More pregnancy pics

These aren't good pics by any means but I've been getting requests for more updated pictures. These were taken Monday and Tuesday after work... so I'm obviously tired and worn out looking!



And we couldn't find Snickers the other night and looked all over the house. Finally, Doyle looked in Kit's crate and there he was! He's never gone in there before so we have no idea why he would start now.

Okay, that's it for now. Enjoy!

Farewell to Guinness

Our close friends, Chris & Melissa, lost yet another furry member of their family. Guinness was only 6 years old and had contracted Lyme Disease from a tick. They did everything they could to try and rid the disease from his body, but it was too late. Here are some pictures of Guinness to remember him by...

This is my personal all time favorite picture of Guinness... getting toweled off after taking a swim by the boat. You just can't see a dog being any happier than Guinness was right then.

Here are a few other snapshots of Guinness being the happy-go-lucky dog that he was and always will be in our memories...

Here's Guinness giving kissess...

and hanging out with friends

This was another of my favorite pictures... from left to right, Guinness, Soco and Kit. You might remember that the Hildebrandt's lost Soco back in October of 2005. Guinness and Soco are now in puppy heaven together.

Guinness will be missed by all who visit the Hildebrandt house.

Grandma Thrash's baby animals

Okay, so I took pictures of the stuffed animals my mom (soon to be Grandma Thrash) made for Cade. They are really adorable. She is extremely talented in anything she crochets or knits! And yes, she does take orders! :)

This is a caterpillar or worm...

This is a baby giraffe. I thought his back was really cute so I wanted to get a picture of it too.

kitty cat

pony

baby lamb

clown

And this is a big net that will hang in the room to hold all of Cade's animals... just as soon as his daddy goes and buys the hooks to hang it with anyway! :)

And G-Ma (Grandma Cooper) got this for Cade too.

And here is Kit, feeling better after getting his shot and pills to help take the itch away. He got a new toy to help him feel better too.

And here are a few pictures Doyle took of me last weekend. Some of them he let me pose for and some he just took while I was cleaning out some old paperwork and stuff.

Okay, so I hope you got your fill of pictures! If Doyle is here next weekend I'm sure he'll take more. Have a great week!

Love, Aimee

Week 32 Doctors appt and follow up

Okay, so I had my week 32 doctors appointment on Thursday. The doctor said he wanted to go ahead and get me an appointment with the high risk specialists again to get an updated ultrasound. This is mainly because of my heart shaped uterus (bi-cornuate). So I went to that appointment on Friday.

Everything looked good! The baby is in delivery position (head down and no longer breach)! So that was really good news. The baby is weighing in at 5 lbs already! So they are definitely expecting him to be bigger than average. The statistic they gave me was that he was bigger than 7 out of 10 babies. The nurse gave me the song and dance speech that if I didn't want to have a big baby then I needed to cut out all sweets and starches and get a lot of exercise. Well, I see that as being nearly impossible but I'll do my best. How else am I supposed to get all that wheat & grains in my system?

The ultrasounds are definitely picking up more details now because the baby is just so much bigger. When she first turned it on, the baby was looking right at us. He was practicing his breathing so you could see his mouth open and close. Plus he would open and close his eyes a little bit too. It was really cute! His face looks so chubby already! The nurse pointed out little fat rolls on his legs too. She also pointed out she thinks he has a lot of hair. Although she said that blonde fuzz kinda looks the same as hair, so we'll still have to wait and see what he ends up coming out with.

I've got my regular OB appointment in two weeks and the high risk people want to see me back in 4 weeks. So we'll get to have another ultrasound and see how much bigger he's gotten by then.

Thursday night was also the first birthing class. Doyle didn't get home until Friday around 6pm so he missed both doctors appointments and the birthing class. He'll get to make this next weeks birthday class and according to his schedule, he'll be able to make next month's ultrasound too. So that is good.

The birthday class was really informative... plus we got a big bag of freebies, which is always nice. Amazingly enough, I haven't even gone through the whole bag yet. I did see some diapers in there and a big book on the whole delivery process and the various stages of it. So I'll definitely want to read that. St. Luke's Hospital has a whole separate building called "The Birthing Place" or something like that. Anyway, they have suites that you get to stay in while you are there delivering. It all happens in the same room unless you end up needing a c-section. And the baby and Doyle can stay in my room also. Visitors have to leave by 9pm - 9am each night, but husbands aren't considered visitors. So that's good.

The other big fiasco we had this week was poor Kit. Remember last weekend I posted a picture of Kit with the cone on? Well, Thursday night when I got home, I opened the back door to let him in and he immediately started scooting around the living room floor on his butt! I was like... KIT! What are you doing?!! So after finally getting him somewhat settled down, I took a flashlight and looked around his bottom area. What I found was not a pretty sight. He apparently had gotten itchy around his genitals (sac) area and had been scooting around the pool on the concrete. It was all swollen and bloody. I felt so bad for him!

So Friday morning the vets office opened at 7:30am and I dropped him off. They ended up giving him a cortisone shot that should stop the itching and should last for a month. They also gave him antibiotic pills to help clear up any infection he may have gotten from the various places he had sores. The place on his butt beside his tail was all scabbed over but the scab hadn't started to come off yet. I'm sure that will be pleasant when it does. That area is probably a good 2 x 3 inches of pure scab with no hair. The poor thing. When I came home on Friday he seemed to be in a much happier mood. The vet said it might take 12 to 24 hours for the cortisone to kick in completely. So we've left the cone on still, just in case he tries to dig and bite himself.

And just a quick recap on Doyle's training... he finally got to fly the aircraft he'll be in... on last Thursday. He said he really liked it. They took off from Columbus and landed in Toledo where they had lunch catered. They also flew over Mansfield, OH, but I can't remember if he said they landed there or not. They probably did. He learned that that is where they filmed the movie "The Shawshank Redemption", which is one of Doyle's favorite movies. I didn't know they had filmed it there. Apparently the prison is only 5 miles or so from the airport. I've driven through Mansfield several times but I don't think I've ever stopped there.

Okay, that's about it for now. I'll get Doyle to take some pictures of me this weekend and I'll post them on here. I'm feeling pretty good these days so hopefully we'll get out of the house this weekend and get some shopping done. I hope you have a great weekend too!

Love, Aimee

Baby Room Update

Last weekend Doyle worked on getting the closet in the baby's room all set up. That closet used to just have 1 rack to hang clothes on. This summer we reorganized our bedroom closet and put all new adjustment shelving in. So Doyle did the same thing with the baby's room closet. It looks so much better! I should have taken a "before" picture so you could see the difference. We both really like the setup in there now. Plus since they are adjustable, when someone buys the house, they can just move the shelves to whatever configuration they want to use it. No, the house isn't currently on the market, but maybe in a couple of years. We would really like to be in a bigger house by the time baby number 2 comes along... and yes, we are planning on having a second child. At least that's what we are saying now anyway. :)

So here are just a few snapshots of how the room looks now.

The newest item we've added to the room is the matching hamper. The wood is unfinished... and I haven't yet asked Doyle what he thinks about staining it to match the crib finish. I guess we'll find out what he says about wanting to do that. I know I'm not supposed to be around fumes like that. It won't be a big deal to me if he says no.

I'm pretty excited to use this crib lamb. He plays the sounds of a heartbeat, which I've read is supposed to be very soothing to babies. Especially since he's been listening to my heartbeat ever since he developed his hearing. I also read babies like to lie on your chest for the same reason, so they can hear your heartbeat. I hadn't really thought about that before.
Here's the changer/combo dresser. The door to the right will hold the diapers and extra supplies. A friend of mine told me that I shouldn't be using baby powder because infants can inhale it and possibly die. Has anyone else ever heard of anything like that? During my daycare and babysitting job days, we always used powder. Definitley let me know if anyone has any thoughts of this. I searched for it on the internet and found very little.

And below are the pictures of the new closet arrangement. We were able to move a lot of STUFF in there. Plus we've still got tons of room to keep adding to it.

I originally had these cubes in the room by the crib but decided to move the stuff they held onto the shelves and put other items in the cubes in this closet. It just made more room in the baby's room.

And yes, we've already got the bassinette/playard setup in our room. This is at the end of our bed... so we both have just as easy access as the other. Last weekend we really went to town getting everything ready. I thought it would be a good idea for the pets to get used to this being in our room. Right now we've got a sheet covering it just so Snickers doesn't get the brainy idea of jumping into it. He hasn't yet tried to, so that's good. Once we get a little closer to the due date, we'll put the absorbable waterproof liner and actual crib sheet on it. Hopefully that should cut down on how often we have to wash the actual mattress. We'll see.

And here's a picture of my baby, Kit. His allergies have really gone through the roof, poor thing. He gnawed a spot on his butt and one of his armpits until they bled. By the time I noticed it, his skin looked like bacon on those two spots. OUCH! So out came the handy cone again. We've been giving him his Omega 3 pill daily (as usual) and giving him Benadryl to help with the itching. I test him every once in a while and take the cone off to see if he's still scratching. Well, I noticed he's not scratching as much as he was, but I did notice a new spot starting. So the cone went back on. We've also got a spray that the vet gave him the last time he had this. We've been using that on him too. He doesn't usually get these allergies until April but it's possible they came early because it's been so warm out.

The only other news we've got is Doyle's birthday was yesterday. NetJets finally called him to go to his 3rd round of training. So he had to get up before 3am yesterday and drive down to West Palm. So we haven't been able to "celebrate" his birthday yet. I did give him his present though, which was an XBOX 360. He was thrilled and very surprised. So I think we'll try and sell his old XBOX because he won't need it anymore. Let me know if anyone is interested in it. He also has the wireless headset for that box too. Of course, none of the accessories are compatible between the old and new set. I just got that wireless headset for him last Christmas too. Oh well.

Let's see... no other news except my belly is still growing, pretty much straight out! I'll get stopped at work by people that tell me that I'm really cute pregnant. Does that mean I wasn't cute before I got pregnant??? ha

The baby is definitely kicking up a storm now. He's doing the really big movements where the shape of my stomach changes. That feels so weird! It seems like I feel him move around more when my stomach is empty. He either just has more room to move around or he's trying to tell me that it's time to eat! I've got my 32 week doctors appointment this week, which means I've only got 8 weeks to go! Thursday is our first birthing class. Doyle is hoping he'll be back home and able to go with me. Class doesn't start until 7:30pm and I think it runs 2 hours. I'm going to be exhausted on Friday I'm sure. I feel alot better when I can get to bed around 9pm, especially since my alarm goes off just before 5:30am every day.

This past week and this next week are the busiest for me at work. Last week I worked anywhere from 10.5 to 12 hours each day. My adrenaline was up so that definitely helped. I'm hoping this week won't be quite so bad. Yesterday I just layed around all day. I had planned to do some grocery shopping but that didn't happen. I think I just needed a day to recover. This morning I got up early and started working on materials that I brought home. I thought it would help in cutting down the hours at work this week. I got a lot done so we'll see.

Alright, I'll let you go for now. I hope you've had a good weekend thus far. I think it's supposed to get up to 79 degrees here today. Since I feel like I've been so productive this morning, maybe I'll go hit the shower and actually get myself ready to leave the house today. I'm running out of food in the house... so chances are, I'll at least make myself get to the grocery store anyway. Which reminds me... it's amazing how much better total strangers treat you when you are pregnant! One example is if there is a line at any restroom... someone always invites me to go in front of them. So there are definite perks to being pregnant... other than the obvious... you eventually get a little baby in your arms at the end! :)

Have a great weekend!

Love, Aimee

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Well, Belated Merry Christmas and Happy New Year anyway! This will probably be a much longer post than normal since we've had so much going on. Let me try to give you a quick recap of our holiday events. Friday, December 22nd, we started driving to my family's Christmas in Ohio. I think we picked the busiest travel day of the year... not to mention it was rainy that day too. So it took a lot longer than we had expected.

Our plan was to make it all the way to Cincinnati, OH that night and stay with our friends, Pete & Rosanna. Well, that didn't happen. We ended up driving 12 hours that day and only made it just into Kentucky. Just prior to stopping for the night, we were on this big mountain in Tennessee. It was extremely foggy and we could barely see in front of us. Some tractor-trailers and other crazy people started zooming past us and I thought I was about to get car sick. I told Doyle that I wanted to stop for the night as soon as we came across the very first opportunity. I was so stressed out being on top of that mountain and not being able to see a thing. I swear my whole body just tightened up. I'm sure it didn't help things that we had already been in the car for such a long period of time anyway.

So once we came off the mountain we saw a motel and stopped for the night. It took a while to get checked in because Doyle was upset that they wanted to keep his credit card number available until the next morning. Once we got to the room, at least the place looked clean. We figured it was fine for just sleeping. When we got up the next morning, I went to take a shower but there wasn't any hot water and I had let it run for well over 5 minutes. So I went to call the front desk to complain but there wasn't a dial tone on the phone! Well, Doyle noticed that the phone wasn't plugged in. So then I was able to make the call. The guy pretty much said, "well, what do you want me to do about it?" when I told him there wasn't any hot water. So I suggested letting us try the room next door to see if they had hot water. So Doyle runs down to get that key. Nope, their water was just as luke warm as ours was. I ended up trying to do a partial spongebath at the sink and Doyle swore the water wouldn't be all that cold. So he hopped in the shower and let out a couple of shrieks. Yes, the water was pretty cool!

Doyle was able to get us a discount on the room and we left. I thought pancakes sounded good for breakfast but we needed it to be quick so we just stopped at the McDonald's there in the same town. We got our breakfast to go and once again were on the road. I started to divy out the food and realized they hadn't given me any syrup for my pancakes. Needless to say, we won't ever be stopping in that town again for any reason!

We ended up making it to our friends house at 11am. We had a great visit... it was SO good to see them again! They had just bought their first house together in the past year so we got the tour and got to see all the improvements they had made on it so far. They've done a really nice job! Plus Pete's parents were there visiting for the holidays so we got to meet them as well. They are such nice people! I ended up eating this sugary bar cookie that Rosanna made from scratch, which was REALLY good but a little while later I had a little episode. She and I were standing talking in the kitchen and all of a sudden... I thought I was going to pass out! I just sat on the floor and everyone did such a nice job of getting me back to feeling well! I was really hot so they put a fan on me and I ate some cheese and crackers then some wonderful soup that Pete had made. Once I got that all in my system I felt fine. So thanks you guys for feeding us... that wasn't why we stopped in to see you! :)

Since our camera died at the NJ baby shower, we took some pictures from their camera. As soon as I receive them I'll post them. We got some funny ones!

Once again we were on the road. We made it up to my Aunt Ila and Uncle Butch's house in Montpelier, OH, around 6pm. Just in time for dinner! Notice how pretty much everything I do these days centers around food? Ha! We ate and just relaxed. Mom and dad were picking my brother, Aaron, up at the Indy airport and we didn't expect them to roll in until later. Well, apparentely they did rather well on time and made it a little earlier than we expected. Dad arrived with a grin on his face. He had gotten pulled over, but the cop only gave him a written warning. WHEW!

Yes, everyone was very happy to see each other and to see how much I'm showing! Again, since we don't have a camera I've had to rely on receiving copies of everyone else's pictures. Here are a few from the time there.

Aunt Ila made us a baby shower cake. She set aside time for us to specially celebrate the baby, the day before Christmas. Isn't this cake just cute! I thought she did a really good job on it.

Here is my side profile for those of you wanting to see how big my belly is getting.

This is a beautiful baby blanket that my mom made. She really knows her stuff when it comes to knitting and crocheting. She did a VERY good job of picking a pattern that wasn't too "froo froo" for me. :) She also made some crocheted animals for the baby's room. I'm sure I'll get pictures posted of those when we get the room all setup.

This is the matching hamper that Butch & Ila got for us that goes with the crib bedding. It's going to look really cute in the room and will no doubt gets LOTS of use!

Butch & Ila also got us a really cute little outfit set. The bib has a little airplane on it and it even came with a little pillow that you hang on the door knob that says the baby is sleeping. The booties are too cute too. They look like little bears. I'll be sure and get pictures of him wearing that outfit!

Here we are relaxing after cutting into the cake and eating all the other goodies Ila had made.

The next day was Christmas morning. As usual, Dad was the worst "kid" at wanting to open the presents right away. I on the other hand had preferred to take a shower and let everyone look respectable before starting to take pictures! I do realize that once little baby Cooper gets old enough to understand Christmas, then we'll no doubt be opening presents first thing in the morning. Until then, dad can just wait! :)

It's an annual tradition that dad plays Santa and hands out the gifts. He is also supposed to wear the santa hat every year too.

Here is Aaron trying on his new racing gloves.

Mom and dad thought it would be funny to give me my Curious George from when I was a baby. Mom had re-stuffed it years ago and it's been sitting in their attic ever since.

Here is mom and dad opening up some gifts.

It was funny because at one point in time, everyone had their cameras out at the same time, taking pictures of each other taking pictures!

Here is the official Christmas 2006 picture. There was another picture that everyone else liked better, but Doyle's eyes were almost closed in it. Aaron's eyes are pretty much closed in this one, but hey, I've got to go with the picture that my husband looks the best in! :)

Ila wanted a turn at feeling the baby kick.

She definitely felt that one!

Mom and I played Jenga that night. We hadn't played it since last year and no one was there to supervise us. We started playing but obviously hadn't remembered how to do it because whenever we took a block out, we were putting them to the side in a pile. We got a good laugh out of that. I think we ended up getting it higher than this picture shows.

Here's dad making one of his usual funny faces.

And here's Dad, Aaron & Ila... just hanging out in the kitchen like we usually do.

The day after Christmas we drove to my parents house in Winchester, IN. A few days later, we had my dad's side of the family over.

This is my Aunt Cheryl, her boyfriend and my cousin Kim. It had been several years since I had seen Kim. Below is her son Caleb. I hadn't seen him since he was just a little kid!

This is Aaron and our Aunt Linda. Aaron ended up coming down with flu symptoms while everyone was still at the house. He had gone to his in-laws for 2 days prior to this party. Apparently everyone there ended up getting the flu while he was visiting. He thought since it had been 2 days and he hadn't gotten it, that he wasn't going to. Bad assumption!!

My friend Heather and her daughter Ashton came over too.

Ashton was pretty quiet until most everyone left. Then she came out of her shell and was the life of the party!

This is my cousin Bernie and her daughter Avery. This was the first time I had gotten to see Avery. She's a cutie!

Here is Dad swinging Avery around. From what I hear, she really likes her Great Uncle Larry!

Here is Doyle, Bernie and Rowena. Our family adopted Rowena as our token grandparent years ago. We love her! She just turned 98 years old and is sharp as a tack!

This is Aaron after he started feeling better.

And mom's Christmas tree! She said she didn't put nearly as many ornaments on it as she usually does. Looks like plenty to me!

Okay, so the morning after the party, Doyle and I hit the road to come home. I was really afraid that either of us or both would end up getting what Aaron had. So when we set out to drive, we knew we wanted to at least try and make it home that night. We also took a different route going home that went around Atlanta. I think that helped shave off quite a bit of time. Everything was going along just fine when about 3 hours from home, my stomach started to not feel quite so good. I kept telling myself that I was just hungry and needed to eat. After all, that is a common occurrence for me if I've gone too long without eating. So we stopped and I got something to eat. Well, things only started feeling worse.

We made it home around 11:30pm that night. I felt absolutely terrible by then. Doyle's parents were at our house and had waited up for us. I had to excuse myself as soon as I got in the door and went straight to bed. About an hour and a half later, after I had already fallen asleep... the symptoms starting hitting me. I ended up being sick for about 2 days. Doyle's parents flew back home on New Year's Eve. We had plans to go to a friends house that night, but I definitely wasn't feeling up to that. Later that night, I started to feel a little better. The next day I was ready to get some food in me and luckily, it stayed in me.

This weekend we've been really busy cleaning the house up and taking down all the Christmas decorations. Doyle has been busy working on getting the baby's room closet finished too. Plus we went ahead and bought all the little details we still needed. Boy, all that stuff really adds up! We walked out of the store and realized just how expensive having a baby was going to be! We are fairly prepared now. We do still need to set some things up in the room and buy the car seat still... but other than that, we are pretty much good to go. At least we have the needed supplies to change a diaper anyway!

Okay, it's taken me about all morning to get this post finished. They definitely aren't normally quite this long! Well, we hope everyone has a great 2007 Year and many more to follow!

Happy Holidays! Love, Doyle & Aimee