What I've been up to...

Well, I know....it's been FOREVER since I've updated my blog. So here's a quickie of what I've been up to.

Doing Lots of Baking of a little bun soon to be named Emmie :)
Let me tell you. She's a mover. Perhaps she will be a tiny tutu clad ninja. Only time will tell :)

Also, I (and by I, I mean we) have been selling Miche hand bags. Check them out at www.andreasmichebags.com They are super addicting. And EVERYONE who sees them, loves them and buys them. Here are a few photo's to give you an idea of how cute they are:



You can see how they work on my site. But basically it's a classic size bag as seen in the picture above on top or the big bag as seen below the classic. Instead of having to dump out your purse when you want to change colors or styles, you just change the outside! It's brilliant and sooooo convenient!

Anyway, it's easy to sell something you love. And I LOVE them!

Baby Gymnast

So Friday 9/10/10 was our 20 week OB appointment. My doctor was on the same wave length as me and totally agreed that Ultra Sounds are more elective usually than diagnostic. She said that as long as the pregnancy seems to be progressing at a normal level and you hear a healthy heartbeat, there is not a whole lot of reason for Ultra Sound if it doesn't change the outcome. In our case, no matter what, the outcome would be the same.... give birth to baby and we will love what ever we get. Abortion is NOT an option to us.

(The day before, we got an ultra sound but decided not to stress about it not being at the doctors office and it was cheaper anyway. THANKFULLY all was healthy and wonderful. The tech was amazing at pointing everything out and assuring us that we had a very healthy, and very tall baby girl growing with all 20 digits and a perfect little face and heart :) Yay!)

Anway..... later in the evening on Friday we were at our friends THE RAMBOW'S and I felt the baby start kicking away. I grabbed Taylor's hand and put it on my belly because he hadn't gotten lucky enough to feel her yet. The look on his face was so cute as he was in such awe that he finally got to feel her after hearing me talk about feeling her moving.

Then, this morning we were sitting on the couch waking up and my tummy was growling... well apparently she gets anxious when I'm hungry because she was kicking like crazy. So I pulled my shirt up and told him to watch and he got to see her kick twice. It was so cool :) He's so excited and scared to be a dad. No doubt he will be AMAZING. He comes from good peoples :)

Updates on baby :) It's a.....

Ok, sorry I'm a slacker and haven't updated in a while. So here's the skinny of the last week. On Thursday 9/9/10 we went to THIS 4D Imaging place to find out the gender of our little bundle.

Here are a couple of photos:
It's a............................................................GIRL!!!!!

She was so active during the Ultra Sound. It was sooo fun to watch her kicking and moving and being imodest :) We did a $100 package and then paid the extra $25 to get the live motion DVD. It was so worth it! (I would have paid $150 at my Dr.'s office AFTER insurance with no fancy pictures, CD or DVD)

Now I can pop it in and watch her get jiggy with it. And considering I'm only about 20 weeks and am starting to feel a lot of movement I think my belly is going to be moving a LOT in these coming weeks.

Heyyyy baby

This is 14 weeks. Not a whole lot different than 11 weeks but I'm starting to slowly feel better. The sickness seems to be only in the mornings for the most part now unless I need more sleep. I feel more sick if I'm more tired. So there ya go. More sleep is what the Dr. ordered. Yoouuuu got it.

Cravings: Beef, Artichokes, corn on the cob, tart or fruity things
Aversions: Still chicken tho it seems to be lightening a little, Salad (blechh), raw veggies in general.

Good. Times.

11 1/2 weeks

So, a little background on today's visit. I had a wee bit of a heart attack because when the Dr. was listening for the heartbeat with her fancy little machine she couldn't find one. She quickly does a pelvic exam and says my uterus is tilted back quite a bit and that might be why she can't get the beat because baby is too far away from the surface or something...

I woke up today for the first time in weeks not feeling sick. Time. To. Panic.... Not a good sign. I'm not quite 12 weeks and yet I didn't feel sick this morning. Uh-Oh...

So she refers me over to Ultra Sound to get one as sort of an emergency.

Longest 10 minutes of my entire life.... trying so hard not to freak out as my husband is sick with strep and too sick to make it to the appointment... Be STRONG Andrea...

At last, finally the tech takes me in. Does the U/S.... Finds baby.... wait.... finally! Finds a heart beat. Holy crap I almost gave birth right then. 158 bpm and I got to hear it!

So. Amazing.

And, my baby is going to be a little Athlete. It was moving and shimmying all over the place. The tech even said, "wow, that's an active baby". My ribs most definitely will not appreciate that later I'm sure of it. However, it will be worth knowing little bebe is healthy and good.

8 Weeks

So here's my first preggo photo at 8 weeks. Just enough of a pooch that I can't "suck it in" anymore. Boo hiss. J/K I'm excited :)

Finally I can talk about it!

Ok, so it's been forever since I've updated but mostly because I felt like anything I say would spill the beans too early about bambino Graves, coming to a hospital near you around February 3rd 2011.



We are super excited and were a little surprised as we were not officially trying. Obviously not preventing very well either ;)

• I have been sicker than a dog....but thankfully the Dr. Rx'd me the generic Zofran which does wonders. I can actually function on it. Though the occasional dose is not quite up to par and so I still suffer a bit. All I can say is thank goodness for medicine because I would be in bed ALL the time without it.

• Side effect: CONSTIPATION. This has been a real battle. I've become the point of impacted twice now. I won't go too far in to detail but lets just say it takes physical intervention to get movement again. And there's blood. Lot's of it sometimes. Due to the consistency I tore and once you have a "Fissure" it doesn't heal until you can be on a complete clear liquid diet for 3 days. Seeing as how that's not possible with a growing fetus....well you get the picture...Oh the joys....

• Eye on the prize. That's what I keep having to chant to myself as I experience the lovely discomfort that is morning (hah! more like all day) sickness, constipation, and aversion to food though hungry all the time.

• That Duggar lady is CARAZY. 19?? At this point I think my mother is crazy too. She had 6! And was sick, if not sicker than I am. Who thought this pregnancy thing was a good idea anyway? Ok, ok, I do. I am so excited. only 32 weeks left.....

From my journey

So I'm not generally keen on posing in a bikini but I did it in part for motivation and in part to see the true results. Since my tummy has always been a problem area for me. 14.6 lbs. Wowza!




And can I just say this diet is HARD. Emotionally more so than any other diet I've ever done. Then again, I always broke down and cheated or just quit on all my other diets so I filled that emotional void with food. Not this time. Nope. It kicked my emotional butt....but it works.






I am thinking I will do the three weeks of maintenance and then maybe try to kick the last 5 or 10 on another round. I know I won't be able to do it "on my own" without the CRAZY strict structure that this plan makes you follow. But I'll let you know in 3 weeks when my maintenance is up just how I feel.

Update on Weight

So this plan has been working so well for me! The cat's out of the bag. I am doing the HCG diet. It's all the rage in Utah and now I see why. IT WORKS! (I'm doing the homeopathic though. No scary injections of straight hormone for me)

I have lost.....drumroll please....... 11 pounds!! In less than two weeks! And no.... it is not water weight. I was skeptical of the results I read about at first because having done Adkins before the first 5 lbs is always water weight (I lost 20lbs in one month on Atkins but it came right back as soon as carbs were re-introduced). Not with this diet. I noticed a diff in size right away but not in my hands or feet. I can tell very easily if I'm retaining water or not in my fingers. I am down a whole size already and am wearing pants today that I haven't worn in TWO YEARS! This diet is VERY strict and VERY hard, but is working so well for me because it is incredibly structured. You have to track EVERYTHING. It's not for everyone....but man o man, if you're someone who has tried everything and always gain the weight back. You might give this a try.

It IS...I repeat IS a LIFESTYLE change but it forces you to learn how to cook healthy because otherwise you get so sick of the limited food options. Now that I have all these great ideas and recipes I will definitely be cooking more often on my maintenance phase. Pray for me that I keep it off!

Weight

Only 4 1/2 more lbs to go till pre wedding weight. Only 17 1/2 more to go to get to my goal. I weighed that when I moved here and figure since I'll be trying for babies in this year and I hit 30 next year, I should get down to the weight I want to be so that I can maintain it more easily. Cause heaven knows it will be 10 times harder when my metabolism decides to slow down.

and then....

OY OY OY. Our water heater decided so spring a violent leak and as a result of soaking everything in a 5 foot radius, shorted out the power to our actual heater. We have an old school heater that you light the pilot electrically with a light switch....but when the light switch get's soaked and blows and the pilot gets doused by all the spraying, this means no heat.....brrrrrrrrr. It was like 50 in our house last night. First time i've had to sleep with a space heater on in a year. fun fun.

Following...

So for those of you following my blog, I am on a journey right now to lose the post marriage weight gain of 10 lbs and get my endurance back up to what it was about 5 years ago. Check out my story and those of a few other women in their weight loss/getting healthier journeys. This "Losing with Loves and Lovers" blog is actually really helping me because I don't want to give up every time I get a little discouraged....Because I am no longer a freak in my own head when I read that others have the exact same frustrations and thoughts about this lifestyle change! So check it out, because at least for the time being I will probably be posting to that blog more often than this one. You can follow and or become a contributor. See ya on the flip side!

Christmas/New Years re-cap

We began our adventure by driving to Utah the night of the 23rd. We left at about 7:30pm. About half way there, our heat decides to stop working. Rather, it just blows a luke warm air. Quite a "Dumb and Dumber" moment for those of you who've seen the movie. We were shivering as we arrived. Turns out due to some bone headedness on the part of Jiffy Lube, there was a hole in a place there shouldn't have been and as a result our thermostat stopped working. Fun. Thankfully my brother just so happens to be mechanically inclined and SAVED the day! And the trip! Yay for heat.

We had a wonderful time on Christmas eve and Christmas day spending time with family and cathing up. It was so great to see everyone.

On Christmas night as we returned home to my brother's around 11 my tummy started feeling queezy. This is not abnormal for me so I took some Tum's and tried to go to bed. I awoke about an hour later and emptied the contents of my stomach through violent heaving. I proceeded to repeat this about 6 more times over the next 12 hours. Life is quite interesting when you have to have a bowl in your lap on the toilet because your insides have become liquid from both ends :( But literally after about exactly 24 hours the appeal of food returned and I felt almost totally normal. Good times. Thankfully this was on Saturday, a day when my family had just planned to be lazy and let the kids play with their toys anyway. So I sent Taylor on his way snowboarding because how boring to watch your wife wallow in misery all day? So I was able to just relax and rest all day and my brother and sister-in-law were awesome and got me anything if I needed it.

Sunday we had the pleasure of attending Taylor's Uncle Brig's daughters blessing. What a beauty that one. We were able to enjoy spending a little time with everyone from that side of the family for a couple of hours before we headed up to my mom's house for a relaxing rest of our Sunday and dinner with more family. I was able to visit with my long time BFF Sharon too. I always love chatting with her.

Monday morning we headed out for our long drive home. Thankfully it was totally uneventful and we always love spending time together so we actually enjoy road trips such as this.

Tuesday, I got my new treadmill!!! Tay and I set it up and I walked on it right away for 20 minutes. Love at first walk....sigh.....

I worked Tues and Wed and then had another nice little break for a 4 day new year weekend. We got a lot done, got a lot of R&R and it was just a nice and enjoyable holiday. Oh, and I worked out every day but one. Go me!