Week #1 Down

Bedrest week number 1 down!  My big goal is to get to 34 weeks so I'm happy to be another weeek closer to that.  One week into bedrest I've settled into what to expect.  Which is good and bad.  I'm getting my routine's down and slowly getting everything I need here.  But nothing is "new" anymore and I miss Claire more than I thought possible.  I look forward to her visit's and daily Skype sessions but nothing replaces actually being with her.

To give you an idea of my typical day this is the routine:
6am- Medicine
8-9am- Breakfast arrives, Shawn leaves for work
7am-9am- Doctor makes rounds
12noon- Lunch arrives, more medicine
4pm-6pm-Dinner arrives
8:30pm- Shawn gets here from work with a snack
Midnight- Medicine and ambien then off to sleep.

Of course they are checking my blood pressure and reflexes every 4 hours so I see the nurses plenty. 

Right now my blood pressures are holding steady and my 24 hour urine tests are still in the mild range.  All good news!!  Here's to another 3 weeks of status quo. :)

It's been a while...

Wow, it's been a LONG time since I've updated here.  Some major life events hit right at the beginning of May and life has been a whirlwind since.  We had some horrible medical news that we were waiting for final confirmation on, only to never get a confirmation!  I wasn't really sure what to say about that and what should be said on-line about it.

In much better news we found out that we are expecting another baby girl!  We're all so excited to have another baby girl to love on and even more excited to see our two girls becoming sisters and friends for life. 

As of today I am 31 weeks pregnant and settling into my very first week of hospital bedrest.*WAH, SOB*.  In early October I had a never ending case of pneumonia.  Now that I'm finally over all of that I was diagnosed with the beginning stages of preeclampsia.  I did have the same condition during my pregnancy with Claire, only it came on as severe and not until 34 weeks.  My biggest goal right now is to stay pregnant for another 4 weeks or longer.  Those weeks make a huge difference!  I'm settling in the best I can, trying to strucuralize my days so that I don't die of boredome.  Of course, the worst part of this all for me is missing Claire.  I wanted to spend the last few weeks of my pregnancy with her and absorbing those last few days before she was a sister and not just an only child.  Life has other plans though and I'll do whatever I need just to make sure both of my children are safe and healthy!

For now this is the view from my room!

Accidents and Easter

I think I'm ready for April to be over now.  This has been a trying month!  On Thursday, April 21st, I had a pretty bad car accident.  I am NOT a morning person.  Nobody in our house is, even Claire hates getting up early.  (It's pretty perfect when your infant sleeps in!!)  So the work week morning routines are pretty torturous for me.  I despise getting up when it's still dark and rushing to get ready.  On this particular week Claire had some trouble actually going to sleep so we pulled some late nights.  I was extra tired.  That morning I had already dropped her off and was a little over half way to work when BAM, accident happened.  I had apparently fell asleep.  I woke up in enough time to see the truck stopped in front of my so I slammed on my brakes and swerved to the empty lane beside us.  It just wasn't enough.  I clipped the back end of the truck and my car flipped over two lanes until it finally came to a stop back on it's tires.  Thank God there were no serious injuries.  Not even to me.  I have a burn on my arm from the airbag dust and my back/neck were really strained but that was it.  Ford's safety features are AMAZING.  I can't even describe how bad I feel about being the responsible one.  The other people were just minding their own business and then I came out of nowhere.  My car is totaled.  The car that I was planning on driving until the wheels popped off.  I was hoping that would be many, many years from now.  Now I have the joy of paying off the remaining amount on the loan (that insuranse didn't cover) and then going on a car search.  Thankfully Shawn works in the car business and I won't have to personally go through all that red tape. 

It's been over a week now so I'm recovering physically and mentally.  Driving through the same intersection a few days later was pretty intense.  I handle things differently than most people so it's hard to explain exactly how I feel or how I'm handling things.  I'm pretty good at picking myself up, brushing bad things off and moving forward though.  That's what I'm focused on now.  Life goes on and I have alot of good things to look forward to.  This however, is my precious car.  I will miss it so much.  The first car that I was 100% satisfied with and loved.  *sniff, sniff*

Easter turned out to be a GORGEOUS day!  I still wasn't feeling the best so I didn't get as many pictures as I wanted but I always get something good with a beautiful girl around. :)  Spending the day celebrating our Lord's resurection with family is the perfect day.

Next week is my 25th (gasp) birthday so we are headed to the Beach and then onto Williamsburg for a mini-vacay.  Can't wait!!!

I Spy...

I have become a HUGE fan of Little Miss Momma's blog, thanks to a wonderful reference from my awesome cuz Beth.  I love seeing all of her crafty designs and finds.  Thankfully there are people out there who can blog about them and tell me where to buy everything since I am just not crafty.  However her I Spy series is something that I love to see and is something I'm actually good at, taking pictures of the things *I* Spy!  This week's theme was My Neighborhood.  I don't live in the typical American neighborhood but I enjoy having so much space to enjoy just by ourselves.  I do wish we had a nice street for afternoon walks though.  Right now the long driveway will have to do!  So, this is what I spied in my yard tonight:

 My Tulips blooming

 My happy baby girl!!

 Welcome to our house

 Rock Collecting

 Olivia watching over everything

 Swinging!

 Mr. Cooper

 New Maple leaves as the sun goes down

The Sad Goodbye

On February 14th, 2011 we lost our Abbey girl.  We are heartbroken over this intense loss to our family.  I've avoided this post for over a month now.  We weren't prepared for this at all, she was only 5 years old.  We miss her beyond words but are so thankful that we got the honor of having her in our family and loving her.  She's constantly on my mind but I know that we'll see her again one day.

There are so many memories that it would be impossible to write them all.  This is the first time we've really experienced the loss of a pet and it's worse than I could ever imagine.  She had our hearts from the first time I laid eyes on her in that Ohio neighborhood until the last night of her life that I spent hand feeding her.  She adored Shawn and he adored her in return.  Claire thought she was a very fun jungle gym! And Morgan was her best buddy, even if she did use Abbey as her own personal bed.  Truly one of a kind.

Abbey

August 12th, 2005-February 14th, 2011

Vacation fever

January is hands down the longest month out of the 12.  It's right after Christmas, 31 days and COLD!  We've dodged just about every snow storm this year and watching snow is the only real fun part of winter.  It's been a pretty ugly January here in Virginia.  This week we finally had some snow though!  We got a little over 3 inches at our house.

So after the snow had been around a few days and started looking slushy and gross we all came down with the WORST case of Vacation fever!  It is a horrible thing to go through in the middle of winter.  We're currently looking and planning away but knowing that whatever we do will be months away is depressing sometimes.  I'm addicted to watching almost everything on the Travel Channel and even watched some of our old cruise home videos this weekend. *sniff, sniff* It's like I could almost feel the warm sun on our skin!  With all the talk of warm weather Claire and I decided to just take a quick trip to Hawaii!  Isn't she the cutest hula girl you ever saw?? :)

 Getting flirty now!

 Cuteness overload

And I was finally able to get most of her hair into a ponytail!

Sick Day

Our internet modem is broken. :( It's a very, very sad thing!  I'm having a heck of a time trying to get a new one so I'll post what I can, when I can!  2 weeks ago I spent a rare sick day at hom with Miss Claire.  Rare because she is hardly ever sick.  Here's how we spent our day:

Learing to climb into chairs all by herself

Taking naps

And playing with Abbey!



Of course the week after this I got SO SICK.  4 days off work laying around miserable.  There are no pictures of those sick days!!  I'm still sick but slowly starting to get over it.  Shawn also had a bug for a few days, we were quite the sick house!  Is is spring yet??