Two Week Crunch.

Daddy Pet the animals... Eliza looked on cautiously.

This is the way she LIKES to look at animals, behind bars.

Eliza and Grandma at the pumpkin patch!

Please note, this board says 'How TALL this fall'... I thought that a more appropriate like is ' How WIDE this fall'. Check out that huge belly! haha!

Eliza on the carosel with daddy... crying... being forced to wave... she'll love it someday i'm sure!

Ok so I missed the post last week. Sorry to all those who hang their weekly 'happy high' on my ever so enertaining post... hahaha!

The past two weeks have been interesting. Ok who am i kidding I've just been glad to get through the past two weeks. Eliza has been learning more and more words. She's gotten a whole lot better at actually talking to me and I understand her. We even have conversations some times which is fantastic! It makes me ever so excited for her to REALLY be able to carry on a conversation that isn't full of yes and no questions. Now there is one specification on this whole talking thing I should clarify... She talks to me, I understand a small portion of what she says and hopefully answer appropriatly. She doesn't talk to other people. I did not realize this until after leaving her with Grandma Merritt and Aunt Abby where she didn't say two words until I was back with her and then we couldn't get the kid to stop talking. Haha! Grunts and pointing is all she does for everyone else.

SOO... Two weeks ago... what did I do? I don't know.

*Had a Dr. appt for the baby (new name Elphy short for Elphaba until birth that is.) I'm dialating (slowly) baby is healthy and in the proper position. Got the flu shot.

*Went to 'Wicked' (the musical) with Lindsay, Mom, Heather, Heidi, and Mike (apparently we needed a little testosterone to help balance all my hormones on our girls night, hehe) It was fantastic the only thing that could have made it better would have been to have Rachel be there too!

* Sunday I started to feel a little under the weather but figured it was no big deal

This Past Week:

* REALLY miserable on monday. Sick, no energy yucky, yucky, yucky! did nothing all day.

* Tuesday was even worse. I was so miserable it took all my effort just to keep Eliza fed that day. Finally called the Dr. who put me on some Flu meds... turns out I got the flu anyway! the meds were amazing! within 24 hrs I was feeling a lot better! Thanks a billion to Diane who went and picked up my drugs for me so I didn't even have to get them myself!

* Wednesday was at Grandma Waite's house... Eliza ended up having NO nap at all thanks to her Uncle being so sweet (and a little uninformed)... She was one tired baby by the end of the day! Ben and I registered at the hospital and also found out that NO one under 18 is allowed to visit me while i'm there. That includes Eliza... I'm very ticked and motivated now to come home ASAP after this baby is born. Oh well I cannot change their 'flu season policy' I just get to think it's a little extreme to not even let the siblings come.

*Friday I got a massage (Aaahhh!) it was great! Eliza played at Grandma Merritt's house with grandma and Abby. We also went to my parents Trunk-or-treat... Eliza caught onto the trick or treat concept very quickly and loved it. We only got her to wear her costume for a little bit and I don't have pics but my parents do (forgot my camera). She looked adorable though!

* Saturday was also a fun filled day. We invited Grandma Merritt and Abby to come with us to the pumpkin patch. It was a learning experience for all of us... Eliza didn't stop whinning and crying the whole time. We did force her to ride the carosal and go in the petting zoo... she was started to enjoy the animals by the end but was never really thrilled. Hence the ticked off look in the majority of the pictures. Oh well it was fun for the rest of us.

Ok so that's the past two weeks in a nut shell... a really big nut shell.

another week's gone by...

One more week down... 4 more to go. Yes my time line revolves around eventually getting this baby out of me, to reduce the front half of my body and get some more sleep. Now don't argue with me on the getting more sleep thing with a newborn because getting up every few hours for a cute little baby is much easier than waking up every few minutes because she's abusing your internal organs!

Our week started out with Eliza and I going shopping in Loveland and then spending the rest of the day with Grandma Waite. I finally got my Wii fit all set up and am really excited about seeing what happens when you suddenly loose lots of weight (aka baby). The other thing is that I discovered that my balance is all kinds of messed up for the time being so some of the games are a lot harder than they should be! Ben's been using it some too which is really fun to watch! Eliza thinks that she should get to play while we play too so I finally set up an account for her to play and then she promptly lost interest! silly girl!

The week proceeded forward with little excitment in the house. Eliza is getting more and more language which has been helping the overall moral within the house significantly. We have been going to the library for story time the last few weeks and the librarian has a bear puppet that's mouth moves and his hand waves... well Eliza is terrified of this thing. I mean litereally near tears every time it moves. So this week my goal was to get her to actually turn and face the bear (a good distance away of course) and we were successful! Oh the joys of the little things in life :-) Maybe this next week we'll try and 'meet' the bear... maybe.

Thursday I wasn't feeling so good... lots of cramping and stuff like that other signs that I might have a urinary tract infection and after consulting the grandma's I finally called the dr's office while Grandma Merritt had Eliza. I was hoping they would just let me run to the lab here in Longmont and be done but NOOOO they think I'm going into labor and they want me to come in so they can strap the monitors on me for an hour... Poo! It wasn't part of my very well planned day but I went none-the-less. After sitting there for an hour feeling uncomfortable they informed my that (shortend version) I don't have an infection but I am having regular contractions, the baby is handling them just fine and they aren't going to do anything to stop labor at this point. SO the pain I am feeling is probably the ligiments holding the uterus being stretched too much too fast and the baby is more anxious to be here than my body is apparently ready for. They said sorry they couldn't do anything and take some tylenol.... well in the end I kind of felt like that was a waste of 3 hours driving and sitting in the dr's office but better safe than sorry!

Friday: Ben won tickets to the Rockies game on Saturday night!!! it's post season and very good seats! that spoiled boy!....

Saturday: Ben's Rockies game got postponed till sunday due to snow and terribly cold weather! It was the first snow of the year here and it's only October 10th! What the heck... doesn't the weather know that it's not suppose to snow until Halloween!!? We hung out at home most of the day as a family and then that evening went to Scott and Lesley's wedding reception which was beautiful!! The bride and groom looked incredible and they had the worlds best 'first dance' I've ever seen! The food was great and Eliza had a blast getting to run around with all the other kids!! The funniest/ saddest part of the evening was that just before we left Eliza fell head over heels down the stairs she got a bump on her head but seemed fine once we got her calmed down. Then at the reception she was sitting at her place drinking from her cup (cheap hard plastic that's pretty but breaks easily) and fell head first out of her chair breaking her cup in half therefore pouring water all over mommy, cutting her face up pretty good and wacking her head on the leg of the chair. Poor kid, by the end of the night she looked like she'd been in a fight and came out the looser!

Final statement: funniest thing I heard all week from a sweet sweet girl to my mother in reference to the size of my belly: " How is it that 'joan' (another pregnant lady at the wedding reception) is due in 10 days and she looks about half the size of Sarah and she's not due for another month!" .... Yes I'm fat and getting fatter and I soo appriciate the fact that everyone else notices this fact :o) hahaha!

Happy Birthday to my Missionary!

So Jaron's (my younger brother on a mission in South Carolina) birthday isn't really until tomorrow but I had to wish him a happy birthday seeing as how I don't actually get to talk to him and I miss him like crazy! So Happy Birthday J-Wa we love you lots!

As for the rest of the post it's been a fun normal week.
Eliza has started to use some more words that I can actually understand... I'd make you a list but it might go on for a long time and I'm not sure if it counts as real words when most everyone still doesn't know what it means. But the most important person (myself) does understand so that is fantastic progress! In case you didn't know we've been working on using more words these days to talk to eachother due to the anger and irritation that flows through my house when She doesn't get what she needs and it's all because 'I'm not listening' (or rather that i don't have a clue of what she's asking for). So additional words being added to her vocabulary is a very exciting thing for both of us!

The begining of the week was mellow. Wednesday was at Grandma Waite's house because she was crazy busy at the end of the week so we took advantage of the time she had open on Wednesday! I also started my very first baby afghan. It's bright red with sparkles and I think it's going to turn out really cute in the end! I'm about halfway done with the first part and overall it's been a fun experience I might just have to try another one later!

Thursday was a great day for me! Grandma Merritt, being the amazing person that she is, offered to have Eliza through her nap so that I could get something done around my house and feel a little more human again! I really really really appriciated this seeing as how it appeared that a bomb had gone off in my house and I was in desperate need of some time to steal a short nap! So after I walked home from Grandma's house (we walked there upon Eliza's request so walking home was a necessity) I watched a movie... slept through parts of it and then got my house all sparkling clean! I felt so much better by the end of the day! Thanks again Grandma!

This weekend was General Conference and it was fantastic! We stayed home and watched all 4 sessions here. 8 hours of church is still a little hard for me but being home made it fun for Eliza. I made her some playdough and she is absolutly in love with it! My hands on the other hand can't handle how dry they get from all the salt in that stuff! Of the 8 hours she actually sat and listened to a good portion of it which I didn't expect but enjoyed non-the-less! I had lots of favorite talks and couldn't tell you which was really my all time favorite. I did think it was interesting how much they talked about God's love for us and such. It was a nice reminder. My favorite talk from today was Elder Holland about the Book of Mormon. It was very powerful and direct which is really nice, you could really feel what he was trying to get across it was just an amazing spirit overall. I feel so blessed to have the technology that allows us to hear directly from our Prophet on such a regular basis and the freedom to worship as we choose in this wonderful country of ours!

Tonight we celebrated my Mom's, mine, Nana's (my grandma), and Jaron's birthdays... the reality is that the celebration was for mom and myself because we were the only ones there. We got my mom a birthstone ring (difficult process when you have 8 kids!) and I got spoiled rotten by my family who got me a Wii Fit. I have been wanting one for some time but had no money for it so it was not on my mind until I opened it and then I wanted to jump out of my chair with excitment... the jumping doesn't happen when your 8 months pregnant and on a comfy couch it just wouldn't have been pretty trust me! But I did the happy dance in my head!

That's the week in a nut shell. I don't have any pictures sorry! Oh and before I leave an update on the baby... She's busy busy busy. You can watch my belly morph from across the room... she keeps me up at night and makes sure to remind me on a regular basis that she's there throughout the day by pinching my sciatic nerve. I have mastered the pregnant waddle and am looking forward to holding the little bundle of joy in my arms!! That's about it so have a happy week!