My Biggest Fears

With all the excitement of getting the nursery ready, my first shower this weekend, buying our first pack of diapers ($23..yikes!) – I’ve been thinking a lot about the actual delivery of this child. And by thinking I mean freaking out.

Here is a list of my top 5 biggest fears about delivery. (Warning – may contain too much information. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.)

1. That they will all of a sudden realize that he is breach and the doctor will try to manually turn him back so he’s head down. I saw this on an episode of Private Practice and it looks incredibly painful. Side note – I have taken a hiatus from watching Private Practice since EVERY episode has something to do with either the mother dying in labor, the father dying during labor (yes that happened), embryos being placed in the wrong mother and then one of the babies died, a baby being CUT OUT of a mother for the love of God. Plus, every time I watch I get a headache from crying so while I’m DVR’ing them..I haven’t watched in a few months.

2. That I will poop on the table. Everyone tells me that this is normal and doesn’t even phase the nurses or doctor but this is terrifying to me.

3. Hemorrhoids. Nuf said. I don’t want them and I’m tired of reading the warnings about them in my pregnancy books.

4. That after 24 hours of pushing my doctor will decide that I should have a c-section. I’m not even someone who is against a c-section but after all that work of pushing I might slap someone if they tell me it was all for nothing and they’re just going to go in and get him.

5. Many of my friends have heard me “joke” about asking for the epidural mid February. The joke is on them. I’m not joking. I prefer as much pain medication as possible and as early as possible. I have a fear that by the time I get to the hospital it will be “too late” and they won’t give me any pain meds or an epidural. I’m not above ordering from Canada and bringing my own stash to the hospital. Hopefully this will not be necessary.

All jokes aside (although I’m dead serious about the hemorrhoids) my biggest fear is that there will be complications or that the baby won’t be healthy after delivery. I think when you are pregnant (and super emotional) you tend to notice all the scary stories of what has happened to other babies. Ultimatley I know that I’ve done everything I can to get this baby here healthy and happily and the rest is up to God.

I don't have any pictures that really go with this post (lucky you) but this one is pretty funny.

Stella is very protective of the baby stuff already and doesn't even really like it if Sasha comes in the baby room. This is when Sasha got a little too close to the car seat and Stella attacked.

Happy New Year!

These last few weeks have flown by with visitors, holidays, and lots of Christmas snacking! I'm a little worried to get on the scale at the doctor's office on Friday! We hope everyone had a safe and happy holiday season. We thought a lot about how different next year will be compared to this year. We are definitely in the home stretch. I will be 31 weeks on Wednesday so 9 more to go! Baby Kippley got lots of fun new outfits, stuffed animals, and ornaments for Christmas. Spoiled already!

We got all of our furniture up in the nursery (and by we I mean Brian.) The room looks A LOT smaller now that we have furniture in it!

While we were sorting things in the nursery a few weeks ago, Sasha found this pacifier on the floor and apparently it looked good to her. She put it in her mouth exactly the right way and when Brian went to take it from her, she ran downstairs and laid in her bed. We were dying laughing and had to take a picture first but then Brian went down and told her "no" and gave her a dog chew toy. The bad thing is when you put some of the baby stuffed animals next to the dog stuffed animals...even I can't tell the difference. So that should go well in the future!

The dogs enjoyed celebrating Christmas with lots of extra treats and bones. You would think we could get Stella a smaller bone but she has to have EVERYTHING that Sasha has or she will just want Sasha's so we get them the same size. Maybe it's good practice for when we have kids because these 2 behave just like sisters.

They really do love eachother and snuggled all day on the couch yesterday while Brian and I watched a marathon of NCIS. Hey - there isn't much else to do when it's -15 degrees out!! Sasha uses Stella as a little pillow and Stella appreciates the extra body heat that Sasha can provide.

My mother-in-law went out to visit Brian's sister of the holiday and I knew she was sending "a few" things back for us but I never could have imagined what she crammed into this HUGE hockey bag. I was like a kid on Christmas morning. She sent stacks and stacks of baby clothes (all 0-12 months), some adorable toys, and a bouncy seat. Our nephew Micah will be 2 on Feb 29th (yes a leap day baby!) so he is seasonally the same size as our boy will be. I wish I could take a picture of all the cute hats, socks, shoes, and outfits that Molly sent but I just took a picture of the bag...busting at the seams and a few of my favorites. Molly even put all the tops and bottoms together so that I could see what went what. So sweet. I can understand how she would be worried after an unfortunate incident last week. Molly had sent a bundle me snuggle thing along with this net thing. I honestly thought it was something you put on the mattress. So I emailed her thanking her for the bundle me and "mattress pad." Molly emailed me back that it was not a mattress pad but actually a mosquito net thing that you put over the stroller!! Oops!! :) Good thing she told me before I attempted to put that on the mattress!

Two wiener dog outfits...so cute!

This one is a dinosaur ensemble and it kills me. There is a little stuffed dinosaur that comes out the pocket and it even has dinosaurs on the hem of the overalls. It also came with a hat but I didn't get a picture of it.

Thanks again Schneiders!!

Overall I've been feeling pretty great! Definitely can tell that I'm more tired and a few aches and pains. I can tell that my belly is growing everyday. Brian told me, "You look 10 times more pregnant this week than last week." Then over the weekend I was changing my shirt and Brian walked by and asked "What is that?" I looked down to see what he was referencing and it was a stretch mark on my belly!!!!! Are you kidding me Brian?? Two very bad things that you should never say to a crazy hormonal wife. There are no pictures in this post of Brian because it's hard to cover up the bruising. :)

Here are a few pictures of me a few days apart but I feel like the 2nd I look bigger just 2 days later..yikes.

Winter Wonderland

The last few weeks we have had a lot of visitors staying at our house which has been really fun. Starting this weekend, we have a string of 4 legged visitors coming to stay. Our friends Tom and Jess asked us to watch their dog Parker this weekend while they were out of town. He is such a good dog and Sasha always loves it when other dogs come to play. The dynamic seems to be Sasha wants to play with Parker. Parker wants to play with Stella. And Stella wants to be left alone with her afghan on the couch. But I think Parker is warming up to Sasha. Today Brian took them outside to play in the new snow we had and it was hilarious. Parker can definitely hold his own!

Racing back to Brian.


Parker trying his best to pick up the frisbee. It's about 1/2 the size of his body. Please don't mind the yellow snow in the background..I don't know how to photoshop.

Brian holding Sasha and trying to get Parker to let go of the frisbee.

Stay tuned as Sasha's other BFF Hunter (a beagle) is coming to stay for a few days on Christmas Eve!

Winter is here!

I'm not all that excited about it but considering I have no choice, there's nothing to do in MN except enjoy the winter and all the fun stuff it brings...like hot chocolate which is the only thing I can think of right now. At CHR we have a silent auction in August to raise money for charity. One of the items they auction off is an underground heated parking spot at work. I told Brian that I was going to bid on the January and February spots and he better not complain because just about any price was worth it to me not to have to heat up my car or walk on the ice my last 2 months of pregnancy! I won and I can't wait for the next 15 days to fly by so I can start parking underground. It's the best money I've spent during this entire pregnancy...and it went to charity.

Stella also HATES the winter. As soon as we turn on the heat, she strategically positions herself over or in front of a vent. If we are upstairs, she lays in the bathroom. If we are downstairs, she lays on the vent in the kitchen. I don't know how she doesn't singe her hair off because sometimes the vent in the bathroom is super warm and she will just press herself up against it.

Here she is in her 2 spots.

My mom was in town this weekend for Disney on Ice and The Nutcracker. We also got the chance to go have a 3D ultrasound which was really fun for her to get to see. The doctor confirmed that it's a boy! After the ultrasound we went to Babies R Us where my mom went a little crazy on the "buy 2 get 1 free" sale on Christmas stuff. Anyone who has been to my mom's house at Christmas time knows she puts Clark Griswold to shame..and she's trying to pass that onto my baby. She bought outfits not only for next Christmas but the Christmas after that AND the Christmas after that!!!!!! Poor Brian just looked at her like "seriously??" but he was nice and didn't say anything :)

Here they are..in order although the middle one looks really big compared to the one for next year.

The best part of the ultrasound was they give you this SUPER CHEESY DVD of the ultrasound with music in the background. Brian almost lost it when I put it on the big screen at home. I might just break it out every now and then when he irritates me. 27 minutes of a weird blob skeletor looking thing on the big screen with Twinkle Twinkle Little Star playing in the background. Priceless. Unfortunately because of where my placenta is, we didn't get the best pictures because his face was turned in most of the time. I do like this one where it looks like he's scratching his back. The ultrasound guy kept pestering me about which one of us he looks like. Umm sir? He has no nose cartilage, his eyes are just black holes, and I can't tell the difference between an arm and a leg. I would be offended if you saw a resemblance in either one of us right now!! :)

And one of his entire body - his head is facing away from the placenta.

DITTO!

I know..3 posts in one week is a lot but I guess it's been a busy week. This has nothing to do with babies but Brian's FAVORITE sportswriter Bill Simmons has a HILARIOUS wife who sometimes will blog about how lame her hubby's fantasy sports leagues are and I feel a sort of kinship with her. Brian just sent me an email that she took over her husband's blog for the week and her writing cracks me up so much I had to share the post.

I'm not sure if you have to annotate blog's but if I figure out where this came from, I'll add it. Probably from Bill Simmons espn.com blog or something. Here it is. http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmonsnflpicks/091204

Enjoy!

GREAT CALL OF THE WEEK
I'm turning the Great Call of The Week over to the Sports Gal, and only because she gets 50 percent of my money if we ever get divorced in the state of California. As she reminded me during the Tiger scandal. Repeatedly. In the meantime, I am giving her this space for a week.

Here's what she wrote:
"Everyone is talking about Tiger the spineless cheater. I would like to talk about his wife, Mrs. Tiger, the former nanny from Sweden. Bill and I were at dinner when news broke about the 'incident.' Bill shrewdly predicted that she attacked the car and that's why Tiger crashed. I told Bill that if he ever cheated on me, I would do the same thing she did, only I would attack the car with his League of Dorks trophy and keep hitting him with it until he stopped breathing. I then tweeted this so he knew I was serious.

"Now Mrs. Tiger is being portrayed as a crazy loon. Isn't she a hero? Did you see the parade of skanks that Tiger cheated on her with? Each one looked like she came with her own pole and lip plumper. Mrs. Tiger could have looked the other way and said, 'I am just lucky to live in America in this big mansion with my wealthy and famous husband who wins many golf tournaments. I will get back at him by having sex with cabana boys and masseurs.' Instead she stood up on behalf of women everywhere. Just because you are rich, famous and successful doesn't mean you get to humiliate your wife and kids.

"I wish Mrs. Tiger would admit what she did, if she did anything. She won't because Florida has strong domestic violence laws. California does not. If Bill ever follows Tiger's skank-chasing footsteps, I am going to beat him to death with his 2.8-pound book, while also having sex with cabana boys and masseurs. There will be no mystery about what happened. That's my Great Call of the Week."

DITTO...except I would use Brian's beloved softball bat insted of a trophy!! (And Brian is currently reading that 2.8 lb book) :)

10 on Thursday

There is another blog that I read (Life in Motion Photography ) written by a photographer who I love. She does a post "10 on Tuesday" which is 10 random thoughts every Tuesday. I thought it would be fun to do "10 on Thursday" although I'm not sure I can get to 10 but I'll try.

1. Best new show this season is Glee. If you've missed any I may or may not have all the episodes on our DVR. This guy is my favorite. I felt bad that I've been lusting after him because he plays a 16 year old on the show..but he's 27 in real life so I odn't feel guilty anymore.




2. I just got back from South Carolina and I'm so happy to be back home. I was only gone for 2 days but I missed my bed, the dogs, Brian, and just being home.

3. I'm also really enjoying the NCIS - LA show. LL Cool J wears a different tight henley shirt EVERY SINGLE EPISODE. Brian and I play the guessing game on what color it's going to be. It's usually gray, black, or blue but he spiced it up this week and it was red.

4. My name is Robyn and I'm addicted to Facebook. I am. I love it.

5. There has been a lot in the news lately about "sexting" (texting sexy I guess). So while I was traveling I sent a text to Brian that said: "Let's try some sexting. I'm wearing granny panties. Now you go." He didn't respond so I guess that's not what the kids these days are saying.

6. I'm really excited about watching some Christmas movies this season. My favorites are Elf, National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, Love Actually and Dr. Suess' How The Grinch Stole Christmas.

7. My one big craving so far during the pregnancy has been chocolate covered bismarck donuts that have the custard filling. So good.

8. I can't wait for my Mom to come up next weekend. We have tickets to Disney on Ice and the Nutracker. If I could throw in a New Kids or Brittany concert, it would be my Mom's dream weekend.

9. Our guilty pleasure is the MTV Real World/Road Rules challenges. These people keep coming back year after year to drink too much, beat eachother up, and do funny challenges to win money they probably blow the second they get the check. But we can't stop watching. I wish they would put the first seasons of Road Rules and Real World on DVD. That would be great maternity leave TV. (while I'm watching the baby of course.)

10. This is the nursery so far. We picked up the crib about 3 weeks ago and the other big box is the dresser. I have this feeling that Brian thinks if he puts the crib together, the baby is going to be here sooner. I hate to break it to ya pal, but this baby is coming whether or not the crib is up or not :)

99 Days to Go!

I can't believe we only have 99 days left! It seems like a lot but when you think that we started out with 280 days...we're into the home stretch. I also think with the Holidays right around the corner that the time will fly by. We have something scheduled almost every single weekend from now through February 7th (when we'll be watching the Vikings play in the Superbowl hopefully.)

I had a "Pretty Woman" moment a few weeks ago. I went to Pottery Barn Kids because I found some cute bedding there that I wanted to register for. It was a Monday night and I had a bunch of errands to run. I was wearing jeans, my UNI sweatshirt, and tennis shoes. Pretty low key. Well I couldn't get anyone at PBK to help me!!! I felt like yelling a few Julia Roberts' lines like "I have money to spend here." But instead I just bought an adorable advent calendar (to prove I had $70 to spend on something I didn't need) and then left. I should mention that the PBK is in The Galleria mall which is kind of fancy schmancy. It boasts a baby store where in a hurry I accidentally bought a $75 onesie and was too embarassed after she rang it up to tell her I didn't want it anymore after seeing the price! So the next Saturday night, Brian and I decided to go out for dinner at a restaurant in the Galleria and I thought since we were all dressed up, we should give PBK another try. They were so pleasant they actually told us they were locking up but we could stay and continue registering. Hrmph! I should have just told them off but once you see the bedding..you'll know why I bit my tongue. I can't resist this little elephant!





Hope you all had a great Thanksgiving! Ours was very relaxing. We had my mother-in-law and Brian's brothers and sister Amy over. During dinner the topic of "movies that you need to watch to be able to hold a conversation with Brian's family" came up because they thought I would want to keep notes for the baby. Brian thought this would be a great blog topic (even though I refuse to give him the password) and started taking notes of all the movies that would make the list. Obviously Brian was not a good choice to be note taker because as he was reading them back to us we all wondered how "The Longest Day" and "Hoosiers" made the list. Apparently Brian had just started adding every movie he has ever seen and liked to the list. So stay tuned for a future blog posting with the list. Later that night we started playing Scene It and The Three Amigos had a clip and several questions following the clip that you had to answer. This movie will be on the top 5 of the list and I'm not going to lie..my hands got a little sweaty worrying if I would miss a question and be voted out of the family. Thankfully I got all of them right and the baby and I can stay for one more year :)