March Updates

  Pregnancy - 

I had my gestational diabetes screening (I passed - I did the lemon lime drink.... I love sugar but BLECH).  I also got the TDAP vaccine - sore arm!  Thinks looked good, my belly was measuring 28.5 when I was 27.5 weeks.  If I remember right, the belly should measure the same as the gestation week, so that was good! Baby boy's heart rate looked great.  It was such a quick appointment with Dr. E, feels good to be boring again :)

28 week bumpdate

30 week bumpdate

We made it to the third trimester! I used to only allow myself a piece of cheesecake after every marathon.  Since pregnancy, I modified that criteria and get a piece after each trimester and will get another after delivery.  We enjoyed some cheesecake factory! I went with my go-to red velvet - soooo delicious (Joel got the reese's chocolate cake cheesecake, this is reminder to him that he thought it was too rich and couldn't finish it).

Celebratory Cheesecake!

My 30 week appointment, the belly was measuring 31 cm.  I lost part of my plug, so we are monitoring that to make sure I don't need to go in to get steroids for Sprinkles' lungs in case he does make a super early appearnace.  That week, I also ended up getting food poisoning. ROUGH.  It hit on a Saturday night and I was finally able to keep food and water down for dinner Sunday.  The following Monday, I ended up going down just to be monitored to have a non stress test.  Baby boy looked perfect and of course was SUPER active right when they got the monitor.  You can definitely see him moving from the outside now. It was nice piece of mind after a stressful weekend - more on that a little later.

The insomnia is real.  Vivid dreams, AWFUL reflux, getting up to pee multiple times at night.... 

Hailey - 

Hailey's pediatrician she has been seeing since she was born retired so we needed to find a new pediatrician.  I forgot that one of my old coworkers from Medtronic's wife was a pediatrician, so I reached out and asked for any recommendations.  He mentioned a doctor that used to live by him that had just switched to the Blaine clinic.  We tried her out for Hailey's 18 month appointment and liked her a lot! She seemed great with Hailey and seemed very knowledgeable.  Her 18 month appointment went well - she is 33.9 inches long (95.74 percentile) and 24.47 pounds (72.96 percentile).  

A few days after her appointment, we had a trip to the ER.  It was a Friday morning before 6am and she started crying, but there was this weird noise while she was crying.  Joel and I thought she must be somehow bumping the crib and it was making a weird squeaking noise.  I went in to try to sneak her her baby doll, but realized the noise was coming to her and she was struggling to breathe.  We hopped in the car and went to the ER.  Turns out she had croup - it was sort of funny that the doctor could verbatim tell us how the symptoms showed up and sounded, he also said "you're a little late, usually I expect parents of kids with croup to be in around midnight to 2am".  It was also interesting because he mentioned that they have seen barely any kids in the ER this winter season - kids just aren't getting sick (not going to daycare/school, daycare cleaning procedures, daycare temp checks/stay at home procedures) or getting really hurt (jumping off playgrounds, etc). 

Hailey started swimming lessons this month.  It is so stinking cute.  She's in the backfloat baby 1 class down the street at the Foss Swimming School, expensive, but it's nice to have only 4 babies in her class.  They take our temperature when we come in and and all adults have to wear masks, even in the pool.  Joel has been doing the class with her (you do NOT want to see me in a swimsuit right now).  They do let me sit and watch since the numbers are down in MN right now.  She really loves baby dolls - the instructor uses a baby doll to demonstrate the different activities they will do in the pool and Hailey realllllyyyyy wants that baby doll.

We have been trying to plop Hailey on the potty before she takes a bath when she's already nakey.  She has accidentally peed in the potty twice this month, and she is terrified when it happens! We'll keep trying and cheering her on when it happens but she'll most likely be in diapers for a while still.

She got to hang out with uncle Tucker for a little bit this month!  He is fully vaccinated now and less than 30 days from recovering from COVID.  It's so nice to see family :)

Some of our favorite things this month:

• She blows us kisses and loudly goes "mmmm-WAH" when she does it
• We went to Costco and brought her with, she took off down one of the aisles and stopped at the huge jars of olives, pointed at them, turned to us and said "DIS!!" - she loves her olives
• We have been going to the park quite a bit with the nice weather, she loves the slides and swinging but is definitely scared of strangers
• We stopped at Cup and Cone this month and Hailey really enjoyed the orange ice cream
• She knows what going to bed means now, she will wave good night to me and blow me a kiss as walk down the hall with Joel to be put to bed - she loves having her baby doll in the crib with her

  Life - 

The Peloton has arrived!! I just love it! (This is written on March 4th after I have taken one class on the actual bike... as a reminder when I don't want to work out or it's sitting idle, RIDE THE DARN BIKE! THAT COST A LOT OF MONEY!!) 

I never get things delivered ahead of schedule, but happened to get a call that they could deliver at 8:30 am instead of between 4-6pm (this is in addition to already getting bumped up 2 weeks).  This would normally be amazing, but I had to present at a SME review that I was super stressed about. Joel did a great job getting things set up with the bike and I was able to destress and get a ride in after the review.

Dakota had a vet appointment with a new vet.  He, of course, freaked out at the guy when he walked in.  The vet put some squirty cheese on a stick though and that made it manageable.  We decided to start him on Prozac to try to help with his extra anxiety, which will probably help a lot too when baby #2 gets here.  He seems to be doing okay on it, we don't notice a huge difference but it's only be a few weeks.  He also got a haircut!  He looks so skinny when this happens.  I think he got a little cold without that thick fur keeping him warm.

Minnesota opened up their COVID vaccine eligibility and I happened to find an event that allowed me to get in the next day.  I got my first shot! I got the Pfizer vaccine.  I didn't have too much for side effect: sore arm, mild sore throat (which may also be from allergies? or Hailey?), and suuuper tired (which could also be pregnancy, overdoing it, Hailey?).  The weird thing was that they decided that day was the day they weren't going to schedule the second appointment right there with the first appointment.  It was also confusing because the different pharmacists had conflicting information - some said they were going to call to schedule the second appointment, one said they weren't and I would have to find it myself... I did finally get scheduled 6 days before I was due, so that was a huge stress of my shoulder.  The unfortunate thing is we have an animal study the next day, which requires being in my feet wearing the heavy leads prepping devices for the physician for 6-8 hours.  We shall see if the side effects get me.

I took a full week off of work to try to get the nursery ready and move our upstairs closet room to downstairs.  It was the week after getting the first vaccine and Hailey having croup, so I think with my cranky immune system and Hailey's germs, I got my bum kicked.  I got the closet room moved downstairs and Joel helped moved his office stuff down there as well but I did not get half the items I wanted to get done that week finished.  We are buying a Snoo from a friend for Sprinkles and I keep having to postpone picking that up due to being sick and not wanting to pass it on to them and their kids, but I'm really excited about that!  We have a bunch of clothes that I bought off Facebook Marketplace that I still need to organize as well, but I keep being lazy.... I also still want to do some freezer meal prep, but again, I'm lazy.  It's so much harder to get that stuff done having a toddler running around this time. (The after and before picture are shown below of the closet system I got moved downstairs).

We also got our air ducts cleaned.  I had never done that before, but it felt nice to get that done. 

They have now also opened up the vaccine eligibility to all Minnesotans.  Trying to find one for Joel is so hard.  Joel's dad got randomly selected through Minnesota and Leah gets her vaccine through a work event.  My parents are both fully vaccinated now and Tucker and Cassie are as well.  It's such a relief to see the amount of people getting vaccinated going up.  There has also been studies showing that the antibodies to pass on to the baby, so thankful I can help protect Sprinkles.

Joel's parent's current house went on the market this month.  I don't miss that stress trying to sell a house and keeping it prepped for showings.  Their new house has all of the walls framed in and is looking so good!  It should be ready at the end of June. Fingers crossed they sell their current house soon!

After having the peloton bike for almost a month, I didn't realize how much I would love it and be motivated by the classes.  I made the HUGE purchase to buy the expensive Tread+.  I am so excited about it but I do feel a little guilty about spending so much money on it.  I am going to sell our old treadmill to a friend from my Moms on the Run group, so that will be nice to be out of the house to make room for the new one.  It gets here on my birthday!  I won't be able to run on it for a while, but I can definitely do the walking classes :)

March workout stats (not including today, March 31):

• 22 walks - 24.2 miles
• 20 bike rides - 147.9 miles
• 7 strength workouts - 1 hr 14 minutes total
• 3 yoga sessions - 1 hr 12 minutes total

We (I) had a huge scare of the weekend.  I was hanging out with Hailey downstairs while Joel was playing pickleball.  For some reason, I called Dakota to come down and lay by us while we were sitting on the love seat.  All of a sudden I heard a lot of thumping around upstairs.  Tesla was downstairs with us and it seemed unlikely that Rotor was making that much noise.  I thought maybe Joel was home and I hadn't heard the garage door open so I went and checked the door to the garage.  As I was opening that door, our sliding glass door for our deck opened and a teenager walked into our kitchen.  I ran upstairs, heart racing, and yelled WHAT ARE YOU DOING (or something like that, that's what I remember but I was scared).  He turned around and went right back out our the door and stopped at the steps on our deck. I followed him out and saw another person on the outside of our fence.  I was in pure panic mode but it runs out the person on the other side of his deck was his dad.  He was yelling at me telling me his son was autisic and didn't know what he was doing.  His son was leaning up against our house at that point and his dad asked if he could come into our yard to get him.  It turns out, the kid had gotten out one of the doors of the house, climbed over their privacy fence and took off running down the street.  The dad didn't even realize it right away until a neighbor across the street called.  While it was terrifying for me since I didn't know what was going on at the time, it must have been equally terrifying for the dad.  We live on a semi-busy street - to know your son is running down the street and then watching him break into a strangers house... I ended up walking over the next day (once I had recovered from food poisoning) and bringing them cupcakes to introduce myself and let them know things were okay on our end. 

Joel has been super busy at work, he partially took on a some new responsibilities this month.  He also found out his boss was leaving the company, so that transition will be interesting.  The other team lead is due not too long after us, so making sure their work is covered during paternity leave will be stressful.  Joel has been trying to play pickleball at least once a weekend and keeps crushing workouts and being super consistent with that (no surprise there!).  He starts a new part of his program he is doing (I think it's Mind Pump?) and will require a sandbag, so he bought one of those this month and got it filled up to 100 pounds and ready to go.  He did a nice clean out of the garage to get the dust and dirt build up out of there and scrubbed out.  

Lots going on next month and things to look forward to!

• My birthday/3 other family birthdays to celebrate
• Easter (I want to see if Hailey will enjoy some of those plastic Easter eggs and hunting for them)
• Peloton comes
• Last full month (hopefully!) being a family of 3
• Big milestone for work project - design freeze review
• Going away outside picnic thing for a Ragnar friend
• Second vaccine!
• Most swim lessons for Hailey
• Nicer weather