So this is it, right?

I thought since it has been a few weeks I would put a current pic up of our progress. I don't know why I can't seem to get a picture when our bed is actually made. Oh yes, that's because it never is. Sorry Mom. I blame the pregnancy pillow. I am sure I will be right on top of the bed-making once the baby gets here.

Now mind you, I have no idea where I fall on the pregnancy size-o-meter, but I feel like it's still manageable. Apparently Rick feels differently:

(Actual exchange while driving yesterday, me at the wheel)

K: I wonder how close my belly will get to this steering wheel over the next few months?

R: Probably not too close. I mean, you are not going to get much bigger, are you?

Apparently Rick feels I have stretched as far as I can go. I have a feeling he's going to be in for a bit of a surprise over the next 12 weeks. We both might be in for a bit of a surprise...

Updates Galore!

I apologize in advance for any sleep you all might have lost while wondering/worrying about all the action going on in the lives of Kaly and Rick. Hopefully this post will serve to bring you all up to speed.

Most importantly, I am feeling much better today. Thanks for asking. I committed to heavy neti pot use on Wednesday, and after somewhat of a struggle yesterday, I feel much better. I even slept for 8 straight hours and didn't wake up with the sensation of my trachea being lined with thumb tacks. Life is good!

The basement project is still going on, though there appears to be a light at the end of the tunnel. Or they are telling me there's a light. Either way, I am taking in this news with blind acceptance and am devout in my stance not to worry about it. There were a few delays due to the "blizzard" from a few weeks ago, and Joe had some crazy other issues come up which stole him from us for a few days. But he hit the basement hard this week and we now have insulation, can lights, new electric business (also not concerning myself with that), and the drywall is delivered and going up on Sunday. As seen in the photos below, it is coming along quite nicely and is about 95% less creepy than the basement of just a few weeks ago.

Now lest any of you think that my resignation to watch the basement progress like a hawk means that I have eased up on my pursuit of Manny with Totsy, be not afraid. I gave Manny two weeks as of our last email exchange of harrassment-free time to get me my missing merch as he had promised. Well, the two weeks came and went, and you guessed it, no merchandise, no word from dear Manny. I sent him another email on 2/22 requesting an update and received this response on 2/23 (again, from Manny):

"Thank you for contacting us. We know that you have been very patient while we get the missing components to you. We recently received the items and unfortunately, the incorrect color of sand was received while you purchased the platinum version. Form my understanding, we are sending this supply back to the manufacturer for replacements in the correct color. I am very sorry about this and I do realize this is taking longer than we initially anticipated."

Interesting. Now, I am no customer service guru (though I play one on this blog), but wouldn't it have been appropriate for Manny to contact me when the SAND colored stuff came in, let me know it was wrong, and give me the option of taking the SAND or waiting for the platinum? Of course, I would have demanded that they send it back because who chooses Sand over Platinum, but at least I would have been involved in the process and not having to hunt Manny down for intel. So, I forwarded this email to my gal Melissa (Manny was not copied) with Easywalker and she responded that this was not her understanding of the situation and she was going to look into it. So the plot thickens. If you all had trouble sleeping before from all the speculation about this situation, kiss those "z"s goodbye, because this is stimulating stuff!

Chinese Cabbage meets Indian Chicken Fingers

How do you know when you are a very loved uncle? The answer is when you can get your 7 and 9 year old nieces to eat Indian food in celebration of your birthday. Sure, they ate mostly something resembling chicken fingers and naan, but it's all about the baby steps, right? I am pretty sure they at least tried some new things! Of course, Chloe proclaimed that the place smelled weird because Indian people like spices (she learned that part about the spices yesterday at school) and they were referring to the naan as "pizza" by the end of the meal, but we were still proud of them and it made for a very special birthday dinner.

We are officially at 28 weeks of pregnancy today, which means a measly 12 weeks left! The Super has developed more brain tissue and is 15 inches long and 2 1/4 pounds and is the size of a Chinese Cabbage:

This photo even includes a coin for scale! Very advanced.

The phone continues to reference this magical blinking of the eyes and then starts again with the laundry list of not-so-pleasant things we can expect during these last few weeks. They advise that I will gain around 10 pounds this trimester (here's hoping!) and continue warnings of swelling, urinary incontinence, itching skin, hemorrhoids, and again with the heartburn. While I did temporarily lose my ankles last Friday, I have eluded most things on this list so for that, I am eternally grateful.

Birthday Boy

Rick in his summer habitat with two of his favorite things: cheese and beer

It's Ricker's BIRTHDAY!!!! Everybody's favorite City Museum director is 35 today! I had big plans to take Rick out for an Indian meal this evening, but those plans might be thwarted by this pesky cold that is turning me into the mother of all mouth-breathers. Very attractive. I will continue my efforts to rally in hopes that we can make dinner. Rick is insistent on not doing anything special for him this year, which is absolutely no fun. Though it is hard to top events of years passed when we have taken our annual trips to exotic places for his big day. Oh well, there's always next year. Until then, I will be sending my beloved husband warm birthday wishes full of beer and cheese.

Check-In with Dr J

This morning was our monthly Super check-up. After last month's impressive weight gain, I was a little apprehensive about this appointment. February has involved a trip to Texas, yet another bout with a cold/allergy attack (which makes working out even less likely), and my dear husband's gift of 48 cadbury cream eggs for valentine's day. If you are doing the math on this little equation, that works out to a 6 pound weight gain in one month. Excellent! Dr J doesn't seem to be too concerned just yet, though his comments are getting less and less encouraging:

5 Month Check-up: "Weight gain is perfect"
6 Month Check-up: "Still looking good. Do your best."
7 Month Check-up: "It is what it is."

I would probably be getting more grief, but I am still in sight of being within their recommended weight gain range of 25-30 pounds and well below the average of a 45 pound weight gain, so I have that going for me (I have never wanted so badly to not be average in my life!). My blood pressure is also still perfect, so no worries there. We got the results of my glucose tolerance/gestational diabetes test and I passed with flying colors. No diabetes for this chick! I am also not anemic, which I didn't even realize was on the table.

Super was cranking out the beats for Dr J at 146 beats per minute and she is growing at the perfect rate. She was moving all around last night and I noticed that I really only feel her kick on the left side (confirmed this is normal with Dr J). In reading the interwebs, this likely means that her head is over to my right. Apparently she's found a comfy position because she's been like that since I have been able to feel her. Or she's just lazy. She gets that from her mom.

We had a pretty busy weekend of house renovation/nursery activities. We spent Saturday registering at Target, which nearly resulted in me breaking down in the bottle aisle. Who knew there were so many options for bottles, nipples, pumps, accessories??? Thankfully one of our neighbors happened along and gave me the run-down on the situation. I spent about 45 minutes discussing our plan of attack with her while Rick buzzed around with the scanner. So if you see anything that looks strange or out of place, Rick might have gotten a little scan-happy. We also opted to register at Amazon.com so we could read one bazillion reviews before deciding on something. I started feeling crappy on Saturday, likely due to the change in the weather, so I pulled the pregnancy card and rested for a few hours. Sunday was spent on a mad carpet/flooring/couch for the basement search, which led me to one undeniable fact: I hate West County.

27 WEEKS!!!

So that 2nd trimester went by quickly for me, I don't know about you guys. We are in the home stretch here! And to really confuse/annoy me, the phone is now saying that super is the size of a cauliflower. Hmm. That's interesting. I think they have officially gone off the deep end or run out of random foodstuffs to reference, so now they are just throwing things out there. Next week they will tell us that she is the size of approximately 300 dominoes. Actually, that might be a slighly more uniform, quantifiable reference. Maybe these people are hiring. I feel I could provide valuable insight into their operation.

We have finally reached the 2 pound mark and she's around 14.5 inches long. This is becoming very real here, people. They are telling me that she now resembles what she will look like at birth, though slightly redder and more wrinkly. Sounds like Dan Hagemann on a beach vacation (my brother in law is well known for getting a sunburn to beat all sunburns on the first 2-3 days of vacation, shedding that layer, and then breaking in his "new skin" for the duration of the trip; it's fascinating to watch). The baby's immune system is continuing to develop and she's becoming a pro at breathing amniotic fluid. Every time they mention the breathing fluid, I think of that old movie "The Abyss" with Ed Harris where they have to breathe some sort of fluid to survive outside of their little submarine. Did you see that? No? It's just me? Fine. Your loss.

I am now being warned of leg cramps (check!) , back pains, pressure, premature labor and restless leg syndrome (in addition to all of last week's symptoms). The list is getting longer than the disclaimer at Space Mountain. Oh well. I guess I can endure anything for another 13 weeks.

I go in to get my glucose tolerance test to determine if I have gestational diabetes tomorrow. In preparation, I have been laying off the sweets in hopes I pass with flying colors. While I can cope with 13 weeks of backaches, swollen feet (and face and hands), constipation, heartburn, restless legs, mood swings, hip pain, and leg cramps, the thought of 13 weeks without sweets is almost more than I can handle.

Weekend Getaway

The Erwins escaped to warmer climates on Friday for a weekend of family fun. Our cousin, Elizabeth, was getting married, and was kind enough to have the wedding in a place that was convenient to allow for visitation of other family members: Austin. We flew in early on Friday, just in time to enjoy a late lunch at one of Austin's trailer park eateries. We then did some shopping, checked into the hotel, and I tried to rest for a bit. Rick went out to pick up some stuff I forgot, but then somehow found himself at a hot dog happy hour that sounded like it couldn't be missed. That night we went for drinks with Patrick, cousin Brandon, and Chaney, and then stopped by a pre-wedding cocktail party. We then went back out with Brandon and his delightful girlfriend, Jordan for a late dinner. Sounds busy, no? Well, if you are pregnant and ever want to gauge your level activity over the course of the day, check out your feet. Mine resembled Fred Flintstones with a sweet sunburn (still not sure why they were so red). It was awesome. Needless to say, I was pretty excited to get to sleep that night.


On Saturday we went to breakfast with Kristen and Dave and then went to find some shoes that fit my new flintstone feet. We then had lunch with my sweet Aunt Lynnie, cousin David and his family (wife Kate and son Stuart). Kate is pregnant with TRIPLET GIRLS! In true Kate fashion, she was as upbeat as ever and looked amazing. I could not complain about my swollen feet in Kate's presence.

Sweet Stuart Ellis, he who is about to be further over-run with girl siblings and cousins.
Lunch was absolutely adorable and it felt great to finally feel warmth of the SUN!

Bigs and GB surprised us all by driving all night to arrive in Austin early, just in time to make lunch. This is my sweet Aunt Lynnie.

Stuart with his Mom and Dad. Kate, I believe, is 29 weeks pregnant. Three babies. God bless her.

Shisha, cousin Brandon, and his g-friend Jordan.

Big D and Stuart practicing their "hook 'em horns", which is a mandatory ability in Austin.


All the ladies.

Chaney sharing scoop with GB and Big Daddy.

Saturday evening was the wedding in Dripping Springs, which I assumed was just outside of Austin. I was wrong. It was about an hour shuttle ride away, which we all almost missed. Chaney and Liza were the most dramatic, having to run up 6th street in their dresses (sans high heels to increase speed) to make the bus in time. We love a good entrance.

Patrick wasn't sure if his hot toddy he received upon arrival had quite enough alcohol.

Wow, that's a puffy face. Oh well. I blame strange vacation food.

The beautiful bride and her father, my crazy uncle Jimmy.

Gorgeous setting.

The reception was THE FUNK. They had a great band and dinner consisted of shrimp and grits, mac 'n cheese, chicken fingers, spinach salad, some sort of beef product that Mom and Chaney almost came to blows over trying to identify, and some yummy soup. Desserts were cake, cupcakes, and MILK SHAKES. Seriously, this pregnant chick was in heaven. Nevermind the fact that the first milkshake I took a huge gulp of was heavily spiked with something. It doesn't count if you didn't know there was alcohol in it.

All in all, it was the perfect weekend to usher in valentine's day. It was full of family and love, which was what I kept trying to focus on as I waded through the piles of medical bills, that for some reason aren't covered by my insurance, that were waiting for us when we got home. Good times. I will not let you get me down, Meritain!!!

This goes out to all my friends and family. Happy Valentines day! Thank you for being a source of light and love in our lives and we appreciate you more than we could ever say.

Now I am off to take out some of my insurance aggression on Totsy...

*tap-tap*-Is this thing on?

Super can officially hear us now. This, coupled with the fact that blinking is starting now, is really crazy to me. This is real-deal baby stuff here people. Surfactant is starting to be made, which is somehow involved in lung function. We use surfactants to clean up petroleum spills, but I don't think they are talking about the same stuff. At least I hope not.

Miss S is now around 14 inches long and weighs around 1.75 pounds. She is now the size of an eggplant. One app refers to her size as a hothouse cucumber. I have never heard of this particular item, but it sounds like one slutty cucumber.

The phone warns of backaches, constipation, itchy skin, and heart burn. These are truly the days people. Thankfully, I have only fallen victim to one of these issues. I will leave it to you all to figure out which one.

Too good to be true

Thanks to a certain basement remodel project which caused all of the basement storage to be relocated into the future nursery, my nesting efforts have been somewhat limited lately. We have been able to make some purchases for the nursery however we can't get anything organized until we get all of our other stuff out of there. As a result, I have been forced to focus my nesting instinct on other things like cleaning the bathroom. And Totsy.

"What's Totsy?", you ask? Well, it's one of those "deal of the day" places that offers huge discounts on limited quantities of items. They send you daily emails taunting you with excellent bargains that you don't want to miss out on. It's like a used car salesperson for slinging baby-related items. So around the beginning of January, Rick and I fell prey to the wooing of this Totsy and purchased the Easywalker Travel System they were offering. The system was to include the stroller, the carrycot/bassinet, and a travel bag. This stroller is pretty fancy and normally really expensive, so we jumped at the chance to get it at a huge discount. We knew it would take a while to arrive and were happy we ordered it in advance. It was slated to be delivered on February 1, so when it arrived a WHOLE DAY EARLY on January 31st, we were thrilled.

This is the stroller, though we ordered it in dark gray.

The stroller base with the carrycot. Pretty slick, eh?

align="left">I waited for Rick to come home to open our first real-deal baby item so we could marvel at both our slick new stroller system and compliment each other on our financial responsibility. Well, we open up this HUGE box, only to find just the stroller inside. Being that it is Danish design, we thought they might have tucked the carrycot and travel bag into some nook of the stroller, but we found nothing. I looked at our order form which enthusiastically proclaimed "Order Complete! Thank you for shopping with Totsy!" I was instantly furious. Totsy. What a stupid name.

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I have been aptly nicknamed "Customer Service Nightmare" (CSN) by my husband and various members of my family. I wear this as a badge of honor. I will say that CSN only comes out in situations where it is greatly deserved. I think the pregnancy sort of turns up the volume on the CSN situation, but I like to think I am still pretty fair when determining the level of freak-out necessary when this customer thinks she's not receiving good service. I instantly emailed Totsy (seriously, it's like the name of your super annoying sorority sister that you just want to choke) and got an automated response providing me with my ticket number. I tried calling and got this bubbly "Thank you for calling Totsy, our office hours are ..... Please leave a message." A message? What kind of clown shoes operation is this? Do you not even bother to connect me to some fella in India named Jose who will try his best to resolve my issues?

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Long story short, no response from Totsy for a week other than to tell me they are looking into it. My rage grew. So on Monday I sent an email to Easywalker, just letting them know my concerns about the Totsy (brain bleeding) service and they might want to take this into consideration the next time they are thinking about doing business with them. And I copied Totsy on the email. I am sure it is a coincidence, but within about 20 minutes of sending that email, I got a response from Manny with Totsy (I'm not joking). He said they were working with the manufacturer to get the balance of the order fulfilled and said that we could get something within the next two weeks. Melissa with Easywalker also responded and said she would be contacting Totsy to help them get this resolved.

So Manny, Melissa and I will probably become fast friends over the next two weeks. I am reserving any serious judgement of sweet Totsy until the two week deadline expires and then I will unleash the fury of Father-to-Be Erwin, who, thanks to the wonders of social media and a highly popular children's museum, has access to THOUSANDS of parental units that I am sure would be interested to hear about the service Totsy provides. We'll keep you posted.

Edited to add: Apparently we are aligning to the left today, and want to tell everyone about it! I tried to fix it, but then it wipes out most of my text, so it will stay. And I can't get my new background to come up. I smell a totsy sabotage.

Super Bowel Sunday

This weekend was a bit of a haze. I am not really sure what we did on Saturday other than a run to the mall and Nordstrom's Rack, followed by an Investigation Discovery true-crime marathon/nap session, which was awesome. I was finally directed by Rick to "shut that thing off after we find out what happened to the Jacobsons! I can't get sucked into another one of these shows!" We never found out what happened to the Jacobsons. We held out hope for them to the bitter end though.

Yesterday was a MAJOR purge day. Ricker and I went through closets and drawers and managed to generate FIVE bags of stuff to take to Goodwill. Of course, that still doesn't leave enough room to move Rick's closet from Super's room back into ours, but we'll figure something out. We then ran around looking for paints and various other items for Super's Baby Cave. We finally found a sweet leather chair at an even sweeter price that adds to all the fun colors of the room. We might be the only people in the world to find out the gender of our child, then go with a completely gender neutral room. Oh well. Pics will follow once we get it together. The "vision" evolves daily, so no sense in confusing everyone.

No, the title is not a typo. I have been plagued with some sort of stomach ailment the past few days. I thought it might be those fake-out contractions at first, but they seem to somehow be food-related. I get a really tight feeling in my stomach either if I get hungry or after eating. I realize this is a vague reference, given the size of my stomach lately, but if you are looking at my stomach, and my stomach is a map of the US, the pain would reside somewhere around Indiana (Texas/Oklahoma would be the belly button area, naturally). I am sure my mother will tell me it is gas. All stomach ailments are gas, which in our family, is true about 99% of the time. The mystery pains are somewhat of a governor though, as they keep me from eating too much, which I guess might come in handy at my next Dr's appointment. Maybe I will only gain 8 pounds this month.

25 weeks!

Stats:

13.5 inches

1.5 pounds

Size of a rutabaga (seriously?)

Super has continued to pack on the pounds, which means cute little baby fat to smooth out the skin. My phone warns of stretching skin, shortness of breath (due to my huge uterus, YAY!) and increased body hair. Good times. Now, I am not bragging here, but my leg hair has almost completely stopped growing. I know there is zero chance of this happening, but if this continues post-pregnancy, this is essentially winning the hygiene lottery for a woman. Knowing my luck, my body will make up for lost time after Super arrives and I will turn into a human Chia pet, but for now, I will enjoy the silky smoothness.

One thing my phone doesn't warn about is pregnancy turning me into a crazed lunatic. A sporadic crazed lunatic, which is almost worse, because you never know when it is going to strike. I guess I can understand that there is not an easy way to tell expectant mothers that they will want to rip the heads off of all those that are near and dear to them, for no good reason. That was me yesterday. And when I wasn't ragey, I was sobby. It was not good. I finally had the presence of mind to separate myself from society and ride the storm out solo. So apologies in advance (or if I haven't apologized yet) for being mean, crazy, rude, or ultra-sensitive. I am sure I will be back to my semi-mean, crazy, rude, and quasi-sensitive self soon after the baby arrives.

Kindness of Strangers

Though I feel I am pretty obviously pregnant these days, and don't do a lot to disguise it, there has still been a complete lack of acknowledgement from the general population to my pregnancy. Heck, I am not sure what I could do to disguise it at this point, short of donning a Barney the Purple Dinosaur costume for the next 4 months, which might be equally conspicuous. Not that I expect it to be the topic of conversation at grocery stores, malls, and movie theaters, but I see them looking. Up until yesterday, I had only one unsolicited pregnancy comment, and I have since convinced myself that I might as well have been wearing an "I'm Knocked Up" t-shirt that day, so the validity of that exchange is under scrutiny.

Until yesterday, when I had the following exchange with a kind stranger in my office elevator:

(elevator doors close)

S: Boy or girl?

M: (looks around, to make sure there is no one else in this 4x6 space whose gender might be up for debate, though there is no one else in the elevator) Me? Oh, it's a GIRL!

S: Congratulations. Your first?

M: Yes it is. (now on to more important things, because this is exactly the conversation the guy wants to have in the 15 second ride in a confined space with a stranger) You know, you are only the second person to say anything to me about it without me bringing it up first!

S: Really? Seems pretty obvious.

M: I know, RIGHT?

S: And I am pretty careful to not say anything if I think the person might just be fat.

M: God bless you.