Laboring Adventures

Yesterday evening we were pretty sure the baby was coming.  We thought Angela's water had broken, and she was having steady, hard contractions.  We excitedly packed and then took Christine over to our friends' house.  On the way into the hospital, Angela was contracting so hard she couldn't walk.  The nurse checked her and... no cervical change.  What!?!? Really!?!? so the doctor said we could walk around and try to get the labor going. 2 hours and about 40 contractions later, and she had dialated from a 2 to a 3...  They sent us home at 3 in the morning very disappointed.

6 hours later Angela had her OB appointment and the doctor told us that she had progressed a bit more, and he thought that she would go into labor later today!

After the appointment I made her pack boxes and run around cleaning all morning.  She was a trooper all morning, and the contractions were picking up.

We are back in the hospital now, and she is dialated to a 5!! so the baby is on its way!

As a side note, before we dropped off Christine today she informed us that we had forgotten several things the night before.  First, "Tangy Bear was cold last night.  She needs her pants."  When I went and got Tangy bear, she did, in fact, not have pants on.  Then she told us that we brought her pink blanket but that her favorite color is purple. "I need my purple blanket, too!"  I wonder what kind of kid Jacob is going to be.  We can't wait to meet him.

Anniversary Gifts?

It's our 5 year anniversary weekend!  I never know what to say on an anniversary, is it better to say, "It feels like we just got married yesterday," or "I feel like we've been in love forever."  They seem to be mutually exclusive statements, but I'm going to say that in our marriage, at least, I feel they are both true.

On that note, this year we decided to give each other some pretty awesome presents!  First, I thought it would be fun, meaningful...even touching... for us to reenact the days before our wedding.  We got married two days after we finished finals.  We spent those two days, packing up our separate apartments and hauling all the stuff to our new apartment. During those days we learned what each of us likes to hoard: Jeff- class notes and papers, Angela- dishes, kitchen items, and books.  So to commemorate our first move, the day I finished up Medical School, we packed up our apartment to head to our new home for the next 5 years: Temple, Tx.  We learned that Jeff still hoards class notes and papers (I finally got rid of my organic chemistry notes) and Angela still loves her kitchen items and books and has added to her list sewing stuff.  Although, she made a valiant effort at clearing out her fabric stores.  We noted that over the years we have focused our book collecting to children's books. With the help of Nana we have over 30 Little Critter books!

For our gifts.  I decided to splurge and spend a little bit more than we normally do for anniversaries, but hey this is the big 5. So on Friday I bought her a house!  That's right we are now homeowners!
Angela promised to give me the greatest present a man can receive from his wife; a gift that requires, especially in her case, the sacrifice of her body, her health, her mind, and her energy for 9 months, a present that will require years of commitment and sacrifice but promises to endow our marriage with untold memories and blessings... I came through with the house; however, Angela did not deliver!

I will say, she gave it her best effort to get that baby here this week. We packed all week, and I made Angela do all the heavy lifting... well maybe not all of it.  This picture was taken on Wednesday night.  Angela had been having her normal off and on contractions so we went to Lowe's to pick up some paint and moving supplies.  In the store the contractions started coming pretty strong and regular.  They continued after dinner and got closer together (9 mins and then 6 mins).  We started making plans with our friends about where to take Christine, we packed the bags, the snacks, got Christine ready, took a commemorative photo and... the contractions stopped.

This scenario has repeated itself several times over the last few weeks.  It's quite the roller coaster of emotions, but I keep reminding myself, that baby will eventually come out. 

Mother nature gave us another present for our anniversary weekend, more of a leaving Houston present.  Two stories will help explain this story's significance.  When Angela and I were first dating I told her about Texas and Texas size rain storms.  I told her that the storms sometimes occur very quickly and can be really powerful, much more powerful than anything they have in Utah.  I told her about one time when my sister-in-law Ali had first moved to Texas.  She wanted to go running, but I told her, it looked like it was going to storm.  She said we had plenty of time to take a short run.  One block from the house, we were in a torrential downpour, with huge gusts of wind and lightning strikes all around us.  We ran back to the house just in time to witness our neighbors gigantic tree get uprooted and fall onto their house in the wind.

Since moving to Texas we have experienced several large storms.  One storm Angela will never let me forget.  I was at school studying for my Step 1, and I received a frantic phone call from Angela.  She told me that apartment complex was flooding.  I assumed she was overreacting.  "She's from Utah.  She just isn't used to these Texas storms."  I finally realized she was not overreacting when she told me the water had come in all the way to our closet!  By the time I got home, though, the storm had passed so I had not experienced the initial anxiety and stress of rising flood waters.

Well Saturday night, mother nature sent us an amazing, stressful storm as her going away present from Houston, and Angela finally got her moment to say, "See! wouldn't you have been freaking out too if you were home alone during a storm like this?!"  Answer: I was freaking out, and I wasn't alone.

The rainstorm started rather suddenly.  We opened the windows to let in the nice fresh rain smell.  But then we had to close the windows quickly because the wind was so hard it was blowing the rain in through the window.  Then the rain water started to rise.

It's hard to appreciate in these photos, but this is right along the front of our apartment.  It is about 6-7 inches deep all over the courtyard.  I slopped through the water to make sure none of the drains were clogged, but it was just coming down too fast.

It was lightning and thundering pretty loudly too.  Christine was scared, until Angela told her it was like in Mr. Brown Can Moo when he goes BOOM BOOM BOOM to make thunder.  Then she started just repeating "like in Mr. Brown Can Moo!" everytime there was big thunder.  Then we heard a weird kind of thunder, it was more like cracking and then BOOM!  We looked out our window to see

The three-story-tall tree in front of our apartment had fallen over and was resting on the roof of the apartments across the courtyard.  (I did not get a very good photos of the tree)

 

Here's a video if it doesn't work just click here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/123zuzzy/8690019645/

Now Angela has seen a large tree fall down due to a Texas thunderstorm. We are now ready to move.

38 weeks

That me... wearing a sweater because it was cold this week (60 degrees brrrr)

 And.... BAM big ol' belly in yo' face!

I am feeling HUGE right now. Waddling around the store I feel so OBVIOUSLY pregnant (which I should, I mean I am 38 weeks) It's nice because people go out of their way to rush to open doors for me, or if I ever drop something on the ground, strangers run over to pick up the dropped grocery list. But sometimes I just feel like everyone is staring at me wondering if my water will break right there in the store.

When I went to my weekly doctor's appointment last Tuesday I was dilated to a 2 and 50% effaced. I have decided that the ideal time to have this baby would be this Saturday (or a few days before) because that will give me a full week to pack up the house, and a week to recover before the move. The worst time would be May 3rd, the day we move. Speaking of moving, I packed my first box on Friday. 1 down, 99 to go.

Jeff had his very last day of medical school on Friday (his last day was spent doing a rhinoplasty- a nose job).  Finished with medical school! Crazy! He has submitted his papers for his medical license, and everyone can start calling him Dr. Hamaker. Now that Jeff is done, he will be home all day with us so we can begin packing up the entire house. We will probably have to take turns taking Christine to the park to get her out of the house while the other one stays at home packing. I hope to make some serious progress this week.

Christine is soooo excited for the baby to come. Last week she pretended Madeline (her baby doll) was Jacob and was feeding "Jacob" his bottles, changing his diaper, rocking him to sleep. We had to pull out his new blankets and she put the baby doll on them and then told me "Jacob is sleeping" and we had to leave the room and shut the door. Then Christine made a crying noise "waa waaa- Jacob is awake Mommy!"  Yep, I think she is ready to be a big sister. I took this photo of Christine because she asked me to. "Mommy take a picture of me!" (I had the camera out taking pictures for my crafting blog). At the time Christine was playing "picnic at the beach"

Then, "Now take a picture of Tangie Bear Mommy!!" So here is a picture of Christine's "friend" Tangie Bear (her words not mine) Tangie Bear is wearing "underwear" (an outgrown diaper cover of Christine's) because she is a "big girl like Christine" Most days Tangie Bear wears full outfits including pants (usually a pair of blue capris) on top of underwear, and a shirt (most often a red tank top with a butterfly on it- because butterflies are Tangie's favorite).

Two months ago we took Christine to her bi-annual dentist appointment and he told us it was finally time to take away the binkey. I attempted to take away her binkey a year ago but she quickly started to suck her thumb- her dentist told us it was better to keep the binkey. Her binkey was only a bedtime/naptime thing, so it was just a matter of her learning to fall asleep without her binkey. Except our stupid apartment complex decided it was a great time to do a construction project on all the catwalks, which involved construction workers being right outside Christine's room banging hammers, ripping down wood, yelling at each other, whistling, and just being as loud as possible. Great combination. But we couldn't put it off, the construction is still going on today and will continue on after we move, then we will be dealing with transitioning to a new house and a new baby. NOT an ideal time to also take away the binkey so we had to press forward. We had a REALLY hard time at nap time, and there were several days that she just skipped having a nap or else we would go for a drive and she fell asleep in the car for 30 minutes. yikes! it was HARD. But now, 2 months later she's a champ. If we didn't have the dumb construction going on right now I think it only would have taken 2 weeks to transition to no binkey. After 2 weeks she stopped asking for her binkey and saying things like "I'm missing something in my mouth" or "I need something in my mouth mommy!"  Our biggest helper was an mp3 of white noise purchased from Amazon for 99 cents loaded to an ipod. It really helped drown out the construction. She calls it her "soft music". Much better deal than a $30 white noise machine.

Jeff and I plan to post updates on our blog when we go to the hospital just like we did for Chrisitne, so if you are wondering if I've gone into labor just check our blog.

April update

Angela here. I know, big surprise. Jeff has taken over all household duties including keeping our blog updated. He's such a good husband. I figured it's about time for a real update: How have we been doing?

I am 37 weeks pregnant. The baby is the size of honeydew melon. I feel like I should be at 40 weeks already. Pregnancy just seems to drag on and on and ooooooon. Little baby you can come now! We've had 2 nights already of timing contractions for several hours and making phone calls to our friends to ask them to keep their cell phones nearby in case we have to drop off Christine. But the contractions always slow down and stop. Last night we got really close to going in to the hospital, we had our bags all packed up and ready to go. But finally after 4 hours, the 4 minute contractions went away. I just hope that all that pain and annoyance at least did some dialating.

Did you notice the hair? I got the "baby haircut" something low maitanance that doesn't take so long to blow dry. I'll be honest, I was a bit upset when I got it cut because it was NOT the haircut I asked for. I brought in a picture of shoulder length hair but I guess I didn't describe the hair cut well enough because I walked out with an a-line bob. It's not that I don't like the hair cut, I am just worried about having something high maintance. So far I really like having short hair, and it DOES fit in a pony tail. So it should be good enough for those weeks of zombie-like existance.

Here is Christine enjoying a chocolate Easter bunny. We had a really fun Easter. Christine wanted to make a trap out of legos to catch the Easter bunny, because that it what we did for St. Patrick's Day- we made traps to catch the leprachans who left us candy. So obviously, that is what the Easter bunny would do right? Thankfully the Easter Bunny is clever and did not fall for the trap, and still left us an Easter basket full of candy.

Today while Christine was falling asleep for her nap I was singing songs to her and she asked for the "Happy Song" I attempted to sing If you're happy and you know it and the smiles song but she told me "no no no that's not the right song" So I asked her what was the "Happy Song?"  She proceeded to sing (to the tune of if you're happy and you know it) "If you are good and obey you get a chocolate bunny for dessert". "That's the right words mommy!"

The Easter bunny also gave Christine two little people princesses- Ariel and Bell. Christine is starting to love the Disney princesses. Cinderella is her favorite. We read her Cinderella book before nap time AND before bedtime every single day.

When we went to the Galleria to get my hair cut, we were going to go to the Rain Forest Cafe for lunch. We thought it would be a fun thing to do with Christine before we moved and had the baby. We walked in the restarant and got a table, and at first Christine thought it was pretty cool (she really liked the butterflies) but then the elephants and tigers started to rawr and move around and it terrified her. So we left and went to the Cheesecake Factory instead.

I got the Red Velvet Cheesecake... Yummmmm. and Christine got chocolate ice cream. She was pretty happy.

We had a fun Easter egg hunt at Gigi's house with Christine's cousins. Eric and Sandy were visiting on their way to their Disney cruise. Christine was excited to play with her cousins Zack and Brad.

Christine now has a massive supply of jelly beans. This is good, because there are so many she doesn't notice when mommy sneaks half of them.

Jeff is currently doing a rotation in plastic surgery.  After he finishes next week, he is all done with school!

We are going to be moving in 3 weeks, at least we will be moving our stuff. Christine and I might be moving in with Jeff's parents until the baby comes if he waits too long to be born. I am hoping he comes sooner than later!!

Funny Christine

In Nursery, we have laminated pictures that represent the songs we sing.  Each kid gets to come up and chose the picture/song they want to sing.  For the "If you chance to meet a frown" song we have a smiling face that you can turn over to make it into a frowning face.  Well, last night Christine was being defiant.  I held her in my lap and told her when she does not obey she makes Daddy sad.  Then I asked her, "how can you make Daddy happy?"  She reached up to my exaggerated sad face and tried to push up the corners of my mouth and began singing the song.  I said, "No Christine, you make Daddy happy by obeying."  Defiantely she responded, "Turn Daddy's head over," and proceded to try and turn my head over. Exasperated she said "Oh no! Daddy's head is attached.  It won't turn over." At this point Angela and I could not keep up a stern face and began laughing.  Oh what are we going to do with this girl?  Sometimes she is just too cute!

She has also begun making up her own songs to sing.  Today in the bath tub she sung "cooking the water" over and over to a sort of tune.  She also sung to the tune of Ring around the Rosey, "Splishy, sploshy, we all fall down."  She also asked Daddy to sing with his lips and then made a weird hmming noise with her lips puckered out.  Her new favorite animals are Chimpanzees because we saw them eating tomatoes at the zoo.  So we thought she wanted me to make Chimpanzee noises. Turns out she wanted me to whistle.

This is her classic "say cheese" face.  She looks at the camera for one second, puts on this strange fake smile, closes her eyes and says "cheese, click".

  She is obsessed with the book Critter goes to the Dentist.  Which is rediculous, since she was terrified when we went to the dentist a few weeks ago.

She is quite a talker and spurts out long streams of sentences passing tangentially from one thought to the next.  If you ask her if she wants to play a game she says, "Yea! Let's play a board game. I love board games. Candy Land is a board game. Yea Candy Land is a good board game. I love Candy Land.  Maybe I draw cupcake."  From this stream of sentences you would think that we have several board games that she likes to play. No, we only play Candy Land.

We successfully got rid of the binkey over the last few weeks.  It was a rough transition especially since the apartment complex decided to do a huge remodel for the next 3 months.  They bang and pound throughout naptime.  I want a set of ear plugs and a binkey myself.  To get through it, we bought a brown noise MP3 from amazon-- that's the best 99 cents of static I've ever bought.  I don't know who decided to name certain static white and this static brown, but I think the brown static got a raw deal.  Brown noise sounds like bad bathroom humor.  It actually is very soothing.  They should have called it chocolate dream or something like that.

Our big rewards right now are to watch Blue's Clues or the Mickey Mouse Club House.  She also requested to watch Frasier with Daddy today.  Daddy shows include Frasier and Mythbusters. Christine often gives me permission to watch one of these shows if I'm especially good, or sometimes when I just go to the bathroom on my own.

This is a classic picture of Christine everyday.  She has her sunglasses on, her fancy necklaces, her sparkly braclet.  She has several of her "treasures" on the chair with her (in this case some colored plastic ball and a ring).  Tangy bear (our other daughter) is fully dressed sitting in her pink princess chair "watching".  Two of Angela's high heals are out in the living room.  The Dora car (her "bicycle") is out with the trunk open where she stores her treasures.  The pink bucket is also a favorite spot to hold her treasures.  The card board paper towel roll (her noodle), was claimed by her before we could throw it away.  And she is asking Daddy to move the chair in to the kitchen so that she can cook some soup. We love Christine! (Angela made both the yellow dress and the beautiful tunica. She is amazing!)