Miss Mollie

3 months ago, a phone call between my mom and I...

Mom: Hi! So, there is a girl at my work, who has a reeaaallly cute puppy. She is super cute and a really good dog, but the girl has a skin allergy to her and can't keep her anymore.

Me: oh. ok.

Mom: So, I was thinking that you guys should adopt her! She is so cute.

Me: Yeah, no. We don't really want a dog right now. We are having a baby, remember?

Mom: Weelllllll I think you should take her anyway. She is just tiny, a mini poodle shih-tzu mix. She is all black.

Me: nah. We are gone a lot. And the whole baby thing.

Mom: Yeah....well I kind of already told them you want her. So when can I bring her over?!?!

Sigh. We agreed to let my mom bring her over and we would look at her and see what we thought. The family that couldn't keep her was going to give us her and all her stuff for free. I was pretty set on not keeping her.



AWWWWWWWWW!!!! After one look at her, and watching her run around and play with us, we were smitten. We named her Mollie and she has been the best thing to happen to us! (Erm, except for our real baby, who is still on the way. But Mollie is pretty great too.)

She is the best behaved dog I have ever owned. She is playful and fun, great with kids (Anne and I often allow her to babysit Hazen in the playroom when we hang out...see here and here.) loves to cuddle, came to us completely potty trained and is hypo allergenic! She has such a cute personality, we can't imagine life without her now.

This is her sweater and leg warmers set. Tell me you could see a set of puppy leg warmers and not buy them, please. She has a few outfits and doesn't hate them. We had a really cute christmas t-shirt for her, and after her baths she would go find her shirt wherever we left it and bring it to us. awww. A girl with fashion sense!




(she does get a little "drowned rat" looking during bathtime...)


I am a little worried about jealousy issues when Boston gets here (she already gets a little jealous when I spend too much time on the computer...she will come lay across the keyboard until I pay attention to her...) but I think it will be okay. We'll see. We might need Hazen to babysit her for a few weeks until she gets used to the idea that she is not the only baby in the house anymore!

Echogenic Foci

We had another ultrasound yesterday at the doctors office. When we had our 20 week appointment, they saw 2 small spots on Boston's heart. They are called Echogenic Foci, which are small spots of calcium in the heart.

When we first found out, the doctor told us this sometimes could be an indicator of Downs Syndrome, but also that lots of babies have these foci with absolutely no problems. He said having them increases the risk of Downs Syndrome by less than 1% and it was nothing we should worry about. He also said most of the time they go away on their own and nothing more is ever an issue with them. We scheduled a second ultrasound to check the progress, which is the one we had yesterday.

It looks like now there may be a third spot in the heart, or one they missed the first time. Our doctor is sending us to a Perinatologist to get a more focused ultrasound and see if they can tell anything more.

The good news: There are no other abnormalities found and other than the foci, it looks like Boston is a perfectly healthy little boy. (There are usually more abnormalities in Downs Syndrome babies that are more obvious on an ultrasound) Because I am only 22, the chances of Downs are significantly lower, even with the presence of these foci. Our doctor says he still is not too concerned about it, but would just feel more comfortable with the second opinion of a specialist.

The blah news: Having three foci is slightly more concerning than just one. Also, if the foci were only in the left ventricle of the heart, it would be even less concerning, but one of Bostons is in the right ventricle as well. Again, not necessarily significant, but its just another concern.

Anyone out there ever have an ultrasound with echogenic foci? Or know of anyone that has? Either way, we have our appointment with the specialist next Wednesday so we should hopefully know more then. We are trying to stay positive and have faith that everything is going to be just fine. Deep down, we both really feel like it will be, but there is always that concern. We would appreciate any prayers or happy thoughts sent our way!

The nursery continued...

It took me forever to pick out a crib I liked. Before we were set on colors, I changed my mind from white to black to cherry to dark brown...Jason was about ready to kill me. I finally found a crib I decided I loved and off we went with decorating ideas.

We had to special order the crib from Babies R Us beacuse they didn't have any in-store. We also got a killer deal on it, so I was super excited.

Ha. Or so I thought.

To make a realllllly long (several hours at Babies R Us, days of waiting, and one long drive to Ogden) story short, the warehouse had sent the wrong crib to the store, and then discontinued the crib we had bought. It took a bunch of phone calls and a few days of patience, but the awesome Babies R Us manager ended up finding us the crib we were supposed to have in Ogden. We didn't want to wait longer for it to be shipped to us, so we drove there to pick it up and got a gift card for our troubles. (Hello, free crib mattress and changing pad!)



It took about 20 minutes to get it all set up, and it was totally worth the wait!!



Jason and I spent last weekend in St. George with his parents. His mom is awesome when it comes to all things sewing. I am very proud to say we got all the bedding sewn in 2 days without a single tear or swear word! (one or the other -or both- happens within 5 minutes of me trying to sew on my own. every time.)

His mom was a HUGE help, and the bedding turned out exactly how I pictured it. I wish I had taken photos of us sewing all weekend, but I didn't. So here is the finished product...





I wanted everything about the bedding and nursery to be very modern. I didn't like any of the babyish pastel stuff I kept finding. (even though my mom's argument was, "but he IS a baby!!" every time I brought this up...)




I still am working on the other 2 walls of the room, so I'll post photos as soon as those are finished. I'm so happy with how its shaping up so far!

30 Weeks

You know how sometimes your face just looks super chubby in photos and you really hope its not that fat in real life and its just an unfortunate angle?


Thats kinda how I feel about posting this photo today. BUT, in the grand scheme of keeping up with the blog and documenting what is left of this pregnancy, here is Boston and me at 30 weeks:

(note: the flash is obviously not doing me any favors. My shirt is not, in fact, see-through today)

Things are still just going swimmingly. Other than a few minor inconveniences like leg cramps, swelling and feeling overall clumsy and bumbling, there isn't much I can complain about pregnancy. I was never sick, which rocked. Now if I can just get through the next 10 weeks of this kid flopping around inside of me like an acrobatic fish!

We are thisclose to being done with the nursery as well. Painting was a lot of time and effort, but I looove how it turned out. We decided to go with black, green and white, and use mostly polka dots and stripes. I had a great image in my head of how it was all going to look, but as I started painting and buying fabric, I started to get worried it was all going to be pattern overload! Luckily now that is is almost finished, I don't think it is and it is better than I pictured!

The paint. It was supposed to be a tad darker (not quite so lime, but it still turned out well. (Although you should have seen the look on Jason's face when we opened the lid. He thought I was insane.)


The primer was a nasty, super bright yellowish color. I wish this photo did it justice.





We (I) decided to stripe one wall. It was hard work, and lots of layers of paint! We were debating striping another wall, but after doing this much, we decided it was good enough and kept the other wall solid.





And because it is impossible for me to use paint in any way without making a huge mess of everything...


Poor miss Mollie was banished outside the room after sticking her face in the primer within 2 seconds of it being opened. She watched at us like this for 2 days straight.


p.s. We did learn a killer tip about paint stripes from here. You have to make sure to run something stiff and straight (we used the plastic piece you smooth spackle with) across the tape a few times to get a good seal, and we found 2 coats of glaze worked best. We ended up with razor straight stripes!

Sigh. Ok, so I know it's been three months. (over 3. wow.) You would think being pregnant I would could actually think of interesting things to blog about. (I read that once on someone else's blog, and I was all, yes you could! When I'm pregnant I'm going to document the whole thing, right here on Mr. blog! ha.) So far, I have taken one--count it--one photo of my belly, and have blogged a total of 3 times about this pregnancy.

Truth be told, I get really intimidated by blogging sometimes. I read other's blogs every day, and I get bummed if people don't update, but everytime I go to update I get all paranoid about being funny or entertaining or interesting. Then I don't do it. And here we are, 30 weeks pregnant, with lots of exciting things that have happeneded to us and nothing to document it.

So here is yet another resolution for me to blog more. I really want to be able to look back and remember so much that has happened. I see people making blog books, going back to previous pregnancies, remembering old vacations, etc. through their blog, and I want to be one of those people!

Things on my List to Blog:

--Mollie (our sweet little puppy)
--Pregnancy updates (the one photo I have so far. Plus hopefully more to come)
--Jason not being an illgal immigrant anymore (a work in progress. And okay, he's not really illegal. But we are trying to get his citizenship)
--Anything else I deem interesting or blog-worthy. (or even if its not interesting. Because remember? I am going to blog more, regardless of interestingness. I am going to be one of those people.)