My thoughts on this Pregnancy thing...

Since I've been feeling a lot better lately, and looking at a monitor no longer makes me quite as nauseous, I decided I would share my thoughts about our pregnancy. I've also been reading a pregnancy journal on one of those baby websites, and they are blogging every week, so I thought the least I could do is maybe once a month or so!

First off, I am really super excited. This kinda comes as a surprise to even me, as I'm not the oogely-googely baby type, and really don't have that much interest in kids in general. But good ol' mom was right - I DO feel differently now that it's my own! I'm sure the pregnancy hormones really rev up that maternal instinct. And, seeing the ultrasound was simply amazing - there it was, a real live little person moving around inside me! That was definitely the coolest moment of pregnancy so far.

One of the challenging parts right now is not having health insurance. Jay's work has the customary 90 day waiting period, so we won't be insured until Nov 1st. So, for the first dr visit, we just paid cash, and then we were able to schedule the next visit after Nov 1st. We have temporary, emergency-only insurance, which of course does not cover pregnancy. And even if it did, the deductible is so high it would not be worth it to actually use it! The only thing that is a bit scary about it is what if we/I/the baby needs something before Nov 1st...though I'm sure it will be fine, and I know this is just another one of those "tests" God throws our way to make sure we are fully reliant on Him and not our own little helpless selves, as much as we want to be the ones in control!

Other things Jay and I have been doing/experiencing since becoming pregnant - Getting bombarded with free magazines and pamhlets and advertisements from all sorts of baby and parenting sources; Getting free formula and diaper cream samples and passifiers from the OB/GYN office and the maternity store where I bravely entered to buy a "belly band" (a contraption designed so a newly pregnant girl can wear her normal pants unbuttoned when she is just feeling a bit fat and bloated, but not big enough for maternity wear); Starting a list of possible boy and girl names; Thinking about baby furniture and decorating a baby room which we will hopefully have soon; and, Trying to figure out how we're going to cope with (and be good parental figures to) a tiny newborn, a baby, a toddler, a preschooler, a grade schooler, a jr-higher, and a high-schooler! God help us!!!

And now, for your viewing pleasure, here are the pics of the 2 home pregnancy tests I took (Jay didn't believe the first one), and also a profile of me with a barely pregnant, just starting to pooch out stomach (oh, and ignore the date on the pic, we hadn't set the date thingie on the camera yet - who knew it didn't just come programed with the correct date?!):

Ella's Adventure

Today it was gorgeous out, the sky was crystal clear and the mountains were freshly capped with snow.


It was in the upper 60s, so we decided to take Ella on a walk to the local park we found recently. There's a pond in the park with signs that say "please don't feed the geese". I've never seen geese in it until today. Neither had Ella. Here's a pic of her gazing longingly at the geese that were parading around in front of her:


Shortly after this picture was taken, she decided she couldn't take it anymore and dove into the pond! Ella hates water, she normally avoids puddles and runs from the rain, but in this case apparently the drive to destroy the birds taunting her overrode that natural tendency.

She had her leash on (and choke chain), so midair she was spun around and was out of the water about as quick as she was in it... but it was hilarious. That water couldn't have been warm, either, its been in the low 40s every night for the past few days. The funny thing was, she didn't give up there. As we walked around the pond, she never took her eyes off the geese. I let her get close to the edge again, and she kept crouching down like she was stalking them, ready to pounce. She tried diving in a second time, but I yanked her back midair and she landed back on the ground. Needless to say the geese weren't too thrilled... here's one batting its wings


So we've decided if we ever want to train her to swim, all we need is a fake duck or something and she'll go right in!

Also, there was a field with a ton of prairie dogs right next to the park (which surprisingly Ella had no interest in). Here's a picture of one of them poking his head out and nervously chirping to warn the others that I was intruding on their territory.


So Ella will definitely be having some good dreams tonight. Lots of critters to dream about killing.

Jenna Has a Bellyache

and it looks like this!

(coming to a bassinet near you, April 20th)

Jay's Creativity

so Jay found a new use for Ella's crate - a breakfast (or dinner) in bed tray...so ingenious... the top of the crate comes off the base, and then it has a hole on one end so you can actually put it over your lap.

Dollar Movies!

Since we're on a tight budget with the double house payments and all, we've been looking for things to do that get us out of the apartment but without spending a lot of dough.

I decided to look for a dollar theater, but quickly realized that they're hard to find. They're not necessarily called "Cheap Charlie's Dollar Movies" or anything like that. So I did some searching on the web, and came across a website called www.boxofficemojo.com that has a list of every movie theater in every state, along with ticket prices (click on "showtimes", then click "theater index" on the top bar). I found a theater right near our area that was $1.50!



The theater wasn't exactly top notch (as you'd expect at a dollar theater). It was a little run down, the audio wasn't exactly THX, and the place was messier than most theaters, but it wasn't too bad.

We went to go see Nacho Libre, but it turned out they didn't have it that weekend for some reason (it is a dollar theater), so for $2 (it was a matinee) we saw the movie 'Click' with Adam Sandler and Cristopher Walken. It was actually a decent movie - kind of like a modern 'Its a Wonderful Life' only a little different. Its about an architect (oddly enough) who is a workaholic and always chooses work over his family. He gets ahold of a "universal remote that controls the universe" from Christopher Walken, and discovers he can fast forward through the mundane stuff in life and get right to the good parts. Its a good deal at first, but then it goes bad. Its one of those "life's a journey, not a destination" movies. I'd definitely recommend it for rental (or dollar theater).

If you're wondering, I also found a dollar theater in Irvine, appropriately called "Starplex Cinemas - Woodbridge Dollar Movies 5" for you Orange County types (which you may already have known about).

City of the future

There's a lot of building going on here in Denver. I've seen or heard from 3 different famous architects in the last couple of weeks - Steven Holl, who's design architect for the Denver Justice Center Courthouse (which I will probably be working on in some capacity because my firm is the local architect) has been wandering around in our office, Robert AM Stern is design architect for the "Cosmopolitan Club" (downtown assisted living facility) which I've been working on off and on, and tonight I went and saw Daniel Libeskind (designer of the Denver Art Museum expansion and the World Trade Center master plan) unveil his design of the civic center park in the middle of downtown (picture below, article here)




Its really rare to see so many high profile projects going on simultaneously, with both public and private money. Even cooler is that I get to be somehow involved in some of it. The fact that these big shot out-of-state types are swarming all over tells me the word is getting out about Denver. The civic center park looks to be a very cool place to go when you all come out here (although since its just in the "vision" stage, it will be years before its complete). Libeskind echoed some of the same sentiment that attracted me here, about the pride that Denverites have in their city, and the bright future the area has. I keep thinking its such a awesome time to get to be a small part of building this city at this point in its history.

Its funny that when we decided to move out here, I was just hoping I could find a reasonable job working on halfway decent projects. I really had no idea what I was getting myself into.

I'd love to actually move here. Just gotta sell the house!

Our Weekend

Just a recap of our weekend, for no particular reason....

We signed a bunch of paperwork on Saturday morning to officially put our hold on the house, with first right of refusal. We've probably got about 6 weeks to get the OC house sold before the Parker house closes. We've got an extremely reasonable price going, having dropped almost $100K from the original asking price, so we're hoping it goes soon. We're getting more and more attached to the Parker house, so we'd definitely prefer that this would work out than not, but if not I'm sure there's a reason for it.

We showed it to the Heldts, and they gave it a thumbs up, so we figure that counts for something.

We took Ella for a walk along Cherry Creek Trail (different than the Cherry Creek Reservoir, where Jenna went a while back). The trail follows the creek for miles, and seems like a great place to ride your bike. We'll have to get a couple of bikes once the finances are in order. We didn't see a lot of wildlife (we were hoping to spot some deer or antelope or something), but we were nearly eaten by this ferocious snake
Okay, so that photo is enlarged. It was actually about a foot long, and completely harmless. Here's another picture with Ella in it for scale. She was completely oblivious (not the most observant dog)


(yes, if you were wondering, that is Ella's poo in the bag... you've got to take it with you - they're really big on that in the C.O., which is good, because I don't like to step in poo any more than the next guy)

We visited the Heldts and checked out their halfway installed landscape (coming along quite nicely, but I'm sure they'll post about that), and found a convenient back road between their place and our prospective house in Parker that takes around 20 minutes. I also checked out Jenna's new stable. We think its in this stretch of forest called the "black forest", because it pretty abruptly changes from wide open prairies to dense evergreen forest. Its pretty cool, and not too far from our prospective house (although it feels like your in the wilderness).

I think that's about all...