Halfway Through!

Hello, our beautiful little girl!

So much has happened in the last month!  First of all, we were blessed to find out that we would be adding a sweet little girl to our family.  I can’t tell you how excited we are.  Your Daddy is already coming up with fun games to play with you, and I think we’ll have a little programmer on our hands in no time.  :-)  I cannot believe that we are halfway through the time it takes to see your sweet face and meet you.  The time feels like it is flying.  We’re also looking for a house to live in, so I will get to start planning your nursery in no time!

You are getting stronger by the day!  You have already kicked me hard enough a couple of times for it to actually be uncomfortable and hurt, which causes your Daddy to worry a little bit.  He’s eager to feel your kicks for himself, but you are proving to be just as stubborn as the two of us are.  As soon as he lays his hand on my stomach, you usually decide to sit still.  (On the other hand – maybe this isn’t stubborness.  Maybe you are already calmed by your Daddy’s warm, comforting hands.)  You actually kicked his hand four times the other day, but he is still having a hard time differentiating between your kicks and my all-too-strong heartbeat, so he didn’t recognize them for what they were.  Since you are slowly gaining height inside of me (I’m feeling kicks at my belly button!), I’m hoping that the location and strength of the kicks will help him know what he is feeling.  [You are currently kicking away at my stomach while I type this letter to you.]

Now that we are to the halfway mark, the books give an idea of exactly how long you are from head to toe.  According to our book, you are now 10 inches long, or the length of a banana!  It’s crazy to think that all that length is curled up inside of me.  At our doctor’s appointment, they said you are a petite little miss – you measure at around the 21st percentile.  This is well within normal, and it just means that you will probably be built a little more like me and less like your Jolly-Green-Giant of a Dad!  He thinks it would be funny if you ended up taller than me, though.

Pregnancy is still treating me well right now.  I’m dealing with the same headaches and migraines, though I’ve decided those are probably with me through the end of my pregnancy with you (and beyond).  As for nausea, that has gone away unless I take my vitamin too late at night after I’ve eaten.  Otherwise, I’m feeling great and am enjoying watching my belly grow because of you.

I can’t tell you how excited Daddy and I are to meet you.  I send prayers up for you all the time, and I am eager to see exactly what kind of woman you become.  You are already cherished!

Love,

Mommy

Apologies to those Connerites who have already had the opportunity to read this.  The letter was too good not to post for others to read.  I have quite a funny husband.  :-)

David has dealt with a dizziness problem several times since we got married.  (It’s not a constant thing.  It happens every few months, always in the depths of allergy season.)  This is David’s explanation of his day yesterday that included yet another round of testing to see if we can find a cure.

*****

Today I went to the doctor to be tested for allergies. I don’t know why they need to test, I know I have allergies. There’s a whole back story about why I had to go get tested for allergies, but I’ll cut that short and just say, you know how in Tom and Jerry (you know, the cartoon) when Tom gets slapped so hard that his head shakes from left to right and then he grabs his head with his hands to stop it from shaking and his eyes continue to shake left-to-right and then back?

Tom and Jerry

It turns out that’s a real condition – not the getting slapped part, but the thing where you shake your head and your eyes keep shaking. I get it from time to time. So in trying to figure out what’s causing it, my doctor sends me to this doctor and that doctor, and every other doctor, and finally I end up at the allergy doctor’s office to be tested for allergies.

I went in this morning for allergy testing. Before they got started they said I had to sign what was essentially a waiver, that I understood the risk of being tested. Evidently it can turn out bad – like every orifice swells shut and then you can’t breathe. I sign over my life and then they get started. They tell me to lay face down on this table and that they’re going to apply a series of 9 different applicators, each having 8 applicator tips/points/needles, to my back. Each little needle is infected with a different allergen, so, 72 different allergens in total. The guy who was mashing these torturous little devices into my skin said I might feel some discomfort… I may as well have laid (lain?) down on a bed of nails infected with cat hair, and had the guy jump up and down on me so they dug into my skin. It wasn’t painful, but it was more than a little discomfort. He lied, so already I know I can’t trust him.

That's right, Doc - Just jump up and down a few more times!

He finishes mashing the last of the allergens into my skin and comments that my whole back is red. At least he’s observant. He told me I’d have to wait for 20 minutes for the allergens to take effect. I thought they already had. Then he says that during this 20 minutes I need to talk so he can monitor whether or not my tongue, throat, and other air passageways are swelling shut. I didn’t really have much to say to him, so he did most of the talking. He tells me about the different types of serum that they make, how concentrated they are, and other boring stuff about the allergy medicine business. He tells me about how they grade the allergic reaction from 1 to 4, 1 indicating no allergic reaction, to 4 indicating “Yup, you’re super allergic to that”. He notes, from my back, that I’m super allergic to cats. That’s when I realized the tests work. I’ve been super-allergic to cats for years. He tells me I’m super allergic to mountain cedar trees, live oak (as opposed to dead oak?) trees, red oak trees, pecan trees, some kind of mold, and cats – those are all 4s. A grade of 2 is like the reaction you get from a mosquito bite.

The guy finally, after the 20 minutes is up, grades and notes the severity of each reaction. It turns out I’m allergic to everything on the page, except for 9 items, one of which is the control substance – sugar water. Those things I’m not allergic to are essentially pointless to know about because they are: European Privet (so if I ever go to Europe, I won’t sneeze), Russian Thistle (so if I ever go to Russia, I won’t sneeze), Johnson grass, sugar water, cattle (evidently the Panhandle is where I need to live), horses, dust mites, sugar cane, and soybeans. Since I don’t eat soybeans, that’s moot, I don’t ride horses, so that’s moot, I don’t chew sugar cane, so that’s moot, I don’t live in Russia or Europe, so those two are moot, and I don’t drink sugar water, so that’s moot. Pretty much the only things that aren’t a moot point are johnson grass (yay) and dust mites (yay).

Now for the 63 things I’m allergic to: I won’t really list them all here, just the fun ones: corn, wheat, milk, eggs. When he told me I was allergic to all that, I informed him that I drink milk every day, and eat wheat bread and cereal every day. He asked me if I ever get “the toots”. I told him that was pretty much a constant condition with me. So, now I have an excuse! It’s a medical condition! I can’t be held responsible anymore for my “toots”. I reckon I’m fully justified in just farting wherever I am, however much I need to, because, dammit, it’s a medical condition. If I get any rude remarks from anyone, that’s my excuse and I’m stickin’ to it.

Now that I know I’m allergic to everything, I’m supposed to start allergy shots. When the guy was telling me about the allergy shots, he informed me that I’ll have to have one in each arm. I stopped him and asked about that. He said that since I was allergic to so much stuff, they’d have to mix some stuff together in one serum vial, and then mix the other serum and put it into a different vial. That way if one arm swells up they’ll know which mixture I don’t react well to.

I keep wondering how they mix their serums. The serum is just a mixture of all the crap I’m allergic to. Where do they get cat extract? I can just imagine them making quarterly trips to the pound, buying some cats, and then turning them into cat extract. I think I’m in the wrong business. They are turning cats into $400/ounce serum. How much do you reckon a cat weighs? Even if it’s only 2 pounds, that’s 32 ounces, at $400/ounce, that’s some pretty good money. Heck, forget the cats, let’s go dig up oak trees. Those weigh a lot more than 2 pounds. I bet each oak tree is worth a million bucks. All we’ve got to do is turn it into a fine powder and mix it into some saline solution, then sell it to allergy doctors all over the world.

"I'm RICH!!!"

Since this serum that they’re concocting for me is all natural, I might be able to save a few dollars and just go lick a cat once a week, lick an oak tree once a week, eat some corn, eat some wheat, drink a glass of milk once a week, fart a lot, and be done with it. I reckon that’d have the same effect, and it’d be a lot cheaper, it’d just taste worse.

So that’s what I’ve been up to today.

*****

Note from Penelope: When David came home for lunch four and a half hours after testing, his *whole* back still had the perfectly-shaped grid on it, and every single bump was still visible.  This was after they had cleaned off all the areas and was supposedly good to go.  Poor guy…

This comment would be a little more at home in a Facebook status, but since I think family would get a laugh out of this, I thought I would post it here.

We learned something new tonight – I can barely see out of the peephole in the front door.  If someone even moderately short comes a-calling, I won’t be able to tell who it is.  The sad thing is that I didn’t recognize the problem.  I’m standing on my tip-tippiest toes, straining my neck to see out, pushing up on the doorknob for more height, and pushing my glasses farther down on my nose to keep everything in focus, all the while assuming everything is normal.  (I have no idea just how ridiculous this looks from behind, but it must be bad…)  Meanwhile, David’s staring at me trying to find out whether or not I’m actually going to be able to make it, and he practically rolls on the floor laughing when he sees the results of my attempt.

Do you know what he did next?  Asked me to repeat it three more times, just to see me try to see out the door.

I never thought I was very short until I married the Jolly Green Giant, who literally bends his knees to see through the peephole.  :-)

A couple months ago, I started a new game with Cooper before we go on our walks.  Walking is the best motivator ever to get her to learn something new because it’s something that she really looks forward to, so she’s willing to stretch herself and figure out new things a lot faster if walking is the reward.  We just call it the Leash Game, and the goal for her is to find the leash.  We have always kept it on the bar between the living room and the kitchen, and before I invented the game, she would jump up with her front paws, ‘point’ at the leash with her nose, and look at us until we got the point.  Now, she has to actively find the leash before we go.

Due to her excitement, I thought I would videotape it to show our families.  Some people might think this is boring to watch, but I think it’s funny to watch her race through the house.  It’s entertaining first thing in the morning!  She really is quite intelligent.  I have hidden it in every single room of the house except our bedroom (because that’s where she has to “sit and stay” until I hide it), and she has never once failed to find her leash.  I don’t just put it in plain view, either.  It’s usually behind or in something, so it takes some work for her.  You can also see that she has learned not to race out of the room right when I open the door.  She has to be patient, which is hard enough for her anyway, much less when she is waiting for something she likes.  She knows to wait until I say “find your leash,” and then she’s off.  Here is the video:

Cooper’s Leash Game

When I was watching it yesterday getting ready to upload it to YouTube, Cooper heard the sounds from the other room.  She came hauling into my sewing room to figure out what she was hearing.  She knew it wasn’t me talking in person (since I was sitting right there), but she recognized my voice and what I was saying.  She also saw a dog racing around on the screen and heard the jingling of her collar (another indication that we might be going on a walk).  She started racing around my sewing chair, barking at the speakers and the laptop.  I just sat and laughed at her.  Poor thing.  :-)

Now, just for clarification, you can hear me say in the video that we can’t say the W word, and this is “walk” in case that wasn’t obvious.  Once we have played the leash game and she knows what’s next, saying ‘walk’ doesn’t get her quite as riled up as usual.  This is why she just sits like a good girl at the end of the game.  She also doesn’t respond to it as much at other times of the day because she knows she goes on walks in the morning.  This makes it easier since we don’t have to censor ourselves quite as much.  I always felt bad getting her hopes up and then dashing them…

Anyway, I hope you like the video.  This was also a chance for me to try out the video feature on my camera again.  I like how it turned out!

Week Number 16

Dear Sweet Little One-

We’re four weeks further along from our last set of pictures, and I think the pregnancy is becoming even more real for your sweet Daddy.  Both of us are enjoying watching you stretch out my stomach, though it is still a little odd for me sometimes to look down and see my shirt poking forward.

You (or, that is to say, my hormones) have been much nicer to me in the last few weeks than they were during the first trimester!  I’m very rarely nauseas, and I’ve had a lot more energy, so I’m getting to finish some crafts that have been on my mind.  I’m starting to visualize what I want your room to look like, and that is very exciting.

You are getting bigger by the day.  We are always shocked to read just how big you are when we open up the pregnancy book.  By this week, you should be 4.5 to 5 inches long (about the length of a large avocado), not including your skinny little legs, and according to our readings, your growth is about to speed up!  I went to the doctor last Friday, and I got to actually hear your heartbeat for the first time.  It was amazing!  You are strong and healthy, and the doctor was completely happy with our checkup.  (In fact, everything was so normal that the doctor didn’t stop talking about the movies we were discussing.  I had to actually stop her and ask if everything was good!)  You can see light through my tummy and wiggle your fingers and toes.  I have been continually amazed at how God planned our development as people.  It’s so fun reading about all the milestones you are reaching.

One of the most exciting events of this pregnancy so far has been being able to feel your little movements for the first time!  Right now, I can only feel tiny little “pops,” and it doesn’t happen very often, so I am looking forward to when I feel you move more often.  I think Daddy is ready to feel you move, too, though he’ll have to wait a little longer…

You will be the perfect addition to our little family!

Love,

Mommy

**Note: The bottom left photo is David showing how big he thinks I’m going to be by the time this baby is “done.”  Yes.  He really thinks I’ll be that large.  How sweet.  :-)

**Another Note: In the top right photo, we were making funny faces at one another and taking pictures of it.  I asked him if he could do my Daddy’s lip curl thing, and he attempted.  I told him he wasn’t doing it right, attempted to show him, and then he tried again.  I just dissolved into giggles!

The long-awaited post is here!  I really don’t mean to wait so long between postings, but we seem to have a whole lot going on right now, and I have barely had time to relax, much less remember to post.

Back in January (before pregnancy-related-fatigue confined me to the couch for weeks on end) I worked very hard to come up with something special for my little sister’s birthday/Christmas present.  Yes, I was a little late for the Christmas thing, but she was okay with that!  :-)  Mom gave me an awesome Media Sewing Pattern book for Christmas, and I instantly knew what Kara was going to get once I flipped through it: a camera bag.  She had been using our Grandpa’s old night-kit that he took on trips, and it didn’t really scream out “Kara’s Camera Bag.”  She needed something special!

The Bag

I’ve been a little leery about sewing something like a camera bag due to the fact that they need to be really sturdy, and I wasn’t sure how I could accomplish that.  The camera bag I own just seems so hefty.  After reading the instructions, I realized exactly what went into making a sturdy one, and I went for it.  David and I packed up one day to head to Joann’s Fabrics, and he helped me pick out fabric that we thought KaraLa would like.  I’m happy that I have a husband who is willing to go with me to do this!  It might not be what he would voluntarily choose to do during his relaxation time, but I love that he will spend time with me.  (and he really is good at finding fabrics that I would otherwise miss!)

We began with the paisley fabric (which I adore) and found three other fabrics to match it.  They are all quilting-weight cotton.  (Not to worry – there is plenty of stabilizer added in.)  I think David’s favorite was the green polka dot.

Side Pockets

I love all the details.  Each end of the camera bag has a side pocket like this.  The blue fabric is a flap that opens up to reveal a nice little pocket.  The flap attaches with a piece of velcro, and it has pleated edges (am I saying that right?) to help the pocket expand.

Front Pocket

The front has a pocket, as well, and you can see the folds at the sides that allow for expansion, as well as the velcro.  Side note: I finally figured out how to sew velcro on without totally hating the process afterwards.  Thank you, Mom, for the awesome suggestion!  (It involved sewing with the velcro facing down.  A little tricky, but the thread didn’t get tangled and break!)  I called her pretty upset one night because I thought I was going to have to sew 10 pieces of velcro on by hand, which is NOT how I envisioned this project going.

You can see that inside the front pocket, there are also two extra pockets.  These are a bit tighter to hold things like skinny memory cards in place.  Totally cute!

There are details on the interior of the bag, as well.

Dividers

One feature that I find important in a camera bag (at least for SLR’s) is for them to have dividers.  This allows the camera body with one lens to sit in one side of the bag, while extra components (such as another lens, an external flash, etc.) can sit in the other side and stay put.  The tall divider is something I’m used to and have seen before.  The small divider was a new find for me!  If I have a lens in the bottom of the bag:

Unprotected Lens

…then I can cover that with the smaller divider.

Smaller Divider With Fold

I should have taken a picture from the other side, but this attaches to the side of the bag with velcro.  Then, you can sort of see in the picture that it is meant to fold down over the side of the lens, effectively protecting it and holding it in place.  So cool!  I put this in and then added the tall divider to separate the left-side from the right-side of the bag.  My camera and lenses fit in the bag well, though I would make the larger-size bag for myself to also accommodate my external flash and lack of restraint in cramming other stuff in the bag.  (cell phone, small wallet, etc.)  I don’t typically like carrying multiple bags on my shoulder, so if I have my camera, it can be a catch-all sometimes.

Another hurdle I had to jump over was the strap.

The Strap

You would think the strap would be simple, right?  For the most part, it was!  Add stabilizer to the fabric, sew pieces together, blah, blah, blah.  Not bad at all.  It was the little silver piece you see in that top picture that had me frantic by the end of the project.  I went to four different stores here trying to find that piece, and not one of the stores carried it!  You can find them online, but I was absolutely DETERMINED to get this to Kara by her actual birthday, and I didn’t have time for shipping.  My great-grandma’s old sewing stash didn’t even have the right piece I needed.  After much searching, I decided to see if I owned an old purse that had this on its strap.  I was practically giddy when I found one, and I hadn’t used it for years, so it was unceremoniously cut up and used to benefit a much cuter project.  :-)  After days of searching, it took me less than five minutes to finish the strap!  You can see in the previous photo of the side pockets how the straps attach to the bag.  I LOVE how they attach.  Those connectors are seriously heavy duty.  I got them from Tandy Leather Company, and they are so much better than what I expected I would use.

Other than the strap (which was the actual last piece finished), the final piece on the bag was the lid.

The Lid

The Hinge Attachment

Let me begin by saying that I love the hinge attachment.  It wasn’t that difficult, it ended up looking nice, and it does a good job of keeping the lid where you want it.  That stupid lid, though, just about bested me one night.

I am a fairly detail-oriented person.  (Can I get an “amen!”?)  :-)  I try my best to follow instructions on a new project to a T unless I have prior experience with a similar project and know of a better procedure.  However, even the most detail-oriented person can’t help being off on seams by a fraction of a fraction of an inch from time to time, and that is all it takes to mess up the dimensions on something like a lid.  (I think my main problem came from all of the layers I sewed together.  I’m not used to that many layers, and I probably tried to compensate by making the seams a little smaller.)  After sewing together the original lid, I found out it was about an inch and a half too short (as the zipper zipped).  Believe me – there was NO way to take it back apart and sew it another way.  There wasn’t enough fabric.  I had to start completely over on the lid, which is comprised of seven layers, and redo it.  I’m really happy with how it turned out, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t frustrating during the process.  The second time around, I managed to make the lid to the perfect dimensions, and it zips together better than anything I’ve made thus far.  Zippers and I tend to have a rocky relationship.  Look at how nice this one looks, though!

This is the most recent sewing project I’ve had the chance to tackle, and boy am I ready to get back to my sewing machine!  It’s been too long.  Once I clear some of this stuff off my to-do list, it will be time to sew up some projects that have been waiting on me for a while.  I’m so excited!

While we were setting up for our preggo photo session on Saturday morning, David had some fun with the camera remote.  I just kept hearing a clicking sound from the other room, and I asked David what he was doing.  He yelled “nothing!” and laughed when I came in and saw him.  He cheered me up quite a bit doing this after I had a bit of an emotional morning.  :-)

Starting Out

Well, that's not a happy face!

Practicing for his choir performance?

He has to work to wink.

...and the other eye.

A bat could roost in those things.

Does this photo remind me of someone else?  Oh yeah!  How about him:

Yet Another Nose Photo

Aaaaand….back to my cutie:

Huh!?!

I'm pretty sure this is when I started asking what he was doing.

Taking sneaky photos now?

Reckon he's sticking his tongue out at me?

"Uh oh...she's coming!"

I absolutely love the expression on his face here. He's my Sweetie.

Offering Up Some Sugar

I asked him to turn sideways for a test photo. He and I have different definitions of "sideways!"

What? That sideways wasn't the right one? How about this one?

His Pregnant Pose

Playing With Our Sweet Cooper

I absolutely love this man.  It took him all of five minutes of being goofy to cheer me right up, and that’s just one thing that makes him the best husband ever.

I’m definitely gonna keep him.  :-)