So I have to apologize for not posting anything in a while. The holidays came and went, I got sick, I started a new position at my firm, trained my replacement for my old position, and well to be honest, I just wasn’t feeling up to blogging much. Just too tired and run down from my cold to even attempt to keep up. I’ll try to keep this short and sweet….
First – the holidays. My in-laws and Ben’s brother, John, and his girlfriend, Tracy, came to stay with us for a week over the holidays. Even with the small house, it was nice to have people at our place for once. We watched a lot of movies and ate a ton of food. For Christmas Eve we went to Carmine’s on Penn for some awesome Italian food, and then Christmas Day Ben and I made our first full-fledged turkey dinner. I did a traditional roast turkey and Ben deep fried one. They both turned out great. I might add we did cornbread stuffing this year and it ROCKS. I’ll post some photos below. We exchanged gifts with everyone and got tons of great stuff. We got a gift card to Babies R Us, which will come handy for sure, a gift card to Best Buy, which we used to upgrade our camera with some video capabilities, and we got a jogging stroller as well. Ben’s stoked about that one! We got some baby sandals, booties, robe/bath set – all of which are just too cute and I can’t wait to get them on Baby Lowe. All in all, it was a great week and we were really quite lonely when everyone was gone. But I guess we should just relish the calm before the storm.
I caught a nasty cold which started the day of Christmas and just got worse over the next couple of days. I had bad head congestion and then it moved into my chest. Believe it or not, I finally just kicked my cough this week. I was as tired as I’d been during my first trimester. I was miserable on some days, somewhat okay on others. Didn’t miss any work, but I think I probably should have. I just didn’t have the time to take off since I had to take 6 of my vacation days for my knee surgery back in June. That just messed me up for the rest of the year to take time off.
I am now a paralegal at my firm, working on post-judgment collections and general litigation. Basically, one of my mail responsibilities will be to find money (that people likely don’t have) to pay debts to our clients. I’ll be doing investigative projects, garnishments, and preparing my attorneys for hearings in which they’ll question the debtors about their assets, etc. I’ll also be supporting associates on general litigation matters within the firm, drafting documents, doing filings with the courts, document management, calendaring, etc. The list goes on and on, but after a week and a half in the new position, I have now realized I was really ready for the change and the challenge. I trained my assistant, Stacy, last week and she’s fallen into our firm nicely. I am happy to leave my two partners and one associate in her hands!
We also got a crib, if you can believe that! I remember driving home with it in the back of Ben’s Xterra, thinking, wow, a year ago we’d have been driving home from Sniagrab (big ski sale) with new skis or snowboards or something, but here I was staring at a crib and dresser thinking, wow, this is actually going home with us. We’re not delivering it for a friend, it’s actually for us…..weird, surreal, but really very exciting!
Baby Lowe is growing - I can tell. Kicking has gotten more often and not so much flutters, but more of full on kicks once in a while. I felt the first one at the beginning of 19 weeks, and grabbed Ben fast enough that he could have a chance to feel it from the outside too. He just lit up and got this big grin on his face. I was so happy that he could feel it I wanted to cry. Then again last night, I was laying in bed reading when I felt some more. I got his hands on my belly and he felt them too! I love the smile on his face, and I got all giggly to the point where my stomach was shaking so much you couldn't tell what was going on for a few seconds. But he definitely felt them!
I am at the end of my lunch hour, so I’ll leave with one more blurb – check the blog tomorrow. We have our 20 week ultrasound and we’ll hopefully find out if we are having Baby Girl Lowe or Baby Boy Lowe. We’ll take a DVD with us, but I’m not sure if I’ll be able to get it uploaded from the office computer or not. But we’ll definitely post on here what sex the baby is. Stay tuned…..
Here are some photos from Christmas and the crib. Oh and a couple more belly shots of me along the way. Happy New Year everyone!
Cornbread stuffing, yams and greenbean casserole
Our two turkeys, roasted in the front, deep fried in the back
Ben's handiwork setting the table - it looked so nice!
Our tree
Ben's ingenious idea for stringing lights - backpack!
Baby Lowe's dresser with changing pad
Baby Lowe's new digs
16 weeks
18 weeks
19 weeks
20 weeks
