Bye Bye Cedar Bluff

The past few weeks have been really bittersweet for the Reeves V family. On the one hand, I am so thrilled to tell you that we are now once again homeowners!! Yes, we were crazy enough to attempt moving with two small children at Christmastime. First order of business in the new house - get everyone's beds set up. Second order of business - get the tree/stockings up! We managed to get the important stuff put away in the past two weeks, but it's been interesting. The kitchen's pretty well in tact, as are the girls' rooms (sorry Anna, I have a few more boxes hanging out in your room right now, but you can't go through them like your big sister, so that's why they are in your room!) Our room is definitely on its way - I get distracted going through all these boxes because I literally haven't seen some of this stuff in two years since we left Gainesville. Part of me says that's a big clue that we could get rid of it if I've been able to live without it for two years, but the other part of me feels like I'm re-opening all my wedding presents again! :)

Of course, with the move comes leaving Cedar Bluff. We've been there for almost right at two years. There's been a LOT that went on in those past two years as well:
-Leave Gainesville, which was way harder than I ever thought, seeing as how I pretty much hated the place when I moved there
-Move in with Jerry's parents (literally - we were in his childhood bedroom for the first 7 months!)
-Start a new job
-Have surgery for Crohn's
-Carrie started her school and has really thrived there
-Jerry got a new job that we knew would require him being in Portugal for EIGHT months
-Moved from Jerry's room to the cottage on the Reeves' property
-Went to China for two weeks
-Was back from China for about a week and a half and found out I was pregnant!
-11 days after finding out about Baby #2, Jerry leaves for Portugal
-Sold our house in GNV! My poor father in law - he had to go with me (on Valentine's weekend, no less, and help pack up the remainder of the stuff in GNV)
-Had to go to ER because of my Crohn's acting up (and my wonderful inlaws came to rescue me since I couldn't drive!)
-Had to go to ER because I fell down chasing Carrie in the Bluffton post office (she accompanied me that time and still to this day says "Mommy fell down and had to go to the doctor")
-Went to Portugal to visit Jerry while 28 weeks pregnant
-Jerry returned home; 8 days later Anna Sophia made her early arrival!
-Finally bought a house of our own
-Got into a car accident (that actually just happened this morning and I had to throw that in there - it's an attempt to laugh to keep from crying about it, folks)

Whew! That's a lot of stuff for two years. I don't think Jerry and I will ever be able to repay Whizzy and Pop-Pop for all the support they've offered throughout this entire experience. When we were first considering a move we knew the only way we could do it was to either sell the house in GNV immediately (yeah, right) or move in with them in the interim. They never once hesitated and have driven car pool, babysat, and the list goes on. I know part of them loves to do this since it means more time with the grandchildren, but still - that was a huge commitment to take on when they were about to reclaim their house as their own when Rhett went off to college!

My parents have been amazing as well. I know my mother has to be tired of me calling with real estate questions. Too bad she didn't get a commission off every single call I made to her asking fifty thousand questions :) They made trips to SC during the time when Jerry was gone to entertain me. I always called my dad whenever I had an IT question since my usual IT department was 6 hours ahead of me. They really supported our decision, even if attempting to sell a house in the current market wasn't the wisest decision ever (hindsight and all that).

So we will soon have all of our stuff out of the cottage at Cedar Bluff and be busy finding a place for it all (or sending it to Goodwill!) in our new home. We'll clean out the cottage one last time and close that chapter of our lives. I know Jerry will never believe this, but the other day when I was over there and I walked into the cottage I was surprised to find myself a little sad. It represents a pretty significant point in our lives, and I will miss being able to walk out the back door and go have a glass of wine with Whizzy & Pop Pop and chat about the day or borrow their roasting pan to make BBQ.

Bye bye little cottage!

In Love...

I think I am in love with our new nanny. She is A-MAZ-ING. Literally. We were a little wary of trying to get another nanny because we had such a great experience in FL with Hayley for Carrie that we weren't sure that could be topped. Not to mention the pool of nanny possibilities here is considerably less than it was in a college town of over 40k students (mostly women from the looks of it). But Kayla has met and exceeded each and every expectation. It's only been two weeks, but what a great two weeks.

She takes excellent care of Anna. I have yet to come home to a crying baby, and that is saying something because usually by 4:30 she's on the verge of what my mother in law appropriately calls "hurricane hour" for kids, meaning that they've just had enough of the day, thank you very much, and are gonna be cranky! When Anna sees her she just lights up and smiles and giggles, and that does my heart good.

Carrie loves her too. I've always considered Carrie a pretty good judge of character, as are most little kids. She's very social and will say hi and smile to just about anyone, but she won't immediately jump into someone's arms unless she's sure about them. When we interviewed Kayla we could hardly get a word in edgewise because Little Miss Bossy wanted to play Ring Around the Rosie the entire time. Kayla took it in stride, answering questions while twirling Carrie and taking care to make sure she didn't slam her head into the corner of the table.

She gets Carrie ready for school in the morning so we don't have to wake her up at an ungodly hour to get her out the door (this may of course change once we move!). She asks me if there's anything I need/want her to do around the house while Anna naps. She volunteered to help pack up the cottage in anticipation of the move. She does the girls' laundry. Yesterday she put some semblance of order into our pantry which, if you had seen it, was quite the job. Did I mention that these are all things she's just seen that need to be done and she does them without me giving her any sort of task list? The only things I've explicitly asked for are items related to child care....the other stuff is just a bonus.

It's hard being a working mom of two - every day when I walk out the door I have this little twinge of mommy guilt which, as any mother knows, is the most powerful stuff in the world. But I know Carrie loves her school (and yes, it really is more of a school than a daycare....the kid is writing her ABCs already people!) and the people there love her and take care of her as I would, so that makes a huge difference. And now I know that Anna is well taken care of and loved while I'm not there as well. Not only does it put my mind at ease, but it feels like a physical weight has been lifted. Whew.

Happy Anniversary!!

Today marks 7 years of being married - can you believe it?!? Who would have thought that an innocent study abroad trip the summer between my junior and senior year at GT would lead to all that we've experienced in the past 11 years? Between the two of us we've experienced 5 degrees, one very tiny apartment in Gainesville FL, (almost) three homes, 5 moves, 5 jobs, 3 really cool vacations, 1 dog, and 2 kids. I can't imagine a better person for me to have experienced all of that with either :)

So what does one buy one's spouse for their 7th anniversary? Hopefully, fingers crossed, this:

Back to work

So I'm back at work now. Boo hiss. I actually did better this time around than I did when I returned to work after having Carrie. I seem to remember being reduced to an absolute puddle of tears several times that first day back. This time I had some tears as I left in the morning since I don't get to see either Anna or Carrie in the morning before leaving for work (I'm now working 7-4 instead of 8-5), but managed to make it through the day without any further meltdowns. Anna was so excited to see me when she woke up from her nap and I was there last night, so that was great. Carrie goes to sleep around 7:30-8 so I unfortunately don't get to see her too much after work, but Anna still doesn't go to sleep till about 11 so I have plenty of quality time with her :)

It was so weird last night....we had ZERO meltdowns from either girl last night. Which was nice, don't get me wrong, since Jerry was at a function in Savannah so I had them both last night. But it was a little like "who are you and what did you do with my children?" Perhaps it was as one of my friends put it on my facebook page, that it was just a lot of fun when I got home and so they weren't interested in mucking it up by pitching a fit! It is nice and quiet at work as compared to home, but I already find myself waiting for the weekend so we can have all day together. Wonder if I'll still feel the same by 8pm on Sunday evenings :)

Things I am thankful for

This seems an appropriate time to reflect on what I am thankful for, not only because it's Thanksgiving, but because I'm going back to work on Monday and I think I'll need to remind myself of all the wonderful things in my life when I have to leave Anna at home that morning!
-My wonderful husband (and not only because I think I've just about got him convinced that he can handle both girls on his own for at least part of the day after Thanksgiving so Mom and I can go out in the fray of Black Friday shopping). He is an amazing person and I am so glad to have him in my life. He is the best dad ever (right up there with my own dad!). I love watching him interact with our girls. And he is my biggest cheerleader, constantly pushing me to believe in myself more than I ever have.

-My girls. I can't believe that I have two daughters now! Sometimes I have to pinch myself and remind myself that they are indeed my children....still seems odd to use the plural form of child, but I'm getting used to it. Carrie is such an amazing little girl - truly not a baby anymore. She's 2 going on 20 if you ask her. She constantly amazes us with what she's learned in her two short years, talking about how her favorite dinosaur is the T-Rex, and that Thanksgiving is all about the "Penguins" (that would be Pilgrims for those not well versed in toddler talk) and Native Americans. No joke, she really did tell me all about the Native Americans on the way home yesterday. And Anna just is growing by leaps and bounds every day, getting her own little personality. On the one hand I can't wait to see how they interact as they grow up, and on the other hand I want so badly to keep them just as they are right now so they'll never grow up.

-My parents. They have made me into the woman I am today. They love my children as much as I do. I'm finding it so hard to put into words how I feel about them as I'm sitting here typing, so I'll leave it at the fact I hope I am at least half the person they are, because I'd consider myself successful.

-My inlaws. Don't think I would have made it through the past year if it weren't for Whizzy & Pop Pop!! Whizzy runs car pool just about every single day for Carrie and while Jerry was out of town and I was growing more and more pregnant by the second, she knew just when to offer to hang out with Carrie for a bit so I could have some down time. Pop Pop has dealt with our crazy house search and helped us out tremendously, and barring any catastrophes we'll close in about three weeks on our third house!! And when we move out I can honestly say that I truly love my inlaws as much, if not more, than the day we moved in (and I would dare say that not many folks out there could say that!) This also includes my sisters-in-law, which are really more like my sisters :) I've known them for about 11 years now, and they are amazing young women.

-My family. I don't get to see all of the members of my family very often now that we live in SC and they are in GA/MS/FL, but I think about them often and know that, if anything happened, they'd be here for me in a second.

I think that about covers it for now!

Thanks honey!

I have such a great hubby :) He is very conscious of the fact that, in order for me to be a great wife/mother I too need my "Mommy time" which is what we call it when I get to actually leave the house sans children. Yesterday was my weekly "mommy time" and I went all over the place and did all kinds of errands without any little helpers and it was great. Don't get me wrong - I obviously love my kids - but grocery shopping with a two year old and a two month old is not high on my list of favorite things in the world to do. So even though Anna still gets a little cranky whenever I'm not around, he sent me on my way yesterday morning. I immediately went to Starbucks to get my java chip frappuchino (yum!) and started marking things off my list. I was only gone for about 2 hours or so, but it's amazing what two hours can do. I was surprised at how much I got done in that timespan...I managed to go to Starbucks, Target, Petco, Blockbuster, Publix, and get gas all in two hours. Jerry was amazed when I came back home because he thought I was going to be gone for the better part of the afternoon. Be careful what you wish for, dear.... :)

Sign that your newborn nurses too much (or that your husband needs to watch what he says around your two year old)

So the family had a nice get together yesterday at Cedar Bluff in honor of Alston's birthday and her visit to the lowcountry. There were aunts, uncles, cousins, friends, you name it. I was talking with a few of these folks when Anna started getting a little fussy and my darling first daughter Carrie is right there beside me. I ask her a question I've asked a million times since Anna was born.

Me- "Carrie, Anna's upset, huh?"
Carrie - "Yep."
Me - "Yes (we're trying to get her to say 'yes' instead of 'yep' or 'yeah'). What do you think she needs?"

Now, 99.99% of the time when I ask her that question she says "She's hungry" or "she needs food." This, apparently, was the .01% that she busted out with a different answer.

Carrie - "She needs the boob!"

Thanks, Carrie. Appreciate that.

And Jerry - if that's not proof that Carrie is listening to EVERY SINGLE WORD that is said, I don't know what is.

My Inner Chef

One good thing I've discovered while on maternity leave this time around (other than having fun hanging out with Anna), is I've been able to actually cook. Not the "It's 6pm what the heck are we having? Tacos sound good" cooking, but flipping through my recipes and cookbooks and trying new recipes out that I haven't been able to try before now. I really love cooking, I just don't seem to have enough time to do it during the week while working and doing the kid thing. I've discovered some great cookbooks that focus on cooking in large batches at once and then freezing, which actually got me through a lot of the time Jerry was in Portugal. We always have homemade spaghetti sauce at the ready in the freezer, and now some homemade chicken pot pie, chicken enchiladas, and some yummy lasagna.

Before Jerry headed to Chicago yesterday morning he said "You know, I'm going to really miss your cooking this week." I think that was the biggest compliment on my cooking I've ever received :)

Time flies

Wow, it's been awhile since I've posted here!! So much has happened....Anna's doing much better these days. Eating like a champ, as well as sleeping like a champ. We seem to be in a routine of sleeping for 8 hours at night now, regardless of what time we go to sleep. Last night it was 11:30-7:30; the night before it was 10:30-6:30. I think I can deal with any going to bed time if I know there's 8 hours of sleep to be had afterwards :)

Carrie's doing fabulously with her little sister. As soon as she gets home in the afternoons she runs straight over to the couch where Anna and I usually are (sleeping 8 hours at night means pretty much eating non stop during the day), hops up and starts rubbing her feet and talking to her. She's really taken to the role of big sister very well. Much better than I ever anticipated she would. She still has her moments, to be sure....just ask Jerry about bathtime last night :) Let's just say she never really got a bath. I wasn't in there, but all I could hear was crying from Carrie because Daddy wasn't using the right soap. When he switched to the "right" soap, it magically turned into the wrong soap. I guess that's the prerogative of a two year old (and a female to boot!). She still loves school - learning to write her letters. She comes home and loves to show us how to write A, B, C, D, & E, as that's as far as they've gotten so far. It's crazy to me that she's already writing out letters and so forth.

I'm really making an attempt to truly savor my maternity leave this time around. I think with Carrie I was anxious to get back to work to "regain" some of my identity outside of being a mommy to some extent. This time I am not as concerned with work or making sure the house is just so. This could very well be our last kiddo, which means the last time I'll ever get to experience this time in a child's life. Sappy, yes, but it's how I rationalize not always getting the dishes cleaned before Jerry gets home, or accidentally leaving a load of laundry in the washer :) So if Anna eats then wants to nap in my arms, so be it.

Our miracle baby

I was already contemplating a blog post with this title prior to this weekend's events, but now I have two reasons to post here with this title....

My first is because I really do think of Anna as our little "miracle" baby. It's no secret anymore that me getting pregnant the first time required medical intervention. Not being able to get pregnant the "normal" way was a blow to me - as a woman if you can't do that, then what can you do? That's what women are supposed to be able to do, and I couldn't. Thankfully we lived in a town that had excellent medical care and I was able to get in to see the necessary doctors rather quickly (I guess it probably didn't hurt that I worked in the department of medicine, either!). It took right at a year for me to get pregnant with Carrie. At the time that seemed like an eternity, but in the field of infertility, that's nothing.

So imagine my surprise when, just two days before Christmas 2008, I took a pregnancy test and it was positive. I wasn't supposed to be able to get pregnant without medical help....yet there it was staring me in the face. I distinctly remember when I took the job with GT-Savannah sitting at the kitchen table crying my eyes out because their medical insurance didn't cover infertility treatments. I had thought to make sure that their insurance covered my Remicade treatments prior to accepting the job, but I didn't think to check on the infertility treatments. I remember thinking it was going to cost us about $10k a month that we "tried" to conceive child #2, and thinking we'd never be able to do that. So both Jerry and I were a little shocked when I took the test and it came up positive. Jerry was elated; this was what he had been hoping for (me too!), that I'd somehow be able to get pregnant without help so that it would be a big surprise. And yes, it WAS a big surprise!! To top it off, Jerry also got his wish in that, although Anna's delivery date was scheduled, she decided to come early. He got to do the whole "honey, it's time!" deal and scramble around the house making sure we had everything we needed and rushing to the hospital for the baby to be born. I will never forget having contractions in the car and him driving like a lunatic from Okatie to Savannah. I remember telling him "well, it looks like you got exactly what you wanted with this kid - he/she was a complete surprise AND we're doing the rush to the hospital routine!"

And after this weekend, Anna's my miracle baby once again. She spiked a fever of what we thought was 100.4 from our thermometer at home on Friday morning at 2:30am. By the time we got to the hospital at 3:30am, it was at 100.7, which earned us an automatic 2 day stay in the hospital. The doctors explained that with newborns they had to be extra cautious because their bodies could be overwhelmed by infection within a few hours and could die from said infections. This meant Anna had to get an IV straight away so they could administer antibiotics and draw blood for blood cultures and samples, she had to get a catheter to collect a urine sample, and worst of all she had to get a spinal tap to check her spinal fluid to ensure she didn't have meningitis. I truly hope that I never have to witness either of my children ever getting a spinal tap ever again. Jerry tried to keep me from seeing it, but as I was walking back from the restroom at one point I could see her out of the corner of my eye, and it will probably be awhile before I get that picture out of my head. I know there are much worse things that she could have, but this was a first for me and something I hope never to repeat.

Everyone's home now and on the mend. We're attempting to get back to normal. So, if anyone has any tips on how to get little Anna to go back to sleeping on her own and not with me, they would be much appreciated :) She was just a little spoiled when she was sick, and now we're attempting to get back to everyone being in their own beds!

Which is which?

Do these two kids look alike or what?

Okay, okay

Cut me some slack people! I've finally updated our Picasa site to include pics of Anna's early arrival :)

Life with two kiddos is interesting to say the least! All I can say is thank goodness my mom's here to help out for a couple of weeks!

Carrie seems to be adjusting as well as can be expected. Some times she just wants to love all over Anna....and others she gets a little mad that Anna takes up so much of my time. All expected reactions from her; it's just hard as a mommy to feel like you aren't able to fulfill the expectations of both kids at the same time. I'm sure it's something I'll figure out when I've had more than a few days under my belt of being a parent to two children!

Anna's 1st Full Day

Today was a great day! We had a very routine night last night as well as today. Lady (Carolyn) came to help out and bring clothes to Mom and Dad. Anna went to the nursery and passed her hearing test! We had Larry's Subs for lunch. Yum! Mommy's first cold sub in 9 months! Whizzy, Rhett, and Carrie came in this afternoon to so that Carrie could meet her little sister for the first time. "That's my little sister" ! Carrie also announced to her friends at school that she had a little sister. Everyone was very excited! Papa Johns for dinner and now we are off to "bed". Here are a couple of good pictures from today. It looks like we will shoot to go home on Wednesday morning.
Good Night All!

Welcome Anna Sophia!

At 6:14pm this evening we are please to have Anna Sophia join our family! 6lbs and 10.2 oz and 18.25". As of this writing Mommy is great and Anna is hangin in the NICU working out some fluid in her lungs. We should have her with us in a couple of hours. Yea! Here are some pictures of todays adventures. We look forward to introducing her to you all...

So what's a few days....

Sorry everyone but I (Jerry) will be handling blog duties for the next few days because today is the day! #2 has decided to make his or her grand entrance 12 days early! Stay tuned b/c we will be heading to the OR this evening for the delivery. Yea! For those of you who have been keeping up, the wait is almost over as we will let you know the name and sex ASAP!

Stay tuned... Only a few hours to go!

HE'S HOME!!!!

Finally! Jerry's been home almost a week, and even my co-workers have noticed a difference in me....they say I'm laughing more, looking more relaxed, etc. That's cause my partner-in-crime is finally back on the correct side of the pond, silly people! (Well, that and the fact that I can say "honey, i'm really exhausted....can you give carrie a bath tonight?")

Welcome home, Daddy! We missed you terribly and are so excited that you're back and we're so close to starting the next exciting chapter in our life, growing from a family of three to a family of four!

Please excuse the fact that I look like the broad side of a barn in this photo. This is what 36 weeks pregnant looks like. Taken moments after our reunion!

Random updates

Hi there! I'm waiting on all of my guidebooks on Portugal/Spain to make their return trip to the states before finishing up the blogs on my trip there since I can hardly remember my name these days. In the meantime....

Went to the doc on Thursday and got a great report! Well, great in that fluid levels are going in the right direction - up. She still wants me to rest and drink gallons of water, which I've been doing, and it seems to be doing the trick. While there I thought they had forgotten about me....they hooked me up to the non-stress test machine to measure contractions and baby's heart rate - and left me there. For like 45 minutes. I finally knocked on the wall and another nurse came in and apparently no one realized I was in there. Fantastic. Luckily she ran to get my nurse who had forgotten about me and also brought me some sweet tea & a brownie to encourage the baby to move around a little more. I do what I can in the name of helping my baby.

Jerry will be home on SATURDAY. I can hardly believe it. Some times it feels like it's been forever that he's been gone, and sometimes it feels like it's been 5 minutes. More often than not it's the former, but oh well. It's almost over! Jerry keeps saying he's going to mess up the "routine" Carrie and I have going. I say come on home and mess it up all you want :)

Carrie went to the "big girl" class today at school. She's obviously been two for awhile now, but the school waited till now to move her and several other kiddos from her 18 month old class over to the two year old class all at the same time to ease the transition. Thankfully there's a total of 6 kids going over there starting today, and one of them is her BFF Lauren. I'm not kidding - these two are like super glue on each other. They always have to sit right beside each other whenever doing crafts, story time, lunch, you name it. The teacher did say she had to separate them at naptime or otherwise they'd keep the entire class up chattering. I just find it utterly fascinating that this sort of social structure has started so early in life. I guess it's the psychology training coming out in me, but I'd love to spend a day just watching like a fly on the wall to observe all of this!

I am having a little bit of mommy guilt over the fact that I didn't take her on her very first day, but I will be picking her up. I didn't take her because getting her out the door and deposited at school and me at work by 8am is never going to happen and I had a meeting this morning at 8:30. I feel horrible not taking her on her first day of big girl class, but also felt silly asking to come in late on one of the only three days I'm in the office each week. I will take her in tomorrow, though. And my mom got to take her in today, so that was a "treat" for mom as well. Apparently as soon as they pulled into the parking lot Carrie announced "No Miss Lizzie class." Uh oh. She wasn't terribly happy from what I hear about going to her new class, but she waved like crazy to my mom from the window (I'm glad that this classroom has a window just like her old one does, so we can do the ol' "wave bye bye to mommy!" trick if necessary).

There are lots of new things going on in her class - no sippy cups, just regular cups (um, let me know how THAT goes) and stand up diapering in the bathroom to encourage potty training. I have to admit I've been terribly lazy on the potty training thing. I had a lofty goal of having her trained by the time Jerry got home. Obviously that hasn't happened. But seriously - have I had the patience and energy to go through that little process in these past few months? Absolutely not. Jerry seems quite committed to getting her potty trained himself after he arrives home, so I say go for it buddy. I am hoping that by seeing all the other kids in her class doing it she'll want to speed up the process. It may all go out the window in 3.5 weeks, but that's okay. At least she'll have a vague idea of what she's supposed to be doing.

Three days a week

That's how often I'll be in the office from now until 8/21. Just three days a week. It feels weird - I haven't done this since I left UF (my boss there was an absolute angel and allowed me to work from home two days a week after Carrie was born....I could only dream for such a set up this time around!). I'm not good at admitting I'm exhausted and run down and can't keep up my usual go, go, go pace, but this time I don't have much choice. I am exhausted and run down :) Plus the OB ordered me to only work three days/week. The amniotic fluid around the baby is lower than she'd like, so it's her hope that with some extra rest and fluid intake it will right itself. I'm not sure of the other alternatives if that course of action doesn't work....IV fluids? Deliver baby early? I didn't really want to get into all of that last week at my appointment because I was a little wigged out about the low fluid levels. I go back on Thursday for another ultrasound (yeah - more pictures!), a non-stress test and check in with the doctor. The only good thing out of this is that Jerry *may* get to come home a week early. I at least had the presence of mind to ask the doc to write a letter indicating it might be in my/baby's/Jerry's best interest to come home earlier than expected. Well, that and the fact that I can watch Food Network all day Tuesday/Thursday if I so desire! ;)

Jerry's Fifteen Minutes (or seconds) of Fame

Jerry will probably KILL me for uploading this video to our blog, but I just couldn't resist!!

Movie Madness

My parents and Jerry have all heard me whining as of late about the filming of a movie on our campus. Miley Cyrus & Greg Kinnear are currently filming "The Last Song" on our campus, and it's been nothing short of a circus. It's been in the works for awhile now. I've been involved in getting all the different sides to play nice and get the lawyers to sign all the necessary paperwork. Then some of the folks in charge of shooting the movie got my phone number and let's just say I've been hopping pretty much non stop for the past two weeks, and especially the past two days as that's when the actual filming has been going on. Yesterday was pretty quiet, amazingly enough, but that was before the Savannah Morning News came out to take photos and then had a huge article in the paper this morning about how Miley was filming on campus. Some family drove from freaking Augusta this morning in hopes of seeing Miley. I hate to burst their bubble, but even on campus that kid's not allowed to walk around - whenever she's going to/from the actual set she's shoved into a giant black Tahoe and shuttled around. One of the local news stations showed up and tracked me down to see if I was interested in being on TV and talking about the effect the filming has had on campus life....no thank you, I value my job and therefore couldn't really say what I wanted to say!

It has been pretty amazing to see the transformation of our campus building into a hospital scene. I did get to sneak a peek at both Miley and Greg Kinnear yesterday afternoon while checking out the chaos (with the blessing of my boss, thank you). Now he and I are scheming to get some GT Savannah merchandise into the hands of Greg & Miley. It would be pretty darn cool to see a photo snapped of Miley Cyrus at some point down the road wearing a GTS t-shirt.

Portugal Day 3

So this proved to be one of the more 'exciting' days on the trip, depending on your definition of exciting....

We had to wake up fairly early because we decided to go hang out in Lisbon all day instead of Porto since the weather in Porto wasn't all that great. This meant catching a 9:30am train so we could get to Lisbon at a reasonable hour and have a good portion of the day to wander about before boarding the hotel train at 10:30pm. So we were up and at em, packing all our stuff up (I wasn't going to be back in Porto again before heading home) and heading to the train station. We took a taxi because, although it was "all downhill" as Jerry promised, I really didn't care and wasn't interested in lugging my bags downhill to the station. Good thing cause the taxi ride took about 10 minutes (which means it would've probably taken me an hour to waddle). We get to the station with about 20 minutes till the train leaves and Jerry gets this panicked look on his face. All the money that he's been so diligently saving up for our trip from his per diem that he hasn't spent....left back in the hotel safe (and it was a pretty darn good amount). He immediately takes off, ON FOOT, back to the hotel. I'll never know how he did it, but he managed to get back to the hotel, get the money, and get back to the train station inside of 15 minutes.

We hop on the train and get settled for a two hour or so ride. We're in "first class" which just means you get a little snack on the train. It was so funny though - they give us a menu that has choices on it, but then just brought us something else entirely that wasn't on the menu at all. Not that we really cared, but it was like "here's what you COULD have, but we don't really feel like serving that, so you'll be getting this instead."

The train ride was somewhat uneventful until I noticed Jerry's got this weird look on his face. I ask him what's wrong, and he tells me he doesn't feel so well. Seriously? This guy NEVER gets sick, and when he does it's like the world's coming to an end. I won't go into all the gory details of what was wrong with him, but let's just say once we were in Lisbon we got to see a Portuguese ER in action. I must say that from start to finish we were only there for about an hour and a half. It was impressive. And always fun to try to navigate the medical community in an entirely different language from your own. Stuff like this would usually send me into a tailspin, but I just sort of went with the flow and we were making jokes about it the entire time. Thank goodness we had switched Jerry from my medical insurance to his company's for while he's overseas. I don't know this for a fact, but I'm pretty sure it helped minimize the pain of the entire process.

After that little side adventure we decided to go get something to eat since we managed to miss lunch altogether. By this time it was around 4 or so, so we were running out of daylight in Lisbon. We had grand plans of all of the fun things we were going to go see, but only managed to hit the Santa Justa elevator and do some general wandering around in the city before heading back over to the train station.

We could board the overnight train from Lisbon to Madrid at 10pm, so we were at the station around 9:30 anxiously awaiting when we could board. Jerry was just so excited about the concept of an overnight train....I myself was not sold on the idea, but went along with it because I knew Jerry thought it sounded like fun. We got on the train and were directed to our cabin. Honestly it should be called a very tiny hole in the wall, because that's what it was. It was pretty much exactly as I had anticipated; I think Jerry was a little surprised. When the beds were let down out of the wall, you could barely get around (especially if you happened to be 28 weeks pregnant). The bathroom was a joke, but at least we didn't have to stumble down the corridor to go pee in the middle of the night. I could tell Jerry was truly disappointed because it hadn't lived up to his expectations, but we just repeated our motto of "it's an adventure" and sucked it up. They served dinner at 10:30 (normal for Portugal, although by this time I'm beyond starving) so we headed to the dining car, ate dinner, then went back and attempted to get comfy in the little cracker jack box of a room we had. I have no clue how these other people that didn't get the sleeper cars did it. This was definitely one of those experiences that I'm glad we did and can say we've done it....but I do NOT care to repeat it in this lifetime, unless it's the freaking Orient Express or something.

Funny School Story

So Carrie's not a big fan of me dropping her off at school in the mornings. I'm not sure if it just throws her off since Whizzy usually takes her, if she's just extra clingy right now, or if some other force is at work, but it usually involves a full-scale meltdown to the point of her gluing herself to my leg. This happened this morning and after me trying everything I possibly could think of, it came time for me to just kiss her goodbye and trust that Elisabeth could handle it when I left (although believe me, I'd much rather have hung out all day and played than go to work!). Elisabeth calmed her down a bit by suggesting that she come over to the big window in their classroom and watch for me and wave when I left the building. Carrie seemed to think that was a good idea so off she went. I slipped out of the room and headed out of the building. I rounded the corner and was immediately greeted with the cutest sight I've seen in a long, long time - an entire line of about seven toddler faces all peeking out of the window waving bye-bye to me just as hard as their little hands would wave. And yes, Carrie was indeed one of the smiling faces, thank goodness.

That was definitely a good way to start the day.

Portugal Day 2

Day 2 of our vacation started off late....as in, I didn't wake up until 10:15am!! I literally thought I had forgotten how to sleep that late, but was soooo glad my body remembered. We hopped up, went to have breakfast downstairs before they shut down the buffet, then headed out for our day...

We decided to take a trip up to the area near Porto where all the wineries are. Not that we could really go on the wine tasting tours (well, we could have, but wouldn't have been too much fun for me), but it was supposedly a nice drive and pretty country, according to Jerry. It's only after we set out that he tells me it's through pretty windy roads and he and a bunch of guys got lost the last time they tried to do this drive. Great....

Having me serve as navigator is a horrible idea since I'm doing good to get back and forth to work each day without incident, but I certainly couldn't drive since it was a stick shift. He wasn't kidding - the roads were VERY windy, and I definitely started feeling woozy about an hour into the drive. And we got lost. This is about the time we came up with our two mantras for the trip: 1) "We're getting there and 2)It's an adventure. Luckily we made it to Regua safe and sound after a few wrong turns and near misses of me almost having to hang my head out the window. Regua is a cute little town along the river Douro, so we just sort of wandered up and down the streets, found a place to have a bite to eat, and wandered some more.

Things got really interesting when we tried to go home. Jerry was trying to find the short cut back to the main highway to avoid all the twists and turns....well, we ended up on some teeny tiny roads that I was sure we were going to get into a head-on collision on through these tiny little "towns" if you can even call them that. One of the funniest things we saw was this little old lady shuffling along the side of the road chatting away on her cell phone. These towns didn't have any good signage for stupid Americans that got lost, but they had cell phone service??? After a few choice words on both our parts and driving alongside what we knew to be the main road we were looking for, we finally got to a point where we could actually get on said road and head back to Porto. I tried to get Jerry to just drive through the vines and undeveloped land just to get to the road faster, but I guess he was concerned about messing up the rental or something :)

When we got back to Porto we walked over the bridge that connects Porto to Villa de Gaia (where Jerry's actually staying). It was really beautiful as it was just at nighttime and everything was lit up. We went down by the river and had dinner at a great restaurant called Chez Lapin. It was recommended to Jerry by one of the Portuguese he works with (it was where he took his wife on their very first date). It was SO good. Jerry had the veal (which I'm not a huge fan of, but still tried and it was pretty good), and I had pork in a mustard sauce. Yummy! After dinner (which ended around 11 or so...these people eat LATE) we headed back to the hotel to get ready for the next day. We decided during the day that we were going to take the early train to Lisbon, knock around there all day, then board the hotel train for Madrid at 10:30pm. Little did we know what was waiting for us in Lisbon!!

Come ON!

Small break in the Portugal/Spain action....

Had to go to the freaking eye doctor today. My eyes have been itching like crazy, tearing up and looking like I'm hung over on and off for a week now. I finally broke down and went to the doc today because it started to look suspiciously like pink eye. Thankfully it's not that, but some allergic reaction to something. That's about as specific as he got - "it seems you are definitely allergic to something in the environment." Gee Doc, that narrows it down. Thanks.

Good thing I recently got a nice pair of glasses that I don't mind wearing out in public.

Portugal Day 1

So my trip to finally get to see Jerry after 2.5 months of separation began on June 5th. I had originally planned on flying out of Savannah at around 3:30 and then catch the flight from Atlanta to Madrid at 6:40. Well, after a quick look at the weather on Friday morning I realized I needed to get the heck out of Savannah earlier if possible. At the slightest hint of bad weather either here or Atlanta, and that flight is the first to get cancelled. It would not have been pretty had my flight been cancelled! So I called Delta on the way in to work and sure enough, I could get on the 11:45 flight to Atlanta (for what was supposed to be a $100 change fee....but they never asked for my credit card at check in!). I had to go in and do a few things before leaving the office, so Mom took Carrie to the Barnes & Noble to check out the books and get some Starbucks then picked me up around 10:30. Love flying out of Savannah - even if your flight is at 11:45 you can pretty much guarantee it won't be hard to get through security or anything. Of course, when I got there and got to the kiosk to check in, the stupid machine had no record of my reservation. Panic ensues (it's what I'm good at), but I finally flagged down an agent and told her what was going on. She was able to pull up my reservation and got me all checked in and ready to go!

By this time it was about 11, so I needed to scoot through security and get settled at the gate. Carrie was fine til I tried to kiss her goodbye and she lost it, which made me lose it. I'm walking down to the security line and I can hear her wailing :( I got through security with no problems, got my Java Chip Frappuchino and got settled at the gate. I called my mom to check on Carrie and she says "Oh yeah, she's fine now. As soon as we left you she spotted a dog in the airport and was totally fine." Gee, glad I'm so easily replaced!!

The flight to Atlanta was fine. Got there and had some lunch at Chilis while sitting next to a rather rude woman. She engaged me in conversation and, when I told her where I was going, she couldn't quite comprehend why on earth I wouldn't quit my job and move to Portugal while Jerry was there. Gee lady, as great as that sounds, I can't really abandon my job and uproot Carrie and all that. I just finished my lunch as quickly as possible and got the heck out of there!!

Let me say that I am spoiled for life now....anytime I fly anywhere as far away as Portugal I'm gonna want to fly first class. It was so amazing!! I actually slept on the plane, quite comfortably actually, and it was just a really nice experience. I mean, it doesn't really make me love flying by any stretch, but it did help the anxiety level.

Got in to Madrid around 9:30am their time (that'd be 3:30am east coast time), and had to do the whole customs/recheck bag thing and went to wait on my flight to Vigo where Jerry was going to pick me up. That flight was uneventful, and I landed around 1pm their time. I was SO excited to see Jerry that I managed to walk right out of the secure area...without retrieving my luggage. Great. I found Jerry and he was like "Um, glad to see you, but didn't you bring any clothes for the next 10 days?" So we had to track someone down that would take pity on the poor brainless pregnant woman and let me back in to get my bags. Retrieved my bags and we were off!

Jerry warned me about the rental car before we even got to it. It was a nasty shade of brown, so I'm sure you can imagine the nicknames he gave it. We piled in and started to head back to Porto. We did stop in one little town (Jerry - what was the name of it??) and saw a really pretty church on top of a hill that had great views. We also managed to see a bride while there. We were there for about an hour or so, then headed off to look for some food. These people eat at weird hours. I think it was like 4pm or so when we stopped at a restaurant and had some pizza. I was pretty impressed with Jerry's Portuguese; that is, until the waitress stopped him at one point and said "You can speak English." I think Jerry felt a little put off, but I think he was doing a great job :)

We made it back to Porto and I have to say his accomodations are actually pretty good. Good thing since he's been there for 6 months. He's got a kitchen area, a TV (with mainly Portuguese channels, of course), a sitting area, and then the bedroom is separate. We pretty much just dropped off my stuff then headed out to attempt to secure reservations on the hotel train from Lisbon to Madrid for 6/8. We got to the train station and that particular one had already closed their international counter, so we had to go one stop up to the next station. Got there, Jerry didn't have his passport so we couldn't get the Eurail passes validated. Go back to original train station to get Jerry's backpack out of the car which has his passport (all the while me doing the mommy thing saying "Why don't you have your passport on you ANYWAYS???"), go back up to the other station and get our reservations and then go back to original train station. Oy.

Then we go park the car at the hotel and start walking. Not really my idea of fun after a long day of travel, but okay. It was very interesting to see everything that Jerry's been talking about for months. We went to the grocery store which was an experience and an education all in one, seeing the different meats/fish they eat. After that we went back and had dinner at the hotel. By this time it was about 10pm! Very late to me, but apparently very normal. The only good thing was that this certainly got me on track for not having jet lag the next day!!

Panic & Separation Anxiety

I know I know...I promised to give blow by blow updates on what happened in Portugal/Spain, and I will. I just had to get this out before I exploded though.

I have those lovely little ticker things on my iGoogle home page. You know, the ones that count down to whatever event you program into it. I have one that happily announces that Carrie's 3rd birthday is 299 days away...and another that says it's a mere 72 days until Baby Reeves #2 arrives. SEVENTY-TWO DAYS, people. And that's assuming this child does not try to make an early appearance (please don't, little one - your daddy isn't back yet!!) Can you say that panic has officially set in? There is so much to be done from my perspective and not nearly enough time to do it (what with me all but collapsing on the couch after Carrie goes to sleep in the evenings). There's so much crap in storage that I need to haul out and start getting cleaned up and ready like car seats, baby bathtubs, swings, etc. Carrie's big girl bed isn't in yet, but when it does come in we'll have to do that little transition which hopefully will go well (note to self - I still need to get some sheets for the poor child to put on the bed). There's all this stuff that I had planned on getting done while Jerry was gone that hasn't materialized yet, like making sure Carrie's baby book is all up to date, photo albums are current, etc. And oh yeah, there's the little thing of us still not having bought our own home yet. I seriously thought we would have by now after selling our FL house in February, and we had several prospects, but we honestly just lost steam on it for awhile and had so many other things going on it got pushed to the side. Plus it honestly freaks me out a bit at the idea of buying a home without Jerry actually seeing it with his own two eyes (yes, I know I can email pictures and video, but it's not the same!) I know all this probably sounds silly to many, if not all, of you, but these are the things that keep me up at night so don't make fun. I just know that two children does not equal twice the work - from what I hear the work grows exponentially instead (how's that for a GT dorkism?). I can't promise I won't have an anxiety attack before this is all said and done! ;)

On another note, poor Carrie does NOT like for Mommy to take her to school apparently. She had a meltdown on Monday for whatever reason when I dropped her off. I think it was a combination of me waking her up early, her not being used to me dropping her off in the mornings, and the final straw was when we got to school and realized Miss Elisabeth (her favorite teacher) was not there. Cue gigantic tears from the wee one, and it broke Mommy's heart too. Yesterday was "water day" so she didn't hesitate at all about going to school since she knew kiddie pools and sprinklers were in her future. Today we had more tears before I even tried to give her a kiss goodbye. She just glued herself to my leg and when I sat down with her for a minute she plopped right in my lap and stuck her thumb in her mouth. Thanks to some quick thinking from Miss Rita, some snacks and a sticker the morning was saved. It just breaks my heart to see her crying like that when I know it's because I'm about to head out the door. I'm not sure if it's just typical toddler behavior or if she's afraid Mommy is going to disappear for awhile again like I did when I went to visit Jerry. Either way it sort of stinks (even though I know she'll be fine)!

Made it back!!

So I've made it back safe and sound from my whirlwind Portugal/Spain trip. I will provide more details later (i.e. when I can upload all of the pictures that will help me to remember what I did on this trip, cause there was a LOT!), but I just wanted to say hi to everyone and let you know I'm back on this side of the pond. It was sooooo good to see Jerry. I hold it together fairly well these days with him being gone, but I miss him more than words can say. There were definitely tears in the Madrid airport (and not just on my part, although I was responsible for a marjority of them...sorry Jerry!)

Two transatlantic flights gives you a lot of time to think, and one thing I realized during this trip - I am one incredibly blessed and lucky person. I mean, I already knew that, but trips like this really bring it back into perspective for me, you know? I have one amazing husband and one really cool kid (about to have one more really cool kid!!) My parents and in-laws are the greatest people on the face of the earth to pretty much drop everything they are doing to take care of Carrie so I could go have this experience of visiting Jerry and getting to mark two more countries off my "to visit" list. I have a lifestyle such that I can go to all these great countries and have all of these wonderful (and not so great) travel experiences (just wait till I blog about the hotel train, folks). I have been to many more countries than most people will ever get to go to in their lives, and I'm only 32. For the most part I have my health. There are people WAY worse off than me, although I confess that sometimes I have to remind myself of that when my Crohn's is flaring and I feel like whining. I still have a job in this economic climate, and Jerry was able to land one.

All in all, I think I'm a pretty lucky gal.

Random thoughts

It's been awhile since I posted so there's lots of random thoughts running around in my head. Here goes!
-I hate flying. HATE. IT. Like, so much so that I tend to generally try to take benadryl or something similar when flying so I can just hopefully fall asleep and wake up on the other side. It never happens that way, but if I take the benadryl I generally don't have a panic attack at every slight turbulence. I got the go ahead from the doc today to take some benadryl or tylenol PM for the upcoming flight should I need/want it. Can someone tell me again why I insist on wanting to visit all these places that require such long flights? I never regret it when I get there, but man....the getting there part sucks sometimes. I'm not sure where I got this irrational fear from, but maybe first class seats will help me get over it :)

-I finally finished up most of my packing tonight. I was halfway done on Sunday, but got derailed by Carrie. She was "helping" me as she so often likes to do these days, but disappeared for a minute and came back dragging her little rolling backpack announcing that she too was going to pack for Portugal. Can you say Mommy turned into a puddle?

-Got another dose of Remicade last Friday. This stuff works crazy well. My last GI doc in FL used to joke with me and say it's my version of crack. Why yes it is, and I'm not afraid to say it. I hadn't gained any weight at my last two OB appointments which was starting to concern my doc, but I went back today and I'm finally up to having gained 10lbs so far for the pregnancy. Never thought I'd be excited about gaining weight people! I also got to have another peek at the little guy/gal, which was great. Everything's measuring right on, so yeah for that!

-Work's been tough this week. Staff reorganizations are never fun, especially when they include eliminating positions. It's times like these I really don't like being in HR.

-Carrie and I took our first solo road trip to Atlanta over the Memorial Day holiday, and I am excited to say it went quite well! We didn't have any major breakdowns (vehicle or Carrie-wise), and it was great to see family. We were supposed to have a repeat trip last weekend for a friend's baby shower, but alas, it was not meant to be. Carrie got snotty and coughy on Friday, then on Saturday thought it best to get some sort of stomach virus....which I apparently picked up starting Sunday night/Monday morning. Ugh. Thankfully both of us are done with the getting sick thing, although I'm still hacking up a lung.

I think that's all for now folks. I can't make any promises to post while I'm in Portugal/Spain, but I'll try :)

Here goes nothin'

So I got my first pregnancy Remicade today, which went quite uneventfully, thank you very much. I think I had all of the poor nurses freaked out though - nothing like a pregnant lady waddling in to get an IV infusion to set folks on edge! Got my tylenol & benadryl, then the Remicade and took a nice 3 hour nap. My nurse said she kept coming in and checking on me and I was sound asleep until the pump beeped and I was out of juice. I'm in "negotiations" with my GI right now as to the schedule of treatments....when a person first starts this medicine, you have what's called an induction phase where you go once, then go two weeks later, then four weeks after that, then every eight weeks. I contend that I didn't have to do that when I came back on it from being pregnant with Carrie (a lapse of 10 months), but current GI thinks it's been too long and I have to go through the entire induction phase again. Hopefully once the PA relays the info to him that I've already been down this road once and came back on it after a 10 month hiatus I won't have to do that, but we'll see. It would only mean one extra treatment than what I was already expecting, but still...only want to have to to do this the absolute minimum number of times! Baby's still kicking around in there, so that's a good sign. The plus side of these treatments is definitely the built in nap during the day though. Nothing like it :)

Also, I was able to eat my very first meal with NO stomach cramping AT ALL for the first time in about 2-3 months (mmmmm.....Moe's). Coincidence? Placebo effect? Perhaps. I choose to believe the meds are already kicking in, though.

On a fun note, one of my very good friends from my college days is making her way down to visit as I type. It should be lots of fun! Nothing exciting planned for this evening, but I've got a babysitter coming tomorrow to hang with Carrie while we go out to dinner and a movie. Not sure what we'll go see, but I told her I didn't care as long as I got some movie-theater popcorn :)

Quick Update!

So I just called in to the infusion center to make sure they received the faxed results of my TB test I had done years ago at UF (you have to have this done prior to getting a Remicade infusion), and was met with good news - not only has she received the results, but has already cleared it with my insurance company and did I want to come in this afternoon?? Okay, that was a bit fast for me, so I asked if I could just come in tomorrow, so I'm heading in tomorrow morning for my first infusion since November. I probably just should have taken the approach I did in New Zealand with skydiving and just did it this afternoon to not give myself too much time to think about it. Oh well. I promise to try not to dissolve into tears when they hook me up to the IV. :) I just have to keep reminding myself I am doing the best I can for both me and my child by having this done. I have to believe that three separate doctors would not tell me to do this if it wasn't going to be okay. I hate having to rely on others' information....I'm not good with giving up control, if anyone's noticed!

On a happier note, a previous babysitter of Carrie's took some AMAZING pictures of her this past weekend, and I have uploaded them all on our Picasa site. She's just graduated from UVA and is trying to get her business going. Take a look at her site here. Although still young, I think she did a wonderful job with a toddler that was constantly on the move throughout the entire time she was there snapping pics. Keep in mind these are all un-retouched. I still have to go through them and pick and choose which ones I'd like in black/white, sepia, etc. The ones that are already in B/W are ones she initially took last summer while babysitting. I freaked out when she showed them to me and immediately requested that she come take more photos this past weekend! I also told her that, with another little one on the way, she should probably just block out an hour or so each time she comes to visit her parents to come take pictures of my family. Enjoy :)

Struggling

I'm really struggling right now with this whole Crohn's thing. I'm not having a flare up right now, thanks to the prednisone. However, the prednisone is the problem. It's not good to be on it long term at any point in one's life, but it can cause a myriad of problems in pregnancy....gestational diabetes and cleft lip, just to name two fun ones. I'm sure if I googled "prednisone and pregnancy" I'd find all kinds of scary stuff, but one thing I learned when diagnosed with Crohn's - only go to WebMD or the CDC for any medical related information on the internet!

I went to see my GI yesterday and he's on board with me starting back up with the Remicade that I stopped as soon as I found out I was pregnant. The last infusion I had was the day before we went to China, so it's been awhile. I asked my GI to call my OB so they could chat and make sure everyone was on the same page about Remicade (the last time I talked to the nurse for my OB she said in a lighthearted voice "Dr. Linfoot's perfectly fine with you going ahead with the Remicade! Do you have a prescription for it currently?" "Um....no....it's not something you just go pick up at the pharmacy. And on that note, I really need her to talk to my GI, cause that SCARES me that she knows so little about it.")

Fast forward to today. GI has talked to OB and I get the call from GI's physician's assistant today to tell me the good news that everyone's on board and the GI has already put in the order at the infusion place and they should be calling me to schedule my next infusion in the next day or so. Great, right? I immediately get off the phone and start crying. I know intellectually that I pretty much have to do this - going into a full blown Crohn's flare could prove disasterous. I know this. I've talked to my absolute favorite doctor in the world, my GI from UF, and he's always said he believes Remicade is safe in pregnancy, much safer than the mother flaring up. He wanted me to stay on it while pregnant with Carrie, but by some miracle I felt completely Crohn's free for the entire pregnancy. But for some reason it just scares the hell out of me. Maybe it's the fact that it means being hooked up to an IV for three hours? Maybe it's the hormones? I have no clue. None of it makes sense to me. I know it will make me feel better. I know it will prevent me from getting those stomach cramps after eating. I know it's safer for me and baby to get the medicine twice while pregnant than to stay on the steroids. But it still scares me. But I'm going to do it, hopefully later this week or first thing next week. I go see the OB tomorrow AM, so I'm sure we'll chat about it as well.

Wish me (or us, rather, since it's me and #2) good luck.

Good grief

So you know that "to do list" I talked about in an earlier post? Yeah, well, there's one thing that was NOT on my list that I ended up doing today....going to the ER with a toddler...by myself...and I was the patient. Geez.

I feel like SUCH a klutz. I don't know if the belly's got me off kilter or what. We were standing in the post office today when Carrie decided to bolt. I took off after her, and managed to have my feet come out from under me just as I got to her and landed square on my butt and my right hand. Good lord, seriously? I think the poor post office employees thought I was going to sue the government (as if they have anything to pay me off with!). It freaked Carrie out a bit because she just sort of stood there sucking her thumb like "Uh oh...I'm thinking maybe I had something to do with this, and maybe it wasn't a good idea to bolt away from Mommy." I got up and, other than my butt and hand hurting, I really felt fine. I wasn't too concerned since I didn't land on my belly.

So I mail my package, load Carrie up in the car, and head over to Target. I decided to call the OB on call service just to be sure I wasn't being stupid in thinking everything was okay. Well, as soon as I told them I fell it didn't seem to matter how I fell or what I landed on, they wanted me to come in. Keep in mind my hospital is about 40 minutes away. So I loaded up Carrie in the car and headed to Savannah. By the time I got there I was convinced something was wrong. And get this - I had to sit in the ER so I could be evaluated from a trauma standpoint before being sent up to Labor & Delivery to make sure my baby was okay. This did not sit well with me. I think the nurse that triaged me could tell and they sent me back quickly and got the doppler out. Once I heard that whoosh whoosh of the baby's heartbeat I immediately calmed down. However, Carrie did not. She didn't like the doc or nurse doing anything to Mommy. I guess it freaked her out, so those were the only times she was a real handful at the ER. Since I landed on my hand they wanted to do an x-ray of my wrist to make sure I didn't break it (um, pretty sure I didn't since I can move it around, but whatever). Once that was cleared, I was sent up to L&D to be monitored. More upsetness from Carrie when they wanted me to get into the bed with the monitors, so Carrie and I were snuggled up on one of those tiny little hospital beds. She did seem to like listening to the heartbeat at least. After about 2.5 hours in L&D I was finally released, deemed in fine health, although my ego bruised a bit and my poor toddler napless, and we headed home. We were there a total of about 5 hours. Carrie got up this morning around 7am, had no nap at all during the day and she and I split apple juice and a 100 calorie Cheez-It pack for lunch. Needless to say as soon as we got home we filled our bellies and she put up zero fight to go to bed. I don't think I'm too far behind her.

It's a darn good thing I had my dream pregnancy with Carrie. I'm not sure I would have been so eager to have another had this pregnancy been my first. I feel like such a bad mommy to this child already - I've been to the ER twice, had to get a shot of morphine b/c of my Crohn's, had to get an x-ray of my busted hand, have been on prednisone for about 6 weeks so far, and will probably have to go back on Remicade before this child pops out because of the Crohn's. I know I need to do what I need to do to stay healthy for the baby, but really? Gggggrrrrr.....

Over halfway there

I can't believe I'm 22 weeks pregnant with #2 today. It literally seems like just yesterday that I was staring at those two lines on the test and thinking "huh?????" I'm pretty sure Jerry had the same reaction when I came bounding up to him, still in bed, woke him up and said something to the effect of "LOOK AT THIS!" Sometimes I'm still in a bit of shock/denial about it, but then get quickly snapped out of it when I can hardly catch my breath to keep up with Carrie and am finding it increasingly more difficult to find a comfy way to carry her when she wants to "hold you." (that's what she says when she wants someone to carry her).

I know I need to update this with photos from the big 2nd birthday party. It's on the "list" for this weekend. We'll see how far I get. I seem to have these grand plans on Fridays of what to do on the weekends while Carrie's napping....but when it comes right down to it and she goes down for a 2-3 hour nap in the afternoon, I start thinking that sounds like a darn good idea for myself.

I did accomplish one big item on the to do list last night, and that was ordering Carrie's big girl bedroom furniture. I did this with a mixture of excitment and sadness. I'm excited because I know she's ready for it, and also the practical reason of the incoming child will obviously need a place to crash, but a little sad that she won't be in her crib anymore. She really is growing up (as if I didn't know that from the attitude she throws every now and then, but still...) I just can't quite picture her sleeping in a double bed!! I did manage to forget to order the guard rails for the darn bed, though. Guess it's one more thing to add to my list.

I think I'm going to cry....

Why oh why does the swine flu have to hit NOW? When I am preparing to go see my husband, whom I have not seen since March 14th (and that was only for a week, mind you) for a glorious 10 days in Spain/Portugal? I know I am just feeling sorry for myself, but I am really trying to wrap my head around the very real possibility that our "babymoon" will be derailed once again (our last one was derailed because of a dog with a bum leg that had to be repaired surgically...how's THAT for dedication to your pet?)

I know there are way worse things out there to have to deal with. I know this intellectually. Hormonally is a different story people.

Let's all do a "go away swine flu" dance and hope that miraculously in the next 5 weeks this gets solved. Good thing I bought trip insurance.

Why are people so damn nosey?

Just today, in the space of about two hours, I've had two staff members here at work make comments to me about my pregnancy. First off, they weren't solicited comments, so it's not like I was looking for their opinions anyways, thank you very much. Second, and this is the funniest I think, BOTH of them were from women that have never had children. Interesting, no?

First comment came from a good friend of mine here at work who's older than me by about 25 years and spent a good portion of last year telling me how I was crazy for going to China because she just knew something bad was gonna happen. Okay...whatever. Obviously I went and came back just fine. Today she starts in on the whole swine flu thing. Yes, I've been paying attention to it. Yes, I realize it's a concern. Yes, I'm going to talk to my doctor next time I see her to get her take on whether or not it's a good idea for me to still plan on going. Yes, we're getting travel insurance. As if I'm going to just throw caution to the wind (cause that's my style, and all...yeah right) and say "screw it! I don't care that I'm pregnancy I'm gonna be selfish and still go abroad, swine flu be damned!" She then felt the need to just barge into my office a bit ago and inform me "You aren't going anywhere in June!" Um, okay. Since you have obviously gotten a medical degree in the past two hours, I'll definitely listen to you over my doctor. Whatever.

Next comment comes as I am at the vending machine. What can I say? It's 3:45, my sugar's low, and yes I want some m&m's. I am pulling the bag of m&ms out of the machine as I hear "What are you eating!?!" in this semi-shocked voice. I just turned to her and said "Whatever I want to eat!" Snarky, yes, but please. I don't need nutrition advice from someone's who's never been pregnant. It's not like that's the only thing I'm eating all day long!! This comment also came from the same woman who, upon finding out that my husband is a 5th said "oh no, you aren't going to keep that going if this one's a boy, are you?" At that point I just smiled and politely told her "And that, my friend, is EXACTLY why we don't tell anyone any names until it's printed on the birth certificate and too late for people to interject their opinions."

Seriously? These people must not have enough to do if they can keep these kinds of tabs on me and my belly.

My husband rocks

Once I get my laptop back from work I can post some pictures of this past weekend where we pulled off not one, but two surprises for my Mom's birthday weekend. Until then, I thought I'd post about how cool my husband is.

I just got a call from The Inn at Palmetto Bluff. Jerry apparently has purchased me a significant gift certificate to the spa in celebration of Carrie's birthday and the halfway point of this pregnancy with baby #2.

Did I mention that I love my husband? :)

Easter eggs

Being that school's out today, Whizzy's watching the little princess and they have embarked on an Easter egg dying project!!

Grrr.....

So now that everyone knows I'm expecting, I can whine on here a little :)

Why is it that when you are pregnant (or, at least for me), the only foods I really crave are things that you "shouldn't" be eating? Take deli meat for example. I've never been one to make a sandwich to take to work every single day for lunch, but now that I'm not supposed to have it, it's all I want. Same thing happened when I was pregnant with Carrie. The only thing that sounds good at lunchtime is a giant Subway Italian BMT. I broke down this weekend and got a big sub at Publix, but only after I really confused the woman and asked to have the meat heated up to steaming on their grill since that's supposed to kill any bacteria since the worry with lunchmeat is listeria. I think that sub was THE best sub I've had in a loooong time. I got a foot long so I had the other half for dinner after Carrie went to bed, but only after I had an internal argument with myself as to whether or not I still needed to reheat the meat yet again before eating. I decided to err on the side of caution and heated it up once more. Did you know that deli meat can make REALLY loud pops in the microwave? I know there are some reading this that think this is overkill, but with my history of Crohn's and ability to catch any and all bugs within a 50 mile radius, I ain't taking any chances, people.

The other thing I'm craving is hot dogs. Oh man, I think I could eat a hot dog at every meal, no problem. These are bad because of the nitrates (not to mention fat, but seriously I'm not too concerned about the fat content of foods these days since I lost weight when my Crohn's flared, prompting my doc to tell me "I want you to eat/drink anything and everything you feel like you can"....not sure you should really give a pregnant woman that kind of blank check). I bought some hot dogs at the grocery store last week, and let me tell you they taste soooooooo good. I just need to get my willpower working a bit so I don't eat them all!

Okay, enough whining :)

I think pretty much everyone already knows...

But just in case you don't, a picture is worth a thousand words:


That's right folks, Reeves baby #2 is on his/her way, set to arrive some time late August/early September. The official due date is 9/4, but given that I'll be having another c-section it'll be a bit before that (hopefully not TOO much before then since Jerry's slated to be in Portugal till mid-August!).

Recently overheard in the Reeves V household...

I kept meaning to blog about this and kept forgetting...but I just remembered about it and am actually sitting at the computer, so I had to record this for posterity's sake. Carrie's getting quite the vocabulary these days, so it's always funny to engage her in a conversation. Here's one I recently had with her while giving her a bath:
Me: So Carrie, did you have a good day at school today?
Carrie: Yes!
Me: Did you see your friends today?
Carrie: Elisabeth (the teacher), Joey, Caleb. (There are lots of little boys in her class...great).
Me: What did you do today at school?
Carrie: Time out.
Me: (thinking to myself - hmmm....this could get interesting. let's see where this goes). What did you do to get put in time out?
Carrie: Not nice Carrie!!

Who knows what she did, because I just dissolved into laughter which probably wasn't the most appropriate response, but I was just SO not expecting to have that conversation with her!

My little girl isn't so little anymore....

Where has the time gone? I find myself putting together plans for Carrie's 2nd birthday party (Elmo is this year's theme). Izzy sent me this picture of her from this morning when they were leaving for school. My first thought was "My kid is SO cute!" (just a little biased, really). Then my second thought was "When did she get so BIG?" Sniff, sniff.

Warm fuzzies

As a working outside of the home mom, it's always hard to have to drop your child off at daycare/school for the day while you go to work. It brings up all sorts of mommy guilt feelings, making you feel like you should be at home with your child and not outside of the home (or maybe that's society that makes me/us feel that way?? I don't know).

But I sure do feel a whole lot better about it when we get even close to the school and Carrie starts rattling off the names of her teachers and all her little buddies in class, then makes a beeline from the front of her school directly to her classroom and gives Miss Elisabeth a big hug in the mornings.

Of course, the best feeling ever is picking her up from school and the look on her face that she gets when she sees me open the door to her classroom :)

Well that was fun....

Not really. Well, part of the weekend was a lot of fun, the other part, not so much. Let me back up.

Mom decided at the last minute to come visit us in the lowcountry this past weekend. She got here rather late on Friday due to crazy Atlanta traffic. But when Carrie woke up on Saturday morning she was SO excited to see Lady sitting on the couch waiting for her! Once we all got ready for the day, we headed out to a quick trip to the Starbucks (which she can identify and say, now...great), then to the outlets. Of course Carrie managed to come away from the trip with several new outfits and a couple pair of shoes. Next was lunch and then a nap for Carrie. She wasn't feeling 100% it seemed, so she napped for 3.5 hours! We then loaded her back up to run to Target to get a few essentials (um, like diapers), then dinner at Atlanta Bread Company. When she didn't eat but maybe 2 bites of her cheese pizza, I knew something was up. So we headed back and she immediately went back to sleep.

We knew there was bad weather coming into the area, but it didn't seem to be really affecting us too much. Mom & I went to sleep around midnight, then for some reason I woke up around 2:45. I look at the TV (because I always sleep with the TV on. Weird, I know), and the next thing I know I see a tornado warning for Beaufort & Jasper Counties in SC. Yep, that would be us. I go wake up Mom and say "Um, I'm thinking we might want to head over to the bigger house cause we're under a tornado warning for the next hour." We had a tree hit the house when I was younger, so any sign of bad weather and my mother is moving pretty darn fast. We dragged Carrie out of bed, rounded up the three dogs that were here (the others went with Whizzy & Pop-Pop to the mountains) and headed over to the main house. We proceeded to all pile into a hallway bathroom. All six of us. It had to be entertaining to see, but not so much at the time. Luckily the hour passed with no further excitement, so then we went back over to the cottage and went back to sleep. I thought maybe Carrie would sleep in a bit since we had all that excitement in the middle of the night, but she really only slept an extra 30 minutes or so.

So that was our excitement for the weekend. Not what I'd call fun, but something good for the blog nonetheless. Now I'm sitting here listening to a very unhappy child over the monitor...turns out that bad cough she had that I took her to the ped for last week has turned into bronchitis. Took her back to the ped this morning, where they gave her an antibiotic and liquid albuterol. Seriously? When you give a child a prescription for this stuff they should warn you that it will jack them up and make them never want to sleep again. Ugh.

We are officially homeless!!

Well, not really since we are still in the cottage, but you get the idea. Our house closed yesterday, and I have verified that the check is sitting in my account. Whew. I never thought I'd ever be so excited to not be a homeowner in all my life. It's still quite surreal, but it's a nice feeling knowing that we can concentrate on the future now, rather than feeling like we are tied house-wise to one zip code, and family/work-wise to a completely different zip code. At least now is the time to buy a house....and it doesn't seem to be turning around anytime soon. :)

Rude

What sort of dog is so incredibly insensitive to his owner (that allows him to take over half of a queen size bed every night, I might add) that he PEES on the bed in the middle of the night.

Rude.

One lesson learned here - make sure to monitor Carrie feeding Bailey as she apparently dumped his food in his bowl then went back to get two more handfuls which she dropped into his water bowl. This causes said dog to drink water excessively in hopes of retrieving the few little pebbles of kibble floating in the bowl.

Things I am Thankful for....

So I'm having one of "those" days/weeks so far. The woman that runs the little cafe here at work said it perfectly this morning - "Do you ever have those days where you feel like everything you touch turns to sh*t?" Well, Deirdre, funny you should ask because it sounds like you and I are in the same boat with no paddles! The old me would sit here and wallow and whine and complain, but I am truly trying to make a conscious effort not to do that because, really, what do I truly have to complain about? Nothing. So here are my reasons why I am thankful today....

1. I am thankful that I didn't have to take yet another day off work today and my rock star in-laws are supervising the unloading of the Uhaul trailer and Penske truck into the cottage and the storage units. My boss' head would have spun around most likely had I asked for another day off, so I'm glad that I'm not responsible for that episode.
2. I am thankful that I have a roof over my head, again courtesy of my in-laws (Do we see a pattern emerging here? Could it be called mooching off the in-laws? I think so.) Carrie and I are currently in a pretty cool little cottage that was on the property before they built their own house. Good thing they had the foresight to think "Gee, perhaps we should just move the cottage rather than tearing it down since one of our children/his wife/his toddler/his dog may need to come back home one day for whatever reason."
3. I am thankful that my husband and I are both gainfully employed. That's quite the feat these days. It definitely sucks that he's halfway around the world for most of this year, but we're hoping he'll be able to secure a great position in his new company. In explaining it the other day to some friends I likened it to a season of "The Apprentice." It's like they are all over there in Portugal fighting their way to the top of the corporate food chain. Although he's already heard "You're hired!" from them, I'm hoping at the close of August he'll hear something like "You get to run the place!" Although, something along the lines of "Congrats - you get to keep your job unlike million of Americans" would be just peachy too.
4. I am thankful that I have a very healthy, spirited toddler. Although she drives me to want to drink some days lately (like 5 or 6 out of 7), I realize it could be much worse. She could be very sick or have any number of issues, and so far it seems the only issue she has is attitude-related (but honestly, what did I expect? She comes from a long line of fiery Walker women!!)
5. I am thankful that, all fingers and toes crossed, we will have officially closed on our GNV house on 2/23. I can hardly believe that chapter is truly coming to a close....
6. I am thankful that I truly can start looking for another house now :) I never even wanted to Google homes for sale in this area until the sale of the GNV house was completed. I looked a tiny bit last night, but stopped for fear of jinxing it. Stupid, yes. It will most likely be awhile before we can actually purchase our next home, but that means we have the luxury of shopping around and making sure we get exactly what it is we want, and in this economy, the price/interest rate we want.
7. I am thankful that it's almost lunchtime.

See, it's the little things in life :)

This is what I get....

For asking a 2 year old to help me bake brownies :)
I believe at the precise moment I took this picture she said "A mess!" She was quite proud of herself that she dumped the cup of flour on the floor instead of in the mixing bowl. Thank goodness for the Dyson.

We've been watching a LOT of Baby Einstein Old MacDonald

Carrie loves, loves, loves the Baby MacDonald DVD from the Baby Einstein collection. This is the kid that refuses to sit still for anything these days, but everything stops whenever I pop in that particular DVD and for a full, glorious 30 minutes she will lay on the couch with me enjoying the cows, piggies and horsies. She's obviously learning something from this DVD, as can be seen in this video of me, my mother and my father bombarding her with questions like "What does the ____ say?!"

Please tell me I'm not the only one.

I will get back to blogging about China...I have to since it's my travel journal, and may actually do so this evening if I can't figure out how to watch what I've DVR'd on my satellite box on my laptop :) But I had to put this out there...

Please tell me that I am not the only mother out there that's had moments/days of complete and utter feelings of "I am sooooooooo bad at this, why did I ever reproduce?" Cause I've felt like my life has been made up of those moments WAY too often lately. Take tonight for example. Nothing I did for Carrie was right, and I mean NO-THING. Dinner apparently wasn't to her liking, she didn't like the fact that I had to pack up some stuff for us to bring over to Jerry & Izzy's house because it is going to be FREEZING tonight (the heater in the cottage has been acting flaky and the last thing I needed was to wake up at 3am to it snowing inside), she didn't want to take a bath, didn't want to get her pj's on....the list goes on. I have to admit I feel a little cheated. I mean, I only get to see her, on average, about 2 hours a day during the week, which apparently are her worst two hours. And I realize I bring that on myself by working outside of the home (a completely different guilt factor for another blog). All the teachers at school always say how sweet and pleasant she is....yeah, well, come on over to our house around 6:30 and let me know what you think. One of the teachers at school gave us her number and is wanting to babysit for Carrie. I'm afraid to have her come over for fear of ruining Carrie's reputation at school :)

To top it off, I feel like a wimp for feeling this way. I am lucky enough to have a MIL right here that takes her to school and picks her up 99.9% of the time so I don't have to worry with that aspect when trying to get to work and get home. My job is simply to come home and enjoy my child. This is hard to do when every single thing becomes a battle of wills. I know it could be worse, and I know I need to focus on that. But seriously....I keep telling Carrie that while Daddy's out of town we need to be on the same team and work together...not sure she quite gets that just yet. I'll keep trying, though.

We Interrupt the China journal for an Important Announcement...

Yeah, cause I know everyone's still sitting on the edge of their respective seats since I'm soooo good about updating about China on a regular basis :)

Anyways, the impossible has happened. We have a contract on our house in Gainesville. Not just an offer, but a real, honest to goodness contract. I just sent it back to our agent with the necessary signatures so, God willing, we close on 2/27. Please be sure to pray to the real estate gods that all goes well and we are able to close this chapter that has been open for a year! Ironically enough, the offer came in exactly one year to the day that we put it on the market.

I'm having such mixed feelings about this, which I never thought would happen. I mean, I am SO thankful that we have warm bodies that actually like our house and want to buy it! But it's really bringing a close to our Gainesville chapter. When I moved there in September 2001, I hated that place. I mean, within a week I was telling Jerry "this places SUCKS, it's too small, I want to go back to the big city!!" But little by little it really grew on me. I finally got a job there I liked with the university, and we met some of the best friends we've ever had there. To this day I sorely miss being able to walk down the street to Jenn & Radley's house and see Ansley running around outside, or go over to Amy & Nate's house for a SuperBowl party, or have everyone meet up at Ichiban for some of the best (and relatively cheap!) sushi you've ever put in your mouth. And the decision to move from Gainesville was made even harder by the fact that a dear friend of mine, and Carrie's godparents, Amy & Aaron Aponick, moved cross-country from California to live in Gainesville when Aaron got a professor position at UF (Amy - I still miss our Chick-fil-A lunches!).

I know we will still be friends with these people....but it won't be the same. And I know we'll find a house here that we love just as much, or more than, this particular house in Gainesville. We bought that house with visions of raising our family there for a long time. Guess life has a funny way of throwing you curve balls. This has been a looooong road getting here, but let's hope it closes on a positive note about 45 days from now.