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I had another doctor's appointment today. And I got to hear Peanut's heartbeat! I got in and there was the usual urine sample, weighing in and heart rate check. And the nurse DID question me about why my weight hasn't gone up. And no wonder I've been getting dizzy spells when I stand up to fast because my heart rate is down.

It was the nurse who actually did the doppler and surprisingly it was a pretty small device. It was about the size of a cassette walkman and had a microphone with a flat end. She explained that it may take a few minutes to find the heartbeat, so don't panic when she couldn't find it. And it did take several minutes and lots of jabbing. I kept hearing a faint heartbeat and wanted to say "hey, isn't that it?" but then realized that it was probably my heartbeat. And then she found it :) It was clear as day and she counted it to be about 150 bpm. She said normally it should be 120-180, so Peanut is doing great.

The doctor came in just to say hey and see if I had any problems or questions. I asked about allergy pills (I've been sneezing every morning this week) but other than that I had nothing. I mean really I could complain about the exhaustion, inability to sleep, tenderness, cramps, etc but I know she'd just tell me to suck it up. And still no vomiting, so I don't think I have any right to complain at all.

my wife, the barefoot addict at 12 weeks pregnant

My dear wife loves cereal. Me, not so much. I'll eat a bowl every 2 weeks or so. This means that there is 1 cereal eater in this household. One. Singular. Then why in the dilly o are there 5 boxes of cereal in our cupboard?!!?



4 opened, 1 unopened. My wife, the addict. At least Peanut is getting whole grains and dairy everyday, you know?

Here is a photo of my darling wife. Notice that she is barefoot, pregnant, taking brownies out of the oven and wearing a Pearl Jam concert t-shirt. My plans are coming to fruition.


Just one more, here's the wife and Peanut at 12 weeks.

more belly pictures

Thanks everyone for the congratulatory phone calls, cards and emails. We really appreciate them and enjoy them, especially Marks' card. He sent us a card that had "mommy" and "daddy" on the front, then he wrote in "AJ" and "Big Hair" on the front below it. Then on the inside it said "and baby makes three" and he wrote in "lil' big hair". It made us laugh, it was great. Thanks to everyone! And if you didn't, this isn't a guilt trip, so don't think it is.

And, I have badgered the crap out of my wife and got her to pose for some more belly photos. You can't really tell anything is there, but I'm sure someday my wife will be glad I took these photos of her.

Well, I take that back, I think I can tell a bit of a difference between the 8 week pictures and the 11 week pictures. Regardless, in 3 more weeks we ought to notice a bit more. And for the record, I asked her to take off the big bulky sweater, and just have a lighter shirt on, but she wouldn't.

I told her to pose and make her best "I'm-annoyed-with-my-husband" face. The smile was preceded by an eye-roll, an annoyed head tilt and an exasperated sigh. The things you just can't capture with photographs.


Her stomach makes even weirder noises now that she is pregnant. As I was writing this post, she was standing behind me. All of a sudden her stomach started making this percolating noise like a coffee pot, and I swear the noise sounded like it was moving upward and I thought it was going to percolate out of her and make her vomit on my head.

Bye,

C

See what happens when we tell people?

As Chris implied, it's been a rough week. I've had every type of headache, from normal to tension to sinus to migraine. The nausea also stepped up to bat. I actually took Wednesday off because I was feeling pretty miserable. There are several bugs going around school, so maybe I caught something. Who knows.

The only real problem is that I haven't been eating as much and am losing a little weight. I know you aren't supposed to gain a lot during the first trimester, but I don't think I should be losing any. I haven't lost enough to be concerned. I'm more worried about getting yelled at by the doctor. First time I was weighed I had on a huge sweater and boots. Next time I'll have on school clothes. It'll look like I lost 10 lbs and I'll get yelled at and told I'm not fit to be a mother. Ok, I have an overactive imagination. It's what makes me interesting.

I'm a little overwhelmed with how excited everyone is for us. I mean, I wasn't expecting anyone to boo or hiss or throw holy water at us to exorcise the demon spawn. But I was thinking "oh, people have gone through this already, it won't be that new." But no, we're getting phone calls and cards and shrieks of joy. It's a lot of fun :) As Chris keeps saying "Soak it up because after Peanut is here, you won't get any of the attention." So bring it on! :)

I'm trying to pick a ticker to put on this sight, but since Chris is in charge of layout I can't post it here. So check them out at my blog (Life with Hugs) and let me know which you like. Or if you have suggestions for better ones. And how you get the darn thing to fit.

comments I've heard

Some of the comments that people make to you when you tell them you are going to have a kid are pretty funny. Although I'm disappointed I haven't heard "May your first child be a masculine child" (Godfather and Clerks 2). I told one dude at work that Amanda was pregnant and he says "Dude, you are going to be a terrible daddy." I then punched him in the arm and almost knocked him off his chair, apologized, straightened him in his chair and hit him again softer all while we were both laughing.

Later that same day, the same guy was looking for something and he asked me and I gave him a snippy answer and he replied "Dude, calm down, we'll find out who the father is." I'm still laughing about that one! Amanda liked that one too. *how suspicious!*

Other than that, the kid seems to be doing well.

Amanda's morning sickness seems to be increasing. At first, we were pretty amazed at how her weak stomach was handling the pregnancy. Then since last week she seems to have all day long feelings of nausea every other day.

Amanda appreciates all the phone calls too, so thanks!

I'll try and get some more pictures of her belly up here to track the progress. About right now at 10 weeks Peanut is the size of your longest finger. Peanut. I think that's the official name for the time being.

Word is out!

Yesterday we called Chris's mom ("when were you going to tell me?"). Last night we told my friend Nikki at her birthday party("Ahhhhhh! I'm so excited for you!"). Today we told my parents when they visited(*chuckles and hugs*). Then we called my sister, who was thrilled("Ahhhh! Really? Are you lying to me??"). I'll work on more calls later, but my phone needed a recharge.

Chris and I also dropped off the announcements in the mail, so people should be getting them from Tuesday on. Yikes! People will know! People will want to touch my belly and talk about morning sickness and afterbirth! Ahhhhhhh!

On a lighter note, I am still doing well. I did get a migraine Friday that nearly ruined game night. It managed to hold until the very end though. The nausea is getting better too. Thank goodness for Cheerios and Sprite. I'm still tired by the end of the day, especially after school and tutoring, but still tend to wake up at 2 or 4 in the morning and toss around. And I'm ok with that.

T-minus

Just a couple of more days until the announcements go out. They turned out really great and I'm glad we took the time out to work on them together. We had an assembly line process going and just as we got started my uncle called and he and my aunt were in town visiting my cousins and they invited us out to meet up with them. My mind raced. Do we tell them or not??

Well, we weren't planning on telling anybody for another week, but...that's just how it turned out. Amanda agreed and stated that it is much more exciting telling people in person. And to think we were going to try and wait until Easter to tell everybody....that's over a month away and we (I) were (was) dying 2 weeks ago!!!! So anyway, we told them and now some of my Dad's family knows.

I don't get it, we've got all this anxiety built up over telling our parents. It's like we are guilty of something...

Anyway, we were hoping we could trick Amanda's parents into coming to town last weekend so we could tell them, but they are redo-ing their bathroom, so blah blah blah, they couldn't come to town. Nor could we think of a good enough lie to trick them to coming to town without them suspecting something. So our ruse next week of getting them to look at a house with us is when it's going down. DAA DAA DAA!

Oh, and we told Brother in law Mark over dinner when he was in town for the Arnold Classic this past weekend. It went like this:

C: Hey Mark, guess what?
M: What? (in a very dry, annoyed tone...I think I was annoying him--whoda thunk it?)
C: You are going to be an uncle in October.
M: *sticks his finger in his ear and tries to get some mites or dirt or something unstuck*
M: Trisha (his younger sister) is pregnant?
C: No you dummy, your other sister. (boy did I fall for it hook line and sinker, he got me)

So that's that. I have let the wife on here to do some teacher stuff.

C

More pics

So this is how the baby is shaping up.




I took some other ones too, but this one is my favorite!

We are going to try and trick her parents into coming to town this weekend to look at a house with us (and also so we can tell them our news), but they haven't returned our call and it's been like 5 hours. I thought parents didn't have stuff to do and just waited on their kids to call them. Apparently, they have lives of their own.

But we really would like them to come to town and check this house out. I really like and I'm trying to contain myself. And I'm going to be hanging out with my brother in law and Sergey all day tomorrow, so continuing to contain this secret is going to be the death of me.

Anyway,

C

2nd ultrasound results

I will state it as our doctor stated it: "Here is our little peanut."



I added descriptions to this photo since it looks more like something (say, a peanut?) than a grain of rice. I actually saw the heartbeat on this one. Our next appointment is in a month. At that point the baby's body will catch up with the growth of the head. Don't know what the sex of it is, and we don't really care. We're just praying for the big stuff like no physical deformities and fully functioning organs. That way we are fully responsible when we screw it up as parents and can't cop out and blame it on something like genetics.

I tried to play a joke on Amanda when we were at the doctors office, but it didn't work out. I've been teasing Amanda about my birth weight when I was born (11 pounds 8 ounces) and further teasing her about 'what if it's twins!!?'. We joke and tease and have fun with it. So I thought it would be funny if I asked the nurse to ask the doctor to state during the ultrasound "Gee, it looks like there is two of them in there!" She asked if my wife was vulnerable to having a heart attack and I said no.

So she agreed to ask the doctor, but apparently the doctor didn't think it was a good idea. Now that I think about it, there's probably some HIPPA regulation or some mis-diagnosis clause that would cause the doctor to lose their license in a lawsuit. Needless to say, the doctor didn't say anything while we were in there, so for now it's just one peanut. And that's fine, I understand, not a problem.

But, my wife is a good sport about the whole thing because on the way out to the car I confessed what I thought was humor and she laughed about it. And she really laughed, she didn't give her usual 'ha ha, that's funny' comment laced with sarcasm. So it's good.

I guess now I should start to make up our flyer that we are going to send out to everyone next weekend. Tick, toc, tick, toc until we go to her hometown and tell her family. We are going to drop the flyers in the mail next saturday on the way to their house. Amanda pointed out that I'll probably have that nervous grin and laugh going like I did on our wedding day. hahahaaha!! I bet she is right!

C