Anterior Placentas are bad for you

At least I think so. I haven't had one before but so far I hate it. I can't feel a thing! Here's the story:

This morning I went into the doctor's office as soon as I dropped Ashlyn off at school. I hadn't felt the baby since yesterday and the little handout "Kick Count" card they gave me said that I should be feeling at least 10 kicks in 2 hours and if it took longer than that then I should give them a call.

This hasn't been an active baby by any stretch but I can usually count on a few good minutes of kicking in the morning if I lay on my back as I'm waking up. Last night - nothing, this morning - nothing. I was incredibly worried! An acquaintance of mine (due 2 weeks before me) had to be induced a few weeks ago to give birth to her baby after the cord strangled him. Had I never heard of this I might have been fine to wait a few more hours but I was so paranoid and emotional I needed to know right away if everthing was ok.

I did all that I could this morning according the KC card: emptied my bladder, drank water, stretched. Ahhh! I cried on the way to school and said a bunch of prayers. I made it to the waiting room and spoke to the receptionist calmly but when the nurse came out I said what I needed to and then there was no more. I just cried while they took me back to the room and brought out the ultrasound.

The nurse was so perfect! She knew I wasn't in a talking mood so she chatted with Nathan and just gave me instructions. First thing I saw was a little heart beating! Then I got to let out a nice big sob. She spent quite a few minutes with me and at the end presented me with some printed pictures to take home. I love her! I'll post them and try to explain so you can see too!
Above we have a front view. Tilt your head to the right. On the right is the cutest face you've ever seen! You can see dark spots for the eyes and you can even see a nose and lips! Chest is in the middle. My placenta (the yucky anterior one) is the light curve along the top.




This one is a great shot of my problem. You can clearly see the foot and leg on the left. I am getting kicked. I feel nothing. I love ultrasounds. See? GE really does bring good things to life! The white blobs on the far right (they kind of look like they are forming the head of an arrow) are the fingertips - this little one was waving up a storm at Nathan, who was just eating it up (and waving right back!). That cocktail weiner looking thing next to the foot is the umbilical cord.
Ok, here is another "waving at Nathan" picture. You can see the leg and foot (again pushing on a nice squishy placenta) and I feel nothing! On the right you can see two arms in the process of waving. You can see the fingers. Below you see some vague vertical white ribs and the bright white body. You also get a nice cross-section of the umbilical cord. You can see the three circle areas outlined in white? That's the 2 veins and the artery, or the 2 arteries and the vein - I can't remember.
And last but not least, another cute face! (On the far right - looking right at you!) It's been sliced diagonally, but you can see the baby's right eye, nose, mouth and chin. SOOOoooooo cute! I love the face pictures the best. The white blob is probably an arm and the other things are appendages too.

Anyway - I had to pay $20, but the peace of mind is so worth it!

Builder's Pride

They were so excited to have built this by themselves! They were making variations on this theme for days. You know we do have building blocks, but I guess they aren't as challenging!

Genetics will tell - or Nathan's new trick

During our dumpling dinner we discovered Nathan can do this:

And Ashlyn....

can't.

Foul Soup

We decided that we would use up some turkey by making Foul Soup (which would be RC's Chicken Dumpling soup to the rest of the world). I always make this after Thanksgiving to use up turkey (hence our multi-meat title) and, of course, at other times during the year. Sick people love to get a new twist on the basic Chicken Soup and always ask for the recipe.



Well, today Rick helped me out while I was finishing up a project and made the soup for me. I pulled out some of our yummy Make-Ahead Crescent rolls that I had frozen from Thanksgiving and let them rise all day in the kitchen. I just asked Rick to pop them in the oven when he put the dumplings in and I thought we had a great game plan going for a fabulous dinner!



The soup recipe is pretty imprecise as far as amounts go - I always add more stock than the recipe calls for and just cut up the veggies until it looks good to me. I told Rick that. Well - this was HILARIOUS! First, Rick is not a fan of veggies so there weren't that many in there. But that was only the first surprise I had and definintely not the biggest one.


Here is the soup in all its glory. What are you looking at you may ask? Well, you are looking at about 3 inches of "dumpling" and about 3 inches of soup underneath (I dug some out for the picture). I literally laughed outloud when I took the lid off of the pot! I asked Rick what he did to the dumplings because I had never seen them form up in one solid mass before. Now I'm not the perfect cook - I've seen them dissolve into the soup b/c I messed up while dropping them or didn't have the soup at enough of a boil. I just had never seen such a huge layer of "dumpling".

Oh my! Rick was going off the C.W. Welch addage which goes something like "If a little does a good job, more does it better!" He figured since we added more stock that he would DOUBLE the dumpling recipe! :) Hee-hee. The dumplings are a pretty generous amount as is but I guess I haven't made this recently enough for him to remember. Wow! It was like eating dumplings with some turkey and an occasional vegetable pressed into them. Not bad - but not what either of us expected!

Nathan's New Pocket

Yup! He is thinking this is the best thing ever.

Of course it's a pocket! What else would a slit in your pants be for?

The wise man built his house upon the rock...

That was Rick's Family Night lesson this past week. Care to venture a guess as to why?

Ward Christmas Party

The day after our crazy pot pie, sewing, cleaning, work party we were at it again with the ward Christmas Party. (This was a bad week - literally something every single night!)

We started in the chapel with a presentation and songs then moved to the cultural hall for a ham dinner. They served us in courses so the dinner pic I have is when we were just munching on rolls. :)

Then we had caroling and (though it wasn't on the agenda) dancing.

And then we heard some loud "HO HO HO"s and who should appear but Santa Claus! BTW - Ashlyn asked for a Jack-in-the-box. HUH? That was not something Santa would have thought of for a Kindergartener! They both gave Santa a big hug before getting their treat (pencil and super cool gum balls in a cylinder with attached toy!)

There's Always Time for Family!

Well, that's what it's going to say on my wall clock as soon as I put the vinyl lettering on! It's almost worth being LDS just for the crafts! (Just kidding - if that's all I wanted I would just move to Utah. :) )

Here is Stage One: a 24" circle cut from particle board and then mudded with a putty knife to simulate plaster.

And here is Stage Two: Sanded, painted a neutral beige, then glazed with a rag. And of course the clock mechanism's in.

November 30 - what a crazy day!

I was a crazy woman! I went shopping, made a homemade Chicken Pot Pie with puff pastry crust (no cream of *** soup here, baby! It even had taragon and nutmeg!) in individual ramekins for the kids hoping presentation would sway them to eat well for the sitter (totally worked), sewed Nathan one of his presents, cleaned the house and got ready for Rick's jacket and tie work dinner! (Which was so incredibly lame - $43 plus gas out of my entertainment budget which is already sadly overbudget! How is that since we've been on maybe 4 dates this year? I think for gifts we should just solicit GCs to go out to dinner. Then I've only got to talk myself into the expense of a $25 babysitter instead of the sitter and dinner!) Here are some pics though!

Little Late - halloween craft

I promised myself I wouldn't throw away the kids' cute crafts without taking a picture first. This helps me with my little problem of keeping every single thing they make and then having nowhere to put them. Now I feel a little better if I toss it since there is a picture for posterity!

At Ashlyn's school they had a Halloween party and I came to help out with Nathan. Since there were crafts left over I got one for him to make at home.