3 Weeks to Go!

Well we are into the final stretch, at 37 weeks Anabelle is officially considered full term and if born now would be fully developed. Things continue to go well here, last weekend John and I had Lamaze class. It was quite long Saturday 9-4, and then Sunday 9-2; but overall we found it to be pretty informative and helpful. This class was not your traditional Lamaze class, while they did give lots of info on the breathing and “natural” approach to childbirth; they also provided lots of info on pain medications and interventions that can be provided during childbirth. It was definitely a very comprehensive look at all of the options available to you, and therefore helpful. We also got a tour of the hospital, which happens to be about 3 blocks from our condo. The set up is very nice, with private rooms for labor/delivery and recovery. In my recovery room there is even a bed for John so he can stay with me and the baby. The baby can “room-in” which means that they sleep in the same room, and only go to the nursery for things like a bath, check-ups, or shots. Overall, I am very pleased with what the hospital stay is projected to be like.

After our class I came home and started to feel some false contractions or Braxton Hicks, I have to say I don’t like the term “false contractions” they are not false-they hurt. I’m not saying it was that bad and I know it will get much worse, but still they are painful. So I had these for a few days off and on. Then on Wednesday I had a doctor’s appointment and told her about how I had been feeling. She decided to take a look and discovered that I was already 70% effaced and 3 centimeters dilated. For those that don’t know; effacement is the thinning of the cervix-you have to get to 100%, dilatation is the opening of the cervix-you have to get to 10. So while this is a good start, I could be at 3 centimeters for quite a while. My next doctor’s appointment is Wednesday, so I will keep you posted.

This past Thursday we had Caring for Newborns class, which was pretty useless. Topics covered were, bathing a newborn, diapering, swaddling, and signs of illness. I assumed there would be more to it than common sense, but really it is all common sense. I guess it is always good to get a refresher and maybe it was a little useful for John, but I would have rather stayed home. Part 2 of the class this Thursday is a question and answer session with a pediatrician- I am hopeful that it will be more useful.

This Friday was my last day of work, while I am glad to have time off, it was sad to leave. The kids were adorable, of course; with lots of hugs, questions about the baby, patting my belly and “I’ll miss you’s”. I am hoping to stay off of work till the 1st of the year, and then work only part-time. Probably not at Loyola preschool anymore, they don’t really have part-time positions, so we’ll have to see what I end up doing. For the next 4 months I’ll be getting used to a different kind of job =)

In preparation for Anabelle, John installed the car seat today. It was strange driving around town today with a car seat. We kept looking at our car thinking it wasn’t ours. That task was one of the final things to be done, we are as ready as you can be.

This week I will hopefully enjoy some days sleeping in, and relaxing.

6 Weeks to Go!

Things are rolling right along here in the Delaney House, with only 6 weeks left we are really starting to feel like we are getting close. Overall, I have been feeling pretty well. I did start having a hard time sleeping this past week, which lead John and I to take a trip to Babies R Us and purchase a body pillow. I slept with it last night and I was much more comfortable. Although the thing is huge and sometimes you feel like you are all tangled up. One web review said of it “Rolling over is like wrestling with a giant worm!” I have to say that is a pretty accurate assessment.

Over the last few weeks we have been busy as usual. We had our last baby-free airplane ride the second week of July when we flew to Kansas City to attend the wedding of our friends Curtis and Erica. Marena and Adam hosted us while we were in town and we really had a great weekend. Marena and I learned that our men will never stop thinking that they can still party like the 19 year old college roomies that they once were!

On July 18th we had the baby shower at our place, I had a really great time! Of course I know I have great friends, and they proved me right by throwing me a beautiful shower. Thanks so much to Marena, Becky, Lexi, Jess, Darcy, Stephanie, and my mom! We spent the day chatting with friends and family, munching on yummy food, and oohing and ahhing over adorable baby gifts. Special thanks to Marena and Bonnie for both traveling from so far to share in the fun! After the shower Marena was nice enough to help me unpack all the gifts and organize the nursery, a big help and it looks great.

The following week John and I went to Wrigley Field to see Elton John and Billy Joel in concert. I have long been a fan of Billy Joel and have gone to a few of his concerts already, but couldn’t pass up the opportunity to see him with Elton John at Wrigley. It was neat to see them in that setting, however I was not very impressed with Elton John. He really doesn’t put on an exciting show, meaning he doesn’t talk to the crowd at all, and just sits at the piano and sings each song. Of course Billy Joel tells stories, talks to the crowd and dances around. While I liked hearing the Elton John songs, I also felt that when they sang duets I’d rather just hear the original artist sing the song. If you are a diehard fan, you don’t want to hear Elton John singing your favorite Billy Joel songs. All in all, it was a great show and I enjoyed it. I’m glad we went, with Billy Joel getting older it’s hard to know how much longer he’ll tour and with a baby on the way it’s hard to know if we’ll ever be able to afford a concert again =)

I also had a doctors appointment that week, everything went well as usual. The dr informed me that I am right on schedule for delivering Sept 12th which he claimed he almost never says.

The next weekend I went to my last of 4 Cubs games for the year, unless John and I decide to go to another one spur of the moment. It was great weather and they won, what more can you ask for? That night was spent at a friends 30th birthday party-honestly we have been to about 30 of these by now. It was a fun night spent catching up with friends at a nice outdoor beer garden. I am realizing how few of these fun nights out we have left before Anabelle comes, and trying to make the most of them.

This past weekend John and I didn’t have much to do so we decided to head out to Ikea and pick up the dresser/changing table that my parents got for us for the nursery. Of course you can never go to Ikea and buy just one thing, so we also ended up with 2 new rugs, one for our bedroom and one for Anabelle’s bedroom. John spent the rest of the day assembling the dresser and then we put everything in its place. The room looks great, and really feels like a little girls room, now we just need our little girl.

In other news I have about 3 weeks left of work before I am on maternity leave, I am taking some time off before the baby comes. I am definitely looking forward to the time off. The preschoolers I teach are pretty funny, by now they are very aware that I am pregnant, and they like to pretend that they are too. I also get lots of great questions. The other day a little girl in the next class over asked me, “Why is your tummy so big?” I responded, “Because I have a baby in there.” In a second, before I could stop her she was pulling the neck of my shirt out and peering down my shirt saying “In there? Where?” Like I was hiding a baby under my shirt, kids are so literal- I love it!

This week I am taking Tuesday off of work to have a fun shopping day with my mom, and later in the week I have another doctors appointment. Then on the weekend John and I are going to a musical (Spring Awakening) on Friday and Saturday to the Wisconsin State Fair-I can’t wait to have some corn and cream puffs!

30 weeks down 10 to go!

Wow I don’t know where the time goes, it seems like the past few months have flown by full of activities and baby preparations. I have been feeling well lately, and my doctors visits are all going smoothly. I am 30 weeks pregnant, and into my 3rd trimester. Now I am on the schedule where I go to the doctor every 2 weeks which seems like a lot to me but I’m sure they know what they are doing =). We have also decided on a name for our little girl, Anabelle Corrine Lee Delaney. She is moving around a lot lately, often times kicking me in the ribs and bladder.


John and I went to the Taste of Chicago on July 2nd, I was very excited to eat all of the yummy things at the taste. I was most excited to have some roasted corn, it was delicious!The Taste seemed smaller this year, not as many vendors, we thought it must have been the result of the economy.

John and I celebrated 4 years of marriage on July 3rd, we both had the day off from work so we decided to spend it working on the nursery. I taped the walls and John painted. Of course this turned into a much bigger project than we anticipated. I had decided that I wanted green on the bottom, pink on the top and a chair rail in the middle of the wall. Then to make it even more difficult I decided I wanted to paint a diamond design on one of the walls. Now that we are almost done, I can say that I like it and it was worth it but getting to this point was challenging. We started on the 3rd and then took some time off for the 4th to attend a bar-b-que and fireworks, back to work on the 5th with some help from Becky. John’s task was to put together the crib while Becky and I tackled taping the diamond pattern. This proved to be difficult given our crooked walls, but we got it done. The room still needs a lot of touch-up work but it is definitely looking like a little girls bedroom.

After all of the painting we went and got massages and then out to a nice dinner to enjoy the rest of our anniversary.

It's a ....

I finally had my 20 week ultrasound to check on the baby and find out the gender. When we got to the room the technician asked if we wanted to know the gender and I practically shouted YES!
She began the ultrasound and I was amazed by how thorough it was. She went through every part of the baby and gave us information, I was really shocked by how detailed she was able to get. For example, she could see that the baby's stomach was full, so she knew it was eating well, she also could tell that the bladder was full, so the kidney's were working, lots of information. It was great to see that the baby was perfect and healthy. Here are some pictures:

That's the spine.

Those are the bottoms of the feet, so cute!

Well I guess I made you wait long enough, here is the photo that shows we are having a little girl! It is really tough to tell what you are looking at but that is her butt, and the arrow is pointing at her female organs. The technician said, no doubt about it-it's a girl. She was pretty cute moving around and waving her arms while she was getting her picture taken. She weighs 14 oz right now, just under a pound, and the technician said her due date of September 12 is correct. We can't wait to meet her!

Crazy Cat Lady

Today I came home from work and this truck was parked in front of our condo. You can imagine my thought process, wondering what had gone wrong. Was there a crime on our block?? This was straight out of Law & Order SVU one of my favorite shows.

I watched the truck for awhile but then curiosity got the best of me and I decided to just go down and talk to the driver and see what was up. I pretended to be worried about my building, wondering if anyone was hurt. I honestly didn't think that was the case because there are only John and myself and the girls down stairs from us in the whole building. He was very nice in obliging my nosey-ness. He said that they were there to clean the house next door.

Now for anyone who has been to our place you know that we live next to a crazy cat lady. Her house is huge, probably a million dollar home just because of the size of the lot-but it is extremely run down. In the windows you can always see cats, I think the most I ever counted at one time was about 15, but they all look the same so it was hard to know how many were really in there.

Over the last few days we have noticed less cats in the windows. Yesterday there was a huge dumpster out in front of the building and someone came with a big cage and took some cats away, but I couldn't see all of what was going on or how many cats there were. Later that night Cat Lady and some guys threw about 4 huge litter boxes into the dumpster.

So that brings us to today and the Aftermath people. He said that someone had called and complained about the number of cats she had, and that she had to get rid of them. Then this company was called in to clean up. He said that she had anywhere between 120-150 cats in the house!!! Can you even imagine?! We knew she had a lot of cats but that is truly insane. He said that the cleaning process was unbelievable, and that you couldn't imagine what the inside of that house was like. They had to scrape the floors and he said it was just layer after layer. So gross!

The sad thing is that most of the cats probably went to a shelter and I know that they would have been completely overwhelmed by that number of cats. I am sure they were put to sleep. For a lady who obviously loved cats, she really was not doing them a service by keeping them that way.

Watching these guys get ready to go into the house was really interesting to see. They put on about 5 pairs of latex gloves, put on not 1 but 2 haz-mat suits, taped around their ankles and wrists with packing tape, and wore masks. They looked pretty serious. Sorry for the poor quality of my pictures.

Just seeing how they get all bundled up makes me think about what they do to clean up real crime scenes. Man that job would suck. Do you think these guys make a lot of money? I sure hope so.

Long weekend

Had Friday off this week, gotta love long weekends; hopefully you all are able to enjoy an extra day off too. I spent the day taking our kitty Morgan to the vet, always a fun time. Nothing else can make you feel as badly as cramming an unsuspecting kitty into the cat carrier, and then taking her to a place to get probed, prodded and generally annoyed by the outside world. It turns out that Morgan has developed allergies and so we got some medication to give him that will hopefully help. After torturing my cat, I did a little shopping at Target-gotta love that store. Later that night John and I had a date night, we went to a great bar-b-que place and then to see I Love You Man, which was really pretty funny.


Today we are doing some work around the house, in an attempt to start getting ready for the baby. We recently got an office armoire that is going to be moved into our living room today with the hope that all of the things in the office can be transplanted into the armoire. Once the office is empty we will be turning it into a nursery.

Overall I have been feeling pretty well, I have an appointment with the doctor next week-just a general check up. At the appointment they will schedule an ultrasound to determine the sex of the baby. So we should know withing a few weeks if it's a boy or a girl!

I took some pictures of my expanding belly, and thought I'd share with you all. Marena was supposed to come and see me every month to take baby belly photos and since she's fallen down on the job I thought I should start taking some. Just teasing you Marena-I love you!

Finally Finishing Phoenix

Well only a month late… here is the rest of the trip to Phoenix.

We left off on Saturday, our first day in Phoenix…

Sunday was spent sitting around relaxing while the boys hiked Camelback Mountain, which sounded really fun and also dangerous so I’m glad I didn’t go. For lunch we tried the famous In and Out Burger, which really wasn’t all that wonderful. To me it was on the same level of Portillo’s but I like Portillo’s better. Then we spent some time by the pool and it was off to dinner in Old Town Scottsdale. We went to the Pink Pony, which is an old-skool supper club where the seating is all curved booths and the atmosphere looks like something our grandparents would have enjoyed. We had some good steak and then desert at the Sugar Bowl, a fun ice cream parlor that is all pepto bismol pink, and had delicious treats.

Monday got up and got ready to go to another Cubs game enjoying a rickshaw ride from where we parked to the game. The game was not very exciting, and again we were seated in the lawn where it was about 90 degrees and sunny. Now, I hate to complain about beautiful weather, but it was a little on the hot side. Overall the Cubs lost and we left after the 7th inning-a boring game.

Tuesday was spent relaxing; John watched some movies while I went to a nearby mall to do some shopping. I have to say that Chicago has spoiled me on shopping, we have some of the best places to shop and when other towns rave about their malls I find I am often disappointed. On top of that, shopping isn’t so much fun now that I am getting bigger, but not yet able to wear maternity clothes. It’s a weird stage to be in… After shopping we headed over to John’s Aunt Pam’s house for a lovely dinner with Pam, her husband Gene, John’s Mom and her friend Vivian. They tried an ancient Celtic gender prediction ritual on me and determined that I will have 2 children in my life and the first will be a boy. Now really this was just a needle and thread stuck into a pencil eraser that was dangled over my hand, but I guess we’ll find out that validity of the ritual in 6 months.

Wednesday we picked up John’s mom and Vivian and started the long drive to Las Vegas. There is NOTHING exciting about that drive. After about 1 hour you are already sick of looking at the different kinds of cactus. We did stop at the Hoover Dam where I snapped some pictures; it was neat to see. When we arrived in Vegas we checked into out hotel, the Rio. It was really much nicer than I expected. The room was huge and even though it is off the strip it was nice. We then picked up John’s Aunt who lives in Vegas and headed off to a local casino where we ate buffet and gambled a little. John and I both lost $$ there.

Thursday we got up and headed over to the Flamingo to the buffet (I know 2 buffets in 2 days). I love the buffet there; I have good memories of eating lots of bacon (really- platefuls) with the girls while on spring break. Much to my dismay it had seemed that the baby had taken over and vetoed bacon, but while at the Flamingo an amazing thing happened. It’s almost like the baby recognized the awesomeness of the Flamingo Buffet bacon and decided it was okay. So I enjoyed about 6 slices of glorious bacon. Of course since then the idea of bacon makes me sick again… we’ll see maybe bacon’s making a slow comeback.

After the bacon we lost some $$ playing blackjack and then went to see the Cubs play the White Sox; it was great weather, but sadly the Cubs lost. Following the game we went to the new Trump hotel where John’s mom and Vivian where staying that night. John’s Aunt Tish and some of her friends treated us to a mini cocktail hour in the hotel suite. After our treat, it was off to see Cirque de Solei’s LOVE. John and I had both been looking forward to seeing LOVE, lots of people had told us how wonderful it is. While we both enjoyed it, we didn’t think it deserved the rave reviews we had gotten. After the show we walked the strip for a little while watching some of the free shows, like the Mirage Volcano and Treasure Island show. If you haven’t seen the Treasure Island show recently, it is so bad! They have tried to make it sexy, and it is just cheesy, not funny and not sexy at all-bad! After that horrible experience we needed to go somewhere we knew we’d like so we headed over to Ellis Island, an off the strip little casino that we always win at. Naturally we won this time also, managing to win back enough that we were up just a little bit on the whole. After that it was back to the Trump hotel for some rest and up early to drive back to Phoenix.

The drive back was just as dull as the drive to Vegas…we spent Friday relaxing and then out to a nice dinner. With only Saturday morning left in Phoenix we squeezed in a visit with my aunt, who I was very happy to get to see. Then it was back to Chicago. Overall a very nice trip, and probably our last baby-free vacation.