Spinning Head!

We have been so busy. We must be absolutely crazy. There are so many things we need to do between preparing for the new baby (let alone deciding on a name for her) and getting ready for Thanksgiving and Megan's big First Birthday and we're just adding stuff to our list. This week we started turning our teeny gameroom into a media/play room. It had a big opening to the foyer so the downstairs TV and the upstairs TV really couldn't be used at the same time and I worried about toddlers throwing stuff (maybe each other) to the foyer below. It was a nice little architectural detail but made the upstairs space relatively worthless. We hired someone to drywall in the opening and then we will paint the room and do the rest. We have a huge TV that we plan to downsize and too much furniture that we plan to rearrange. It will be a media/gameroom for mom and dad with space to put all our sports/Aggie stuff and a play room for Megan and baby girl starke (to be named later) with little chairs, toys and oodles of storage. The best part ... we'll be able to put a gate across the doorway so it will be a giant playpen. We'll just say it's a work in progress causing messes and headaches but hopefully it will be presentable by Thanksgiving.

On top of that, James is off from this afternoon through Thanksgiving weekend so he has decided to paint our house. We have wanted to put something other than the flat builder white paint on the wall since the day we moved in and now that I'm pregnant and chasing around a toddler we have decided it is time to finally do it. I wish we were hiring someone to do this part too but James wants to do it so I guess that's that. We're not going much different, just a light tan but something darker than off white and with a little bit of a sheen (and washability). It is going to be a nightmare and hopefully will be done before Megan's first birthday. I would hope for Thanksgiving since we're hosting but I know that's wishful thinking. I think we'll hand out paint rollers with each plate of turkey or slice of pumpkin pie and make our guests work for their dinner!! :-) I can't really help much so it's a huge job for poor James. I think he might be certifiably insane.

Last weekend we made the difficult decision to wipe out our desktop computer. We had picked up some sort of virus/spywear/trojan something or other that just kept jamming up our computer (even McAfee couldn't do it's job) so we decided to either buy a new one (cha-ching) or just reload the operating system. Well, we decided to save the cash and make our old computer new again. Luckily we had all the disks we needed and were very stingy with what we actually saved onto the external hard drive to transfer. It used to take 10 minutes to boot up ... now it's like a brand new machine! It's great! And we're not out $1000! Bonus! It took all weekend to get it done though and it was one headache after another to figure out.

While everything is getting done around the house next week we also have a TON of stuff going on. Monday I have an OB appointment with another ultrasound. I'm excited we'll get to see baby girl starke (to be named later) but they never seem to get us in on time when we have an ultrasound. Tuesday we are having pictures done at the Arboretum in the morning. We're praying for good weather (and so far, it looks like we'll have it) and a good mood for Megan. It's when she takes her morning nap when she decides she wants a morning nap. Hopefully she'll sleep a little on the way there since it's so far away. I'm sure that's more wishful thinking for me. Wednesday I have to work on parts of Thanksgiving dinner and get the pies baked. I'm making pumpkin and either apple or cherry. I also have this GREAT day before mashed potato recipe that I'll be doing this year. It's not for the dieters though since it has both sour cream and cream cheese in it on top of the butter that usually comes with mashed potatoes. You make them, refrigerate them overnight then bake them before serving. YUM-O! With other meals they would be great with cheese and bacon, etc. mmmmm hungry. Obviously Thursday is Thanksgiving and then Friday I wanted to decorate for Christmas then Saturday is Megan's birthday!! I may forget the Christmas decorating on Friday just to save my sanity (especially if James is still painting) then I think I might not get out of bed on Sunday. hee hee!

So how was that for a nice long boring post? I'm not done yet!

I turned 24 weeks pregnant today!! That's a huge milestone for pregnancies since it marks the time that the baby's lungs are really starting to mature. Preemies born at 24 weeks have a greater than 50/50 chance of surviving which is a huge increase over 23 weeks. It's a small sigh of relief for us. Last night, James felt her kick for the first time. She was being mommy's little soccer star during Grey's Anatomy last night (which is a whole other paragraph ...) and I could actually see her poking around in there. I was excited James finally got to feel her. It's almost like the pregnancy isn't real to the dads because they just can't grasp the idea that there is, in fact, life growing in there. Speaking of soccer, my uterus is about the size of a soccer ball now. I'm well aware of the size of a soccer ball. That's HUGE! I'm huge. I can't wait to find out how much weight I've gained, because I'm pretty sure it's only a couple of pounds.

I had tons of bloodwork done at the endocrinologist last week. My A1c (blood sugar average over the past 2-3 months) was a 5.0 in a reference range of 3.9-6.0 so that was good. My fructosamine (average blood sugar over the past 2-3 weeks) was 187 in a reference range of 190-270 and the doc even wrote that it "looks good" on the report she sent. I am concerned because I have highs up in the 150s and lows into the 50s when I'm supposed to be staying between 60-120 so maybe they're averaging each other out. I don't really know what affect the occasional (er ... 2-3 times a week) high numbers have on the baby. More research for me to do I guess. Anywho, my thyroid is finally stabilized too so it was all good news for the two times they had to stick me to get my blood that day.

On to Grey's Anatomy ... what the HELL is this love story between Izzy and Denny? Are the writers aware they already killed him off? He's dead!! How can she be having sex (and apparently pretty great sex) with a dead guy? On top of that, don't they think Alex has had enough crazy for one lifetime? If Izzy is going nuts, is he going to have to take care of her? Seriously. I think they may have lost their ever loving minds. Then we have the interns doing epidurals and surgery on each other. How are they still in med school? Shouldn't they have all been kicked to the curb? Thank goodness the lesbian storyline is over. I wasn't really against it but Callie and McSteamy are really fun to watch and Hahn (or however you spell it) just wasn't a great match for her anyways. It was sweet to see McSteamy has a heart. awwwww. And I don't like Christina and Meredith getting in a fight. It's not their friendship dynamic. It just didn't make sense. Oh well. I hope the show doesn't continue down this crazy path because I might just have to jump the shark ... seriously.

Now that I've shared with you everything in my mind ... I should bring this epic post to a close and go read other blogs. I haven't had a moment to think lately, let alone keep up with everything. Megan didn't take a morning nap today since we were at the grocery store buying our Thanksgiving stuff. I had to get creative to be able to cram my huge turkey in the freezer. Nothing like 14 lbs of turkey for 5 adults and a toddler! ha ha ha! Hopefully Megan will sleep until 5:00 which should give me another hour and a half of relaxation. Hopefully that will be long enough for the swelling in my feet to go down!

Oh - and Mommie Dearest is on SOAPNet Sunday night! Too bad I'll be watching the 24 special on Fox. YAY! Jack Bauer ROCKS!