The Cooke Family Website

It’s a girl!

Well, we went for our second ultrasound today.  The tech confirmed what we thought might be true last time – it’s a girl!  Grandma Cooke got to come along this time to see the baby, which was very nice indeed.

It’s late, but here’s some more pictures for our album of our new little girl:

Not labeled, but it’s a face looking right at the ultrasound spot:

A foot:

A profile:

Now, to finalize on a name….

Branson, Weeks 19 and 20

I never made an update post regarding the branson trip that we took.  The last few days that we were there were a flurry of activity, trying to get the most out of the last days of our vacation.  We traveled back in a single day, and that traveling took a long time:

Yes, that’s correct.  17 hours+ on the road on the final day.  We were slowed by a 1 hour tie-up in traffic on the way back through Indianapolis, and actually became trapped at a freeway rest stop while traffic backed up.

Overall though, it was a very good vacation.  We got to spend time with family and relax a bit.  Three generations of our family was there, which made it even better.

Week 19

Week 19 was actually last week, but I didn’t have time to write about it.  Between decompressing from the vacation, a business law paper to write, and my new 12 year old constant companion (yay summer vacation) I had a lack of quiet time to write up anything.  I’ve finally found the quiet time, and so here I am.

Last week, the baby was “the size of a large heirloom tomato”, or at least so say the baby sites.  I’ve never heard of such a thing.  Is it a old, dried up tomato that gets passed down from generation to generation?

Anyway, the baby is developing regions of the brain used for smell, touch, taste and vision.  Most places agree that the baby will start hearing – and perhaps recognizing voices.

Week 20

During week 20 the baby is no longer measured from head to ‘rump’.  Instead, they’re measured from head to toe – like a real person!  Predictably…

they’re using fruit again to demonstrate the length.  This time, the baby is about as big as a banana.  Perhaps bigger news than this, though, is that it’s the halfway point in the pregnancy.  Yes, that means that every day from here on out we’re looking at a fast dwindling time of pregnancy.  The baby will be here before we know it! We’re looking forward to the next ultrasound that we have, scheduled for the 1st of July.  Perhaps we’ll find out if it’s a boy or a girl?  I’m not holding my breath, but I’m hopeful.

When did this happen?

How did my sister go from this:

to this:

so darn fast?

Yesterday was her high school graduation party.  I feel like she should still be the 3 year old that I taught to sing.

In spite of my wishes for her to stay 3 years old forever, she grew into quite a beautiful woman.

Graduation! Vacation! Chicago! St. Louis! Branson! Week 18! Too Many Exclamation Points!

Well, it’s been a busy weekend and beginning of the week.

Friday, Graduation Day

We started off our festivities with a graduation from grade school.  This marks my third and final graduation I would be attending this year.  Maddie earned a presidential award for academics.  It was a nice time, and afterward we left for Chicago to begin our vacation.  The kids wanted to buy things at the Lego store and the American girl doll store.

We left and arrived in Chicago in the evening.  We checked into our hotel room, which we pricelined for $50 downtown.  It was literally right downtown.  We were within walking distance from “the Magnificent Mile,” known by that name for it’s shopping and other items of interest.  The room was nice, and it had a flatscreen tv.  But it had to have a flatscreen tv, because a regular tv would not have fit.  You couldn’t walk from one part of the room to the other without running into someone.

Behold:

The queen size beds were actually twins.  It felt like we were sleeping on chiclets.  Still, the price and location couldn’t be beat.

We brought food but decided to eat out, since there’s TGI Fridays all around the area.  We stopped by the Apple store, which is always neat to go in and play with the new toys they have.

Saturday, Traveling to St. Louis

We woke up Saturday to a rainy rainy day:

Still, there was shopping to be done.  After eating some in-room breakfast, I drove the girls to the girl shopping store.  The valet was very nice and held the car at the front of the hotel for me, since the garage was blocks away.  Afterwards, we picked them up and I took off to the ‘boy store’, the lego store.  This was only a few blocks away, so we walked it. Driving in downtown Chicago isn’t the easiest thing, with the construction, traffic, and a GPS system that can’t find satellites because of tall buildings.

We departed after shopping at noon and proceeded on to St. Louis/Collinsville.

We arrived at our room.  This was another $50 priceline special, but this one was quite a bit better appointed:

This was a new hotel, and walking in wearing my ‘driving outfit’ made me feel hideously underdressed.  The rooms for this were likely four times the price we paid, and there was a wedding reception being held there.  Everyone was wearing gowns and formalwear, I was wearing reebok gym shorts and sneakers.

There was a Ponderosa up the road, which is reasonably priced for kids to eat at the buffet, so we decided to eat there.  The she-beastie though is now 12, and doesn’t get kids discounts there anymore.  It ended up being more expensive than we thought, but filling and convienent.

Then, we went swimming and enjoyed the complimentary free WiFi internet access.

Sunday, Catsup, The Arch, and Branson

The hotel was actually in Collinsville, IL – just 10 minutes from downtown St. Louis.  Interestingly, the town is known for having the largest bottle of catsup in the world.  It’s actually a water tower, but still…  being just 2 miles away from our hotel, I had to get pictures.

while my family looked on disinterested from the car

I guess they don’t get the allure of large bottles of catsup (sigh)

We headed down to the St Louis Arch, and took pictures of it and the Mississippi river:

Then we got on the road.  5 hours later, we arrived in Branson and ate at one of our favorite locations there, the Hard Luck Cafe.  The waiters and waitresses sing to you as you eat, and have cd’s for sale in the gift shop.

Afterward, the kids got to spend some time where they wanted to be most – the pool

It was nice, and a welcome sight.

Pictures

There are lots more pictures that I didn’t put in this post, but you can look at them.  There are some other nice ones.

Week 18

This week, the hearing of the baby is supposed to be getting better and better.  It’ll try to cover its ears when it hears loud sounds and can start to hear voices.  It’s going to be gaining weight and size from here on out, having developed almost all of it’s final organs.  Mom is doing well, though is feeling ‘very pregnant’ now.  The long car rides aren’t optimal for her, but she’s doing very well overall.  Sometimes ‘flutters’ can be felt, but the baby is still a bit too small to make the movements felt very often.

Vacation is nearing!

I bought myself some chineese food today, and as always there’s great wisdom in the cookie:

Sounds good to me!  Think they mean the Mississippi?  Here’s our vacation route:

The first leg of the trip will bring us to Chicago, where we have pricelined a hotel room for dirt cheap just 1 block off of Michigan Avenue, where we’ll be shopping.

The second leg of the trip will bring us to just outside of St. Louis.  We’ll be staying at an upscale hotel there for, again, dirt cheap.  The town is Collinsville, and is just oustide of St. Louis.  It’s the home to the largest ketchup bottle.  I will make it a point to visit there before we head to the arch.

The third and final leg will bring us south of St. Louis through to Branson, Missouri.  We’ll be staying at the same timeshare we were at last year – it should be amazing.

Week 17; Ultrasound!

So I missed week 17’s update on Friday, I was trying to get caught up with school.  I figured I’d just postpone everything till Monday when I was sure to want to write a new post anyway.

This week the fetus is as large as a turnip.  The baby site obsession with the produce section continues.  The eyes are sensitive to light, so the baby now knows mom stays up too late every night.  The cartilidge is turning to bone, though still flexible.

The Ultrasound

The nervousness for me started about 3:00.  I tried to take a nap to settle down, but it didn’t really work;  I could not nap.  All we have seen or heard so far is the heartbeat that once.  I tend to think about the worst case scenario, and was just thinking ‘what if’?  Jolene seemed not nervous at all.

Madalyn got home and asked if we were going to see the baby.  I had previously told them about the first ultrasound.  “Not without your mother,” I responded.  Eventually Jolene got home and we left.  Ben was on a field trip to Lansing and couldn’t make it.

By the time we hit the road, I was a wreck.  What if?

We got to the hospital and found the radiology department.  Dropped off our form and nearly went straight back to the ultrasound room where a former coworker of Jolene’s started the examination.

Within moments the machine was working and showing pictures like these.

Once I saw the baby jumping around I felt a huge rush of relief wash over me.  Not only does it seem ok, it seems like it might be a future Olympic gymnast!  These pictures are hard to tell what’s what.  In motion it was much easier to see things like the facial features.

My favorite part happened when we zoomed in on the hand:

The baby, swear to god, waved at us.

It’s not very chubby right now – the form is very skeletal in nature. We got to see the heart beating, and hear it again.  The baby was looked at from all different angles.

The Big Question

I know, you’re thinking “Is it a boy?  Is it a girl?”.  I am proud to announce that….

…

…

…

…

it is either a boy, or a girl!  We couldn’t tell from today’s examination the gender.  The technician zoomed into the baby’s bottom and we looked for quite a while.  The 15 minute ultrasound turned into a 30 minute one.  In the end, we think it might be a girl, but are unsure as yet.

Amazing new invention!

This is truly amazing….  It’s almost like one of those ‘roombas’, that automatically vacuum your house.  Instead of electricity, this one just requires that I slip it a few bucks.  The result?  A mowed lawn!

Sick. Music. Week 16.

Well, I just spent the past week or so sick.  I haven’t gotten much done.  I was even too sick to post the normal weekly post I’ve been doing.  It all started out with several days of fevers – those were the good days.  It went downhill from there.

I missed the Decemberists concert.  The kids and Jolene went alone.   They did get some pictures, and Maddie made sure to record videos of the songs for me on the camera.  That was very sweet of her. I was super sad that I couldn’t make it – I had been looking forward to going for months. The pictures and videos they took of the concert are here.

I did fix my issue with not seeing the concert, though:

Garage Sales!

Since it has been 9 years since I had a baby around, we are severely lacking in the baby supply department- as in- we are starting from scratch.  At the same time, we are trying to pay down debt, go on vacation and do some projects around the house.  So, last weekend, I started garage sale shopping for baby items.  Last weekend, I found a baby swing and 5 blankets just by dragging David around Midland.  The weather was bad and there weren’t many sales to be found.

Last night, David picked up a Midland paper for me and he and I sat down with Google Maps and mapped out the route of every garage sale that listed baby items in their ad.  Maddie and I waited for the rain to stop and we headed out.  She had $50 of her own money and I took $100 with me.

She bought lots of random things- a handmade cheetah print hair clip, a cheetah print pillow, a floaty raft to take to Branson for the pool, cake pans and her best deal of the day-she found a white and brass daybed for $7.  She is cleaning her room right now to make room to move her old bed out and the new bed in.

I spent $77 and here is my list:

11 newborn onsies

5 newborn t-shirts (all snappy instead of pull-over the head in case I manage to break another baby’s clavicle during childbirth)

1 hat

3 bibs

1 snowsuit

6 ‘bag’ style jammies

8 sleepers

1 pair of duckie slippers

2 pairs of socks

1 brand new boppy pillow

1 play-yard/bassinet/changing table combo

What to Expect the First Year

What to Expect the Toddler Years

2 crib sheets

All of the clothing is newborn sizes and winter clothes, and almost everything is Carters, in yellow and green and in perfect condition.

It was a very productive day- and I am exhausted.  Maddie, on the other hand, could have gone for another 4 hours!

Week 15 – Oranges!

As predicted, we’ve moved up in the world – from lemons last week to oranges this week.  The fetus is about the size of an orange, so the baby websites say.  Of perhaps more importance, this is the week that the fetus will start reacting to sounds that it hears around it.  That means that when we go to our Decemberists Concert on the 1st of next month, the baby will get to hear it’s first concert as well.

It can also now make a fist.  It’s a good thing that it couldn’t hear when we went to the heavy metal concert, because it would probably be sad it couldn’t throw one of these

It’s said that some women can start to feel movements this week, but it’s uncommon.

On a sad note, peanut butter cravings have ceased.  I’ve waited for a while to post this, because I found it incredibly sad.  The resultant mania that accompanied the peanut butter cravings is now over.  Hopefully we’ll get some other strange and bizarre craving soon.  I wonder how long it’s going to take to use up all the accumulated peanut butter in the house?