Lots and lots of baby updates

I hit a big milestone on Friday. It was June 13th and with my due date being July 13th I was officially one month until the due date. It's amazing to think that in 4 weeks(ish) I'll be done being pregnant and be the mom of a little boy. I'm so excited to meet him and I definitely can't wait to feel relatively normal again. It's hard to remember not being pregnant but the end is in sight!

Our little guy is still pretty active and since he's run out of room I can feel his movements all the more. I'm convinced he's trying to create more space since a lot of times he sticks out his foot and pushes hard and just stays like that for awhile unless I push (gently) back. Not so comfortable but his moving around always helps me feel like he's doing just great. Heartburn's been striking with full force and I've had a bad cough for the last little while but other than that I've been spared a lot of the unpleasantness of pregnancy. I haven't really had any problems with swelling, stretch marks, sleeping through the entire night, back pain, etc. so I have lots of blessings to count.

I had another appointment with the OB/GYN last Friday. I was shown right to the room where she saw me but didn't see her until an hour later. Sitting on a table for an hour when 8 months pregnant is not comfortable so I wasn't very happy about that. It was my luck to be right after some girl who had an emotional breakdown and took the doctor's attention for 45 minutes. Grrr. Seeing the doctor this whole time has been pretty uneventful since there have been absolutely no complications. (another blessing) She even told me last time that I was really easy because there was never anything for her to do. My visits with her rarely go over 5 minutes.

The baby's heartbeat is "happy" according to the doctor and I'm assuming that's a good thing. I don't get told the numbers but it sounded good and strong. Also in good news the baby is head down and I've dilated to 1 cm. It sounded like that was good for a first time mom. With any luck this baby will come a little early. I'm just praying he doesn't come late though I know that's really common with the first.

Also on the baby front Derrick and I took a tour 2 weeks ago of the labor and delivery area of the hospital I'll have the baby in. It felt good to pre-register and see where exactly we need to go when we're feeling a little rushed. It felt funny to be walking around with a small group of very pregant women and their husbands. It was good to hear a little more about how the whole process works. After hearing about some of the different parts of the process I've decided that I'm going for the epidural. I'd considered seeing if I could tough it out for awhile and have the epidural as back up but I'm thinking I might just skip to the epidural. We'll see. My one complaint about the visit was that the "tour guide" kept joking about things which got confusing since I'm so new to this whole thing and had a hard telling when she was joking or really telling things as they were. Yikes.

As a final note, Derrick and I have been spending the last week decorating the baby's room. We decided to do a tropical/beachy theme to the room instead of the traditional pastels. We had fun finding great deals on wooden shades, fake flowers, and other decorations. Because cute baby bedding is so expensive we decided to make some of our own. Derrick helped me pick out different blues, greens and tans from the fabric store. He designed the different panels for the crib bumper pad on the computer and since then I've been creating the patterns and making them. It's been a lot of fun for me to figure out how to do this since I haven't done too much sewing. I've got half of the panels done and I'm really excited about how they're turning out. We'll post more pictures once I finish.

Belly pic at 8 months (the first day of week 37). The background shows how we decorated one of the walls in the baby/computer room. Yea for small apartments.

Down to One Job

So after working for 3 1/2 months in a preschool class at Farrer Elementary School for children with autism, I am done. The school year ended the last week of May and I don't think the timing could have been much better. Working two jobs everyday and needing to get down on the ground with high maintenance kids for one of them was starting to take a lot out of me. The kids were really cute and it was fun to learn the best ways to interact with them. Each kid was so different and figuring out how to keep them happy and doing what they were supposed to be doing (instead of inciting tantrums) was always an exciting accomplishment.

I think I was the most excited about the progress I made with a little boy named Jaxton. He never wanted to stop moving so keeping him focused on his work was frustrating and I'll admit I usually tried to let the other aides deal with him. After working with him for a few months I learned to love his quirks and we became good buddies. He was one of the kids I most looked forward to seeing and he went out of his way to make sure I was the aide who was helping him.

I was usually too busy to take pictures during work but I did get some from the last day. A few of the kids are missing. It was hard to get most of the kids to actually look at the camera. I've added captions to the pictures in case anyone's curious which one is Jaxton.

Trip to the Cabin at Fish Lake - May 23-26

So I'm finally getting caught up on blogging about the vacations Derrick and I went on in May. For Memorial Day weekend we went to the cabin Derrick's maternal grandpa and his siblings built at Fish Lake here in Utah. It's a 2 1/2 hour drive south of Provo. I was surprised to find that Spring hasn't reached Fish Lake yet. It was still really cold and even snowed a little on some of the days.

We met Derrick's parents and the Sessums, a family from their ward, at the cabin and had a lot of fun with them. Over the weekend we made s'mores around the fireplace, watched movies, went on 2 walks/hikes, and played lots of games. We went to church at the lodge there (about a 3 minute drive from the cabin) and during the sacrament a bat started flying around the room. I'd never seen that before! Also, it was so cold in there that most of the women didn't bother to wear skirts and most people brought piles of blankets with them. An old lady sat next to me and threw one of her blankets on top of Derrick and me because she brought so many. She was pretty funny to talk to before church started.

The cabin is pretty rustic. The only sources of heat were the fireplace and a wood burning stove. We got to climb ladders to get to the lofts we slept in at night. There was some question before we got there as to whether or not I could handle the ladder but luckily there was no problem. I'm glad I can still do a lot of the things I could before I was pregnant. One of the biggest things I miss is being able to bend over. Tying my own shoes without difficulty is one thing I won't take for granted anymore :).

We didn't take very many pictures during the trip but I did want to show what the cabin looks like, especially the ladder and the loft. As a disclaimer on the pictures, we were semi-roughing it so showering and using makeup were not regular occurrences over the weekend.

New Job

So, I'd been doing some freelance work for different companies (mainly little web based projects in php) but 2 weeks ago or so they started to thin out, so I thought I'd check out a more solid job. (Actually a bigger issue about it was that I would have to spend a certain amount of time looking for opportunities, which is time that I wouldn't get paid for...) So on a Monday I sent out my resume to a bunch of places, and by Wednesday I'd landed a solid web developer job at a local company called Cleantelligent.

Cleantelligent started out as an in-house web tracking system for a janitorial/facilities management company called Bear Com. They needed a system to track customer work-orders/emergencies/outages and there wasn't a commercial product that really fit their industry. After they had done a significant amount of development, they realized that they could profit more by selling the system as a service to other companies than by the simple competitive advantage, so they split off the software division into it's own company.

Being a custom system, its direction is heavily based on feature requests from clients. This is one of the major benefits of the program, if a company really needs a certain functionality, they can pay us to put it in there. So that's basically what I do, in short, the bidding of the highest bidder.

Since starting I've mainly done little bug-fixes and minor customizations, but now that I'm getting the hang of how the program works, I'll move on to some bigger projects. Besides the web side of things, there is also a version of the program for Tablet PCs and blackberry/PocketPC devices, mainly for on-site inspections.

The system is mainly Java based with an increasing amount of Flex, and the desktop apps in C#. In the near future we're putting in some advanced scheduling/calendaring features, multi-language messaging, and a scaled down version of the web site for things like the iPhone.

It's been really nice there so far, its pretty laid back, with all the snacks a guy could want and benefits including monthly massage and haircut (though luckily not at the same time) I'm looking forward to continuing on there for a little while.

Camping Trip - May 16 to 17

Because I'm lazy and catching up on a lot of posts, I'm posting another slide show instead of trying to artistically incorporate pictures with the words.

Derrick and I organized a camping trip to the Wedge Overlook in the San Rafael swell (not too far from Price, UT). Derrick's sister's boyfriend recommended it to us so we thought we'd try it. This place is called the mini Grand Canyon. I'm still not used to desert camping but it was a really pretty place.

The Sharps (my sister and brother-in-law), the Ropers (Derrick's friend growing up and his wife), and the Chandlers (some friends from the ward) came with us. After we sent up our tents a few of the girls came over and told us that they were there for a bachelorette party so they might get a little loud. Luckily they were never a problem though we all thought that it was pretty strange that the girls each seemed to have a dog and that they were camping for the bachelorette party.

We were all in charge of our own food and still ended up all having the same kind of tin foil dinners for dinner. The Chandlers made some really good peach cobbler with a dutch oven we borrowed and Jeremy (Roper) had a lot of fun with playing with lighter fluid and the fire after we were done cooking with it.

I was able to sleep surprisingly well considering I was 33 weeks along. I didn't feel at all guilty bringing a queen-size air mattress to sleep on.

After breakfast we drove down into the canyon and stopped to see some pretty cool petroglyphs. The signs explaining them didn't know too many details about them. Some things they did tell us were that the petroglyphs were thousands of years old, had been added to several times, and because of their prominent location, were meant to be displayed. After having a good look we found a river to play around in. Heat is starting to be pretty uncomfortable so the cold water felt so nice. After eating lunch we headed home. Showering felt so nice.

Louisville, Colorado Trip May 7 - May 13

During the 2nd week in May Derrick and I got to fly to Denver and visit my family in Louisville. Melissa and Nate joined us there and it was great having so much of the family together. Usually we drive but there was no way I was going to sit in a car for 8 1/2 hours when I was 32 weeks along. We timed the trip so we could help out with my sister's Colorado wedding reception. Because of this, my parents surprised us by buying our tickets for us. We were happy with the deal.

While there:

- We did a lot of preparations for the reception (grocery shopping, making torte, ironing table clothes, decorating the church gym, etc.) and hosted the reception. I curled Melissa's hair for her. Here's slide show of pictures Derrick took before and during the reception.



- I got a hair cut so now it's 4 inches shorter and a little more layered. The person who cut my hair was actually pretty frustrating and kept only doing tiny changes until I gave up asking her to do more.
- Derrick had someone who would actually play Halo with him (my younger brother Garrett)
- There was lots of game playing. This trip the main games were Settlers of Catan and Rook.
- We did our family's traditional trip to hike Boulder Falls then a picnic and walk along Boulder Creek. While walking around these places I got really excited to come back and show them to our little boy once he's old enough to notice his surroundings. Here's a slide show with pictures from Boulder Falls.



- Mother's Day - Derrick and I made a fancy dinner that my mom got to choose. We ended up having steak, baked potatoes, fried zucchini and squash, fruit salad, and frape (sp?) all served on the china. We also sang songs around the piano and played extra games with my mom since she loves playing games. I had a really fun time going back to the Louisville ward. It's the ward I grew up in and I hadn't been there since last May.
- Derrick and I went to visit his younger brother Tyson who's going to school at CU-Boulder. We met his new dog Oswald, made smoothies, and watched Live Free or Die Hard.
- We received a lot of baby clothes and supplies. My mom had fun shopping for her first grandchild and got a little carried away. We're not complaining though!

XKCD

A web comic Jeremy and I like to read put up this one that seemed all too a propos:



You'll probably need either Firefox or the latest IE to see it right, and make sure you check out the tooltip (hover your mouse over the image for a lil bit).

fun times.

TIme to play catch up

So it's definitely been awhile since we've posted on here. Sorry to those who actually read this blog. Derrick and I have been getting most of our vacations in this May because we aren't sure how much traveling we'll be up for later this summer with our new edition coming this July. Hopefully, several new posts will be joining our blog in attempts to document the last few weeks.