29 weeks 3 days

Another month, another doctor's appointment. Sometimes I feel like these things are a waste of time because nothing really happens. And yet I look forward to them all the same. From now on I'll be seeing Dr Porter once every two weeks instead of once a month. That means I'll have a reason to post twice as often now! 

Today I weighed in at a hefty . . . not going to say. But I have gained more weight. I think I'm up about 22 pounds total so far, but there's still plenty of time to go. Li'l Cleatus still has a good strong heartbeat. As Dr Porter was trying to listen to it, he asked if the baby has been moving well, and in response he got kicked. It made the doppler thingy bounce on my tummy. Needless to say, I think Cleatus is going to be a soccer player. Or a dancer. I tease Nate by telling him that the baby is dancing around inside me. He doesn't like it much, but that's what all those crazy movements feel like. Occasionally the baby pokes his foot out so far that you can see the protuberance sticking out there, and I kind of shove it back in. 

Li'l Cleatus is about 15 inches long and weighs about 2.5 pounds at this point. In length he compares to a butternut squash. (See picture below.) From now on he won't get too much longer, but he'll continue to pack on the pounds (just like his mama).

Dr Porter gave me some samples to try of this heartburn medication stuff. We'll see if it helps. I've been chewing Tums-like calcium tablets on a regular basis for about 3 months now just so I can sleep. I don't really want to take any more medications, but I'll probably use up the samples and then go back to my regularly scheduled programs. 

The best part of the visit was when I asked Dr Porter for a note that I could take to work. See, at PDC one of the only dress code rules is no flip flops. That's fine in the winter (well, maybe not fine, but at least tolerable), but it's not so much fun in the summer. Especially when my poor feetsies have already started swelling up in the afternoons. I asked HR if they gave special permission to pregnant women to wear whatever shoes they wanted (I knew they had done it in the past) and they told me I needed a note from my doctor saying that it is medically necessary for me to wear flip flops before they'd be okay with it. So I asked Dr Porter for a note and he complied. It says, "To Whom it May Concern, Kirsta is experiencing swelling and may need to wear flip flops to work in for the remainder of the pregnancy." Nice. I dropped it off with HR and look forward to having happier feet in the weeks to come. 

So, to sum up, everything seems to be going well. I have a few aches and pains to go along with the usual nausea, but nothing to complain about. (At least nothing to complain about to anyone but Nate who gets to hear it whether he likes it or not.) I'm doing great. The baby's doing great. Nate's doing great. Our house is coming together slowly but surely.  I only have 10 weeks left until I get at least a 6 week vacation from work. Everything is great. 

Nate Smelts Awesome Videos

Check out this sweet action

Caleb is very talented. I wanted to play with our new video camera, and this was the first thing that was awesome. Also, I'm very good at growling.

Diabetes

I passed! Huzzah! No diabetes for me! Finally something has gone right with this pregnancy. All I had to do was not eat for like 6 hours, guzzle a bottle of lemon-lime syrup (way worse than the orange soda stuff), get my fingers pricked 4 times, and not throw up. And I did do all of those things. To celebrate when I got home I ate 3 bowls of 3 different kinds of cereal and took a 3 hour nap. Not a bad day. Nate and my brothers just went to play soccer, so I guess I'll try and get some stuff done around the house now. Later-

25.5 weeks

I saw Dr Porter today, but there's not much to report. I gained a little more weight, but not as much as last month (thank goodness!). I think I'm up a total of 15 pounds now. That part is taking a little getting used to. Dr Porter had me take the "sugar test" since I had the time, and I failed. The sugar test is a glucose screening test. From what the lab nurse told me, which wasn't much, all this means is that I get to come back on Saturday and take the 3 hour sugar test (as opposed to the 1 hour version I failed). So Saturday will be a fun day because I have to fast (which makes me sick) and then guzzle down twice as much orange soda as I did today (which makes me sick) and then check in and have my finger poked every hour for 3 hours (which doesn't make me sick but which will be annoying). I hope I pass this one, because methinks it will be bad news to fail twice. Dr Porter didn't tell me anything, but my trusty interweb says that about 15 to 23 percent of the time women test with blood sugar levels that are too high (like me) and have to take the 3 hour test to see if they really do have gestational diabetes. The good news is that most people don't have it and this is probably a false positive (I hope). I guess I'll have more info on that later this week.

Li'l Cleatus is around 13.5 inches long and weighs about a pound and a half (says the interweb). His weight is roughly that of an average rutabaga, for those of you who know your veggies. He's still pretty active, and I think he likes to dance. That's the only way I can think of to describe the random movements I feel from day to day.

That's all for now. I'll let you know if I pass my next test or not on Saturday. Bye!

Some Pictures

Here are some pictures of our unfinished house (some of you have already seen it, some have not), and some pictures from the Great Easter Egg Hunt of 2008. Okay, the Easter pictures are more along the lines all the funtivities we did today. I'm sure Caleb will have plenty more to post later. 

My eggs say Cleatus, Supra, Egg, and I Heart Nate...

This is Nate's happy Easter face. He's holding Li'l Cleatus's presents.

The kids sorting through their 12 pounds of candy...


Scott giving Rachel a hand...




Okay, here are the pictures of the house, starting with our bedroom. 

And here's the kitchen...

This would be Nate running on the treadmill we're babysitting for Lenna and Scott...

And here's the living room...

That's all. Oh wait. I have a couple more fun pictures of Nate. Here you go...

He's wearing the dragon we got from Ikea for Li'l Cleatus's room. We're planning on decorating with like safari/jungle animals, but how could Nate's son NOT have a dragon? 

In this picture Nate's wearing his best shirt. It says, "Your mom goes to college." 

And though I might regret this later, here's a picture of me today trying on a pair of maternity pants that I will never, ever, put on again. Ever. (Yeah, my shirt is tucked in. I think it helps add to the overall effect.) Yikes!

My next doctor's appointment is on Tuesday, so I guess I'll have another update then. That's all for now!

Good Times

So, I went to California this weekend with my mom, brother, and sister. We went down for my cousin's wedding, to see some of Seth's mission friends, and to go to Disneyland. It was a short trip, but we had a lot of fun. Seth and Heather went on their favorite rides while my mom and I went shopping with her friend Pauline. Thanks to my fake cousin Amy we got a sweet discount on most of our purchases, and we even got to go to the special employees only "Company D" store. That was pretty awesome. The store is a little ways away from Disneyland in the warehouse district of Anaheim. Everything in the store was at least 50% off of regular price. The items weren't seconds or ruined or anything--just overstocks from the other stores. I got some cute clothes and things for Li'l Cleatus, and my sister got a child's Peter Pan costume that fits her.

My cousin's wedding reception was a little weird, but it was nice to see my aunts and uncles on my mom's side of the family. We don't get to see them very often, so we appreciate it when we do. And seeing some of the families Seth met on his mission was fun. It was nice to see that people liked him and missed him. We took the missionaries in Barstow out to lunch on Saturday and enjoyed visiting with them. They seem so young. They looked about 12, but they seem to be doing good work out there. I don't know the story behind it, but now all missionaries in that mission have to have someone back them out any time they reverse out of anywhere. Seth helped them out after lunch so they could both stay in the car. (Seth mentioned that it took him a while to get used to the fact that he didn't have to back my mom out of the driveway and that he was just standing behind the car for no reason.)

Anyway, everything was great and wonderful, except for the fact that my right leg is still numb and that made sitting in a car for 10 hours straight and walking around Disneyland until midnight a little uncomfortable. I guess I'm just going to have to get used to it for the next few months. It varies between feeling like nothing's there to feeling cold to feeling like it's on fire. Good times. I think it's way too early in my pregnancy to have things like this going on, and I've tried telling that to the baby, but he doesn't seem to care.

Squash

According to babycenter.com, our little guy is roughly the length of a spaghetti squash. And he weighs almost a pound. I don't know why, but I like how the website compares the size of my kid to a different produce item every week. Stay tuned for more grocery fun!

21 weeks 3 days

So, I went to see Dr Porter today (hence the new post). Nothing fabulous to report—unless you think it's fabulous that I gained a bunch of weight in the last month. I don't find it so fabulous. I know deep down in my heart that I'm going to get bigger and the baby's growing and whatnot, but shallower in my heart I don't like feeling fatter. So I guess it's high time I got the treadmill out and started doing some kind of exercise. (Because I'm certainly not going to try and eat less. That's just crazy talk.) Also, my right leg has been going numb off and on for the last 2 weeks, so I asked Dr Porter about it. He said my right hip was out of whack. He then proceeded to force it back into whack. I didn't like that part so much. It hurt. I guess I'll be able to tell in the next few days if it did any good. Li'l Cleatus wouldn't stay put long enough for Dr Porter to get a fix on his heartbeat. It was kind of fun playing hide and seek. And that about does it for the appointment. I go back again in 4 weeks.

I don't have the ultrasound pictures ready to post yet, but Nate said he would help me scan them or whatever it is I need to do. Hopefully we can get it done for family night tonight.

Nate and I are having trouble coming up with name ideas that we both like. So far I think we have 2 to choose from. I haven't decided yet if I'm going to tell everyone what we're thinking or not (because I don't think I'd like it much if someone told me they didn't like the names we like), but I am going to solicit ideas from everyone. So if you have a good idea, leave a comment. We'd appreciate a little help in this area.

In other random thoughts, I'm getting excited about decorating the baby's room, but there just seems to be too much boring stuff to do before all the fun stuff begins. I need to clean my junk (and my brother's junk) out of that room before I have space to work on blankets and pictures and whatnot. There's still a lot of finishing work that needs to be done in the rest of the house, but I think I'll delegate that out to Nate, Seth, and Ethan and reserve the fun baby stuff for me.

I'm going to California this weekend for my cousin's wedding. But more importantly I'm going to hang out at Disneyland for a day. I can't really go on the rides, but I look forward to shopping for the wee one. (I think Nana Ruth does too.) That's all for now. Later!

Kaylee is not a witch

She might have guessed correctly in the past, but Kaylee was dead wrong on this one—our baby is a boy! Huzzah! It looks like Kaylee doesn't have any magical divination powers, she's just a lucky guesser. Or maybe our baby's just tricksy. I guess we'll have to wait and see if she's right about her new sibling. She's predicted boy for that one. But either way my faith in her is gone. :)

I'm so excited to starting pimping out Li'l Cleatus's room and collecting pirate and BYU football gear. Awesome. Hooray! Yahoo for boys! And soon we'll have our first contribution to the Silvey Family Football Club (and by football I mean soccer this time). Li'l Cleatus will make 4 grandsons, so we're well on our way to a team. And if Heather has a boy later this year, then even better. I think Nate might be a little sad that he doesn't get his princess yet, but he is excited for our boy. I'm excited to see if he gets his dad's chiseled abs and stunning features.

During the ultrasound today everything looked great and normal. And the pictures show that he is definitely a he. The doctor had to work pretty hard to get the money shot, but it worked fine in the end. He kept poking me with the ultrasound wand thingy to try and get the baby to move around and show his goods. I'll see if I can scan some of the images and get them posted. The pictures turned out really clear. Li'l Cleatus measured exactly 20 weeks and 0 days, which is right where we thought I was. So my due date is staying the same—July 4th. Actually, according to the ultrasoundologist man, my due date is July 4th at 7:00 am. He seemed pretty confident, so I'm going to plan on it. I figure I'll pop the baby out at 7:00 am and be ready to hit the parade by 10:30 am. No sweat.

My next doctor's appointment is on Monday the 25th, so I'll probably have another update then. In the meantime, here's a little something to tide you all over: The Office will return with 6 new episodes starting on April 10th. Mark your calendars. This is important stuff.

Attention!

So, Lenna brought to my attention that I had done something weird to the comments option that prohibited people from commenting. My apologies! I had no idea I was depriving you all of such a wonderful opportunity. So, it's fixed now. Comment if you like. That is all.