Hello World!!!!

Wow. Seven months. Almost eight. Jolee is scooting around the floor and eating strained sweet potatoes and chewing on Kyle's tennis shoes and yelling at me when I leave the room and wearing size 12 month clothes. Where has time gone?

I feel like my world has been turned upside down, sideways, front ways, long ways, and back again and I am LOVING it! I'm sorry I haven't been keeping this updated with all the fun things Kyle and I have gone through with our precious little Jo, but I just figure it is better for me to be experiencing it than to be blogging about it and missing something else. Everything happens so fast with this little girl. One minute she was laying in her tiny little crib at the hospital and the next she is blowing raspberries and kissing our faces with her mouth wide open. She is beautiful and amazing and perfect and precious and more than I could ever have imagined. I am going to try to keep up with this a little better now that Jolee has her schedule set. But for now, she is telling me that it is time to get her out of her crib because nap time is over :)

Holy Geez...ONE MONTH!!!

ONE MONTH ONE MONTH ONE MONTH!!!

We are SO close to baby time its not even funny.

Last weekend we had an amazing shower with some of my favorite people in the entire world. It was so nice to get to spend time thinking about our little JoJo. It seems like I haven't really had a chance to sit and just think about her recently. Everything has been so crazy! Pretty soon, though, I will have plenty of time to sit and think of her and hold her and kiss her and squeeze her and talk to her and look at her. YAY!

We are slowly but surely getting her room completely set up. The crib is up and looking beautiful. When I'm home for a little while, I'll take some pictures and post them. But first, I need to get all the boxes out of our house. They are overwhelming us at the moment. Yesterday the girls made a tunnel out of them and had a blast. I think they will be sad when we throw them away. It's amazing how much fun a stroller box can be, let me tell you!

I start my every week appointments this Thursday. I can honestly say I am super excited about this one. Sunday I had a little scare. I thought my water might have broken, but it turns out that Jolee probably just pushed on my bladder a little too hard and I wet my pants :) Whoops! But I did find out that she is most likely dropping already, which is a GREAT sign! It means she is getting ready to come see us! WOOHOO!!

This week is pretty uneventful. We have Mariah and Caitlyn tonight for the last time this week, so we are gonna make spaghetti and hang out at the house all evening. Tomorrow is work and then I'm gonna run by the other branch that I work at and say goodbye to all the people I will miss there. Thursday is DAD'S BIRTHDAY!!!!! WOOT!!!! and also my doctor's appointment.

My last day of work is Friday and I'm very sad to say goodbye to everyone at Farmer's & Merchants. It has been such a great job and the people here have been amazing! I will definitely miss it, but little Jolee definitely takes priority right now.

Saturday we are going to celebrate Dad's birthday and July 4th...woohoo! We are going to a RedHawks game which will be great! Hopefully it won't be too hot for our JoJo. Sunday we have the girl's again for a little while, so I'm not sure what we are gonna do.

Next week, I plan on cleaning house on Monday, then I have an interview with a day care on Tuesday. I'm not sure why but this day care just kept popping into my head last week. I sent them a resume on a whim, just to see what would happen. They called me the next day to schedule an interview. I really don't know if it is something I want to do, but I thought it was at least a good idea to look into it. Who knows where it might take me? It looks like a really amazing place, so hopefully it is. Wednesday Aunt Gee (Christine) will be coming to hang out with me and I am SO SO excited to see her! We are going to meet Mollie for lunch and just be bums. It'll be wonderful. Thursday I'll have another doctor's appointment and hopefully my momhead will be able to go with me, although it's kind of short notice for her to get off work. I'd really like to go get a pedicure :) We'll see! Friday night we will have the girls again for the weekend. I have no idea what we are gonna do. Kyle is on call so probably just hang out at the house.

Time is just flying by like pigs on wheels...I don't know what that means....

Jolee will be 36 weeks Thursday. This is what Babycenter.com has to say...

"Your baby is still packing on the pounds — at the rate of about an ounce a day. She now weighs almost 6 pounds (like a crenshaw melon) and is more than 18 1/2 inches long. She's shedding most of the downy covering of hair that covered her body as well as the vernix caseosa, the waxy substance that covered and protected her skin during her nine-month amniotic bath. Your baby swallows both of these substances, along with other secretions, resulting in a blackish mixture, called meconium, will form the contents of her first bowel movement.At the end of this week, your baby will be considered full-term. (Full-term is 37 to 42 weeks; babies born before 37 weeks are pre-term and those born after 42 are post-term.) Most likely she's in a head-down position. But if she isn't, your practitioner may suggest scheduling an "external cephalic version," which is a fancy way of saying she'll try to coax your baby into a head-down position by manipulating her from the outside of your belly."

She is almost here!!!!

Melons...

I was just thinking to myself...this will all be over in about 5 weeks and 2 days. That is NO time at all. Of course, I have enjoyed being pregnant, or at least some of the time I have, but I am really, really, really ready to not be pregnant anymore. I am tired of feeling giant at all times of the day, of not being able to get comfortable ever, and of never knowing how my stomach is going to react to the things I eat. I'm ready to go through a full day without feeling like I let someone down because I couldn't do something because I was too tired, or nauseous, or uncomfortable, or hot, or whatever pregnancy-related issue I was having at the time.

But most of all, I am ready to see this precious little baby that has been growing inside me for 8ish months. I'm ready to hold her and see her little face, to see whose eyes, ears, and nose she has. I'm ready to rock her and put her in her little tiny bed to sleep. I'm ready to use all those little tiny diapers and outfits that have been in my house for too long with no one to wear them. I'm ready to see her litte fingers and toes and what color her hair is. Oh, we are just so close!

I'm feeling relatively good these days. I'm tired all the time and I can never decide what sounds good to eat. My house is a disaster because by the time I get home from work and figure out what to eat, I don't feel like doing anything else. Hopefully, after I quit, I'll be able to keep up with the house a little better. I'm having all these weird aches and pains, nothing so bad that I think there is something wrong, but its just not a normal feeling to have a 5 pound baby in your uterus, ya know?

On to little Ms. JoJo...

She is in her 34th week and going strong. Last time I went to the doctor, her heart beat was 150 and the doc said everything is perfectly on schedule. She said we are about as textbook as we can be. She said in the next few weeks, we need to be watching for blood pressure changes and swelling, but other than that, things should be relatively uneventful.

Here's what Babycenter.com says about her development these days:

"Your baby now weighs about 4 3/4 pounds (like your average cantaloupe) and is almost 18 inches long. Her fat layers — which will help regulate her body temperature once she's born — are filling her out, making her rounder. Her skin is also smoother than ever. Her central nervous system is maturing and her lungs are continuing to mature as well. If you've been nervous about preterm labor, you'll be happy to know that babies born between 34 and 37 weeks who have no other health problems generally do fine. They may need a short stay in the neonatal nursery and may have a few short-term health issues, but in the long run, they usually do as well as full-term babies."

I have the rest of this week and one more after that, then I will be done working. My last two-week Doctor's appointment is July 2 (happy birthday, Dad!!!) and then we start one week appointments. We are almost to the finish line...woohoo!

We're getting close...

43 days...

6 weeks...

5 Doctor's appointments...

12 days of work...

30 katrillion more baby kicks in my bladder...

Man, time is flying!

I think I am housing a karate instructor...

So...little Ms. JoJo is a kicker. It's really cool that I get to feel her all day long. She kicks and turns and punches and headbutts and all those fun things. This morning I was awake at 4:30 (not on purpose, Kyle was snoring) and I could feel her just rolling around like crazy in there. It was insane! I'm pretty sure she is the size of a Subway foot long at this point and that is just unbelievable. I mean, she started out as nothing...just a little tiny poppy seed-sized blastocyst and now she is a Subway sandwich. It's just crazy! (and kind of makes me want a sandwich...)

In other news, we are about to begin work on the nursery. Kyle's parents gave us the go-ahead on turning the garage into our bedroom, so we can turn our old room into Jolee's. It's gonna be great. Kyle has worked SO hard on the garage. We are almost done with it. All we have left is painting one wall (the wall he just put up this weekend) and then carpet. That's it. :) I am SO excited! I will take pictures once we get the entire room done.

Whenever that is done, we will begin turning our old room into a beautiful baby JoJo room. I'm ready to get all that done now. I just need to see the place she will be living. I think it will be even more real when that is done. We are getting extremely close to her being here and I just want everything to be ready.

I will be 24 weeks this coming Friday. 6 MONTHS!!!! Time has passed so quickly! It felt like the first 3 months would never end, but now that I'm feeling better and am able to actually accomplish things, time is just flying by. She will be here before we know it! OH, my goodness, she will be HERE!!!!! EEEEKKKK!!!!!

Now onto the fun stuff...the update from babycenter.com...

"Turn on the radio and sway to the music. With her sense of movement well developed by now, your baby can feel you dance. And now that she's more than 11 inches long and weighs just over a pound (about as much as a large mango), you may be able to see her squirm underneath your clothes. Blood vessels in her lungs are developing to prepare for breathing, and the sounds that your baby's increasingly keen ears pick up are preparing her for entry into the outside world. Loud noises that become familiar now — such as your dog barking or the roar of the vacuum cleaner — probably won't faze her when she hears them outside the womb."

So she is a perfectly beautiful little mango baby on her way to being an ear of corn. They just grow up SO fast!

Ultrasound Pics

beautiful little JoJo
tiny baby arm

she is SO precious!

FOOT!

looks kind of big, huh?

GIRL!!

definitely a girl!

baby face

baby face

Almost HALF WAY!!!!!

Alright, alright...blah,blah,blah...I've been super busy...now onto the good stuff! :)

We had our complete ultrasound yesterday and YES they were able to see the gender of our precious little Clumpy baby. Kyle and I are very excited to announce that on or around July 30, 2009 we will be bringing home an amazing little baby named....Jolee Rhea Porter. We chose the name because it uses my Mimi's middle name (Jo), Mom's middle name (Jo), Darcy's middle name (Jo), Shelby's middle name (Lee), and my middle name (Rhea). It's just perfect! She will be beautiful and is already completely spoiled by both sets of grandparents, as well as her aunts and uncles. It is amazingly exciting!!!

She (I just LOVE that I can call her something other than it) is almost 19 weeks along in her growing process. She now has ears that work and are in the correct position on her head. Her eyes are in place and even though they are sealed, she is able to detect light if we were to shine a flashlight at my stomach. We haven't done this yet, but I am sure it will happen eventually. Jolee Rhea has been kicking a little bit lately, but only when I am sitting at my desk at work. It is such a strange feeling knowing there is a tiny little 9 oz. baby growing in there. Just completely surreal.

Now for some babycenter.com updates...

"Your baby's sensory development is exploding! Her brain is designating specialized areas for smell, taste, hearing, vision, and touch. Some research suggests that she may be able to hear your voice now, so don't be shy about reading aloud, talking to her, or singing a happy tune if the mood strikes you.Your baby weighs about 8 1/2 ounces and measures 6 inches, head to bottom — about the size of a large heirloom tomato. Her arms and legs are in the right proportions to each other and the rest of her body now. Her kidneys continue to make urine and the hair on her scalp is sprouting. A waxy protective coating called the vernix caseosa is forming on her skin to prevent it from pickling in the amniotic fluid."

First of all, I am sure you are wondering, what the heck is a "large heirloom tomato?" Well here is a picture....

Yeah, she is getting pretty big, and this is for 19 weeks, which we will hit on Friday! At the Dr.'s appointment, they said our little Baby JoJo weighs 9 oz. She is right on schedule...cooking just like a baby should!

Really all I have left to say is that I cannot wait to meet this little booger. She is quite the little stinker already, so I can't even imagine how fun she will be when she is out here in the real world. At the Dr. yesterday I had to get up and jump around just so she would cooperate with the ultrasound tech. She just wanted to curl up and move her little hands all over the place. Her little legs were almost completely curled underneath her. The last time we went she wouldn't stop standing on her head. It was a crazy picture. If I can remember, I will bring it to work and scan it to put it on here. It's pretty hilarious! Our little JoJo is already a little clown with a spunky, stubborn personality. I'm just so ready to meet her! Just pray that the rest of this pregnancy goes as easily as the first of it. Love you all!

Karly and Jolee