Category — All About Christine

The day is finally here. Christine is heading off to work tomorrow morning and Reily and I are left to fend for ourself. These past 3 months have been amazing – Reily aside (which is incredibly difficult given that he loves being the center of our world!) – Christine and I have bonded more over this short time then ever before in our relationship.

I have always classified our relationship as being the strongest out of all the couples that we know – great communication, an understanding of our needs as a couple and as individuals, and the right balance of when to push and when to pull. And I certainly wouldn’t say that we were perfect or didn’t have areas in which we could grow. But these three months have been amazing ~ we have fallen in love all over again! (It may be that we have only slept 6 hours in those 3 months but we’ll just rule that out for the time being.)

I’m incredibly grateful for the opportunity to have been with both of them every day for the past 3 months and for allowing myself the chance to experience it every day. Granted, it may have been easier financially had a few things gone a little differently – like the condo in Chicago selling or the investment house in Akron selling or not having my Lehman stock go from $60/share to $0.06/share – but none of that matters when I look back at what I’ve received in return. What I have received can’t be measured. And I want to thank everyone for your tremendous support as well because we couldn’t have done any of this without you either.

So as we head of to sleep, I think back on the past 3 months where every moment I got to spend it with my wife. And despite what she might tell you, I still believe that you can never have too much of a good thing. Its like I always say “If two Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups are good, then 12 will be amazing!” I’m reminded that tomorrow is going to be tough on us all and I’m sure that there will be some meltdowns along the way. For Reily, his will come in the comfort of our apartment. For Christine, her outburst will just scare the crap out of the hispanic women sitting next to her on the bus! We’ll all survive because that is what we do…but she’ll definitely be missed. And not just during the time when he need a full outfit change because the diaper didn’t hold!

Tomorrow sunrise brings a new day and exciting possibilities for us. After the initial shock, we’ll begin looking forward again. And this will all work out ~ its just a matter us determining what our next chapter is going to look like!

Reily and I will miss Christine tomorrow during the day. We recognize the sacrifices made as parents and the courage that she has as a mother…And we are forever grateful. All our love to her ~ as its tougher on her than anyone. Till then we will count down the hours till she gets home!

I think it was my suggestion to do a final load of laundry before we go for another walk that got Dan’s attention. We thought for sure that last night was going to be our little guy’s big introduction to the world. We timed over 67 contractions ranging from 3:30 min to 8 min over the course of 6 hours, making initial phone calls and text messages to the grandparents to be, letting them know we thought the arrival was imminent…only to continue to watch the contractions vary in length and slowly taper off. Finally, finding absolutely nothing interesting on TV, we went to sleep last night around 2am.

I was able to sleep through the night and have continued to have some contractions today, but again, they are all over the place in timing and intensity. We have a doctor visit at 9am tomorrow, but we’re still hoping that our little guy will be here in time for the UCLA game tonight!

Well, we have officially reached week 39 and Boo is having such a good
time in mommy’s tummy, that he just isn’t ready to come out yet. We
saw the Doctor on Monday and she said we are both doing great, still
very healthy and our little guy is still head down and ready to
go…but he was not dropping and I was not dilated yet.

Even though he’s not late, he is measuring a little big and the Doctor
doesn’t feel comfortable letting me go more than one week past the due
date. After hearing that, I decided that I need to start doing
everything possible to encourage our shy guy to join us. While Dan
talks to him and tells him how much he wants to play, I have stepped up
the walking to twice a day (for a total of about 5 or 6 miles),
additional yoga classes, squats, herbal teas and yesterday I prepared
the spiciest pasta sauce we have ever tasted. I’m starting to have
some strange new feelings, but nothing to start timing yet.

To “get away” without going to far from the hospital, Dan took me to the “valley” today. We went to the baby/kids store Smooch run by the Kardashians with very low expectations. Dan and I just thought it would be nice to see the stores we see on my favorite reality TV show. To my great surprise, Courtney was in the back of the store and briefly made eye contact with me when she closed the back door…that made my day.

A short while ago I was easily upset by all the random people telling me just how large I had gotten. I still don’t advocate telling someone they look like they are huge, but my perspective is a little different these days and I just smile and nod. These days people just ask when the due date is, or simply guess “any day now?” Tonight, a young girl of about 3 passed us on the sidewalk and told her dad “she has a big belly!”. She was just stating the obvious. I took a measurement of my belly, something I had been scared to do since pre-pregnancy and the results were shocking…41 inches!

Immediately Dan began to tell me where on his chest 41 inches would hit, or that it was like 3.5 feet tall! We laugh that I don’t just fall over forwards. So when we got home, I did a little research and found a few other things that are about 41 inches:

Another pregnant belly (not me)

A snake about 3.5 ft long

A guitar

Or ironically, a young girl, only slightly larger than the girl we passed on the sidewalk

We see the Doctor again tomorrow and hopefully she’ll be able to tell us if our boy is big, or just his mom

Many of you have let us know that the bar has been set high for blogging now that I’m officially on maternity leave. The only problem is…nothing is happening

Actually this is probably a good thing. I have a tendency to get a little to anxious for things and try to make them happen faster than they really should. Sometimes, I get what I want, but most of the time, I end up disappointed and wishing I would have waited. Some examples are snooping for Christmas gifts, only to be disappointed on Christmas morning when there are no surprises; or making a cake, not wanting it to burn & wanting that piece so badly, that it’s still batter in the middle when I cut into it. So each day, I try to remind myself of patience and faith because we certainly don’t want Boo to be undercooked!

To keep my mind off my clenching (yet still painless & sporadic) contractions, Dan and I take our daily 3 mile walk to Starbucks and back (sometimes more than once). The extremely nice barista at Starbucks loves to see my big belly every day and sometimes surprises us with free drinks! Ahh the beauty of being pregnant I spend quite a lot of time catching up with friends on email, facebook, or by phone. I average a conversation with one of my parents or sisters at least every other day. On the off days Rhonda calls to check in on us…making sure she hasn’t missed the big event Mid-day we go outside to meditate, read or just talk and stare at the ocean. The breezes lately have been awesome. And the evenings are always capped off with at least 4 to 6 hours of Olympics!

These last two weeks have been a real lesson about finding inner peace and getting back to what is truly important in life, family. Kind of fitting as we are on the cusp of expanding our own!