Baby Dooley's blogger debut!

Here it is! SHE if you ask me, HE if you ask Mitch. (Girls are better, Mitch. Face it. I don't know what to do with a boy!) TWINS if you ask the grandparents. Especially my mom.

...PS--we're not having twins. I don't think we could handle TWINS + 7 YEARS of school for Mitch. Maybe one or the other, but not both! Plus, we were approved for Medicaid and WIC and we would lose Medicaid coverage on anything "abnormal", meaning a multiple birth!

It was so cool seeing the baby on the screen. I was told by everyone that it would make it more "real." Well, i've been as sick as, well, a very sick person, so everything was every bit real to me. However, it was really cool to see the movement on the screen and everything! Its little shoulders movin' around and its sweet little heart beating so fast. It made me very reassured to hear the midwife say that everything looked great and completely normal (after a nurse scared us to death on the phone...I told her stomach pain--from all the nausea--and she immediately suggested an ectopic pregnancy! NOT COOL!!!)

This is the first picture: they used a "head to rump" measurement (the X's and dotted line) to show us that it measures 1.83 cm!!
I love our little kidney bean! I think the appointment made me love the baby more, if that's possible. Maybe that's how it made it more "real" for me. It made it a person instead of a parasite making me sick and hungry every 2 hours!

Here's a second picture. You can see a little arm bud on each side if you look closely. We are so excited and can't wait for November 6th/7th! (We've heard both as a due date...we've been saying the 7th like the Health Center told us, but the doctor today told us the 6th...it was really a computer telling both of them, so I don't think it matters!) :I thought the internal ultrasound would hurt or be uncomfortable, but it wasn't at all. One second the screen was black and then almost immediately there was a BABY there that we could both see very clearly! We both saw the head and brain right away and we could see the umbilical cord. We've been studying pictures on babycenter.com of what it should look like, and it was a perfect representation!

This is the coolest experience ever! It makes me want to meet this kid! I wonder if it has thoughts before it has a gender. I mean, it has a brain that can tell its heart to pump blood and it already has its major brain parts, but I wonder what makes thought possible? I know its spirit is thinkin away somewhere and I hope its as excited to come here as we are to meet it! :o)

Testing my patience...again...

So it's not a secret that Rexburg, ID (yeah, if you don't live here, don't try looking it up...it's probably not on a map!) is not my favorite place in the world to live. Nope! One conversation with me will give that little fact away!

WELL, when I didn't think I could dislike this place any more than I do now...

this happened. This was kind of the last straw for me. Man i'm a downer!

Anyway, the city of Rexburg has this new rule that you have to have a parking permit to park on streets adjacent to campus. This is the first semester i've been here that this rule has been in effect. The permits are $35 for one year. Not bad.

We keep going by city hall trying to get a pass, but they sell out the day they get them. I don't know the reason for the restrictions on the numbers but it's looking ridiculous. Now they tell us that they're going to be out until spring semester, which starts April 20th.

The killer is that they can KEEP giving us parking tickets and we can't do anything about them. They're only $15/ticket, but 5 adds up. Like i've said, we've tried the whole time we've lived here to get one and we haven't seen any "in stock" yet.

I feel like something about this rule needs to be changed. We're like number 1293487509 on a "waiting list" to get one next semester, and then they'll send out emails and it's first come, first serve.

However, there's a kicker with that, too. Classes end for Winter semester on April 10th and start for Spring on April 20th. We'll be out of town most of that time, visiting Mitch's family. We can't have our lovely neighbors pick it up for us because they need our driver's licenses, which we don't want to travel without!

I feel like we're in a catch-22 here! My patience is gone and I'm afraid my hormonal self is going to lash out at someone in their tiny city hall to kick some butt when I get my next ticket!

Ugghhh....

Awesome giveaway!

I just love The Vintage Pearl! They're giving away 3 of their new designs!

See them here! How precious!

Good week :o)

Such a generic title...oh well :o)

This week was a good one! Our baby now has a head and "eye spots"...haha funny! But, we grew a head this week! So we're making progress :o)

We also had financial yuckness taken off our shoulders--we qualified for both Medicaid AND WIC! (Well, at least me and the orange seed did!)

Mitch is working his tail off in his classes--he loaded on the hard ones this semester! Poor guy! But I think he can do it :o) He's also got a cold so i'm (nicely) shunning him!

I'm teaching the Primary kidlets the song for March, Follow the Prophet. It's great because they already know it, but we need some review. I did just find an adorable verse for President Monson: I'm going to teach it tomorrow!

President Monson is our prophet, Friend to all is he
Shares faith-building stories of how we all should be.
Gladly serving others throughout all his days
He's a true example of the Savior's ways.

In the midst of miracles

That's what we've learned. Unexpected challenges tend to yield miracles when they're most needed.

Amazing!!

Here's how things went for us this week:

Sunday: Mitch sees his midterm grades and pretty much goes into all-stress mode...this guy was a stressed-out drone...he piled on the hard classes and difficult teachers and we're studying and praying our hearts out!

Monday: Very next day...we're pregnant. NOT the timing WE had in mind...but we've already discussed that :o)

Tuesday: Go to pick out prenatal vitamins...Mitch helps as much as he can, but the choice is up to me and the pharmacist. Mitch played with the blood pressure machine and it diagnoses him with hypertension :o) I just thought that was funny!

Skip to Thursday: US Bank loses our deposit (the one to cover rent AND what I owed on taxes...it was a big one!) and slams us with 6 overage charges for $37.50 each. After screaming at supervisor after manager we find out they will erase all but $57.00 of charges, so we quickly deposited it. The account balance is still negative and won't be taken care of until Monday. We hope. After the remainder of the charges have been paid BY THE BANK we are closing our accounts and switching to a local credit union. Forget US Bank. This isn't the first time they've lost a deposit of mine.

Thursday afternoon: as i'm at the ATM making an early evening deposit (so it's there before they opened Friday, as the branch manager/supervisor asked of us), realizing that I forgot my Visa so I can't do a THING at the ATM (and feeling frustrated that I have to drive all the way home and back), our amazing friends, Jake and Amy, who happen to be the managers of our apartments, call and offer Mitch a job paying $10-15 per hour to do maintenance work around the complex. He said he wanted Mitch because he is working on a property of Jake's in Idaho Falls. We felt like it was an answer to prayer! Here I was, struggling to make a deposit that I couldn't afford to get rid of charges that we REALLY couldn't afford, and Jake and Amy sweep in to save the day!!

That has been it so far. Small miracles we've discovered have been all the advice from you all! Thank you so much! We're moving forward with ways to save money and be total misers for the next 7 years while we're in school!!

Love you all! I'm really excited about this pregnancy. I do get really nervous because there's no real "proof" that i'm pregnant, besides 2 home tests and a definitive test, and I can't really tell that I am yet. However, the constant cravings for ANYTHING food (my stomach is never full!) and the constant trips to the bathroom have been comforting if anything. They remind me that yes, i'm still pregnant, and no, our 4 1/2 week little embryo hasn't "disappeared." Of course, if something were to not happen correctly with this baby I guess i'm just preparing myself for it!

Oh, baby!!

WELL, I was two days late on my birth control...

...took a test, and sure enough....

it went POSITIVE right away! No three-minute wait!

Mitch didn't believe me at all--in fact, it's still a weird little fact!

All we could do is laugh and cry at the same time, all the while shouting, "HOLY CRAP!!!" (forgive my sailor language :o)) over and over again!

This was Monday. What an FHE: calling people (family, family friends, etc.) to interrupt THEIR Family Home Evenings with our good news! (sorry, people!)

I bought prenatal vitamins at the store yesterday. I talked to my nutrition teacher and my mom, oh, and the pharmacist at the store, and eventually felt confident picking one :o)

It kind of makes it real! Luckily I took it last night and fell asleep before it digested and made me nauseous!

Here's what SCARES me and makes me wish this happened at a different time, or that I had been aware of what was going on:

- Albertson's had it's free Dr. Pepper day on February 20th and we had 2 liters of caffeine in our house...I used to never drink it, so of COURSE the ONE time I start it's while i've got UBER important cells inside me actually doing something important!!

-I was told to buy folic acid to take with my birth control, "just in case." ...yeah, I stopped taking it months ago, thinking there was NO WAY anything would happen.

-My apparent due date is November 7th. Our insurance (with its $750 deductible for each of us) starts over on September 1st. We almost have this year's paid off; I have current dental x-rays, so I think i'm gonna go get a filling replaced. however, when i'm 7 months pregnant, I have to find $750 somewhere around our house to pay off the new deductible. We're doing the math now to figure out if it's worth it, or if it would be cheaper for us to pay 100% than $750 + 20%.

So, i'm feeling horribly guilty and I can't kick it. I want to be excited, but I can't stop worrying myself about this folic acid thing especially. Oh, and the MONEY.

Any advice?

I'm not sick of hearing it. I'm welcoming any advice I can get :o)

Plus, Mitch is SUPER stressed out about his classes; he took a heavy load of hard classes and now, just passed midterms, he's really concerned. Needless to say, when I was debating prenatal vitamins and we both played with that machine that squeezes your arm (couldn't help it :o)), he was told he had "hypertension." Really, he's just never been more stressed. Poor guy.

Oh! One more worry. My parents may not be able to come out in November. What am I gonna do without my mom!? I don't know what i'm doing!

My nutrition teacher told me to go look in a mirror and notice how skinny and stress-free I appear right now...even if i'm not, she said it's the thinnest and most stress-free i'll be for the rest of my life. Apparently parents worry about their children for the rest of their lives. Who knew? :o)