Week 26: What's The Time, It's Time To Get ILL

Music fanatics, name the group who performs the title of my entry today, and you win a cookie!  (well, an imaginary cookie...)

Yes folks, Week 26 of pregnancy brought me: a cold.  Or it was probably one of my department assistants who came in with a cold and I caught it from her...but either way, Tuesday morning I woke up with a very sore throat.  Darn you compromised immune system!  What's funny is I manage to get a cold every fall/start of school no matter what, so I'm quite used to my annual sickness.  For breakfast I decided to see if peanut butter and tea would coat my throat...

One of my faves-apple slices with peanut butter and Tazo Passion Tea

Throughout my work day my cold progressed and by mid-afternoon it was time for me to go home...my throat wasn't getting any better and I was getting the hot and cold feelings, then just felt exhausted.

Generally mid afternoon traffic is non-existent on my route home.  Of all days I of course hit some miserable traffic and thought it was due to an accident.  Turns out there were a few wildfires burning right off the side of the highway.

Imagine this but with five more fire trucks, 30 firefighters, four highway patrol cars for over a half mile.  This was the only photo I could take when stopped.

Once I finally reached home, I passed out on the couch.  Hubby was home with the pups and they were sweet enough to oblige in my nap time.

Photo courtesy of the hubby, who apparently likes to take pictures of me sleeping all the time.

That night I wasn't the only one sick in our household-Miles had the worst case of diarrhea and would whine/bark every two hours to be let out of his crate to go outside.  Hubby was sweet enough to help out poor Miles, but I would wake up every time he got out of bed.  Needless to say we were exhausted Wednesday morning.  I felt just as ill so I called in sick to work, and we ended up making a morning run to get canned pumpkin for Miles and OJ and soup for me.

After a long, much needed afternoon nap that made me feel about 90% better, the hubs and I got ready for a meeting with the Professional Degree Program at my school to go over questions about applying for the program...turns out this may be a good step in the right direction as far as hubby's future career.  Basically he would be taking two night classes per semester to obtain a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Information Systems.  This also means staying in California for a little over two more years...but in the grand scheme of time, this isn't that long, right?  And with 80% tuition remission since I work here, it's a really good way to get a degree for much cheaper than anywhere else.

After that meeting, we went to our first Prepared Childbirth class.  I was nervous and excited!  And I "documented" some of class...

We sat in the second row...we were all asked to bring pillows because our chairs were uncomfortable

Baby H's excited parents!

Our rather unique childbirth teacher talking during a quick break

I think hubby and I were the only immature parents in the room...we saw these "birthing/comfort" positions and made up random scenarios for each one.  The one on the right is trying to escape out of a window!

We ended the class with a relaxation technique that I've done many times in yoga classes.  Hubby didn't like it at all...but that's because he has A.D.D.  And I can see how hard it is to relax in a classroom full of strangers, in a room that literally shares the elevators and then having the intercom in the hall go off.  I was able to relax though-it made me sleepy!  Apparently next week is an important class, but I get nervous just thinking of watching birthing videos.  I tried watching a C-Section performed on my phone one night and it made me shudder.  I have to do this though-I'm going to be the one giving birth soon.  Scary thought.

Anyway, we timed our way back from the hospital to see just how long it's going to take if I go into labor at home...30 minutes with no traffic.  Made us a little nervous to see how long it would take, but looking at a map to the closest hospital to our home it's about 20 minutes.  Either way I'm stuck in a car for a while!  And, hopefully this won't happen, if I go into labor at work the hospital is about 15-20 minutes away as well.  They say it will take a while for labor to happen anyway, so might as well not stress the drive.

When we got home we found a lovely present, or should I say a few lovely presents, courtesy of Miles.  He had thrown up what was making him sick (stupid palm trees in our complex drop these seeds that Miles happens to eat without us seeing), threw up bile a few times, and pooped all over his crate which seeped into the carpet.  It. was. disgusting.

After half an hour of scrubbing his crate/throwing his bedding into the wash, we sat down to a not-so-good dinner of crock pot teriyaki.  I put in the chicken pieces way too early thus causing dry, over seasoned teriyaki.  On top of all of these fun activities I started feeling worse.

This morning I woke up with a stuffy nose, but at least felt better.  I even got to work 10 minutes early, woohoo!  I've been frantically catching up with work today and writing this blog in my short down-time moments.  Hopefully the next couple days our little family has a speedy recovery and no more stress.  Wish us luck!

Early Start to Week 25/26

Hello y'all!

Since I have my 6-month dentist checkup at 4:30pm today, I came into work at 7:30am so I can leave early.  Feeling not too shabby!  The weekend wasn't too exciting, but here's a recap of the past couple days:

Saturday: Minor melt-down about my car registration renewal...I never updated my address with the DMV, thus never receiving my renewal card.  When I went to change my address on the DMV website, they wanted me to enter the date of last year's registration...which I have somehow misplaced/thrown away/eaten up by goblins?  Long story short, I had a panic attack-I've been driving around without my current registration.  But hubby saved the day when he got home from work.  Good job hubby.  But it really ruined my Saturday...I spent most of it organizing all of my paperwork, music, and extra files that I had laying around, trying to find my missing car registration.  I guess Saturday wasn't ruined-just productive?  Although my state of mind was sort of in ruins!  I did purge about three medium-sized garbage bags full of paper work and documents I do not need anymore.  What kept slipping into my mind though was "If I can't even keep track of a car registration, how am I going to keep track of Baby H?!"  I know, I know, a little hard on myself, but I couldn't help it.  But like I said, hubby made me feel better and he saved our Saturday night.  He did not however save Saturday dinner...hahaha...we ended up getting fish and chips at this little hole in the wall that he's tried once before.  I'm a little skeptical of eating fish in a place that's basically the desert...but I wanted to make him happy since he saved my sanity.  Funny thing was the restaurant's special was lumpia (aka filipino deliciousness!).  Those turned out really yummy-kind of tasted like my mom's lumpia!  But the fish was super bland, probably frozen.  Wah waaah.

Sunday: I was woken up bright and early by the gruesome twosome, aka Miles and Coltrane.  Hubby wanted me to get my smog check as soon as they opened so he could watch football, and so we left at 8am...passed, then got delicious breakfast from an unsuspecting fast-food place (which I will yelp soon...I'm on a yelping frenzy lately!).  My usual is scrambled egg whites, bacon, potatoes and a short stack of pancakes that hubby and I split.  It sounds simple enough, but they make it sooooo well-the bacon is extra crispy and the pancakes are so fluffy.  What's funny is they are better at breakfast than the IHOP right next to it.  Ha.  After breakfast I left hubby to his football and I went to the dollar store to pick up a few things...and man, I came out like a bandit!  I really love the dollar store.  Then off to groceries.  I usually shop at TJs, but it's kind of a long drive, so I decided to try out our local Ralph's.  I was relieved to find a well-kept, well-stocked store and not as crowded.  I think I did a good job sticking to my grocery list and staying under budget, woohoo!  It's the small things people.

After making a large bowl of pasta salad filled with lots of veggies for my week's lunches, the pups and I got a good nap in and then later a couple of our friends came over to watch the Seahawks game.  Times like these I wish I took more photos just for the blog's sake...but at the same time since the first half took forever with the lightning delay and the millions of yellow cards thrown, it wasn't that exciting of a game.  Our friend George is a 49er fan, so it was still kind of fun cheering against him.  After the game I had the Miss America pageant on in the background while I prepared for my Monday since I had to leave so early.  I really liked Miss Minnesota, but hubby told me who won (which he didn't tell me how he knew this!) and headed to bed early.

Not too exciting of a weekend as you can see...oh, I did forget to mention that as we were watching the Seahawk game, I could see Baby H's movements!  It was kind of an 'Alien' experience...haven't witnessed this before!  Hubby caught a glimpse of movement too.  Baby H is growing so quickly.  Think he's already a Seahawk fan?

Week 25: Holy Cow, 15 Weeks To Go!

First of all...12 year anniversary of the Towers...on my way to work this morning a lot of radio stations were replaying news reports of the tragedy.  It's very disturbing to hear the screams, sirens and sounds that happened on that day.  But it's also consoling to hear about the events going on around the nation to remember all those who were lost in the catastrophe.  Pepperdine University put up nearly 3,000 flags on their lawn, one flag for each victim, and they're going to announce all their names at 11am.

Onwards...have I told you all how much I love pregnantchicken.com?  I'm sure I have but I will say it again...I love pregnantchicken.com.  They crack me up.

This sums up that Baby H can pop out any time now, but of course we'd rather have him wait until closer to 40 weeks.  There are all these symptoms to look out for, and of course this makes me paranoid.  But I'll try not to stress and hope for the best.

Let me back track a little bit...about two weeks ago one of the voice teachers came into the office.  She's my age and really sweet; she has two kids, one is I think 3 and the other turning 1 or around that age.  She also lives really close to us and will probably be our part-time nanny since she'll be on campus only two days a week!  We got lucky.

Everyone meet Angela!

Anywho, she's been great to go to for pregnancy advice and tips.  Before I got preggers she was trying to get me to join her gym to do this fitness challenge which I almost signed up for, but I couldn't afford the entry fee.  She's in awesome shape-think I may have to join with her after Baby H is born!  Okay sorry-back to the point of my story.  I told her how my doc said I should slow down on the weight gain and how it was getting me pretty down.  She basically said don't even worry...she had gained about 60 pounds with both babies and lost it all in the first few months after they were born.  She really put my mind at ease!  Then whattoexpect.com sent me an article about "Weight Worries During Pregnancy" and someone had posted a comment at the bottom about how she gained 50-60 pounds with her two kids...with her second baby she didn't fret about exercise and dieting and the weight came off in six months.  So, I am much more calm about my weight gain.  I still try to eat the right foods and get in exercise for Baby H but definitely less worried.  Here's me in action yesterday during my toning Zumba workout:

And looking at these photos, I don't feel so bad about my body.  Yay!

More backtracking...besides our fun outing to Santa Barbara to celebrate our one-year anniversary, I ordered the hubby a large canvas of one of the photos he took at Yosemite.  The traditional one-year anniversary present is supposed to be paper so I thought a canvas photo would be appropriate.  For my present I asked for another diamond to be added to my wedding band since that's what we had planned when we purchased it as well as some new perfume.  I picked up the brand "Clean - Skin" while we were in Santa Barbara (I'm in love with it!) and then hubby picked up my ring yesterday...here's kind of a blurry picture of both:

You can see the canvas nicely; the ring is hard to see but I love it!

I try to end my blogs on good notes, but I have to add that Miles now has a severe cough that started after we took him to the vet this weekend.  We are worried he caught kennel cough from there!  This sparked a little tension last night between the hubs and me...he wants to get our $ back from the vet since Miles is obviously not allergic to anything and not licking his paws/hairless patch like the vet said he was.  But the meds are helping Coltrane with her allergies, so that's a plus.  And if the vet was where he picked up kennel cough then he wants them to treat it for free.  I said we need to go to another vet; we were seeing a different one before but I feel like we burned our bridges with them when we dropped Miles off to get neutered then immediately returned to pick him up since the cost was so high...and my hubby and the receptionist kind of got into it.  The vet there though was great.  So not sure where we're going to go, but we are worried about the kennel cough in Miles.  Of course the dogs contract all these problems when I'm pregnant-when it rains, it pours, right?  Cross your fingers that all of their problems go away soon and we have a dog-stress-free 15 weeks...

Where Did the Weekend Go?!

It's already Monday...I wish we always had three-day weekends.  Wouldn't that be nice?

My weekend entailed a lot of stress over the doggies.  Miles has had this weird hairless patch of skin on his shoulder for over a month now, and recently it has been getting these scabs.  Hubby and I thought it might be ringworm, but since it's been a month and his hair hasn't grown over, we took him into the vet Saturday morning.  Vet thinks it's allergies, we're not on board with his decision 100%, but we're trying out the meds he gave us.  In order for him not to scratch or bite at his shoulder, Miles gets to wear a T-Shirt.  He's too adorable.

Later that afternoon we went to the craft store to get some Baby H supplies, then to the mall to get Shaved Ice since that's what I've been craving...it's been so hot lately (my car said 104 on Saturday)!  After a long wait line, we finally got ours and scarfed them down while walking the nice cold mall.  I wish I took pictures of them, they were soooo good.  And mine was Sugar Free, so I wanted four more.  We thought of ways to bring a cooler with us next time so we could just stock up on them.  Heehee.  Saturday night we relaxed at home and watched a lot of movies/played board games.

After taking the doggies for an early morning walk on Sunday, I noticed Coltrane scratching and writhing on the ground.  She has allergy flair-ups occasionally and this time it was bad.  I gave her a benadryl, but right before I left to get groceries she threw up all of her breakfast, peanut butter and treats we had given her.  It was gross.  Then when I got home she threw up again and proceeded to scratch everything on her.  I decided to give her half a benadryl which calmed her down immediately and she was much better all night.  Poor itchy pup.

The most interesting highlight of my Sunday was grocery shopping and starting a baby blanket for Baby H.  Since football preoccupied the television, I zoned out and relaxed.  Sometimes lazy Sundays are necessary.

Happy Friday, Crazy Dreams

TGIF!  Hooray.  And thanks to Labor Day, this was a nice, short work week.

My day went by pretty quickly yesterday thanks to the hustle and bustle of students back on campus.  I like the laid back summers, but I think I like being busy more.  After work I was exhausted but I still managed to get a workout in...

Zumba!!!

I've been doing my pregnancy/pre-natal videos lately, but I feel like they don't give me a good enough workout.  I researched doing Zumba while pregnant and as long as I take a few precautions (don't overexert/overheat, be careful with balance, etc), Zumba is safe!  It felt really good to dance around with my small weights.

Hubby has been on a Caesar Milan kick-he figured if we exercise Coltrane A LOT, she'll behave a little better.  Wednesday she was a sweetheart.  While I was working out I was also kicking a ball with her.  These are my happy pups after my workout:

Look at how dopey they are!

Then...hubby brought out cards after dinner.  No more happy Coltrane.  After a long trip to the park this morning and lots of running/playing in the apartment in the afternoon, Coltrane still went to attack hubby while he was shuffling cards.  That sent him over the edge.  We had to put her in her crate for the rest of the night and he proceeded to scold her.  We'd like to think she can understand us, but of course she's just a dog.

The last few weeks stressed with Coltrane along with a growing baby sparked some rather interesting dreams last night.  I was in Japan with friends and these large, neon fish and shapes were floating in the air.  At some point a man-shaped balloon floated over and it was part robot.  It wanted to scan our food supply to give an analysis of our future.  I started recording the conversation on a translator because he was speaking in Japanese.  Basically the state of our food supply showed that the world would go into starvation mode in the near future.  How freaky is that?

Then in my next dream, hubby and I were at a Six Flags at night.  As we turned a corner around a roller coaster, a huge brown bear came stalking towards us.  We turned back around and I stared at hubby to see what to do; in my dream, he had encountered bears before so he knew what to do.  We found two trees and stood against them as still as possible.  The bear found us and started sniffing me.  He stood up and slowly started to put his teeth around my head when some older gentleman came up with a "Wii Shotgun".  It sounded just like a regular shotgun, but of course it was for the Wii console.  He started shooting and scared the bear away.  The gentleman explained it was a very hungry and could smell I had a baby inside of me so it was basically a 2-for-1 meal.  That was the end of the dream.

I looked up bears in dreams when I got to work this morning...it's an uncommon appearance in dreams, and apparently a bear attacking represents "avoiding a big issue in life", "anger, uncontrolled aggression" and "some overwhelming obstacle."  I translate all of this to dealing with Coltrane.  I have a feeling that we need to figure out what to do with her sooner than later, or else I'm going to keep having dreams of animals trying to hunt me down.  Not cool.

I'm looking forward to a nice, relaxing weekend though.  I'm getting my creative itch so think I'll be making Baby H some crafty projects.  Happy Friday everyone!

Week 24: 16 Weeks To Go!

I absolutely love pregnantchicken.com.  They are hilarious.  Found this gem in my inbox today:

Yes, Baby H is the size of a footlong sub today.  I gained a lot of weight this week, but at least I can chalk some of it up to him gaining half a pound.  Take that weight!

Yesterday I did eat a lot better and I weighed half a pound less today...I know I shouldn't be weighing myself constantly (Barbie, you and I have the same problem!), but sometimes you just cross your fingers and hope for some kind of result.  I did get more sleep last night too and worked out when I got home.  So yay me!

Bad news is Coltrane had another freak out (unsurprisingly).  Hubby had played with her all day and apparently she was super cute.  But then when we went to move the coffee table so that I could work out she bit him on the wrist.  Again, if hubby was moving the table by himself she wouldn't bat an eyelash; but because I was moving it with him she went into protective mode.  This really broke hubby's heart last night and I couldn't get him out of his funk.  I think we are both handling this situation the same way, just at different times; I'll get really down and in a funk and hubby will be calm then the next day he'll stress out and I'm the one to be a little calmer.  I guess it's good that we're balanced out but we can't seem to help each other out.  She's five years old, you would think she'd grow out of her bad behavior or at least mellow out, but we both agree she has gotten worse.

I do apologize if you've kept up with my blog and all you see are updates on Coltrane.  She's a big part of our lives and I wish that we didn't have to contemplate letting a family member go.  How sad is that?!  What gets me through this a little is knowing how happy of a dog Miles is...he can be annoying in his puppy ways sometimes, but he's always excited to see people and other dogs and just loves playing and cuddling.  At least I feel like I'm doing something right with a pet.

End of 23 Weeks: 1 Year Anniversary

Happy day-after Labor Day!

Had a nice, long relaxing weekend...a little too lazy at times, but we define lazy as being cheap and frugal.  : )

Saturday was spent doing a couple errands around the house and bringing my wedding band to the jeweler we purchased it from...each anniversary we're adding another small diamond to it!  The main jeweler wasn't in so we dropped it off.  I feel naked not having it, hopefully they'll call me soon when it's ready!  After that we had lunch at Which Wich in Burbank, and somehow the hubby got his sandwich jacked by another person with the same name and similar handwriting!  So as I scarfed my meal down, he had to wait...sorry hubby.  And that was the extent of our Saturday.

Sunday was our 1-year anniversary celebration!  I have to admit, I'm glad we did not go to Disneyland to celebrate, it was so hot this weekend and battling crowds and standing in long lines didn't sound like fun.  We dropped our pups off at a cheaper doggy daycare (Coltrane used to go there all the time, but the guy was flaky...we decided to give him one more chance since he's so cheap), and it was off to Santa Barbara where the temps were closer to 80 than 100.  Before we left I made the hubby take some baby-belly photos (also my hair was perfect and knew it would fall in a couple hours):

The drive was much quicker than we expected and we started our day off at the Santa Barbara Zoo since we get a half-price discount as LA Zoo Members!

Seriously, I don't know why I've never visited this zoo before-it is the most cared for zoo I've ever seen.  It kind of looks like a privately-owned zoo since it's so small.  The animals don't have a lot of room to roam, but they were all really active and seemed happy!  The people visiting were all nice and the kids were well-behaved.  The best part for me?

Those are Small-clawed Asian Otters!  Otters in general are my faaaavorite animal, and when we visited the Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle, a few were just born so we weren't allowed to see them yet.  When we visited the San Diego Zoo, didn't see any otters.  The LA Zoo doesn't have otters, or at least I don't remember seeing them.  So it was such a treat to see these guys as the first exhibit!  When we first saw them, they were sleeping on their backs, sun-bathing.  It was super cute.  Before we left the zoo, they were being fed/looked at by a zookeeper, and they were so frikin cute.  The little guy on the right was squeaking excitedly for his food, and the guy on the left was so patient, standing upright.  The keeper said they make the otters stand so they can inspect their fur on the bellies to make sure everything is growing properly.  I love otters!  On our way out I snapped a picture of the hubby:

After the zoo, we decided to get lunch at the same place I go every time I visit Santa Barbara...I did want to try something new, but we could smell Pascucci's from a mile away (yummy garlic), so why try to fix something when it ain't broke?!  I asked our waiter's opinion between two dishes, and I'm so glad I took his advice.  I couldn't stop raving about my food.

We tried to get the waiter to take our picture, but it didn't turn out well, so here's us side by side.

After our delicious lunch celebration, we walked all the way down the main street and ended up at their small pier.  It was a long walk and being heavier my feet were killing me, but it was nice to get a breeze by the ocean since the weather warmed up a lot.

Fisheye lens!  I'm not good at taking self portraits.

Hubby is better at taking photos.  Happy One Year Anniversary!

By the time we made it back to main street, my feet were aching, I was a sweaty mess and I was craving something cold.  It was too late to visit a few places we talked about since they were closed, so we ended up grabbing drinks at Starbucks then taking off for home since we're old/pregnant/out of shape!

Once we got home, we watched the only Anniversary movie we could think of - So I Married An Axe Murderer.  Haha...it's a classic!

It's so crazy to think how time has flown by so quickly, and that we are already celebrating our One Year Anniversary along with our own little bundle of joy on the way.  I love my husband so much, I can't imagine life without him.  We were talking about how we've had so many stressful, down days back to back lately, and the trip to Santa Barbara was perfect, we couldn't have been happier.  I look forward to spending many more years with my hubby, through all the ups and downs.

So tomorrow marks Week 24, and my downer today is I'm so much more heavier than I should be.  I really need to watch what I eat.  I say this at the beginning of every week, yes, I'm a broken record-but today's weight really hit me hard.  My biggest fear is that I get "gestation diabetes", which a co-worker of mine has gotten.  Not cool.  Healthy Nichi here I come!  Going grocery shopping after work, stocking up on healthy snacks and meals.  No more binge eating on the weekends, that's my downfall!

Last update, Coltrane is still a psycho pup.  Our daycare guy said she was of course the Alpha dog, and Miles didn't want to leave his side.  Last night we tried playing a few board games and she still went after the hubby, and then proceeded to lick her crate the entire time she was in there.  We're so disappointed in her, she'll never learn.  It's still absolutely heart breaking to think of her leaving us, but we stress over her every single day.  It's sad.  Better news is Miles is maturing and such a happy dog, I'm so thankful he's not like his sister.

Okay, back to the grindstone--classes start tomorrow, and the campus is getting busier each minute!  I like the hustle and bustle, makes the days go by so much quicker.