Lizards, flamenco, and baby kicks

Big day yesterday. Left work "early" because by 2:00 I already had worked an 8-hour day, so I was home alone for a couple of hours. Decided to let Kitty out on the lanai. Nice day out. Little bit later, I heard Kitty make a terrible noise. Went to the dining room to see what her problem was. She had a little lizard in her mouth. I had to shake her to get her to let it go and then I put her back outside quickly. And the lizard ran under the wine rack. So here I am, no Khan, with a lizard IN my house. First I called Khan to whine to him that he wasn't there to deal with this. Then I got a tupperware bowl and tried to trap the lizard underneath it. It worked. Now I had a lizard trapped under a bowl and I didn't know what to do with it. It would suffocate by the time Khan got home. So I slid a piece of cardstock under the bowl and managed to carry the little guy outside. He was stunned for a bit and didn't get off my cardstock. I guess spending time in a cat's mouth freaks lizards out a bit. Eventually he took off, I got my cardstock back, and Kitty won't be going outside for a whole week as punishment. And I handled the lizard crisis all by myself.

Later that night, Khan and I finally got to go to see some real flamenco. First time since Spain. There was a tour group from Madrid that came to our performing arts center. Great show, reminded us of our trip to Spain. Sigh.

Baby girl seemed to like the show, too. She was wiggling around in there for the whole first half. Every time the rhythm and noise of the show got going, so did she. Maybe we'll have a dancer on our hands.

Halfway there

Today we've reached the 20-week marker. That's halfway there! Crazy how time is flying now.

Yesterday morning I felt the baby for the first time -- I think. I'd love to gush over how cool it was, but the reality is that I didn't know what it was. I've felt all kinds of new feelings in my tummy area while pregnant, things like muscles or ligaments or something growing, strange cramps, and just weird feelings. Most of them I ignore. And at first, I ignored this feeling too.

And then I thought about it for a second and wondered: Was that the baby? I'm not sure how to describe it; my doctor and others have said it feels like flutters, but this felt different than that, too. Use your knuckles and roll them on your arm gently; that's kinda what it felt like. But it was about an inch or two below my belly button. I felt it a few more times and was pretty sure it was the baby. Very cool.

Leaving work early today for my 20-week check-up with my doctor. I'll have to step on the scale again, and I'm pretty scared about that. I just hope I didn't gain another 9 pounds like I did last month. I'll be a whale by August if I keep that up. After I see my doctor, I see the ultrasound specialist one last time to measure the length of my cervix. I'm feeling pretty optimistic that my cervix will measure well one last time, and I'll be out of the woods on this one.

I'll keep you posted.

It IS a girl!

Ok, now I'm ready to believe it. I just needed to see for myself, one unobstructed picture that we are actually having a girl. This time she decided to be a good girl and we were able to see very clearly that she is a girl. And the ultrasound tech took a bunch of measurements, and everything is going quite well. We saw her moving around - even though I can't feel her move, I know she is. She was curled up in a ball most of the time that we were there, but we saw her moving her lips like a fish. Not really sure how else to explain it, but it was really cute. I really just wanted to pick her up and hold her. But, I suppose she needs to get a little bigger first.

Oh--I added another photo album of all of her sonogram pictures. I also added a space for video clips. I added her 8-week ultrasound video clips there, which are kinda cool because you can see her tiny little heart beating. We weren't allowed to use our own camera at the later ultrasounds because those were done at a separate place from my doc's office with more sophisticated equipment. Different rules, I guess. I'm hoping we'll have another ultrasound at my regular doctor's office so we can take some more video.

Tailia Aubree

Tailia Aubree Lynch was born on February 29th. She weighed 7 pounds, 3.8 ounces. Congratulations to Marc and Phay on your new baby girl! We visited them on Saturday, March 1. Took lots of pictures, of course. She's a beautiful baby girl, but we haven't seen much of her yet. She opened her eyes a little bit for a few seconds every now and again.

Other than that, nothing too exciting going on for us. Khan and his Dad spent most of Sunday cleaning the patio. They pressure-washed the cement and scrubbed the screens in our patio. No more green gooky stuff on our screens; they look brand new.

Spent a little more time on our nursery. I'm in search of the perfect green rug. Actually, I'm looking for the perfect, green, cheap rug. Tried one from Target, but it was too bright. Tried one from JC Penney, but it's too dull and dirty-looking. Going to try one more time from Target. Hope the third time is the charm!

Phay and Marc's baby girl and what happened to week 17?

Seriously, what happened to week 17? I remember saying "I'm sixteen weeks, I'm sixteen weeks," and then I looked at my calendar this morning and it said 18 weeks. Huh. I thought that was wrong and had to double-check. But sure enough, I'm 18 weeks today. Supposedly I should start to feel the baby soon. I read this morning that she's very active now. She's yawning, hiccuping, rolling, twisting, kicking, punching, sucking and swallowing.

In more exciting news, Phay and Marc are having their baby girl today. (This is the only picture I took at Phay's shower. And it's a terrible picture. How sad is that? See what happens when Khan's not there and I get stuck with the camera. No pictures.) Her name is Tailia, but I don't know how to spell it. It's pronounced "tie-lee-ah." Khan and I will go visit our newest niece tomorrow.