Speed Demon Dominic

Dominic is a fairly cautious kid. He's not crazy at the park like trying to leap or walk across things that are too tall for his age. He is generally Mr. Careful when climbing at home and performing tasks that could cause injury, but the kid just loves speed!

Now I shouldn't REALLY be the one posting this because I wasn't even there, but I'm grabbing the opportunity to use the video and somewhat re-tell the story.

My Mom takes Dominic every Tuesday so that I can work. I usually drive him out to her house and then pick him up in the evening (there or at the library in RR). It's an all day event. Alex gets to come visit too because Robyn (his moma) works in RR for a couple hours twice a week. Lately, Robyn and Mom have been taking the boys on adventures after Robyn is done working (usually by 10/11am). This week they went to the Bear Creek "Castle" Park. One of the few parks left around here with cool wooden castle-like structures. Apparently they also have a TON of great wide paved walkways that make great bike paths for the boys. They rode their bikes forever on them.

Dominic LOVES to ride VERY FAST down hills. He gets VERY into steering, like weaving back and forth. He's so funny to watch. He acts SO in control leaning his body left to right just perfectly to get a slow turn without spilling. These bikes are NOT the best down-hill bikes - next time I should send him with his "low-rider" (Big Wheel) and definitely a helmet!



My mom said everyone in that area was staring at him careening down this hill with fear in their eyes like oh boy, he's going to eat it big time! ... and he did. Ha-Ha. But he didn't ball his eyes out or anything. The way my mom described it was that he crashed, poked his head up and his hate was pulled way down over his face (whew, no face injuries or missing teeth or teeth-through-the-lip) and dirt up his chin.

His response, "Let's do it again!"

13wks - Ultrasound

I wanted this to be a little more exciting but I also didn't want to take 2wks to post about it. I have a really adorable DVD of the entire ultrasound too, but I have to take the time to edit and load it online, which I don't have time for right now. So you're left here with some blobs and a profile shot of our little peanut. :)

I am currently 13-weeks along. The baby is about 3" long. Our due date keeps kinda creeping closer to May instead of June, but not enough to change it officially. At both ultrasounds they have measured it sooner than later. Babies will come when they come though. 

The top 2-shots are 3D. If you click on the image it'll be a lot larger to see the details. The top one is sort of a "left side" view with it's hand balled up by it's face. The second is an almost direct shot straight on. Head, fists balled up around the nose, mouth and eyes, forearms and elbows - then tummy. The last one should be an obvious profile shot with a vague balled up fist by the face. :) SO CUTE.

The DVD is great because it's doing a lot of wiggling and kicking. Dominic was always very still-sleepy with lots of hiccups every time we caught him on the camera. 

We got a lot of compliments from the sonographer that it was very easy to photograph our baby. Very photogenic she kept saying. lol She's a cute lady. I hope we get her for our gender appt in January.

So that's it for now, I'll try to get that DVD up by next week. It's really worth seeing!

I'll be the only one next year

So if you haven't heard via 3rd party or seen on facebook or gathered from Robyn's latest post, yes, it is true, I AM PREGNANT. :) Anyone shocked? We are umm... 10wks I think this week. So still in the first trimester, but we wanted to share.

We had our first appointment and ultrasound at 8wks and told everyone at the end of the week on Halloween because that's when most everyone was going to be over. I started popping out that week and it was showing too much as it was. I feel little ridiculous popping out so much this early, but I can't do anything about it I guess. I seriously feel like I'm 4mos pregnant some days. It seems so silly. I have also heard that many people "pop out" sooner with pregnancies after the first. I thought maybe I was just fatter than last time so it is making me look bigger (?), but we actually had a "twins scare". LOL Which would be just our luck!

I decided to use a completely new office and new doctor this time around. At our 8wk appointment (which was a Monday), we expected to go in and get to see the ultrasound and all so we dragged the whole family (John and Dominic) along - big mistake. We found out that their office only does ultrasounds on Wednesdays - ugh - which was fine, I should have found that out but I think I assumed. The last office we went to is bigger and does them whenever they want. I still like the Dr and office so I'm sticking with them. So poor Dominic and John had to hang out for an hour so that I could get the preliminaries out of the way - Good thing John is an awesome daddy and didn't make Dom stay in the aapt room, they went adventuring to the elevator. Live and learn right? Probably not. Anyway, to my point...

The Dr. "checked me" and commented that my uterus was bigger than it should be for how far along I was. Now to go back a little on how I couldn't possibly be any further along - John and I finally had a serious talk about having ONE MORE kid (that's right, this is our last, don't assume or ask if we're having any more after this one. lol). We had that talk on Sept 7th and I guess that "talk" turned in to a baby asap. LOL Not to brag about how fertile or lucky we are. We actually have a hard time telling people this because we know MANY MANY people around us who have had so many trials and hardships with pregnancies or getting pregnant. We DO feel extremely lucky. Anyway, so the Dr kept drilling me on twins in the family details and such. I'm sitting there thinking, seriously? Is this really happening? I'm sure Fiona & Zach will protest, but to me, the IDEA of twins is cute and adorable, but the actual taking care of twins is a nightmare to me - considering that I like my career of being an artist and designer as well and I already do it a minimal amount.

So we sweated bullets and didn't even talk about the possibility of us having twins on Tuesday then came Wednesday and the ultrasound showed ONE. ONE SAC, ONE BABY. hah. phew. I just have a lot of fluid in my uterus, which isn't necessarily a bad thing I'm gathering at this point. So that helps me settle with my popping out issues. LOL

So that's as exciting as it gets right now on the whole, "we're pregnant" announcement. So far, we are the only ones having a baby that we know of, next year. Everyone and their mother had babies this Fall. It might be kind of nice being the only one I suppose.

I have been extremely ill for the past month. OK Not compared to Robyn or other girls I know. I've been nauseous ALL day (heaven knows why they call it "morning" sickness). I have only puked once or twice - you know you wanted to know that. hah. Robyn on the other hand routinely pukes for 5mos. So I figure I don't have it that bad. I had a weird dizzy thing for about a month but it seems to have left, thank goodness. It made it hard to focus. It was like my eyes were cross-eyed all day. Mind you, I didn't have any of these symptoms with Dominic.

Girl or Boy? We find out officially in January. I don't have a date yet. At this point, I am supposed to go see the local specialist who deals with scary pregnancies. I have to keep tabs with the specialists office so that they can keep an eye on the baby and keep me informed about what could be necessary if my Rheumatoid Arthritis flairs up (medications wise). So far, my Rheumatoid has gone down, my RA Dr says it can go either way and it's unexplainable. So I'm hoping it stays down. Wow, I'm good at going off topic. So ANYWAY - I will most likely do my 20wk ultrasound for gender (for us) and to check out the baby's growth and insides etc with the specialist. I guess the positive to that is that we get to see it all in 3D. :)

I am betting that we are having a girl. John and I had always wanted another boy, since Dominic is soooo utterly awesome and he'd probably love a brother (as well as a sister, I'm sure), but I've recently started doing more sewing and crafting and well, now I really want a girl. I think also knowing that we are ONLY having two kids makes me not want to miss out on having a girl. Hey, I can hope. John and Dominic are a lot a like and they team up on me - need to even out the teams! hah.

OK so I REALLY think it's going to be a girl because of being so sick and opposite Dominic's pregnancy (I've known too many people with the same scenario and had those results). Also, the ultrasound tech fed in to this by telling us that it's heart beat was really fast which could imply that it's a girl too. Don't worry, she didn't just blab this, she asked politely if we were planning on finding out the sex. I won't be disappointed if we have another boy. Dominic is a terrific kid and if I had two of him life would be a breeze! I hope if we have a girl, she's just as mellow.

So there's my novel for the week! I'd post more ultrasound pics but they're not super clear. 8wks is pushing it for doing an external ultrasound. She almost thought she'd have to do an internal one, which I was sorta hoping she would because she said the pics would be much clearer. Just a blob for now.

I hope you didn't fall over from all the reading. LOL I type uber-fast. OK back to work!!

Side note. Sorry I forgot to mention our due date is currently June 5th 2011. :) 

Dead Battery = Running to Day Care, Literally

I realized after my other post that I actually did have a quick funny story that just happened this morning. 

My latest goal for working out has only been maintaining some sort of physical activity. Sadly, for reasons here and there I'm not signed up for any big races nor have ANY except for the Portland Marathon NEXT October (2011) in mind. We plan to do the Turkey Trot around Thanksgiving again though. It's a minor fun run. I'm going to do the 5k with Dominic. John will do the 8miler. Anyway.... just a little side story on my activities agenda. This week I have been lazy, but this morning was forced to be active...I posted this along with my morning run...

So I have had a little run/activity fail this week and this morning decided I did not feel like running at all and convinced myself I didn't have time any way (in order to get Dom to daycare on time). So we get loaded in to the van, ready, set - nothing. ah, yes, when you leave the key in the ignition with it half-turned over night, yes, the van will be completely dead the next day. :( So dominic thinks I've lost the key's because that's the only way a van won't go right? He's helping me with ideas saying they keys must be inside the house, "Go in the house mom. The key's are inside." very confident and knowingly for a 2yr old. lol. To make matters sillier - I guess, or at least I couldn't figure it out, a Toyota Sienna back hatch will not open unless you have power(?) - I thought that maybe it was locked but apparently the lock/unlock switch will also not work with no power - these seem like scary safety issues, but maybe I just don't know how the van works. 

Anyway, the jogger was in the back of the van, so I had to get back there and haul it through one of the side doors. Dominic in the meantime had discovered that I certainly had keys (when I grabbed them assuming the back hatch had at least a key hole to open it with - nope) and kept telling me that they were "right there mom, there's the keys. Make the van go". HAH. I guess you might've had to have just be there. He puts really great tones and emphasis in to everything he says.

So therefore that is how we ended up jogging to day care this morning. I'm glad I did. It felt good, I've been a lop all week. I snuggled him in to a blanket, he had fun. It was probably in the high 40's. Cold, but not too cold like Wednesday morning when it was in the low 40's. Now since John is at work until 5 (when I pick Dominic up), I must jog back to get him. Ohwell, it'll help me catch up on my miles this week.

My weekly goal is 10 miles. If I go at least 2 miles every day of the week it makes this goal easy. Day care is only 3 days a week but I can double some days and we usually do a family run on Monday's. Since you wanted to know all those great details with no entertaining pictures. :)

Negligent

I need to start posting again and I've got a trillion things I could post about, but where do I start? I think I'll just start where we're at and if I get to all the things that happened between May and now, well, then you're lucky. hah.

I swear I'll be back on the blogosphere more. Between Sam & Emily getting married and being pretty involved with that, and work and camping and well, SUMMER, I just haven't had the time or made the time at 1am to make a post. LOL

But seriously, between managing work and family and my extra endeavors for artistic projects, I just haven't had extra time. Exciting for me though, I just re-designed my business card which I haven't done in a few years - I'm getting a TON of work and having a hard time saying no. :) You would think that working from home would be so much more flexible, and it does have it's times, but most of the time I'm swamped and over-deadline. Probably mostly my fault.

Anyway... I'll post something more interesting by the weekend. :) Just telling everyone, I'll try to be back!

Eugene Half Marathon 2010

I'm short on time these days but catching up. Just wanted to share that John and I completed the Eugene Half Marathon this past weekend. We had so much fun! 

We went without Dominic, meaning he had his first overnighter somewhere else. He got to have a sleepover at Alex's house. He hung out with Gramsi all day and then got to go play with Alex and have dinner and go night-night there. He also got to go to church with Auntie Robyn and Uncle Paul and buddy Alex. He did fantastic. Ask Robyn and Paul and he couldn't have done better. That's very promising! We will be leaving him again in June for our 1/2 Ironman at Pacific Crest. Here are our results:

Dominic Climbing a Chain Net

I recorded this from my iPhone maybe back in Januray? Not sure. This was only his 2-3rd time climbing this and then he did it all by himself. He's a wiz at it now.

I realize that I should flip the video but I uploaded it via my iPhone to YouTube and don't have time to flip it. So deal. :)