davejenbarnes

I think by now, everyone has received our Christmas portrait. Here it is just in case.

We decided to stay local this year and celebrate Christmas close to home. (Besides, even if we did want to travel, the midwives at AABC really do not want any of their moms to travel farther than an hour away driving at all during the third trimester, so even if we weren’t just being selfish, I have the support of the midwives to stay close to home and the birthing center. Pretty soon I won’t be able to drive even an hour away.) David played in the two morning Christmas Eve services at church while James and I slept in and all three of us went to the first evening service together. Our church does not provide childcare for their Christmas Eve services so the whole family sat in the sanctuary for the service. James did pretty well, but we were thankful that we accidentally had a pacifier in the diaper bag left over from some trip to grandmas or another. It’s amazing how much less attention you can pay to the actual service with a demanding 17 month old in your presence.

Christmas morning, we opened the gifts from Grandma and Grandpa Barnes and played in the little tent and on the table for a little while before heading up to Grandma and Grandpa K’s house. There weren’t an overabundance of gifts, but we all ended up getting spoiled and surprised and even shocked at the presents. James wanted to unwrap everyone’s gifts. He was really into the tearing off paper this year.

We’re home now and David is sick, just like the last break school had. BUT, he was smart and made a doctors appointment at the first opportunity he had so he immediately started medicine for the sinus infection and tonsillitis. In other somewhat tragic news (well, not really, it just adds an expense we’d rather not have to fork up the cash for) I dropped my WACOM pen in the cat’s water and it only works eraser-side down now which means I won’t be photoshopping anything anytime soon since photoshop is smart enough to tell the difference between the pen side and the eraser side and it disables my access to all the different tools in the tool palate and only lets me “erase.” I didn’t think a replacement pen would cost much, but golly-bob-howdy those things are expensive!

UPDATE: it must have dried out - the WACOM pen is working again! I was able to make the christmas collage in photoshop without the frustration of using a mouse!

Christmas was wonderful. We’ll update about that in the next few days. Here we are the day after Christmas visiting the beautiful Baylor campus. I gotta say, though, James looks good in burnt orange…

We just got home from taking James to see the Trail of Lights. Yes, it’s late. 10:39 pm to be exact. We skipped bathtime and put him straight into his pajamas without so much as even warming up his toes. Hopefully the warm bottle of milk will help with the chilly toes.

James seemed to love the lights. He calls them “pretty” instead of lights, I suppose, because they are pretty. I had packed up three cameras for the evening (2 cameras and 1 camcorder) but preggo-brain that I have, I forgot to charge batteries during the day today and we arrived at Zilker park with three dead cameras and no spare batteries. Oh. I did get 2 pictures of James bundled up and asleep on the drive there. He rode just about the whole trail on David’s shoulders while I pushed the empty stroller, and yes, we had a hat, mittens, and winter coat on him. He did still manage to get cold hands and feet though. I suppose letting him run around would have helped keep him warm but neither of us wanted to risk losing him in the huge crowd.

I’m hoping that he goes to sleep tonight because he was up last night with a fever, took two naps today, and skipped dinner. Odds are that he’ll wake up hungry with another fever again tonight but we did give him some children’s Motrin before bedtime. He can say “medicine” amazingly clearly for his age. Of course, it tastes like candy, so it’s no wonder he can say “medicine.” When he’s well, he usually sleeps 13 hours through so the middle of the night waking beats us up mentally. Yes, we’re spoiled with his normal sleep habits.

so I had my 30 week checkup today. Everything’s okay. Well, technically everything’s okay though my belly button has been killing me. Fundal measurement right on target at 31 cm, weight gain averaging 1 pound per week.

Belly button diagnosis - okay, this is all what the midwife thinks - no hernia, just a baby head in breech presentation - his butt isn’t engaged yet, so there’s more pressure from his head since he’s up higher, and more hope in getting him turned (yay!) There is, in fact, some slight bruising of the area because there is no muscle there to support the tissue. I’m okay to lift James as much as I want (but keep it nothing out of the ordinary) rest when I want, lots of laying on my side and yoga-ish up in the air positions to get him to flip. The earlier he flips, the less pressure on the belly button area from a little bowling ball head.

I passed the glucose test last month but with much lower numbers than they like to see, so I’m on a 5 meal a day regime and supposed to add at least 1 protein shake a day (ew) and my blood pressure is low-to-fine. Today it was 112/70 last time it was waaaaaay lower. I’m at 126 pounds which today’s midwife said was awesome (gaining 1 lb per week!) but I feel is low. Shoot, my goal weight for my height is 135 and that’s NOT 30 weeks pregnant!

So, yeah, same concerns, take it easy until he flips, lots of eating. (forever with the eating!)

Next appointment in 4 weeks (they keep telling me next time will start the 2 week appointments but I go in and it’s 4 weeks).

Happy Anniversary to us… wish we could celebrate together!

(Dave has a band concert in Cedar Park and I have Bible study in Round Rock so we won’t even be in the same city!)