Patience

Still waiting... we went to the Dr today. I had hoped to hear I had at least progressed to 3-4cm since last week. Unfortunately no. I kinda think he's comfy in there and doesn't plan to come out any time soon. I was thinking both of us are born on the 7th of a month so maybe Nathaniel is waiting for February 7th? That sounds like a long time from now :-( I scheduled another appointment for Feb 5th where they will check in on him and we can decide if we want to wait longer for him to come on his own or not. Patience... something I can never quite master.

January 29th is HERE

So I know they tell you the due date is just an estimate... every little baby is different in how long they take before they are ready to come. It's strange knowing this Big Event is coming, but not sure when. I've decided to book plans for every day/night this week so that I will keep busy. We are so anxious to meet this precious little one! I'm trying to enjoy the fact that we aren't overwhelmed with a crying little one just yet.

A few more thoughts

It is SNOWING AGAIN! It's supposed to start warming up by noon, but it's coming down hard right now. I had a bunch of errands to run, but I think me and my big belly will be staying home. Why cause undue stress... unless... will that start labor? Hmmmm. Seriously though, I have plenty of things to do around the house so a day cooped up inside won't be too bad.


And for those who are curious just how big I am.... here's a picture. Dad thinks we are at least a week away from Nathaniel's arrival. He sure is moving around like he is trying to get out though. I'm told many first borns are late, so I'm trying to be patient. I keep getting a knee or foot right behind my belly button :-( I'm told this is the most comfortable time of pregnancy.

Just waiting now...

Well we expect Nathaniel any day now. I am happy to report that we have a functional room and cradle for our little guy. We did a lot of work on the room on Saturday to get it up and running, and I'm happy with the way it turned out. I even finished the rocking chair cushion covers on Sunday. We found the glider/rocker on craigslist for $20 but when we got it home the cushions smelled a bit like smoke so I set off to find cushions and with little success moved towards pillows and fabric. It was a little extra work but I think it was worth it. It took me about an hour to remember how to thread the sewing machine but eventually it came back to me.

38 weeks

We are anxiously awaiting the arrival of our little Nathaniel. We had a Dr. appointment on Friday and then said he is in position (just not "engaged" yet). She felt his head but it still had wiggle room. It sounds like the cervix is starting to soften and dialate, so ready or not... he's a coming. His heartbeat sounded really good too. It's really too bad we don't get another ultrasound, we really got used to seeing him every visit in Israel. He's still stretching and moving quite a bit and I'm getting bigger and bigger.

We've been working more on getting his room ready. Ken's sister Norine was really helpful in getting me to commit to a color theme (reds/blues/baseball) and yesterday Bethany (another sis-in-law, Steven's wife) assisted with pulling it together and starting to paint. We are making progress now. Our upstairs is completely turned up-side-down but it should be back together soon. I'm missing my other sis-in-law Amy (Micah's wife) and know she would love to be here if she could. She's been so excited and supportive even when she is so far away.

I'm trying to determine if Nathaniel will be more like dad or mom in terms of timeliness... Ken's "on time" is always 10 minutes early, mine is always 5-10 minutes late. I guess we will know soon enough :-)

Pump It Up

We found a fun place to take our little buddies for Christmas. Pump It Up. I guess there are multiple locations in the Portland area, but this site is specific for kids under 5. There are two rooms filled with blown up castles and slides for the kids to run around in. Here's a pic of Garrett and Maddie. Looks like fun!

A day with my brother

This weekend we took my little Honda Civic up to my brother's house. Hoping he could help us with two little "issues". We've had multiple people tell us that our muffler needs replacing over the last year or so. Jeremy agreed to take a look at it and ended up fixing it for us. Wow, our quality of life just went up without that lawnmower sound everytime we drive around town. Turns out all those people were right, we did have a hole in our muffler. Our second issue was the lack of sound coming from our radio. This last summer while we were gone, our car battery died so we had it replaced. Apparently if you remove your battery from the car, the anti theft feature will activate causing the sound in the stereo to be cut off. In order to fix this little problem you need the serial number on the stereo which is mounted into your dashboard. We asked Jeremy if he could get at that serial number so we could call the Honda dealer with it and in return get our secret code to reinitiate our stereo. I thought it would be a quick pop-out-the-stereo job, but the next thing I knew I was in the back seat of the car holding the glove box and the dashboard covers. I've never seen the insides of my car like that! I kept asking him if he was keeping track of the ever increasing pile of screws that was beginning to overflow the cupholders. Does my younger brother really know what he is doing? Apparently not... he called one of his buddies. Actually he did really well, but his buddy knew a lot about this specific make/model and was of great assistance. I felt bad for all the ways Jeremy had to maneuver under the dashboard. It looked pretty uncomfortable being upside down for long periods of time. Surprisingly though, all the pieces went back together and our emergency lights, heater knobs all seem to be working properly, and there were no left over screws. Now we need to call the dealer and get our security code. I'm exhausted!

Baby Shower

This weekend my cousin threw a baby shower for me. I was a little concerned when I heard that a few people didn't even get their invitations (ie. my sis-in-law). I was glad I had briefly mentioned it to her at Christmas. I think the mail was really slow especially with all the winter weather over the last two weeks. Anyway, we had a really fun "tea time" and each of the guests made a little onesie for Nathaniel. They are really cute. I really hope he can fit into the newborn size they say they will fit up to 8lbs.



My mom also made this cake out of rolled up diapers. It looked amazing. I'm feeling a little better about having things ready. Well, maybe not everything is in it's proper place but we at least have the essentials. Now I just need to put that carseat (borrowed) back together which I took apart to wash the straps.

We had another birthing class this weekend. I'm not sure if it is making me more comfortable or more unsettled about what will take place in the next few weeks. These videos can be a bit disturbing. We had a Dr. Appointment on Friday and everything went well. She thought he was about 7lbs... but it was a total guess from across the room. No scientific facts to back her up. I hear that they don't really know and can be off 2 lbs either way. They actually said I've lost 5lbs since my last visit two weeks ago, which really doesn't make sense to me... I feel like I've been eating everything in site. The baby's heart sounded good and the Dr. is so calm and reassuring. I think we are going to make it! Can't wait to have little Nathaniel here, I'm interested in meeting his little foot that is constantly trying to push his way out my right side. He's still moving a lot. I didn't sleep at all last night. Guess I'm getting prepared for his arrival :-)

I love milk!

I think it's true. I have been drinking at least 2 tall glasses a day. I'm making up for the small amount I drank in Israel due to the price. Costco has apparently changed their packaging of milk. It has a wider opening at the top which makes spilling more of risk, but I can manage. Lots of things seemed to have changed while we were gone. New stop lights, Stanford's Happy Hour :-(, and the weather (snow 3x already!!!). All trivial I know. Just wierd coming back and things being a bit different. I guess life will become dramatically different in a few weeks anyway with little Nate coming.

While it's so nice to be home, my thoughts often drift towards the good friends that we left in Israel. Especially with all the news on Gaza. I've recieved emails that things are fairly normal in Haifa despite the comotion down South.

Changes. On multiple occasions we have had to hold back our urge to honk when someone is sitting at a green light. We didn't honk much over there, but we heard it ALL the time before the lights even turned green! It's going to take a while to get back to NW driving habits. I went to the grocery store and saw all the checkers standing up, which reminded me in Israel they all sit on comfy chairs and take their time ringing you through the line. Ken was driving in the snow a few days ago and put his blinker on to get into the right lane... and the guy behind him actually slowed down to let him in instead of speeding up to make sure we didn't get in front on him. The fruit in Israel was so tasty and juicy. I had a rather dry box of Satsuma oranges last week. Oh how the fresh squeezed OJ was so yummy!

Swim class. I think I miss the Israeli swim aerobics with all my friends over the age of 65. I've been taking a swim class at the Club up the road and she seems to be an "ultra cheerleader type" instead of the one in Israel who just barked orders in Hebrew. There are only 8 in the class instead of the 30 we had in Israel so we don't bump into each other and if we do there is always a "sorry" exchanged. I feel like I got a better workout in the Israeli class though, maybe I'm not working hard enough? I got used to my friend Abraham always telling me he had a sister in NY and that he knew 8 different languages English, French, Italian, Hebrew, Arabic...etc. Every other day we would have the same conversation!

Neighbors. I wonder who is bugging them everyday now that I'm here? I mean I required a lot of assistance between setting up Dr. Appointments, getting tourism information and assistance with Hebrew homework.

I guess it's been long enough here at home (or is there too much housework?), to think back and be missing what became "normal" for the last 7 months. Miss you guys!

It's raining, It's pouring...

And we are finding leaks in our house :-( We were cleaning in our garage a few days ago and noticed some pools of water on top of the rubbermaid totes... after some investigation we isolated the problem and think we fixed it. Last night we came home from a visit with family and I heard a drip, drip, drip coming from the window in the living room. Uggh! It was pouring pretty hard and after drying as much as we could we tried to caulk the leak. Hoping that will be a good temporary solution. It looks like the sheetrock is pretty bad though. Great time to be starting a house project huh? We woke up this morning to a blanket of white snow and blue skies. How random.

Most of our time over the last few days has been spent trying to get a nursery room ready for our little Nathaniel. We have quite a few "gadgets" now and we are feeling a little more prepared.... now if we can just catch up on those birthing classes that have been cancelled due to weather and holidays.