7 Months Pregnant

So I haven't been as good about updating my blog this last trimester. It seems like the list of things to do before the baby comes gets longer and longer, and all the while my energy to do it gets shorter. I'm on a vacation day from work today to try and clear out the room we'll use for the nursery, as it seems the weekends are only good now for catching up on sleep, cleaning up the mess we made during the week, taking baby preparation classes, and adding more things to the to-do list that we never get to! I think I'll have burned up 10 of my 12 vacation days before he comes, but fortunately I'll be taking a few months off and then going back part time after he's born - so hopefully I won't need them as much!

How I'm Feeling:
Really, pretty great! I thought I would be much more uncomfortable by this time (I'm writing this at 32 weeks). The round ligament pain has actually decreased - although can still be somewhat pronounced when I try and roll over in bed - and I don't really feel all that big. I'm surprised sometimes when I look at pictures or catch my profile in the mirror. Clothes are a bit of a problem, though, as the current style of empire waisted maternity clothes do NOT look good on me. Fortunately, I have been loaned/given a bunch of clothes by my friends and sister-in-law, so I am pretty well-outfitted. :)

Ziggy's Getting Stronger!
Our boy has become quite the acrobat in my belly, which fascinates me to no end. It's gotten to the point where you can actually see my belly shake when he kicks hard enough. Of course, every time I try to get Mark's attention so he can see as well, Ziggy decides he's had enough. Mark can usually catch some acrobatics in the middle of the night when I'm sleeping. And a few nights ago he was kicking with unbelievable force. It amazed both of us.

Baby Preparations:
In my own OCD world, it makes sense to me why I have to have the kitchen finished and our new office completely organized (including all my filing from my inbox done) before I start on the nursery - but we're running out of time! So I did allow myself the luxury of finishing the organization of the kitchen, since Mark recently cut another shelf for our pantry and added a shelf to our spice pull-out drawer! So, yeah, it's ALMOST done!! In fact, the only thing left is for Mark to stain a little piece of the underpart of a peninsula cabinet that hangs down over the counter. We'll probably have to do something to celebrate when it is officially done.

Our computer and most of our day-to-day office items have been moved to our formal dining room, and I love the new location of our desk. It's right in front of the window, so I can see a bit more of the world, and next to the kitchen making it easier to get snacks! I've mostly got the stuff in here organized, but just have (as always) an overflowing inbox and a small stack of random stuff to deal with. That small stack is about to get huge, though, as today I HAVE to clear out the rest of our office stuff from the nursery. Mark is going to steam clean the carpets (first time since we moved in) and put up a closet organizer in the nursery. We've also got some painting to do - the nursery walls (we're leaning now towards a gray), and a dresser and bookcase (probably just an off-white). Fortunately, we have reinforcements coming in to help with the nursery (yeah for mom!), so we may wait to do the painting/organizing in there until she arrives (early May). Fortunately, most of the essential furniture has been taken care of - my parents are giving me the crib and rocking chair they used for my sister and I, we're using a small bookcase that Mark built a few years ago, and Mark's bro and sister-in-law gave us a dresser that they are replacing. The dresser needs a little TLC - a new back, and fresh coat of paint, but it sure beats the hassle/cost of going out and buying a new one! We're going to use the dresser as a changing table - and because it is painted, we can screw the changing pad right on top.

Baby classes:
We've got a ton of classes planned over the next couple of months. We're currently about halfway through our Bradley classes. We've also taken a 1-day hospital prepared birthing class. We're also signed up for a Life with Baby class (necessary, we have little-to-no-experience with newborns), Breastfeeding class, and an infant CPR class. Whew! Our last class is on May 23, so as long as the baby doesn't come more than two weeks early, we'll get through them all.

Vacation/Travel:
We've had/planned a lot of travel in this last trimester. We wanted to see our out-of-town family and friends before we are confined to the house with the new baby. :) I took a three day weekend in mid-March for our "Baby Moon" - and although Mark had to work a bit through it, we had a grand time. It mostly involved going out to eat at all our favorite places, daily naps, and we even went OUT to the movies - something we don't do very often. We saw Amazing Grace - which was quite good.

At the end of March/Beginning of April, we took a trip to Colorado to visit my high school friends. We'd all had this trip planned for over a year - and our host was 37 weeks pregnant herself ! Fortunately, she waited until the day after everyone left to have the baby. We left a bit early, so I don't know if we can claim credit for inducing her (we have this amazing effect on our friends - who seem to go into labor shortly after visiting us) - although a 5-day delay isn't so bad! We had a great time, and I even went on a short hike!

For Easter, we went to Dallas to visit Mark's parents and brother & sister-in-law. We had a lot of fun - including an evening at a local rodeo!

Next weekend, we are going to Wimberly, TX to visit my aunts. The weekend after that, Mark's parents are going to visit us (unless our newest nephew hasn't made his appearance by then). The first weekend of May, my mom is coming to visit and to help us finish the nursery. Then the second weekend of May, we are planning another trip to Dallas to meet our new nephew and to see my sister-in-law's dance recital. Whew! By that time, we'll just be a few weeks from my due date, so we'll spend the last few weekends at home resting and preparing.

And here's my (roughly) 7 month picture - I've been much worse lately about taking them on time! I used to take them on the very day that I hit the mark! (this is about 31 weeks)




















Here's Mark and the belly! :)

And finally, a family shot of the 3.5 of us. Willy tends to get a bit confused, because apparently the voice I use to talk to the baby is the same voice I use to talk to Will.

Hope you are all well! Thanks for reading my blog!

Six Months Pregnant

I'm officially in the third trimester!! It feels like I've been pregnant for a long time now, but the fact that I only have three months to get everything done before Ziggy arrives is still a bit daunting.

I've mixed some of the 5 & 6 month experiences in the entry I posted earlier this morning, so this one will likely be a bit shorter. Basically, the sixth month of pregnancy was similar to the fifth month - lots more home organization, stronger kicks on Ziggy's part. One change though, is this past month, I've gotten much better at exercise. Mark and I have resumed our relatively long walks, which have actually gotten easier as I've built back up some strength. In the last couple of weeks, we have walked to the grocery store, library, bank, and my favorite - the Shell station - to buy Hostess cupcakes!! It's probably a good thing that the exercise (well, at least the walking part of the exercise) has come back a little easier, because my sweet tooth is uncontrollable! I crave candy, cookies, chocolate ALL THE TIME! I've always had a sweet tooth, but it subsided quite a bit during the first trimester (Mountain Dews didn't even sound all that good!), but has progressively gotten stronger over the last couple of months. Our order of three boxes of girl scout cookies arrived last Friday night - they were gone by Sunday night. To my credit, Mark did help me out a bit - especially with the peanut butter patties, but I still take most of the credit for polishing off all those cookies. I went in for the glucose screening test yesterday, and am a bit nervous how it will come out, because it's going to take A LOT of willpower to cut out the candy. In fact, when I'm done with this blog, I'm headed to the grocery store to get a mountain dew (don't worry - this is indeed a rare treat - only once a week or so), and stuff to make smores tonight for dinner (and of course, normal groceries too). I feel a bit guilty about eating so much sugar, but in truth, I'm still eating a lot less sweets than I really want to eat - and I'm doing reasonably well balancing this all out with healthy foods, especially eating a lot more fruits & vegetables than I normally do to offset all this sugar consumption.

This past weekend, we put up shelves in one of our guest room closets so that we could clear a bunch of percussion stuff out of the formal dining room so that we can move our study in there - clearing out the small bedroom so we can make it a nursery. So during your next visit, you'll be able to peruse music & percussion accessories from the comfort of your stay in our guest room! :)

Mark studiously reviews some music in front of his closet:

My mom has made an adorable crib set with matching wall quilt, so I'm excited to get the nursery set up and put it all out. We still need to buy a crib & changing table (although we're likely going to buy a dresser, and use a changing pad on top of that instead of buying an actual table), and paint the walls (either a light tan or a bold yellow - haven't decided yet), but as long as we have the nursery ready about a month before Ziggy's scheduled arrival, I'll be comfortable.

WORK:

Now that I'm a little less frantic about the birth experience & having the right doctor, I'm facing the indecision of how long to take off work, and in what capacity to come back. Mark and I had originally decided that we wanted for me to take 3 months off when he's born, and then go back part-time (20-30 hrs per week) after that. We're also shooting for me to have a flexible work schedule, so that we won't have to worry about day care - ie with Mark's schedule, I could still be in the office during work hours 20 hours a week, it would just vary widely, which days/hours I was there from week to week. ExxonMobil's policies support that (in fact, I can take 6 months off (unpaid) and return part-time for up to 2 years), although I'm not sure about the flexible hours part of it, but I'm feeling a little guilty because I just started a new assignment in January, and don't want to be a big hassle. On top of that, my Project Manager is not thrilled about someone coming in to replace me for three months, and so all involved are talking about just leaving my position vacant when I'm gone. That may be feasible, as I think my project won't have too much terribly pressing during that time (reach a project milestone right around my due date), but I also don't want to come back to a pile of work that has to get done done immediately upon my return. Also, now I'm thinking that I may want to actually take the full 6 months off, or at least more than three months, as it's a unique opportunity that I won't have again (or until we have another baby). But I also could go a little crazy being home for that long, and the extra income is always nice! :) It's tough to make this decision when I really don't know what it's going to feel like to be a mom, and how much energy (or interest) I'll have to work. I'll keep you posted.

I'm sure I've left something out, but that's all I can think to write for now. To leave you, here are the six month pictures. Since the five months were actually taken at 5.5 months, there isn't a whole lot different. Just a different shirt, I guess. :)

Five Months Pregnant

Okay, so I'm actually now six months pregnant, but I figured I should try to remember something about the fifth month of pregnancy and keep my blog chronological. One thing is I had a lot more energy (the second trimester IS somewhat magical) - and so Mark and I were busy getting things done/organized - and hence the Blogging got put on the back burner. We finished our laundry room (okay - it's really a laundry closet). You can't really tell from this picture, but we painted the inside a rather bold yellow, replaced the plywood behind the machines that was loosely attached to the brick exterior with insulation and drywall, re-cut a dryer vent in the wall so that the dryer would actually fit all the way in the closet (it used to vent to the attic through the wall), put up two cabinets above the machine, put up a shelf to the left of the washer to hold laundry soap and put up various hooks, etc. to hold brooms, flyswatters,etc. Perhaps that seems a little more impressive now? :)

Along the home improvement lines, we also put up shelves in one closet, transforming it into a linen closet, and put up shelves in another closet to fit more of our "stuff" in there (we also put up shelves in our Guest room closet to hold a bunch of percussion music, accessories, but that will appear in month 6 entry). Here we are busy working (and yes, I helped!)

The final product:

Health:

I had a little scare regarding my health - but it turns out me & Ziggaroni are okay. I've had weird, and sometimes very pronounced, pains under my ribcage on the right side for the past few months. I have seen just the Nurse Practitioner for the last two months because my doctor was on maternity leave, and she isn't the world's greatest listener, so she sort of blew me off. When I finally told my doctor about it again, she said it could be my gall bladder, so had me give some blood to check enzyme levels and scheduled an ultrasound of my gall bladder. I went online to read about gallbladder issues, and I had a few of the symptoms! It made me really mad that the NP kept blowing me off. Anyways, the ultrasound was fine, but my blood tests came back with high enzyme levels, so she had me take the test again, and they went even higher. I guess she was getting a bit concerned (although she didn't let me on until after everything was back to normal), but I guessed something wasn't right when her office called, and asked if I could come back the same day to have my blood pressure checked and give more blood. Everything was back down to normal, and she doesn't know why it was high, but thought it may be some sort of viral thing that resolved itself. The good part is I got to see Ziggy again, since she ordered a growth ultrasound to be sure he was okay. He is, and is currently 65% weight for his age. A big boy! Hopefully he doesn't get too much higher on the percentile ranking before I have to push him out. :) It was neat to see him again, since he looks a lot less like Skeletor and a lot more like a baby. I could see his lips, his nostrils, fingers, etc. I could even see him blink his eyes! And it was cool, because I would be able to feel him move, and see what that movement actually was on the screen. Speaking of which, I don't know that I have mentioned that I can feel him move now (called "quickening"), but I can. Unfortunately, I don't really remember exactly when it started. It was hard in the beginning to differentiate him moving from my stomach growling, or just other normal intestinal movement. But he's really strong now (esp in 6 months) - and it's fun to feel him party inside of me. Mark can feel him now too - actually, it wasn't long after I was confident that it was really him moving and not just my digestive system that Mark could also feel him move when he put his hand on my belly. In fact, the two of them had some "alone" time the other night while I was sleeping. Mark put his arm around me, and felt Ziggy kick. He says he kicked for sometime, and Mark enjoyed getting to enjoy this by himself while I slept, since I get to enjoy Ziggy by myself for quite some time. I thought that was rather cute.

Birthing:

Wow, some hard decisions to make came this month as we started to think about our birth plan. A friend of ours used Bradley, and it sounded promising after a discussion with her and her husband. It's basically the "new Lamaze" if you want to have a natural childbirth - but focuses much more on deep relaxation rather than breathing to get through the labor contractions. It's also called Husband-coached childbirth, since the dad has a lot of duties in helping the mom relax, etc. I think Mark likes that part of it, so that he'll be busy too, and not just feel helpless standing there watching. We're actually signed up for a class (8 weeks, 3 hours each Sunday night) which starts tomorrow. The hard part for us is deciding if we have the right doctor. We actually really like my doctor, and I trust her quite a bit, but she's not this big hippie, natural-birth doctor. From our conversations, it seems she uses interventions only as appropriate (ie not routine), so I'm comfortable with that. It's just sort of hard reading all the Bradley stuff and not getting freaked out that my doctor may make an episiotomy or recommend inducing, or things like that, and it not actually be necessary. Of course anyone who has enough passion to write a book about natural childbirth is likely to be a bit extremist (doctors are evil - don't let them steal your childbirth experience!), so I struggle a bit to balance out what I actually think about the natural method. Basically, I just really want to avoid a C-section, and at least trying for a natural birth seems to be a good way to go to achieve that. But I also don't like how the extremist mindset makes you feel like a failure if you choose an epidural, or God-forbid end up with a c-section. A doctor-friend of mine pointed out that while, yes, our bodies are designed to be able to handle childbirth without intervention, women died a lot during birth before modern medicine, so interventions are sometimes necessary. Sigh. After our appointment yesterday, Mark and I think we're going to stick with our doctor, but I'm still a little nervous that this Bradley class is going to make me paranoid that she's going to intervene when it's not really necessary. So any of you thinking about having a baby anytime soon - I recommend figuring out what kind of birth you want to have, THEN choosing your doctor.

The interesting thing about birth is that I'm not as nervous now as I thought I would be. I'm actually excited to go through the experience, and a bit eager to meet this little guy whose bouncing around inside of me. That being said, I'm also enjoying lots of sleep (usually around 9 hours or so a night), organizing our house and still maintaining control of my life.

And finally, here are the 5-month pictures (except these are really the 5 1/2 month pictures, since our camera broke):

Pictures of Ziggy

As you may remember, I had my 20-week ultrasound a couple of weeks ago, so here are some recent ultrasound pictures of our boy. I'm guessing that this is the last ultrasound we'll have, so the next time you get to see him may be after he's born! Although, I have to warn you, the scan of these are not so good - since our harddrive crashed on Christmas day, I don't have very good scanning software now. AND our camera is broken, so I can't post (or even take) my 5-month pregnancy picture either (and today is the actual 5-month mark, so I'm rather dissapointed - since every other picture I have taken ON the day) ;)

To help you see him in this picture - his head is on the left, and the white dots toward the bottom are his spine. This is a side profile.

In this next picture, he had his hand on his eye. I was a little worried that he was going to poke his eyes and hurt himself (because he kept doing this), but I suppose there's nothing I can do about it. And I don't know that I have ever heard of a baby being born with self-inflicted injuries. If you have, don't tell me. :)

I also have a picture of his foot - from underneath - it looks like a little footprint. Very cute, but it doesn't show up at all on the scan.

I'll post another update when we can get another pregnancy picture taken. Also, we have made very good progress on one of our house projects - the laundry room (well, laundry closet really). Between last weekend and this week, we installed new drywall (there was just brick and plywood behind the machines themselves) painted it (yellow on the wall, white behind the machines) cut a new dryer vent, and put up two cabinets! Yeah! It looks really good. I would not have thought that having a neat, clean, newly painted laundry area would make such a big difference, but it does. I'll take pictures of that too, someday...

But right now, I need to hit the inbox again (how does it overfill again so quickly?), then go to the grocery store to get something yummy for dinner and a movie. Mark is on a ski trip with friends in Breckenridge with some friends this weekend, so it's up to me to entertain myself. It also means that I don't have to leave the house (I'm becoming more and more of a homebody! :) But I already miss him, and I'm ready for him to come home! :( Don't worry, he comes home Monday night, so you don't have to feel too sorry for me.

Hope you are all well!

Four Months Pregnant

It's been a while since I posted an update. So here goes...

I'm now 19 weeks pregnant. Next week is the half-way point, and Mark is off Friday night so we are going to go out to dinner to celebrate. The second trimester IS proving to be a happier and more magical place. I have MUCH more energy (some days even rival pre-pregnancy energy) - the nausea is gone, and the mood swings are more infrequent and less severe.

With all this magical newfound second trimesterism, though, comes the aches and pains of pregnancy. I don't actually feel all that pregnant, although I am into maternity clothes (not the huge tent kind yet, but I found items that are supposed to grow with you that I'm wearing now, as only a few of my former items of clothing fit anymore). Yesterday, however, I DID feel very pregnant, as I took a brisk walk with Will while Mark took a short run, and it wore me out. Now this wasn't even that aggressive of a walk, but it felt like so much effort while I was doing it!! And then I got home with all sorts of plans for the afternoon, but no energy to do them. I made it through the first few items I intended to get done, but by about 5 PM I was on the couch, exhausted. I pretty much stayed there until bed.

The other discomfort I've got is achy ribs. I thought this was strange - whoever heard of your ribs aching? It started out as back pain - but I thought it was in a rather unusual place - the middle of my back, not my lower back. And then I started noticing that when I laid on one side, the bottom of my rib cage would ache, so I would switch sides until the other side ached. And then I figured out that part of my back that hurt was probably where my rib cage attached to it (my own non-medical theory). I've had one friend who also experienced ribcage pain during pregnancy, so I guess I'm not the first case. But it is a bit weird.

Also, I think I've got a bit more estrogen working through my body - as on New Year's eve and day I decided that I wanted to bake. And I didn't just bake a little - I made 2 batches of brownies and 2 batches of cookies, including homemade frosting to go on the cookies! Now I admit, there were a few things prompting me to do all this baking: First, we got a kitchen aid mixer for Christmas (wonderful - highly recommend if you don't have one), I also got new cookie sheets, and I had 2 boxes of bakers chocolate that were about to expire. Truthfully, I think it's the bakers chocolate that put me over the edge. I have issues with throwing away food - so my OCD-self felt the need to use it all up. From this experiment, though, I have come to the conclusion that cookies/brownies made with bakers chocolate are better than those made with cocoa powder. The peanut butter drizzled brownies were the best of my baking efforts - remind me to make some for you the next time I see you.

We've also got a bit of the nesting going on - however, that's not really new to me. I've always been a bit of a homebody. And I LOVE to organize. If I could make a living organizing things, I'd be there in a heartbeat. We bought one of those closetmaid systems for one of our hall closets, which I turned into a linen closet. FUN FUN! Now I just need to organize the other hall closet, move Mark's percussion stuff from his current music office into it's own closet, move our study into his old music office, paint the old study (new baby's room), tear out the wallpaper and paint the hall bath and remove the sunroom from the back or our house and convert it to a patio- and then we'll be all done with the projects that we had intended to complete before Ziggy arrives. Oh, and I forgot to mention, finish up just a few items in our kitchen, cut a new vent hole for our dryer, and put up two cabinets above our dryer. Four and half months to get this all done - no sweat, right? :)

Anyways, hopefully that provides a bit of an update. Next Monday we go in for the 20-week ultrasound - so be looking for more pictures of skeletor soon!

And, of course here are my four-month pictures:

Love to you all!

Drumroll, please....

It appears that little Ziggy is ... a BOY!!

So, as you know if you've been reading this blog, WE'VE known with 90% probability that he would be a he for several weeks now from the blood screening test. But I wasn't totally believing it for a couple of reasons. First, I was pretty sure he was a girl (guess my intuition's off a bit), and secondly, 10% is a lot of room for error, at least I think.

But we're having a boy. And I can reveal to you one aspect of male behavior already. We went in for the ultrasound, and the technician said "well, I can't really see what it is, because the hand is covering it." She tapped my belly with the ultrasound wand a few times (he didn't want to let go of that thing!), but finally he revealed his jewels for us. So I can prove that a boy's fascination with his tool begins as young as 13-weeks of gestational age. :)

So it's probably a good thing that Ziggy is a boy - since I think Ziggy is more of a boy's name anyways. :) Just kidding, we will be giving him a different name when he's born (and we've already selected one). But I have to admit, he's just so Ziggy to me - it's hard to imagine calling him anything else. Although one new name did come to mind during our ultrasound. After the technician was finished showing us Ziggy's jewels (which are, btw, well photographed - perhaps I can use them in the future to embarass him when he's girlfriend is over?) she showed us some face shots. Now, you have to understand that an ultrasound doesn't show much detail - so we're looking straight on to a very skull-looking object (ie you can see the eye sockets, but now the eyes), then he started opening and closing his mouth. The technician was acting like that was very cute. All I could think of was "Skeletor" (from He-man I think?)

Here he is! This view is looking at him from above. You'll see his head, with his legs sticking out - and also his nice little boy parts. :)

Our own Skeletor!

We hope you all have a very merry Christmas/Hannukah!

A Good Day to Be Me

So yesterday was a really good day. Because THREE good things happened.

1. I don't have to go to Milan! Now I know for most sane people that does NOT sound like a good thing - but for me, it is an overjoying thing - so much so, that I called Mark when I found out and he said he hadn't heard me quite that giddy in a long time. There are quite a few reasons I don't want to go. First, it takes a heck of a long time to get there. And while my doctor assures me it is safe to do so, I am at increased risk of DVT - so I worry about that. And I also worry about something going wrong with the baby while I am there, and I'd have to find my way to a hospital and explain to a doctor in Italian, etc. Secondly, I still get feeling pretty miserable if I don't get enough sleep (which is about 9 hours per night for me now), and I don't constantly keep my stomach in the half-full state. I'm going to be working while I'm there, so I wouldn't have all day to wander from store to restaurant every time I thought I needed to eat something. Thirdly, the first two days I'd be there, I'd basically be on my own because the guy I'd be working with is tied up in meetings (we planned this trip a while ago before he knew of these, I guess) - so I'd be sitting at some table on my laptop all day long - which won't be ergonomically correct (I'm still sensitive to that) and frankly wouldn't have that much to work on - since I need this guy's input on the stuff I"m working on for him, and most of my normal work now is training my replacements (since I'm headed to a new job in a couple of weeks). Also, it's cold there and I don't have many clothes that would fit - so packing would be a hassle (I already hate packing for trips) - and I'd have to get laundry done while I was there. And finally, I really think traveling alone for business is NO fun - you don't have the luxury of getting lost, you have to find everything yourself (I'm awful with getting oriented in a new place), eat by yourself, and if you decide to go sightseeing, that's by yourself too. I'm a bit of an extrovert (wink), so all this doing stuff by yourself is no fun. Oh and finally (I know I already said that), I'd lose half of my weekend, as I'd have to leave Sunday (tomorrow) morning

Now that I've explained why I don't want to go in excruciating detail, I'll tell you how I got out of it. I've been working with this guy via conference call/ Netmeeting for the last couple of weeks, and have gotten a good amount of the work done. With his meeting on Monday/Tuesday, we'd only have two days together in the office - so I explained that it seemed like a lot of travel and cost (he has to pay for my airfare etc, plus I bill my hours to him as well - it's ExxonMobil funny money, but they take it very seriously nonetheless), and I felt confident I could complete the work remotely. He thought about it for a moment and then agreed! Yippee!!!! This was by far the best part of my day.

2. I gave a 4-minute speech to my entire division (a couple hundred people) during our year-end luncheon. And it went well!! I was asked to talk about my work on one of our recent safety initiatives and how it related to the objectives of the division. I'd been working on the speech for about a week, and pretty much could recite it in my sleep - which is necessary, because my brain pretty much turns off during public speaking. I got good comments afterwards, and people said I looked natural and calm (neither of which I felt - I hoped they couldn't see my hand shaking violently). On top of that, I had to speak into a handheld microphone - so it was something else I had to pay attention to with my non functioning brain. So yeah- that's done!! There were only two downers with the speech - one, the VP who I was supposed to "impress" was late, so he didn't hear the speech. And secondly, I got a hard question at the end - meaning I had no idea how to answer it (there were about 8 of us who gave speeches, followed by a Q&A) - and it wasn't fair, because nobody else got questions, except the VP - and I was the least tenured speaker. hmph! I was sitting next to the SH&E manager, and he offered to answer the question, which I quite happily accepted. So he stood up and began answering the question, to which the VP harassed him that I was supposed to answer the question. So I stood up and pretty much said I didn't know the answer, but perhaps Ray (the SHE manager) would like to field the question - to which everyone laughed (okay laughing - I know they all felt bad for me so they weren't laughing AT me). So Ray spent a couple of moments giving me an answer to recite back (which was totally obvious that's what was going on) - so I said "Let me see if I can repeat this accurately" (more laughter) and repeated his answer. I got a round of applause after I sat back down - so hopefully I didn't look like too much of a moron. But it stinks, because I nailed my speech, but then had to end on that note. Oh well. Still a good part of my day.

3. It's our division's custom to go home following the luncheon (not too many - actually ANY other customs like that) - so I got home at about 3 PM yesterday. Yeah!!! Our house is a pigsty (still haven't managed to do much productive once I get home from work) - so while Mark hung Christmas lights (yeah!) - I did a gazillion dishes while listening to Christmas music and drinking apple cider. Not a bad way to spend the afternoon (beats sitting behind my desk - AND I got to start the weekend with a clean kitchen).

So anyways, I thought I would share with you the joys that happened on Friday.

And finally, I am now officially in the second trimester - which all sources I can find promise to be a happy and magical place. So I am expecting the next three months to be full of bliss! I'll let you know how it goes! :)

Oh - one more thing - we've decided to go through the last round of genetic testing - which will take place a week from Monday - and it includes an ultrasound where we'll hopefully get to confirm Ziggy's gender. So once we see what kind of plumbing this baby has, we'll share the news! Think good thoughts about Ziggy's brain and spinal cord - because that's what this testing is for. :)

Have a great weekend!