Feelin' irie

We are leaving in the morning for the cruise! Good luck weathering the cold... and just remember that while you all are bundling up in your winter best, I will be cruising the Caribbean, lounging by the pool in the hot sun, drinking rum runners while exotic and topless Caribbean gentlemen are fanning me, rubbing my feet and feeding me strawberries!! Ha!

Send me any bon voyage messages by tonight, otherwise, I will "see" you all in a week!

Still here.

I'm still here. Sorry for the lack of communication!!! I'll try to get you up to date:

Starting with a little test I took. About two weeks ago I peed on a little "magic wand" and after 3 minutes: two blue lines appeared!! Much to my surprise: we're having another baby! I was a little taken-aback, so I didn't tell George right away... he got the news just a few days ago. When I finally got around to telling him, he was really excited! I didn't doubt that he would be, but I knew we were definitely not planning on baby #3 for quite some time. But he reassured me, "I love being a dad, and I love the two we have already, so why wouldn't I be excited?"
I went for an ultrasound yesterday. and have the pictures to prove it. I won't find out my exact due date until November 10th, when I return to the doctor.

Cravings so far: orange juice, calamari, avocados, nachos w/ extra extra artificial cheese product, frosted mini-wheats, bean soup and I have the urge to put mayonaisse on everything. As with all my pregnancies I also have a hankering for lemonade... but not just any lemonade - I am dying for an icy cup of boardwalk lemonade! I guess George will be driving me to the shore during the very off-season to buy me my treat!!

I've been feeling pretty nauseous to the point where I can't eat my first meal until about 4 o'clock in the afternoon... thus the life of an incubator. But I'm starting to wonder if the whole 'morning sickness' bit was all in my head. I've been fairly stressed about this pregnancy so far... especially since the doctor handed me the script for an ultrasound. But since I have seen my healthy little one, the morning sickness has vanished - literally overnight!! I have come to the conclusion that it was mostly related to stress. Once you have gone for an ultrasound and they don't find the baby's heartbeat, you panic that they won't find a heartbeat for the next baby, and the next, and the next. It's such a sickening feeling. Luckily, we are so blessed that in yesterday's U/S, the heart rate was present, and beating at a perfect pace. The size of the fetus showed that I am 11 weeks along... only 29 weeks to go! Eek! According to BabyCenter, the little one is a teeny-tiny 1 and 1/2 inches long - the size of a "fig."


Baby #3 (the head is on the left)


number 3

Abby came with us to see "her baby" yesterday. We passed time in the waiting room looking at pictures of the development of babies in-utero, from one of the magazines they give you with your "welcome to pregnancy" care-package at the OB office. She loved looking at the baby develop month after month, and when I showed her the picture of what our baby looks like at this point, she laughed. "It looks like a fish!" she exclaimed. She's right.

We went on vacation with my parents from September 25 - October 2. We drove to the Outer Banks and stayed in a posh, yet child friendly, 6 bedroom house right off the beach. Abby and Georgie had a great time, though we didn't do very much once we unpacked our bags... the perfect vacation, I say. But by the end of the week, we did venture out - far out. Lol. We went on a wild horse hunt... lucky for the SUV because, to find the horses, we had to drive 8 miles on the beach. Once you get off the beach at this point, the roads are all unpaved, sand roads... so needless to say, not for the 4-wheel-driveless. Abby was in her glory!!! She made a friend almost immediately. She named him "Spirit" from her favorite movie. He was an uncommonly friendly horse (according to the locals, anyway), who really took an immediate liking to Abby. Actually, one local said that in all the years he had been on the island he had never seen a horse come that close to a human. But this horse followed Abby everywhere she went. He must have sensed her love of horses. We have a bazillion pictures. Here are just a few:






I swear, in none of the above photos does Abby have anything in her hands to eat... I don't know what it was about her, but that horse was hooked! We all said it must have been the "Herbal Essences" shampoo she used in her hair that morning.

The ride home was long and grueling. It took us 10 hrs to drive what normally should only take about 7 hrs. Needless to say, Georgie was a mess. He cried - screamed - the entire ride! I completely understood his pain - like I said, it was a long, long ride.

Pacemakers and fire alarms

It's been a while since I updated last! Been keeping busy! Last month we all went to the shore with Jay, Lisa and the kids for a long weekend. It was a great trip. The kids had so much fun together, and the weather held out nicely for us. On our last day there, we got a call from home saying that George's dad was in the hospital, having a pacemaker "installed." Apparently his heart stopped a few times, and they had to put the paddles on him to reboot. It's pretty much the same thing that happened to my dad a few years ago, when Abby was a baby. Everyone was very scared, as you can imagine. But everything went very well. So well that the next week, even though I worried Al was not going to be ready for such a trip, we headed down to the boat with Al and Dot for our annual cruise. Actually, not all of us went. Denise took Georgie for the weekend, since he doesn't bunk well on the boat. We dropped him off on Friday, and George and Abby and I enjoyed a couple days at home alone before we headed to the boat on Sunday night. ETA 11pm. This year Al was told not go any further than the canal with the boat. The jerking of the waves in the bay was enough to pull the wires of the pacemaker out of their stratigically placed points in his heart. Late Monday morning, maybe early afternoon, we scooted out of the marina towards the canal, but when we hit the bay, it was so calm that Al dismissed all doctor's orders and he and George kept right on going... to Chesapeake City, where we stayed for two nights.

I started back to class last week. My first day of English was the 7th. I've already had 2 quizzes, written 2 short essays, and I have a big essay due on Tuesday. Sociology just started this Monday, the 13th. So far I think I'm going to love both classes, but they're going to be alot of homework and studying. Sociology class was a bit of a waste on Monday. Someone pulled the fire alarm during the first half-hour of class, and we had to stand outside for 45 minutes until they got everything sorted out. But somehow we still managed to squeeze in 4 pages of notes and a pop quiz on the 20's by the end of the night.

Georgie has been walking everywhere!! He finally got the hang of it. We think Jayme taught him how. He does not like the whole concept of shoes yet. Everytime I put them on his feet, he either crawls, or he'll walk (actually, it's almost an exagerrated march) raising his feet as high as he can lift them, probably hoping the shoes will fall off mid-stride! I guess he'll get used to them, I don't remember if Abby had this problem or not.

At the marina

abby & george at the marina! 

We took the boat to the shore this weekend. We had fairly nice weather, and Abby had a great time on the ride! Annie and Sean came for the ride on the boat too, so Abby was overly excited, to say the least! I wasn't sure how Georgie would be for the length of the boat trip, so he and I stayed home, and I drove the car down later in the day on Saturday. First thing Sunday morning, we broke out Abby's swimmies and floatie, and headed for the pool. Annie and Sean were Abby's tugboats, as she had them pull her all over the pool! We threw a ball around for a while, and then Georgie took a dip. He sat in his floatie, and after the initial shock of the cold water, had a blast!

The whole weekend was an adventure, being this was the first that Abby spent any time away from home since being potty trained. She did really well! I'm so proud of her! She even did her first poopy on the potty this weekend at the boat! (sorry Abby, I have to document this for all the world to see...)