24 week update (on everyone)

Welcome to the 24 week update! I'm thrilled to write very good news about SLS in this update after a troublesome week! So, I'll start our update with her. Last Wednesday I started feeling very crampy and on Thursday it got a lot worse. I worked on the computer from home Thursday with Sammi and after a long day of painful cramping in my lower abdomen, I thought maybe I just needed some exercise so I walked Sammi down to our neighborhood playground. (I'll pause here for some photos...)

We swung by the clubhouse to see our friend/neighbor Lisa (also happens to be the Property Manager for our neighborhood), and found myself just complaining and complaining about not feeling well to her----sorry, Lisa! So, we headed home. The pains in my stomach came and went and even woke me up several times throughout the night. Something didn't seem right. 

I called my doctors in the morning and spent a few hours in their office hooked up to a stress test. Everyone at the office was sooo sweet and accommodating and just made me feel so comfortable in their care! My stress test was showing some contractions, and even though they were small, they seemed concerned about having them so early. (NOT normal, even for a second pregnancy!) 

I was not dilated at all, so Dr. Meltzer told me he wanted me to rest, rest, rest all weekend and see how things were on Monday. Um....okay.......but we had a wedding Saturday!!! When I talked to him about it he cautiously said that I was allowed to work the wedding as long as my assistant (THANK YOU, NIKKI!) carried all of my equipment all day, and if I had any changes in my body or got concerned for any reason, that I would stop everything I was doing and called the doctor on call immediately to meet me at the hospital.

Saying I was worried about the wedding is an understatement. I knew in all reality that Dan could handle a wedding by himself if he had to, that our assistant Nikki was joining us and she is truly awesome, and that my doctor would be there for me if I needed anything day or night. Long story shorter...I did great the first five hours, had a bad relapse just in time for dinner which gave me a 1-hour break to sit and rest--it was truly perfect timing if it had to happen, and had just enough energy to shoot the main events following dinner while Dan took over most of the responsibility. We got home at a decent time and I went straight to bed. I stayed in bed in the morning later than usual, took it VERY easy all day Sunday, and as of today my cramping seems to be gone completely. WHAT A RELIEF. 

On a side note, Dan's mom, Kathe, had driven down from Fort Wayne to watch Sammi for the day (our usual wedding routine) and when we got home she had done all of the ridiculous piles of dishes and laundry that got backed up all week long from me not doing any housework. (Must have been at least 3 loads of dishes and 10 loads of laundry.....not to mention all of the toys she picked up and other cleaning around the house. Okay, I was a little backed up before last week!) Kathe is so amazing and I am sooooooo grateful for all that she does for us. Sunday was the first time in a while I felt like I could "breathe" in our (clean)  house again, all thanks to her.

So, that's my long SLS story with a happy ending, so far! I am definitely taking it easy though and resting as mush as possible. Dan carries Sam anytime we are together and I try not to lift anything that isn't necessary. Dan was going to surprise me with a big trip for my 30th birthday in two weeks but we decided it was best to cancel the plans to fly. We are going to drive to Chicago instead though and that will be a very fun weekend too! 

More fun things about SLS: she is kicking a lot lately! Dan can feel her sometimes but I can feel her pretty strong often and I love it! My gall bladder is holding steady and I can say for sure the one craving I've had this entire pregnancy is milk. Plain, with Ovaltine, in hot chocolate, in a protein shake, I can't get enough! :) (With Sam it was always peanut butter!) My belly is growing like crazy and all of my current maternity clothes are getting really snug...just in time to switch to fall clothes! :)

And an update on Sammi's latest learnings.... Well, she is learning new things in her new(er) classroom all the time! She can point to any kiddo or photo of a kiddo in her class and say his/her name right every time. Today I walked into her room where her cubby is to get her things and she pointed to a pacifier in another girl's cubby and said "paci". I said, "You're right, that is a paci." Then she said, "Norah", while still pointing at the paci. I looked up at the cubby and sure enough, Norah's name was on that cubby. Amazing! 

She is learning her colors. If you point to something red, pink, purple, or blue, she will almost always say the right color. She struggles with green, orange, and yellow. :) She loves working on her "ABC's" and so far the farthest we've heard her do them right by herself is "A, B, C, D, E". She also will chime in when we are doing them with her. Counting...she's getting pretty good at counting, but she always seems to miss 3 and 4 when she counts by herself. She says "One, two, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten!" It's funny to watch her because she holds her fingers up as if she's counting with the numbers but never holds up the right amount of fingers! :) 

On our last trip to Ikea we picked up a tunnel for her and she LOVES it! She crawls through it, hides in it, and tumbles around!

Other fun news: my parents sold their home in Evansville and they are officially moving into their new house TOMORROW!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Yea!!!!!!!!!!!! 

For those of you who don't know, their new house is about 6 minutes from our door to theirs, and we are so excited to have them so close! They've already moved most of their things up, and they'll bring the last truck up tomorrow. I snapped a photo today (above) when I stopped by to grab some more of our frozen food from their used-to-be-empty freezer. (We transferred all of our food over when Ike hit and the power was off for what ended up being only 12 hours. We were soooo lucky! We've been retrieving it bit by bit since then.) 

Well, this post has turned into a novel, so I'm going to end it for now and pick up later this week if anything exciting should happen. I'm thankful we have a slow-moving week to catch up with TONS of office work like editing photos and designing wedding albums. I should do an update on the new studio soon...that would be a novel in itself! We are scheduled to move in the first week of November...yea!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Much love and well wishes to you all!!!

becky's 30th birthday

Our friends: Travis, Michelle, Becky, Mike, with Brooke and Dan

A week ago my good friend Becky had a birthday bash at the Upper Room in Broad Ripple. Sammi got sent home from school Friday with a 102 temp and we were worried about leaving her with a babysitter Saturday even though her fever was gone and she didn't get sick with any other symptoms. Although my parents were in town for the week unloading boxes, they had plans that evening so we hadn't asked them to watch her. When they found out we had a party to go to and nowhere to leave Sam, they came home early and offered to have her fall asleep at their house for the evening so we could go. We don't get out much, so we REALLY appreciated the opportunity to hang out with good friends and see Becky on her big 30!!! :) Thanks, mom and dad!!!!!
(Above) This is Becky on the left and Michelle in the middle. I LOVE these girls! They have been good friends with each other for years and coincidentally I have gotten to know Michelle because we photographed her wedding two years ago-----and separately gotten to know Becky because our husbands went to high school together and were college fraternity brothers. Now we all hang out together and I love it! Becky has a little girl, Bree, that is Samantha's age and also has a 6 month old, Kate! (I'll have to take photos of the girls next time we get together with them! --And now we're going to have FOUR GIRLS collectively!) :)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BECKY!!!!!

ponytails

Hooray! Sammi's hair is finally long enough to be put into pony tails!!! :) It's starting to get a little shaggy again, and even though we're trying to have it grow out, we need to keep it trimmed to look nice and keep growing. :) I think I'll give Amy a call soon! The photo above is what Sammi looks like many days when she comes home from school. I'm not only amazed at how cute the girls do her hair...but that she sits still for them! She's always a wiggle worm for me! :)

This was Sammi getting ready for school in the morning and daddy making breakfast. She LOVES playing with balloons!

Taking a quick break for a photo with his little girl!

*Note Sammi's new shoes for fall.....I've fallen in love with Payless Shoes' kids toddler section! Cheap, cute, and comfortable! (As if I would know....but they seem like it and Sam doesn't complain! She loves them too!) Can you believe summer is over?!?!?! How did that happen?

visiting the new studio

We visit the new studio almost everyday. The construction process is on a fast track to be done in 5 weeks (yea!), so there is something new to see every time we visit. We have a lot of land in front of the building and Samantha just loves running up and down the berms!

You can kind of see the building off to the left...we are getting close! The city of Fishers requires that you seed your property even though we still have trucks going through for irrigation purposes. Our grass is coming up great with all the rain lately! Hopefully we won't have to reseed too much of it.

I was running out of milk for Sam on the way so I stopped at Starbucks and got her her first "coffee", a Starbucks Kids' Steamer, which is whole milk steamed with a flavor of your choice. Are we starting her on bad habits early or what?!?! She actually didn't love it as much as I thought she would, which is probably a very good thing. :)

I put this photo in so you can see what is right across the street from us. Two Men & A Truck is right across the street and I'm not actually sure what is to the right. TruGreen (not shown) is to the right of the unknown building. The Fieldhouse (not shown) is just to the left of Two Men and a Truck.

sammi at the office, part II

Dan had commercial, all-day shoots on Tuesday and Thursday this past week, so it was mommy and Sammi at the office those days. Samantha LOVES to color, so we bought her a desk and an easel with a chalkboard on one side to have at the office. This is her sitting at her new desk. :) It's not put together totally yet because I forgot to bring the power drill and wasn't about the hand-screw in the cup holders and accessories through that hard plastic! :) Next week we'll finish it up.

Sammi loves to draw and color with crayons, markers, pens, chalk....anything! She's pretty good about styaing on the paper, but gets confused what she's allowed to write on her chalkboard with. :)

Sammi's play area betwen our desks. You can sort of see her new easel to the left too.

Sammi LOVES to sit on mommy's lap and color while I work on the computer. Amazingly, it works well!

I love that you can enjoy school a few days and I can enjoy you at my office a couple of days too! I'm soooo lucky!!!!!!

the story on sammi's ears

Many people have asked me about Sammi's ears--did we get the tubes? Has she had ear infections? I've been meaning to post this story for quite some time, and finally have some photos to go with it, so here it goes!

Two different things were going on in the Brand family last winter and they came together this summer. Dan has had bad back problems over the last 5-6 years, so started seeing a chiropractor. The chiropractor that was referred to us has a very holistic approach to health and wellness. Doesn't believe in drugs, immunizations, surgery, hospitals, or doctors except for accidental emergencies (eg a car wreck cut an arm off, etc.). Although this is not how we feel about medicine, Dan needed to get his back fixed, so we went to get a consultation.

The team at the chiropractor's office explained to us, in detail, how the body works. Based on their theory, if your spine is aligned, then your nerves are aligned, then your body reads illness properly, and fixes itself without medicine. It made sense. But not enough sense to us to put all three of us (me, Dan, Sam) on a program with them to come in 3 X a week over the following few months, for thousands of dollars. It didn't seem like a scam, it just seemed like more than we needed. We just wanted Dan's back to get fixed. Here's what happened:

Dan joined the program and Sam and I declined. Over the next few months, while Dan made his visits to the chiropractor over and over, Sammi got the flu twice, two viral infections, multiple sinus infections, pnemonia, strep throat three times, and 7 ear infections over three months. I got at least half of those too, in addition to mono. Dan never got sick. Not once. Not even a cold.

About this time we, along with our pediatrician (who we love!), decided it was time to see the ear specialist and talk tubes for Sammi. While I tried to get answers from our insurance company on the cost of doing this (which was amounting to about $3,000 because remember--we are self-employed and pay an arm and leg for mediocre insurance), Dan mentioned to Dr. Brean (the chiro) that we were scheduling Sam's surgery. Dr. Brean was adamant that if Samantha came in to have her spine aligned on a regular basis, she would not have all of these infections. She was so passionate about it that she offered to treat Samantha for free for 6 weeks, just to test her theory. We decided to save the $3,000 for a few weeks and try it. Why not?!?! We could always reschedule the surgery.

Since Samantha started her chiropractor treatments, she has not had a single ear infection. She had one sinus infection this summer and no other illness, at all. We've continued her treatments past the initial free six weeks and I have started going too! It's expensive for us (of course, our insurance will not cover any of it), but there is NOTHING more important than our health and it's worth it!

Samantha doesn't mind being at the office, but she hates, and I mean HATES having her neck whipped around and back adjusted. We don't have any photos of her getting adjusted because we have to both hold her down!!!!! We are all down to maintenance of going once every 2 weeks. I do have a fear that part of the reason she's been healthy is because it's also been summer, so I'm sort of dreading what this winter might bring, but we'll just see what happens!!!! We are so thankful that she has been healthy, Dan's back has been great, and my treatments have helped my pain through my pregnancy too!!!

Sammi climbing up onto her fishy table!

It makes Sam nervous to see mommy and daddy get worked on.

She always watches closely. This is me sitting on the pregnancy table. It has a part that opens under my belly so that I can "hang" through it. They have a HUGE pregnancy pillow thing that I can use as soon as the table is not comfortable anymore! How funny!

The saving grace of Sammi's tears after each adjustment...the toy box! She always finds a bracelet to take home when she comes in.

After this trip we stopped at Bub's Burgers in Carmel for some dinner. If you haven't been, you should go!!! They serve "Big Ugly Burgers", which are 1 pound of meat after cooked with a 1 pound homemade bun! (They also have other sizes and healthier choices too!) :)

Dan taught Sammi some games like thumb wrestling while we waited on our food.

Sammi enjoyed her first lemonade.

And of course, some fries...her favorite!

22 week update

It's been a few weeks since we've had an SLS (Sammi's Little Sis) update...so here it goes! Its a long one...

Finally, we've scanned in some of her 19 week ultrasound photos for you!

Above is her profile: head on right and legs going off the left side. Below is her whole body.

And, the U/S photo we opened at Cheesecake Factory...proof we are having another girl!!! This is a shot as if she was sitting on a chair and you were looking up at her from underneath.

Sam's pregnancy was hard, but this one seems a lot harder. Dan reminds me that I remember my pregnancy with Sam as being better than it actually was, and he's probably right. I have to say that the first pregnancy is much more exciting than the second. Now, don't get this confused with being excited about the baby. I am just as excited for this baby as I was for Sammi! But the pregnancy part.....I'm totally over it and can't wait to not be pregnant anymore!!!

The first 16-17 weeks I threw up all the time. I'm a person who doesn't like crowds or small spaces anyway and my pregnancy (both of them actually) has not only made that worse, but I now also get car sick easily, dizzy, and feel faint a lot. If I don't eat in time I still get sick. This makes shooting weddings and carrying equipment especially hard but I've made it through them all so far! I psych myself out a lot because I'm scared I'll get sick or faint in a public place (even though it hasn't happened yet) which just always makes matters worse!

With Sam I had two kidney infections, which are by far the worse medical thing that has ever happened to me and I am TERRIFIED of getting another. My doctor put me on an antibiotic to take everyday of my pregnancy to help prevent them this time because pregnancy makes a person more prone to them...so that makes me happy and gives me hope I might not have to deal with that this pregnancy. I, of course, being the worry wart, still worry about them all the time.

And on to my gall bladder...during my first pregnancy, I started having aching and throbbing pains in my right rib cage area. An ultrasound detected no gall bladder stones so my doc told me that I had "sludge", which is (for lack of medical terms and specifics) when the gall bladder slows the processing of fat which causes pain. It was too late in my pregnancy to have surgery to remove it so I was put on a strict diet and dealt with the pain until my delivery. We expected to have the surgery shortly after Sam was born, but then.... a miracle! All the pain went away and I was fine!!!

The relevance of telling you about that now is that I'm starting to have problems with it again this time. My doctors told me that I might, and I've been eating better than last time for sure, but I admit- not always as healthy as I should. I've read online (not always the most reliable source, but hey...) that about 12% of womens' gall bladders slow down due to hormones during pregnancy, and go back to normal after delivery. Some of those gall bladders fail after delivery, but I'm hoping that I will be fortune enough to just have the "sludge" during my pregnancies and that's it! I am avoiding the surgery if at all possible. About 30 minutes after I eat something high in saturated fat, I get the aching painful sensation in that area. Sometimes I have to lay down and rest if it gets bad enough, and some foods are surprisingly worse than others. I'm trying to be careful.

So for SLS, overall I am achy all the time, all over, and my back is always in pain (things shifting and carrying a toddler around), I'm much more emotional (for the good and bad) over things this pregnancy, but believe it or not after reading all of my woes in this post, I am in good spirits and soooooo looking forward to having this precious little girl join our family!!!! Like I said, I'm just as excited for Baby SLS...just done with the pregnancy!!! :) :) :)

On to more fun things... Sammi is starting to understand more and more that she'll be getting a sister in January. She knows there's a baby in my belly and she'll point it out to you and give her kisses. However, there are also times when you ask her where the baby is and she'll lift her own shirt up and point to her belly! Obviously we have a way to go before she really gets it. :)

We do have some names picked out but we haven't decided for sure. We've talked about what we might do with the girls' rooms but nothing is set on that yet either. Two years old seems awfully young for Sammi to be in a big girl bed, but we think if we put our queen mattress (currently in the guest room) on the floor, Sammi will do great in it. We are thinking of making the guest room her big girl room so the baby can have her current room, crib, etc. I don't really know what would be best, but I don't want to buy new furniture or another crib. With Sam it worked best for us (everyone is different...this was what worked for us to keep our sanity per our doctor's suggestion--God bless him) to put the newborn in her own bed as soon as possible (after only two weeks and this time maybe even less), so I'm not expecting to have extra time for Sam to move with the baby in a bassinet. Any ideas on when we should move Sam and how?

I'm not by any means in a hurry to get Sam potty trained, but it has crossed my mind that it would be nice once the baby is here to have only one in diapers. On the other hand, sometimes diapers almost seem easier for me than dealing with running a toddler to the bathroom every hour! :) We'll see as the months pass. These kiddos change so rapidly!

Our new studio has been taking up most of our extra time so the weeks seem to fly by, even with all of my complaining! 17 more weeks to go....ugh.....that sounds like a lot to me. :) :) :) I have to end by saying that I do feel so blessed to be pregnant with a little girl who I know I will love more than I could ever explain. I am lucky to have the opportunity to have this experience and I don't ever lose sight of that even through the aches and pains! I am truly blessed.

Belly photo coming soon....I'm getting pretty big!!! :) :) :)

congratulations, gaudins

Congratulations to Jessica and Bryan Gaudin on the birth of their son!

Cooper Robert Gaudin
September 17, 2008
(3 weeks early!)
7 pounds 6 oz
19.7 inches
Born via c-section after 18 hours of labor.

He's perfect! (Except that he's in Texas and I can't meet him yet!) :(

He's a doll and I already LOVE HIM!!!!!!! :) SLS's future boyfriend???? :) :) :)

Congratulations, Jessica and Bryan! We love you!!!!

first fudge pop

Samantha has been eating SO WELL lately, which is unusual...so last night I thought she deserved a little dessert treat! It was a bath night anyway, so I let her dive into her first fudge pop. Needless to say...she LOVED IT! She ate every bite, minus what was left on her face!

colts, ouchie, jumping, and a full sentence

Okay, so this was before the game and Sammi was cheering, dancing, and doing the touchdown sign in hopes of a good win! She also loves to jump!
After her jumping around for the Colts, Sammi ran into the kitchen, tripped and fell, and bonked her head on the hard floor, hard. Ooooohhh.... don't you HATE those moments as parents?!?!?

Holding an Elmo ice pack to her face after her fall...

Sharing with daddy...

A kiss or two makes everything better!

And in no time at all, with a big red bump on her head, she is ready....set....

jumping again! Sammi LOVES to jump! She is airborne in this photo! :)

But, it's been a long weekend and a very long day, and she is soon tired and asking to go to night night. The sad face is after mommy asked her to jump for just one more photo. But mommy...I'm ready to go to bed! You know your kiddo is tired when they ask to go to bed!

One quick hug and photo with mommy before heading upstairs to bed...

Another note about this weekend...Sammi said her first full sentence!!! Okay, so it was three words, but it made a sentence! She's been putting words together recently, mostly two at a time. "Bye bye grandma", "TV on", "No, Ryan", etc. Today she was chasing after the dogs and as soon as she was able to grab Bailey's tail she said "I got you!" while giggling and squealing in delight. It sounded more like "I gotchoo!", but I stand by the fact that is was a full sentence, used in the right context, and she said it each time she "caught" one of the dogs while playing chase! :) :) :) We are so proud. :) :) :)