Day 122- Yea, I'm awake and 19 weeks pregnant

I'm up doing work. I think the past week of sleeping 10-12 hours a night is finally catching up to me. I feel like I'm unstoppable as I process to-dos and get rid of the hideous stack of stuff in my physical inbox.

Anyway, I'm 19 weeks pregnant. I forgot to mention at the last ultrasound John noticed that the baby weighed 11oz which is about 3oz bigger than a typical 18 weeker.

I haven't done one of these in awhile, so here is what's officially going on inside my womb this week:

Your baby's sensory development is exploding! Her brain is designating specialized areas for smell, taste, hearing, vision, and touch. Some research suggests that she may be able to hear your voice now, so don't be shy about reading aloud, talking to her, or singing a happy tune if the mood strikes you. Your baby weighs about 8 1/2 ounces and measures 6 inches, head to bottom — about the size of a large heirloom tomato. Her arms and legs are in the right proportions to each other and the rest of her body now. Her kidneys continue to make urine and the hair on her scalp is sprouting. A waxy protective coating called the vernix caseosa is forming on her skin to prevent it from pickling in the amniotic fluid.

In financial news, I made some money off of the baby's sex, see winnings below

Yep, and that's John's $5 boy wager below it, currently sitting nice and cozy in my wallet. The baby pool was compliments of Dan Hurwitz, the final standings were 3 boy/3 girl. Dan was betting girl with me and is pushing for the name Danielle.

Here are some other things I was putting off posting

This is a video of Christmas in Seattle and a tour of the apartment:

And here is cutie with Christmas goodies in view:

Goodnight!

I love the mailman

Woke up this morning to banging at the front door. John brought in the CWD laptop I ordered to replace the fried one and then started carting in large yellow and blue bins. I was very confused until I realized that he ordered GROCERIES from amazon fresh direct.

It feels really cool to be in the presence of a carton of honey nut cheerios and 2 cases of tomato soup, a case of Classico tomato sauce and a variety of other items John decided we needed.


So much for laying off the double plus food talk. But come on- this is noteworthy.

Day 117 - Oh yes

Just came back from coordinating the monthly dinner lecture series with my work. I've become great friends with the lead server at the dinner club named Solomon. Tonight he came up to me at the end and whispered in my ear,

"Tai, we have some left over food, do you want it?"

I'm not even sure why I asked this but I did
"What kind of food?" (as if it mattered)

"Cake, ..."
I interrupt by moaning in agreement"
"Chicken"
"Yes, I'll take it"

So at the end of the night he hands me a bag of food. When I got home I intercepted John about to heat up some microwave thing and popped open with bag
Box number one: FULL OF CAKE (ABOUT TEN SLICES)
Box number two: full of chicken and veggies
BOX NUMBER THREE: FULL OF CAKE (ABOUT TEN SLICES)
NEED I SAY MORE?

I'm going to try hard not to make this blog the life and food intake of tai john and little fetal mother teresa, but I couldn't help but highlight how awesome it is that Solomon gave me two boxes of cake because it assumes that I somehow can and will handle the cake with grace and ease in a timely manner.

Her debut

Day 116 - Biggest joyful heart ever

It's official, this beautiful healthy baby suspended in my belly is a GIRL!

Here are some photos:

Day 115 - Groan x 1,000,000

This week has been pretty difficult for me (aside from Pedis & greek food with Sarai :).

List of things bothering me:
1)General "down" feeling
2) Dormant feelings about family being awoken
3) Didn't find out the gender of the baby
4) New chair of CWD board resigning
5) Feeling underappreciated by work
6) Head feels full of dead energy, hurt feelings, anger and disappointment


List of things making me feel better:
1) John

I wish I had a loud speaker that amplified volume to the world so I could use it to go
"UGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH" for like 5 minutes.

Day 114- Sheesh

It's been a rough day and I'm feeling stressed but tomorrow is going to bring lots of joy! 12 more hours until the big reveal.

:) :) :D

Day 111- Lay off me

I just ate 2 bowls of chocolate peanut butter tillamook ice cream. When I came into the room with the second bowl, John was like, "Oh you got some ice cream?" which is cool because it's like the first bowl never existed until I post this blog.

Day 108 - 17 weeks preggo and 1 week till the big reveal

Oh man, when I start to think about knowing the gender everything gets really REAL. Of course, thinking about a lot of things makes it real, especially the cost of alone/john & tai / recreation time increasing dramatically- the story of parenthood of course.

Today I made calls that I should've made at least a week ago and it felt good to touch base with people. Sometimes I feel really overwhelmed by the phone, I guess because I always feel like 1) I can't really gauge how long a person wants to be on the phone with me and 2) I'm a terrible "recapper". I was talking about this with the girls earlier this week. My mom is an expert phone storyteller. I remember sitting in my room when I was younger listening to my mom tell the same story to 4 different people and being totally captivated every time. Not only that, but the story would usually be about what she and I did that day, so it's like- I just experienced everything she talked about firsthand and was still drawn into it. Usually I'm capable of recapping once to one person, MAYBE. Mostly because I feel like something becomes somewhat less important after I've talked about it with one person. Typically the first person I talk to will say:
"So what's new?"
and I'll tell them whatever news I have, we'll exchange ideas, I'll probably walk away from the conversation being touched in some way or another by their comments, ideas, reflections, blah blah blah. Then I talk to the next person and they say:
"So, what's new?"
and now, it's not new anymore. It's old because I already unloaded it.

I don't know. I think I just have to get over it and be a better communicative person via phone.

That's the end of that thought.

Other news of the past week:
1) Belly is getting bigger, harder and higher on my torso. Very cool
2) John's grandmother passed away which bums me out as I wish I could've met her
3) John and I saw Daybreakers, a vampire movie with the right idea and wrong everything else
4) Got turned away from seeing Avatar and eating at Blue C Sushi (sold out and closed, respectively)
5) Both of us have been pretty organization/goal oriented lately. I think I'm going to make a master list of goals called "101 Goals in 1001 Days" to try to record what's important to me in the next 2.75 years. John's making a database which connects smaller goals to bigger ones. It's pretty cool to follow benefit paths to see how something small you are doing is contributing to the big picture.
6) Everything is quite peaceful. Seems like a lot of things became very solid and well, peaceful since we found out we're having a baby. I feel like John is my rock, as corny as that sounds. We're totally committed and really excited about shaping our future and having a family.
7) I'm looking forward to mapping out the future with my mom moving to Seattle (and in a perfect world, Tim too :). It makes me happy to know that she will be a part of my life and growing family here as she blossoms into a person who is independent, optimistic and content. I know transitions take time and energy both physically and emotionally but I am completely confident that no matter what we'll figure everything out. It sure would be great to have both grandmothers (and Dave:) living nearby.

Whew that was a handful of thoughts!

Alright, well, I'm really excited to know girl/boy at this point. I'm still keeping my cool but man oh man it's like when you have to pee and finally find a toilet and start fumbling with your zipper. I'm just so close yet have to WAIIT.

OH- another thing that made it REALLY real was receiving our first baby gift in the mail yesterday!!!!! That was super exciting although John tried to open it without me there with him (FOUL BALL JOHN) but couldn't get it out of the package and ultimately we opened it together. THANK YOU AUNT SHELLY!!! It's a padded cover for shopping carts/restaurant booster seats. John took it out of the plastic wrap and sortof draped it over himself like a bra which I must say is a pretty good idea for my rapidly growing bosom in the meantime.

In conclusion, I ate steak tonight. Eat your heart out Mom, Ronda and vegetarians of the world. Yea, this fetus likes meat and I'm okay with that.


Man, I am REALLY excited to know if it's a girl or boy

monitor

We're about to head to the bank. I was just checking out the blog, thinking about what to write, and then emmett showed me this, which I've gotta figure out how to add to the registry http://www.theonion.com/content/news_briefs/new_grown_up_monitor_allows

Day 97- 4 months pregnant

Today marks week 16 of being pregnant. To follow up on Wednesday's appointment, we dropped John off in the early morn to his appointment and Debbie and I went to Group Health for mine. Once in the room, all the routine checks were done and we were lucky enough to get an ultrasound. As soon as she placed the joystick on my belly, I saw legs doing a bicycling motion. It was amazing! She moved it around and we could get a good look at this big baby in there. I couldn't believe it wasn't a gummy bear/teddy graham anymore. It was laying there with its big brainy head on the left side and was quite active, moving legs and arms around. Debbie pointed out the spine, ribs and heart too. It was an incredible vision. I still don't feel very pregnant and I don't look it either. I know it is a matter of time before I'm rounded out, so I'm not feeling at all anxious about it.

Last night John and I went to Lillie's wedding and had a great time. Lillie looked gorgeous and the general theme of the wedding was "peacock" in an ultra-classy way. It was really nice to start the new year/decade off with her celebration. We got home from Tacoma at like 1:20am and I felt like death and slept like death. All day today I've been napping and I must admit, it felt pretty good.

Next big task on my agenda: Tell work that I'm pregnant. Not looking forward to it even though I'm sure it's going to be fine. If a women's empowerment organization has issues with my pregnancy, there's obviously something wrong with that picture.

Oh, so ultimately, we didn't find out the gender on Wednesday. The machine was "too old" and it was a side view of the baby- a guess really wasn't feasible. My next appointment will be January 19th- THAT'S when we'll know the correct pronoun for the air biker in my abdomen. I can't wait until I start feeling the motion of this baby cross-training down there, joyous.