roo-2: 9 weeks

a grape! my ultrasound appointment went fine today. i waited in the waiting area for over an hour, because despite the fact that i checked in when i got there, they never put me on the list for ultrasound. but once i inquired, they got me right in there. tracking right at 9 weeks, where i should be, so our due date was not changed. i couldn't get photos though, because both of their ultrasound printers were busted. i go back on the 29th and should be able to get copies then.

from babycenter.com:

Your new resident is nearly an inch long — about the size of a grape — and weighs just a fraction of an ounce. She's starting to look more and more human. Her essential body parts are accounted for, though they'll go through plenty of fine-tuning in the coming months. Other changes abound: Your baby's heart finishes dividing into four chambers, and the valves start to form — as do her tiny teeth. The embryonic "tail" is completely gone. Your baby's organs, muscles, and nerves are kicking into gear. The external sex organs are there but won't be distinguishable as male or female for another few weeks. Her eyes are fully formed, but her eyelids are fused shut and won't open until 27 weeks. She has tiny earlobes, and her mouth, nose, and nostrils are more distinct. The placenta is developed enough now to take over most of the critical job of producing hormones. Now that your baby's basic physiology is in place, she's poised for rapid weight gain.

coming attraction

in theaters near you july 10, 2009

Fun at the Gym

Thursday is one of the days Q's "gym" has free play where the kids can just do whatever they want. Luckily I was post-call today and had the afternoon free. Q had a great time especially in the ball pit. You can also see he has a nice cut under his right eye. He fell into the wall today at daycare :(

Happy Holidays

Hope everyone had a nice thanksgiving. Quentin made this at daycare last week. I think they used pudding or something. The other kids did not quite get into it as much as my son did. He loves to make a mess!

first appointment

my first appointment took forever, but went well. mass general does not do ultrasounds until 18-20 weeks - weird. but we did the whole medical history, physical exam, etc, as well as the pee in a cup, step on the scale, and check my blood pressure thing that will be the regular routine. blood pressure is good so far - yeah! doctor said i'm measuring big based on the physical exam. she tried to get the heartbeat with the doppler thingy but couldn't (usually can't until 10 or 11 weeks.) so now she wants to do an ultrasound on friday to get a better due date reading. so i go back for a second time this week. ugh - they also took 8 vials of blood. but fortunately the blood guy listened to me about my trusty hand vein being way better than my arm veins so it went relatively painlessly.

roo-2: 8 weeks

i finally go to the doctor this week - yeah! i am still hit and miss with the nausea. some days i feel totally fine, others i feel terrible. at least we will be able to tell people soon enough :)

from babycenter.com:

Webbed fingers and toes are poking out from your baby's hands and feet, his eyelids practically cover his eyes, breathing tubes extend from his throat to the branches of his developing lungs, and his "tail" is just about gone. In his brain, nerve cells are branching out to connect with one another, forming primitive neural pathways. You may be daydreaming about your baby as one sex or the other, but the external genitals still haven't developed enough to reveal whether you're having a boy or a girl. Either way, your baby — about the size of a kidney bean — is constantly moving and shifting, though you still can't feel it.

me too

quentin's new nickname at day care is "me too." he has to be wherever the "big boys" are, doing whatever they are doing. the big boys do not appreciate their new follower. nick says to quentin, "no baby, mine," several times a day, as quentin tries to get in on whatever nick is playing with. the two new babies have not started coming to day care yet, so Q is still the baby for a little while longer.

photos of a fidgety boy

we took Q to babies r us last night to get his 15-month pictures taken. despite having pre-scheduled an appointment, it took over an hour before it was our turn to go. Q went from being ok, to being super fidgety. one-year-olds are not good waiters. all this waiting for 7 minutes, yes only 7, of picture-taking. they came out ok, i guess, but they are not my favorite pics ever. i felt like the photographer was rushing because they were so behind and the store was going to close in like 10 minutes. plus Q did not want to sit still. oh well.

nooooooooooooooooooooo

Q has a new favorite word. all weekend long: "nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo." we're not even sure he really gets it, but he certainly enjoys saying it.

roo-2: 7 weeks

another week down, a whole bunch more to go. i have now graduated to intermittent nausea and a complete lack of interest in eating. i am hungry, but i just can't think of anything that won't make me want to hurl. even when i think i've come up with something "safe", i make it, take one whiff, and have to throw it away. good times. thanksgiving should be loads of fun!

roo-2 is a blueberry. i could go for a nice blueberry smoothie. too bad there are no smoothie places near our house.

i had my pre-appointment medical history phone call today. the nurse asked me all kinds of questions about Q's birth, like when did my water break, that i just couldn't answer. still don't know that. also weird - mass general apparently does not do an 8-week ultrasound. they only do one, at 18-20 weeks unless you do all the optional genetic testing, then they do one at 11-14 weeks. weird.

from babycenter.com:

The big news this week: Hands and feet are emerging from developing arms and legs — although they look more like paddles at this point than the tiny, pudgy extremities you're daydreaming about holding and tickling. Technically, your baby is still considered an embryo and has something of a small tail, which is an extension of her tailbone. The tail will disappear within a few weeks, but that's the only thing getting smaller. Your baby has doubled in size since last week and now measures half an inch long, about the size of a blueberry. If you could see inside your womb, you'd spot eyelid folds partially covering her peepers, which already have some color, as well as the tip of her nose and tiny veins beneath parchment-thin skin. Both hemispheres of your baby's brain are growing, and her liver is churning out red blood cells until her bone marrow forms and takes over this role. She also has an appendix and a pancreas, which will eventually produce the hormone insulin to aid in digestion. A loop in your baby's growing intestines is bulging into her umbilical cord, which now has distinct blood vessels to carry oxygen and nutrients to and from her tiny body.

free play at the gym

As Keira mentioned in the last post, Q now belongs to a kiddie gym. Two hours a week they have free play where the kids can just play with all the stuff. Ours has Tuesdays from 1230-130 and Thursdays 3-4. Anywho, I was on call last night and we finished rounding at a reasonable time so that I could potentially get Q from daycare and take him to free play. I got there in plenty of time and we had a great time. Q has become an expert climber as you can see from the pictures. He enjoyed climbing up the slide backwards and climbing a ladder to get to the slide. I was so surprised how easily he could climb a ladder. Nothing in our house is safe anymore!

interesante

i can't eat most things without wanting to hurl, yet i can eat mexican food. hmmmm.

baby gym class

over the past few months, we have realized that quentin has a ton of energy. the boy can go and go and go. and now that it is always cold and dark outside, running around the yard to wear him out is no longer an option. and his play area in the cellar is nice, but it gets cold down there as well preventing extended play times. we had pretty much resigned ourselves to running laps around the first floor of our house, chasing him as he runs. then we found it. i saw a commercial for My Gym - a kiddie gym with classes for babes as young as 6 weeks! on saturday we took him to a free trial class to see if this might be a good fit for him. quentin is a "waddler" (14-22 months) but the class we can actually attend on saturday mornings is a "tiny tykes" (7-13 months) and waddlers combo. he had a blast. they did a nice mix of structured activities and free play and always kept the kids moving. they do "circle time" with singing and hand movements to develop fine motor skills. quentin also got to swing on a trapeze, climb up a log cabin, walk on a balance beam, swing, and more. we learned that he is fearless and these classes are a good thing for him. so we are now full-fledged members. we figured it is a good way for him to expend some energy and interact with kiddies his own age. our membership entitles us to one class and one "free play" hour a week. most of the other waddlers classes and free plays are during work hours, but between jeremy's weird work schedule and my upcoming holiday vacation days, i think he'll be able to get to a bunch of them.

roo-2: 6 weeks

lentil! getting so big already! still feeling pretty ok, though i do have moments of nausea. i am just waiting for it to kick in all the way.

from babycenter.com:

This week's major developments: The nose, mouth, and ears that you'll spend so much time kissing in eight months are beginning to take shape. If you could see into your uterus, you'd find an oversize head and dark spots where your baby's eyes and nostrils are starting to form. His emerging ears are marked by small depressions on the sides of the head, and his arms and legs by protruding buds. His heart is beating about 100 to 160 times a minute — almost twice as fast as yours — and blood is beginning to course through his body. His intestines are developing, and the bud of tissue that will give rise to his lungs has appeared. His pituitary gland is forming, as are the rest of his brain, muscles, and bones. Right now, your baby is a quarter of an inch long, about the size of a lentil bean.

security!

quentin has officially declared a security blanket. "blueberry" is never far from his side. he has one at day care and two more here, just in case. you can't tell from this picture, but blueberry is a bear / blanket. i think he likes the bear part ok, but really digs the satin.

15 month check-up

quentin had his 15-month appointment on election day. he is doing well, right on track. here are the stats:

• height: 31 and 1/4" (55th percentile)
• weight: 25 pounds, 12 ounces (68th percentile)
• head: 47.8 cm (68th percentile)

i'm guessing we have a growth spurt coming soon. he's got the little pot belly he gets right before he gets taller :)

sooooooo big

quentin demonstrates one of his favorite games: "how big are you?" "sooooo big"

he also shows how he eats a peanut butter sandwich... messily.

roo-2: 5 weeks

we've survived our first week of knowing about roo-2. and i'm not sick yet, though i am sure it is coming. i am obscenely tired all the time and freaking ravenous. might as well stock up on food now though, in case roo-2 is like roo-1 when it comes to super-extended morning sickness!

from babycenter.com:

Deep in your uterus your embryo is growing at a furious pace. At this point, he's about the size of a sesame seed, and he looks more like a tiny tadpole than a human. He's now made up of three layers — the ectoderm, the mesoderm, and the endoderm — which will later form all of his organs and tissues.The neural tube — from which your baby's brain, spinal cord, nerves, and backbone will sprout — is starting to develop in the top layer, called the ectoderm. This layer will also give rise to his skin, hair, nails, mammary and sweat glands, and tooth enamel.His heart and circulatory system begin to form in the middle layer, or mesoderm. (This week, in fact, his tiny heart begins to divide into chambers and beat and pump blood.) The mesoderm will also form your baby's muscles, cartilage, bone, and subcutaneous (under skin) tissue.The third layer, or endoderm, will house his lungs, intestines, and rudimentary urinary system, as well as his thyroid, liver, and pancreas. In the meantime, the primitive placenta and umbilical cord, which deliver nourishment and oxygen to your baby, are already on the job.

15 months old!

such a big boy!

roo-2: 4 weeks

wow! still can't believe that there's a roo-2! roo-2 is 4 weeks along. from my good friends at babycenter.com:

This week marks the beginning of the embryonic period. From now until 10 weeks, all of your baby's organs will begin to develop and some will even begin to function. As a result, this is the time when she'll be most vulnerable to anything that might interfere with her development. Right now your baby is an embryo the size of a poppy seed, consisting of two layers: the epiblast and the hypoblast, from which all of her organs and body parts will develop. The primitive placenta is also made up of two layers at this point. Its cells are tunneling into the lining of your uterus, creating spaces for your blood to flow so that the developed placenta will be able to provide nutrients and oxygen to your growing baby when it starts to function at the end of this week. Also present now are the amniotic sac, which will house your baby; the amniotic fluid, which will cushion her as she grows; and the yolk sac, which produces your baby's red blood cells and helps deliver nutrients to her until the placenta has developed and is ready to take over this duty.