This Christmas was probably the most relaxed ever.  With the exception of Christmases on the mission this is the first time Greg and I didn't spend Christmas at home with our Families. Really, it made it rather relaxed. We weren't running from one house to another, but we enjoyed it.

Thursday night and Chirstmas Eve morning we went spreading Christmas cheer by taking fudge to some of the people in our ward. We got to visit with the Flemmings and finally see their baby and with the Pumphreys as well.

Christmas Eve we video chatted with my Family while everyone was over at my Grandparents. We also made a tasty Christmas tree made of rolls as one of Greg's request and I made Chicken Cordon Bleu for dinner.  That night Timmy slept through the night. What a great gift for mommy. Sort of. He would make noise like he was waking up and was hunger so I would get up to go feed him and he would just fall asleep. So even though  he slept all night, I didn't but at least I could just go back to be and never had to actually stay up with him.

Christmas day we got up and opened presents. Greg made a breakfast skillet. We watched Scrooged. I made a Pie. We video chatted with my family again. We had a ham with cheesy potatoes and carrots for dinner. We ate the pie and watched Elf.   It was a pretty relaxed day.  We got some good presents this year. Timmy got a play gym from my brother and well, a lot of stuff from a lot of people. Greg got me a massage pillow and I got him mug with pictures of me and Timmy on it.  My brother and his wife got us a nice digital video camcorder and we got some clothes and some nice fleece jackets from Greg's parents. We of course also ended up with money from a few people. Thanks everybody for a great Christmas.  

Here's some more pictures:

Timothy will be four weeks on Friday. Today we took him to the doctors for his 4 week check up.  He weighed 8 pounds 8 ounces and measured 20 1/2 inches.  He was in the 20-25 percentile for weight, 25 percentile for hieght and 30 percentile for head circumference.  The doctor said that makes him small for his age, about the size of a two week old, but there is no concern with his since he is proportional.  He's doomed to be short with Greg and me as his parents anyway.

 

As I've mentioned, little Timothy was born Nov. 26, the day after Thanksgiving. So he was one day late. Hurray for not being induced.

Well, here is the birth story. The 26th was a long day, but we made it with no epideral!  I woke up at about 12:45 am. I had a contraction and 11 minutes later I had another, then another 6 minutes later, then we hopped in the car and they were about 3 minutes apart the entire drive to the hospital. After a half an hour of monitoring in labor and delivery triage I was only 2 cm, not enough to be admitted. They told me I could either walk around  for 30 minutes to an hour or I could go home, but that I had some time to decide because they wanted to monitor the baby a little longer. So after another hour and a half of monitoring (They were having a difficult time reading him) I never had to make the decision because  they checked me again and I was already at 6 cm. So I was admitted into the hospital around 4am. Then, nothing happened.  My contractions went to about 5 minutes apart and stayed that way and I stayed at 6 cm all day. The on call Doctor came around 10:30 or 11 and broke my water to see if that would help and I slowly made my way to 8 cm with the help of standing for a little while and some pitocin. The next 2 centimeters were slow going too.  But about 5:52 pm  they decided I was ready to start pushing. (Side note: the lady in the next room was also pushing so there was a race and some question as to which patient the on call doctor would go to first when she arrived at the hospital) At 6:08 pm Timothy was born. The pushing went a lot faster than anyone expected so the on call doctor wasn't even there for his actual delivery. When she finally made it in to stitch me up she said she was a little suprised to hear a baby crying when she got to the hospital.  She went to the other patient first.  Anyway, Timothy was born at 6:08pm and I got to hold him right away for a couple of minutes and then I didn't get to see him until 9:00pm.  They were having a hard time getting him to cry and open up his lungs so they took him and Greg to the nursery and put Timothy on some oxygen and suctioned out a bunch or gunk and took a chest x-ray. He was fine, just had a hard time transitioning. While I waited for him to come back they brought me some dinner. I hadn't eaten since Thanksgiving dinner and all they would let me have during labor was juice and sugar free jello. I eventual got my babyback and we snuggled all night.

Now, he's 10 days old. He likes to sleep and be held. His embillical cord fell off yesterday and we're still getting a hang of this feeding thing, but were getting better.  He thinks that bed time starts at midnight. When we went in for his first doctor's appointment on Dec 1. He was 19 3/4 inches long and 6 pounds 14 ounces.  He was around the 15th-25th percentile for all his measurements. Yep, he's a little guy. He's also very cute.

Here is a link to a lot more pictures on a public facebook album.



and happy due date. Although, I would be happier if I had a baby.  I guess I've made it 40 weeks, I can manage to wait a few more day. It's only 4 more days untill I'm induced and he could come before then (keeping my fingers crossed.)

Well, my due date is tomorrow and we are still babyless, but the trip to the doctors was certainly and adventure this morning and brings kind of good news. First of all, we got there super early. We expected the roads to be awful after the snow yesterday, but they weren't.  Even though we were early they got me in as soon as I checked in (I love morning appointments) and then I get all settled on the exam table ready for the doctor and his assistant comes in and says that the doctor just  got called over to the hospital  to deliver a baby (and I mean just because we passed by him in the hall maybe 2 minutes earlier when the assistant was taking me back to the exam room) and it would probably be another half an hour, but that I was first on his list when he gets back (good thing I was early.)  The doctor finally makes it back (I don't think it even took a half an hour. The hospital is right next door.) He gives me my exam and absolutely no change from last week. This baby just doesn't want to come! Anyways, we talk a little bit and he says he will call the hospital and see about a scheduling an induction for Monday and while he is making that call that he wants me to head to the ultrasound room to make sure there is enough amniotic fluid to last until Monday. Totally wasn't expecting to get an ultrasound today, but at least I got to see my baby boy, kind of. The poor little guy is definitely running out of room. His little face is all squished and he doesn't look comfortable at all.  After the ultrasound we sit around a while waiting to hear from the doctor exactly whats going on with the induction. Eventually, he comes and tells us to check in at Labor and Delivery at 5:00 am monday morning. Hurray, I'm going to have a baby by Monday.  That gives this little boy 4 more days to come on his own. Let's see if it happens. If not I'll have a baby in 5 days.

Here are the ultrasound pics. They are little hard to decypher since it's a little crowded and he is so much bigger than he was 20 weeks ago.

 

Like I said, they are difficult to figure out.

Here we are with 7 days left. I'm hoping, I'm praying it's less. I had a doctors appointment on Tuesday and I was 1cm and 50% effaced, so I'm really hoping it's less than a week. But, I know that some women walk around dilated for a long time before labor actually starts. I hope I'm not one of them. Greg keeps jokingly saying that the baby will come on Friday (tomorrow) at 3:00 pm with a margin  of error of 2 (we're not sure what units the 2 actually is. It could be minutes, hours, days.) Baby is running out of time to meet that deadline. If baby felt like coming today or tomorrow it really would be ideal because it would give Greg the longest stretch of time off of work. He has a week to take off and with the 2 days off he gets for the holiday, if the baby came in the next 2 days he would get 2 weekends attached to that vacation time instead of just 1. I'm just hoping he comes by Monday. Why? It just seems like a good day and it would give me a couple of days to recover before Thanksgiving. I do have a Turkey to cook (well, for Greg to cook after all.) Come on baby, let's get this show on the road! 

Only 14 more days. 

Saturday morning I had the Relief Society Super Saturday at church and it was fun. We made our crafts and had a pot luck lunch.

Now, the candy jar they had on display and had provided ribbon for was painted with snowflakes for Christmas. It was cute but I already have Christmas candy jars so I wanted to make one I could use year round and everybody kept telling me that I could do the snowflake one and give it to someone as a gift. Is it really so bad that I wanted to make one for myself?  Funny side story, the relief society president came over to my house last night to visit and she was impressed that I already have candy in my jar, but I had to admit it was just the left over Halloween candy (we only had like 5 trick or treaters.)

I've also been busy crocheting. I made some cute little amigurimi animals with the left over yarn from the Noah's ark blanket (Ignore the fact that the I haven't put eyes on the snake or the elephant yet). When I was making the elephant I just had his trunk and  the two legs sewn on and I  made a comment to Greg that it reminded me of Q-bert.  Greg has never heard of Q-bert.  Anyway, I'm now officially done with all of my crocheting. Now, I can work on my Provo scrapbook more diligently at least until I find a new crochet project. I'm thinking I need to make a Christmas Afghan....

Last Thursday, Nov 4 was Greg's Birthday.  We had a fun day. I woke up and made Greg breakfast: French toast with homemade Dulce de Leche (Okay, so I really  made the Dulce de Leche the day before). He of course had to work but after work he opened presents and then we headed out to dinner. It was hard for Greg to decide where he wanted to eat.  He had kind of been thinking PF Changs all  week but when it came down to it he wasn't super hungry so we looked up places in Reno on Google Maps and found a Melting Pot. Greg got on the website and just to make sure we didn't need a reservation or anything and we unfortunately discovered a Note on the website that said the Reno location closed on October 6. Sad day. No Melting Pot.  We eventually decided it wasn't worth it to drive all the way to Reno so we picked a place in Carson City, Red's 395 that was recommended to us by a sales rep at a Verizon Store a few weeks ago. We thought it was a steak house but it turns out their specialty is BBQ. Yumm. So we ate some fabulous BBQ and had plenty of leftovers. We still have leftovers in the fridge and we've pulled them out twice since we went. It was a lot of food.  After dinner Greg wanted to look for a new video game so we went to Game Stop. After some recommendations from the store manager and not listening to them he took home a couple of used games:  Mario Galaxy and Call of Duty: World at War.  He finished playing Call of Duty Saturday Morning (not a lot of game play) and since he didn't like it much he took it back and traded it for Muramasa, the game the store manager originally recommend.  He had a good birthday and he's definitely been enjoying Mario Galaxy since then.  

With 21 days to go this baby is considered full term and has permission to come any day now.  Of course it would still be better for the baby if he waited a couple more weeks (which is highly likely considering I haven't even had a single Braxton Hicks contraction or real contraction for that matter and according to my check up at the doctors on Monday I haven't started to dilate which is not very shocking since I haven't had any contractions.) Even if it would be best for him to wait a little longer I am tired, anxious, not sleeping at night, uncomfortable, tired, have swollen feet (I can strangely still get my wedding ring on and off just fine), wishing I could breath again, sick of the view of the bathroom, and really, really hoping that this baby comes sooner than 21 days from now and hopefully not a day later.

So I've been very diligent about taking pictures to track the growth of my baby bump and everyone tells me I'll be very grateful that I've taken so many pictures. I'm sure I will be, but I needed some nice pictures too. Saturday, we finally had time for Greg to take some pictures of me. I was just thinking we would go to one of the local parks, but Greg decided that we needed to go to one of the mountain trails around Lake Tahoe. (We never actually made it to the specific trail he was thinking of.) In the couple of hours we spent on this photo shoot we encountered sunshine, clouds, rain, and even a very tiny amount of snow. It made for some very beautiful scenery complete with rainbows. We had fun and got a lot of good pictures. Sure, they aren't professional quality, but we like them none the less.