My Dear Little One,

I never knew how much I could love someone I've never even seen. Each time I think about you my eyes burst into tears because you are so precious to me. There are a few things I want you to know, and I pray that I will be able to tell you so that you can understand them some day.

First, I want you to know that you are wanted, and despirately loved by your parents. We both feel so blessed to have the opportunity to have you in our home. We marvel everyday at our part in creating your beautiful little life. With each of your movements that I feel and that your daddy chances to get to feel we both are filled with joy. Last night I went to The Forgotten Christmas Carols and I know you can hear what's going on in the world outside your mom's tummy. During every song you tumbled and rolled around inside of me! I guess you love music! It brought me to tears (not that it's very hard to do right now.) Also your daddy leans in to my tummy each night to tell you goodnight and that he loves you.

Second, I want you to know that your mom and daddy love and cherish each other. I look at the wonderful man that I married and chose to start our family with each day and marvel at how much I really do love him. He is such a strength and support in my life. I have complete faith in his ability to be the husband and father he has set out to be right now. I also know that he loves me. He has a way of showing me everyday his love for me.

Lastly, I want you to know that I have such bright hopes for your future. I know that life can be hard, and I also know that I don't know everything, but I will work hard on your behalf to help you with that future you chose to follow. You are a precious gift from Heavenly Father and I hope to be able to guide you the best way I know how.

I love you with all my heart.

Love,

Maggie

Classical

I have discovered my favorite radio station to listen to at work. The other people that work here like country and "soft rock-music for the workplace," both of which make me want to poke my eye out after about half an hour of listening. The problem is that reception is pretty bad on the little radio my boss has set up and there are no speakers for the computer at work. So the selection of radio stations is pretty bad. A few weeks ago I stumbled onto a little station that plays nothing but classical music and I found out that I love it! I can listen to this music all day without wanting to run away or hurt someone. I take this as a sign that I am getting dorkier by the day. Oh well.

Another thing that I like to do at work is read other people's blogs. I have found that the genre that I'm most particularly interested in is pregnancy stories (no surprise there). I have found that after a few days of five hours on the internet I have started to have a hard time finding other women's pregnancy stories. Can anyone point me in a direction that has plenty of these stories? Thanks.

Get A Move On

My husband's family has a distinct schedule in which all of them like to road trip (or at least all the ones I've been on the road with.) They prefer to drive in the nocturnal hours. I can't figure out if this trait came from his mother or his father, but it certainly is strong! If they can drive through the night that's the best way to do it. Second best is to get up so early in the morning it can only be considered night to hit the road. They find no problem with stopping at a rest stop on the side of the road in the middle of the night to sleep for 4-5 hours or so and then just wake up and keep on moving.

Growing up I thought my parents liked to get us going on trips early by leaving around 6AM (boy was I wrong!). This time gradually became later and later as my sister and I got older to where leaving by 9AM was good for us. We liked to get going, but stopping frequently became necessary when my dad's diabetes required many breaks for food and rest rooms. Also, my father would never sleep in the car if a motel room was even an option. In fact I can only think of one example of my family sleeping in the car overnight. This only happened because there were NO hotel/motel rooms available in the city that they stopped in. (I wasn't even on that particular trip!) I consider us pretty efficient travelers, but we definitely had a different feel to the whole experience.

My husband and I are still trying to meld these two different versions of road travel. That is why I consider our itinerary for going home for Thanksgiving a personal triumph! We are leaving as soon as possible (one point for him), but we are not going to be sleeping at a rest stop. Perfection!

What?

I went to the doctor's today. He said that my ultrasound agreed exactly with my due date so little baby Charlotte is perfect! Then he measured my bellie and said that I measured at 24 weeks (which is two weeks ahead of schedule). So that means that my baby is normal sized, but my uterus is trying to get a head start on growing big! (I'm trying to not let myself think that my baby is normal sized, but I'm just getting fat.)

Also I told the doctor about something I've been noticing happening the past week or so. When I walk around for a while my left thigh, right above my knee cap starts to tingle and burn. He told me the problem is one of my nerves (not the sciatic nerve). It's the nerve that goes down the front of the hip (not the butt) and since my bellie is stretching everything out it's stretching the nerve and I'm feeling it in my leg. So now I have to wear a maternity belt to try and minimize the tingling.

Also my bellie button is starting to become an outtie. This news isn't good since I'm only just under 6 months and still have quite a bit of growing left.

On the plus side I got my hair cut last Friday. It looks so much better! Another plus is that it dries!

My husband thinks that the UW admissions committee met last Friday. That means that he might hear something from them today. I'm trying SO HARD not to get my hopes up that he's in and we don't have to worry, because I know there's a very real possibility that he'll hear, "you have to wait longer" or "not this year." Wouldn't it be so great if we heard, "We love you. You're in!"? He said he'd call me when he gets any news so I'm at work sitting practically on top of my cell phone waiting for him to call me. I think I'm making myself sick thinking about all this. I'd better stop.

Update: Dan just called and told me the news was that we still have to wait. We wont hear anything else from UW until March-April. Just like last year. This is starting to get really old.

Movement

Last night Charlotte was moving around a lot so I thought it would be a good time to try and get my husband to feel her move. I've been able to feel it with my hand on my bellie for a while now, but I figured that was because I knew it was happening from the inside. Last night he had his hand resting there for a while and then she moved and he said, "What was that?" I told him it was our baby and he got all excited! He can feel her move now too! YEAH!

A Baby Crib

The closer we get to my due date (which isn't very close at all come to think of it) the more I appreciate the bassinett that my in-laws gave us. This bassinett has been in my husband's family for generations, he was put in it when he was a baby and now our baby will be the sixth generation to use it. This means a lot to a lot of people, and although I'm very happy with that fact, it's not the point of my post today and not the reason I have come to think of this bassinett as precious.

The reason is the brand spankin new crib that my mom bought us. I picked the crib out myself and when I saw it in the store I loved it! We bought it way back in September, but never got around to putting it together. (Not a big deal since we have no baby, and we have a bassinett). So my husband tried to surprise me the a few weeks ago by putting the crib together while I was out of town for a while. There was one problem, the metal matress support doesn't fit. It's too big-by at least an inch! His answer to this was, "No problem, I can fix it. I just have to bend the metal." When I got home and he told me his solution to the problem I was nervous. If this is furniture that we are putting our baby in, I want it to fit right the first time. I told him to wait on the bending metal issue until I called the company service number on the instructions. What a headache! So I called the company today. They were great about the whole situation and said they'd ship us an new matress frame! Now I just worry that the new one will be too big too and we've just spent money on something that's never going to work as I want it to! Arrgh!

In the mean time I've got the bassinett put together on my own (not that assembly was too hard, I just had to put the rockers in the slots.) And I've cleaned the little matress cover and it's completely ready for our baby! Oh the joy that fills my heart when I look at it! I'm still thinking that maybe I want to paint it or something, but it's just so exciting to look at it and imagine my baby laying in it rocking to sleep!




PS. My sister's week 21 present arrived yesterday! It's the first distinctively girl present I've gotten so far and I love it!

A Be-Genious

I just thought I'd let everyone know how proud I am of my husband! Yesterday he got interview invites from Temple University and Loma Linda University! The tally is up to four schools so far! Yeah for him!

Also yesterday he told me that he would pick up the few grocery items we are out of at home while he was in town. Then he lost the list.

Not that it's a big deal since I had to go to work today anyway so I can just pick up groceries today. So I re-wrote the list:

• milk
• butter
• chilli powder
• soft scrub
• pam

To which he added:

• fruit smiles

I introduced him to the Walmart brand of fruit snacks and I think I may have made a terrible mistake. Now he wants them all the time.

Our Roof

Growing up I learned that if you listen closely to the sounds your house makes at certain times you can know a whole lot of what's going on around you.

For example:

My sister and I both learned the violin. She started taking violin lessons at the age of 5 and I started with her teaching me when I was in the third (?) grade and then my mom signed me up for private lessons with my sister's teacher. For this I will ever think that my mom is SUPER-MOM. Having a child that plays an instrument means having a mom (or dad) that knows how to use creativity, love, and persistance in ensuring that learning is taking place. One of the rules in our house growing up was that practicing MUST be done before anything fun like TV watching or playing. My mom, however, would be away from home for a little while right when my sister and I got home sometimes. If you were really tricky/lucky you could time it right and "fool" mom into thinking that you were the most obedient child in the entire world and chose on your own to practice those 30 minutes she was away from home. Meanwhile you chould watch [insert afterschool cartoon of choice here] to your heart's content. The real important thing was to have your violin ready, music out and to have the TV low enough that you could hear the start of the garage opening. Then you would run to the front room and start playing in the middle of a song. My sister and I thought we were pretty tricky. (I'm sure the racket we must ahve made running the length of our house never clued our mom into our little trick.) The point is, the opening of the garage could tell you what to do next.

Example #2:

In high school I could always tell who came/left our house and why by the sounds around the house. This was especially handy when I'd made a complete mess in our basement doing various activities (ie. dirty dishes from eating in front of the basement TV, dirty clothing from being out in the snow, scraps from sewing.) If it was Mom I knew that I needed to start cleaning pronto! If it was Dad however, cleaning could take place later, probably tomorrow.

In all the years of listening to the house, I've never had a house tell me so much about what is going on outside as the one in which my husband and I currently live. First of all there's the sound of our furnace. My husband and I held off turning on our heat for as long as possible because a) it's really loud and b) we're cheap. The colder it gets though the more it turns on. I have noticed the nights are getting much colder by the number of times I am awakened in the night by the sound of a 747 right next to our headboard. (The furnace is located on the other side of the wall.) Then there are the numerous places around the windows that must have small cracks in the wall. I know this becuase it's getting windy and when the wind blows I can hear it blowing through ALL of these cracks. Also the wind sort of moves our blinds. Finally, there's the roof. The roof of our trailor is metal and sort of acts like a drum. I feel very connected with the wildlife living outside and occasionally on top of our trailor because everytime they run across the roof you can hear the pitter-patter of their tiny feet. But the best, and perhaps loudest thing that our roof tells us is when it's windy. The wind must be able to get under one of the layers in the metal and move it around some becuase it sounds like thunder. That's why I knew before I even got up this morning that a storm had moved through in the night. I was surprised to find out that it had dropped about 4 inches of snow on my car!

I really should stop

Tuesday night I barfed.....again! I told myself that I wouldn't start telling people I'm over morning sickness until I go a complete week without barfing and I'm at 21 stinking weeks and I still haven't made my goal! This is barfing with my anti-nausea medication. I have to admit that it works so well on me that I thought I must be over and started trying to take half of what I was previously taking. I'm back on full medication. Hopefully week 21 will be barf free!

Also, sleeping has become a rather difficult task lately. My husband is a cuddler. This is something that I really like, until I'm actually wanting to fall asleep. And lately the extra weight of him on my already stressed body just hurts. He's such an angel and doesn't complain at all when I tell him that he has to stop touching me now that my body hurts anyway. Last night I may have stumbled on gold with the use of three pillows-one between my legs, one behind my back and the other (a very little one) holding up my stomach. It's sort of ridiculous. I'm still waiting for my husband to look over at me and just start laughing. It's also bad if I get uncomfortable in whatever position I've got all the pillows in. Turning over in the bed with that many pillows is a real task.

But I really should stop complaining about how my body seems to be on revolt from it's happy self. I really am happy with my pregnancy and I feel so blessed about it! I realized this very powerfully last night. I was with my sister-in-law (also pregnant-her fourth) when my sister called me. I told my sister that I hadn't felt my baby move since the night I got my ultrasound (that would be two days of not feeling her move) and it was starting to make me sad. This is because I love to feel her move. For some reason everytime she moves I just get the happiest feeling! Anyway, later that night my sister-in-law asked me if I really hadn't felt the baby move at all in two days. I told her no. She said that it wasn't a good thing and that I should go home and lay down and relax and concentrate on seeing if she moves. "Probably you've just been too busy to feel her, but you should make sure," was her reaction. Then she said if the baby didn't move I really should call the doctor in the morning. My ever-rational mind jumped to the thought that my baby's dead. I finally got to see her on the ultrasound and now she's dead! I completely freaked out when I got home alone. (There is no need to remind me how irrational I can be. I know it already.) I tried my best not to cry, because when I'm all upset my baby never moves anyway. I did pretty well not crying for the hour and a half laying down on the sofa alone until my husband got home. As soon as he walked in the door he knew something was up. He asked what was wrong and as I started to tell him I completely lost it. He asked me what he could do. I knew he felt awful not being able to do anything to help the situation. He even tried poking my bellie trying to make the baby move. (It didn't work.) We just cuddled together on the sofa watching LiarLiar. That movie is much better to watch with him because, like his father, he laughs out loud at movies. I couldn't keep being so wound up cuddling and listening to my husband laugh. When I finally did relax I felt her move. That little movement seemed like the biggest blessing of all! It completely erased the past three hours of worry and stress. I know the whole situation was probably completely manufactured in my head, but that doesn't make the fear any less real.

I learned that I should stop complaining about how uncomfortable it is to be pregnant (even if most of the complaining does just happen in my mind.) All those things mean I'm going to get to have a little miracle of my own! So anyway, my back hurts, I'm still throwing up occasionally, and I'm starting to have problems sleeping. Isn't life great?

The Best Kind of Pet

I also forgot to tell everyone about our new pet! A couple of weeks ago my husband and I went to the temple. The session was a little late and we didn't get home until about 10 pm. When we pulled up into our drive my husband said, "What's that? Did someone put a fence in our backyard?" I looked and indeed an electric fence had been set up just behind our propane tank. (Keep in mind we are renting so the backyard isn't actually ours, we just think of it as such.) It was weird to have a fence put up without anyone telling us, but since it isn't actually ours we weren't really concerned. Later that night, while getting ready for bed my husband looks out the back door and says, "We have a cow in our backyard!" I said, "You've got to be joking me. I know you want to live on a farm, but we don't have a cow in our backyard!" To which he responded, "Yes, we do. Come see!" I looked out and indeed, the glossy eyes of the cow were staring back at me. Someone had put a cow in our backyard while we were out that day! As I was looking out the back door a knock came at the front door. It was our neighbor. She had noticed we forgot to turn off the dome light in our car and wanted to let us know. As she was leaving I said, "Do you by any chance know why a cow showed up in our backyard?" She told us that it was her husband's cow (he's a farmer) and they always put it back there so it can eat the weeds and the owners of the trailor don't have to mow. She said the little boy that lived in the trailor before us loved "Huey." Yes, the cow has a name. After she left my husband turned to me and said, "I told you there were blessings to going to the temple!" Crazy me! I never thought a cow in our backyard would be a blessing from attending the temple!

As of two days ago Huey got a friend. Now we have two cows in our backyard! My husband is on cloud nine! At least this kind of pet you don't actually have to take care of or feed. We can just enjoy having them out there.

A little slip

In all that excitement about the baby I forgot to update everyone about the other love of my life. My sweetie had his interview at UW medical school what seems like forever ago, but really it was just about two weeks ago. When he gave me the post game wrap-up he seemed very happy and positive. He said he had a different interviewer this time than last time and they didn't talk about socialized medicine. This means that he didn't take the whole time defending himself against what the interviewer though. They had the ethical questions and healthcare questions that he had to answer, but he felt really good about his answers. So that went well. Hopefully we'll hear from UW in a few weeks and, fingers crossed, we'll be out of the suspense for the rest of the year.

But if not, he got an interview invite from Virginia Commonwealth on December 5th. Virginia sounds like a long way away, but so long as he gets into school I don't even care where it is! Plus, it sort of takes the pressure off the interview he had at UW.

I think he's super excited that our baby is a girl. He did get to go to the ultrasound, which was so great. I was so excited just to go to the ultrasound and see our baby that I had made myself sick (sort of like my sister did every Christmas Eve growing up) and it was good to have him there to hold my hand. Now he kisses my bellie every night and says goodnight to Charlotte. Although I'm sure I'd be just as excited with a little boy, I just feel so blessed with our little girl! My husband is going to be such a great daddy!

A Break From Tradition

I have a tradition on my blog of not putting any photos on it. Mostly that's because I don't have a camera (digital or any other kind) so I don't have any photos to put on. I thought I'd put a little break in that tradition today because I'm just so excited about these photos! Yesterday I went to the doctor and got my ultrasound that confirmed that my husband and I are having a girl!

This was the first picture that we got to see of her cute little body.

Then she yawned!

The photo we have after this one is showing that she's a girl and not a boy, but it's this grainy black and white shot and I can't distinguish anything so I'm not posting it.

After this we got to see the really cool part of the ultrasound where they take 3D shots!This is Charlotte Claire covering her ear. She was all curled up in the ultrasound and tumbling around a ton so she made it kind of hard for the ultrasound lady to find a good photo of her whole body.

Yet another shot of her little face!

You can see her little toes in this shot! She's pointing right at the machine too!

There are a few more photos, but they're pretty much the same. She kept spinning around in my belly so getting anything but her hands over her face and a foot or two was pretty hard.

So that's the big news of the day today!