Mia's first sniffles

This weekend, Mia put on her party dress (or party ruffled jumper) and attended her first birthday party. Tybalt, our babysitter and friend Kate's son turned one and had a jungled-themed birthday. Although not fitting with the theme, Mia brought a nice turtle for her best (and only) friend:

Patchwork turtle, probably the most complicated thing I've made so far.

Mia was minimally fussy at the birthday, despite the larger crowd than she's used to. There were a couple of other babies there, one 4 month old and one 5 month old. She definitely looked smaller than those two, but was infinitely more alert than either one of those, which leads Brian and I to think that our daughter is probably a genius.

Unfortunately, Mia now has what appears to be her first cold. She's got a bit of sniffles going on, and fusses every 3-4 hours, which makes me think that she's got a sore throat similar to the one I have. We're lucky to have avoided any sicknesses to date by shying away from traditional daycare, but I guess we couldn't keep her locked up forever. I brought her to the office yesterday, and she wouldn't let me put her down, or sit down while holding her, so I had to stand up at my computer and type like this:

Moby wrapping it up!

Funnily enough, it felt oddly similar to when I was walking around the office like this:



I recently decided to embrace being a Las Vegan and a Mom, so I joined a Meetup group. On saturday morning, I went to a farmer's market a Tivoli Village, which is a mall that was constructed right before the economic downturn, so it's basically a really nice looking outdoor mall with only a scaterring of shops. The farmer's market had about half of the vendors of the one we attended in L.A., but it is certainly better than nothing. I had some freshly made mini donuts (mini means less calories, right? even if I ate 6 mini donuts? hmm...). We also got a very nice and delicious loaf of multigrain bread for Brian's lunch sandwiches, and some wax beans and fingerling potatoes from a farm in California. I met up with another Vegas Mom and her friend, who were very nice and I'm happy I met them. This mommy group has quite a few outines per week, and I'm looking forward to attending more of them, even though it is dominated by stay-at-home-moms and half of their activities are during work hours. This saturday, there's a storytime that we are going to at a nearby Barnes and Noble. I'll just keep telling myself that Mia will totally be into what's going on at B&N, just like I tell myself that she's paying attention to the stories that we read before her beditme.

Lastly, here's the most adorable Mia pic of the week:

I'll be 3 months old tomorrow!

Baptisms

Mia is almost 3 months old and is still not baptized. I think my grace period is starting to come to an end, so I am going to seriously start planning this thing now.

In making a few preliminary phone calls, we've realized that getting baptized in Las Vegas is infinitely more complicated than getting married here. The first step is become a registered parishoner. I've never been a registered parishoner anywhere, so I never realized that this would be a requirement. If I have to commit to one parish, I want to make sure I like it. Without making it all sound too trite, I will make my decisions based on:

1) Content and length of Homilies
2) Boringness/Animation of the priest
3) Number of attendees/Size of the church
4) Quality of the musicians at various masses

I am going to try to convince Brian to go to Christ the King parish, which is just West of us on Tropicana this sunday. Next sunday, we'll try St. Joseph husband of Mary parish. We've only been to one church here in Vegas, and that was in Henderson. Henderson is pretty far away from us, plus, we don't think we're going to end up living in Henderson once we buy a house anyway. Plus, I definitely did not like it. It was the size of a Sam's Club, and we were ushered to a reject room to the side, where we had to watch the mass from a flat screen. So, that'll be a big consideration.

From most parish websites, it seems that if I make a decision on which parish to go with by the end of this month, we should be able to aim for a November baptism! Pencil in your calendars.

And now, your obligatory photo:

Here's Mia showing off her skills and holding herself up on the nursing pillow!

Due Month!

When I got into work this morning, I realized that it was time to flip my calendar from April to May! It's strange to see "Due Date" on the page that is currently opened on my desk. Strange, exciting, and slightly nerve-racking. My mom is arriving in about 2 weeks, and my ultrasound to determine the baby's approximate birthweight is the scheduled for the same day, and we have our Las Vegas baby shower coming up! Also, next monday, I'll officially be full-term, although some websites/books say that I am full term right now.

This weekend, Brian had both Saturday and Sunday off, which is a rare treat. We initially wanted to do a real overnight getaway somewhere in the area, but we decided against it at the last minute. Instead, we planned an afternoon at the Las Vegas Springs Preserve. It is essentially the site of the now-dried-up Las Vegas springs, which was the pre-Hoover dam water source which attracted the early Las Vegas settlers. The "springs" portion is now a retention pond, but there is still a fair amount of wildlife surrounding it. We did the entire 1.6 mile loop of hiking trails (also known as waddling trails, for some of us), saw a bunch of lizards and what looked like desert chipmunks. There were also some gardens which were advertized as "botanic", but they were a bit disappointing. There is  also a little museum and wildlife show, but these were mostly geared towards children. We are starting to learn that all museums or educational exhibitions in the Las Vegas area are geared towards children, which is disappointing when you come from a city like Chicago and are used to the Field, Science and Industry, etc. Overall, it was very nice and we both agreed that we would buy a family membership next summer, when our little one will be walking!

Sunday, I had another case of 'nesting', feeling the need for have every surface of the apartment cleaned, all laundry done, and making the executive decision of no-more-dogs-with-long-fur. Everytime Swarley moved, he got the evil eye for shedding on my just vacuumed carpet. Poor dog. Of course, I say that now, but if we're at a shelter and another long furred dog decides to sit on my lap, that will be the end of my new rule. Just like last weekend, and the weekend before that, I may have overly extended myself and was exhausted and starving by 3pm. I have a feeling this cleaning will only get worse as the next few weeks pass, but that my exhaustion point will only get earlier.

Las Vegas is one classy city

Yesterday I had an appointment with my OB. As usual, he found the baby's heartbeat within .5 seconds of putting the little doppler thingy on my belly. Her heart is beating strongly, she's in the right position, everything is good with her.

Me, on the other hand, managed to gain 6 pounds in 3 weeks. Now, my weight gain to date has been encouragingly slow. I haven't gained more than 1 or 2 pounds between doctor's visits, which have been more less than 3 or 4 weeks apart. The "normal" rate is 1 pound per week, for a total of 40 pounds, but that is if you were at an ideal weight before getting pregnant. Since I was not at an ideal weight, it is not recommended for me to gain the full 40 pounds. Up until yesterday, I was at +20 pounds. Ok, so +26 pounds is still good for a pregnancy weight gain, especially at this stage (34 weeks, exactly 2 1/2 weeks until I am full term! 5 1/2 weeks until my due date!). 6 pounds in 3 weeks isn't healthy, even if 2 of those pounds should have gone directly to the baby. I'm going to blame it on the entire bottle of water that I chugged before going in, since I anticipated another urine test. Which I did have to do, confirming the result of a "raging UTI" as my doctor put it. That's 2 UTIs in one month, if anyone was keeping track. In 2 weeks, I get the Group B Strep test, which I am not looking forward to, since the pamphlet explains that it consists of violating my privacy (that's as specific as I am going to get).

By far, the highlight of my time at the doctor and hospital yesterday was the waiting room experiences. My doctor was running late because he had been in a delivery in the morning, so my appointment was delayed by about an hour. I had my Kindle (Water for Elephants), and I am glad that my Doctor makes himself available for deliveries even if he has a bunch of appointments in a row, so I absolutely didn't mind. Plus, I was so conveniently seated next to a wonderful example of the white-trash that lives in Las Vegas. A 28 year old woman was there with her sister, and her sister's two pretty cute children. The sister was loudly talking about going to the Tatoo convention, and yelling at her son about having to shave his head (which he was very upset about) because he had gotten gum in it. It was the woman's first visit to this doctor's office, so she was filing out all the pregnant paperwork. She was not-so-discreetly telling her sister that 1) she couldn't remember when her last period was, so she put down "sometime in February". 2) she didn't know anything about her baby's father's medical history, and couldn't call him and ask because he was in jail. 3) didn't know her insurance information (her sister reminded her that she was on Medicaid). Her sister, in between yelling at her 2 1/2 year old son, also kept interrupting her 4 or 5 year old daughter playing a video game on her phone because she was "doing it wrong". Excellent parenting examples.

After my appointment, my doctor recommended that I head over to the hospital to pre-register for my delivery. In that waiting room, I had another delightful sample of Las Vegas locals. An extremely overweight woman, who turned out to be pregnant, was there with equally overweight mother, her 13 or 14 year old daughter, and her 2 year old daughter. She was talking to her mother about how inconvenient it was for her to get searched by the cops last week because she had two vibrators in her purse. She told her mother about how the cops asked why she was carrying two vibrators in her purse, and she explained that "I'm pregnant, as big as a house, horny, single and nobody will have sex with me". She further explained to them that she needed two because one was for "on the go (you know, like in the car and stuff)", and the other was for "prolonged pleasure". She was also there to preregister because her doctor (also my doctor) was going to schedule her for a c-section because her "uterus was liable to BUST", as she explained to the woman doing to her registration. Also, when asked about her marital status, she said, "well, I got married to the father of my first child, but I haven't seen him in 10 years, so I don't know the answer to that question". Sometimes registration questions are hard. On the way out, the 2 year old spilled the entire contents of a bag of Doritos (which she obviously got yelled at for, because 2 year olds should be in charge of holding their own Doritos) onto the hospital floor right in front of the doors to the infant nursery, so my entire time registering was spent interrupted by people's shoes crunching on the chips (which have always smelled bad to me, which is only intensified by being pregnant).

Yes, I am judgmental. I understand people all have different circumstances and everything, but come on! You don't know if you're married? You don't know when your last period was?? You're yelling at your kid for doing kid things, like getting gum in their hair and spilling Doritos? Now I know why all the nice houses are in gated communities.