21 weeks

here's the latest from babycenter.com: Your baby now weighs about three-quarters of a pound and is approximately 10 1/2 inches long. His eyebrows and eyelids are fully developed. And you can certainly feel him move. He's oblivious to your schedule, though, so don't be surprised if he starts working out just when you're settling down for the night. If you're having a girl, her vagina is formed now, though it will continue to develop until birth. so roo should be 3/4 of a pound but according to our ultrasound this morning roo is already 1 pound and 1 ounce! big little roo! my doctor said that roo is about 10 days ahead of schedule! roo is very, very cute. we got to see it crying and kicking me on the ultrasound. we also have some fun new roo pictures that we will post as soon as we can get them scanned in. roo was not shy and the ultrasound nurse could tell what gender roo is, but we didn't find out. it will be a surprise!! now we need to quickly get the house clean and get packed for our trip to boston this weekend. someone is coming to see our house today at 3:30 and our train to massachusetts leaves at 6. crazy!

peeps are peeping and so are we

we've got someone coming to see the house on friday and someone else coming on saturday! fingers crossed - our realtor said he's feels pretty good about the lady coming to see it on friday!

meanwhile, we're almost ready for our trip to the town of beans this weekend. we've sent our realtor up there a massive list of houses we like, and have flagged the ones we really, really like. i think he has a much better sense for what we're looking for now! we'll be seeing 5-6 houses in milton and braintree on saturday and a whole bunch of houses in quincy on sunday. most of our faves are in quincy, which is really convenient for jeremy. it's about a 25 minute subway ride to mass general from quincy - not too bad!

Jeremy's Weekly Post 4/7

Hello all. As you can see we woke up to find about 1/2 inch of snow on the ground. Good thing we planted all those flowers :( I can't believe how big the baby is getting. We are already half-way home! I think Roo may be grounded on its birthday for all the kicking, nausea, and stress it's putting on Keira :) Hey, anyone wanna buy a nice house in Richmond? Open house was less than stellar but hopefully it will all work out. I've seen a lot of people take flyers about our house, that can't be too bad. We're going to look at houses next week in Boston. We were hoping to have an offer on our house by then, but who knows. It's kind of exciting b/c this is the house that Roo is going to come home to! I hope he or she likes it :) This week I take the clinical skills portion of my boards Thursday in Philly. Wish me luck. It shouldn't be too bad, but will be a long day and a little bit of driving. The following week I take the written part. Looking forward to putting all my efforts into moving and preparing for graduation!

snow!

we haven't had any snow all year here in the RIC, why not now???

there goes all the nice flowers we planted!

a good reason to buy our house

richmond is less deadly than normal this year

20 weeks

half way there!!!! no more produce comparisons. i guess roo is just a baby now: from babycenter.com : "Your baby weighs about 10 1/2 ounces now. She's also around 6 1/2 inches long from head to bottom, and about 10 inches from head to heel. (For the first 20 weeks, we use measurements taken from the top of the baby's head to her bottom — known as the "crown to rump" measurement. After that, we use measurements from head to toe. This is because a baby's legs are curled up against her torso during the first half of pregnancy and are very hard to measure.)A greasy white substance called vernix caseosa coats her entire body to protect her skin during its long submersion in amniotic fluid. (This slick coating also eases the journey down the birth canal.)Your baby is swallowing more, which is good practice for her digestive system. She's also producing meconium, a black, sticky substance that's the result of cell loss, digestive secretion, and swallowed amniotic fluid. This meconium will accumulate in her bowels, and you'll see it in her first messy diaper (although a few babies pass it in utero or during delivery)." it's hard to believe that we're halfway there! roo is definitely getting big as evidenced by the rapidly increasing size of my belly. it's a wiggly little thing with a powerful little kick. and 10 inches long - that's almost as long as tini, our dachshund! in general, i am feeling much better. i am eating more actual human food and not throwing up nearly as much. what's weird is that the random aversion to tissues is back this week and has made me throw up a couple of times this week. just can't win! no hits on the house yet, but we must be patient :) fingers crossed that the cold temps this weekend don't ruin all the nice work we did out in the yard last week!

if a house is open and no one comes, is it still open?

no good news to report from the open house. it's was pretty darn slow according to our realtor - only three families came in. :( at least they were all actual house hunters as opposed to nosy neighbors. but he said it's pretty rare to get an offer straight from an open house unless it's a super desirable house for whatever reason. fingers crossed that we have better luck with realtors showing it to individual clients. at least the house is super duper clean right now so we can keep it this way and be ready for additional showings at the drop of a hat. our house needs someone to love it as much as we do!!!! it really sucks that there are now 3 houses on our block of our street for sale. the one to our right is for sale and so is the one three doors down on the left. the one right next door is smaller and more expensive, but does have a garage which we don't. the one on the other side is also more expensive. it has one additional bedroom and a formal living room but is still the same (or less) total square footage. it will be interesting to see how this all works out! one of the houses has been on the market since 2/28 and the other has been on the market forever, since the fall i think (i can't find it on the yahoo real estate site or on the local prudential office's site, but the sign is still out front.) so yesterday for the open house we had to scoot and take all the pets with us, so jer and i drove around richmond for a few hours with 5 dogs and a cat in my jetta. loads of fun. how does it work for private showings? any experts know (carey!!!)? do we have to do something with the dogs during the showings? if it's on the weekend or at night we can load them into the car again, but if it's during the day, we can't exactly take them to work with us! doggy/kitty day care would be expensive! people have to understand that we still live here, right???

open house

the house is listed - 4 and 1/2 hours until the open house! got some last minute touch ups to do but we're ready. amazing! check it out! wish us luck! we've got our fingers crossed for a quick sale! wanna buy a house?

Dude I felt Roo

Last night, Keira said Roo was acting up so I put my hand on her belly and felt Roo kicking! It was so awesome!

19 weeks

roo is a zucchini! babycenter.com has this to say:

"Your baby weighs about 8 1/2 ounces, and he measures 6 inches, head to bottom — about the length of a small zucchini. His arms and legs are in the right proportions to each other and the rest of his body now. His kidneys continue to make urine, and the hair on his scalp is sprouting. This is a crucial time for sensory development: Your baby's brain is designating specialized areas for smell, taste, hearing, vision, and touch. If your baby is a girl, she has an astonishing six million eggs in her ovaries. They'll dwindle to fewer than two million by the time she's born."

wow! getting bigger!! probably because roo likes ice cream. it really really likes ice cream.

Jeremy Column for 3/30

Basically gonna keep this one short and sweet. Moving sux! Very excited to move, but very painful literally and figuratively. We have an open house on Sunday. If anyone's in the neighborhood stop by and be sure to make a good offer. The baby is very wiggly, kind of like its dad :) I haven't been able to feel it move yet but I still think its pretty cool. When Keira told me Roo was moving, it really made me feel happy. With all the stress in our lives right now, just hearing that the baby was moving made me realize how amazing it is going to be to be a daddy. anywho, enough sappy crap. I'm gonna go drink some beer, get a tatoo, and plan a fishing/hunting weekend b/c I'm a man who shows no emotion :)

whirlwind boston trip

we're going to boston 4/13-4/15 in hopes of finding a new house! it will be a crazy weekend. flights were absurdly expensive so we're taking the train. we'll leave richmond at 6:00 p.m. on friday 4/13 and will arrive at south station in boston at 7:52 a.m. on saturday. hopefully we'll be able to hook up with a realtor saturday morning and afternoon to see some houses. we have tickets to the red sox game at 4 p.m. we hope to look at a ton more house on sunday before we catch our 9:45 p.m. train out of boston. we'll be back in richmond by 10 a.m. on monday and i will get to head straight into work. we'll be in boston in less than 38 hours! crazy!

moving hurts

less than a week until our house goes on the market. we're having an open house on sunday and we still have so much to do. we did get the POD full of boxes and extraneous furniture. the attic is virtually empty. the carpet cleaning company is coming tomorrow to suck the pet essence out of all the carpets in the house. hopefully the power washer will call us back tomorrow so we can schedule an appointment, otherwise jeremy and i will be buying a power washer at home depot and attempting to do it ourselves! oh. and we have to clean and declutter every room in this darn house by sunday. and paint the trim. and mow the lawn. and freshen up the landscaping. the list goes on and on. our current to-do list is 8 pages long (10 point font, single-spaced) and growing! jeremy is in pain because he has carried many large heavy boxes out to the POD. i'm in pain because i am pregnant and simply don't have the energy to do what i am doing right now. plus by the end of the day my feet are so freaking swollen. ouch! roo is definitely complicating this whole moving process, but we still love it anyway!

18 weeks

sweet potato! love it from babycenter.com :

"Head to bottom, your baby is approximately 5 1/2 inches long (about the length of a large sweet potato) and she weighs almost 7 ounces. She's busy flexing her arms and legs — movements that you'll likely start noticing more and more. Her blood vessels are visible through her thin skin and her ears are now in position and stand out from her head. Myelin (a protective covering) is beginning to form around her nerves, a process that will continue for a year after she's born. If you're having a girl, her uterus and Fallopian tubes are formed and in place. If your baby is a boy, his genitals are noticeable, though he may hide them from you during an ultrasound."

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roo is a wiggly little potato and a night owl like its mom. every night, roo is just rocking and rolling in there!

boxes, boxes, everywhere

we're on box overload here! last saturday i went to uhaul.com and ordered an obscene amount of boxes ($300 worth - ouch!) however, i never received a confirmation email from uhaul and when i logged into their site it said they had no record of my order. eek. especially considering the POD is being delivered tomorrow. we need to get stuff packed and into the POD before we have our open house on 4/1, so yesterday after work, i went down to the uhaul store. i bought $200 worth of boxes (which is a lot of boxes - we have a lot of stuff.) after artfully shoving them into the jetta i brought them home and started packing. today - what's on our doorstep? yup. the $300 worth of boxes i ordered last week. nice. fortunately, uhaul buys back any unused boxes. but who knows? maybe we'll need them all. we do have a ton of stuff to move. i fear we may need multiple PODs.

prep for our big move

forget selling the house, or buying a new one. jer and i need to work on our boston vocab :) wicked good guide to boston english i'm further up the learning curve thanks to my masshole upbringing, but i do need to brush up! it's funny to read some of the vocab words - things i thought everyone said (until i got to the south for college!) like "cellar" instead of "basement", or even worse "down cellar" as a noun. or like "grinder" instead of "hoagie" or "sub". "packie" instead of "liquor store"

17 weeks

more produce comparisons this week! roo is now a large onion! from babycenter.com :

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"Your baby weighs about 5 ounces now, and he's around 5 inches long — about the size of a large onion. He can move his joints, and his skeleton — until now rubbery cartilage — is starting to harden to bone. His sense of hearing is also developing. The umbilical cord, his lifeline to the placenta, is growing stronger and thicker."

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getting there! roo can hear! time to start teaching it to love wake forest, and hate duke and carolina! :)

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we had our third appointment this morning. roo's little heart is still beating like crazy. i still haven't gained any weight, but i'm not losing any more either so we seem to be stabilizing. next appointment is in 4 weeks (on friday the 13th!) and we will get our second ultrasound then. if we wanted we could find out if roo is a boy or a girl, but we're still opting to be surprised when roo is born.

i knew it!

first of all, congrats to jeremy!!! very well deserved!!! he's a harvard boy now!

and i totally called it! i had a dream about match day earlier this week and we ended up at mass general. i reaffirmed my bet as we were walking in to match day today. even more ironic, here's a picture taken on the MLK weekend trip to boston last year with john, suzanne, jenny, and nathan:

it's hard to tell, but that's me in front of mass general, crossing my fingers :)

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boston here we come!!

We're Going to Boston!

I matched at Mass General! We're all very excited!

I Matched

I matched! We won't know where until Thursday. I'll update the blog as soon as I can on Thursday!