Life's A Beach

Monday was a wonderful day! I had the day off, Russell was still in town, Mallory’s teeth were almost totally broken through and Matthew had a long lunch! So the four of us took advantage of the perfect day and drove to the coast for lunch. We stopped and had fresh clam chowder in a bead bowl (Mallory loved the bread, not so much the chowder). After lunch Matthew then headed back to work (poor guy) while Russell, Mallory and I drove on to Salmon Beach. It was perfect. The sun was warm, a little breeze, the sand was toasty and the waves were ideal. At first Mallory was just having a field day playing in the sand. She would stand up, take a few steps, then fearlessly fall straight back into the sand. She would just roll and roll in it, occasionally sticking her tongue out to taste the sand (hey I get it… if it’s that much fun to play in, it’s got to taste good too, right?). Her face was always priceless after the fact… her nose, lips and tongue all covered with a thick layer of sand. Soooooo Funny! Then she noticed the ocean. It was like a light-bulb got flicked as she realized that the waves were actually water… then the ‘fun’ began. How can something so little be so fast and strong???? She wanted to just walk out into the ocean. It didn’t matter that it was supper cold or deep or that she can’t swim. It was water, which meant she should go in it. And once this girl has an idea in her head there’s practically no stopping her. Finally after countless times of trying to bring her back from the waves/out of the water we just left. It was easier that way. It was nap time anyway (for me, not her).

Week 13

Before I get too far behind in the week, here is week 13: Our little BB is about the size of a 3 inch outdoor screw and now weighs about an ounce. Its little organs are now all inside its abdomen (hopefully) and it is developing ribs. Bone is replacing cartilage and our little one has defined fingerprints AND genitalia now.
Mallory is starting to understand that there is a baby coming… well, as much as a 13 month old can understand that concept. It’s really cute, if you ask her where the baby is she’ll come over and lift up my shirt and kiss my belly. That being said, she is also wanting to lift up other peoples shirts and kiss their belly too (hey you just never know who might have a baby in there…. Daddy, grandma, babysitters, other babies…. Might as well kiss them all).

Week 12 (is almost over)

Little B.B is steadily growing! Week 11 it was 2 inches, about the size of a master-lock key, this week B.B is about 2 ½ inches, roughly the size of a master-lock! At the three month mark most of the internal organs are now fully formed and startling to function, so now we start the long process of maturation. Some of organs are still outside the body wall, so they are slowly working their way inside. B.B now has reflexes, and can start to respond to pressure put on my abdomen (not that I can feel the little sucker yet) along with opening and closing its hands, and mouth and wiggling its toes.

Another First

I had yet another parenting first this weekend. One that I really could have done without! Matthew was still at a friend’s b-day party so I was getting our little lady all ready for bed by myself. No big deal, right? I do it with about once a week. We have a pretty regimented routine: Bath, reading, p.j’s, snuggle, prayers/signing, bed. Easy-peasy… and most of the time it is, until you throw in a monkey wrench.
Mallory LOVES bath time, rarely is she the one who wants to get out, but it’s more of us being tired of sitting there watching her. Such was the case on Saturday. My bum was getting tired of sitting on the world’s most uncomfortable bath-stool so I help Malory pick up most of the bath toys and I pulled the plug on the water. I turned to grad her towel…. When I turned around (seconds later) she had THREE floating, brown friends with her in the tub! SHE POOPED IN THE TUB! Luckily she didn’t seem to notice them and had left them alone. I pulled her out, rinsed her off and set her down beside the tub. Now giant wads of toilet paper and I made mad dashes at the slippery ‘friends’ so that I could get them out before they became mashed in the drain. Ever the copy cat, Mallory kept trying to reach over the edge and grab them too. So now I have one had full of soggy toilet paper and poo, the other hand was lifting the lid of the toilet/trying to keep poo-water drops from splattering everywhere, so I have to use my foot and legs to keep a wet/slippery baby from both falling back in the tub and from grabbing her poo. It was quite the adventure! After bleaching down the tub and remaining bath toys, the rest of bed-time was relatively uneventful… Thank goodness!!!! Got to love parenthood!

Thumbs Up

Ok, I want you to give yourself a good ol' fashion Thumbs up! Go on, do it. Thanks! Now not only have you given yourself a little self-induced positivity this morning, but you have also seen how big B.B is. I've been a slacker and haven't taken a week 11 picture yet (even though it's now almost over). But B.B is about the size of an average thumb (so for you outliers with big or small thumbs you rs don't count... go find someones elses thumb to look at). The little one is about 2 inches long and is now able to kick and throw punches in it's little warm water world. It can also swallow! And as of now, it's 'little' head it about HALF the length of its body. So fun.

Work Update

I just realized that I haven’t given you all a work update…. And last you knew ‘work was work’. Well, that is no longer the case. I can’t tell you how much fun/mentally stimulating work is! Now, in hind site I realize that God truly did have a reason behind what I felt like at the time was a horrible/hopeless situation. The caliber of medicine that I know get to practice is phenomenal! (Not to toot my own horn… but, Toot, Toot). The tests that these clients allow me to run are out of this world, the things I’m learning and cases I’m seeing are more then I had ever dreamed of!!!!! I feel like I am getting to practice the quality of medicine that I have heard all my classmates talk about!
So now looking back I am flabbergasted by the fact that I COULD have stayed at the original hospital that felt ‘comfortable’ due to how familiar it was and never would have realized how much MORE I could be/do…. And I would have been ok with at (6 months ago)… but now, when just the other day someone mentioned that ‘maybe you could work back for Dr. Dave in the future’ the first thing I thought was I will NEVER go back to practicing that sort of medicine. Not that its bad medicine, it’s just not how I want to practice any longer. You know? I do have to pay credit to Dr. Dave though; HE gave me the foot-in-the-door that I needed to break into the small animal world, so I have to thank him for that… But now I feel as though I have spread my wings and am finally learning just how much I am capable of! It is an electrifying feeling! So YES, I am LOVING work again!

1th Dr. Apt.

I had my first baby doctor appointment last week for little B.B. It went great! According to ‘them’ I am currently due anywhere from March 3rd to march 8th. Not really sure what date to go with. (March 3rd sounds better to me, since its sooner).
With that in mind here are the week 10 stats (yup, I’m already a ¼ of the way finished)…
Little B.B is about a 1 ½ inches long (roughly the size of a large paper clip). Its little bones and cartilage are growing and tooth buds are forming, along with hair and fingernails. B.B’s inner ear is now working, which means it can hear! Sooooo fun. It can bend at the elbow and has distinct fingers (no more webbing). Its ‘basic’ brain divisions are also present…. And when I say ‘basic’ I mean highly advanced and very, very smart!
I can’t believe how much quicker this pregnancy is happening. I already have a baby bump going on and I am putting on weight like it’s a race (guess what, I win)! Uhgggggg!

This pregnancy has been quite different so far, I was sick! I mean vomiting sick for about 3 weeks. Just the sight or the image of meat would bring it on. I still don’t feel wonderful, but at least it’s just a dry heave every now and again. I have been breaking out like crazy (I feel like a teenager) and I’m MUCH more moody then with Mallory. Matthew walked in to the kitchen a few weeks ago and there I was, sobbing! All by my self, just crying! He asked me why I was crying and my tearful reply was “I (sob) don’t (sob) know” sniff, sniff! Some people are speculating that all these ‘new’ events mean that I’m having a boy…. But on the other hand I keep hearing that ‘every pregnancy is different’ even if it’s the same gender. So for those of you with gender duplicates, what do you think?

humpty Dumpty

I hope this video works…

Our Fish

Starting this past Monday Mallory started swim lesions! It’s been a blast! It’s a half hour class every night (kind of long, since after about 20 minuets Mallory has pretty much lost interest in it). Matthew and I are both able to go with her since we purposely signed her up for the 7-7:30 lesions. It’s fun, we sing song and do little dances and have just some free ‘swim’ time. Mallory’s favorite part is the Humpty Dumpty song, where she gets to fall back into the water/our arms. She’s so funny. I’ll TRY and post a little video of it. Oh, and yes, that last picture is of Matthew trying to keep Mallory from drowning…along with himself!

In trying to organize for the all-to-fast approaching arrival of B.B Matthew and I are working on making use of the limited space that our sweet little house gives us. We added an extra shelf in the kitchen (which is helping), and our next project has been to move all of the stuff out of the ‘guest’ room, so it can be transformed into Mallory’s new big-girl room!!!! But in order to do that we needed to make/find room to up ALL that stuff. We started by realizing that our closet was where a tone of it would end up, so with that in mind we knew we needed to re-do our walk-in. Matthew and I designed what we wanted (it turns out it would cost us about $700 bucks for a custom-ordered closet system) YICKS! Not going to happen! But my very hand hubby and father-in-law thought that we could do it. And we did! It took about a day and a half and only about $200! It turned out great! And it fits ALL our stuff! Clothes, jackets, wine, and random stuff. PERFECT!

Twitch

I think that I am feeling a little stressed. Starting 5 days ago my right lower eyelid started twitching!!!! It's driving me crazy. Yeah, stress and the poor quality of sleep has got to be playing a roll is my spastic eye (since I can't blame it on caffeine or alcohol). What I hate the most is when it happens while I'm in an exam room and I try to carry on, hoping that the client doesn't notice.
Not really sure how I can relax and make the twitching stop. I think maybe I should cash in my gift certificate for a massage.... maybe that would help!!!!

Camping

We had a blast camping! I think there were about 24 of us total in 7 site at the Hendy Woods campground. Mallory LOVED camping. She’s such an outdoors-y gal that she had the time of her life walking around, picking up stick and leaves and getting REALLY dirty. The weather was nice (a little cool… for me…. But then when isn’t it a little cool for me?) The grand’s all had a blast playing with Mallory and she loved the attention. She got loads of pumps/scrapes and bruises, but she didn’t really seem to care. There was always soothing to distract her from her little tumbles.
The birthday celebrations went well. Mallory tore into her cake like a pro.
Though I think we are all still trying to recover from all the sugar and lack of sleep!!!!
Thanks to everyone who were able to make it. Can’t wait to do it again!!!!!

Food Snob

Somehow keeping the blog updated has slipped to really low on my priority list… sorry! I have loads to catch you all up on, Mallory’s family b-day gathering, the camping trip for Mallory’s 1st and Matthews 30th b-day, both of their actual b-day days (Matthew’s is tomorrow) and a update on the little B.B. Frustratingly my new (ish) camera (yeah the one I got 7 months ago and have already sent back of 1 repair), is on it’s way BACK to the shop! I’m so pissed about it! I spent a nice little chunk of change on it, so that I would like the pictures… and what do I get? A camera that is a lemon! Grrrrrrr. So I guess what I’m trying to get at is, even though I have been using my spare camera for the past little bit, I don’t know where the adapter is for it, so I don’t know when I can get picture from all these evens onto my computer… and we all know a story without pictures it just not as good. In all my spare time I’ll look for the plug… but don’t hold you breathe.
Therefore let me tell you about the Food Snob that Matthew and I are raising. Babies aren’t supposed to have nuts/peanut butter until they are about a year, an event I was really looking forward to. I love peanut butter! I mean I LOVE it! On just about anything. So I was really excited to share this love with Mallory. So for lunch the other day I made each of us a PB and J. I pulled out all the stops, good peanut butter, homemade peach jelly, yummy bread….The perfect quantity of each ingredient.
She hated it! Really! The little lady who will eat just about anything, hated her PB and J! That night Aaron came over for diner and brought some fresh goat cheese for appetizers. Our little food snob hated PB and J’s but couldn’t get enough of goat cheese! All I could do was shake my head. Silly baby.

Week 6

During my first pregnancy, I was SURE that I was going to have a boy…. Boy was I wrong! So I got to thinking, all through that pregnancy I was comparing the size of the baby to fruits/veggies…. But what self respecting boy wants to be compared to a plumb, a raspberry, or worse a rhubarb stalk! So of course the baby turned out to be a girl! Sweet Mallory Rose. It only makes sense. This time, in order to potentially ‘help’ the gender determination I thought I would go with ‘Garage-type things’ to compare the baby to. Not that we both wouldn’t be thrilled to have another girl, we are having such a blast with Mallory that we would love it, but who doesn’t dream of having a girl and a boy? Once again we are not going to find out the gender until delivery, so we’ll all just have to speculate for the next 34 weeks.
Last week the little B.B. was roughly 0.13 inches long… about the size of a sliver of wood that you would find on your garage floor. :)


This week our little B.B. is 0.25 inches long… exactly the same size as a #6 zinc plated Internal Tooth Lock Washer (of course). In reality it looks more like a tadpole then a human, but has already started to develop the cups that will house its eyeballs, its heart is beating despite the fact that it is only about the size of a poppy!


Mallory on the other hand is about to turn 1!!!!!! Just 5 more days then my little baby girl has her first birthday!!!!! It’s hard to believe. She is now walking EVERYWHERE. There is no reason for her to crawl. Chase is one of her favorite games right now, and if you act like you are going to chase her, she gets sooooo ridiculously excited, she’ll try to run but her feet just don’t more that quickly yet, and she’ll end up falling. It cracks me up. It actually looks really similar to when a cartoons gears up for a fast run/chase by their legs going a million miles a minute while there body sands still….That’s what our little girl looks like… until she falls.

I'm WHAT?

So the despite the fact that Matthew and I were hoping for/ wanting another baby and we are very much aware of the fact that unprotected S-E-X (I thought I would spell in incase kids are in the room) leads to babies… I was shocked when I turned up pregnant! ‘How?’ you are asking… I don’t know. I mean it’s like I didn’t think that it would really happen…. Again… or SO quickly! So when I had the slightest inkling that I just might be knocked up, I peed on a stick. The FAINTEST of 2 lines showed up. Wow, I thought, I guess I’m pregnant…. Then I went into denial and just had to pee on another one the next day (the line was a little darker). Still I wasn’t convinced, (for what reason I don’t know). So after waiting 3 LOOOOOOOOOOONG days I couldn’t stand it any more and peed on yet another one. Yep, both lines were still there... and darker. Matthew got all gooey and excited, while the realization that I am going to have 2 babies about 19 months apart hit me like a ton of brinks! 2 sets of diapers! 2 kids that can’t talk! 2 kids that can’t dress themselves or even feed themselves. What was I thinking?! I just started a new job! Am I crazy? Why would I choose to put myself through this? After about a half day of internal panicking I started getting more and more excited. I can do this! Mallory is such a big girl already. Matthews such a great dad! Both sets of parents are here! This is going to be just fine. Then I started thinking that maybe, just maybe I somehow read all 3 tests wrong and I wanted to make sure that I truly was pregnant (especially before we told the grands)… so you guessed it, I peed on yet again one more test! Yup 4 total (I only needed 3 the first time around). All saying the same thing. I am growing a baby inside me… again…. And I couldn’t be happier about it!!! :)

Telling The Fam

Growing up, I remember mom would tell dad that she’s having another baby with a clever t-shirt…. So I thought that we could to the same thing, only we wanted to incorporate Mallory into the ‘telling’ process. So I made this little onsie, and we carted Mallory to each of the grans houses (we told Robert over in Colfax…. Along with the majority of the Klein family). It was fun to see how each of the grands reacted/how quickly the ‘got’ it. Robert caught on right away, my dad had to slowly read the shirt, Joyce took a few moments because she was looking at how cute the outfit was and I had sort of told mom already. They are all so excited about our little Bahamas Baby (B.B.). I think that I am about 5 weeks along (so WAAAAAAAAAY early), which would mean that I would be due early March (I have my ultrasound/dr. appointment in a few weeks).

Mallory’s Big Announcement!!!!

Work

I am just finishing up my 3rd full week of work at my new job! Time has that crazy effect of making time fly by, yet at the same time, making it feel like I’ve been working there a long time already. Any way… It’s going…well. The first week was tough. Not like case-load tough, but emotionally tough. I was more or less shadowing the owner, getting a feel for how his hospital runs/their protocols/the clients/patients.… and I have to be honest, shadowing sucks! I am such a hands on person that not getting to do things myself was torturous.
The second week I was there mostly by myself, and in 4 days I had 2 emergency Pyometra surgeries to perform (that’s when the uterus is infected and FULL of pus or necrotic and literally shredding into dead-smelling pieces). Mmmmmmm. Both those surgeries went great! I love to cut! And it was nice to have 2 HUGE surgeries to ‘show off’ some of my skills. The owner was impressed and said that he was shocked that I had 2 pyo’s, since he hasn’t seen one in more then 5 years! (I just kept waiting for the third, since things always seem to come in 3’s).
This week was pretty mellow in comparison to last week. Just steadily busy. I have had a slew of new clients come in, so that’s really nice.
I don’t feel like I’m at home when I walk in the door… as I did at the last hospital. I feel like I’m there as an employee, like I’m there to work on animals (which is still fun) and to earn a pay check. I’m sure most of you are thinking, ‘Uh, that’s what a J.O.B. is,’ but not for me. It had always been someplace that I couldn’t wait to go to and wasn’t ever in a huge hurry to leave. Oh well, so things are a little different now. That’s ok. I’m still just getting the hang of it, right?

All Grown Up

A few weeks ago we got together with Dave, Rebecca and Cody. I love, love, love this picture because Matthew and Dave have been best buddies for just about ever and when they get together they still act and talk kind of like they are in junior high school, but yet here they are as Daddies!!!! It’s kind of a mind trip. For all your Healdsburg Higher, all you have to do is think back to our senior year and giggle when you think of the things they did (or ‘didn’t’ do).
But somehow these two hoodlums turned into wonderful husbands and loving, attentive, gentle fathers. I am so proud of them both. Becca, we did well!
Speaking of Fathers…. Matthew just got to celebrate his very first Fathers Day! We all had a wonderful time! Matthew got to pick how we spent the day, and all he wanted to do was be with Mallory and me and see the dad’s. So in the morning we opened a few gifts… Mallory had to break him in right and got her Daddy the obligatory ‘ties for fathers day gift.’ We then went and hung out with my dad at the folk’s house, eating, playing horse shoes and swinging in the (new) hammock. That afternoon/evening Robert came over to out house to play. Mallory had a great time showing off in her ‘Crab Pool’ (I’ll post pictures about that soon), while we all enjoyed some frozen beverages and BBQ.
We all had such a great time. It made me realize what a blessed life I lead, having such a wonderful husband to be the father of my baby girl AND to live within minutes of both my Daddy and my Pops! I love you all.

Sorry

Sorry that I have been sooooo behind on posting... I don't know when I got so busy. It may have something to do with a new job, a toddler who is into, on top of and under EVERYTHING (all at the same time), a husband who I feel should get some of my time, animals that are seeming neglected, and a house that seems to constantly need cleaning/repairing. Besides that I have LOADS of free time.
I promise I'll get around to blogging... soon....ish.