7 Months and Paradise!

I am hoping that it is just because it's summertime that life is passing so quickly. Maybe when I actually have Owen, life will slow down a bit. Gut instincts are telling me no though. It is almost the end of June! In about 8 weeks we're going to have a squealing small-fry in our home. Crazy crazy crazy.
So I guess it's time for my monthly post. Maybe I should post more often. We'll see. Once I get a computer in my office, I think that will change. So here's how the belly is doing.


It's interesting because now I can tell that he is steadily getting bigger. We are going to gain about a pound a week for the next 8 weeks I'm told. Hopefully that's more him than me :)

One of my doctor's visits a couple weeks ago wasn't my normal in and out. She measured my belly about 5 different times before telling me that I was measuring too small and that I needed to get another ultrasound to make sure everything was all right. Kind of not-fun to hear, but she said I just probably wasn't going to have an 8 pound baby. Ok by me. But the ultrasound showed that he was almost 4 pounds and in the 64th percentile at 31 weeks. She even moved me up 4 days! So my due dates have gone from August 19th-14th-10th. I'm shootin' for somewhere in there. My stomach is in constant motion and I finally felt his first batch of hiccups. So fun! Seems to be doing hunky-dorey.

Next item of today's post: Bryan and I decided to take one last "we don't have any kids to keep us home yet" fling. So we saved our pennies and took a jaunt over to Hawaii to chillax over there. We were there from June 7th-12th. And what a blast we had!!! It was a great blessing and very relaxing. We rented our own car so we could go where ever we wanted to on the island of Oahu. Here's some things we got to do:

This pic was taken at the Polynesian Cultural Center. That was a ton of fun! I haven't laughed that hard in a long time. Some of the shows we saw were just down-right hilarious. And the night show was spectacular. Good times.

This is what Bryan was doing almost the whole time. If that boy could have little cameras taped to his eyeballs so he could capture everything we saw in Hawaii, he would have been one happy camper. But he is so passionate about film that it was adorable to see his serious face when he was getting "the perfect shot."


When Bryan was pulling off the road with one of his random shots, we just happened to find these massive sea turtles chillin' on the beach on the North Shore. We had gone snorkeling at Hanauma Bay, but only saw fish. These guys were awesome to swim right next to. Gotta love free things!

Fun little beach by the PCC where this dude let us hold a crab he had caught. These were the smartest little boogers I had ever seen! Impossible to get a video of.


One of the best parts of Hawaii, the views and sunsets. And we weren't even on the prettiest island! We saw sunsets from all of the 4 shores, and the West shore was by far our favorite. We got out of our hotel room in Waikiki as often as we could. Way too touristy. Gallon of milk=$8. Gag me with a spork! The Swap Meet was the place to go though. Loved their prices! Also went to Pearl Harbor and the USS Arizona Memorial. Very nice. Went on a city tour, got lost/turned around a ton with all of their stinkin' one way streets. I am so not a good navigator in new places. The Dole plantation was cool too. I have never seen so many different kinds of pineapple in my life! But they had yummy samples :)

All in all it was a wonderful vacation. Bryan and I enjoyed our time together and are now looking forward to our time with little Owen.

Oh yeah, 3d Trimester!

I have now officially hit my 6 month mark! Baby Owen's anticipated arrival is 3 months away. We'll see how fast that time can fly.

Little Owen is around 2 pounds now and just over 14 inches long. He can open and close his eyes and is finally starting to put on weight so he doesn't look like a wrinkly alien. (Got that alien part from Baby Center. They said it first, not me!) At 27 weeks, he does not like it when I rest my arms or elbows on him. He gives me a swift kick to tell me that he is already squished enough!

I have been doing wonderful, considering all the things that could be not fun for me right now. Only little things here and there that aren't that fun. Already having poor circulation makes my feet even puffier at the end of the day with the extra weight I now have. I get these nasty cramps in my lower abdomen, not Braxton Hicks, that make me feel faint. Don't really like those. Acid reflux is my constant friend sometimes. Trying not to live off of Tums. But I seem to be carrying Owen really high, so that might have something to do with it. But really, that's it! I have been extremely blessed and have never thrown up. Sometimes I don't even feel prego until I look in the mirror. Reality check.

Besides the baby, the other huge thing on my mind is that SCHOOL IS ALMOST OUT! Since I am not on here too often, it will probably already be over when I write again. I love my students to death and I ADORE being a teacher, but I am so much more excited for motherhood. Eight and half more teaching, or should I say babysitting days left. My students gave up on me weeks ago when testing was over. It's a good thing that we are almost done with my office to so I can have a place to put all of my teaching stuff when it's moved out of my classroom. I'll put pictures of my office area when it's done.

One last thing, Tootsie is a goober. Love her to death, but she is a goober. Here is a picture that captures it all. This was taken not even 24 hours AFTER she had a bath. NOT before.

Goo. Needless to say, I was not a happy camper. And I guess she didn't learn her lesson the first time because she decided to go romping in the tree dirty water again today. She didn't like her kennel too much after that. She grew from a 2 year old to a teenager way too quickly.

Our Recent Remodel

We planed on knocking down the wall from the garage to one of the small rooms in the back when we first bought the house, we just didn't expect it to happen so soon. But thanks to a little push from a future member of our family things are moving along. We decided to do the remodel because Bryan's office was in one of the bedrooms down the hall but we wanted to change that into a baby's room for Owen while still keeping the guest room. So we tore down a few walls to make some smaller rooms into a bigger and better one and that's where the project began. Here is the before and after (and a few in betweens) of our remodel that we've been working on for the past two months.

We had to rip out a beat up old bench tear off the sheet-rock and pull out the insulation.

Kara was having too much fun being destructive and managed to get a few good blows into the wall to help it come down.

Bryan and Dean cutting and ripping down the stucco wall from the inside of the small room. That was a mess!

Kara's grandpa came over to help with the pipe that ran right through the room, it wasn't long before that problem was overcome, then spur of the moment we decided to go to home depot and get a door for the side of the house. I think Home Depot is Bryan's new favorite store, not by choice though. Cutting the hole for the door.

Bryan overcame a major obstacle with putting in the electrical all by his self. With a few phone calls, research on the internet, and a couple of visits from people that have done it before he got it all done only shocked himself once and everything works... no fires yet :)

Bryan ran more than 350 feet of electrical wire through the new room, garage, shed and attic.

Digging a trench to run power to the shed in the back of our house. It now has plugs and a lightso we can see in it at night finally.

The easiest part was probably the insulation the only tools needed were scissors and staples.

This is our new door going outside from Bryan's office.

And sore for a week after putting up the sheet-rock and sanding the whole room.

The new look of the garage, rather than a work space we're going to put in a work banch with cabinets and a place for tools and other stuff like that... you know garage stuff! That's why it's indented a little and the plugs are so high on the wall.

Kara said it best when she sketched this out in the sheet-rock dust. A little over a week after sanding and it was all finished. We were both happy to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Kara is cleaning and prepping the floor for the special cement stuff we got for floating the floor out to make the two sides more even.

Dean came over to help float it out, We appreciate his help I couldn't have done it a lone it was definitely a two man job.

He also sprayed the texture on the walls well Bryan went around and pulled the bumps down.

This is Bryan after a long day of working on the room and finishing with the texture. Ready to hit the shower and then the sheets.

Tadaa! The after portion of our project. Bryan's starting to move his computer and equipment over to his new office. Next on the list paint and decorate Owen's room. Bryan's not too excited about the work but both of us are excited to have a cute baby room ready for the day we bring owen home from the hospital.

We put edging around the door and the window. We both thought that it looked really nice so we're going to do it to all the windows in our house. No big deal right?

Knocking down the wall and adding the extension put another 100 square feet onto the living space of our home. We hope that the remodel will serve us well while we are there and in the future when we decide to sell it. It was a lot of work but we learned a ton and it was worth it in the end.

Babies!

So we made it through the half way mark. I am now officially in my 5th month and week 23. Little Owen decided to make my belly all of a sudden pop out, so this is the result. It's nice to have more of a bump now so that people aren't wondering if it's fat or baby. He kicks like a black belt ninja, which will only get more intense, and is already weighing around 1 pound! (Ridiculous that he is only 1 pound of the bunch I have gained.) Bryan felt him kick on the outside for the first time about two weeks ago. That was way cool! It helps to know that you aren't crazy about feeling something moving in your stomach.
I'm not really feeling sick or anything anymore, which is way nice. A little heartburn and some headaches from heat is all. Nothing bad at all. Hopefully it stays that way :) My feet do kill though. Being on them all day at work is not doing wonders for them. ONLY 5 WEEKS LEFT! I can't believe this school year is almost over! Beauty.
And we do have some other babies at our house. Baby tomatoes! We bought a plant a couple of weeks ago and there are about 7 little green tomatoes on it already. We are surprised we haven't killed it yet. So we'll see if we have some Roma tomatoes within the next couple of weeks.

HOORAY!!! We finally found out what we are having! And as you can tell... IT'S A BOY! We are super stoked! But it was pretty funny that almost everyone we talked to said we were going to have a girl. Guess we'll save that one for later :)
We already have a name picked out for him. Owen Bryan Illguth. We love it and little Owen is already getting used to hearing his name. So nice not to call him "baby" or even worse, "it."
When we went to do the ultrasound on the 19th, the nurse jellied me up and asked if we wanted to know the gender. We said yes and 5 seconds later Bryan says, "It looks like a boy to me." She told him he was right. I couldn't see the stinkin' screen because I was laying down. But after a while I got adjusted to the funky angle and saw that he was flashin' the world. Not hiding anything. We got a bunch of ultrasound pictures to prove it, but I don't think he wants his goods shown to the world. So I'll stick with these.


This was the only profile shot we got of him. He would not hold still for the life of him. But at 19 weeks, he already looks darn cute!

And here's one looking almost straight on to his face. I have some brain and bladder pictures too, but I didn't think those were too interesting.
So there is the cute little 10 oz. baby growing inside of me. Such a cool thing to think about. But I'll update when more comes along!

4 Months.... already?

For reals, it has already been a month since my last post??? Holy buckets, what did I do last month?!? Grew more of our baby I guess :)

Well, I never put up a 3 month picture because I didn't look noticeably different. So here's one for 4 months. I have this little belly and people at my work keep touching it. I guess they think it's cute. Such a relief to tell my co-workers I was expecting. Then I didn't have to go around trying to make people not think I was fat. I get to actually be pregnant :) It's nothing too hard core yet, but I swear I stick out more every day. The baby is going through a growth spurt and is about as big as an avocado.

Next cool thing. Bryan's parents are coming to visit in 4 days so I decided to move up my appointment so we could find out what we are having when his parent's were here. So now we are finding out on Friday the 19th! 5 DAYS!!! Here's a little chain I made. I am not excited to find out the gender..... :)

And yeah, I just had to put this in here. I didn't even make it the whole work day with my pants fully buttoned. This was a couple of weeks ago. I now have to do this to almost all of my pants. All I had was orange...

3 months!

So I had my 3 month appointment about 2 days ago. This one I did solo. Here's a couple of things that I found out:

-I am on week 15
-I am blood type A-
-I don't have any nasty diseases that I could have picked up from my students (thank goodness!)
-I gained 4 pounds (I wasn't super excited about that news, but doc said it was normal)
-My stomach was measured and she said it was getting bigger. It's not totally noticeable yet, but my side profile isn't looking so flat anymore...
-Our baby has a nice, loud, strong heartbeat. It took a second to find it because the baby was so wiggly.
-And lastly, we get to find out what we are having on March 22! The Monday after Spring Break! That's less then 4 weeks away!!! YIPPEE! So when the date gets closer, we'll have to get some votes on what people think the gender is. I have been itching to do at least SOMETHING babyish, whether it be decorating or buying even one piece of clothing.

I need to take a 3 month picture and put it on here in the near future. I just don't look too different. So we'll see. I have found a pair of jeans and work pants that don't fit like they used to. Going maternity clothes shopping in the future is going to be awesome!!! I am looking forward to that one.