Kendall 

I’m trying to add some pictures, let’s see if I can add them!

My little Kendall is now three months old!  He is 12 lbs and 4 ounces now, (or he was at his last appointment), near the end of January!   He is truly a joy to have.  He is getting much better at sleeping in his bassinet now.  I think I will keep him sleeping in there until he pretty much outgrows the bassinet.  I like having him close by at night so I can check on him without waking him.  He is just like me in the sense that he likes to go to bed late and sleep late.  He will sleep in on the weekends which is really nice.  We had his pictures taken about a week ago, as soon as I learn how to upload them, I will put some on here.  He made us work for a smile though!  He started smiling on December 22nd, just in time for Grandma and Grandpa Norris to come for Christmas.  He had a wonderful Christmas with his Grandparents and his Aunt Mary.  This past weekend Grandma Norris and Aunt Mary came to see him again.  They had to drive through a terrible storm to get here, but they made it safely. 

In two weeks Kendall will be baptised.  Did I spell that right?  He will finally meet his Uncle Mike and Aunt Sarah for the first time.  They will be his Godparents.  Last night, we went to church and Kendall started to cry after communion, (apparently he was disappointed that he too didn’t receive a wafer?), so I took him out to the lobby.  I know no one wants to listen to a crying baby when you are trying to hear the sermon.  At the end of Mass, Dad came out and brought his bag so we sat on the couch in the lobby and fed Kendall as another little one was baptised.  That was wonderful to see!  It also gave me a sense for how long the baptism would take.  I know that is probably an awful thing to think of, but when you are dealing with a little one, it is a nice thing to know because keeping them happy can be a challenge!  We were fortunate that a couple of church members came right to our house to do the baptism class!  (A Pre-Jordan class is required if you are Catholic)  They were so wonderful, they explained everything for us and Glynnis wanted to hold Kendall, and she must have the magic touch because he sat with her for almost a whole hour; happy as a clam!  (She has four grandsons, that must have something to do with it!)  Her husband Steve also did all of my classes when I was an RCIA candidate 5 years ago, so we were very familiar with him.  I can’t believe I’ve been married almost 5 years now!

I promise to get some pictures of the little guy on here soon!  We will have to get some baptism pictures on here as well in a couple weeks!

Take care and keep warm!

On October 25th, we were finally blessed with the birth of Kendall.  It was a little stressful, but everything went very well.  I woke up at 7:30 that morning.  I was getting ready for work and I was in the bathroom and I felt a “pop,” and I thought it might be the water breaking, so I called my husband, and my mother of course and told them I was going to the hospital because I thought today “might be the day”.  I had just finished all of my school work the night before, so today was a perfect day!  So, I drove myself to labor and delivery, where David met me, and a little while later, we were informed that “yes, the water had broken”.  So I was admitted to the hospital, even though it was about 9 am now I still hadn’t felt any contractions, so the doctor showed up with some Pitocin and said we would now get the “party started”.  Mr. Kendall had different ideas though.  He was moving around so much, they couldn’t monitor him with the external monitor, and they tried the internal monitor also and it wasn’t working.  Everything started happening rather quickly and I was now feeling contractions.   Now the resident doctor came in and explained they were having a hard time monitoring him and he was having accels and decels in his heart rate, so they were trying to determine if he was in distress, but they weren’t able to tell.  So, we were proceeding with a C-Section now.  I had made the decision a couple of weeks ago that if they had to go with a C-Section, I wanted general anesthesia, just in case they had any problems, being I have had so many surgeries.  They were worried that Kendall might be a little sleepy because of the anesthesia, but they were able to get him out fast enough that he wasn’t affected at all (good doctors!).  I woke up a little while later in recovery and they finally handed him to me!  He was with his Dad while I was being finished up in surgery.  He is beautiful!   All 6 little pounds of him!  I just couldn’t believe I was finally being able to see him for the first time.  Here was this little baby boy who I’d been carrying around all this time and I had wondered what he would look like and be like when he finally arrived. 

He seems to like just about everyone who holds him.  He hasn’t automatically started crying yet when someone picks him up.  He can be hard to comfort sometimes, especially when he wants to eat or needs to be changed.  He doesn’t like to be “swaddled,” he is a human furnace just like his Dad!  He doesn’t like to sleep in his bassinet much right now either.  He pretty much wants to sleep with Mom for now. 

Our “pests” seem to be responding well to him right now too.  We are amazed at how well Jamie (dog) has taken to him!  He loves him, except when he is crying at 3 am.  Jamie watches over him.  Wants to comfort him with kisses!  The cats, whom I thought would pay him no attention, are very curious.  So, I am not sure what the cats are up to.  The dog is genuinely accepting of him though, which is what we were hoping for.

We are enjoying finally having Kendall here, even if he is a little loud and unruly at times    He is loved more than he will ever know!

Supposedly less than 3 weeks to go now!  We’ll see….  Today we went out and put the “bases” for the carseat in our cars today.  I’m hoping we have it done right.  Maybe we can have someone check it at the hospital.  Still a little scared of the “labor” part of it. 

Yesterday I went to a Pampered Chef party, that was fun.  Got to eat some “Jerk Chicken Nachos”.  David would’ve liked those.  Bought more stuff as usual.  Oh well, nothing a couple hours of overtime won’t pay for.  However, I feel I am pretty much overtimed out right now.  I’m thinking that I won’t be doing much of it now until I come back from Maternity Leave.   I can’t believe I could be a Mom any day now!  It just feels surreal.  I was sitting on my bed working on some homework for school the other night and I started thinking, soon, this will not be as easy.  Soon there will be a screaming child in the next room and our house will lose it’s “quietness”.  With just David and I living here for the last 5 years, it is going to be strange to have someone new in the house.  Even though we have a dog and 3 cats, they are pretty quiet most of the time.  I had to record the narration to a powerpoint presentation the other day and I decided that maybe Kendall’s room would be the best place to record it because it is quiet in there, and I love going in there and sitting in the glider chair and smelling that baby item smell.  It’s going to a big change in our lives!

Almost done with my 13th class for school!  Wednesday is the last day of this class, and as usual, I am working hard to just pass the class and get it over with.  A couple more assignments and it will be complete.  Just hoping that I am doing well enough in it to get my credits for it and move on to the next one.  I really wish I could’ve taken this quarter off, but my classes are in a 2 year rotation and if I skip one or two, I have to wait another 2 years for the class to come back around, or try to find a course at another school to fill in the gap in order to complete the degree. 

Well, nesting calls…..  I still have a few things I want to do before baby comes.  You know how the cleaning goes.  How you want your house perfect before baby gets here (or should I say the parents and in-laws), baby doesn’t really care about the house being clean!

Well, I have two more modules for my class right now.  This one is the biggest one, there are 5 assignments to this one, including a narrated Power Point presentation.  I’m just starting on my assignments, they are due on Friday, but I wanted to get a big jump start on them, especially the Power Point Presentation. 

Pregnancy is going well so far, but this child is getting very big!  These are definitely the “dog days” of pregnancy.  On Tuesday, I will be 37 weeks, which means he will be considered full term then.  I have had some foot and ankle swelling, hip and pelvic pain, and lots of pressure and Braxton Hicks contractions.  I know this may sound crazy, but there are moments when he gets moving around in there so much, I worry he is going to break the “water” trying to get out!  I think he must be getting uncomfortable in there, not enough room to move.  I am resolving myself to the “impending doom” of Labor.  I know it is coming and it is not going to be pleasant.  I’m praying to God to go easy on me!    I am always scared of the unknown and this is a big UNKNOWN in my life right now.  I realize it is a natural process just like the “monthly” visitor that has been absent from my life for about 8 months now (boy has that been nice!), but I get the feeling that paybacks for lost time are hell?  I think the art of pregnancy is to make women so uncomfortable with this huge baby inside them that they don’t care what they have to go through to get it out?  Sleeping is one of my favorite passtimes, but even sleeping is not so easy, as it seems like I wake up every half an hour to visit the bathroom!  Oh well, I must remember that I am fortunate to be expecting what I hope is going to be a beautiful child.  Remind of how beautiful my child is when he is 2 and telling me “No!” every few minutes, or when he is a teenager and screams at me for not letting him take the car, or wanting to wear something that I find inappropriate, or wanting to stay out past ten o’clock on a school night.  Yes, the joys of parenthood only start with something called LABOR!  I do have moments that I look at this big ol’ belly and go, “What did I get myself into?”  With that said though, the room is ready for him.  His clothes are all neatly put away, the diaper bag is packed and in the stroller for him.  (I have not packed my own bag just yet though.)  I guess I should be doing that soon hunh? 

Nesting is in full swing also.  My husband keeps asking me why we are cleaning so many things, and I said because when this baby comes, people are going to descend on our house like mad, so let’s make it “semi-clean” for them and for us when we come home.  It’s funny because one of my colleagues is pregnant and due any moment, and she said it is weird the way you just want to get rid of “cludder”.  Most of the time you think twice about throwing something out, but when you are pregnant and want to get rid of something, the garbage man is so handy!  They come right to your house and remove all unwanted things from the curb!  It’s wonderful.  I think tomorrow we are going to be going through some cupboards and pitching some things.  We need to create a “baby cupboard” to put bottles and bowls and of course eventually food in for him.  So, we will need to condense and create a space out there for him also. 

 Well, I suppose I should get back to school work, however, I’m really feeling the need for a nap right now! 

~sn

I just finished my first assignment of this new quarter.   I know I say this everytime, but I so can’t wait to be done with school!  This is my 13th class of 18, so only 2 more quarters to go after this one. 

Today starts my 34th week of pregnancy too!  I am feeling really full most of the time!  He is getting crazy big now!  I am starting to experience some of the symptoms of late pregnancy now.  Last Wednesday, I said to my husband, “my socks feel tight!”  We looked down and my ankles were SUPER swollen, then Sunday night, it disappeared just as fast as it happened!  Sometimes my bladder feels like it is being squeezed like a lemon, and I also feel pressure on my sternum every so often too.  Friday, I had Braxton Hicks contractions and that kind of scared me.  They didn’t hurt or anything, but they were coming pretty regularly for a little while and I felt somewhat nauseated.  So, it was a little scary, I took a nap and they went away though.  The nursery is pretty much ready.  He has TONS of clothes, so this had better be a boy or, I told Jamie (dog) I would cut holes for his tail and he would be really well dressed for a while!  Poor dog!  He does have his own sweater and sweatshirt, and he isn’t too fond of wearing clothes! 

At work, they just opened the new “Health Living Center” which is pretty much a state of the art gym for us employees!  It is AWESOME!  There are two olympic sized pools and being pregnant, water aerobics classes sounded kind of good to me, so I have been to a couple now and I really like it!  There are 4 floors!  There is a track, tons of equipment, and of course the pools.  Not to mention they have ‘out of this world’ showers too!  I am usually a little cold after the aerobics class and I pretty much run to the showers and stay there for like a half an hour!  Unlimited hot water and perfect rain like showerheads, who could ask for more?  I could stay forever!  There is a steam room and a whirlpool too, but I am not allowed to stay in there long, as you know, because I could “pressure cook” someone in the process, so I have gone into the steam room, for a couple of minutes and came out.  Feels good, for a couple minutes, just to breathe in a little steam.  I really want in that whirlpool, but I know I’d better not!  So, for a couple more months, I will have to just resort to my long soothing showers.

Well, I am running out of things to write for now, just figured I would add something in here for anyone interested in reading it!

~sn

You know how you do something and you know it is your fault for not planning ahead, but you still need to take the time to complain about it? 

 Here goes!  First of all, did I mention how much I am tired of SCHOOL right now?  One more Week and I am done for a few weeks!  Now just so you know I didn’t wait for the “last possible minute”.  I did start my assignment last night and it was due tonight, but they usually don’t take me very long to do.  I figured I would only need about an hour tonight to complete it and I budgeted more like 2 1/2 hours, so I was a little shocked that it was taking me so long.  They sent us to a website to go through tutorials on the VA’s computer system.  Last night I rather enjoyed it.  The speaker was really good and very easy to understand.  Tonight was a totally different scenario!  “Press this key, press that key, go jump in a lake!”  I was not following it very well at all.  In fact, I pretty much bombed the assignment because I couldn’t find the answers to the last three questions.  I need 34.5 points to pass this class and since there are about 80 still possible, I am not going to worry about it too much!  Some of the assignments you just don’t get anything out of, I can chalk that up as one of them!  The assignment has to be submitted at 11:55, well, that’s when I submitted it 11:55 on the dot!  It was just completely frustrating!  I’m having a lot of those moments lately!

Last weekend was Labor and Delivery class.  You know what?  It just reaffirmed what I already knew!  Give me the drugs darn it!  I have had surgery several times in my life already, so I am not a big advocate for pain!  I have no desire to feel like my stomach, and a few other parts are going to just rip right out of me.  I will be very happy to see the little guy though when he finally arrives.  —I think I wrote this on August 21st, and at this point, I spilled Coke all over my laptop!  So, I had to close down the computer very quickly!  Thank God, there was no harm done and the computer just needed to dry out, at first my keyboard wouldn’t work though.  Whew!  That was a close one.  Do you think Dell gets a lot of those calls?  “Help, I spilled Coke on my laptop!”

Well, this weekend was rather gloomy.  (no sun at all)  We did get lots of needed rain yesterday though!  I was telling David, “well, you’ll need to mow this week because that darned grass is sure to grow a foot now!”  Our grass has been pretty dry, but living in “the Park”, I really don’t worry too much about it.  The less we water, the less we have to cut, which saves gas right?  Ha!  I knew there was a good environmental reason for it!  I was going to work yesterday, but just didn’t really feel like it.  So, late last night we went to see the Simpson’s Movie, wasn’t too bad.  It was cute, not my favorite movie, and not a “must see” by any means for me, but it was fun to get out of the house for a while.

Oh Friday night, David went to see the Tractor Pull at the Fairgrounds (county fair going on this week).  I decided that I would finally light up the Firebowl!  (Did I mention that my family thinks I will surely burn the house down with this thing?)  It is on our deck, but I didn’t get it going all that wildly, so it was fine.  I didn’t light the deck on fire or melt the siding off the house.   I did keep a bucket of water nearby,  just in case things got out of control.  Managed to burn a Wal-Mart bag full of mail!  (hey, I get sick of shredding, there is just too much of it, much easier to just light a match and watch it burn!)  I did burn a couple of pieces of wood with it also.  Jamie sat outside with me for a little over an hour, however, I think he got bit a couple times because he wasn’t sitting close enough to the fire with me.  He actually sat down on the doormat outside our front door and scrubbed his little abdomen to scratch his itchy spots!  Kind of funny.  The doormat says, “Wipe Your Paws”.  So a little ironic that the dog was using it also.  Do they make “Off” for dogs?  We treat him with Frontline Plus once a month, but I haven’t bought K-9 Advantix yet, waiting for the price to go down a little bit on that stuff!  Jamie loves the commerical for K-9 Advantix though!  The second he hears the music he is in front of the TV barking his head off at that little dog!  He loves to watch animals on TV! 

So today, Sunday, I actually did go to work for 7 hours.  Boring, but it will be worth it to make a little extra before we go on vacation in a couple of weeks.  I came home to find that the dishes were done!  What a nice surprise!!  That and dinner was ready shortly after I got home too!  What a nice husband! 

Watching the news now.  Still a lot of information about the 35 W. Bridge Collapse in Minneapolis, very sad, it is bad, but I am so glad more lives were not lost, but I expect that they will recover more people eventually.  Feel bad for the families of those who did lose a loved one,  or still have one or more missing.  Prayers are with you all if you happen to be reading.

Will sign off for now,

Next weekend Labor and Delivery class.  That should be interesting!

Okay, I don’t usually like to talk about my job all that much but there are some things that just drive me crazy!  Our department is always up to some juvenile antic.  They call them “Performance Improvement Projects”.  Well, guess what?  They make me feel like I am in kindergarten!  The latest thing is that each office of our department puts on a “State Fair Day”.  Well, you have a choice of whether to participate or not participate.  So, for once I decided not to participate in this “initiative” right now.  I am working overtime, going to school, and oh yeah, I am almost 7 months pregnant, I do believe that I have enough to do right now.  So, I am trying to work this morning, I turned on my MP3 player and jacked up the volume and I could still hear the noise of them decorating our office for this State Fair thing.  They even ROPED off my desk so I had to Limbo under it to get out!  (their state is Texas)  So, I respectfully asked them to remove the rope, I am not going to Limbo out of my desk all day.  Remember I mentioned above that I am working overtime.  They have asked us all to commit to 8 hours of overtime for each pay period right now, yet they want to have a State Fair day??  What kind of Sam Hill management tactic is that?  Oh, let’s not forget how many TREES they’ve killed printing crap to hang all over the office!  Whose expense account is that one coming out of?   But the whole thing is so disruptive that I just want to slap them all!  Just because I decide that I didn’t want to participate in one of their goofy things for once, I feel like I am being tortured for actually doing my work!  Oh, and our manager, brought Chicago Style Popcorn for everyone who participated in decorating!  (and disrupting everyone who was working) Yeah, go ahead, reward people for NOT WORKING!  Oh, this whole State Fair thing is supposed to make it so that other people from different offices in our department can get to know each other.  Hello!  If you don’t work with them, what do you care?  You only see them once in a great while unless you change offices!  I just don’t get it.  I have never worked in a place where they have these PIP’s, it is the most ridiculous thing you have ever seen!  Other departments don’t do this!  Sarah (SIL) made the perfect reference one day to all of this stuff.  She asked “who was passing around the CRACK pipe at lunch?”  Which is so true!  What are these people smoking and where do I get some?  Anyway, sorry to totally VENT, but tomorrow is the State Fair thing, today was just the “decorating” part.  So, thank God my other friend Sarah has the day off and has agreed to kidnap me for a long lunch and shopping for a couple hours so I don’t have to be there for all the Fun and Games!  I know, I sound like a GRINCH, but I didn’t go to college to learn how to put on a “State Fair Day” at work!  I am pretty sure I wasn’t hired for this job because of my decorating skills!

I feel like I have a watermellon sitting in my stomach!  I feel like a Weeble when I walk around (Weebles wobble but they won’t fall down).  I’m really full right now too, there is no treat like fresh strawberries and sweet cherries dipped in fruit dip!  YUM!

Okay, I should be working on my research paper, but I just don’t feel like it!  I wish I could get in the mood to just whip the rest of it out, but I just can’t!  I have it about half done, but I need to share some statistics in it.  So, I have been working on the research portion to add some statistics to support my theories.  Make sense?  I have a few websites saved for that already.  But right now I can hear my husband snoring away right now, and I really want to join him for a nice NAP! 

Earlier this week we had “carseat” class to learn about carseats and how to install them in our cars.  It was interesting.  David said he almost fell asleep during the first 5 minutes, but then he started to get interested in it.  I said, “Well, next month’s class should be a real eye opener then!  Labor and Delivery!  Go ahead, take you bottom lip and pull it over your head!”  That is what Bill Cosby said one of his female relatives told him about how childbirth feels.  I figure it is only temporary, once it is over you’ll have this exciting little bundle of joy to behold.  (he’ll probably pee on me the first time I hold him hunh?)  Plus, there is my friend Barb’s motto too,  “Drugs in, Baby OUT!”  I may be a bad mother, but I am not one of those people who is freaked out about taking medicine.  I don’t smoke, I don’t drink, and I don’t do any street drugs, but I will take my prescription medications.  I worked with my physicians before I got pregnant to decide which medicines were best to control the 3 or 4 ailments that I suffer from during pregnancy.  I have Allergies, GERD, and depression with anxiety.  I know there are people out there that are freaked out about every little thing.  I wash the fruit and veggies, but I still drink a couple caffeinated beverages per day.  Soda pop is my biggest downfall.  I LOVE the stuff!  I am probably going to die with a  Dr. Pepper in my hand!  But from what I have seen on the ultrasound “Kendall” is perfect!  He’s a beautiful little boy!  Can’t wait to finally meet him!  When my doctor said, “16 more weeks!” the other day, I just about freaked  Only sixteen?  How can that be?  Well dork, you are 24 weeks pregnant now, sometime I was going to end up on the other side of the halfway mark, duh!  I just looked at my little pregnancy wheel thing, next week, it says I will be in my third trimester!  Wow, that is weird.   Most people still can’t tell I am pregnant, I just look chubbier.  In fact, when we went to carseat class, I was almost waiting for someone to ask us if we were adopting!  Just about every woman in the room was sporting a basketball!  I did feel a little better when I saw one woman sitting near me though, she looked the same way I do, just chunky.  I have gained 16.5 lbs, which they tell me is totally normal, and actually good for me being 24 weeks. 

Well folks, I do feel that new bed calling my name right now….I’m feeling like I need about an hour, then I can get back to the homework!

So goodbye for now!