35 Weeks.....

Face and hand at 33 1/2 weeks.

Definitely a girl! From my ultrasound at 20 weeks.

Below: Face, abdomen, and hands at 20 weeks

I had an ultrasound a couple weeks ago to check on the size of the baby and fluid levels. As I mentioned before, babies of diabetic mothers can get quite large so this is of particular interest to me! It appears she is doing fine. She was 4 lbs 11 oz, which my doc informed me places her in the 35 percentile.. which is good. She thinks she'll be a 7 or 8 lb baby, so not small but not large by any means! I really don't want to have to push out another 9 lb child! When it's coming out of your body, even a pound or two makes a really big difference.

I'm doing well handling the diabetes. Diet and exercise ended up not being enough to control my blood sugars, they were still too high so I have to take a medication and that seems to be helping. My doc said that can happen. Sometimes the hormones of pregnancy make it too difficult for some women to control their blood sugar. I still have to be careful about what I eat but I can have the occasional treat! :) I have to admit, at first I was a little ornery about not being able to have my daily can of Coke and having to cut out sweets and cut down on carbs. Now, though, I think I'm getting used to it. I do still get the Coke craving, I think it's a Cripps trait. The Coke gene is in our DNA. I was never a huge sweets girl, it's the carbs I love. I love a good plate of pasta and delicious, warm, buttery, flaky bread. Wow, my mouth is watering as I type ! :) Anyway, developing diabetes has forced me to develop healthier habits which has helped me keep the weight off this pregnancy. Since I was overweight when I started that's a really good thing. In fact, I'm only a few pounds heavier now than when I found out I was pregnant with Logan. Excellent!

At my appointment today I was surprised to learn I am dilated to a 3. I guess that doesn't really mean anything.. I could be a 3 for the next 4 weeks but it's encouraging nevertheless. If I remember correctly at this point with Logan I was a 1 for 2 weeks then a 3 for 2 more. Maybe this baby will be more cooperative. If she doesn't decide to come early, we're still on track to induce at 39 weeks.

Oh and for those of you who haven't heard... we've decided on a name.

Isabel Marie Soares

Isabel is a name we considered for Logan before we knew he was a boy. We'll be calling her Izzy for short.. NOT Belle or Bella!! Marie is a family name from Luke's side of the family.

Oregon....

We decided to go to Oregon again for our vacation this year but this time we went with Luke's side of the family. We rented this awesome house right on the beach in Oceanside. There was a sea lion colony out on one of the rocks and we could see them playing in the surf sometimes. Also, on our last day there a grey whale showed up. You could see it's spray and it's head would pop up every now and then. We all had a fun and relaxing time.

Above is at Multnomah Falls, a waterfall just outside of Portland.

View from our deck.

Logan's favorite pastime... throwing rocks into the surf.

Hiking at Cape Meares.

Cape Lookout beach.

The air museum. Logan loves it there.

Munson Falls

Logan's 4th and Other News....

Logan turns 4 today but we had his party on Sunday. We had both families over for food, fun, and cake. Logan was spoiled, as usual. :) I'm pretty sure he got everything he asked for. He'd been asking for the Iron Man Rocket Boost (below) for months. That's been his favorite toy so far. He sleeps with it and carries it pretty much everywhere he goes.

There aren't too many pictures because he got a bit surly during gift opening. He hates to be the center of attention and gets a bit frustrated when people are too focused on him. Hopefully he will grow out of this crippling shyness! I was pretty shy when I was little so it must be genetic! :)

Thanks to everyone for the gifts and fun.

Logan requested a Spongebob cake this year. I think I did a pretty good job!

He got a slip-n-slide from his aunt Kristin. He wasn't too sure about it at first and he wouldn't ever slide down it but he did decide it was pretty fun to walk down.

Yes, my child has inherited my nearly albino skin. This means we have to apply copious amounts of sunscreen!

In other pregnancy news... this pregnancy hasn't been as uneventful as it was with Logan. About a month ago I had a kidney infection and had to go up to the hospital for IV antibiotics. At 28 weeks I did the standard glucose test and it came back high so I had to go do the 3 hour glucose tolerance test at the hospital lab. That was fun. Those results were high as well so that means I have gestational diabetes. I should be able to control it with diet and exercise. I have to go see a dietician later this week to set me up with a meal plan to help keep my sugars in check.

There are risks for the baby but they can be minimized by keeping up with the diet, exercising, and testing my glucose levels 4 times a day. Since I've now had gestational diabetes I'm at a higher risk of developing diabetes again in a future pregnancy and also later in life.

The baby and I will be more closely monitored. I'll go in for an ultrasound in a couple weeks to make sure she's not getting too big to deliver vaginally. Logan was 9 lbs. so I think my body might be good at delivering large babies! :) Starting at 32-34 weeks I'll have to go to the doc twice a week to be hooked up to a fetal heart monitor for 30 minutes each time. I'll be induced at 39 weeks which is exactly 4 days before Logan starts his first day of preschool so I'm a bit stressed about that.

That's all for now!

Water, Water, Water.....

We've been having a bit of bad luck with water at our house lately. First, we had a near disaster with our fish tank. The way the filtration system is set up is this... we have the tank with the fish and then under it we have a smaller 55 gallon tank with all of the filtration necessities. So the water cycles from the top, gets clean in the bottom, and is then pumped back to the top. It's also necessary to keep a bunch of snails and crabs in the tank with the fish for cleaning purposes.

Well, one industrious snail somehow made it's way into the tube that carries water from the top tank to the bottom. This particular tube has a valve opening in the middle to control water flow. The snail dies in the tube sometime during the night, falls, and perfectly covers the valve opening. This means that while water is still being cycled up from the bottom tank, there's no way for it to flow back down. Now the tank is overflowing. Oh, did I mention we were sleeping at the time?? The water (SALTWATER!!) soaked the wall behind the tank and the carpet surrounding it. It also caused one of the surge protectors to spark. Luckily, everything was so wet it wouldn't have had a chance to start our house on fire. It ended up shorting out about $200 worth of lights, pumps, and fans. Awesome.

On to our next minor disaster. This last weekend we planted a tree in our yard. After planting the tree we left a hose running to water the tree while Luke mowed the lawn, Logan went inside, and I went to grab some dinner. When Luke was finished he went inside to find Logan sitting downstairs in his underwear. Intrigued, he asked Logan why he was sitting around in his underwear. To this Logan replies, "It's all wet!" Sometime during the winter the pipe running to our backyard faucet burst and when we turned it on it started gushing water into our basement. I should mention that we don't have Pineview water in Riverdale, we just have the faucet on the house that's why it leaked into our wall and basement.

The amount of water was tremendous! We had to get rid of the carpet padding and some insulation but we were able to save the carpet. The picture below is our exploratory hole. When Luke fixes it he'll have to cut another hole in the wall next to the door.

In a way we're lucky. The pipe is connected to a valve that doesn't let any water get past a certain point until you turn the faucet on. The break was on the portion where no water was, otherwise we'd have had water leaking all winter long and a whole mess of problems with mold and wood rot. Fun times! :/

Hawaii....

Luke recently had to go to Oahu for work and Logan and I got to go with him. I mean, really, I wasn't going to miss out on Hawaii!! Logan was pretty excited for his first plane ride but the novelty soon wore off. Our landing in Hawaii was pretty rough because there were some pretty strong winds and he was scared to death but otherwise he handled himself pretty well.

As you can imagine, Hawaii was beautiful and wonderfully warm. We had a lot of fun despite Luke having to work a couple days and a bout of middle of the night puking for Logan.

Logan's first plane ride. Chillin' with SpongeBob and pretzels.

Waikiki Beach at sunset.

Looking toward the mountains and Honolulu. Those mountains were nearly always covered in clouds but the beach was always clear.

Logan and I went to the Honolulu Zoo while Luke was working.

I think he liked the playground more than the animals!

Another Waikiki Beach sunset.

Waikiki Beach. This is the view from our hotel balcony.

The coast on the Windward side of Oahu.

Logan was not a fan of the wind.

Totally looks like the mountains in Lost right?? It's because they film Lost in Oahu.

On our last day, we didn't leave until 9:30 that night so we drove over to the North Shore and drove along the coastline. A day or two before there was an earthquake in Japan and there was a warning on the news about large waves. We happened to be on the right side of the island that day to see them. There were no swimming signs all over the beaches. They were the biggest waves Luke or I have ever seen. Pretty cool.

I left the dude in the picture so you could tell just how big the waves were. He's standing just above the water line down a slope from where I was but you can see the crash on the beach is about as tall as he is.