34 Weeks in Baltimore

We went to Baltimore, Maryland, today for some good seafood and to hang out by the ocean. We had the BEST crab cakes ever at Lexington Market & then headed over to the inner harbor. Rob had some fresh oysters at the Raw Bar, but I passed on those for now. We didn't go to the National Aquarium (super busy), but we'll be back to check that out. They have a lot of food & shops around there, and it is just a really pretty place to go on an afternoon. There were even some street performers for entertainment.

This week I also had my first experience being hooked up to a fetal monitor. Thursday, the baby was really quiet & I couldn't seem to do anything to get him to move. Later in the afternoon, I felt him wiggle a couple of times, but pretty much nothing all day. I called Rob & he thought we should at least call the doc to see what we should do. After leaving a message for the nurse, she called me back before I could even walk back to my office & told me to come in right then (yea, that freaked me out a bit!) So I went to the office & they hooked me up to the monitor. The monitor has one belt on it that senses baby's movements & uterine contractions while the other belt senses his heartbeat. It spits out a strip of paper with a pattern like an EKG machine...or a seismograph :-)

Woudn't you know it, after a few minutes with those belts on my belly, he started moving all over the place. Apparently he was just being lazy or something, because as soon as we were cramping his style he got busy. Perfect heartbeat & lots of movement, so everything is fine. It just scared us a bit! And probably the worst part was that Rob was in Scranton that day & couldn't even get there. Even though it was the longest I'd spent in the OB's office (1 hour), he was just pulling in to Philly when I was leaving (Scranton is 2 hours away, so it really stinks when he has to work all the way up there). But it's all good, so nothing to worry about!

More pics from Baltimore

Really looking pregnant now!

My turn to try out the new camera

The 3 of us :-)

Have to get a side shot in there of the belly at 34 weeks!

The Name Game

We don't have a final name picked out yet, but we do have some finalists for a first name. Our favorites are Kaden, Matthew, and Jacob. For the middle name, we are going to use a Chinese name and have enlisted the help of Rob's Mom to pick that out.

In Taiwan, you pick a baby's name based on the date and time they are born to get a very auspicious name for the baby. The name has to have the right number of strokes in the character and work well with the birth time. (For those of you not familiar with the Mandarin Chinese language, they are characters instead of letters and the characters are built of individual parts- similar to letters- that result in the meaning of the character).

There is actually a very involved method in determining this, and you have to consult with the "fortune tellers" at the temples for help. The "fortune tellers" are not the kind of people that read palms and card like you would probably imaging a fortune teller would, but I don't know what else to call them. They use the personal data of the individuals and the lunar calendar to determine good dates for weddings, good dates for moving into a new house, names for babies, and many other things. This is how we picked our wedding date and the date for our wedding banquet in Taiwan, and that has worked out very well for us!

When Baby Kaden, Matthew or Jacob is born, Rob's Mom will find several good Chinese names for the baby for us to choose from. The final first name choice will depend on the final Chinese name choice so he has a good, complete name. We want a Chinese middle name that sounds good, has a good meaning, and is easy to pronounce for my friends and families who are not familiar with Chinese :-) We do have a favorite first name right now, but I reserve the right to change my mind!!!



This is the character for Chang that is our name (there are a couple of characters that can be used for Chang, depending on the family and location).

33 Weeks

By popular demand, we have more pictures! I will try to post weekly now, since we are coming in to the home stretch (I can't believe it!)

These are from July 4th, when Rob & I had our own little pretend barbecue. We can't grill at our apartment (some weird township rules or something), so we used our little bitty George Foreman grill. And since I can't eat regular hot dogs right now, we had veggie dogs. Let me tell ya, veggie dogs aren't that great! At least they looked better than the tofu dogs in the grocery store. If you dress them up with toppings, though, you can pretend like it's a hot dog. So we had our veggie dogs, corn on the cob, baked beans & the biggest watermelon I think I've ever seen. What you see in the picture below isn't even half of it. I'm sure it wasn't as good as the food some of you had at real barbecues, but it was still fun! Since I'm not up for dealing with the heat and the crowds and the noise right now, we finished up the meal by watching fireworks on tv.















The feast! We even had some decaf sweet tea!

31 Weeks

So here I am at 31 weeks. I can't believe it's getting so close!!! Baby is getting bigger & likes to hang out under my ribs. Other than that & some Braxton-Hicks contractions, we are doing good. Braxton-Hicks contractions are not fun. Some people never feel these apparantly, but I'm just one of the lucky ones. As long as he's staying put for a few more weeks, I will take any kind of contraction or pregnancy oddity that comes my way!

The three of us in Flushing (right outside NYC)

We got caught in a rainstorm, which is why there are raindrops all over our clothes & my glasses. Oh, I miss the boba in Flushing & Chinatown!!!

Week 26

Forgot to put these up. It's been a while since I've done belly shots, so here's the latest. I got big!!





This is our new glider...so comfy, but Lady Belle can't figure out why she won't fit on my lap very well anymore

Baby Room Pics

We got furniture put up & did some work in the baby's room this weekend!



A touch from MeMaw on his bedroom door






No, the car seats will not be kept there...it would just look kind of funny to put them in the cars already :-)









My big bad baby blanket! I finally finished it!

Baby Shower

I've been a bad blogger- my family threw me a baby shower 2 weekends ago & I'm just now sitting down to write about it! It was a wonderful day hosted by my Mom, my sister, and my Aunt Robin & Aunt Cindy. Somehow we even got just about everything to fit in our suitcases to fly home, too. Little Jenny really came to our rescue, too, wrangling 3 little girls who REALLY wanted to help with presents :-) Everything was so appreciated and meant so much- I never even thought I'd be able to have a baby, so it was really a celebration for us!

The hostesses: Lori, Aunt Cindy, Mom, & Aunt Robin

One of the Great- Grandmas, my Memaw.

Little Jenny wrangling the little girls while I opened presents- it was my own little cheering squad!

Leigh and her little one- one of the Kelley Partners! She delivered this beautiful blanket knit by my friends from Kelley- they are all spread out over the country & each knit one part of the blanket, then 1 person put it all together. It was just beautiful!