I am sooooooo excited about the fact that I'm now twenty weeks!!!! As of next week, I'll have less time to go than I've already come. Yippee! Unless, of course, the baby's late. Hmmm... I'll have to have a discussion with my belly on that. :D But it's all downhill from here. Think snowball effect. It's going to go by so fast! We have a lot planned the next several months, and more to do that we haven't allocated time for yet. Starting in less than two weeks, we're shooting four weddings in five weeks, so we won't have much on the brain except photoshopping. Then it's our anniversary and a couple weeks later we're planning to go up to Humboldt county to visit Harry and Christa for a bit, then three weeks later we're going to Utah for Thanksgiving, then we've got the baby shower, then a few days later we're shooting another wedding, then two weeks later it's Christmas, and two more weeks and the baby's due!!!! Crap! Somewhere in all of that, we need to get our dead oak trees cut down and chop all the wood for firewood, finish setting up our new firewood holder Steve's been working on, get the baby's room as ready as possible, maybe get a couple of new trees for the backyard, deal with the everyday maintenance on the house, and work. Whew! Needless to say, we're going to be busy. We might end up putting out an all points asking for some assistance, but we'll see how things go. I'm trying to do as much now as I can, so things will be a little easier later. I finished painting the baby's room today. Totally done, finito. That made me feel good. I will post pictures, but I want to wait a few days until we have a couple pieces of furniture in there. The colors are bold enough that the furniture is needed to tone things down a bit. We chose yellow (top half of the walls), green (bottom half), and dark brown (stripe in between). Steve says it's kind of like a Mexican restaurant, and I can't disagree. But I do think that the pale, neutral furniture we have chosen will mellow everything out a lot. I feel pretty strongly it'll turn out just fine. And everybody knows a mother's intuition never fails. Right? :D

   I went through all my clothes this morning to put away all the items that don't fit anymore so I could see exactly where I stand and if I need to buy more garments. Not surprisingly, none of my regular pants and shorts fit. I actually found two skirts with elastic waistbands that still fit and will for at least another month. I was utterly shocked at the number of shirts I have that still fit. And even more so that about half of them look better now than they did before. Maybe it's just that I don't care that they show off my belly, whereas before that made me feel chubby. I'll be able to wear some of these shirts to term, with the help of my wonderful belly band. I think I've mentioned it before. It's like a tube top that goes under the shirt and over the pants to cover the belly when a shirt rides up. Corinne sent me a link to it, and I'm profoundly grateful. I'm telling you, any of you women who are planning to get pregnant (ever), you need one of these. Mom4life.com. Great investment. So now I have half a closet of shirts and more bottoms than I thought, so I'm definitely a happy camper. Steve and I are going to San Diego on Thursday to pick up a couple of antique dressers from my grandma's house (one of which is going in the baby's room) and I'm planning on checking out the big Goodwill while we're there, see if they have any good baby stuff we'll need. Now I know I don't have to spend much, if any, time in the maternity section. Sweet! We have some things we'll need but haven't put on our registry because we figured we'd get them ourselves used for a lot less. By the way, if any one wants to get us anything from our registries (eventually), please feel free to look around for a better price somewhere. Especially with the more expensive items, if you can find them used on eBay or Craig's list, we'd be more than happy for you to save some money! After all, that's the way we do things for ourselves, so why should we ask you guys to be any different? :D

   Our hick status has officially gone down a notch. We no longer live on a dirt road. They paved Lakeview, as well as almost all of the other dirt streets we go walking on in the neighborhood. I was absolutely amazed how fast they managed this. They graded all the roads, tore up the old asphalt on Manzanita, then laid new asphalt on every street. Three days. That's it. And they did a really nice job too.  The steep turn from Manzanita onto Lakeview has been graded, so it's much easier now. And, if you believe it, Valley View was already a paved road. It's just covered in a lot of gravel and dirt from the  surrounding dirt roads. They didn't do anything to it, by the way.

   I'm having another ultrasound in two weeks, so there shouldn't be any question this time. The baby will be big enough (22 weeks) that he'll have a heck of a time trying to hide the goods! :P We're 95% sure it's a boy, but 100% would be pretty good. Doncha think?

Big Bear was great, and just what all three of us needed, I think. We stayed at a lovely little B&B and did a bit of hiking at Snow Summit Ski Resort, went over to Lake Arrowhead for lunch and looked at all the crazy huge homes and people with way more money than sense, and ate. A lot. Thai food (CURRY!!! with pineapple) and pizza (mmmmm, pineapple) and vegetarian sushi (Ohhh, avocado rolls {and pineapple?  no pineapple}) and the utterly nummy breakfasts at the B&B. Just what we needed. There was a lot of windy mountain roads, even worse than the ones up to Julian, and as we went around some of the sharper turns, I could feel Will sliding side to side in my belly. It was the weirdest thing! After awhile he seemed to get the idea and planted himself in one spot. That was much more comfortable for me, let me tell you!

    It went to the doctor today for my four month checkup. Everything's going really well, Will (still assuming it's a boy) has a strong heartbeat. We didn't do an ultrasound, but I did make an appointment for one next time I go in. I'll be 22 weeks then, so there shouldn't be any issues. Right, Will? At my last two monthly checkups, I lost three pounds each because I had been so sick. This time I had gained weight. I have gained back the six pounds I lost so I now weigh exactly what I did the first visit. So I haven't actually "gained" any weight yet this pregnancy. Well, the nurses aid (or whatever she is) that always weighs me and takes my blood pressure is reliable for always getting something wrong. I have no idea what she wrote on my chart, but I saw what the scale said. So I was a little surprised when the doctor said, "you've gained too much weight. You've put on thirteen pounds." Umm. Huh? She didn't quite get what I was saying when I tried to explain that I haven't gained anything beyond what I'd lost. I mean, come on. The woman IS a doctor, and this isn't exactly meteorology. (I have been told by a very trusted source that rocket science really isn't all that hard.) Maybe she'll be sick the day the baby comes....But then I'd have no idea what kind of person I'd be dealing with for such an important occasion. Sigh. I do actually like her a lot, and she always seems to know what's up with the little one. I told her I'm still sick unless I take my medication, and she said to increase my folic acid. That's supposed to help enough so I don't have to take the meds, which would be really nice (they cost an arm and a little toe!) and she really doesn't want me on them anymore if it can be helped. I can appreciate that.

    While we were in Big Bear, we left both dogs with our next door neighbor Robert. He's the one with all the sled dogs. Because he has so many dogs (nine), most of them spend the vast majority, if not all, of their time outside in the yards. Tippy and Ramsey had their own little yard, and Ramsey was as happy as a fat kid in a candy store. Tippy, however, spent the ENTIRE time hiding in a dirt hole under the dog house. Robert said he had to put her food dish up there and throw her biscuit to her there to make sure she got food before Ramzilla ate it. Poor little thing. I think we're going to do just about anything we can to make her more comfortable the next time we have to leave them anywhere. She can go and stay with Gma and Gpa Kaufman. She seems pretty happy with them. And Ramsey can go to doggy wonderland at Roberts, since he's so happy there.

Steve originally planned to go backpacking this week. I kept telling him he should go, since there wasn't a guarantee of the next time it would work for such a trip. He kept saying he wasn't really sure, and was I sure? The night before he was supposed to leave, he anguished over the decision for several hours and decided not to go. He said he would feel really guilty the whole trip that he was taking a second vacation during the pregancy and I hadn't had any. So, we decided that we'd take a short vacation together. We're leaving tomorrow and coming back Thursday. Short because it's not feasible for me to get time off at all during race season (now) and it was also so last minute. So we looked around at several options and finally decided to go to Big Bear. I haven't been there, so that'll be nice, and we got a really good deal at a B&B last minute. We'd had so much trouble finding any place at all that had availability at Laguna Beach (our first choice) that we were beginning to think we might not be able to go anywhere after all. But Big Bear saved the day!! I'm so excited. I haven't been on a trip since our two-week roadtrip last October. We're going to Seattle in September for my sister's wedding, and we're strongly thinking about heading up to visit Harry and Christa in Humboldt County in October. That'll depend a lot on how I'm feeling at that point and expenses blah blah blah. But hopefully that'll happen. Keep your fingers crossed for us! Fall seems to really be our travel time, for some reason. I know it's partly because it's slow at the spa at that time so it's a good time to take off, and the weather is pretty nice anywhere you go (not too hot or too cold) and it's not really peak season anywhere either. We're planning on doing our weekly photo at Big Bear, so you'll have to wait a few days for that!

I've really started feeling quite a bit better lately. I find that as long as I'm taking my medication, I don't really feel sick. FINALLY!!!!!! I've been able to eat a lot more normal foods and closer to regular sized meals, too. I still really crave fresh produce, and that's still a large portion of my diet (as it should be). I've started being able to eat small amounts of tuna and peanut butter the last several days as well, which makes me feel better about my protein intake. I know pregnant women need to be careful of their tuna intake because of the mercury content, so I really don't eat much of it. But other kinds of meat are still on the "ick" list. i'm just extremely grateful that I can eat (mostly) normal foods again! Yea buddy!

(STEVE'S ENTRY)

So it's my turn to "blog." A corworker told me the other day, "Being a parent is the hardest thing you'll ever do... and it's also the most rewarding thing you'll ever do." Now I think everyone knows (or should know) that raising a child ain't easy. It kind of goes without saying... raising kids is hard! We definitely knew what we were getting into when we decided to have a baby. However, it's one thing to know that it will be difficult, but it's an entirely different thing the first time you experience it. I'm not even technically a dad yet, and you know what, it just got hard! It hit me in a way that only reality can do.

Anyone who knows me knows that backpacking is a huge part of my life. I haven't missed a single backpacking trip in 10 years. Over those 10 years, people would bail, things would happen, but one thing was constant... my cousin (Harry) and I would strap on our packs and climb high into the backcountry of the Sierra Nevada mountain range. It was our unofficial "New Year." Spending a week in the High Sierra would rejuvinate/revitalize/re-energize us so that by the end of the trip, we were ready to head back into the world to tackle yet another year.

Well, at 18 weeks pregnant, I came to the realization that I could not leave my wife home alone for 8 days while I set off into the Sierra. I called my buddies, literally less than 12 hours before the trip, and told them that I'd be staying behind this time. It was the toughest decision I've ever made... but my family has to come first, and I knew that in that moment, my desicion to stay or go would set a precedent. The chance of something bad happening to mom-to-be while I was away was slim, but that's not the point! I knew I had to stay behind so that I could be there for my wife and unborn child in the event that they needed me... and even if if this upcoming week is uneventful (health wise), they would still need me and I would still need them. Regardless, this would likely be my wife's last chance at a "vacation" (our last chance for us to be alone on vacation) before the baby was born. Ultimately I knew the choice that had to be made, but it still wasn't easy... however I feel better for making that choice. I love my wife and unborn child too much to screw this up! :-)

I would like to give a big thank you to everybody who has left us comments and signed our guestbook! We love the feedback. It reminds me that I'm not doing this for me; it's so you guys can keep up with our ever-changing lives and feel included with this pregnancy. I think it's especially great for the people that don't live close or we don't see very often. I would like to take this opportunity to respond to a couple of questions people have left on the comments and we haven't answered yet. Dana, yes, we'll be posting pictures of the nursery when we're done painting. We haven't decided on any particular theme or anything, and would be more than happy to here a suggestion or two (Dana? Tami?). Kelly, we were pregnant at your wedding. We had actually found out less than a week before (actually, we found out the day after the housewarming party). That's why we weren't feeling up to going out drinking.... :D   

    I've been reading Dr. Spock's child and adolescent care book. Love it! I've done a lot of babysitting in my life and been around a lot of different little kids, but it's obviously a lot different when it's yours. This book talks about everything I could possibly want to know about. He mentions some things that I have always agreed with and a few things I didn't (but he made me at least look at them from a different angle) and a lot of things I'd never thought about or never knew I'd need to worry about. I love that he even tells you how to do simple things more easily and the pros and cons to everything. It's made me feel much more confident about what I already know and like I'll be able to handle the things I've never had to deal with before. I'm going to have to tie Steve down and read it aloud to him, I think. Not because he refuses to read it, but because it's hard to get him to read ANYTHING at all (he just isn't a big reading fan) and he's always busy doing something else (usually looking at weather or photo stuff online). But I think it's really important he reads it too. Especially since he's never even changed a diaper. I was flabergasted when he told me that. I didn't realize how common it was to not be exposed to that! Must be my years of exposure to the McGarry's. You didn't get out of that house alive without changing at least one diaper! :D Just means I'm a little better prepared, for which I'm grateful. And I know we'll have lots of support from all of you with whatever we're having trouble with, and that is always appreciated!

Well, it's been awhile since I've done a journal entry. Ya'll are probably wondering what the heck is going on with us and when on Earth I'm going to get around to tell everyone! :D I've been pretty distracted the last several days; I was rereading the entire Harry Potter collection. I forget how engrossing that is! But I'm done with the last one now. I think I might watch all the movies while Steve's backpacking. Incidentally, does anyone know if they are still making the sixth and seventh movies?

    Okay, on to baby stuff. Obviously, or maybe not, we didn't have a weekly photo last week. If any of you are confused by the fact we still went from week 16 to 17, it's because the doctor told us that we were a week behind in development of where we thought we were, so we're just going to assume from now on that we are the least far along of what they tell us. They can't really seem to decide for themselves. So anyway. We were going to call last week's picture week 16-2, but we ended up not taking one (i.e. we procrastinated). The craving of the week last week was milk. Now, for anyone who knows me really well, they will appreciate how weird that was for me. First off, I'm mildly lactose intolerant and straight milk really hurts my stomach. Second, I HATE milk. I've never liked the taste. Ever. I dislike soymilk, ricemilk, etc., just as much. So when I need to use milk for something, like cooking or cereal, I buy lactose free milk. The taste is not so easy to remedy, however. Let's just say I ate plenty of cereal and a lot of oreos last week. I found if I dunked the oreos in the milk, took a bite and kept it in my mouth, I could drink a lot of milk and only really taste the oreo. So I'd only eat about three oreos to a full glass of milk. Just because I'm craving it doesn't make it taste any better. Bleeecch.

  The baby is gonna be a helluva dancer. When I'm lying on my back (which I don't do all that often anymore, 'cause it's getting a little uncomfortable) it's super easy to feel the baby moving all over my belly. Doing the conga, the merengae, a little salsa.... And he's started to kick harder too. Steve managed to feel him kick just last night. Our good friend Jane (who was also our realtor-if anybody's thinking of buying property up here, she's the one to talk to) brought me a little gift bag that had What to Expect the First Year and a little giraffe that plays Twinkle Twinkle. Ramsey thinks it's supposed to be his, and keeps looking at it in awe and expectation. Makes me a little nervous. I think we all know exactly what he'd do with it if he ever got hold of it.  Steve and I like to wind it up and put it against my belly so lil' Will can hear it.

    We bought paint for the nursery and I started painting last week. It's going to be three colors, three feet of green on the bottom, about five inches of brown, then the rest yellow. I did all the green, so I spent several hours sitting cross-legged on the floor. Normally that would not really bother me at all, but it did this time. I was so horribly sore the next day that I had a hard time walking, and every time I stood up straight, I'd have siatica shooting down my legs. Luckily for me, knowing how to get rid of, or at least ease, muscular siatica is part of my job discription. It's just hard to do it to yourself. I enlisted my ever able-bodied husband to help, and that took care of almost all of it. So that means I can tackle the rest of the room this week. Especially since I don't have to sit on the floor for any of it.  

I'd like to invite everyone to check out our new poll on the front page. And I want to give a quick shout out- Happy Birthday Mom!! Love you!

All right. Things we know about the baby. It loves to dance. It likes to play hide and seek. It's a vegetarian. Major trouble maker. Likes attention. Girl or boy? Hmmm.

I've been waiting to do another journal entry until we did the ultrasound today. We were going with the explicit purpose of finding out if the baby's a girl or boy (as long as the baby agrees to tell us). So we show up and wait what seems an enormously long time (I think it was a whole eight minutes) unitl we're called to go back into the little room. The ultrasound tech, it seems is out of "goop" (her word), and leaves to get some more lube. Finally, I'm half out of my pants and smeared in goop and she's got the wand on my belly. "Oh, there's the head, there's the belly, there's the bottoms of it's feet, that's the spine...." YEA YEA YEA COMEONALREADY!!!! The baby was all curled up, crossing it's legs like Tippy does. She finally got an angle from the bottom of the feet towards the butt and the area of interest. Of course, the feet are in the way. She said, "I don't think I'm going to be able to tell this time." NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!! She pushes on my belly and the baby uncrosses it's lil' legs. Thank God they record the whole ultrasound because there was only a very rapid flash of the sweet spot before the baby swam away into a dark recess (i.e. the other side of my full-to-bursting bladder). She rewound the video and stopped it on a split second image (how she managed to split the seconds, I don't know. She was good) and said "that looks suspiciously like a boy, but it's pretty hard to tell, so don't go out and buy blue just yet." And that, it seems, is as good an answer as we're likely to get. So we still don't really, truely, 100% know yet. But the odds are good that it's a standing pee-er. Well, at least we had them say something, even if they end up being wrong. Now we can say "he" all we want instead of "the baby this" and "the baby that." If we end up having a girl, we'll find out later. And that'll be exciting all on its own, doncha think? And, to top the whole morning off, she tells us we're only sixteen freakin' weeks. And we're not due until January 6th. I wanted to smack her, except I felt that would be a bad influence for my son. And it's not like it's her fault if we're really a week behind where we think we are. We've actually been going back and forth on exactly how far along we are with the doctor pretty much the whole time. Sigh. It's just really not what we wanted to hear. At all. Not even a little bit. Week sixteen is feeling a helluva lot longer than it should right about now. But, at the same time, it does make me feel a bit better as far as where I am with my morning sickness. I understand it's not at all uncommon to have morning sickness until week sixteen. And it's just now, barely, starting to go away. I've only thrown up once in about a week! Whooohoooo! Happy dance, happy dance. This is a very good thing, considering it's starting to get a bit busier at work. I want to work as much as I can now, since it's anyone's guess as to how long I'm going to be able to keep working when I'm an overstuffed, lumbering mammoth and my stomach stretches out farther in front of me than my arms do. I'll have to learn to massage with my feet (and yes, there IS a modality that does that called ashiatsu).

So, if ya'll were wanting to read this eagerly with the idea of finding out the all important sex, well. Sorry. You're just gonna have to keep waiting with us. Sigh.

It occurs to me that I've been complaining about one thing or another this entire pregnancy. Maybe it's time to focus on some of the positives. For a little bit. Let's see....um. I don't feel guilty having carrot cake for breakfast. No body gives me any grief about not feeling well enough to take care of something. It gives me the chance to write online journal entries that enable every body to get to know me a little better. I can take naps as often as I want. My husband doesn't complain when I call him up three or four times asking him to bring me something specific from the grocery store on his way home from work. Every day. (Which, sadly, yes, I do do.) And who could forget? At the end of this whole endeavor, I get a baby!! That's definitely the big'un. Except for maybe carrot cake for breakfast....

My belly has grown dramatically this week. In the last week and a half I've lost two belt loop holes. Just don't have any idea where they went. My belly's so big I can't see my belt half the time anymore. :D Okay, not quite, but it's not that far off. Something tells me I won't have lost weight come my next doctor's visit.

I did a prenatal yoga DVD this morning. I've done it once before, right before I started getting so sick in the first trimester. It kicked my butt both times. It's not designed to be difficult, I just haven't done yoga in so long that even the simple things are tricky. And because I haven't been able to do any kind of exercising in about three months, my muscles have atrophied. That doesn't help at all. But I got through the whole thing. And continued to lay on the floor for about ten minutes after it was done. Then I was so freaking beat I had to go take a nap. Never mind that I'd only gotten up an hour before. We don't think about such things, do we baby? Hopefully next time it won't be *quite* so bad. Hahahahahaahahahahaha! Yea, sure. Doesn't mean I won't do it anyway.

A lot of the weekly pregnancy websites I've been looking at (to see where the baby is in its development) have been telling me that at week 16 or even 15 they can tell the sex of the baby. I had a doctors appointment yesterday, and Steve and I were very excited about finding out if its Steve Jr or Nicole Jr. I mentioned something like that to the doctor, and she said "you need to wait three more weeks. Otherwise it's not guaranteed." Well, shit. I would have been interested in an unguaranteed analysis. That would have given us a few weeks of entertainment at the least. Instead it's just more waiting. I guess I'm just going to have to get used to that, right? About the only interesting thing we learned at the doctors is that I've lost weight this last month. Again. Nausea will melt the pounds away. Every month I've lost a few more pounds. Not enough to be a concern to anyone. I thought it was really interesting because I feel like I've gained about ten, just because the baby is getting bigger and pushing everything else up and out. Everybody who's seen me recently (mostly coworkers) could tell you I'm getting a belly. But I guess it's all just baby. I think that's actually pretty exciting. I have been feeling quite a bit better lately. I won't say I'm totally out of the morning sickness woods yet, but the sky is getting a little more visible beyond the trees.

At least the afternoon wasn't a total disappointment. Tami and I went to a couple of stores to look at maternity clothes, and found some really really cute ones, and some really really ugly ones. We only bought the cute ones, of course. We're sensible people. I was showing off my new outfits to Steve this morning (three new shirts and two new capris), and he said "this is torture! You put on these cute maternity clothes that show off all your best features and then make me say I will not have sexual relations with this woman. Come on!!! You shouldn't be allowed outside of the house in that." Maternity clothes: better than lingerie. ???? Okaaayyy. I'm just thrilled that I have some clothes that fit comfortably and will continue to do so for quite some time. (And don't be moved by Steve's sob story. He gets plenty of action.)

Ramsey's favorite toy is a tennis ball. I think he likes it because if we don't want to play with him, he can drop it at the top of the stairs and chase it down on his own. His beloved previous tennis ball eventually succumbed to his jaws of death and split in twain. He still played the halves. Just harder to chase that way because they don't roll as far. So when I was in Oceanside yesterday, I stopped at Target on my way home and bought him a new set of tennis balls. When I got home and pulled one out of the can, he went very still, his eyes narrowed, and his body lowered halfway to the ground in anticipation of a really good chase. I just threw it down the stairs. The whole rest of the night, that ball only left his mouth if he was dropping it for me to throw. (Did I mention that he will literally play fetch for hours?) When I took him outside for his before bedtime pee, I had to wrestle the ball away from him, and he started to run away like I was going to throw it. Wouldn't have been so bad if I didn't already have the leash on him and have it attached to my hand. Then I had to shove him out the door to keep him away from trying to retrieve it from the safety of the countertop. And the funny part is, he really had to pee. I guess you just have to have priorities.