let the purchasing begin...

So what was mom and my grand adventure today? Well, it just so happened that I had a lot of work (like real work, at my job) to do earlier this week and had to log some extra hours so, when mom suggested we do baby things on friday I said to my boss, "could I not come in on Friday?" and she said, sure! So I had the day off and mom and I headed to the "Just Between Friends" Consignment Sale. We didn't have anything in particular in mind, but we wanted to get there early-ish (the first couple hours were just for first time parents) and check out what they had.

I'll spare you the play by play, but we did find a few good things and more than that, we learned a lot (like the location of a nice consignment store in issaquah). here's the cutest purchase we made - two of these (note: I think they look cuter in real life):























we were excited because a) they worked (they have little motors that can play music and/or swing at various rates), b) were clean, c) they had two matching ones, and d) they were decently priced. one was $20 which is what got us hooked, and the other was $35. $35 seemed to be less of steal, but... they matched, and it was only $55 for both so... plus, now that I'm home (and looking on the internet for pics to post) I see that new they go for more like $100 each.

now, remember that consignment store we found out about? well, we went there after we went to the store, and when we walked in... there were two of the same exact swing for $25 each. so apparently we could have saved $5. but we're focusing on the positive here!

we did get a few other things (a baby tub - $7; a pair of not great but only $5 maternity jeans, etc) and we almost bought a twin stroller, but some ladies in the check-out line told us we could get an even better deal at the consignment store, so we put it back. we didn't find something better at the consignment store, but we have time and now we know that apparently one can do better than $75 (or perhaps one in better shape) so... we'll do a little more online research and know a bit more for the next time we go back to the consignment store or for when we go to the multiples consignment sale in april - where I'm thinking they're likely to have several twin stroller options. we don't plan to buy everything used (car seats for example will be new) but one thing we have right now is time, so we plan to use that to our best advantage in our shopping!

good night! more yoga tomorrow, so time for sleep now!

week 14

alrighty, so what's going on with the little guys this week? well...

• 3.5 inches each! that's almost as big as the short size of a regular #10 envelope! (okay, apparently #10 envelopes are 4.125 inches tall, but that's the closest thing on my desk of approx the right size) that's like, sorta big, and it's only a "crown to rump" measurement, not head to toe. (do I already sounds like a new mom? rounding up, and proclaiming the greatness of my little ones?)
• 1 ounce each! they're getting so big...
• most interesting fact: they have fingerprints, which apparently, are made when the baby movies his/her hands around in the amniotic fluid, which is why everyone's fingerprints are unique. never knew that.
• most optimistic thought: I might start to feel the babies this week! okay, many places say not until week 17 or 20 or other far-off-seeming dates, but one place (and that's all I need) said possibly as early as 14 weeks. So I'll let you know, but I just think that would be the absolute coolest! (remind me how cool it is later when I'm sick of it)

the last week

okay, I have a lot of catch up blogging to do so we shall utilize the wonders of bullet points.

Last Thursday (Feb 18, week 13)...

• after my dentist appt, and a full day of work, mom picked me up at MS (where I had to leave the car for blake) and we went to dinner. dinner was lovely, despite the fact I had to ask for my slider w/o bleu cheese. so sad.
• then we headed off to "Car Safe Kids." yep, a class about car seats, put on by one of the local hospitals. it was 2 hrs, and we thought, how could there be 2 hrs of car seat info? but there was.
• we learned about a lot of stuff (kids in booster seats until they're at least 8 years old!?) but I had to focus on the car seats for newborns because there was plenty of info there. basically there are two types, infant car seats and convertible car seats.
• the convertible car seat is awesome in that it lasts longer. whereas if you buy an infant car seat, it's pretty likely you'll have to switch to a convertible car seat later anyways, so you're buying a whole extra car seat (or two if you were, say, having twins). But... the infant car seat has some excellent features...
• infant car seats can interface w/ a travel system. ie the base stays in the car, but you unsnap them and carry them into the house, or unsnap from the base and re-snap into a stroller. sleeping baby stays asleep. also, because they unsnap, you can load them up inside your house from the front, then carry them down to the garage and just clip them in backwards. no awkward trying to get your baby into a rear-facing car seat.
• the biggest infant car seat selling point for me is, if I had convertible car seats and was home alone w/ both babies, what would I do with baby B while putting baby A in his/her car seat? w/ the infant car seat I can be inside w/ baby B in the crib or on the floor while I strap in baby A, then baby A can sit there for a smidgen while I strap in baby B and then I can carry them both down to the garage and snap them in to the car. so, while we haven't decide 100% on the infant car seats, that's the way we're currently leaning.
• the other lesson we learned was that most car seats are okay for babies down to 5 lbs. but twins, apparently, can be more like 4 lbs. if you have a 4 lb baby and car seats for 5+ lb babies, the hospital doesn't let you leave until hubby goes out and buys one for 4 lbs. so, while we hope our babies will be 5+lbs, might be wise to get one that goes to 4 lbs just in case... (and it seems like more infant car seats go to 4 lbs than convertible ones).
• there was lots more, seat belts vs the LATCH system, how to install them, etc etc, but I'm not thinking you really care so we'll skip that part.

saturday

• saturday was awesome. anybody around here has to agree. the weather was just so wonderful.
• I started off my morning by sleeping in. woke up around 10:00, around 10:15 I decided to check that my class started at 11:00 and was surprised to find out that whoops! it started at 10:30. but blake helped me gather my stuff quickly and I zipped out the door.
• what class are you taking Dana? you might ask. why, last week was my first week of holy prenatal yoga! what? you say. well, apparently one should consider yoga when pregnant. the local hospitals offer prenatal yoga classes, the books/internet and my doc say to check it out so I was aware of the idea. but it just wasn't that appealing to me to go take a yoga class all by myself (as blake prob wasn't invited to the prenatal yoga classes, nor were many of my friends!) but, our church offers a holy yoga class on monday mornings and a couple coworkers (before they knew I was prego) said we should go try it together. so I went, and I enjoyed it! we had to fill out a medical info sheet and I wrote "pregnant - shhh!" on mine. the next week the instructor pulled me aside and gave me a list of moves I should avoid, or how to alter them so they were prego-safe. she said she wanted me to check w/ my doc that it was okay, but since I was still early in my pregnancy, I could continue. and, she said, she was starting up a prenatal version of her holy yoga class. but, it wasn't at our church - it was in redmond, on saturdays. I was like, bingo! closer to home, that's awesome. then I asked my other friend erika if she wanted to join me and she said yes! plus it's only $8/class which is about half the price of most other prenatal classes we could find. so last week was the first week, and it was just me, erika, and one other lady and it was great.
• but that was not all to my day, oh no. by the time I got back, it was time for lunch, so blake and I walked to quiznos, got sandwiches to go, and then walked back along the trail to eat them on a park bench while people ran and biked and rollerbladed past. and what beautiful weather!
• then I took a nice nap...
• and then, becuase it was still beautiful out, we biked to redmond town center on our tandem. we had to get my watch battery replaced and so while we waited, the only thing to do was swing through the cupcake store (owned by a lady from church) and then go to borders and look at baby books.
• by the time we got back there was just a few minutes before jackie picked me up, we grabbed dinner at jamba juice, and then headed to b & d's for an anne of green gables, crafting, and yummy-thing-eating marathon (including those cookies I mentioned before - they were awesome as always!)
• now seriously, could you come up with a better day?

I was going to tell you about the plans mom and I have for tomorrow, but... they begin at 7:45 so it's almost bedtime now. alas, you shall have to wait (you're heartbroken, I know). and perhaps sometime I'll tell you about what's happening w/ the babies at week 14 (today!) but not now...

good night, sleep tight, don't let the bed bugs bite!

lent and flossing

I'll have you know that I think about blogging frequently. it's just that usually when I could be blogging I could also be sleeping, and sleeping generally wins out. but I have many things to blabber about this week and I currently have 14 minutes until I need to walk up to the other building and have a nice evening meeting. so while I sit here at my desk and eat my pb&j, I shall tell you about lent.

preface: it's not that interesting, but if I tell you, I will do it, so you're now all my accountability partners, and hopefully you'll get a nice laugh at my expense.
on tuesday I went to the dentist. I used to have this space btwn my back teeth where food would get caught so I was flossing multiple times a day back then. but, 6 months ago, they filled that little spot in for me. so now... my flossing has been more lax. and, while I've been reading in some books that one should take good care of their teeth during pregnancy this has only been enough to make me feel guilty and not enough to change my habits. So, on tuesday when I went to the dentist, I come to find out that not only can you not have cavities filled while you're prego, your gums get extra-sensitive and unhappy due to... what's that? yes, progesterone. which would be one of the drugs I've been taking extra of. so, lack of flossing + pregnancy + extra progesterone = a stern talking to from the dentist.
so, the next day was... that's right, ash wednesday. not that I have ever fasted for lent before, but this year I can't even think about it. so... in what way do I need to add discipline to my life? have you put two and two together? are you shaking your head? laughing at me yet? yes, indeed, this year, for lent, I am going to floss. it's sorta like a spiritual discipline, just a little on the less-spiritual side. so far I'm doing well folks. I even bought more floride mouthwash and while I floss I occasionally think spiritual things to make a little more Jesus-esc.
so there, now I've told you. and when you see me next, you ask me how I'm doing on my flossing, and hopefully that fear (of having to tell you I've been slacking) will motivate me enough to resume excellent flossing habits.

happy monday.

13 weeks - nutter butter

tomorrow the babies will be 3 inches - the size of a nutter butter. or, as one website says,
"Your baby-to-be now weighs about 20 grams and is nearly 3 inches long, or about the size of a Nutter Butter, covered in chocolate. OK, it doesn't have to be covered in chocolate, but isn't everything better that way?" yes, yes everything is better that way.

in fact, on the topic of food, if you've got a little time, here are two of my favorites of late, you should try whipping them up for yourself sometime...
Chocolate Chip Cookies
If you're in WA, you want to have my friend Danielle make these for you. She makes them so well, even better than Molly, the writer of the blog that link goes to (scroll down for the recipe). Also, one must note that these are not just chocolate chip cookies, they have sea-salt on them. which is what makes them so, so incredible. But, if you're in WA but can't get danielle to make htem for you, you want to go to Delancey (Molly's restaurant) and try one there. I will be eating these cookies on saturday at danielle's, so... consider being envious of me about then.
Next is a more main course option, Chicken Piccata. I went from a very high protein diet pre-pregnancy to a very carb-based diet because I no longer can stand care for most protein-rich things - except chicken. So this is one recipe we've repeated a few times. it's easy (we skip the pasta, salt, pepper, and parsley because we're so lazy usually) and we've never gotten the sauce to thicken, but hey, it tastes good and can be made in about 15 minutes. had it for dinner last night in fact.

all this food talk is making me quite hungry. I'm going downstairs to find something now... then i'll come back up and talk about more baby-ness.

okay, now I have a little peanut butter honey banana sandwich in me and back to babies. this week the babies can make fists and suck their thumbs, and their intestines have moved from their umbilical cords into their bellies (once again, I don't think I knew they were growing in the umbilical cord previously, but i'm glad they're in their bellies now)! the babies' vocal cords are complete now, so they can sing! la la laaaaa... and bones and ribs are beginning to form and solidify. all good good things.

time to do some more tutoring in about 2 minutes here, so... going to switch the laundry (I know, it's amazing, me doing laundry) and then the doorbell should ring! later.

Congrats Ev & Alyssa

How cute are Evan and Alyssa? So cute. and now they're engaged. Congrats guys, and welcome to the family Alyssa :)

picture is from the caulley family trip to hawaii this past summer.

12 week appt

This morning blake and I went in to Group Health and had our 12 week appt. We're very excited that this appt happened because it was really only tentative - our doc was on call, and if any emergency happened, then we would have to reschedule. which I'm not sure how rescheduling would have worked since they're booked for the next 3 weeks and I'm just not that patient!
but, we called at 9:00 am, they said come in, and at 10:00 am there we were and she saw us right on time.

So... she got out a little doppler thing and ran it over my belly. at first all we heard was my stomach (apparently I have a loud, active stomach), then... a heartbeat. crazy. then she moved it around and a little while later, a second heartbeat. the doc grabbed an ultrasound machine and we got a visual look. yep, two of them in there. just as blake and I are beginning to understand the mess of gray fuzz, the bottom baby punched his/her sibling! it was like when you see a spider and it's all still and then suddenly it moves REALLY fast and you think "*!%!&$". we dubbed the bottom one the kicker because as long as we watched, it kept that up. kick, punch, squirm/wiggle, rest for a bit, and then start pounding on the sibling again. the top one however we called the napper because it was just ignoring its sibling. I was a little concerned that might not be good, but we could see its heart beating and the doc said that was normal. she said our bottom one was a little freaky, but hey, what was anybody expecting from blake and dana babies? :)

the doc also told us that bed rest was fairly likely in july, which is a bummer, but good to know. she suggested I take up knitting or something. (perhaps we could read a really long book for our book club in july! jk) other than that, no new news. our next appt is in 5 weeks (at 17 weeks) and then another one at 20 weeks. I'm pushing to see if we can identify the sexes of the babies at 17 weeks, but the doc seemed to be nicely telling me I would have to wait until 20 weeks. hrumph.

I am so, so excited that both babies are happy and healthy looking. and, I'm so so excited to be at 12 weeks and finally be able to tell everyone. seems like it's been an eternity and I'm not a fan of secrets so... to all who are new to my blog, welcome! It is so nice to be able to share this crazy time of life with you.

:)

twins twins twins. more to come later tonight, but there are still two of them in there. with heartbeats.

10 weeks / 11 weeks / sneak peak at 12 weeks

alright what was interesting that I should have written about at 10 weeks (1/28)?

• size of a kumquat (I had to look up what size a kumquat was, apparently they're about an inch and a half ish)
• weight: .14 ounces (4 grams)
• nails are forming, fingers and toes are no longer webbed
• skin is see-through (crazy!)
• baby's brain will make 25,000 new neurons every minute this week (WHOA!)

11 weeks (2/4)

• happy birthday evan
• 2 inches long! (about 1 inch of head, 1 inch of body)
• weight: 1/3 ounce - we graduated to ounces only, no grams listed!
• tiny tooth buds forming under the gums
• baby can kick (but I certainly can't feel it yet)

and while we're at it, let's look ahead to the glorious 12 week mark (2/11)

• 2.5 inches long
• weight: 1/2 ounce
• one site says "baby's face is looking more human as his eyes have moved to the front of his head..." - can't say I knew they were anywhere else before, but i'm glad they'll be in front soon!
• baby can swallow
• ready for the crazy part? assuming I am still carrying twins, they'll look like this on Thursday!

here's hoping thursday comes soon! (I have an appt on thursday so I a) get to see the babies and make sure they're both still in there and b) afterward I FINALLY get to tell everyone!)

broke my 3lb bubble

since I found out I was pregnant I've been weighing myself. and basically I've just been going up and down, up and down, all w/in a little 0-3 lb range. but today the last digits on the scale were 4.5 s0 I busted through that 3 lb range by 1.5 lbs! I'm sure my weight will continue to fluctuate and I may well be back in that 3 lb range tomorrow but... it has begun! (crazy!)

pills, pills, pills, and patches

I do plan to write about week 11 sometime, especially since I never blogged about week 10 but... here's what's really, truly exciting to me this week...
for the past 11+ weeks, I have been taking the following:

• prenatal vitamin, 1x day - no biggy (well, actually it is the "biggest" technically, but no side effects, nothing to complain about)
• projesterone, 3x day - I hate this one. I will spare you the details, but I preferred taking it as a shot twice a day over it's current form and the side effects associated with it
• estradiol, 1x day - undesirable, but tolerable
• estrogen patches, 4 every other day - these are basically 1x2 inch stickers that I put on my abdomen. at first it took a little trial and error to figure out where to put them so that it hurt least when I ripped them off and also so that my clothes didn't try to move them. after getting that down they're alright, but they're basically like band aids, including the aspect where they gather fuzz and gunk around the edges. except that unlike band aids I wear them every day so trying to scrub that off started to make my skin bleed.

so here's the great excitement... I know this is not exciting for you, but it is SO exciting for me... I will keep taking my prenatal vitamins (I'm on my second bottle of 100), but around week 10 I got to start tapering everything else. I now take my projesterone only once a day, my estradiol every other day, and I'm currently on 2 patches, switching to 1 patch on Monday. I AM SO EXCITED!!!! by Friday I'll be done with everything (except the prenatals).

if you want to know a little about the biology:

I still need all these hormones, but around this time the placenta is mature enough to start making its own and doesn't need help via pills. all the little week-by-week websites say that now you should start getting headaches and various other minor side effects as your body starts producing these hormones, but since I've had them all along I'm just like, oh... so that's what those headaches were probably about - a thing (mostly) of the past! (I read this awhile back so my terms might be off but the reason I was taking the pills is because in a natural situation there would be this "thing" (a corpus luteum) that I guess is made by the ovarian follicle when it released the egg that would be providing a minor amount of these hormones up until the placenta could take over. since I had a frozen transfer there was no corpus luteum, so I had to take the pills to make sure I got those hormones.)

so while a lack of pills may not be an exciting thing to blog about, it is a very exciting thing in my life. hurrah! yay! and there was much rejoicing...

bad dana

well, I've done it now and i've come to confess to all of you. I did my first semi-intentional bad thing for the babies (but oh-so-good for me). Semi-intentional because it wasn't intentional at first, but then after I realized, I decided not to stop. :)
tomorrow is the session retreat at church/work. it's actually tonight too, but I only have to go tomorrow (all day tomorrow, 7:45-5:30!). and each dept is supposed to bring a snack. being the only staff person in my dept, that task fell to me and I decided to do some fun baking. so I made these w/ white chocolate chips (and choc chunks and walnuts). yum yum yum.
so there I was, rotating baking sheets between the oven, cooling racks, spooning out more... when there was dough on my hand. lick lick lick. oh no! blake is very anti eating raw dough in normal circumstances but I'm always willing to risk it. but it is on the pregnancy no-no list so I have been avoiding the raw egg thing... up until now. it was so good. and, I figured, it either was or was not a problem w/ the two eggs in the batter, so what was done was done and another spoonful wouldn't hurt, right? so good! how can a person go wrong w/ sugar, butter, and chocolate? it was really good I'm telling you. :)

rounding errors

one of my students cancelled, so here I am blogging instead. but since I'm also thinking about math, let me share some math with you.

from a nickelodeon / parents connect / 3d pregnancy site on the "8 weeks" page:
Your growing baby is six weeks old, thanks to the fuzzy math of pregnancy. This fuzzy math is also responsible for the widely believed notion that pregnancy is only nine months long, when in actuality it's closer to 10. Who comes up with this stuff? Obviously a man.

I disagree - or at least I don't understand....
here's how I think people come up with the idea that it's 10 months: 40 weeks, about 4 weeks to a month, 10 months.
but here's what I get when there's no rounding... 40 weeks... but wait, you're not pregnant for the first two weeks - they're freebee weeks you just get if you count from the first day of the mom's last period instead of counting from conception (which is why above they're saying your baby is only actually 6 weeks old, not 8). so really, you're only pregnant for 38 weeks.
38 weeks * 7 days = 266 days.
now let's say there are 30.5 days to a month, 9 months would then equal... 274.5 days, or 8.5 days longer than you're actually pregnant for if you make it to your "40 week" due date.
even if you don't subtract those freebe weeks, you still get 40*7=280 days. meaning 9 months and 5.5 days. which is still closer to 9 months than it is 10 months.
am I missing something?

all that said... I plan to count my first trimester as over when I get to week 12 (which definitely includes the fuzzy math and rounding down) because well, I want to. and I think I'll still be wishing it was even shorter by the end... :)

next kid due in 2 minutes (tutee, not baby). later gators.