Pigtails!!! Miss sported her first pigtails today and I was totally in love with them and with her wearing them. Surprisingly, she didn’t pull them out either. Gotta love the old-school plastic barrettes too, just like I had when I was little. Check out the cuteness.

She had to thoroughly check out her new “do” in the mirror.

She did a little happy dance when she decided she liked it.

I now cannot sleep more than about an hour at a time without getting up to go to the bathroom.

I am now almost compelled to take a nap whenever possible.

I downloaded Contraction Master on my iPhone and time my contractions a lot. They are usually not as close together as I think, but I could get a bit obsessed with timing them.

I have been waiting for the day that Miss is faster than me as she learns to run faster and I get slower. I think we’re there.

I have wondered if it’s wrong to eat ice cream every night. And I have decided I don’t care.

I am getting very nervous about leaving Miss when I go to the hospital. I’m not nervous about her being well taken care of. I have a wonderful babysitter who is willing to drop just about anything to come over when necessary and hold the fort until my parents can get here (they will have about a 10 hour drive). So I know Miss will be in great hands. It’s just that I have never left her overnight. I really hope I don’t go into labor in the middle of the night because it makes me sad to think of putting her to bed and then having her wake up to someone else, even if it is her beloved babysitter. I want to be able to tell her “I’ll be back soon” and give her a kiss.

I’m getting so anxious to meet this little Baby Girl!!!

It’s really starting to sink in that I will soon have two children under two. Whoa. Let the fun begin!

Two rounds of moxibustion – $108

Five visits to the chiropractor – $125

Hours and hours spent in various contorted and sometimes uncomfortable positions – See “visits to the chiropractor”

One hospital admission, five hours of monitoring, IV, ultrasound, medication, and doctor pressing on belly for about two minutes – $$$$$$?

Getting kicked instead of head-butted in the ribs – PRICELESS!!

That’s right. I went in to the hospital yesterday to have my doctor do the external version. It WORKED!!! After all the hours spent trying so many other strategies, good ol’ medical intervention came through for me. Baby Girl is now head down and has been for over 24 hours. Saw my doctor again today and she said that if a baby flips back to breech it usually happens within the first 24 hours. Plus Baby Girl is nicely in my pelvis, so hopefully, she’ll stay this way and not flip back around!! I’m still a little nervous she’ll flip back, but mostly very relieved that she is now headed in the right direction.

A little over two weeks now until my due date. And can I just say I feel fabulous??? The first time I got out of bed after my doctor flipped her, I could immediately feel a difference in how I felt. It’s amazing how much more uncomfortable I was with Baby Girl facing the wrong way. My back hurts less, I can breathe easier, and I feel much more balanced. My belly looks way different too. It is over an inch smaller than the last time I measured it. Check out the difference:

Before

It could be any day now that my Miss becomes a Big Sis. I can’t wait to see it. She will be amazing.

The past two days have been quite eventful.

First of all, yesterday morning, Miss peed on the potty for the first time. She did a potty dance to celebrate (and not a stupid one like on that dumb commercial).

Then last night after Miss went to bed, I realized that I was having regular contractions that weren’t terribly long or close together, but enough so that I began to wonder about them. I was on the phone with my hubby who was driving to a weekend gathering with his brother and cousins (5 hours away!!) and he suggested I call the nurse just to see what she said. I didn’t think much of it, but since Baby Girl is breech still I thought maybe they’d tell me at what point I should consider coming in or something. Well the nurse I spoke to kind of freaked out and said I needed to get to L&D right away and was making all these dire statements about the baby being breech and so on. So, basically, I got a neighbor to come over until my babysitter could get here, threw the last few things needed into my bag and headed for the hospital. My hubby turned around and started high tailing it home. Thankfully, I was just monitored for a few hours and though my contractions stayed fairly steady, they didn’t get stronger and I didn’t show any signs of labor progressing in that time, so they let me go home. Today the contractions have gone back to being irregular, so that’s good!!

And today we went to the air show here in town. It’s the second largest air show in the world. We’ve lived here for two years but I’ve never made it to the show. This year, we just had to take Miss. See, she has a bit of a fascination with planes. She could spend hours siting on her Daddy’s lap looking at pictures of planes in magazines or watching videos of planes flying on his computer. This is how I found them the other day after he came home from work:


She totally loves planes and says “Pay!” and points up anytime she hears one. She had a great time at the air show today. Here she is dancing around a bit as we were sitting and watching planes take off for a while.

Today was a fabulous summer day. One of those days when everything seems to slow down just a little bit and you get the chance to soak up every ounce of summery goodness.

We started the day with gymnastics class. Miss loves gymnastics class. She is my little climber and loves to roll around on the floor, so I thought she would enjoy it, and she sure does. She dances around, jumps on the trampoline and the mats, climbs up the wall of bars like a little monkey, and is working on a killer pull up and L-sit. Today she was in rare form just being her funny silly little self. She throws her arms in the air and marches around, makes funny faces and jumps. I love to watch her in there.

We came home from gymnastics and went right to the pool, where we soaked up the sun and splashed around. Miss is getting more daring in the water and likes to splash in the fountains or try to sit on the mini fountains. We had lunch and ice cream and more playing, and she fell asleep in the car in the three minutes it took to drive home. My girl knows how to play hard.

After her nap we went out and enjoyed the backyard. We took a few shadow photos.

And there’s nothing like watching my girl point to a flower and say “Pi-ee” (pretty) and then lean over to smell it like it’s the most special thing in the world.
And of course, what would a summer day outside be without some bubbles??? Miss has learned to blow bubbles, but still seems to eat more than she blows. I think the problem is that some of the bubble blowers we have are kind of like pipes and have to be put in your mouth and blown, whereas others are just the normal ones you hold up and blow through. She treats them all like the pipe kind, and thus ends up with lots of bubble stuff in her mouth. It’s awfully cute though, and today she was kind of blowing bubbles out the corners of her mouth while she had one of the bubble sticks in there. Very talented!
To top off the day we had the most fabulous dinner outside on our deck. Homemade brats that my hubby grilled and fresh-from-the-farm sweet corn on the cob. Literally, I picked up our CSA produce box today, so the corn must have been very recently picked. It was some of the best sweet corn I’ve ever eaten. And homemade brats beat store-bought any day.

It was a full and happy day.

And to give a quick update on Baby Girl, I went for another ultrasound and appointment yesterday. She is looking wonderful and healthy. She is still breech. I am still trying chiropractic (every other day) and moxibustion (once a day), plus all my other little strategies to get her to turn. She seems to be trying pretty hard and a few times I thought for sure she was going to make her move. If she doesn’t flip by Tuesday I am scheduled to go to the hospital for an external cephalic version, which of course is just my doctor trying to turn her manually by pressing and pushing on my belly. Wish me luck!

We have had the same old furniture in our house for ages. Seriously, the couch we have been using in our family room is the one I bought when I was an intern, in 2002. It was cheap and kind of junky then. It is now comfy, but sadly lumpy and old-looking. It has been moved to our sunroom as I recently ordered new furniture and it was delivered last week. I am so happy with it! My hubby has been wanting a leather recliner for as long as I’ve known him. He now has one.

And the new couch is wonderfully comfortable and should last forever. I got what I think is a pretty long-wearing upholstery (I had small children and black dogs in mind when I picked it) in neutral colors, so this will be our couch for many many years to come. Interestingly, the upholstery I picked kind of reminds me of the fabric that was on the couch my parents had in our house when I was growing up. I didn’t realize it when I picked it. Didn’t realize it actually until just now. That couch lasted a long time, so hopefully I made a good choice. Unfortunately the rug we have had in the family room doesn’t really work with the new stuff, so it will move into the sunroom, where we need a rug anyway, and I am looking for a new rug for the family room. You may notice the dark brown, kind of grungy looking cushions under my hubby in the photo below. Those are the cushions I’ve been keeping piled on the floor for propping my butt up to get Baby Girl to turn!

It’s been a while since I’ve posted a belly photo. It’s also been quite a while since I measured my belly. I keep a record of my belly measurement and weight in my pregnancy journal, as I did when pregnant with Miss as well. I looked and saw that my belly measurement as of yesterday (four weeks pre due date) is an inch larger than my belly measurement ten days prior to Miss’s birth (which would have been one week pre-due date) and almost two inches bigger than it was at this point in my pregnancy with her. Whoa belly.

So even if for no other reason, Baby Girl has to flip to prevent one of two possibilities from happening: 1. my belly explodes, 2. the weight of my belly pulling so far forward forces me to fall on my face. Just kidding. But I’m still working on the turning thing. Baby Girl seems to be trying hard to get herself turned in the right direction. She’s still moving around like crazy. I have a moxibustion appointment tomorrow morning, and went to my first chiropractor appointment yesterday to get a shot at the Webster technique that is supposed to align the pelvis to make it easier for the baby to turn. Still hopeful. Still smiling!

Sooo, the great news is that Baby Girl is growing right on schedule and looks fabulous. She is about six pounds, is practicing her breathing and has lots of fuzzy hair!!

As I’m sure you can guess, the bad news is that she’s still breech. Thus, I have not had much time for blogging. Or working, or cleaning my house, or anything else for that matter. I am either taking care of Miss or putting myself into some sort of contorted position to hopefully help this baby flip herself. I know last time I posted about this I mentioned being on knees and elbows a lot (which I am right now too!). But I’ve been reading more and more and have tried many things beyond the knees and elbows. Here are some of the things I’m trying as often as I can:

1. Elevating my hips while on my back. I put the couch pillows down and put my butt on them with my head and shoulders on the floor. Sometimes I roll myself from side to side in this position.

2. Knees on the stair landing, walk hands down three steps, hang there for a minute or two with arms straight.

3. Playing music to the lower part of my belly.

4. Playing my recorded voice to the lower part of my belly.

5. Shining a flashlight on the lower part of my belly. Sometimes running the flashlight from where her head is down to the lower part of my belly. “Come to the light little Baby. . .”

6. Moxibustion! I haven’t actually tried this yet, but I have an appointment for Monday morning.

7. Sitting in a very full, very lukewarm bathtub for a very long time.

That’s not really everything, but that’s most of it. Once it stops raining, I have every intention of going to the pool as much as possible and doing handstands in the water. I am not messing around. I really need this little one to flip!!! I have another ultrasound and biophysical profile scheduled for next Wednesday.

On another, related note, I got some other kind of good news. I had been under the assumption that if I had to have a second c-section, the possibility of my ever having a natural delivery was gone. But my doctor had never actually told me this, so I asked her on Wednesday. She said that the situation would be more complicated of course, but that a regular delivery after two c-sections wouldn’t be totally out of the question. It would be dependent on seeing that the scar from my last section had held up well and she would want me to wait at least two years between births. Then it would be a possibility. So, while that doesn’t make me feel too much better about the possibility of having to have another c-section, it helps some. Of course, that’s getting way ahead of the game here, and I am not giving up yet on this Baby Girl turning herself in the right direction. So keep the good head-down vibes coming!!! I will try to post a little more frequently, but if I don’t, just know that I’m probably elevating my butt above my head in one way or another and not able to manage a keyboard too well 🙂 Flip, Baby, Flip!!!

Yesterday marked 35 weeks in my pregnancy. Baby Girl is growing and all is going quite well. She is still moving around like crazy and a few times I’ve thought she might have turned, but I’m pretty sure she’s still breech now. I’ll find out for sure on Wednesday. Only five or so weeks to go!

Tomorrow, Miss is 17 months old. She has had a major increase in language in the past few weeks, which has been so fun. We have been at my in-laws’ farm for the past week, and some of the new words she has started saying since we’ve been here include, “pond,” “elk,” “water,” “bug,”and “deer.” If you are familiar with my in-laws’ farm, these words make perfect sense. If you’re not, I’ll just say there are a lot of animals mounted in the house (elk, deer, mountain lion, turkey, goose, duck, antelope, and a huge salmon, to name some of them), the property is on a lake and there are lots of ponds around. She also has recently started saying “Wow!” which she kind of says with a similar inflection to Joey on the old show “Blossom” (I think that’s the right character/show), and she is putting a few words together on occasion. This age is so fun and I’m enjoying every minute with her.

We’ve been having a great time this summer, just doing fun summertime stuff. Here’s a sample of some of the good times we’ve had in the past week.

Fun in the pool.

Trying to get Daddy to put on the swimmies first.

One for Daddy, one for Miss.

Bubbles!

Swimming at the beach.

Speaking of old-fashioned fun, today I was out hanging Miss’s diapers on the clothesline, which always feels kind of like an old-fashioned thing to do, when I looked over and saw my husband raking hay in the tractor. I had a moment of feeling all “Laura Ingalls Wilder” or something. Except I guess maybe they didn’t have tractors in “Little House on the Prairie,” did they? Whatever. It was a cool moment. And I got this cool photo.