She's 2 Weeks Old!

Today is Peanut's 2 week birthday. In some ways it seems like yesterday and others it feels much longer. My live in nanny is going home tomorrow so reality sets in. :( The posts after this may be few and far between or they may be cries for help!

As for Peanut she's getting bigger and has a bunch of firsts, mainly shopping trips. :) Sam's, Target, JCPenney...she's enjoyed them all, with her eyes closed. :) As for me, things are good. I've already lost 33 lbs! I can't believe how much water I was retaining!

Baby Girl

As all of you know we brought our baby girl home a week ago today so I decided to rename our blog. The last 10 days have been quite the adventure. Franklin had an interesting encounter with a poopy diaper. It was quite unexpected and he accidentally put his finger in it! He was gagging uncontrollably and threw up a little bit in his mouth. I of course was laughing hysterically and had to rescue poor Peanut from rolling around in an open poopy diaper. Ever since then he's very leery about opening a dirty diaper. :)

Last day of freedom

It's now less than 24 hours before my induction and my last day of freedom. Last night we went out to dinner and to Coldstone. We figure we won't be going out for awhile and I'll be laying off the ice cream after the baby is born! So as I lay around on my final day of bed rest and contemplating labor I wish all of you a Happy 4th of July! :)

Baby Shopping!

Franklin and I went shopping on Monday to get the stuff we needed for the baby that we didn't receive from our showers. It was very exciting to actually buy the stuff instead of just look at it! Now we get to set everything up!

Adventures in Bed Rest

The fun continues on day 10 of bed rest. I've watched all four Harry Potter movies, read, wrote out thank yous, watched lots of t.v. and slept. Yup, you guessed it, I'm pretty bored. I know I should appreciate the rest because when the baby comes I won't get to rest, but I'm still bored. :) I have been able to get out some but each day spent in bed seems like an eternity.

I go back to the doctor tomorrow, woohoo I get to leave the house again!!

Pool Princess

The warm weather has allowed Franklin and I to enjoy our swimming pool. Our lovely dog Sophie doesn't like to be IN the pool, but as you can see she's found her new favorite place to relax. It takes a special kind of dog to be a pool lounger.

Lamaze Part Deux

So Franklin and I attended our final Lamaze class this past Saturday. Three of the 8 couples didn't return, including Mr. Living in the Dark Ages. The class wasn't nearly as exciting as the first week but we still learned some stuff.

At the end of the class the instructor decided to teach us a deep relaxation exercise. Not really for labor but just for life in general. We laid down with our pillows to relax, she shut off the lights and put on the relaxation cd. Well, all I can say is it worked because apparently I was snoring quite a bit. :) Franklin was quite amused and is enjoying telling everyone the story. He thinks that alone was totally worth the class fee.

Lamaze

Franklin and I had our first Lamaze class this past Saturday. The first thing I looked at was the "syllabus" of sorts that was given to us and I immediately felt like it was my first day of school. And it exhausted me. After I got over that we did find the class informative. Once I got to lay on the floor instead of sitting in a chair I was much happier too. There are 7 other couples in the class and one guy in particular is a whack job. The instructor asked us all to talk about our pain management plans at this time. He would prefer that his wife not have any pain meds and have the baby at home like the old days. He also referred to the doctor as HER doctor, not our doctor like the other husbands said. He was just a total ass. Fortunately there wasn't much more "talking" time so we didn't have to listen to him anymore.

Taking the tour of the birthing center certainly made things seem a lot more in the now rather than in the future. I'm 34 weeks now so in theory it could happen anytime.

We have one more lamaze class and then a new baby class next week. That's the one I'm looking most forward to. :) Watching Franklin change diapers on a doll is going to be awesome!! :)

Finally

So any of you that have known me for a long time will know how much I love swimming pools. Always have and I can't seem to get enough. I think it's one of the reasons I love hotels so much because they usually have a pool. My whole childhood I begged my parents to get a pool, but they never would.

Well, the day has finally come that I have a pool of my very own!!! I've actually had one since we moved to Ohio but I wasn't able to swim in it till yesterday. I'm in heaven, absolute heaven. When it's 90 degrees outside and all I want to do is cool off, I just climb in the pool. :) And even today when I knew it was hot outside but I was nice and cool inside, I still went in the pool. :) Not for very long though because it started storming.

So all of you who were thinking you might make it to Ohio for a visit someday, now know we have amenities. :)

Sick of the rain...

So I was just about to post something about how sick I am of all the rain lately and then I remembered I had a similar post back in November. Seriously, I feel like we're living in Seattle. It has been raining for the last 10 days and it sucks.

Our first baby shower!

Yesterday we had our first baby shower. Tom's Mom put this together for his friends and family. It was a good turn out and we had a great time. We got a lot of stuff too! This baby thing just keeps getting more real. :) Thanks to everyone who came and gave us wonderful presents.

Our progress

Six months down, three to go. Who do you think will be bigger? :) I love you Franklin!

Alpacas

I didn't know that much about alpacas, but I do now! Today I had an interview at an alpaca farm for an event planner position. Franklin can't get over that it's a farm and didn't even know what an alpaca was!! The job seems interesting so we'll see what happens. If you want to learn more about alpacas, visit their site www.alpacafarm.com

Fountain pop is AWESOME!!

You know, I always liked fountain pop better than straight from the can, but now it's possibly one of the greatest things EVER! Other than french fries all of my cravings have been for beverages and right now it's fountain pop! Franklin wouldn't leave the house last night at 11pm to get me one, isn't that awful?? Thankfully the craving passed gently, but he better be prepared to make some trips in the future!!

Franklin's 35th Birthday!

Franklin reminded me yesterday that I didn't post anything about his birthday this past Sunday. I'm terribly sorry Franklin. I was sure he wouldn't want anything posted since he was so distraught over turning 35. But none the less, here is his post. :) His birthday started off with my Dad making him his favorite breakfast. Then Mom and I returned home from a scrapbook weekend with his favorite type of cake. Plus he got presents!

All in all, it was a good birthday. Now he'll probably refocus on my turning 30 this year. :(

Back from Sin City

Believe it or not on our flight back we were with the same group of plumbers! Turns out they're an ice hockey team and went to Vegas for a tournament. They didn't drink quite as much on the way home and were actually quite entertaining.

Here are the pictures for those interested.

Viva Las Vegas!!

Our adventure in Vegas began on the flight here. There was a big group of guys (plumbers) on our flight along with a lot of NASCAR fans. They sold out of liquor!! In fact, they had to leave the seatbelt sign on even when it wasn't bumpy because they were trying to keep the drunks seated. We had an off duty pilot sitting next to us and he had to go and be a bouncer some times! The guys weren't too loud and really I was just jealous they could drink and I couldn't. :)

After checking into the Flamingo we headed to Margaritaville for lunch. It was just as good as I remembered. We gambled a little in our hotel and then rested till we had to meet some of Tom's co-workers for dinner. We headed down to Fremont St. to see the show and then we went to dinner at the Orleans.

The next day was quite the adventure, or marathon as Tom would call it. Now he's been here like 5 times and I have only been here once, but when I kept asking him if he's seen something he would say no. Turns out every time he came here, he pretty much stayed in the hotel that he was staying in. So I took him down the strip! We took the monorail so that it was a little easier on our legs but it was still a hike. We saw the lion exhibit at the MGM, went to New York, New York, Paris and the Aladdin. We went to the top of the Eiffel tower. It was neat, but very cold. The warmest day here was Thursday at 60-degrees. It was only 47 yesterday!! Tom decided he didn't like all the walking. :) But I did win $28 at Paris!!

Friday night we saw Celine Dion. It was an awesome show! I highly recommend it.

Saturday Tom had a meeting and I hung out in the room. I actually slept quite a bit. My pregnant body was trying to recover from all of the walking the day before! After his meeting we headed to Ceasar's Palace to have lunch at the Cheesecake Factory. Then we went to the Conservatory at the Bellagio. Tom had to go to some stupid dinner last night so I hung out in the room again. Thank god for TBS and TNT.

So today we head home, to warmer weather! We're going to try and get on an earlier flight so that we don't get home so late. Haven't won anymore money since Paris, but we did try and spread our money out evenly. We gambled at every hotel we went into. :) I've also decided that I'm never coming here again when I can't drink. It's just cruel walking around seeing everyone with beer and margaritas and other frozen concoctions. I'll post a link with the photos when I get home.

On another note, I like NASCAR a lot and I have quite a few friends who do too. But seriously, it brings out the most interesting people. As my brother in law would say, white trash at its finest.

Hope everyone had a good weekend!!

Two things that happened on the way home...

Today Franklin and I were on our way home from the mall. We stopped at a drive thru car wash. As we pulled up we told the guy we wanted a basic wash and he told us we paid the people down the hall. We were like what?? You had to get out of your car and the attendant put your car thru the wash but then he got out. It went through without anyone in the drivers seat! It was just very odd.

The second thing was we drove by a Beverage center. This is basically a garage that you drive through and on the inside is a bunch of beverage coolers. Like you would see outside of a gas station. You pull through tell them you want a 20 oz. Coke, pay and you're on your way. We saw two of these!!! What happened to just stopping at a gas station? Or going through a fast food place? Kinda makes me wonder if this is a successful venture. Hmm....

Adventures in Houston...continued

So the rest of the trip has been pretty uneventful. There's not much to do around the hotel and we haven't been to many restaurants outside of the hotel. Like I said, kinda boring. We did go to a restaurant in a shady part of town that the concierge recommended. There was a group of us and it was actually pretty busy but there was a security guard out front. That was kind of funny.

Then this one guy that we know from Michigan told us that he went to Galveston to see the sunrise and hang out on the beach. While he was sitting there a dead body washed up on shore!! No lying!

One thing I did have fun with...there's a long red carpet separating the meeting rooms and the exhibitor show. I pretended like it was the red carpet of an awards show or a movie premiere. Tom even took a picture of me! :) Hey, I have to entertain myself someway.

We head home tomorrow, finally.

Adventures in Houston - Day 1

Yesterday Franklin and I headed to Houston, TX for a soccer conference. I wasn't that excited about going to Houston, but I was glad I could be with Franklin all week. Our first adventure was at the Detroit airport. When going through security we had to go through this Ion machine before going through the metal detector. You stand in it, it blows a bunch of air on you and then you wait til it's done processing. My guess is that the air would blow around any bomb making material you may have on your clothes and then it would detect it, but I'm not totally sure.

After a delayed flight we finally make it to Houston, get our bags and get a shuttle. The shuttle drive was very scary. When merging onto the expressway the shuttle driver almost ran into a car that she didn't see. Then we got off the expressway, she was in the right lane but needed to turn left so she went ahead and crossed two lanes of traffic. And what was this for you ask? Well she needed to get gas. So we're sitting at a gas station as she's pumping gas. She puts the nozzle in and walks away. Then she walks back and without even looking to see if the pump had stopped she pulls it out. Gas went everywhere! Then she tried to put it back in and get the $.05 she paid for but didn't get. We finally get back on the freeway and can see the downtown area, everyone in the shuttle feels better. But does she get off at downtown, nope, she gets onto another freeway headed away from downtown! And then finally gets off the freeway, goes under an overpass (which looked like a homemade shortcut) and heads back towards downtown. Franklin and I were happy that our hotel was first. We wished everyone else luck and got out of the van.

The last exciting thing of the evening was dinner. We went to the steakhouse in the hotel and started talking to our waiter. Because the NBA All Star game was just here this past Sunday I asked him about that. He served Kobe Bryant! That was just kind of cool.

So now today is much less exciting. Franklin has a meeting this afternoon and I'm just gonna hang out in the room. Hopefully there won't be too many more adventures to blog about!