Positive Thoughts Thursday

It's been too long since I've done one of these, and there are way too many positive things going on in my life right now to neglect mentioning!

• I'm 26 years old, with Cystic Fibrosis and will be 37 weeks pregnant tomorrow!
• My latest PFT (done less than a week ago) was amazing! My FEV1 is 83% and my small airway lung function is 92%!
• Baby Girl is growing steadily. :-)
• It absolutely amazes me what my "sick" body can do!!
• I have an amazing, hard-working husband! We've been in our house for just about a year now and it looks like a completely different home, inside and out!
• Tim's sister, Katrina, had her second child yesterday - our first niece, Alayna! I'm so excited that our girls will be so close in age. And the thought of watching all of the cousins grow up together is even more exciting!
• I've been walking with a friend 3-4 mornings a week which has been great exercise and great adult interaction over summer.
• For every hot week of summer, we've had a nice, cool week to balance it out. I absolutely love being able to have the windows open, especially at night, to feel the fresh air throughout the house.
• My classroom is ready to go for my maternity leave! Its a wonderful relief knowing that's all taken care of already.

33 Weeks

Saturday, June 28 - 33w, 1d
Daddy and I (mostly Daddy) have been working machines today! I feel like I've been nesting for a while now, pretty much since finishing school a month ago, but I feel like its kicked into high-gear now! My friend introduced me to a group on Facebook where I can buy & sell items with local people...oh man, I want to sell everything in the house! So far I've sold our extra range, recliner (yay, its finally out of your room!), a couple books and other odds and ends laying around the house. I also bought a super cute bouncy seat for you and a couple adorable outfits & a dress from a garage sale that was posted on the group. As soon as some of our bigger stuff sells, Daddy says I should probably get off of it so I don't go crazy...I'd have to agree with him!
We also bought new vinyl flooring for a portion of the basement today, so right now Daddy's working on organizing it and clearing the room so he can put it down eventually. I started helping him, but it's mostly his tools and stuff, so there wasn't too much I could do.
Oh, and how could I forget...Daddy finished painting the front of the house today & it looks amazing!!! No more blue!!! He still wants to add shutters, paint the gutters, add a window and paint the little bit of blue left on the side of the house, but man...what a difference!! The neighbors across the street even thanked us because they were tired of looking at it! :-)

This is when he first started this morning

The top picture is from last July when we first bought the house and
the bottom picture is from today!
We didn't remove the section on the left in the top picture, it's just a different angle.

Monday, June 30 - 33w, 3d
Yesterday, Daddy and I ran a few errands and it was the first time I was uncomfortable in public. My legs were hurting after walking around for a while, it felt like you were going to bust out of my belly and I ended up getting irritable. Today, I'm feeling much better - no leg pain, no belly pain, etc. I'm just glad it went away and very glad that I don't feel that way on a daily basis.

We had your next doctor appointment today and you're finally head down! (Maybe that's why I was so uncomfortable yesterday) Now we'll see if you stay that way....although the doctor said usually babies stay head down once they get there...we'll see about you. Daddy and I wouldn't be surprised with as much as you move. Speaking of movements, you've been going crazy this past week! You are getting so big that I can feel so many more of your movements and we can also see most of them which is very entertaining! You love to throw your body weight around in my belly and sometimes those huge movements feel so weird! Of course you move constantly at home, but as soon as we're doing an ultrasound, you stop. Today it didn't take you as long to show them some of your moves. You also showed off your practice-breathing skills, you were grabbing your feet, moving your mouth, and they showed Daddy your hair. Your heart rate was 163bpm today and they were pleased with that. My weight was 130.0lbs and my blood pressure was "perfect". My blood sugars were a bit high last week, so I paid better attention to what I was eating this week and they were back to normal. Yay!
After our appointment, we went to tour the Birth Center which was really nice. We were able to see a birthing room, a post partum room, the nursery, and just get familiar with where we'll have to go whenever the time comes. It helped put me at easy since I like to know where to go ahead of time, and I'm very glad that Daddy came with, too.

Thursday, July 3 - 33w, 6d
Not too much else to add to this week. I, thankfully, haven't felt as uncomfortable as I did the other day again, so that's been nice, although you're getting huge and definitely running out of room! Now that I know you're head down, it's a little easier to distinguish which body parts I'm feeling when you move around.
We're heading out of town to spend the weekend with Elise and Kyle & the boys, and Linda & Roger and I'm really looking forward to it. I can't wait for next summer when we're able to do all of this fun stuff with you, too. We only have a limited number of weekends before you're arrival and it's starting to feel more real as the countdown gets closer and closer! :-)

Life in General

It's been too long since I've posted a non-pregnancy related post, but it's pretty hard when that's constantly on my mind! Last "normal" post was in February, I think...oops!

Anyway, we've been keeping extremely busy over the past few months. I'm pretty sure Tim started

nesting as soon as we found out I was pregnant. He's been a working machine! He completely refinished all of the hardwood floors in the house which look fantastic. He redid the ceiling (scraped the popcorn, sanded, added drywall and painted) in the living room and added a fireplace and mantel to the living room, as well repainting it all. The nursery is finished construction-wise, but still has lots of organizing and decorating to do once we get more baby supplies/furniture from our showers in June. We just had a new roof put on our house last week. Tim's also planning on adding a patio and pond to the backyard, as well as repainting the ugly blue siding on our house. And if he can get all of that done before August, I know that the kitchen is next -- which includes repainting the cabinets, extending our pantry, laying new hardwood floors, installing a new countertop and knocking down a wall...and he says there's not much to do in there... :)

I've tried to help out as much as possible but with being pregnant and not super handy, I've only done some of the painting, helped scrape the ceiling and helped move things when I could. Tim has been excellent at getting everything done even when he works full time doing the exact same stuff for work everyday...I don't know how he has the energy!

This last weekend we had our second Great Strides walk! Our team has raised around $1,200! We had gorgeous weather and had a great time visiting with all of Tim's family for the weekend. I did one of the opening speeches about my life with CF and how I had to kick my butt over the last few years to get my body ready for a pregnancy. The speech was a little scattered (pregnancy brain!), but I always enjoy sharing my story with others. Afterwards, I went to join my family and our almost 4 year old nephew gave me a high-five and said, "that was awesome!"

My biggest fan :-)

In other news, I've been pretty busy wrapping up the end of the school year with my little boogers and preparing for maternity leave in the fall. I recently learned that next year I'll be teaching Kindergarten again, so I'm really looking forward to that. It'll be much easier coming back from maternity leave to a grade that I've taught before instead of third grade like it was before. We're down to ten days of school left! This school year has flown by, thankfully, because my class has a couple (four to be exact) handfuls that I'm am definitely looking forward to getting a break from....lol. This summer I'll be moving rooms, again. Thankfully my principal and custodian are wonderful at accommodating all of the pregnant teachers who have to move this summer and doing our rooms first. I'm hoping to have all of my bulletin board fabric and boarders up the day after the last day of school. Then all I'll have to do when I come back after the room is cleaned is arrange the furniture, hang posters and organize. Anyone willing to come down this summer to help me out with that is more than welcome!

Speaking of summer, ours is full! Between baby showers, friends' weddings, family parties and a weekend trip to St. Louis for a Cardinals game, Tim and I will be super busy! Luckily I'll have still have weekdays to put my feet up and relax, :-), but my poor hubby is going to be going non-stop! Hopefully he'll get a few relaxing weekends this summer before the sleepless nights begin in three months! :-)

A Normal Post?!

Wow, it's been a long time since I've written a normal blog post. Things have been going very well for us this winter since finding out I'm pregnant. It's been a long time coming, and so fun sharing the experience with our friends and family! We've already had three ultrasounds and I'm now 15 weeks along with our little munchkin. I have my first CF clinic coming up since getting pregnant, and I'm so excited to see everyone there.

In other news, we've got two Great Strides events coming up this spring, in April and May. Those will be super fun this year, and next year we'll need a stroller! If you'd like to join my team or donate to either walk site, please go to www.cff.org/greatstrides and follow the very simple directions. They all have a free Great Strides app which is very easy to use.

Work has been going well. Teaching first grade is so different from Kindergarten, but I am really enjoying it. My class is full of personalities and they've been keeping me on my toes this year, but its been so fun watching them grow and progress.

Tim's been keeping busy between working, plowing, and continuing to work on our house. Currently he's working on refinishing the floors in baby's room, we just removed the popcorn from our ceiling in the living room, and we'll be painting in there soon. We've definitely had a busy, eventful, but wonderful winter. Sorry to keep everyone in the dark for so long, but we wanted to make sure everything was going well before we shared the news. Stay tuned for many more updates. :-)