The Latest News

PATRICK'S HOME!!! Sorry it's been a while - Patrick got home about a week ago and we've been working on baby stuff. He is SO excited to see the baby moving around in my belly. I guess it's finally becoming real since he's seeing it in person instead of in pictures!

His primary task, besides talking to the belly, has been to get the baby’s room ready. Our second bedroom has been the catch-all room for the past two years, since we have pretty much no storage in our 950 sq ft house. He got the whole room cleaned up this week, got the crib up, and we bought lamps and a few things from Ikea. Our house is so small that even standing in the doorway, all I can fit into the picture is half of the back wall!



We haven’t broken the news to Mr. Man that the new room isn’t for him!

My fantastic friends threw us a baby shower yesterday - it was great! I'll post the pictures shortly in a new post, but that's all the stuff that is in the center of Aden's new room.

May the Force...

Can you believe that I went to a StarWars convention? We (marketing) accompanied 3 buses last weekend to a convention celebrating 30 years of Star Wars in Japan. Here are a few pics from our trip. Enjoy!

Play Our Baby Game!!!

My friend Michelle found this cool site where you can guess different things about the baby before he's born. Check it out and place your vote!!! Go to: http://www.expectnet.com/games/BabyAGuessingGame

Ultrasound

So, I guess one of the benefits of having a 'high risk pregnancy', thanks to my hypothyroidism, is that I get more ultrasounds. Baby Aden is doing great. No pics today to keep, but I know that he's in the 45% - average. His legs are measuring a week ahead, his noggin is a few days ahead, and his tummy is about 3 days behind. Guess that means he'll be built more like I runner than Patrick or I could ever hope to be - especially the small tummy part! They said he's on track to be just shy of 8lbs at birth - let's keep our fingers crossed on that one!

Belly Shot

I know - I wanted to be better at blogging, but that just hasn't happened yet! Here it is 11pm and I'm just getting home, again that late for the 3rd night this week. Now you can see why I'm not blogging :P

A few of you have asked me for belly shots. Here is the latest (it's two weeks old). Baby Aden is doing well. He likes to wake me up or keep me up at night 'playing' and then the dogs want to play in the morning. Between the three of them, I don't get to sleep nearly as much as I'd like!

I have more pictures to post, but I brought the wrong thumb drive home. I'll try to update this weekend. OH, and if you know anyone (good/bad) with the name Aden - I don't want to know - LOL :P It took us FOREVER to come up with a boy's name that we both liked!

It's been a while

Hi Everyone! Sorry, I've been gone a while - things here are absolutely crazy. Since my last post, I've been in 6 cities in 4 states, 3 countries, 14 air flights, put on a major race for over 8000 Japanese, or AND am still working and trying to grow a bambino somewhere in there ;) Whew, I got tired just typing that!

I have tons of pictures to post and more details to follow, but wanted to let everyone know (quickly) that things are going well. OH and Patrick will be home from his deployment in less than 2 months now - WHOOP!

I had a 3-D ultrasound done in Houston. The baby is a bit scrawney in the picture b/c it was done about 3-5 weeks earlier than it should have been (at 19 weeks).

Here's the face, behind the arm. Keeps hiding the face.

But he isn't afraid to show us everyhing else! Yep - HE. His father is so proud. :)

Missy's Home!

I picked up Missy yesterday. She's doing great! She has a 6" incision from the top to the bottom of her poor little knee (okay, not so little). I'll take pictures tomorrow. It's been raining, so I haven't taken the camera out and pictures inside would be really dark.

I didn't realize how much more of an attention hound she is over Mr. Man. It's weird to have her underfoot, following me around the house, putting her head on my laptop while I type... Mr. Man just lays around. Polar opposites!

She's cracking me up too. She has one of those big collars and runs into EVERYTHING! I take it off when I can watch her, but put it on when I leave the house. I put it on her last night when I went to sleep. All night long I could hear her running into the curtains next to the bed. Then she's scare herself, forcing the curtains to move the other way, never realizing that she was the one moving them. Crazy mutt!

Missy Update

I dropped Missy off for surgery yesterday. For those of you who I haven't talked to, Missy injured her knee the last week of January and I've been carrying her up and down the steps ever since, and she's been on cage rest when I'm not home. It's amazing - this same thing happened on her other leg in Alaska and she had surgery in a week. In the middle of Tokyo, it takes 9 weeks. Does that make sense to anyone else? The base vets haven't exactly been helpful. Our vet's x-ray machine has been broken for over a year, so I've been having to drive 1.5 hrs to the Army Vet. That vet had the x-ray machine, but couldn't do the surgery, so he was supposed to set up an appt off-base. He forgot about Missy and made the appt 7 weeks after I started making the trek back and forth.

SO, yesterday I dropped her off for surgery. They called at 8:15pm last night to tell me that she made it out of surgery and is doing great. I have to leave her there for a week for recovery - a long time, but it's best for her. This way she isn't trying to rough house with Mr. Man!

This was Missy when I dropped her off. She looks thrilled, doesn't she :P

Cherry Blossoms & Tulips

My friend Jess and I took her daughter out to Showa Park this past weekend. All of the cherry blossoms are out, and they were having a tulip festival. Check out these fantastic flowers!

There were flowers EVERYWHERE!

She wasn't a big fan of sitting near the flowers, but still had a good time!

We don't know if these two were actually getting married, or if they were models, but it was still really pretty!

This is one of my favorite pictures :)

Here are all of the Cherry Blossoms. I love that in Japan people go on picnics. You never see that in the states anymore. Some place in the park were so full that you'd be lucky to be able to put a blanket down.

Howdy

Hi Everyone! Sorry I haven't posted in a while. I have pictures to put up, but for some reason my card reader isn't working. I'm doing fine. I'm at 13 weeks now and feeling great (except for being a little tired). The other night I fell asleep during the first 5 minutes of The Bee Movie and woke up 2hrs later!

Patrick is doing great and say hi to everyone. I'd say he's counting the days until he comes home, but we're still on the upswing, so that would be depressing to count! He's really excited about the baby and sends me e-mails on a regular basis, asking about what kind of stroller we should get, etc. It's really cute.

I'll post more when I get my files downloaded. Hope everyone is doing great!

Little Samurai

When we were moving to Alaska, we were convinced that we would have two kids while we were there. Patrick wrote on a box of baby heirlooms that we've been toting aroung "Little Eskimos". Well, as you guys know, we didn't get around to it while we were there. When we found out we were going to Japan, Patrick scratched out "Eskimo" and wrote in "Samurai". So, here's our future Little Samurai :)

Patrick and I are SO excited. Patrick is away at the moment, but will be back in time for the birth - and to help me put my shoes on when I can't see my feet any longer! I'm at the end of 11 weeks and am starting to feel better. Things have been pretty good - just a touch of evening sickness, but nothing that going to bed early doesn't fix! I'll keep you guys posted on the progress!

Fertility Festival

This past weekend we took a trip to the Fertility Festival. Due to the nature of the trip, we decided it would make an excellent girls trip. WARNING: SOME PICTURES MAY BE A BIT OFFENSIVE!

Background: Each year, a new giant wooden phallus is carved from a large hinoki (cypress) tree. In Japan newly made objects are thought to express more purity and vitality. The tree is brought to the shrine for purification rituals during the coldest part of the winter, before a master craftsman begins to shape it. The craftsman uses only traditional tools and wears clothing that has also been purified through rituals at the shrine. It is this phallus that will be the central focus of the procession, and then be placed into the Shinmeisha shrine as the principal phallus after the festival. For more info, go to http://www.yamasa.org/japan/english/destinations/aichi/tagata_jinja.html

Okay, here are the pics:

This guy leads the parade.

These are wishes

Women carry phalic symbols like babies.

Yes, it really was this big!

These are prayers for good fertility and healthy babies/

Here are three of the six of us that took the trip. We didn't get lost at all on the 10hr trip. It was great!

He's Still Around?

Hi Everyone! Here was the latest celeb. sighting at Yokota. We had Sinbad visit us and he put on a pretty good show. I didn't know he was still around and wasn't too excited about going to see his act, but it was actually really funny!

Snow?

Does anyone still ready this thing? Geez - whoever owns this blog is really a slacker...

Ok, but really - it finally stopped snowing. Yes, SNOWING! The pups thought we were back in Alaska - who'd have thought that it would snow in Japan (except of on Fuji of course). BTW, nobody here knows how to drive in the snow :)

e were supposed to have a race on the first day of the snow - that didn't happen :)

Throw the frisbee Mom!

Kisses for EVERYONE!