I could have swore I updated this but I guess I didn’t…

So I went to the midwife on Friday, she thinks she’s head down because the mass of baby at the top of my stomach is too big in her opinion to be her head. She listened for the heartbeat to make sure and found it right away down low, so that goes along with her being head down, however then she listened for it up high and found it there as well. It was fainter up high but there nonetheless. She scheduled an ultrasound for July 6th to confirm and get an estimate on the baby’s size; I’ll also have my GBS test and 37 week appointment immediately following. So I’ll know something for sure in a week. Yay! I’m tired of thinking about it. My gut says she’s moved but I’m not convinced she’s head down. I’m a bit worried she might be tranverse or footling breech now; I’m still not feeling very many kicks up high or on the side, they’re almost exclusively down low along with her hands. I really have no idea though. Footling or transverse isn’t good though, so keep thinking head down thoughts…

1. On an actual Tuesday!!

2. Happy Birthday to Candi!

3. 35 weeks tomorrow, woo hoo!

4. I also have a midwife appointment Friday so we’ll see if this girl is still breech. I’m pretty sure she is. Still a hard spot in my upper abdomen and still most movement down low.

5. I chopped my hair off. It was just too darn hot. I have no idea how many inches she cut off but it was a lot. I’m guessing 6 or so. It’s just below my shoulder with heavy layers from my cheekbones down.

6. I’d post a picture but the double chin is omnipresent now and I think I’ll just spare you guys.

7. I’m meeting John and Dash at Chuck E Cheese for lunch. Say what you will but that place is overly air-conditioned and Dash loves it. It’s a pregnant momma’s dream.

8. Some dork at work told me “you’re getting quite a belly on you”. Um. Thanks. Babies do that to you.

9. John’s baseball team is doing really well. I think they’ve only lost one game.

10. Did I post that we got 5% of our salary back? Yay. I can handle being at 90% a lot better than 85%.

Saturday, June 13, we all got up and went to The Little Gym like any other day. I wanted to stop off at Babies R Us and get Kate’s coming home outfit (which I didn’t find) and go to Bed Bath and Beyond and get John’s Father’s Day present (an electric skillet, which he LOVES). We also stopped off an ate at Ketchup, I saw a commercial for it earlier in the week and needed some parmesan french fries…

John wanted to get dessert at Ruby Tuesdays on the way home and see if they had any of the newly legalized, higher alcohol content beers on tap. You can pretty much get me to go anywhere with the promise of dessert. Especially if it’s Oreo Tallcake.

So we walk in and the hostess asks me when I’m due, which I think is kind of odd, most folks have been pretty mum about me being pregnant if they don’t know me. I tell her and she starts leading us back into this back room where someone’s obviously having a party. I’m thinking, I’ve got to tell this woman I don’t want to sit near a party with a 2 year old in tow. It’s just not a good idea. Then I realize she thinks I’M the pregnant girl that goes to this party!! Ahhh!! So I say, “Oh no, I’m not with them!” and try not to make eye contact. You can probably guess who it was. I hope Roz and Rachel are proud of themselves for pulling off such a surprise.

Honestly, it’s a good thing my mom was sitting closest to the door or I would have made a bigger dork of myself.

So, you got me girls, and I think you all rock. Thank you so much for celebrating our sweet impending arrival. It’s always so good to see you all in one place and to laugh our butts off and eat good food.

Here’s the crew before I showed up… do they look giddy with anticipation? I think so…

The cake…

Roz and Liz giving John a hard time about not thinking he could get me there (I’m guessing… somebody’s saying something funny, regardless…)

Me and the Dashman who was saintlike during his sister’s first party…

He sat out in the bar with John and my Dad and told my Dad how he had a vagina. Good times.

And finally, the gifts. You girls went completely overboard.

I love you all very much and again, thank you so much!!

So after Kate’s lovely shower (which is waiting on pictures so it gets the post it deserves) I decided to get Kate’s room for real ready for her so I could take some pictures of things from the shower in a background that wasn’t organized chaos. I finally took some pictures after I got everything moved around (which was a freaking lot of stuff!) The furniture in these pictures is my furniture from when I was a little girl.

I made the picture above the crib (as many of you know, I’m sure) and the bedding is Amy Coe’s Pink Pop bedding. I scored it at TJMaxx for 19.99 for the whole set! I found it on ebay for 129.99 so I was really proud of myself. It’s discontinued so I guess that’s why it was so cheap. I found the peonies at Carlton cards around Mother’s day for 4 bucks a piece. I’m still looking for a mirror or something for above the dresser and a mobile of some sort. And curtains. The mobile that matches the bedding isn’t very cute. So I guess that’s my next mission…

Some of you may have noticed I have another blog listed under my blogger ID… most of you probably didn’t.

I started that blog to keep up with what was going on with Kate when I first found out I was pregnant but before I told anyone so I made it private so no one would find out my secret before I told them. Then I was playing around with the idea of twittering Kate’s birth (insert eye roll here from all of you, I don’t care…) and I didn’t want to make it public until she was here so I wouldn’t have some weirdo following my tweets and telling me I was nuts for trying a natural child birth or anything.

Anyway, forgive it’s random mushy posts and the posts that are written directly to Kate, I’m not a big fan of letters written to people on public blogs, it makes me feel like I’m reading over their shoulder, but I couldn’t help it. I felt like I was talking to her a lot of time, or at least talking to myself. I think there are only 10 posts over there, too, so you won’t have to look at much.

I’ve added most of you to the blogroll and I DON’T MIND AT ALL adding anyone else. Yeah, you have to admit that you read my blog and briefly come out of lurkdom but I swear you can go right back to it. I seriously don’t care. I just don’t want a lot of spammers getting access to that tweet, really. If you’re a real live person, I don’t mind at all if you have access to that blog. Just post a comment here and I’ll get a notice with your email address and I’ll add you. Even if you’re a friend of a friend who liked a picture I posted or something. I don’t care.

So here’s the link…

Blog

Be careful that you don’t just go to thedixons.blogspot… that’s a different set of Dixons.

I had my chriopractor appointment today. Ouch! Ready for the run-down of what’s wrong with me?? I had scoliosis when I was a kid that I never got checked out. One of those school exams, you know. Sure enough, I still have a slight curvature to my spine. It’s pulling on my pelvis weird so that one side is tilting to the back. That in turn is pulling on the round ligament on my right side causing my uterus to twist a bit and constrict poor Kate.

The theory is if you remove all obstructions in your body the baby will more than likely turn. I think the Webster technique (working on your tailbone and your round ligaments) has an 82% success rate or something. A lot of people argue that the 82% are those that the baby would have flipped anyway, but that’s all up in the air. I mean, who knows. And really, if I can get her to flip now rather than later, I’ll take now. Having a head between the outside of your stomach and your lungs isn’t any kind of fun. And it’s not like that sucker is going to get smaller over the next few weeks…

So she adjusted my lower back and put a lot of pressure on those round ligaments to get them to release. I’m supposed to work on it on my own and go back tomorrow and Friday. Hopefully it’ll help. If it all fails, at least I can say I tried everything.

Except having John talk to my girlie parts. I’m not trying that. I don’t care if it’s supposed to work or not. Some things are off limits.

We had our state of the company meeting today, we’re getting 5% of our salary back in July. So yay. I guess. So here’s the thing. When I go on leave, I get 60% of whatever is on the books. Technically the 90% salary should be on the books July 1st. I have no idea if it actually will be. I’m going to be mad if I miss out on it by a few days though.

Also, we had a restaurant downstairs from us that went out of business. A new one is going in. Guess what it is? Are you ready? The Daily Brew, a local coffee shop that has freaking GELATO. How happy am I???

1. This made me cry (in a good way)

http://www.dfwbirthphotographer.com/home/

2. And this made me laugh

http://awkwardfamilyphotos.com/

3. I hate Mozilla Firefox. Developers love it because it has some nifty debugging add ons you can stick in there and debug webpages which helps us since our stuff is web based. I don’t care though, it’s slow and I hate it.

4. Dash, God love him, was laying in his bed with me the other night before story/bed time and was pushing around on my belly with his feet so I reminded him that his baby sister was in there and to be careful. He lifted up his shirt and said “Baby sister in Dashy’s belly!” Sigh. That kid.

5. I’m so excited for Candi, who found out she’s welcoming a baby GIRL in a few months.

6. I can’t believe it’s only Tuesday.

7. We have our state of the company meeting tomorrow. Keep your fingers crossed. I have a feeling it’s going to be a “we’re doing great! the company is doing great! Salaries? what salaries?” kind of meeting.

8. I’m pretty sure they’re weeks away from losing several good developers. The economy around here is picking up and these guys are highly marketable.

9. I’m going to stop at 9 instead of forcing out a 10.

Ha. How do you like that? It’s 4:19AM, I think 2 is all I can muster…

1. I’m sicker than crap right now. Blah. Bad cold. Congestion. It’s loosening up now so I’m coughing like crazy. Dash and I both have it but thankfully Dash is handling it better than me. John is on the verge of it. Hopefully zycam will make it not so bad for him.

2. I had my MW appointment, Kate is still breech. She gave me some exercises to do; swim a lot, get on all fours and wiggle my hips and I have another checkup June 26 at 35.5 weeks. If she hasn’t turned, they’ll do an ultrasound to make sure she’s really breech and if she is they’ll schedule an external version for exactly 38 weeks. The external version usually works if it’s possible for them to turn and you have room, but things can go wrong (like she may not tolerate it well) so they do it that late so I can have an emergency c-section if necessary. Fun. And if it doesn’t work, then I have a huge decision to make. Switch doctors at 38 weeks so I can be close to home with a c-section or opt for a c-section in Nashville and hope maybe she turns before then. Blah. So keep your fingers crossed that she turns. I can also lay on an inclined ironing board with my feet above my head so gravity causes her to cram up under my rib cage so she has room to turn. Sounds awesome with a chest cold, right?

I'm back from my ultrasound… Sigh. So Miss Kate is definitely a Miss. She's also frank breech. Boo. It's still early in the game but I'd feel better if she was head down by now. She had her legs, hands AND cord in front of her face so we literally got ONE good picture of her face and it wasn't great. She had to cut away the cord in the pic but she couldn't get it all so you can still see some weird spots on her nose. Oh well. She's measuring 3 weeks ahead and I'm pretty sure Dash was 6 weeks at this point.

Her hand…

And her face…

We went to the zoo afterwards and had a good time. I'm pooped though.

1. I’m 30 weeks today! Woo hoo! 75% there.

2. I also have 70 days left. I’m not sure which sounds better. 70 days or 10 weeks. Hmmmm…

3. The scale and I aren’t speaking.

4. I have birthday pictures, I promise.

5. I’ve done very little in preparation for Dash’s party this weekend. The cake is ordered and the decorations are bought, the food is a different story…

6. Dash is learning parts of Old McDonald. He says “E-I-O” and “moo moo here” and I fill in the rest.

7. Dash thinks it’s cool to drink water and then let it dribble out of his mouth while giggling. Any ideas for breaking that habit?? Anyone??

8. I had to go to Nashville for work yesterday and I’m pooped.

9. If you haven’t gotten an invite in the mail and you live in the Huntsville/Decatur vacinity, leave me a comment! I addressed them as I got addresses and John sent them off before I had a chance to make a list and cross anyone off. If I missed you, it wasn’t intentional!!

10. The weather here has been BEAUTIFUL this week. I hope it’s like this on Saturday. Oh and there’s a crapload of stuff going on this weekend if you’re coming from out of town and want something else to do. Point Mallard opens and has their balloon festival this weekend, the Daikan festival is Saturday night, and I think that’s it.