pump feature so I can raise the seat up so I can actually see over the dashboard! What a concept!