More guessing!

I do love guessing. :) Here's a fun little online pool - you can guess our kid's gender, birthday, weight, and hair color.

http://bebepool.com/go/?a=decpelton&view=list

just hanging in there...

that's my update. I'm just hanging in there.

physically I'm doing fine (as is baby; he/she passed Monday's NST with flying colors). I'm tired and not sleeping a lot and things ache and all those things, but... I'm fine. I'm not desperate physically to have this baby.

emotionally though... AHAHAHAHHHA!!! Get this kid out of me. I'm impatient. Let's do this thing. Let me meet you - are you a boy or a girl? how will Kaylee and ethan really react to you? No, I'm not 100% ready, but I never will be and who cares about those things anyway? I know, I keep thinking, having some face wipes would be nice at the hospital. And I haven't bought any yet. But who really cares? it's only 2 days, how slimy can I get? This isn't lung surgery here people, it's not days and days of hanging out in the hospital before surgery and then days afterwards.

Back to physically though, I would really like to have a VBAC which means I need to go into labor soon here people. I mean, I'm having practice contractions. And I can tell you that all of my pelvic bones are shifting around, because it often feels like I just rode the STP (a really long bike ride) the day before, so my body is preparing. And if I have a C-section, all that is wasted. So get all the way ready body. Let's have this kid.

Anyways, I should go do some laundry. All these NSTs and ultrasounds get all sorts of goo on my pants and shirts and I would like to have something to wear tomorrow so I should get on that.

But our family is mostly healthy; we're 90% over our colds so... let's do this thing.

pictures!

Here's a much belated but very fun post!

A couple weeks ago my cousin, who is a professional photographer (and mom) in CA, flew up to WA and took maternity photos for me.

Want to see them? They're great (if I do say so myself!)

http://melissabartlettphotography.pixieset.com/danamaternity/

medical update

This week:

• Yesterday/Monday: a Non-Stress Test (NST), which I passed. I get these twice a week now, usually on Mondays & Thursdays. Basically they strap a couple monitors on my belly; one monitors the baby's heartbeat and the other monitors whether I'm having contractions. Then they watch it for somewhere between 20 and 90-ish mins. They're looking for a "good" steady heartbeat w/in a certain range, that the heartbeat accelerates appropriately when the baby kicks, and that it doesn't randomly drop. I seem to pass these tests about 2/3 of the time. When I don't pass (once because the baby's heartbeat was too low, once because it dipped twice) they send me down for an ultrasound. Both times they've done that, the ultrasound tech has been looking for 4 things: enough fluid (I always pass), two types of movement (I always pass), and "practice breathing" which I've failed both times. (Also they monitor the baby's heartbeat at the ultrasound too.) Then, after I fail practice breathing, they tell me to come back the next day. Which is super fun. Once I came back for an ultrasound and NST the next day (passed both with flying colors) and one time I came back for just another NST. If they ever go poorly, that could mean time to have this baby now. Summary of NSTs: more eventful than I would have guessed.
• Today: K&E got sick last week. They're mostly better now, but Blake and I are sick. I've ruptured my eardrum, so today I get to go to my regular (non-OB) doc to have her look at my ear and make sure it's not infected because apparently that's bad when you give birth.
• Tomorrow: 3 appointments! In the morning, a full ultrasound with growth measurements. In the afternoon an appointment w/ the doc to check in and sign C-section paperwork (just to have it in order if it's needed), and then another NST.

In general, "the plan" is that, if I go into labor before 40 weeks (May 5), they will let me try a VBAC. (Their usual policy is 41 weeks, but given that I have gestational diabetes, they said 40 weeks for me.) I'd like this, but I don't expect it to happen. Perhaps I'm pessimistic, and/or just wrong, but the only data point I have for myself is that I carried twins to 38 weeks at which point they induced me and even then it took a darn long time to get Kaylee out and Ethan needed a C-section.

So for now, I have a C-section scheduled for May 5 (at 9am). However, now that I'm 37 weeks, I figure (and this is purely my own assumption) they're more likely to say "close enough" if an NST doesn't look good. However last night I had the fun of lots of contractions while grocery shopping after work and then while lying on the couch. It was my first thought of, "whoa, what if I actually went into labor on my own?" I don't think I ever had anything like that with the twins. I could tell it wasn't "real" but I don't think I ever had a contraction that I was sure was a contraction with the twins. Now, I say "think," because blake remembers these things more accurately than I do, so you can't always rely on my memory.

But that's the deal with me! There's my latest medical update. Could be any day, or could be May 5!

Step 1: Get both blake and I healthy
Step 2: Let's have a baby! I'm ready! (except for the not-healthy thing)

:D

bunk bed story

My mom wrote this email to my brothers (I got a phone call initially and then a cc on the email!) and I thought you would all enjoy this little story. :)

This story is titled, “Things Can Happen Even After A Very Long Time”.

 

So your bunk beds are about 19 years old, and today a child got his head stuck. Yes, Ethan.

 

I was babysitting today (apparently not all that well) and Kaylee and Ethan had helped me move their toddler beds into your former room. I had let them go up on the top bunk, and we had spent quite a while discussing how they can only go on the top bunk when I’m there, and they can’t jump, and they have to be careful, etc. etc. I got them off the top bunk, agreed that it was okay for them to sit on Darren’s lower bunk, and went downstairs for about three minutes. In the back of my mind I was thinking that I needed to start letting them play with a little less supervision (despite what might have seemed an obvious lesson after the Kaylee haircut incident), so I was in my office, listening to them play, testing my theory that I could leave them alone for short periods of time.

 

The test failed.

 

The kids were playing together, and I could hear them prattling back and forth with each other. For just an instant it was quiet, my ears perked up, and I heard a soft whining sound that sounded like Ethan. I got up, and as I went up the stairs I heard this tiny voice saying, “Nana? Nana?” ... so I ran up the stairs calling to him that I was on my way.

 

I can only say that I never expected to see him with his head caught between the slats on the end of your bunk beds!

 

Poor little guy He knew that being trapped was not a good thing, so he was scared. He was just barely starting to cry, so fortunately it wasn’t too hard to calm him down.

 

Skipping forward, I can now tell you that Ethan’s head, at least in every dimension we tried, is greater than 7” across. Because that’s the height of the opening between the slats. I called Dad up from the office, and we just couldn’t get him out. Dad tried to unscrew the bunk bed, but couldn’t do that either. So he ran down and got his power saw. (FOR THE BED, of course!!!)

 

The picture I’ve attached shows where Ethan was stuck (see Pluto, but without his arms through the slats). He was fairly comfortable kneeling on the bed, with me behind him so he was sort of sitting on my lap. Dad showed him how the saw would be noisy, I covered his eyes so no sawdust would get in, and a few seconds later he was free.

 

 

 

So my question to you is, did either of you guys, or any of your friends, ever stick your head through the slats and get stuck? In all these years it hasn’t been anything I’ve ever worried about. If you buy a crib, there are safety standards for how far apart the slats are, but I’ve never heard of an issue with horizontal slats on a bunk bed.

 

The good news is, Ethan is completely fine. It’s possible that he will get over this before I do! Still shaking just a bit ...

 

-- Mom

 

As a follow-up, my mom has now researched bunk bed safety and has concluded that my brothers' old bunk bed is out of compliance on two counts (one of which is the "ethan issue") so they're going to get rid of it. And, in case you were wondering, Evan doesn't think he ever put his head through, and Darren says he did it several times, but that his head was apparently smaller than ethan's! our new kid's head is currently measuring in the 94th percentile, so... I think we have another large-headed kid coming our way. what fun.

names cont...

So many posts have been floating around in my mind, yet so few of them seem to make it to the point where I actually type them up. So here's another name hint, and hopefully other topics will come later...

My mom & Danielle have guessed all 4 names. They are amazing. If you're still working on this, here are a couple hints:

• Girl's first name has 4 characters (no repeats)
• Girl's middle name has 5 characters (no repeats)
• Boy's first name has 7 characters (some are repeated)
• Boy's middle name has 4 characters (no repeats)

The girl's middle name really is the easiest. So start there. And then remember that none of the names start with K, E, any other vowels, or the same letter as each other. So if you can guess the girl's middle name, you can rule that letter out as the starting letter for the other names. And actually, you can rule that letter out entirely, it's nowhere in any of the other names.

Want one more round of clues?

• Girl's first name first letter is NOT in the first 10 letters of the alphabet
• Girl's middle name first letter is NOT in the first 10 letters of the alphabet
• Boy's first name first letter IS in the first 10 letters of the alphabet
• Boy's middle name first letter IS in the first 10 letters of the alphabet

Happy guessing!

new car

we interrupt our regularly scheduled name-posts to say... we bought a car last night! A Honda odyssey in "obsidian blue." it has 8 seats - 8! for the last several months we figured if* we bought a new car we'd go with the mazda 5 which is much closer to car-sized (and has 6 seats), but in the end we figured if we were going to do this bigger car thing, we were going to do it all the way. and bigger it is - it barely fits in our garage, so the next task is to clear out the drawers lining the side of our garage! the odyssey gets the best safety ratings, and we negotiated a great under-invoice price. so we're happy... and kinda of overwhelmed with being mini-van people. but I guess that's what happens when you have 3 kids in car seats.

 

 

* we really wanted to not buy a new car. but when we went to a car seat safety check earlier this month they told us that, although we could buy two new narrower convertible carseats for E&K and fit the infant carseat between, we would not be able to fit two booster seats and anything into the prius (because of the specific way the prius seats are shaped and boosters are installed). since we do plan for the kids to move to booster seats in the next year-ish we figured we'd just bite the bullet now and not live super squished for a year just to buy a car the following year. so... voila!

 

 

 

more name clues

Oh man, this has been so fun to hear all y'all's guesses. Danielle is "winning" thus far; she has guessed the girl middle name and the boy's first name. For the rest of y'all, here are some additional clues:

• All names are between 4 and 7 (inclusive!) characters long. None are 6 characters long.
• All names start with consonants. None of the four starting consonants are the same.
• We think we're using the most common spelling of each of the names. The exception might be the girl's first name, which I'm just not sure about. But, there are no normal names like "Heidi" where we decided to spell it "Hydee" or something crazy like that. No intentional craziness. :)

Also, I'm using this website to calculate scrabble scores: http://www.thekatespanos.com/scrabble-score-calculator/. I don't actually own scrabble to do it myself, and that website is easy! There's nothing funky going on with triple word scores or anything else like that. :)


Hints about the girl middle name:

Here's how Danielle guessed the girl's middle name: She walked in to my office and told me I was driving her crazy with guessing! I said, "start w/ the girl's middle name, it's the easiest." My boss says, "oh, I'll help" and proceeds to rattle off 10 or so random but common girl middle names. I said, "yep, it was one of those." Danielle returns a little while later and says, "it's xxxxxx; I recognized it as your xxxxxx's name and I just checked the scrabble score." I said, "yep, you're right!"
What should you take from this story?

1. It's such a common name that my boss happened to rattle it off.
2. Danielle recognized it as a family name. This is impressive of Danielle, but also lets you know it's not a crazy 7-times-removed relative. It's somebody Danielle has met.
3. Danielle and I do not work at work. Just kidding. We do. In fact, after I write this post, I'll probably make the final edits to our employee handbook. yippee. now you know why I'm procrastinating by blogging instead.

Names that have been guessed but are not winners:

• Brice
• Barrett
• Thalasa
• Anippe
• Indeah
• Lukas
• Nicolas
• Travis
• Trevor
• Tallulah
• Acacia
• Kite
• Marauder
• Vanity
• Board
• Lead
• Fisher

And yes, some of those last guesses were guessed by Evan. I'm a little scared to see what he eventually names his kids!

boy middle name

Last one! Our boy's middle name.

• scrabble score of 12!

Additional hints:

• you have heard of this name. I promise. But you may not know anybody with this name; I don't.
• It was blake's idea originally. :) I like it too of course.
• It's in the top 200 boy names.
• It's not as long of a name as its scrabble score suggests.

boy first name

I think we've decided on a boy's first name. it's been hard to settle on, and we reserve the right to change our minds. but... I think we've chosen.

• scrabble score: 9

additional hints:

• if you've talked to me about names, you will prob be able to guess this one. it's been on the short list as other names have come and gone, but it keeps hanging in there.
• it doesn't end in "n"
• most people will have heard of this name, although it's not a classic. if you haven't heard of the long version, I guarantee you've heard the nickname.
• it's in the top 250 boy names.
• It follows a pattern of names on blake's side of the family that I made up as a pattern. :)

happy guessing!

girl middle name

Since our girl will have such an unusual first name, we'll give her a very normal middle name.

• scrabble score of: 7

additional hints:

• if ethan had been a girl, this would have been his middle name.
• has some family connections on both blake and my sides of the family.
• this name, and its variations, are very common.
• according to babynamespedia.com, this name also has the same Egyptian translation as our girl first name. this seems suspicious. however, in other languages this name also means something about a sea apparently which is kinda like a river...

girl name

One of the fun things about being prego with E&K was seeing what names people guessed for them. Some consider this torture (of the guess-ers) but I think it's great fun (for me)! :D

So we'll start with the hardest first. If we have a girl, her first name will...

• have a scrabble score of 10.

Additional hints (which you will probably need):

• You have probably never heard of this name before. (oooh, look at that, some of you dislike it already!)
• We did not make it up ourselves though, we saw it a couple years ago in a playbill from the 5th Avenue Theater. We both thought it sounded both strong and beautiful. We joked we would name our next daughter that and now... if we have a daughter, we will!
• In a funny twist, Blake had always wanted to name Kaylee "River" and one of the meanings for this name is River.
• Apparently, it has Old Greek, Spanish, Latin, and Egyptian roots.
• More hints to come as needed / as I think of them. :)

Guess away! If you're right we will tell you. :)

catch up post

Now I'm cheating a little and writing this post and setting it to publish later. So when you see it, and until you read that last sentence, you'll think, "see, dana is posting more often" but now you know I'm kind of cheating. I'll take half credit. anyways...

let's catch you up a bit here.

• I am pregnant! hurrah!
• 40 weeks is around May 3-5.
• I have gestational diabetes (which I don't recommend) which means that if I go into labor myself they'll let me try a VBAC, but they won't let me go past 40 weeks (ie they'll give me a C-section on may 5 if I haven't already gone into labor). If my diabetes gets worse they won't let me go past 39 weeks, which is April 28.
• We decided it would be "fun", since we already have a boy and a girl, to not find out the baby's gender until it's born. Sometimes this is fun, sometimes it is not!
• The baby's temporary name is "Peaches"

• Kaylee and Ethan are doing well. They're 3 1/2 these days.
• They're in preschool 5 days a week now (mornings only) but next year we'll just have them in preschool 3 days a week simply because the carpool situation with a baby gets more complicated.
• I'm working 2 days a week; my mom picks them up from preschool and watches them the rest of the day on Mondays, and Blake's mom does the same on Thursdays.

Also, today is my childhood friend Libby's birthday! Happy Birthday!

long time, no blog

I haven't written in awhile. There's no good reason. This post is just to say that I plan to give it another go. Posts will prob be shorter, and although I know everyone loves pictures, they're likely to be picture-less. think of my blog as being a blog/twitter hybrid or something. I'm attempting to make it as easy as possible for me to blog in the hopes that I will. We'll see how it goes!

Huh, this is bad. It's been so long since I've written a post that I can't find where the publish button went. shouldn't that be obvious somewhere? I guess if you're reading this, that means I eventually found it though...

Happy Mothers' Day

Happy Mothers' Day!

I'm spending my second mothers' day away from my children. In fact, I'm writing this post on May 5; I'm about to join up with two of my girlfriends and we're hoping on a plane to Paris (well, technically Germany and then France). There we'll meet up with another friend who's already there. Just us girls, just having an awesome time!

The kiddos are hanging out with Blake and various wonderful "mothers" in the meantime. Blake, then our new nanny Kirsty, then my mom, then blake, then blake's parents, then blake, then Kirsty again, and then I'm back.

Thanks a million to my mom and Heidi: a) for making my trip possible, and b) for loving our kids ALL THE TIME. The kids, Blake, and I are SO blessed to have both of you take such active roles in Kaylee and Ethan's lives. It is awesome, and wonderful, and hilarious to have them come home from a day with one of you having learned new things and repeating your phrases. Just yesterday, Ethan told me that I was going to the "apple tower" due to the brief Parisian education my mom gave them last thursday.

Thanks mom, and thanks Heidi. Our kids are going to grow up to be better people because they have not just a mom, but also two amazing grandmas who love them so, so much.

Tulips

On Tuesday, my mom, the kids, and I went up to see the tulips. Most of the pictures were taken by my mom and I haven't gotten those yet, but here are a few I took on my phone.

 

 

These tulips are called Anne Marie! I tried to get the kids to take a picture in front of them (in front of these, in front of the ones in the field, etc, several tries) but they were not into that idea. Sorry aunt annemarie!

These ones are called Claudia. Anne maries and claudias were my fav single tulips of the day. Grouped together I really liked the "bold" mix of solid red, solid yellow, red/yellow, and solid deep purple. 

Riding a tractor around tulip town. this picture cracks me up 'cuz the kids are so weird looking! (she typed with love)

they grow more than 100 different varieties of tulips at tulip town. amazing to see.

Lunch was a little rough that day (over 50 minutes to get our food) but the kids were AMAZING while we waited so it wasn't that bad, and the rest of the day was fantastic. thanks for suggesting the outing and for driving mom!

katie and brent

I haven't posted in forever, I know. There are many reasons for this, many of which follow the ever-present theme of busy-ness. another reason is that life has been so great and horrible all at the same time and it's hard to feel and wrestle with both emotions so intensely. the great parts of life have been all the fun things we're up to around here. kids are happy, we've done a couple triathlons and whatnot, jobs are going well, life is good. the horrible has been the death and dying. there's nothing that I can write here that can honorably sum up either Katie or Brent or their deaths. The facts are that their deaths were rough, they were un-related, they came so close together, and they both affected Blake's group of guy friends so much. Brent's memorial was wonderful. Katie's is this weekend and I know it's going to be amazing too. The world is a little worse off without them.

It gets you to thinking about all the loss in the world. The boston marathon bombing has been rough as well; I think because although we don't run marathons, both Blake and I run, so it's hit a little close to home. Later this month will be the third anniversary of my cousin's death as well. It's kind of easy to be depressed, and hard to write about how great life is, although really, life has been so great.

So this is my sad, mournful post. Next I'll post pictures of tulips and maybe Easter and other fun, wonderful things. But I also wanted to recognize the loss, and ask for your prayers for Blake, for Ryan, Ryan, Kennedy, Michal, all the boys, and all the families. Thanks.

accident free!

Today was Kaylee's first accident-free day! 10 days in; not too bad! I'd be lying if I called her potty trained, as I don't actually expect that tomorrow will also be accident-free, but it was still really exciting today! She insisted on wearing her undies for nap-time instead of a diaper, and she kept them dry for her whole nap. We have yet to master pooping in the potty (she didn't poop all day today) and  neither she nor ethan are sleeping in undies at night, but... today was still awesome. we celebrated by watching part of beauty and the beast on youtube and eating ice cream. tomorrow she wants to watch lion king and have popcorn if she has another accident-free day. we'll see!

potty training cont

well, potty training continues, as I'm sure it will for awhile. although I called day 1 a "raging success," I would have to downgrade to "progress" at this point. basically, if we sit kaylee on the potty every half hour we're pretty good. we can stretch that to 45-60 minutes and usually make it. but... that's not exactly how we'd like to live our life. when we sit her on the potty if she has to go she does. but we are waiting for the critical step where she tells us she has to pee. hasn't happened yet.

ethan on the other hand is really mastering the remaining potty skills (tearing toilet paper, undies and pants back on... although currently his undies are backwards :)). kaylee's actually pretty good at those things too. I'd say ethan is all the way ready for preschool, so that's nice to feel that one of them is. we'll just keep working with kaylee. it's not so bad, it just means I have to actually start taking the diaper bag with me again instead of just leaving in the trunk of the car when I take them places. could be much worse! if nothing else, I bet our laundry/water bill is not going up as much as our diaper bill is going down. :)

Willawong Station

The zoo was super fun the other day. We saw many fun things, starting off with the four new baby lions. Super cute. but despite the lions' cuteness, the highlight was willawong station, which is apparently one of the largest collections of free-flying parrots on the west coast. who knew? Anyways, enjoy the pics... (all pics by annemarie)

checkin' out the map of the zoo

waiting in line to see the lion cubs; a zoo employee brought around a lion pelt to pet and feel.

Willawong Station!

I bought three seed sticks to start and didn't even have a chance to hand them out or put my change away before I had company.

two visitors as I try to hand a stick off to blake and show the kids

Heidi did not care for this visitor on her head. :D

I removed it for her and another came to check out the seed stick she was holding.

Most of the birds are cockatiels, which I had as pets growing up. But there are other birds too.

Kaylee was not so sure about this bird on her seed stick.

It was a little safer on mommy's shoulder.

So, apparently preening each others feathers is part of the mating ritual for cockatiels and this bird's mate was a little overly enthusiastic (according to the seed-stick-seller). I had noticed its lack of feathers earlier and had explained to Kaylee how once mommy had a bird like that that needed to wear a special necklace so that its feathers would grow back. I assumed Heidi had also noticed the missing feathers and had heard me tell this story. But, apparently, she had not, and Annemarie caught her surprised look quite perfectly the moment she noticed. :)

o. m. g. there is a bird on your head mommy. is this okay?

oh $/*! that bird is on my head now. this is NOT okay.

it's okay kaylee, it's okay. it is just standing there, it wants to be your hat. (secretly I am wondering what the likelihood is that it will poop in her hair)

hrmph. I am not thrilled with this. but it's much better standing on my hood than on my hair where I could feel its little feet and nails. (secretly I am thinking, I can totally clean that off if it poops on her hood)

I suppose this is just how it is now, birds standing on your head and whatnot.

two new seed sticks...

and papa gets a little bird love.

daddy and ethan never got birds on their heads.

but everyone else did!

afterwards we rolled some change down one of those spinning change rolling thingies.

and then kaylee went potty in the big potty (so did ethan) so we just had to buy some kettlecorn which we ate for most of the rest of the trip. life is rough being 2.