37 week bonus pictures

Kalia and I all excited because we're heading into work to put in my letter of resignation!  Well, mine might be excited / nervous.  Kodi's not sure what he thinks of it!!

 

 Her little mouth in this next one just cracked me up.  We're getting ready to head to her little friend Reese's house, and she was so excited!  (As a side note, I think the hair on the top of her head is getting lighter.  The back is still pretty dark, but it seems lighter to me on the top...which makes her look even more bald :-)).

One of Kalia's two favorite spots in the kitchen...the dishwasher.  She was helping Daddy unload it.  Chris hollered at me to come help because she was IN the dishwasher and he couldn't get her out!  She thought it was great!

"That was fun Daddy!  Can we do that every morning??"

And now her second favorite place to hang in the kitchen...inside the refrigerator.  We could wear her out by opening the dishwasher and closing it before she got there and doing the same with the fridge.

"Mommy, come look.  There's fun stuff in here!"

"Yay fun stuff!!!"

Sharing her toys with Kodi before heading to the park.  Kodi actually does really well with not eating her toys.  Although I'm not sure if that's going to stay true with Kalia encouraging it!  She tried to immediately put this toy in her mouth afterwards...I mean, of course, right??

Fun time in the park!  She bear crawled all around...she didn't like the feel of the grass on her knees.  Her little rear was so freaking cute in this outfit, I couldn't help it!

Kodi kept taking breaks in the woods with his soccer ball.  Kalia likes to play with it too, so I think he was worried that she'd steal it while he was resting.  Such a happy Kodi!

Fun time in the big bath tub for her first time!!  She loves all her bath books and toys...she could play in there for hours some days!

Trying to crawl mach 100 for the spigot at the other end!

...and it looks like a tidal wave pool in there...which Kalia thinks is great!

Kalia's breakfast!  Bananas and blueberries, two of her favorites!

 Dinner - peas, avocado's, chicken, and pasta!  She loved the pasta, all of that is gone already.  I put milk in her cup and she drank about a half ounce of it from there before deciding that was enough.

Playing with her new spigot cover in the bathtub.  Of course it's a duck!

 Kalia doing situps for the first time.  She is impossible to get her diaper on after her bath, so we pin down her legs.  She went from this...

to this, all on her own, and without using her arms to push herself up. Although by the time Chris snapped the picture, she did have her arm holding the changing pad.  She is one strong little girl though!  (Yes, I edited in a pretend diaper there...for obvious reasons :-)).

Being goofy about something or another!

 

Plotting what to do next... 

 

Playing with Kodi instead of sitting pretty for our bday photo shoot...

 Playing peek a boo with her curtains...again, instead of sitting pretty for our bday photo shoot!

Sigh...another week gone.  Slow down Kalia!

Happy 37 week Birthday Kalia!

This week, Kalia :

• had a play date over at her little friend Reese's house.  She was so excited to see Reese when we came in the door.  They shared (or snagged back and forth) some of Reese's favorite toys - a disco ball ornament, a remote, and a water bottle.  She had a really good time and passed out within 3 minutes of getting home!
• likes to self feed herself by using her new found pincher grasp.  Actually, by the end of this week she was pretty persistent that she wasn't eating any of her pureed foods and just wanted to self feed herself her meal, which takes forever.  We try to get three ounces of her pureed combo (moreso so she gets meats and veggies) and then we let her have at it.  Her favorite are blueberries, bananas come in a close second, and avocado's are third.  She ate some peas, but those were pretty hard for her to grasp because they were too small.  She thought green beans were for the birds, did okay with potatoes but the outter skin was too hard (we need to boil some instead of just baking them), likes pasta, and likes pears.  We gave her a little bit of chicken and she did allright with that.
• has missed her magic sleep window almost every single night, and even when we do make it, it's lost all of its magic.  She doesn't get as much activity with her taking so long to eat, so she's not as worn out, but she's still tired.  
• is starting to wean herself a lot from me during the day, but seems to be making up for it at night.  I need to just let her go hungry a few nights, but it's a hard thing emotionally for me to let happen.  She doesn't want to sit still to nurse off of me, but still refuses to drink anything but water from any sort of cup, any sort of way.  Well, I can get about a half ounce of my milk down her, but that's max.  I've taken to pumping and mixing it with oatmeal, but see the second bullet as to why that doesn't get me too far.
• points at things.
• is starting to wave hello and goodbye.  She really just sticks her arm out straight and holds her hand up.  Chris has started saying "how" in his best Indian voice instead of hi.  So, when she comes up to you and says how, it's Chris's fault!
• says all sorts of sounds.  She does more than just the hard babbling now, and I swear sometimes it sounds like she actually said something but then I'm pretty sure I made it up.  She did yell out " Daa Dee" a few times while she was trying to calm herself down for her morning nap today.  I still don't think she knows what they mean though.  Actually, I think she does, but she's just doing like she did with crawling.  As soon as I give up on her actually saying any words, she'll start saying them!
• does sit-ups.  She is impossible to get dressed after bath time, so we pin her legs down to get her diaper at least on (I'm waiting to get peed on, I know it's going to happen), and she decided that was enough of that and just lifted herself straight up without using her arms at all.  I had her on the bed doing them this morning and she can do 4 before she starts to use her arms to push herself up.  Not bad for 8 months old!  
• graduated to the big girl bath tub.  This one was probably a loong time overdue!  She thinks it's fun to crawl all around in there and head mach 100 for the spigot.  Chris kept pulling her all the way back to the back of the tub, and she'd race down as fast as she could to the other end.  She finally had to start slowing down some because she had to wait for the tidal wave to pass before she could crawl all the way to the other end.  I bought a spigot cover at Target the next day!
• has a thing for ducks.  She's had a thing for ducks for awhile now...they make her smile.  I'm hesitant to write that...I have a fear of 800 new duckies showing up for her!

I tried to change some of the settings on my camera to get a better quality picture this week.  I've been frustrated with them for a little while!  Having a moving target just makes things all that much harder though!  So, not full smiles (or even full pictures at some points), but I think the quality is better.  And Kalia's cute regardless!!

Note that she's pointing in this picture...

This is Kalia's fake whine face.  She scrunches up her eyes and her nose and makes a "waa" sound.  She wasn't too happy at me trying to make her sit still!

"Seriously Mommy?  You think the silly giraffe is going to make me smile at you??  I don't think so!"

"Umm...Are we done yet??  I'm bored."

Our Little Alien

The doctor gave us these pictures from Monday's ultra-sound.  Kalia's got too much fluids in front of her face (see huge big rockin' belly picture from Mother's Day) to get a really good picture, and she was moving around quite a bit, so this is the best he could do.  She actually stopped moving for a half a second and we could see cuter images, but he couldn't capture them in still frame.  The 4-D thing is amazing.

 

Yes, I realize she looks like an alien.  No, I don't think all of my fluids in front of her face and her sunken in eyeballs are terribly adorable.  But her button nose is cute!!  And in the first few pictures, it actually looks like she might have hair!!  But then you get tot he last one and she looks bald again. 

I can't WAIT to see her outta my belly!!!  I think she's confused though...I think she thinks she's supposed to come out through my rib cage instead of down yonder.  I swear sometimes it feels like she's coming out through my ribs.  I asked the doc if it was possible for her to break my ribs and he just laughed at me.  I guess that means no!

T minus 18 days!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

37 week checkup, breastfeeding class

Yesterday was a busy afternoon / evening with all things baby.  This work thing is getting kind of tough with everything else going on!

I was kind of surprised that the doc didn't check me internally, but I guess there really was no reason to.  He did the ultra sound, and he actually turned on the 4D magic wand thing and let us see her.  She went between looking like an alien and looking adorable.  You could see her button nose.  He said everything looks great, and that she can come out anytime now because she's fully developed.  Woot!!

She weighed in at a WHOPPING 7 lbs 3 ounces!!!!!!!!  So from now until she comes out, she's just cooking and getting bigger...and bigger...and bigger.  He took measurements of her head and her legs, and her head measured at 34 weeks, and her femur measured at 40 weeks.  He said that means she's long and skinny, which is much better for pushing out than a short and fat baby.  Thank goodness for that at least! 

It'll be interesting to see how accurate some of these things are once she finally gets here!!

After that, we had breastfeeding class from 7-930.  I was so exhausted during it, but I learned a lot.  I didn't realize that for breastfeeding, they want you to feed your newborn 8-12 times a day for the first two weeks.  (sidenote : Janelle, I just thought baby Yulander was a porker!!!  Sorry!)  Which means every 2-3 hours.  If she's back to her initial weight at her 2 week pediatrician appt, then we can let her regulate moreso when she eats. 

We talked amongst the parents about some of the good and bad breastfeeding experiences we've witnessed.  I was pretty shocked and relatively appalled to hear what some of the other parents had heard story wise with family members voicing their opinions on breastfeeding.  It was pretty common for the new Mom to hear that she wasn't feeding her baby enough, wasn't producing enough milk, and needed to supplement with formula...and after a few weeks, the defeated Mom gave in.  The first few weeks that the baby is home from the hospital are going to be rough, especially with having to feed her every few hours.  The amount of stress that that puts on the Mom with knowing that you are the sole nourishment / lifeline for this brand new little creature is so intense, I can't imagine not having the support of loved ones during it.  Regardless of if they think what you're doing is right or wrong, support support support...encourage, encourage, encourage!! 

They showed us a video of how to get the baby to latch, and unlike the natural birth that was a little bit tramatizing for both Chris and I, this one actually was beneficial.  I feel much better prepared to go forward with this whole being a cow thing now!

This might be a little TMI, but oh well.  She talked about inverted nipples being a problem for breast feeding, and told us that we wouldn't be able to see if we had inverted nipples by just looking at ourselves in the mirror.  You have to grab either side of the aeroli and squeeze slightly, more so at the breast area than the nipple area, and then if your nipple stays out, you're good.  I of course wanted to see if I had that problem or not, so I did it when I got home, and was actually completely shocked when I got colostrum coming out!  My body is getting ready!!!  That actually made me feel pretty good about the whole breastfeeding thing because it didn't hurt at all, and stuff was coming out.  It's hard / weird to explain, but it was most definitely a reassuring sign for me!

So, pulling up the stats...total love gained so far...31 pounds.  I'm seriously going to topple over if she continues growing this fast!!

T minus 2 weeks and 6 days!!  Woot!

Mother's Day

Yes, I moved a tree on Saturday.

But on Sunday, I did a lot of this with Kodi :

I had to include this last one so that you could see that I am indeed wearing bathing suit bottoms.  Although, I don't think I'd notice the difference if I weren't...I can't see anything anyways, but they're definitely there.

Chris and Kodi bought me flowers and made me breakfast to start off the day.  Chris and I went out and ran a few errands after that, and I can tell I'm getting so large and in charge.  I got stopped I don't know how many times and asked how much longer.  One lady at Home Depot said I was making her nervous because I was too close to my due date.  Apparently you're supposed to do a lot more of what I'm doing in the pics above when you're getting close and just wait for the baby to get here.  Someone tell my brain that please, k?  It won't turn off.

We got home and Chris and Kodi made me lunch, and then we floated in the pool some, and then switched to the hammock for a bit (we being Kodi and I...poor Chris hung out in the pool for a little bit before going to work on the sprinklers), and then the boys made me dinner and dessert!  It was a great way to spend my last Mother's Day as only the Mom of a 4 legged furry kiddo!

Today is officially THE day that it's okay if I go into labor.  We have an ultra sound this afternoon at 415, and he's going to do his weekly 'checks' then too.  After that, we have breast feeding class from 7-930.  It's our last 'baby thing' to do before Kalia's arrival.

I looked at the calendar last night and told Chris that I think I'm going to go into labor on May 17th.  He just started laughing and was like ummm...okaaaay!!!  It's the next full moon though...sooo...that's my logic!!!

Realistically though, with all this talk about me going early, I will probably now go late.  I don't know if I can handle carrying around this front-load belly of mine for too much longer.

Or sleeping like this :

I miss being able to sleep in my bed with Chris.  Chris took this picture on Friday night sometime.  This big body is just impossible to get comfortable, but the side of the couch at least provides support on one side, and then I make a pillow mountain around me and manage to doze off for a few hours...till it's time to get up and pee...again.  Oiy.

T minus 21 DAYS till my DUE DATE!!!  Come on Kalia!!!!!!!