17 1/2 weeks

Well here I am, almost at the end of February, man, scratch that, beginning of March! I want you to know that I had great intentions to update the blog for the past three or so weeks, but isn't it amazing how those days and weeks just fly by....in some ways.

At 17 weeks, it still feels like the pregnancy is inching by...not because its awful! In fact, I love it! And I think Caleb loves it too, except I have noticed a few times so far where my hormonal, emotional thing has gotten the best of me. But anyway, I think the main reason that pregnancy seems to be inching along is because we still have 2 weeks until we find out if we are having a boy or a girl. Doesn't it seem like we should have found out by now?!

Don't worry, I tried. I had a very enlightening conversation with our OB after I begged her to do the ultrasound at 15 weeks rather than 19. My thinking: I know you can tell earlier than 19, why not take a peak...her thinking: we are not actually doing this expensive medial procedure so that you and your husband can choose colors for the nursery; we are doing them to view your baby's organs after they have developed to a certain point: 19 weeks. So apparently there are real medical reasons for placing that ultrasound just out of our reach for another couple weeks. And I guess they are more important. So I promise, two weeks from now, we will post the big news: many prayers please on March 11 that all is well with baby. The medical stuff is still a little nerve wracking for me but I am also very confident that all is great.

While we wait, Caleb and I have puchaced a few things that we are really excited about. On Valentines day, Caleb and I and another couple braved a huge crowd at the REI garage sale in hopes of finding a cheap baby backpack. We got up at 4:00 AM to sit in line with hundreds of other outdoorsy people all ready to compete for cheap, used gear (that is, we got up at 4 to get in line; many slept in tents overnight but we are just not that hard-core). If you have never been competitive shopping, let me tell you that you can't really go into it with one thing that you want to buy. It will almost never be there. The tricky thing about this sale is that REI is very sneaky. They cover all the merchandise so that you can't spend your 4 hours in line scouting out the land and planning your strategy. You have to be surprised with everyone else. So after 4 hours of cell phone Scrabble, we put our lawn chairs back in the car and lined up for the big game. At first, it wasn't looking good...didn't see a backpack anywhere. Then, like a light from Heaven, there was a metal frame sticking out of a big cardboard box. I had to wait awhile for the employee guarding the box to "release" the items inside, but thankfully, I was patient enough to desearve his grace and that employee handed it dirctly to me. There was hardly any pushing or shoving! So for an extra 4.5 hours of our lives, we bought a like-new baby pack that would have cost us $160 for about $3o. You gotta love competitive shopping!

We also have been utilizing the wonderful world of craigslist to find less expensive baby furnature. We are very excited about our new furnature in the nursery. What do you think? Boy or girl, we are doing Noah's ark as the theme...because we found this cool toy. Hey, whatever inspires you.

One of the coolest things that has happened in the last two weeks is that little Fields has started making his presence known. He has been moving a bit which took awhile to diagnose since it is easy to pass off the first movements as gas or something. Pretty sure though that we can be confident that there is actually movement and that it will only increase from here on out! I am sure that soon enough the little girggles will turn into full on grappling with my organs. what fun!

Vegas with the Hovis'

We spent a wonderful weekend in Vegas with my parents over superbowl weekend. Caleb and I road tripped this time because we calculated that a 6 hour car ride was nothing compared to an hour drive to the airport + a 2 hour flight to either LA or San Francisco + a 2 hour lay-over before taking us back to Vegas where we would have to rent a car anyway. It felt much better just to drive there and pick my parents up at the airport. I can't wait until the airline industry starts making money again so we can find some direct flights. My parents are now officially professional travelors and we had the great privilage of staying at one of their resorts with them. We stayed just off the strip begind the MGM and had great rooms.

We toured many of the major casino/hotels and had a great time walking around and shopping at all the stores that house $3,000 purses. Mom and Dad graciously helped our baby from being

born with weird creases when they bought me some new maternity closes. Casey also had them bring down some of her maternity clothes...so nice to be able to share. (and so nice to be comfortable again!)

One of the many highlights was seeing the Cirque show, Misteire. It was so amazing! I highly recommend that show to anyone visiting Vegas.

Baby is doing great and it was wonderful to be able to show off my growing belly to my parents who otherwise would only be able to experience my pregnancy in pictures. I hope they will continue to be able to experience various stages of this pregnancy with Caleb and I and this was certainly a fun way to do it!

My parents had to fly out early Sunday afternoon but thankfully Caleb and I were given permission by the front desk to check out later in order to stay and watch the superbowl at the hotel! I think that deal was hingent on our willingness to sit in their bars and buy their food but Caleb and I oppted to watch in our room and order pizza instead...thankfully they didn't seem to miss us at the bar! We watched all the agonizing details of the game through the 3rd quarter and decided we'd seen enough and headed for home. Unfortunately our Cardinals picked it up in the 4th quarter when we had less than stellar radio reception. We did jump out of the car and into a sports bar in the middle of nowhere just in time to see the Card's 4th quarter comeback...which was immediately followed by the Steelers 4th quarter comback...so we got on the road again. Not the best way to end the game...for us or the Cardinals, but oh well, Caleb and I have only been their #1 fans for this playoff season anyway! Maybe next year, guys!

Mom and Dad, thank you so much for a great time this weekend and for your incredible love and support! You are already the greatest grandparents in the world to those beautiful girls of ours and I am so thrilled to see you love our baby as well!

We have a heartbeat!

Well, about two weeks ago, we got to hear baby's heart beat. I am approaching 14 weeks and it was around 12 that we got to hear our little one's beating heart. It was a little scary at first...Caleb and I were very hopeful that we would hear that unmistakable, wonderful sound immediately. However, it was like a minute in to the nurse's search that she informed us that if we didn't hear it (not to worry!) we'd just go ahead and do an ultrasound again. NOT TO WORRY!? You gotta be kidding me, Lady! Caleb and I both started praying and I for one was thinking "lady, you better find that heartbeat because I don't think my frazzled emotions can take that kind of walk to the ultrasound room". Thankfully within another minute or so (or 2 hours if you were Caleb or me) our wonderful nurse found the little guy hiding down low! Baby's heartbeat was one of the coolest sounds I have ever heard! When she first found it I burst out laughing (all that nervous energy) and she had to find it all over again, except this time without all the dramatics. We had what we needed: confirmation that our child has a heart and it is beating just perfectly. What a wonderful day that was. Last I heard baby's facial features were well underway to forming and he/she was about the size of a peach. On Wednesday I should get all my new email updates (which seems to be all the reading I have time for these days). One of these days I am going to finish all the baby type books that I have started but until then I am very thankful for several very parsimonious paragraphs via email that give me cute little snippets about baby Field's progress without all the details about all the things that could go wrong this week.

Caleb and I are doing well and certainly full of expectation about all that parenting will bring. We have not gotten any farther on the nursery project because we are still using the baby's room as a staging area for all the stuff we plan on getting rid of at this year's church rummage sale...so that we can then fill it back up with other people's old stuff that we acquire from this year's church rummage sale that hopefully will look better and be more useful to our child that our old stuff.

We also have wonderful friend's who have graciously taken Shep for us over the last two weekends that Caleb and I have been out of town. Unfortunately they have noticed some "acting out" behaviors in our dog that seem to symbolize Shep's distaste for our recent life changes. Hopefully he will get used to the idea that he is slipping in the priority scale a wee bit as our attentions are taken away from his every whim. Actually, I am pretty sure that Shep has no idea that I am pregnant (or at least he is not letting on) so he must just hate the fact that we keep going out of town without him. Not to worry, Shep, with a little one on the way, our traveling days may be good and over for a while. I can't help but think how well this baby thing is going to work out for Shep...Caleb and I will both be working more from home and he will have a little buddy to play with...we'll just have to keep a closer eye on all our pillows and valuables until the dog realizes that we are on his side!