For those of you that care, here's a link to our baby registry: Baby Girl Smith or if that doesn't work, the registry number is 46776611 on the Babies R Us website.
I'll be posting a note of facebook too. Only 6 more weeks till she's here !!! :D
Saturday, April 16, 2011
Crazy Ridiculous Storm
Yeah, the title pretty much sums it up.
The storm only last about 20 minutes total, or at least that's how long it took to move through Raleigh. But I tell you what, it was insane.
We were out and about starting at about noon. First stop was Babies R Us to do our registry (again), and this wasn't too bad. Tucker seemed to really enjoy looking at all the baby girl clothes, which is both funny and cute. He even said that doing the registry made him more excited (this would be one of the very few times that he has vocalized this). After the registry, we headed across Capital Blvd. to a used book store just to look around. I don't know what it is about used book stores, but we love them. After hanging around there for a little while, we decided we would go get some lunch, and conveniently, there was a Golden Corral right next door. Happy day!
It was when we left that we noticed how windy it was. We knew that there was supposed to be a storm today, so I turned on the radio when we got into the car and one of the local news stations had 'taken over' the music station. When we started listening to it, they were listing counties that were currently under a tornado watch. This didn't mean much to either of us, because unless we're looking at a map, we don't know where anything is in relation to Raleigh. Anyways, we got home and got on the internet to try and look at what was going on (we lost our free cable this week sadly). This was when the power started to flicker on and off. Not a good sign. Not super concerning, but not a good sign.
It was kind of annoying though, because we were now cut off from any updated information about the storm. I made a comment about how it would be nice to have a normal radio right now so that we could at least hear updates. This was when Tucker remembered the 72-hour emergency kit that his parents had given us for Christmas one year. He was pretty sure that it had a hand-crank powered radio in it. So I dug around for a little while in the closet and found the kit, and sure enough, there was a radio in it. Woohoo!
Tucker cranked it up and we started listening to the storm updates. The weather guys were saying that there was now a tornado warning for Wake county (our county). Everything that they were saying was about a tornado that was on the ground and moving north-east; towards us. This is when I started to get a little nervous. They kept talking about how people near downtown Raleigh needed to get to a safe place immediately because they were in the track of the tornado. We live only a few miles from downtown. Yeah. So we decided that we would head over to the Target near out house because it would be safer than our second story apartment. I put a few things together in my backpack (72 hour kit, phone charger, 2 water bottles, our important documents folder (thanks for that idea Mom), and a couple jackets).
By the time we had this stuff together and had both gone to the bathroom, the rain was coming down in buckets and the wind was ridiculously strong. We decided it wouldn't be any safer for us to head out now than it would be to just hunker down at home, so we moved to our little hallway and closed all the doors leading into it. I'm sure it would have been quite funny to see, but at the time, with the news casters being all negative and stuff, it was kind of scary. I took a couple pictures of us sitting there in the dark, but they turned out horrible, so they've been deleted.
Anyways, they started to report damage throughout downtown and moving our direction. They started to mention streets that were only about a mile away from us, but from everything they were saying, we decided that the real danger was off to our east, if only just barely. A few minutes passed and the radio reported that the tornado was now up in the area that we had been in for our outing earlier (yikes), so we came out of our hiding place. The rain was still coming down, but the wind had died down a little bit.
In the end, our power was off for about 3 hours, and when we could get back onto the internet, we looked up the news website to look at pictures of what had happened. Yeah, it was pretty bad. If you care to look, the website is wral.com. There was some pretty serious damage.Not sure if anyone was hurt or killed, I couldn't find anything that talked about that EDIT :: Just checked the website this morning. There are 10 confirmed deaths, but as many as 24 could be dead. Very grateful that this missed us., but regardless, it was a crazy-ridiculous storm.
The storm only last about 20 minutes total, or at least that's how long it took to move through Raleigh. But I tell you what, it was insane.
We were out and about starting at about noon. First stop was Babies R Us to do our registry (again), and this wasn't too bad. Tucker seemed to really enjoy looking at all the baby girl clothes, which is both funny and cute. He even said that doing the registry made him more excited (this would be one of the very few times that he has vocalized this). After the registry, we headed across Capital Blvd. to a used book store just to look around. I don't know what it is about used book stores, but we love them. After hanging around there for a little while, we decided we would go get some lunch, and conveniently, there was a Golden Corral right next door. Happy day!
It was when we left that we noticed how windy it was. We knew that there was supposed to be a storm today, so I turned on the radio when we got into the car and one of the local news stations had 'taken over' the music station. When we started listening to it, they were listing counties that were currently under a tornado watch. This didn't mean much to either of us, because unless we're looking at a map, we don't know where anything is in relation to Raleigh. Anyways, we got home and got on the internet to try and look at what was going on (we lost our free cable this week sadly). This was when the power started to flicker on and off. Not a good sign. Not super concerning, but not a good sign.
It was kind of annoying though, because we were now cut off from any updated information about the storm. I made a comment about how it would be nice to have a normal radio right now so that we could at least hear updates. This was when Tucker remembered the 72-hour emergency kit that his parents had given us for Christmas one year. He was pretty sure that it had a hand-crank powered radio in it. So I dug around for a little while in the closet and found the kit, and sure enough, there was a radio in it. Woohoo!
Tucker cranked it up and we started listening to the storm updates. The weather guys were saying that there was now a tornado warning for Wake county (our county). Everything that they were saying was about a tornado that was on the ground and moving north-east; towards us. This is when I started to get a little nervous. They kept talking about how people near downtown Raleigh needed to get to a safe place immediately because they were in the track of the tornado. We live only a few miles from downtown. Yeah. So we decided that we would head over to the Target near out house because it would be safer than our second story apartment. I put a few things together in my backpack (72 hour kit, phone charger, 2 water bottles, our important documents folder (thanks for that idea Mom), and a couple jackets).
By the time we had this stuff together and had both gone to the bathroom, the rain was coming down in buckets and the wind was ridiculously strong. We decided it wouldn't be any safer for us to head out now than it would be to just hunker down at home, so we moved to our little hallway and closed all the doors leading into it. I'm sure it would have been quite funny to see, but at the time, with the news casters being all negative and stuff, it was kind of scary. I took a couple pictures of us sitting there in the dark, but they turned out horrible, so they've been deleted.
Anyways, they started to report damage throughout downtown and moving our direction. They started to mention streets that were only about a mile away from us, but from everything they were saying, we decided that the real danger was off to our east, if only just barely. A few minutes passed and the radio reported that the tornado was now up in the area that we had been in for our outing earlier (yikes), so we came out of our hiding place. The rain was still coming down, but the wind had died down a little bit.
In the end, our power was off for about 3 hours, and when we could get back onto the internet, we looked up the news website to look at pictures of what had happened. Yeah, it was pretty bad. If you care to look, the website is wral.com. There was some pretty serious damage.
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
Time seems to have slowed a bit
I don't know what it is, but the last couple weeks have definitely seemed longer to me. Ok, that's not entirely true, I do have some idea of why this is, but it sucks. I'm way more uncomfortable than I ever was before; sleeping is kind of a struggle when it comes to finding a nice position. And yes, I'm well aware of the fact that it will get worse.
My urge to "nest" seems to have kicked in a bit. I've really been wanting to get things organized and put together for when Baby gets here, and today I was all motivated and got most of her room put together. We still don't have everything that we need yet, but we've got tons of clothes (courtesy of a lady from my mother-in-laws ward and from my sister-in-law Barbi, haven't bought a single piece) and most of the essentials. Here's a couple pictures of the room in case you didn't notice them on facebook.
Not gonna lie, I'm getting really antsy. I keep telling Tucker that we need to get everything done soon just in case she comes early and he chuckles at me. Sure the odds of her coming early aren't super high, but it does happen; maybe I'll get lucky :) Y'all should keep your fingers crossed for me.
My urge to "nest" seems to have kicked in a bit. I've really been wanting to get things organized and put together for when Baby gets here, and today I was all motivated and got most of her room put together. We still don't have everything that we need yet, but we've got tons of clothes (courtesy of a lady from my mother-in-laws ward and from my sister-in-law Barbi, haven't bought a single piece) and most of the essentials. Here's a couple pictures of the room in case you didn't notice them on facebook.
Not gonna lie, I'm getting really antsy. I keep telling Tucker that we need to get everything done soon just in case she comes early and he chuckles at me. Sure the odds of her coming early aren't super high, but it does happen; maybe I'll get lucky :) Y'all should keep your fingers crossed for me.
Thursday, April 7, 2011
Not much to report
Doctor's appointment this week was kind of just a weigh in. Nothing they needed to test, just wanted to measure and make sure I didn't have any questions. Although, on my way out, they asked me if I could speak with someone from UNC really fast, which was fine with me.
I'm not sure if I've mentioned it in previous posts, but the clinic that I go to is run by the county health department and I'm fairly positive that the only people that go there are people who are on medicaid like me. So kind of a lot of mexicans and african americans; I'm usually the only white person in the waiting room whenever I have an appointment. This clinic is also a teaching clinic, connected with the med/PA schools here in Raleigh (basically UNC and Duke (I think)), and the hospital that we will be delivering at is a teaching hospital, so I've seen quite a few students in my appointments, which doesn't bother me in the slightest; gotta learn somewhere.
Anyways, back to my appointment. I went to talk with the lady from UNC and she just wanted to know if I was willing to take part in a study they were doing on depression connected to hormones (or something like that) for women shortly before birth and shortly after. This is totally fine with me, mostly because I'll be getting $200 out of it, but also because I don't have to travel anywhere for this study (they'll come to our apartment), and all they want from me is blood and pee--two things I have plenty of right now. The only slight inconvenience going along with this is that I'll have to collect pee samples (sorry if that's gross for me to be talking about) for a 24 hour period. They gave me this totally awesome (yeah, right) kit for collecting samples which has to be kept chilled; for this they told me I could keep it either in the fridge (which is really gross) or in a tub of ice I can keep in the bathtub (definitely going this way). But yeah, $200 is totally worth this. Also, sorry again if this was gross or TMI.
Let's see, what else...
I attempted to set up a registry at Babies R Us this week as well. And I say attempted because they seem to have screwed something up on their end after I scanned everything, so, lucky me, I get to go back to the store to do it all over again. Awesome.
Tucker and I also made it to our first childbirth class on Tuesday night, and it was a lot better than I thought it would be, surprisingly. As with any class that I've ever taken, people insisted on asking stupid questions or the same question someone else asked five minutes earlier in a different way, but it was still interesting to hear everything. While we will go to all the classes (unless our car breaks down again), we're mostly looking forward to the class where they'll take us to the hospital and give us a tour of everything so we'll know where to go when the time comes.
D&D again tonight. Woohoo! Super excited.
I'm not sure if I've mentioned it in previous posts, but the clinic that I go to is run by the county health department and I'm fairly positive that the only people that go there are people who are on medicaid like me. So kind of a lot of mexicans and african americans; I'm usually the only white person in the waiting room whenever I have an appointment. This clinic is also a teaching clinic, connected with the med/PA schools here in Raleigh (basically UNC and Duke (I think)), and the hospital that we will be delivering at is a teaching hospital, so I've seen quite a few students in my appointments, which doesn't bother me in the slightest; gotta learn somewhere.
Anyways, back to my appointment. I went to talk with the lady from UNC and she just wanted to know if I was willing to take part in a study they were doing on depression connected to hormones (or something like that) for women shortly before birth and shortly after. This is totally fine with me, mostly because I'll be getting $200 out of it, but also because I don't have to travel anywhere for this study (they'll come to our apartment), and all they want from me is blood and pee--two things I have plenty of right now. The only slight inconvenience going along with this is that I'll have to collect pee samples (sorry if that's gross for me to be talking about) for a 24 hour period. They gave me this totally awesome (yeah, right) kit for collecting samples which has to be kept chilled; for this they told me I could keep it either in the fridge (which is really gross) or in a tub of ice I can keep in the bathtub (definitely going this way). But yeah, $200 is totally worth this. Also, sorry again if this was gross or TMI.
Let's see, what else...
I attempted to set up a registry at Babies R Us this week as well. And I say attempted because they seem to have screwed something up on their end after I scanned everything, so, lucky me, I get to go back to the store to do it all over again. Awesome.
Tucker and I also made it to our first childbirth class on Tuesday night, and it was a lot better than I thought it would be, surprisingly. As with any class that I've ever taken, people insisted on asking stupid questions or the same question someone else asked five minutes earlier in a different way, but it was still interesting to hear everything. While we will go to all the classes (unless our car breaks down again), we're mostly looking forward to the class where they'll take us to the hospital and give us a tour of everything so we'll know where to go when the time comes.
D&D again tonight. Woohoo! Super excited.
Saturday, April 2, 2011
Birthdays and Car Trouble
Things I consider accomplishments right now:
- I pee less than 3 times during the night.
- I eat a meal without ending up with something dribbled on my stomach.
- I don't fall asleep until 9pm.
- I can bend over to pick something up.
- I actually do my hair and/or makeup (though this one has always been something I struggled with).
That's all that I can think of right now. I'm sure as these last 8 weeks tick down I'll come up with more to add to the list, but for now (seeing as I just woke up) it's good enough.
This past week was our birthdays (mine was the 25th and Tucker's was the 30th). They were alright I guess... or well, mine was pretty good. We had some pizza and wings for dinner, and both my parents and Jenna got "presents" for me. My parents got me one of those edible arrangements, which was absolutely delicious. And Jenna decided that I needed more food and ordered me some fancy cupcakes from a little shop near campus. And here, I'll even post pictures (look at me feeling slightly motivated).
Tucker's birthday was...... not quite normal. The day before his birthday was packed full. We both had to be at campus at 8am; me for work, Tucker to get ready for his committee meeting later that day. Tucker mentioned that he was starting to feel a little sick when we got to school. There wasn't much of anything that we could do for him then though, because I had to work until noon and he would be busy until 5. On top of working for both of us that day, we had our first 'childbirth' class that night from 6-8. So super packed full day.
When I got off at noon, I went and did a little bit of shopping for the lab because the next day (Tucker's birthday) they would be having paninis for lab lunch. It was about 1:30 when I was finally heading home. When I turned on the car, the heat gauge thingy automatically went all the way up to the top like the car was over heating. It kind of confused me, so I turned of the car and let it sit for a second, then turned it back on and it was normal. So I drove home. I didn't want to tell Tucker about this yet because I knew it would stress him out and he wouldn't be able to focus on his committee meeting (which is a fairly big deal). So I stayed home for a few hours, then on my way to pick him up, the temperature gauge shot up to the top again. Luckily I was only about a minute from the school, so I turned the heater on full blast, rolled down the windows and drove the rest of the way to school.
I guess I should mention that about a month ago, we had the same problem with the car 'over heating' and had it in to be looked at. They told us that the problem was a cracked cap on the radiator (or at least I think that's what it was) and it only cost us $20 to fix. When Tucker came out and got in the car, I finally told him what the car was doing (and he was really appreciative that I hadn't told him before because he would have been worrying all through his meeting; I know him so well), so we decided rather than have the car towed like we did last time this happened, we would just drive it to the shop we had gone to before because it wasn't that far away from campus. We dropped the car off, and then were trying to get ahold of the rental car agency so that we would have a way to get home and then back down to the shop to get the car the next day when it was fixed, but no one was answering. So on a whim, we decided to try riding the bus home. Tucker used to ride the bus all the time when we lived at our old place, but he hadn't yet tried it at our new apartment. Yay for adventures! However, he called one of his friends while we were on the first bus back up to campus and asked him for a ride home. Needless to say, we didn't make it to our first childbirth class.
Tucker's birthday dawned and he was feeling more sick than the previous day, and it was rainy outside, and he was going to have to ride the bus to school if he wanted to go, so he decided to just take the day off and stay home (yay!). I made him breakfast in bed and we kind of just took the rest of the day easy. Around mid-day the car place called and told us the news. Basically they were needing to replace some stuff to do with the cooling system and also a couple things dealing with the oil were leaking and needed to be replaced (obviously I don't remember exactly what the stuff was, I don't pay much attention to car stuff). It was going to be a grand total of about $550 to fix everything. Um... ouch. But we told them to go ahead and fix everything, they said the car would be ready by the end of the day.
Now normally, it wouldn't be a super big deal to get to this place in a short amount of time... but we didn't have access to a car and Tucker didn't want to impose on his friend again for a ride. So we decided that when the time came for us to pick up the car, we would just take a taxi (wahoo! never ridden in a taxi before). This was more stressful than I initially thought it would be because they didn't call us to tell us the car was done till about 50 mins before the place was supposed to close. We called the cab place to ask for a taxi and were told that it would be about 15 minutes till they could get someone to us. This was still ok; plenty of time to get to the shop. Wrong.
The cab didn't get to our apartment until 20 minutes before the shop was supposed to close. It was going to take us about 20 minutes to get there. And that's if the traffic stays good (we have to take the freeway). Luckily, we arrived a few minutes before they closed. I got the special job of paying the taxi guy, which we didn't think was going to be a big deal cause their website said that they took credit cards. When I asked the guy if this was true, he shook his head no. Awesome. Normally we would have been screwed, but I just happened to have about $40 in cash on me, which, really, is amazing that I did, cause neither of us ever carry cash. I was that day, however, because I had been planning on going to get our registration renewed that week and needed cash to do that. So, we were able to pay the taxi guy.
We paid for the car stuff and then decided to go to a chinese buffet place for Tucker's birthday dinner. Normally this would be ok with me, but I was starting to get a headache, and for some reason I was feeling kind of nauseous, but I didn't want to ruin one good thing that Tucker would have on his birthday, so I didn't say anything and we went. I ended up eating a cup of soup, 2 mini-sugar-covered biscuits, and a couple slices of fruit. But Tucker enjoyed it, and that was all that mattered that day. I feel really bad that his day wasn't all that great, but we get to play D&D this week and I also got him a D&D book for his birthday, so hopefully this will make up for the crappy day at least a little bit.
So long as we don't have any more problems with our car overheating, I think we'll be happy. It's just kind of annoying.
Have a doctor's appointment this coming Monday (32 weeks along!!!) so I'll try and get an update posted here sometime next week.
- I pee less than 3 times during the night.
- I eat a meal without ending up with something dribbled on my stomach.
- I don't fall asleep until 9pm.
- I can bend over to pick something up.
- I actually do my hair and/or makeup (though this one has always been something I struggled with).
That's all that I can think of right now. I'm sure as these last 8 weeks tick down I'll come up with more to add to the list, but for now (seeing as I just woke up) it's good enough.
This past week was our birthdays (mine was the 25th and Tucker's was the 30th). They were alright I guess... or well, mine was pretty good. We had some pizza and wings for dinner, and both my parents and Jenna got "presents" for me. My parents got me one of those edible arrangements, which was absolutely delicious. And Jenna decided that I needed more food and ordered me some fancy cupcakes from a little shop near campus. And here, I'll even post pictures (look at me feeling slightly motivated).
Tucker's birthday was...... not quite normal. The day before his birthday was packed full. We both had to be at campus at 8am; me for work, Tucker to get ready for his committee meeting later that day. Tucker mentioned that he was starting to feel a little sick when we got to school. There wasn't much of anything that we could do for him then though, because I had to work until noon and he would be busy until 5. On top of working for both of us that day, we had our first 'childbirth' class that night from 6-8. So super packed full day.
When I got off at noon, I went and did a little bit of shopping for the lab because the next day (Tucker's birthday) they would be having paninis for lab lunch. It was about 1:30 when I was finally heading home. When I turned on the car, the heat gauge thingy automatically went all the way up to the top like the car was over heating. It kind of confused me, so I turned of the car and let it sit for a second, then turned it back on and it was normal. So I drove home. I didn't want to tell Tucker about this yet because I knew it would stress him out and he wouldn't be able to focus on his committee meeting (which is a fairly big deal). So I stayed home for a few hours, then on my way to pick him up, the temperature gauge shot up to the top again. Luckily I was only about a minute from the school, so I turned the heater on full blast, rolled down the windows and drove the rest of the way to school.
I guess I should mention that about a month ago, we had the same problem with the car 'over heating' and had it in to be looked at. They told us that the problem was a cracked cap on the radiator (or at least I think that's what it was) and it only cost us $20 to fix. When Tucker came out and got in the car, I finally told him what the car was doing (and he was really appreciative that I hadn't told him before because he would have been worrying all through his meeting; I know him so well), so we decided rather than have the car towed like we did last time this happened, we would just drive it to the shop we had gone to before because it wasn't that far away from campus. We dropped the car off, and then were trying to get ahold of the rental car agency so that we would have a way to get home and then back down to the shop to get the car the next day when it was fixed, but no one was answering. So on a whim, we decided to try riding the bus home. Tucker used to ride the bus all the time when we lived at our old place, but he hadn't yet tried it at our new apartment. Yay for adventures! However, he called one of his friends while we were on the first bus back up to campus and asked him for a ride home. Needless to say, we didn't make it to our first childbirth class.
Tucker's birthday dawned and he was feeling more sick than the previous day, and it was rainy outside, and he was going to have to ride the bus to school if he wanted to go, so he decided to just take the day off and stay home (yay!). I made him breakfast in bed and we kind of just took the rest of the day easy. Around mid-day the car place called and told us the news. Basically they were needing to replace some stuff to do with the cooling system and also a couple things dealing with the oil were leaking and needed to be replaced (obviously I don't remember exactly what the stuff was, I don't pay much attention to car stuff). It was going to be a grand total of about $550 to fix everything. Um... ouch. But we told them to go ahead and fix everything, they said the car would be ready by the end of the day.
Now normally, it wouldn't be a super big deal to get to this place in a short amount of time... but we didn't have access to a car and Tucker didn't want to impose on his friend again for a ride. So we decided that when the time came for us to pick up the car, we would just take a taxi (wahoo! never ridden in a taxi before). This was more stressful than I initially thought it would be because they didn't call us to tell us the car was done till about 50 mins before the place was supposed to close. We called the cab place to ask for a taxi and were told that it would be about 15 minutes till they could get someone to us. This was still ok; plenty of time to get to the shop. Wrong.
The cab didn't get to our apartment until 20 minutes before the shop was supposed to close. It was going to take us about 20 minutes to get there. And that's if the traffic stays good (we have to take the freeway). Luckily, we arrived a few minutes before they closed. I got the special job of paying the taxi guy, which we didn't think was going to be a big deal cause their website said that they took credit cards. When I asked the guy if this was true, he shook his head no. Awesome. Normally we would have been screwed, but I just happened to have about $40 in cash on me, which, really, is amazing that I did, cause neither of us ever carry cash. I was that day, however, because I had been planning on going to get our registration renewed that week and needed cash to do that. So, we were able to pay the taxi guy.
We paid for the car stuff and then decided to go to a chinese buffet place for Tucker's birthday dinner. Normally this would be ok with me, but I was starting to get a headache, and for some reason I was feeling kind of nauseous, but I didn't want to ruin one good thing that Tucker would have on his birthday, so I didn't say anything and we went. I ended up eating a cup of soup, 2 mini-sugar-covered biscuits, and a couple slices of fruit. But Tucker enjoyed it, and that was all that mattered that day. I feel really bad that his day wasn't all that great, but we get to play D&D this week and I also got him a D&D book for his birthday, so hopefully this will make up for the crappy day at least a little bit.
So long as we don't have any more problems with our car overheating, I think we'll be happy. It's just kind of annoying.
Have a doctor's appointment this coming Monday (32 weeks along!!!) so I'll try and get an update posted here sometime next week.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)