The Rest of 2011

So, since I totally suck at keeping this blog updated, I will fill you in on the other events that happened after Colin was born.

The first Sunday in June, Joel blessed Colin.

The end of June, I had a gall bladder attack and had to get it removed.

We were sealed as a family for time and all eternity at the beginning of September.

I got a job at The Old Spaghetti Factory in the middle of September.

And that's pretty much it.

Colin Raleigh Pace

Colin was born April 29, 2011 at 2:39 pm. He was 7 pounds 4 ounces and 20 inches long. He is growing so well. He is sitting up really well and is getting close to crawling. But he would rather walk instead of crawl. So far, sweet potatoes are his most favorite food. He doesn't really have a favorite toy yet. He likes to play with anything that mom or dad has in their hands at the time. He is very much a texture baby. He likes soft things on his face and he doesn't like eating weird textured food. Over all he is a generally happy baby. He doesn't get mad often, unless he is tired, hungry, or hurting. He has brought so much joy to our little family. And everyone he meets just adores him.

Declawed

One of the conditions of living in my mom's basement is that Gogo had to be declawed so he didn't claw up the carpet. So on Monday I took Gogo to Animal Crackers Vet and got his front claws out. He was so groggy when I brought him home. All he wanted was to be held and sleep. When he walked around he stumbled around like he was drunk. It was sad and funny to watch at the same time. He had bandages on his paws and when he started waking up he wanted to get them off. During the night he managed to get one of them off by putting his paw in between a tote and the bottom of a shelf and pulling. He is a pretty smart kitty. The other one he got off the next day by flicking his paw a bunch. He is starting to feel and act more like himself now. I think he is sad that his claws are gone, but he will just have to deal.

Moving

So a couple of weeks ago my mom offered to let me and Joel live in the apartment that they put in their basement. Joel and I took her up on the offer because it will allow more space for us, Gogo and Colin when he gets here. This last week has been very busy with packing, moving, and putting things where they need to go. Joel has been amazing with all his hard work. He has had to do more than he normally would have because I can't do as much as I want because I am pregnant and have high blood pressure. Joel has been making sure I don't do too much because he wants Colin and I to stay as healthy as we can. So far we are pretty well situated. We just need to get the rest of our stuff from the storage unit. I am very excited to have more space than the little room we were in at Joel's parents' house. Gogo is loving it too.

Bi-Weekly NST

So after my hospital visit my doctor decided to have me go into a doctors' office in the hospital for bi-weekly NST's and an AFI. An NST is a Non-Stress Test, and an AFI is an amniotic fluid check. My doctor just wants to monitor my blood pressure really closely to make sure it doesn't go up too high. So twice a week I go in and they do an ultrasound to check the amniotic fluid levels and then they hook me up to two different monitors. The first one measures Colin's heartbeat and the other one sits at the top of my uterus and measures to see if I have a contraction. I am also hooked up to a blood pressure cuff that goes off about every ten minuets. I usually am there for about half an hour. What they are wanting to see is my blood pressure going down from me resting and they want to three good spikes in Colin's heart rate. The spikes are good because it tells them that he is moving well and getting the things he needs from the placenta. I really like the nurses that are there. They are super nice. They will even print me out pictures of Colin when they are doing the ultrasound.

What A Week

Last Wednesday was the first of 4 days that Joel and I watched Britta's and Nun's kids. It was quite the adventure. Especially since I don't have the same amount energy with being pregnant. Joel was so good with the kids. He played with them and helped me get them ready and such. We didn't have to put any of the kids in time-out the whole time we were with them. That was a very nice thing. On Thursday I had a doctor's appointment so I got to take Landon and Tyler with me to the doctor's. They were really well behaved even though we had to wait for a while. Thursday night, Abby had a birthday party to go to. She had an awesome time. On Saturday Charlene was watching Amanda's and Aaron's kids and we decided to take all the kids to McDonalds. They had so much fun playing on the play place. When we got the kids home, they all just crashed. They got worn out playing. All in all we had a good time, but it is hard to go from having no kids to having to take care of three. We were very worn out by the time we got home late Saturday night, and we were very happy to be able to sleep in our own bed.

Hospital Visit

So on Thursday I had a doctor appointment. Everything was going fine until the nurse took my blood pressure. She took it right after I peed in the cup and it was high, so she had me just sit there for a few minuets hoping it would go down after getting on the bed. When she took it again, it was still high. It was 141/84. This number caused concern with my doctor and she had me go to the hospital after my appointment. She checked Colin's heart rate like normal and he was right where he needed to be, which was a relief. At first I was really scared that my blood pressure was so high. I was thinking off all kinds of worse case scenarios. The one I thought of most was that I would be delivering Colin that day. Having Joel with me the whole time was a great comfort. I don't know how well I would have handled things on my own. On the drive to St. Mark's I had started to calm down, which was really helpful with being able to talk to the nurses. When I got to the hospital I had to talk to the billing and coding lady to be put into their system. I then went to get an ultrasound to check the amniotic fluid levels, which were all good. They then took me to the triage room and had me take a stress test which consisted of them hooking me up to the fetal monitor and a blood pressure cuff and having the thing take my blood pressure every 15 minuets. After about 2 hours they sent me home with a 24 hour urine collection jug and told me that every time I went pee I was to put it in this jug and bring it back the next day so they could see if there was protein in my pee. (Having to do that was so weird and a very annoying task.) So on Friday I went back and they did another stress test and they took some blood to do some other labs. All of my tests came back just fine. I just have gestational hypertension. So far the doctor's orders are that I just need to take it easy and not do too much. The OB that was at the hospital said that I might be delivering 4 to 5 weeks early, but we will see how things go. It is going to be hard to just sit. I am more of a doer than a sitter. But I know that my wanting to have Colin be healthy is more of priority than curing my own boredom. While we were at the hospital Joel took the liberty of taking some pictures, mostly out of sheer boredom. And the picture of the drinks is included because on Friday the ice chips were all that I could have. I didn't complain too much because they were abnormally tasty.

Full Recovery

Gogo was a very good kitty at the vet. When he got home he was still very groggy from the antithetic, so he stayed in the pet taxi for a while before he realized he was home. When he tried to walk around, he looked like he was drunk because his back end was numb still. It was funny and sad to see him stumble around. When I put him on the bed all he wanted was to cuddle so I let him make himself comfortable and I let him sleep on me for a while. It was too cute because he let his head drop every few minuets and his nose ended up being pushed into my leg. He was just so tired. Gogo has now made a full recovery and is just as active as ever. I just hope being neutered makes it so he won't pee on things anymore.

Gogo's Surgery

This morning Joel and I took Gogo to the vet to get neutered. For the past couple of days he has been acting quite melancholy. Like he knew something was going to happen. Last night I had to take away his food and water so he didn't have anything in his tummy for surgery. I felt really bad this morning when he was meowing at me for food and I couldn't give it to him. Last night we gave him a bath so he would be really clean for the vet. He was really good for his bath. he didn't try too hard to get out of the tub. But he sure was glad when he was all dry. He was really good in the pet taxi on the way to the vet, and he didn't try to get away from the vet when she had him on the table examining him. I hope everything goes well today. It is weird not having him home. I will be excited to see him again, even though he won't be gone for that long.

Seth and Chari's Wedding

My brother-in-law, Seth, got married on Friday to Chari. It was a beautifully long day. It started with pictures at the Draper Temple. It was so bitter cold with the wind that was coming right off the mountain. From there we went to the church and had the reception pictures taken and then we had the Pace family pictures taken because we weren't able to do them on Thursday before the dinner like it had been originally planned because someone wasn't able to make it apparently. Then Joel, myself, Charlene, Steve, Ranna, Sarina, Anna, Seth, and Chari went to Five Guys for lunch. Then after a couple of hours we headed back to the church for the reception. There were so many people at the reception. It was ridiculous. But it I enjoyed myself. They had the classic cake cutting, bouquet toss and garter toss. For the cake cutting, they both shoved cake in each others' faces. It was funny. Chari failed at tossing the bouquet. It didn't go very far behind her. And Seth did fine on tossing the garter. Afterwards there was a bit of dancing, and Joel and I danced for one song. (It is kind of hard to dance for very long when I am so pregnant.) Shortly after dancing, Seth and Chari got ready to leave. They knew their car had been decorated, but what they didn't know was that Seth's friend Kyle had wired the brake lights to the horn. So when Seth got in the car and pushed the brake in, the horn started to go off. Seth promptly got out of the car and demanded that Kyle fix it. Kyle did with little hesitation. It was a really good thing that Seth was a good sport about it, it wouldn't have been so funny otherwise. After they drove off, it was finally time to go home. It was really nice not having to clean up afterwards. I am excited to have Chari as part of our family now.

Busy, Busy, Busy

Yesterday was a very busy day... Ranna and I made 4 batches of potato salad and 4 batches of gluten free cheesecake. We were cooking for 4 hours. I would have been even more horrible if only one of us made everything by ourselves. We also washed and folded about 16 tablecloths. After that I cleaned the bathrooms and vacuumed the floors. Getting ready for this wedding has been super crazy, but it will be worth it. I am so excited that Seth and Chari are getting married. I think they make a cute couple.

Baby Registry

Last night Joel and I went to Babies "R" Us to register for baby things. We went through the store and registered for most of the big things. Joel started to get tired so we went home and I finished registering on-line. Today I went on-line and made a baby registry for Target. It's nice to have the registering out of the way. Now I just have to see if anyone gets me the stuff we put on the registries. If anyone reads this and wants to check out the registries just go to www.target.com or www.babiesrus.com and click on find a registry and type in my name.

Dinner Decorations

So for the past few days Ranna and I have been working on decorations for Seth and Chari's wedding dinner. The work has been tedious, but I think the decorations turned out quite nicely. And it helps that Seth and Chari like the decorations. It would suck if they didn't. The dinner is going to be the night before the wedding and Mary Beth's idea was that we would put pens and pieces of paper on each table so people could write down their advise for Seth and Chari and put it all into a book for them. I think it's an awesome idea. I have a feeling the book is going to be quite large because Seth and Chari invited a ton of people to this dinner, but we'll see how many people show up. The down side is that they forgot to put an RSVP with the dinner invite so we have no head count. This should be interesting...

Glucose Test

On Thursday I had another doctor appointment. For this visit I had to drink a glucose drink and then they took my blood to see if I have diabetes during my pregnancy. Everyone was telling me that the drink is super gross so I was expecting the worst. But the drink wasn't too bad. It just tasted like over sugared Orange Crush. I haven't gotten the results back yet, but I'm sure I am fine. They took three vials of my blood because they need to see what my blood type is and they are going to check and make sure my vitamin D levels are where they need to be. I am hoping my levels are where they need to be because I have been taking a vitamin D pill with my prenatal vitamins everyday since the doctor told me my levels were low. I just hope everything is good when I get the results back. And now that I am in the third trimester I will be seeing the doctor about every two or three weeks. It is hard to believe that I only have three months left...

St. Mark's Hospital

Last Wednesday Joel and I went and took a tour of the Womens Pavilion at St. Mark's Hospital. The tour was of the Labor and Delivery room and then the Recovery room. They have a very nice facility with excellent security. I am very pleased with everything there. Just walking around on the tour I felt very comfortable, so I know I will feel more comfortable during the time that I will be there. It was very interesting to be around so many other pregnant women on the tour. There were about 8 other couples on the tour. All I need to do now is get signed up for the birthing class...

Oh Charlene.....

So on Friday Ranna and I went to Charlene's work to help her with some filing. We were getting close to finishing things up when Charlene cut her knuckle on either the file cabinet or the on the metal clasp that holds the papers in the file. We aren't sure what exactly happened. Ranna and I finished things up with the filing while Charlene found gauze to wrap her hand with and filled out workers comp paper work. We then went to a clinic to have a doctor decide if she needed stitches or not. After the nurse cleaned the cut the doctor said that Charlene was lucky that it wasn't any deeper because of how close the tendons and muscles are to the surface. Charlene ended up with 5 stitches, and she has to wear a splint to keep her finger straight so she doesn't stretch the skin and pull out the stitches. the splint is the length of her finger and most of the length of her palm. So she really can't bent it at all. The plus to the splint is that it is wrapped in bright pink.

During the time we were at the clinic all three of us were in very silly moods and we were just laughing at the fact that Charlene got stitches in November and again two months later. We were just making all sorts of jokes about things. We even got the nurse and doctor laughing. It was so funny. I was really glad that Charlene looked at the positive side of things instead of being bitter about the whole situation.

He's a Kicker

Ever since the first ultrasound, Colin has been a mover. He won't hardly stay still, especially for the doctor and ultrasound tech. During the first ultrasound we watched him punch his little fist. During the second ultrasound he kept moving so the ultrasound tech was having a hard time getting the shots he needed to make sure Colin was growing the way he needs to be. And every time we go to the doctor he is calm until the doctor pulls out the microphone. After that it is like he is trying to run away and it takes the doctor a few minutes to get a good heartbeat. At our last doctor appointment, Colin actually kicked (or punched) the microphone. It was too funny. Joel and the doctor weren't sure what had happened exactly, they just heard the noise. Later I told Joel what Colin had done, and we just laughed and laughed about it.

One of Colin's favorite activities is kicking my bladder. It can be very annoying, but I love him anyways. Today, Colin's feet are up by my ribs and he has been kicking for about 2 hours. I hope he has strong leg muscles from all this kicking when he is born.

These are pictures from the first and second ultrasounds.

He has gotten so big!