A nose!

I had my ultrasound today. There is a nose, and if you look close you can see how much she looks like Alexa. Ok, maybe only Chris and I can tell that, but she truly does. And no she didn't grow a penis. And I am happy about having another girl despite what everyone thinks:) Her hand is right up tp her mouth in this picture. So cute! She was doing flips the whoe time!

Elias Lewis Harper Brix!

I had the most amazing experiece the other night, for the second time!! Michelle asked me to be with her during the birth of her second son. I was with her with Kindreds birth, which was completely amazing, so to be able to experiece this twice is such a blessing! Elias Lewis Harper Brix was born at 1:40am yesterday. Michelle has been officially labeled (by me) as labor queen! I have never known anyone who can be talking and laughing one minute, and then pushing a baby out in less than one hour. Truly, I was sitting in the bathroom with her while she was in the jacuuzi, talking, laughing, and remembering her birth with Kindred (which was also a very quick one). I told her that since she was talking through her contractions, that she probably hadn't gotten past 7 yet. The next contaction, she moaned "no talking through this one,"
Mike returned from eating his pizza, so i stepped out to pee, and when I got back, she was out of the tub and starting to push. Ok, i could keep going on about meesh's delivery story, but it is her story so I will stopt there. You can click on her blog if you're interested. http://meeshemama.blogspot.com/

"So what, She's pregnant."

The good news is that my nurse manager doesn't care that I am pregnant. WHen my recruitor told her, she said, "so what...don't you think i deal with that on a regular basis with haviong 90% of my staff as women." She will work around what I need. I go in Wednesday for a complete physical and Friday for a pharmamcology test, so if all goes well with those, I will start work Sept. 11. I am excited and nervous, but mostly nervous at this point.
I have another ultrasound this week too. I will post this picture, and hopefully a good shot of the nose.

I got a job...I think

Well, I got offered a job on friday by Einstein Hospital for a med-surg posotion. I am not too excited about med-surg but I know I need the experience. I accepted yesterday, but won't talk to the recruitor until today. I have to tell him I am pregnant, and am nervous about that. I don't think he can legally take away his offer, but I still feel like I am starting off on a bad foot. I am also really nervous about working full time for the first time in 7 years and being prgnant at the same time, having two children at home and trying to have a healthy marriage. Ok, people do it all the time. I keep telling myself that, but I am still nervous. I will start sept. 11th of all days. I will only be able to put in 4 months before my maternity leave. I will have to finish up a full year before going down to part time. I am so glad Chris works from home. Well, if anyone has some encouragement or advice for me, send it my way. I could use it.

Mother Blessing

On Sunday, I had the oppurtunity to host a second mother blessing for Michelle. Her first one was a year and half ago for her pregnancy with Kindred. Who knew I would be having another one so soon for her. This one was in my home, and my friend Amber helped me out with it. It was a lot more fun having someone to organize it with and the group was smaller (13 of us) which made it more intimate. I had a bowl of rose water in the entry way of the house so that when people came in, they could wash their hands to symboloze washing away any worries, or distractions before coming into the circle. We held hands and did a chant about being a circle, and being one with each other. My friend Rose read a beautiful prayer that made me cry (i wasn't the only one!). And we went on with the ritual, having a time of meditation, laying our hands on michelles baby and recognizing his fears, a time to encourage michelle in this new path she is going down, and michelle had a time to share her fears and feelings. We all wrote a fear of our own and put it into a jar for me to burn later (i don't have a fire place). And then, we painted henna on Meeshe's belly, worked on the quilt we are doing for the baby, and ate. I will put some pics in as soon as I get them. You can click the link to the right to look at Mother blessing stuff. It is a wonderful alternitive to baby showers. It honors the mother and brings unity amongst all the women way more than just opening a bunch of gifts and saying "oooooohhhhh, awwwwwwwww, how cute..." You can also click on michelle's blog link to see more...http://meeshemama.blogspot.com/

Lara goes to the vet...

and what did the vet say? It's a girl! Ok, so my mom has this friend who is a vetenarian. She has an ultrasound machine and she loves to "sex babies." So, there I was, lying on a vet table. You know, one of those flat, metal, cold tables. Well, I didn't mind. I got to look at the baby for atleast 30 minutes while we searched for a good inbetween the legs shot. I am sixteen weeks now, so it is time to find out the sex of the baby. I was so sure I was having a boy becasue of the morning sickness (didn't have it with the other two), and all the cravings. I am looking at the butt of the baby, saying come on penis, where are you?? Well, we saw no penis, and when I finally saw the three lines (top picture), I knew for sure. Chris is going to become a truck driver once all these female hormones start raging. The second picture freaks me out a bit because there isn't much of a nose. That is the nurse in me I guess. Still trying not to focus on these things, but I will admit, I got on the internet and looked up other peoples ultrasound pics from 16 weeks. they all had noses, so that didn't relieve my fear. I am just hoping the picture was taken from an odd angle. I will get another ultrasound at 20 weeks. I will be looking for the nose before anything else.

Puerto Rico- Our 10th anniversary!!

WOW! Puerto Rico is so beautiful!! Chris and I celebrated our tenth anniversary in June, so we decided to go somewhere, just the two of us. We chose P.R. because most everyone in our church are Puerto Rican. We wanted to see their roots and understand their culture more. We stayed with one of our friends mom and another one of our friends aunt. They showed us around and fed us some delicious meals. The rest of the time we were in a resort. By this time I was totally over the morning sickness, but I ate way too many mangos, since they are all over the place for free!! Anyways, my stomach was pretty mad at me for that. We drove 1000 miles in 11 days. We drove all around the coast and visited numerous beaches. We visited a place in Fajardo that has a bay with biolumenesence. When it is dark outside, you put your hand in the water and it looks like it is on fire. We kayaked out to the bay and swam in it. So, our whole body looked like it was on fire. It is caused by the bacteria in the water coming in contact with oxygen. It is only in five places in the world (three of them in P.R). We ate such good seafood. Mofongo con langosta y camarones was my favorite. The pastalillos con langosta was amazing too. And we ate a whole fried red snapper, just caught, with this amazing sauce over it. MMMMMMMMMMMM! Well, I gained all the weight back that I had lost from being sick, and plenty more. I was glad to be pregnant. We missed the kids so much though by the second day. We called them everyday. They stayed with my parents, and they kept them very busy.

PAPA FEST

We drove down to Tennessee for the papa fest after picking up the kids in Indiana. Our friends from the Simple Way and Camden House and a bunch of others came together to organize this weekend long festival called Papa Fest.

Papa stands for people against poverty and apathy. There were about 500 folks from all over. We stayed at Shanes parents farm, literally on the cow pasture. My kids thought it was fun hopping over the cow patties. It was hot and humid, but we swam in the lake to cool off. We had small group meetings where different topics were discussed. I went to a talk on raising children in community, one on sexuality and a workshop on sewing. Chris went to some great talks as well.



The best part of the weekend was just hanging out with people we hadn't seen in a long time. Billy and Maria and the whole communality crew camped near us and we ate meals together. It is such a beautiful place to be, and being able to be there with so many good people, made it even better!!

We even had jam out sessions every night. Psalters were great and so was Trace Bundy. I have never seen anyone play guitar like this dude!!

Thanks to Brian Lewis for the amazing photos!!

Chicago

I had never been to Chicago before, so I decided to go with Chris for his Mission Year meetings. We were there for three days. I was able to spend most of my time walking at the lake or reading a book on the beach. We went out to dinner every night. We ate thai, indian, italian, and a couple of american places.No chicago pizza though. Next time. I enjoyed meeting everyone in Mission Year. We stayed with John and his fiance' Priya. They are a fun and sweet couple. Unfortunately we have to miss their wedding. It would have been our first Indian wedding. I look forward to visiting Chicago again. It is a great city, though I wouldn't want to live there in the winter. Priya has (but is selling) a high rise apartment that we stayed in one night. It had a great view of the city and was only a few blocks from the beach. Thanks Priya!!!

Surprise!

In a weeks time, I took my nclex, got another ultrasound, found out I passed my nclex, (WHEW!!) and went to Richmond to throw a surprise 60th for my mom.

Ok, I was also battling pretty bad morning sickness during all of this. I had been throwing up a lot, so much I couldn't hardly hold down water. I started taking B6 and unisom (suggested by my sister-law who has 4 kids). It is a miracle drug combination. I didn't throw up at all once I went on these. The midwife OK'ed it of coarse. So, that did help me get through it all.

The party went amazingly!! My mom was so surprised, and there wasn't a dry eye in the place when she and my brother were hugging and crying. We had pork pulled bar-b-que, ribs, coleslaw, potato salad, beans, and a beatiful cake with a picture of her on it when she was young.

The next day was fathers day and we went on a 12 hour drive up to Indiana to drop off the kids and head to Chicago. I forgot to take the medicine and was throwing up the whole way. It was pretty bad. Poor Chris had to drive the whole way on fathers day.

BABY!!!!

Well, all that busyness with finishing school, running in the race, and studying for my nclex, I didn't even think of the possibility of being pregnant. I had actually been going to an endocronologist fertility specialiat because I hadn't had a period in 5 months, and it had been over a year since I had a normal one. I had a pregnancy test in their office that came out negative and they put me on progesterone to bring on a period. Well, after 10 days with no period, I was getting worried and feeling a little sick to the stomach. hmmm.... i had an extra pregnancy test, so i used it, fully expecting it to be negative. When I saw the two lines, I immediately started to cry. No, not of joy, but of fear. I had been taking this medicine, I had a few too many drinks the day of my final, and that margarita!! I had ran a race (OK, now i know thats ok), but i had been taking advil every day to get me through the race!
Well, I woke up chris, who had just returned from Belize a couple of hours earlier. He was so happy. He tried to calm me down. It was a sunday, so i had to wait to call the doctor. I went in the next day for a blood test and a few days after that for this ultrasound. She assured me everything was fine. No big deal about the medicine, drinking a few drinks, and definitley the running. As long as I didn't do anymore races, no more drinking and no more medication. So I was 6 weeks along when I got this ultrasound. We saw the heart beat which gave me much relief. I don't know how i had the negative test a couple of weeks earlier. But, now I can be happy about the pregnany. Still, the nurse in me keeps thinking of all the things that could be wrong...I am trying to not focus on this.

10 mile race!!

I never thought I could even run a mile when I was younger. I guess it helped quiting smoking... I started trying to run in my junior year of college and broke my foot. So I took a BREAK from it for a while. A long while. I started back up a couple of years ago. I ran in the 5K race for the cure last year. I had so much fun, I decided to train to do the 10 mile broad street run this year. I didn't know if I could do it. I waited until the last minute to register because I was so nervous. The race was two days after my pinning ceremony. Well, I did finish the race, running the entire 10 miles! Ok, I was jogging really. My time was 1:45! But I wasn't last. Not even close actually, which made me feel good. So, I am hoping to beat my time next year. we'll see.

I'm an RN- "real nurse"

Why haven't you heard from me in a while??
Well, I have been a bit busy. I had a hectic senior year in nursing school, but i finished. I graduated in May! It was a tough year of papers, exams, and clinicals. I never thought it would end, nor did I think I would survive it, but I pulled through. This is a picture of my pinning and of chris and I at the local mexican restaurant afterwards. It was cinco de mayo, so it was very crowded. I ordered a margarita to celebrate. yummy!