Work Stress

From Amber:

So people keep telling me that I need to keep my stress low for the baby. The problem is that I work in a crazy, crazy place. An elementary school. I happen to teach all girl fifth graders this year. This should be wonderful, and in many ways it is. The problem is that fifth grade girls are FULL of drama!

Most recently is a problem with she said she said garbage. The girls are not clique like in the classroom, but apparently they cannot get along outside of the room. This amounted to one of my girls bringing a knife to school this week. She stole the knife from her father and brought it in to use it against another girl. The knife was never seen by myself or admin; we know about the knife because the father brought his daughter to the AP and told him about the situation.

It is hard to know exactly what happened because, well, kids lie. But when the stories were hashed out from several different little ladies a few things became obvious. #1 the girl who brought the knife had been picking on one of my more 'immature' girls for a while. This picking on had led to her threatening the immature one. #2 the other girl threatened her back with her older cousin from a local midle school. #3 this led the original girl to bring the knife to school. #4 the knife lady was pulled out of school from her dad about 10 minutes into the day she brought the knife. She claims to have left it in her desk. We have no way of knowing if this is true.

She claims someone must have taken the knife from her desk while she was gone. I personally think she lied to her father and probably has the knife at home. In any case the AP and I spent an afternoon searching every girl's desk and bag. He had called school police, but they told us to do it. They didn't feel like being involved in the situation. Apparently a girl with a knife is not a dangerous situation. In any case, we never found the knife.

Now here is a frustrating tid bit. All of my girls know who brought the knife (they were told). They expect the girl to get in trouble. The problem is that the knife is no where to be found and the only reason we know about it is because her father told us. No evidence, no trouble. The most he can do is RPC (request parent conference) the girl. But, since he already talked to Dad, there isn't any real point in doing this. So to my class of ladies, it looks to them like it wasn't that big of a deal after all.

In better news, spring break is next week. Yippy!

Working Out

From Adam:

I decided that I would start working out last Saturday. I have been having a lot of fun with it. Hopefully, it will last longer than two weeks like the Wii Fit Plus episode I had. I have been working out with my Mia Finnegan Mini Trampoline DVD in the living room every ohter day and on the other days I have been doing push ups, pull ups, and dips on my iron gym that I got for my birthday last year. I got the tramp/DVD for Christmas last year. Well on Saturday I skipped the last part of the aerobic session because I was winded, but I did do the strength portion of the DVD. On Monday and Wednesday I did the DVD again in the same way (skipping the last portion of the aerobics b/c I was winded). On Tuesday I did three sets of pull ups, push ups, and two sets of dips-as many as I could do each time. Thursday I did the pull ups, push ups, and dips routine. On Friday I did the DVD again, but this time I was able to do the entire aerobic session without becoming overly winded. This got me really excited! Unfortuneatly, on Wednesday one of the resistance bands used with the tramp snapped during the strength workout so I only did aerobics today. I was thinking about using two 2 quart water jugs, from food storage, for my resitance during my strength workout, but I am not sure what I will do yet. I have looked up surgical tubing and it is about $10 bucks for five feet on eBay. Seems a little expensive to me.

Updates on Baby

Today we had another ultra sound. This one was much more entertaining. We watched as baby yawned (or perhaps swallowed) several times. The tech said she's gonna be a talker. We also saw her grab and hold onto one foot for a while, and we watched in the 4D real time as she tried to get her thumb into her mouth. After measurements of the heart and brain, the tech was able to get a much clearer picture of the genitalia. It is definitely a girl. Adam and I are both very excited. Baby is growing well, in the 65%. The doctor said he should not need to see me again unless our midwife gets concerned in the months ahead. As of now, everything is looking great.

One of the 4D pictures. She's trying to get that thumb in.

Yawning or swallowing.

The definite girl picture.

Last week my mom was in town. She helped Adam and I paint the baby's room. We painted the room yellow and white with a bright Winnie the Pooh boarder. I was thinking of paler colors, but Adam really wanted bright. It looks very cheery in the room.

If you look closely you can see that he is painting over a light blue.


Our finished work.

I'm doing okay. A few aches and pains, but nothing the doctors are worried about. I have to go back to work starting tomorrow, track break is over. I'm sad because it is a Friday and Adam gets Fridays off. But it's okay; I've been bored since Mom left so it's about time I go back to work.

It's a...BABY!

The ultrasound tech cannot be certain of the baby's gender. She saw three white lines, which makes her think it is a girl. However, our baby was being "stubborn" and would not turn over. So the tech did not get a good glimpse of the area. She cannot be certain that there is not male genitalia there. She did see what she believes is female genitalia (the three white lines), but said that she can't give us a guarantee.

On a better note, everything looks good. The tech measured EVERYTHING. The head, the arm, the leg, the tummy. She said the baby is 13 oz, and this means if we took baby out and stretched it out the baby would be about 13 inches long. But we won't be doing that. She also looked at the blood flow of the umbilical cord and placenta. There was also plenty of amniotic fluid for baby. Everything looked good and she said her measurments were consistent with our current due date.

She viewed the heart several times. She said she could see all 4 chambers, and we could all deffinately see it beating. The heart beat was 153 per minute. But she didn't see everything she wanted to about the heart. Our baby was very comfortably laying face down on its placenta and absolutely refused to turn over.

We have six pictures of the face, but they aren't great. The view was difficult for the tech. When she did have a good view, baby put its hand infront. Being quite shy. Actually baby was irritated by the whole ultrasound process after a few minutes. At one point we watched as the baby kicked out at me repeatedly (I didn't feel this). It was very amusing for Adam and I. The tech wanted to see details of the face more clearly too. She couldn't see anything that looked bad, but she couldn't get a clear look at the lip.

The profile (side) view. This is my favorite. Baby's little nose and hand can be seen.

A view of the face. The hand and torso can also be seen here.

The tech said she was going to recommend we come back for another ultrasound. She left and about five minutes later the doctor (not ours, we were at a different office) came in. He congratulated us, said everything looked good. He joked that the baby was very stubborn, so for this reason he thinks it's a girl. Then he told us that our doctor wanted to know that everything was progressing well and the baby looked healthy. He said that everything was good and he would send the report today so that she would have plenty of time to review it before our appointment next Wednesday. Then he said he would like us to come back in 4-6 weeks for another ultrasound. He hoped that the baby would be more cooperative, and a bit larger, so they could see everything better.

So we set another appointment for four weeks from now. I kind of wanted to wait the six weeks, but my track break is just finishing up at the end of four weeks. So we set it up for my last work day off so I wouldn't have to miss another day of work.

All told we were very excited to see our baby on the TV screen. The ultrasound was very thorough and quite neat. I didn't really want to go again because we'll have to pay for it again. But it will be good to confirm that everything is good and possibly get a better assurance of boy or girl.

~Amber

It has been so long

From Adam:
Our Christmas was wonderful. I don't think we took any pictures in the morning, but we did videotape the majority of the morning. We got the cat a toy that she enjoys swatting at as we dangle it for her. One of my favorite gifts came from my parents-in-law; it is a kill a watt. It measures the amount of electricity devices use while in use, idle, and off. It also tells you how much voltage is running through an electrical socket. It also automatically logs the amount of kilowatts used per hour. I found out that our dishwasher uses 1.09 kilowatts in 2 hours and 19 minutes with the drying cycle on. Next time, I will measure how much it uses without the drying cycle. We are still putting away Christmas decorations and trying to get things back to normal. We have good news. We are going to go to Summerlin Hospital on Jan. 22, 2010 for our second Ultrasound to find out the gender of our little one. We are excited to find out. Then we can focus on names and think about a single gender.

Decorating for Christmas

Amber Says:

We've been decorating for Chrismtas for a while now. The Sunday after Thanksgiving we put up our tree. We put it between our living and dining area where it was last year. But we moved it a few days later into the corner where there is more room (this required a slight furniture move). That Wednesday following Thanksgiving I put up all of the inside decorations. My mom was in town and insisted that the house was decorated before she left so she could see it.

This weekend Adam and I put Christmas lights up outside. This is the first time I've hung lights outisde because I've never stayed in Las Vegas for Christmas. We had a lot of fun hanging the lights up in the back of the house. Adam became very hyper and said he was happy because I was making Christmas so good. So we decided to hang some lights in the front too. Unfortunately the wind (probably along with the weight of the cord) knocked the lights in the back down over night. The lights in the front were still good though; it's a lot less windy in the front since the houses face eachother. Adam's going to try to fix the lights tomorrow. We really like them, they looked so pretty. Hopefully he can get them to stay. Below are some pictures of our current decorating situation.

Out Front W/ and W/O the flash

Our tree and the living room

My villages

From Adam:
I did it! A couple of days ago I got 1001 spins during three minutes of super hula hoop in the six minutes exercise game in Wii Fit Plus. I am excited.
This week I have two 2nd exams which will finish both of those classes. I feel ready to take both of them. The first is tomorrow at 11:30AM, it is about communication, how to learn better and faster, and how to make and achieve goals. It has been a good class. The other class was about older adults 65+ and how they age. What happens to them, why they do things they do, how to age well and how not to, how to bad aging become better aging, and memory strategies.
I will make this post short. Have a good one.

Nothing special

From Adam:
Nothing too special has happened over the past two weeks. I will be going hometeaching next weekend. It will be before Thanksgiving, and will be Stake Conference weekend. My Mother-in-law will be in town Friday after Thanksgiving and her husband will be coming into town for work sometime thereafter. Friday morning Amber and she will be going shopping; I will most likely be at the temple doing baptisms for the dead with Rylee and McKaylee, my nephew and niece. Sometime during the holiday I will be seeing my high school friend Dianah and her family.

I have two reports due this week. One is due on Wednesday. The other is due on Thursday. The one for Wednesday is mostly done, but the one for Thursday only has a topic. Osteoporosis is the topic. I am doing it because I couldn't think of a topic. Amber said she would be interested to know what happens as she ages and her bones age. So I am doing the research mostly for her. Something that I learned in class about osteoporosis is that the bone density that she has right now or possibly a few years ago was as dense as it will have ever been. Now, she needs to make sure she is getting enough calcium to make up for the calcium lost in her urine. So as long as she eats a well balanced diet with enough calcium and vitamin d she will not need any supplements. If she doesn't eat a good balanced diet then she might need to take caclium vitamin d supplements. The diet is not the only part of a healthy skeletal system though. She must also put her bones to work by doing exercise. The body will decide to get rid of calcium if it feels like the body can do without it. So if Amber exercises her body, her body will know that it must maintain its calcium levels, however, if Amber doesn't stress her body enough by exercise then her body will dump some calcium even if there is plenty of vitamin d to take it up.

I did the Super Hula Hoop on Wii Fit Plus. I did the 6 minute version which is the hula counter clockwise for three minutes and then clockwise for three minutes. I was able to achieve 992 spins counterclockwise and 982 spins clockwise! I was absolutely amazed by my performance. I used to hate the hula hoop exercises in Wii Fit, but I have grown to love them.

Amber is feeling a little sick today. Most of the day she was fine, but now that she has eaten dinner she feels sick to the stomach. She's been feeling sick a lot lately. Hopefully, she won't feel too sick for Thanksgiving time. The doc says she'll probably be sick 'til the 14th week.

2nd Doctor's Appointment

We went to the doctors today, and our doctor was actually there this time. She did a vaginal ultra sound, and we were able to see our growing baby with a strong heart beat. This was very exciting for both of us. She printed a picture for us. You can clearly see the baby's head at the top of the picture. If you look closely you can see how it is bent over leaning against the chest, and you can just make out the line between head and chest. The baby measured just under an inch. The original assessment of 8 weeks and 6 days was supported by the baby's growth. The expected due date is still June 10, 2010.

End of October

Happy Halloween

Amber Says:
I got back into Las Vegas late on Thursday night. My plane was delayed an hour so it was midnight by the time we pulled into our carport. I enjoyed spending time with my mother, but I did not like being away from Adam.


My mom took my grandma and I to see Disney on Ice in Portland. Grandma had never been to a show like that before. We all had a good time. We also went to a cousins wedding. The wedding had a country theme and was at the Fair Grounds in St. Helens, Oregon. My cousin wore a cowboy hat, as did his 4 year old son. His bride was beautiful in her gown though. They had hay bales decorating the building along with pumpkins and other fall decor. The cake, made by grandma and mom of groom, was decorated as a cow with black spots and all. They also had a jumper for the kids (those blow up things they jump in) with a giant monster truck on the top. They had a DJ that only played country music, including when the bride walked in. And to top it off there was a mechanical bull. It was really a fun wedding and I enjoyed seeing so much of my family. I also helped my mom prepare for Halloween before heading back.


Adam and I had a good Halloween yesterday. He didn't decide what he wanted to be until 5 O'clock when I began pestering him. I ended up fixing him a candy cane costume. Many people said he looked like an elf. I think he also looked like he was ready for bed. But in any case he was cute. We went to our ward party. Adam thought it was at six, but it turned out it started at five. We got there in time for trunk or treat, but missed dinner. So we passed out our candy and headed up to Adam's parents. We helped his mom pass out candy and had way too much fun scaring all of the children by startling them with screams when we yanked open the slightly ajar door. I should not enjoy scaring children so much, but it was fun.


Adam's words:
I got through the rest of the days without Amber. Unfortunately, Amber didn't want to eat pizza by the time she got back from her parents house. I had to eat the pizza all by myself without any help which in some ways is a blessing. I like pizza. She had a bunch of pizza in WA, that, I think, is why she didn't want to eat the pizza I had homemade. I don't think I have mentioned this on the blog yet, but I am working towards not scratching any itches. I typically have many itches everyday that I have always responded to with a scratch or two or hundred. I get scabs from all of this scratching, which causes me to be itchy during the nighttime and I tend to unconsciously scratch myself. I have a theory about this nighttime itchiness. While in Peru I spoke Spanish all of the time. Around my 15 month mark I sat up while I was sleeping and said something in perfect understandable Spanish with my everyday Spanish accent (I know this because my companion was awake when I spoke in my sleep). Thus, I think if when an itch comes and I ignore it during the daytime hours, I think my automatic response during the nighttime hours will also be to ignore it. I think it will be a while before it is the automatic response during the nighttime hours, but someday I am pretty sure it will occur as long as I keep my no scratching goal. My goal date is to have it achieved by Thanksgiving.
I have done some great things with Wii Fit Plus. One of the aerobic exercises is the Hula Hoop. I did it for 10 minutes and achieved 3464 spins! 3000 spins is really good; the game calls 3000+ spins a Calorie Incinerator. I burn at least 54 calories when I do this for just ten minutes. I am the only one with a ten minute score because I don't get overly tired by it. I have an efficient technique. My vigor for Wii Fit Plus is much lower than when we first got it, but I am going to try to continue exercising because I know it is good for my long term health.
I have a goatee with moustache now. You can see it in the candy cane picture. I am going to keep it until the end of the week, and see if I still like it. The whiskers are still a little stiff and spiky which is why I don't like it.