Almost Un-Homeless

We had the first walkthrough on our new house today. Everything is finally coming together. The past month has seemed like an eternity! We are scheduled to close on Thursday, and move in Friday, Saturday and Sunday. As much as we appreciate Karen letting us live in her house the past month, I am ready to sleep in my own bed again! We do thank Karen publicly for being such a wonderful friend! Her generosity has made our life much easier!

Here is a picture of the house as of last Saturday.


Moving in will just be a small piece of all the work we have ahead of us! Now we just need to finsh Marty's detached garage, a fence for the dogs, irrigation, blinds on the windows, additional landscaping, and the list goes on and on. I hope we survive it!!

14 Weeks Along

I had a doctor's appointment this morning. These early appointment's are pretty easy to get through. This morning, they listened for the heartbeats and talked to me about the upcoming second trimester ultrasound. One of the twins, the one I like to call "Little Marty" spent most of the appointment hiding from the heartbeat monitor. The one I call "Little Kim" of course cooperated fully! "Little Marty" finally came out of hiding after about ten minutes, but he gave me a scare, and of course this was the first appointment Marty did not attend!

So, we're all doing well today, and looking forward to August 19th when we will find out what we're having!!

The Proud Grandparents

We told the proud grandparents about the pending arrivals a couple weekends ago. Everyone was obviously extremely happy, and luckily for us, completely oblivious, especially Marty's Mom. We didn't think she was EVER going to figure out what we were trying to tell her. Aunt Kristi and Uncle Kevin had already guessed that I may be, mainly because I had skipped Nell's wonderful margaritas at the beach. Kristi didn't shock me, but I will never know for the life of me how Kevin figured it out!!

Anyway, it was fun to tell everyone, and we have started telling our friends too! We have gotten so many well wishes from everyone. I don't think anyone was surprised that we were expecting, but we can always shock them with one word, "TWINS"!

The Adventures of Jessy and Jackson

Almost every day now, I hear a new story about the exploits of Jessy and Jackson, predominantly Jackson. I thought it would be fun to list some of them out:

Jackson is used to being fenced in all day, so having this big new space to roam in has been quite liberating for him. So many new things to sniff and scavenge. Plus, I think he is enjoying seeing Grandpa Eddy every day. He has been his shadow. Day 1 of summer camp was all about picking up sticks in the yard after the big storm. Grandpa Eddy's job was picking up sticks and Jackson's job was licking him in the ear every time he bent over.

The most humorous story is that Grandpa Eddy was taking care of some personal business at the shop, with the door wide open, and Jackson decided he needed to take the toilet paper with him, so he politely came in a took it. Luckily, he dropped it after being yelled at, and luckily Grandpa Eddy didn't have to walk too far to get it.

Mom told me that he had also decided the shop toilet brush was better off in the back yard than in its rightful place in the bathroom. I think Jessy must be telling him to do these things!! She's bad!

They've also had some experiences with other dogs, and of course, aggravating the cats is the number one priority for both of them!

We know neither of them are ever going to want to come home!

Another Ultrasound

We were scheduled for another ultrasound yesterday morning at Presbyterian Hospital. We have been referred to another set of doctors due to my ADVANCED MATERNAL AGE (I still don't buy that!), as well as the fact we are expecting multiples. These doctors have equipment that is much more state of the art, and they all have special certifications for reading ultrasounds. We'll be seeing them quite regularly.

The purpose of our trip was to meet with our genetic counselor, as well as have our first trimester screen ultrasound and I had to have blood work drawn. My poor veins are starting to feel the pain!!

Based on the initial ultrasound, everything is progressing normally, and the doctors could see no indication of a chromosonal abnormaility, which is the purpose of this screening. Both babies are a little over 2 inches now, about the size of lime. Baby A was kicking around alot to begin with, but then I think they both went to sleep. When the doctor came in, he kept jabbing me in the stomach with the wand to get them to wake up. They were having none of it! I was having none of it either, since I was required to come into the office with a FULL BLADDER! That was not pleasant!

But, the whole experience was again very fun, and this one lasted a while longer. It is so cool to see those little guys/gals moving around and stretching out their arms and legs! They are really starting to look like little people in there. The doctor gave us about ten pictures, but I am just going to post a few for everyone.

This is a picture of Baby A, in the middle of a big stretch! See those legs?

Here is Baby B. He/she slept pretty much the entire ultrasound.

This is a good closeup of Baby B. You can see Baby A's head in the lower right corner.

The last picture is a 4D picture. The doctor tried very hard to get a good one of them together, but since they were in a "T" shape, no cooperation. What a shocker! Stubborn children for me and Marty!


This is the weekend we're going to "spill the beans"! We're both very excited to tell our parents. Thank goodness we managed to talk Marty's mom into not working every single night this weekend! She managed to squeeze us in for Friday. I don't think she would have been very happy to be the last to know!

We Miss Our Puppies!

Tomorrow is July 4th, and we are both happy to have a nice long weekend to relax, especially me. I have still not adjusted back to eastern standard time! We are staying in Charlotte tonight, and Marty is going to wakeboard tomorrow morning with Rich, and by afternoon, we are going to head into Lexington.

Mom and Dad are keeping Jessy and Jackson for us during our transition between houses. We haven't seen them in close to two weeks, and I am really missing them both!! I am sure they are not missing us. I hear Jessy gets to spend the morning in bed with Mom and Dad after she gets up, which is strictly forbidden at the Smith home. And, Jackson is happy to have human contact every day, as well as chasing the cats around the farm.

We sure do miss them though, and will be eager to get into our house and get them back home with us. Jessy may request permanent transfer to Grandpa and Grandmommy's house after the babies arrive, because her status as an "inside dog" may be officially over at that point!

Home From San Francisco, FINALLY!

I returned to work today after a week long vacation/CPE in San Francisco. It was a long week indeed, and we are so glad to be home.

About an hour into our flight, I got up to go to the restroom, and noticed I was having some bleeding. Since this was a five and a half hour flight, I was panicked, and just felt totally trapped. Poor Marty had to help soothe the pains of a highly hormonal, very agitated pregnant woman, and control his own fears. He did a great job. When we landed, we called my doctor who told us just to take it easy and left it up to us whether to find a hospital. In the end, Marty insisted that we go, so we spent about 4 hours on Tuesday night in the emergency room in San Francisco. Luckily, the bleeding had stopped, and an ultrasound showed both babies just fine, with wildly beating hearts, and much growth since the last time we had seen them. We still don't know what happened, but our vacation was much more enjoyable knowing everyone was ok. Here are the ultrasound pictures of both babies, at 9 weeks and 3 days. They are a little over an inch long:


We returned last night and were so glad to be back home! I am pretty sure that I will not be getting on anymore airplanes until after the safe arrival of these little ones.

I will be 11 weeks along on Friday. We STILL haven't told anybody the news except a few select people I've had to tell at work because of scheduling, and one of my friends from work, Angela, who flat busted us in the lobby of the waiting room of the obstetrician. I didn't think she was going to believe that Marty was there to help support me through my annual pap smear! It was better just to come clean. We plan to tell our families next weekend. Marty is about to die to tell his family. I am excited, but have enjoyed having the news to ourselves for a little while. I think the time has gone alot faster for me than him. Besides, now the family won't have to wait nine whole months like we have!

Stay tuned for the next update, after our ultrasound on Monday July 7th!!