first big buy...

well last summer we bought our bedding. yes LAST summer. PBK was discontinuing my favorite set so i got it on clearance. so the purchase i'm referring to is the stroller. BABIES R US was getting in a different color of their Peg Perego Aria MT and they were selling off their floor model in the old color and we got a pretty good price for it. it will fit about 3 different brands of carseats so we decided to register for a Graco car seat that works in the stroller as well. i figure we're going to have other children and they might be born in months where we would need a stroller that a newborn could sit in so we'd better get a stroller that is compatible with a carseat (since they don't really make strollers that newborns can go in anymore). the stroller is on the compact and lightweight side which is just what we were after, so all in all we're pretty happy we stopped by the store today!

90 days...

are you kidding me?! and only 69 until baby is considered full term!! we better get going on this getting ready for baby stuff. hell i just hit the 3rd trimester yesterday...i can't hardly believe it!

well i just spent the week with jessica, mark, and the girls. all in all it was a pretty nice and relaxing week. i crocheted several items, including my items for the online exchange i'm apart of (it's like a virtual shower with this group i belong to online. we're all due in october and we each got paired up with one other woman who we buy or make something for). i'll post that once i know she's received it in the mail. i've got just one or two more things i need to make/buy for mike and rae and then i'll be sending off a box to them as well. anyway, and while i was there i went with jessica to the girls swimming classes. let me tell you, kate is a little fish!!! i'm betting she'll be on a swim team sometime in the future she's so good.

anyway, things have been going great. i'm assuming since i didn't hear anything from my OB office about the GTT that i passed! whoo hooo!! that means no 3 hour GTT and no gestational diabetes. i do have to go in this week to get my RhoGam shot though. i'll also stop by the lab and have them do my draw for the liver/bile test. hopefully that is why i'm itching. we'll see. we just registered at BABIES R US and i think we're going to head back today to add a few items we left off (SEE SIDEBAR FOR LINK TO REGISTRY). i wasn't feeling so great the day we did it so i've added as much to it as i could online and now i have to go back to the store to add more. haven't decided on a stroller/carseat. i do like the fact that the one mike got is so small, but there are many things about it i don't like so we're going to take a look at that one again and at others today while we're there. i'm beginning to think if we even need to have a stroller that will fit a carseat b/c really how often are we going to take our baby out in chicago winter in a stroller? by the time it gets nice outside baby will be large enough to fit in a stroller w/o the carseat so i think we may just go for a nicer than average umbrella stroller and call it good. we'll see.

so the date for the shower has FINALLY been set! it's 9-17-06 and that's pretty much all i know as of right now. annie is going to email me the info soon so i can have it for myself and so i can pass it along to maggie. it should be a great day. hopefully we won't get too much in the line of clothing since we already have a closet full!!!

oh...and it looks like there is some sort of pregnancy epidemic going on in BOTH of our families! so far there are 10 people total in the Rice/Bathje clans who are expecting in 2006/2007!! my SIL just announced yesterday that she's 10 weeks and due in february! i have to say, i'm so glad God blessed us when he did b/c i don't think i could handle being the only person in my life NOT pregnant. i certainly think i'd be back on the antidepressants.

anyway i'm off. gotta get some cleaning done...we're getting our crib on wednesday from matt's cousin joan and i'd like to set it up ASAP!!

25w4d

well i'm not allergic to the meds. i felt a little better but as it is the itching comes and goes and i'm convinced it has nothing to do with the toprol. so i'm back on it and i really hope it helps my palpitations. i did mention it to my OB today and he wanted to test my bile levels in my blood. in pregnancy they can get elevated and cause an all over itchyness. if i have it he can put me on meds and if i don't i'll just take bendryl for the rest of my pregnancy and hope it works!

well i had my 1 hour GTT (glucose tolerance test, to check for gestational diabetes) today. hopefully i passed and don't have to take the 3 hour test. the drink actually wasn't that bad at all...kind of like TANG actually. by the time the hour passed i was kind of sick to my stomach, but that could have been because i hadn't eaten in over 12 hours. i feel better now that i had something to eat. i also had an OB appointment today. things look good, everything is measuring right on schedule and i've put on 20 lbs!! ahh!! dr isn't worried. it's a normal weight gain for right now, but i'm also retaining A LOT of fluid (my feet look like fred flinstone's!) so he took that into account as well. i was making my appointment for september and the receptionist asked me how far along i'll be at my appointment in august (b/c they start doing appts every 2 weeks instead of every 4 weeks once you hit 34 weeks) and i looked and i'll be 30 weeks!!! i couldn't believe it!! i tell you i hope to God that time slows down once the baby gets here b/c if it flys by as fast as this pregnancy has s/he will be 1 before i know it!!

this weekend matt and i are heading to michigan to visit with mark and jessica (and aunt mary and uncle steve are making a point to be in town so they can see me too). matt will leave sunday and i'll be there until thursday or so. jessica and the girls will bring me back and then we plan on doing some things here in the chicago area since they'll be here until sunday morning. i'm very excited for the trip!

last weekend was great too! it was SO good to see matt and lori and of course the girls. the two of them are getting SO BIG i can't believe it! lori and i went through her maternity clothes, nursing clothes, baby clothes, and toys and they sent us home with a car full! we're so very grateful for their generosity and it was a good excuse to make a trip to dubuque to see them and their home. the area is very beautiful. it's all hills and farms but it is incredibly gorgeous. they could certainly use some more restaurants/bathrooms in between here and there though!! :) while we were in iowa matt and i visited his cousin karen and her family. they are about 1 1/2 hours or so from matt and lori so it wasn't that long of a ride. they just built a new house in a new neighborhood (in the middle of NOWHERE!)and i must say it is a very nice house! ...and they have the best bed and pillows i've EVER slept on! it was the first time in many years that i didn't wake up with some part of me hurting b/c of a bad mattress or pillow. that was a good visit too, i just wish kyle and devon would have crawled out of their dungeon (the basement) once in a while to vist it with us! :)

well that's all that's new here right now. hope everyone is doing well!

update

well i couldn't handle it anymore so i called my GP. he said to stop taking the meds for now and see if the itching goes away. i'm REALLY hoping that it's just an allergic reaction and not PUPPS . that cannot be fun. only time will tell!

the weekend

well i thought i'd take another belly shot just for fun. not as much growth between 21 weeks and 24 weeks as there was between 19 and 21 weeks, but i'm definitely still growing! and thank GOD it's only in my belly!


well this week my GP called and said that they got the results back from my 24 hour holter monitor...everything looked good. some mild tachycardia but nothing to be concerned about. he did call in a Rx for me though that is used to treat palpitations. we'll see how that goes. about 12 hours after my first pill i noticed that my entire body was itching. no spots or rash, just like my skin was crawling. i'm going to give it until monday and if it's not gone by then i'll give them a call. i just don't know if it is a pregnancy related thing or if i'm allergic to the meds. we shall see.

matt and i are heading to iowa on friday. we're going to go visit matt and lori and the girls and to pick up some baby stuff they have for us. i think between what they are giving us and what matt's cousin is giving us we may have enough stuff left over that we can take some of it down to dad's so when the grand babies come to visit there will be things already there for use. but we'll have to see, i have NO IDEA what either of them have for us! then on saturday we'll leave at some point to go visit with one of matt's cousins that lives an hour or so from matt and lori. it'll be short visits with both cousins, but it'll be worth it. hell we haven't seen either of them in ages!

on that note nicole called today to tell me that our crib arrived at their house today. we had it shipped there b/c our buzzer is STILL not working (and it hasn't been for over a year) and it's not something they can just leave at the door. so i guess we'll have to return that to the store. it sucks, but what can you do? the email said that it hadn't been processed for shipping yet, but that there is a delay between their computers and their warehouse so we knew this was a possibility. guess we'll figure that one out on monday.

scratch that...

matt's cousin just offered to give us her pretty much brand new crib and mattress. good thing i can still cancel the order from walmart!

24 weeks!

well here we are at 24 weeks...the earliest a baby can be viable outside the mother! sure there is a slim survival rate at this point, but at least if my baby were born now it would have a chance.

this past week or so has brought on swollen feet. :( it sucks b/c i do everything that you're supposed to do to prevent it from happening and yet i still seem to have elephant feet by the end of the day (which can actually be painful too). i'll talk to the OB about it at my next appointment in a few weeks but until then i'm doing everything i can to get them back to normal.

yesterday matt and i made a trip to once upon a child. the one by us is pretty good, but the one by my MIL is about twice the size and i thought we'd find a better selection there. boy was i right! we spent $100 on about $300 worth of clothing (and a few blankets) and as it was matt had to pry me out of the isles! there was just SOOOOOO much stuff and they only take gently used items (so no faded clothes and no stains) so it was like buying brand new clothes. the more i looked around the more i wondered why anyone in their right mind would buy brand new baby clothes. as it is matt and i have spent probably $200 total on clothes and you'd think we spent a small fortune we have so many. earlier we bought a few things new on sale and thought we got a deal. then i did some garage saling and realized that i'd be better off buying used. needless to say i will probably never buy a brand new outfit for our baby unless it's less than $5.00 (the most i paid for one outfit at once upon a child, the average being $3) or for a special occasion. so my goal in the next day or so is to go through it all and write down what we have so we'll know what we still need in terms of clothing.

other than that, we FINALLY ordered our crib! we had been debating for months over where we should order it from and we finally decided on a store that we knew we could trust, walmart. there are gobs of baby stores online that i could have ordered from, but you never know what kind of service you're going to get with a store you've never heard of before. plus the crib was just under $100 and with shipping and tax the total was around $175. it would have been considerably less though if there was a store in our area that allowed drop shipping. i'm happy with what we paid though. we would have bought a mattress too, but my SIL is lending us hers. our next big purchase will probably be a wooden high chair. all of the plastic ones i see now a days are so ridiculous looking and we want something that won't stick out like sore thumb. baby depot's website has several good quality chairs that are slightly higher in price than plastic chairs so we'll probably order from them (especially since we have one near by).

repeat BIG ultrasound

well we had our repeat BIG ultrasound today. dad just happened to be in town for the 4th of july holiday and so we asked him if he wanted to come in the room with us since he had never seen anything like it before. he was happy to come in and watch. baby wasn't terribly active (which i knew b/c the constant kicking is barely a flutter right now) and s/he is head down and facing my left. this little one must love to look out facing the world b/c we didn't get a profile shot again, so we don't have the slightest idea what baby looks like (unless s/he comes out looking like skeletor...which i really really hope doesn't happen). this is fine by me, i'd rather be surprised. we didn't want to find out the sex so the tech told us to look away when he measured the legs...of course i didn't. good thing baby had it's legs crossed. :) baby was measuring 1.5 lbs and right on target with my due date. this sunday brings a big milestone...24 weeks marks the earliest a baby can be viable outside the mother. granted a 24 weeker has just a slight chance of survival, but that's better than no survival rate at all. well here are some pics for your viewing pleasure.

HEAD AND BODY SHOT


THE NANNA NANNA BOO BOO SHOT (i wonder if s/he was sticking his/her tongue out too)
those are hands up by the face


FACE LOOKING OUT WITH HANDS UP IN THE AIR