Such Is My Luck

So I was waiting to tell work until after my 12 week appointment that I was pregnant, since I have only been there 2 months I was trying to put it off as long as possible.  But I seem to be showing much sooner than I did with Riley.  My boss was out of town all last week so I couldn't tell her.  Saturday Riley started another gymnastics session.  I walked in with my belly hanging out in a shirt that looked me very pregnant and some maternity yoga capris and who's sitting at the place where Riley takes gymnastics???  My boss' boss!  Now I had gone to Battle Creek with him when I was just 7/8 weeks pregnant so we traveled for a week together.  So I spent all of Riley's class debating telling him, I finally decided I needed to, his wife was with him so surely she would wonder.  So after class as we were getting ready to leave I sat down and told him that I found out right after I started that I was pregnant.  He was very excited for us, or at least he seemed excited, he started right after me so he is new as well. 

Seriously, what are the chances that my boss' boss would be at the same gymnastics place as us!!!

And Baby Makes 4!

After a VERY long road, we are thrilled to announce that Baby Zimmerman 2.0 will be joining our clan, due to arrive January 3, 2012!!!

We started trying just before Riley turned 1, so this has been something we've been looking forward to sharing for quite some time.  After 10 months of trying I finally convinced my Dr to do some tests and she started me on clomid, after 5 months on clomid and no luck she sent me to a fertility specialist.  I went mid-cycle to our first appointment and she had some theories but it was too late in the cycle to do anything so the next cycle she tested for any blockages (which came back negative) in my fallopian tubes, meanwhile she had me on femera to stimulate egg production.  After the blockage test she had me come back 4 days later and I hadn't ovulated yet so I was given an HCG shot to force ovulation.  In the ultrasound to see if I had ovulated she saw that I had produced 3 eggs, 2 eggs were big enough to be a viable pregnancy the 3rd was a little too small but the risk of multiples was there.  Fortunately for me, Marc couldn't go to that appointment so I kept the multiple thing a little secret! :)  I was also on progesterone to encourage implantation.  I was supposed to start testing for pregnancy on Marc's birthday and I just couldn't bare to give him a negative test on his birthday so I put it off.  The next day was the day before we left for Vegas and Marc made me take the test, within seconds there was a positive sign, before the test line even showed up.  I couldn't believe it but looking back I should have seen signs, a few days earlier I went to a movie and had a Diet Coke and my heart was racing from the caffeine and I could barely make it through the movie because I had to pee so bad!  I took a digital test the next day because I had it on hand and same thing, within moments it read "pregnant."  So basically all I needed was a few drugs and quitting ConAgra, because when we went back to the fertility specialist to see the heartbeat for the first time, she calculated conception to my last day at ConAgra, hmmmm.  So the timing is not ideal since I just started a new job but after nearly a year and a half of trying I am sure they will get over it!  And we are thrilled to be adding this one to our little family!

So at 7 weeks we went and saw the fertility doctor who confirmed the pregnancy, we saw the heartbeat and heard it as well (we didn't hear it until around 12 weeks with Riley).  That also happened to be the same day we went to Dr H and found out Riley needed to go back in her braces so it was an emotional day.  I'm sure the pregnancy hormones made it all more magnified and was the cause of me crying as I put her braces back on her.  Everything looked so great with the pregnancy that she graduated us from her and I moved over to my normal OB.

At 10 weeks I went to my first appointment at my OB and had another ultrasound and everything looked great.  She spent a ton of time with me talking about having anther preemie, another baby with clubfeet and another small baby.  As of now she's treating this as a normal pregnancy and if things come up along the way we will course correct but as of now all looks good!  So far Baby Zimmerman 2.0 is measuring about 2 days ahead gestationally, Riley was already behind growth wise.

Last Tuesday, at 12 weeks we went to the perinatal clinic and had our 3rd ultrasound.  Everything went great.  The same appointment that took 2 hours with Riley because they couldn't get the right measurements took 5 minutes with this one.  Way more cooperative than his or her sister!  Maybe that's an indication this Zimmerman will be more low key!  Since we got the measurements so quickly the tech took a bunch of images of the baby and let us see him/her moving around in 4D.  We were sent home with a CD of 14 images plus a video!  That's a change from when we had Riley, there were no CDs 3 years ago, just a few grainy pictures to scan into our computer.  We saw the same Dr that diagnosed Riley's clubfeet and so we talked to him about the clubfeet and since Riley was so small he wants us to come back monthly to track growth on this one, he was more concerned about the low birth weight it seemed than the clubfeet.  We go back at 16 weeks to check growth and it also happens to be the first time that clubfeet would be visible so we will be looking for that.  They will also check the baby's gender then too, which we are super excited to find out!

Riley is SO excited to be a big sister.  Currently she is convinced that she is having a baby sister and is even willing to share all of her dolls with her.  I have felt good this pregnancy, it has been SO very different than my 1st trimester with Riley.  I have been extremely tired and can't get enough food!  With Riley I ate cheese, saltines and ginger ale and I have not needed any of that this time around.  I don't remember being this tired with Riley either but I also didn't have a 2 1/2 year old to keep me on my toes all day long.

So here are some pictures of our new bundle of joy!  We've waited so long, but I know it will all be worth it when we hold him or her in our arms for the first time.  And Riley is going to be the best big sister, when we told her she immediately asked if she could give the baby a bottle.  She's already wanting to help!

Of course Marc thinks this one looks like him too...

Ok, the baby still looks a little alien like but it's a cool full body view.  It was a very active baby while we were there.

I love these photos with the baby's legs up, just chillaxin'!

Looking might cozy in there!

Here's a 4D video of the baby moving around!  Pretty crazy!

Farmer's Market

Dublin started having a Farmer's Market down the street from us about a month and a half ago, unfortunately between travel and work we've only been to one of the markets, until today! After school Riley and I met my friend Elisabeth and her little boy Owen for a quick play date down there! Riley and Owen had a blast (they used to live a block down from us and recently moved so they hadn't seen each other in a few weeks). They got balloon animals (Riley got Elmo and Owen got Mickey), ate kettle korn together, and danced! Super fun times and definitely a play date to repeat!

Hugging

Getting ready to kiss!

Buddies!  This is before the $3 Elmo balloon popped (which you can see and hear in the video below)!

Father's Day Fun

or should I stay fail!?!  Riley and I decided to take Marc to the Giants game for Father's Day, they happened to be playing in Oakland so it was a little more convenient than schlepping to the city.  Unfortunately, it started at 1:00 which is right in the middle of Riley's nap so we had to leave at 11:00 which meant that there was no nap for Riley.  Riley was awesome on BART.  She was great when we sat down for lunch and then it went downhill from there.  Marc and I spent the majority of the game taking turns walking around with Riley.  By the 7th inning it was major meltdown mode and time for us to leave.  Riley fell asleep sitting up on the BART train, 5 minutes before we got to our stop.  Naturally!  Lesson learned: Riley + No Nap = Major Fail!

The win of the day was Nachos!  We ordered some so share and Riley LOVED them, I have never seen the girl eat so much, she couldn't get enough and even ate the chicken that were on them!

Busy Weekend!

We had a super busy weekend which made it fly by, boo for that, but it was packed with fun.  We started Saturday off with our weekly walk with Ryan and Shari and then we headed over to Marc's friend, John's, house for the first summer BBQ of the year.  There was a huge inflatable water slide which of course Riley had to get involved with and she just adored John's 7 year old daughter, Allie.  Both of John's kids doted on Riley.  There was one boy there that was probably 14 or 15 and Riley totally had a crush on him.  She kept walking over to him and just stared at him, it was adorable.  After the BBQ we headed to Walnut Creek for some shopping and then we got to meet up with the Goines'.  Riley and Jake had a great time chasing each other around!

Happy Father's Day!

First Pool of the Season

Tuesday is my work from home day and it happened to be in the 90s!  Our first real heat of the season!  So I grabbed Riley from day care a bit early and bribed her to leave with me with the prospect of going swimming.  So I dusted off her little pool and got to work blowing it up.  Riley was pretty funny, every time she saw it inflate, she would say: "Good job Mommy!  Way to go!  You did it Mommy!  Woohoo!"  It was pretty cute, my little cheerleader.  So we finally got the pool semi-inflated, unfortunately, I don't have any "big dolphins" for Riley to swim with but she managed to have a good time!

Getting toes wet for the first time

Water!

Wetting her face, she looked like she was in a hair care or facial care commercial, it was so refreshing! :)

So refreshed!  When did my baby girl get to be so big!?!

This girl knows how to have fun!

"I wetted my hair!"

2 Years 5 Months!

Time is really picking up speed now.  We were all sitting at the kitchen table eating lunch the other day, Riley had decided that she wanted to sit in a chair instead of her booster and as we all sat there eating Marc and I looked at each other and realized our little 4lbs of fury baby was no indeed a little girl!  She seems to have grown a 1/4 of an inch overnight and is pretty verbal these days.  Day care told me she's speaking more like a 3 year old than an almost 2 1/2 year old and she's getting better about using her words to express her emotions (minus the biting episode last week, oops).  She's even starting to wear some 2T clothes, I thought for sure we wouldn't be wearing those until she was 3!  Riley is doing really well with her night-night shoes and has not fought us once since we put them back on, I'm super proud of her for that.  Last night we were walking home from the park and I was telling her what we were going to do when we go home to get ready for bed and I left out night-night shoes so she said "Night-night shoes, Dr Hoffiner says."

Of course we've had our Terrible 2 moments, she's quite emotional and doesn't understand that sometimes things need to come to an end but that doesn't mean we'll never do them again.

She still loves singing, especially Justin Bieber and is still obsessed with dolphins.

Our current favorite Riley-ism: "Don't bodder me!"  Yeah, at 2 1/2, really???  I can't wait for the teenage years!  (Note the sarcasm).

So here's her official 2 year 5 month trend photo.

Awesome Girls Weekend

This weekend I headed back to Indiana for a 10 year (eek!) college reunion with some of my sorority sisters.  15 out of about 35 in our pledge class made the trip to Bloomington.  As the title states, it was AWESOME!  It was so great to see all of my girl's from back in the day and even more amazing that I have made such a wonderful, group of lifelong friends. 

I flew into Indy on Thursday night, I got in at like midnight due to a delay and my poor friend, Woody, was gracious enough to pick me up at the airport, despite being 24 weeks pregnant and having a 3 year old who was going to wake up at 6AM.  First off, I walked off the plane and told Woody that the airport looked completely different, she told me that's because it wasn't even the same airport, they built a completely new airport!  We arrived at her beautiful new house and hit the sack, I personally couldn't sleep, I think the time change plus the excitement of seeing all of my friends, some of whom I have not seen in 10 years was too much for me!  So Friday morning came very early

Friday morning our friend/sister, Crista, hosted all of us for brunch, those who were local brought their kiddos, it was a wonderful brunch.  Crista seriously missed her calling because she is an amazing cook and is  the Martha Stewart of the group! 

Us ADPi ladies and some of the kiddos of the group!

I also got to meet the super fabulous Julie.  She is a friend of Crista's and found my blog through Crista's blog and we got in touch with each other after I had a clubfoot meltdown and Julie posted a super supportive comment.  We've been reading each others blogs for 2 years and are Facebook friends and we FINALLY got to meet this weekend.  Julie came with her two beautiful babies, Owen and Eleanor.  It was so awesome to finally meet her!  We definitely did not get enough time together so we will have to be seeing each other again soon!  Perhaps she and Crista should make a trip to California for a girl's weekend in Napa!  Hint, hint!

Me, Ella, Julie, and Owen

After brunch we all headed down to Bloomington, the spot where it all happened, Indiana University.  We stayed in the Student Union where there is a hotel.  Six of us got a suite and the rest were down the hall.  There was one guy stuck between our rooms, poor guy!   It was a great time!  We headed to dinner at Yogi's, an old favorite, and then hit Kirkwood, the main drag for some bar hopping.  The first stop was the Upstairs Pub for some AMFs (translation Adios Mother#*$&@%), it's a pretty blue drink that is quite potent.

Derkash (we use last names a lot in the house, I was Ski, short for my maiden name Wilensky, and even though the majority of us are all married now, we still used our nicknames from college) with her AMF.  See it's pretty blue!

Ralsto "Red Dawg", Andrea and Derkasch enjoying their tasty concoctions!

Then we went across the street to Nick's, quite possibly the BEST college bar in America.  I spent many weekend nights and many dollars on beer at Nick's. 

Nick's is known for a game called Sink the Bismarck, I am proud to say that I am a master pourer!

Ready to get this game going!

Mad Dawg going in for a refill!

Derkasch, Autumn and I

After the bars we ordered Pizza Express cheesesticks and breadsticks, I dream about these breadsticks.  Rumor has it they are expanding nationally under the Hot Box (yes, classy) name so I might have to look into being a franchisee because I have never had better pizza, cheesesticks, and breadsticks.  And that is not the beer talking!   We kicked Saturday morning off with a hearty breakfast at The Village Deli, it has been featured on Food Network and in their magazine for have one of the best breakfasts in America.  I had the most delicious, ginormous, banana pancake!  I somehow never made it there for breakfast in college but they have delicious lunches as well and feel like I missed out on their breakfasts!

Getting ready to chow down!

 After breakfast we walked into a couple of shops on Kirkwood and stocked up on IU gear.  I scored an awesome IU shirt with an owl in it!  Then we headed over the sorority house for a house tour and some reminiscing!

My senior year composite picture, look how young I look!

The cold dorm, where I used to sleep.  My standards have certainly gone up in the past 10 years!

Jonna, Andrea, Crista (top) and Derkasch (bottom) checking out their old bunks

Amy and I in the Cold Dorm

My old room, I shared this with 2 other girls!  We didn't have the pretty blue paint 10 years ago, it was all beige.

Our dining room, the yellow striped paper is a step up, it used to be what every one who has ever seen it can agree, a tacky floral print

The entrance of our house

We took our first pledge class photo in this very spot some 13 years ago, who knew all of these years later we would be gathering again in Indiana to see our lifelong friends!

Front of our house, it was the biggest and newest when I was there, some of the other chapters on campus have now built new houses and the are ginormous!  But I am proud to say after many years of struggling, ADPi is now the biggest house on campus with some 160+ members!

Avery and Ralsto in front of our house

After our house tour we headed up to Oliver Winery which is just north of Bloomington for a picnic and wine tasting.  Crista arranged for us to have Dagwood's sandwiches (another Bloomington favorite, yes we pretty much ate our way through the weekend).  It was pretty hot and humid so my picture taking skills dropped off significantly. :)

Oliver Winery

Down by the pond at the Oliver Winery, in college we used to take our books to the winery and spread out on a blanket on the lawn and "study" for finals!

After the winery we hit up Jiffy Treat, the best ice cream place ever, they even used to deliver to campus.  So when it was snowing and we had a hankering for Jiffy Treat, they would bring it to us!  Does life get better than that!?!  Their cyclones (like a blizzard) with cinnamon toast crunch are my favorite!  Then we hit up the school bookstore and I stocked up on some IU gear since it's hard to come by in California.  I got Riley a super cute sweatsuit outfit, an IU hat, and stuffed IU bear.  When I gave it to her Sunday, she grabbed the bear, hugged it and said "Oooo I love it!"  So adorable!  Saturday night we went to the Irish Lion, another old classic for dinner and then followed it up with Kilroy's.  Then it was time to head home on Sunday! 

Campus and Bloomington has changed a bunch, unfortunately Kirkwood used to be filled with local eateries and is now very corporate.  Where Jiffy Treat used to be there is now a Panda Express.  It's kind of sad actually, one of the most appealing things about IU and Bloomington was it's individuality and independent charm.  When Starbuck's first opened my senior year (yes, there was no Starbuck's in Bloomington until I was a senior, that's how old I am), there were protests because it was the beginning of corporate business in the adorable college town.  Now there is a Starbuck's in the Student Union which to me is wrong on every level!  They are also building new buildings on campus like crazy but I will say that IU is doing an amazing job of making them blend in architecturally with the rest of the older buildings. 

I would be remiss to say that we were reminded daily of the tragedy of missing IU student Lauren Spierer while we were on campus.  She went missed about a week and a half ago and there are very little leads in the case.  We didn't see much of the search efforts as they were concentrated in the woods around campus but we saw the posters all over campus and town and we all hope that there is a very positive outcome in the search for her.  It's a reminder of how much Bloomington has changed and what a scary world it can be out there.

All in all it was a great weekend, I have made such amazing lifelong friends and only hope that one day when Riley is in college, if she chooses that she can have the same experience!  I truly hope it is not another 10 years before I get to see all of my fabulous IU/ADPi ladies again!

Slippery Fish

Riley is somehow obsessed with dolphins, a few weeks ago she told me that she wanted to go swimming with dolphins. I have no idea how she knows dolphins go swimming, she must have learned about them at school because when we went to look at them at Sea World last November, she was half asleep. I wanted to get free shipping on a book while I was away so I ordered her a dolphin pillow pal. It came Tuesday, along with Tony the Tiger so they became the hit of the night.

And this is the song where the infamous "oh-no" came from, funny how a year ago she just knew the "oh-no" and today she can sing most of the song.

Green Thumb

We were out and about and saw a good price on an Heirloom Tomato plant this weekend so we bought it to plant in our teeny tiny garden that is quickly being taken over by our grape vine.  We decided to put it next to the strawberry plant and of course Riley had to help!

What you doing Daddy?

Helping Daddy

Our crazy grape vine!

"Riley help?  Riley do it!"

First time watering with the hose

Watch out, Riley has the hose!

Having some fun after working hard

My beautiful, beautiful girl