Happy Birthday Baby!

My Baby is 20 today! She is the prettiest Baby that you ever did see, so here is a picture blog post dedicated to her beauty.

Post Thanksgiving Update

Well, this is my post Thanksgiving belated post. Apparently, I am the worst at posting in a reasonable amount of time from an event.

Matt and I had Thanksgiving with his sister Anne and her husband Carlos. It was at Carlos's sister's house in Orem. We opted for this Thanksgiving dinner because my parents were indecisive as to their Thanksgiving plans until two days before Thanksgiving. I like a definite plan, so I went to the dinner with a time and location already set. I've spent a few Thanksgivings without my family though, so it wasn't too unusual. When I was living in Hawaii, I would have dinner with the ward, which was cooked by the wonderful folks in the cafeteria. This years dinner was so much better than those Hawaii dinners.

Matt and I went over early in the morning to help Anne get the turkey ready because we were in charge of stuffing and we wanted to stuff the bird. Matt and I have taken to adding cranberries to our stuffing. I think that they add a delicious tartness to the stuffing. If Matt had his way, I think that the stuffing would be made of the giblets completely. He was very insistent that they be put in the stuffing. It wasn't my favorite, but it wasn't bad either.

I helped as much as I could in the kitchen with all the preparations, but I was spent early on in the day and had a lovely nap at the same time as Carlitos. That left Matt in charge of making the mashed potatoes. They turned out a little garlicy for me, but everyone else loved them and that is what matters. I woke up in time to hear an argument going on in the kitchen about whether or not the turkey was done cooking. Apparently, Anne didn't know what the little plastic red button in the turkey was for, so she pulled it out when she was prepping the turkey, so we didn't have a visual indicator of whether the turkey was done inside. It was pretty funny. We all made fun of Anne for her mistake, but the turkey turned out great so it didn't matter. I got to carve the white meat off of the turkey, which was fun. But, I left the dark meat slicing to Matt; it is much more involved.

It was a little strange being with new people for Thanksgiving because in my family, everyone wants the white meat. There is usually only dark meat left once the meal is over. But, in the Kimball household, it is the dark meat which is coveted. There was tons of white meat left over, but no dark meat. It was like being in upside down world. I even went to my parents house a couple days after Thanksgiving and they had made the dark turkey meat into a salad for sandwiches so that it would get eaten without people knowing that it was the dark meat. I took one bite and knew that I had been tricked. I cannot be fooled with dark turkey meat! It is just gross to me.

A dish that was absent from my usual Thanksgiving feast was Dar Dar Dar (named by my strange brother Mike). It is pretty much a jello salad with whip cream, cottage cheese, and pineapple. It is a family tradition to have it at Thanksgiving and meals where Mike is present. But, Matt's sister Anne did make a pistachio pudding fruit salad which had Dar Dar Dar qualities only with more fruit, no cottage cheese and lots of marshmellows. This fruit salad inspired me to create a variation of Dar Dar Dar because Matt doesn't really like my family's recipe. So, two days ago, Matt and I made a salad with pineapple, mandarin oranges, apples, cottage cheese, pistachio pudding, and whip cream. It was delicious! I have to say that it was better than Dar Dar Dar (even though saying this will bring curses down on me from my family who charishes the original). Maybe, someday, I will try to bring it to a family dinner and try to convert them. Or, maybe I will be stoned for changing the recipe.

After dinner, nothing much else happened on Thanksgiving. We played Ticket to Ride and Matt and I went home. It was a good day.

The day after Thanksgiving, the dreaded Black Friday, I went out just a little to go and get Matt's Christmas gift. My wonderful brother Johnny came with me for muscle support. He was my lifter and toter. Then, Matt and I put up our Christmas tree. Our tree is currently our only Christmas decorations, but I figure that the longer that we are married, the more decorations we will collect. I'm excited for the coming holiday!

22 Weeks

Well, I'm at 22 weeks now... or the baby is 22 weeks old rather. And, by popular demand, here are a couple pics of me and my baby belly.

Matt has been sick for over a week now. He has the cold that never wants to leave. Two nights ago, Matt sneezed (he has really loud sneezes) and I felt my whole stomach jump. Apparently, the baby heard the sneeze and was startled. Now, every time Matt sneezes or I hear a really loud noise, the baby jumps. She is, apparently, aware of sounds and is frightened by them. While I am ecstatic that the baby can now hear sounds, I am also wary by this new frightened jumping because what if my baby all skitish of sounds when she is born? I want a baby who can sleep through anything so that we won't have to be quiet when the baby is sleeping. Hopefully, this is just a stage and the baby will get more used to hearing noise.

I'm feeling pretty good right now. I still get really tired very quickly, but I am able to leave the house in the evening for a few hours before I am completely drained. I am getting more and more uncomfortable. My back hurts every day and standing only makes it worse. Additionally, my belly is very sore. My belly muscles are becoming completely useless. I often can't sit up without assistance and it hurts to try on my own. My muscles rebel against being used. Additionally, the skin on my belly really hurts as it is stretching out to compensate for the ever expanding baby. It kinda feels like a backwards pinch. It is the same stinging sensation that a pinch offers, only it is a stretching of the skin rather than a pinching. It really smarts!

I didn't realize how trying pregnancy would be. It is a complete body change, so that I don't even feel like my body is mine any more. I don't feel or look like me. Plus, I'm drained of energy all the time and dependent on my eating schedule (if I go off my eating schedule, I get sick to my stomach). I'm like a child myself. I just didn't think that it would be this hard. My sister in laws made pregnancy seem a lot easier. Oh the tangled web of lies!

Despite all the unpleasantries that this pregnancy has come to offer, I love my baby very much. I am so excited for the time when I can finally hold her and see the product of all this work that I'm putting in. This baby better be very cute and very worth it.

Last Weekend

Well, I am suppose to have a belly pic to post, but my digital camera is fighting with me. The batteries die as soon as I put them into the camera and I think that the camera is an evil battery eater. We bought a camcorder that we can take pictures with, but it doesn't have a flash, so the lighting has to be really good to get a good picture. I can't seem to take a picture I like anyway. I make funny faces in all the pics. So, the belly pic will have to wait until next time.

Last weekend, Matt was not feeling well, so we mostly sat around the house, but we did manage to get out for a little while. My maternity jeans no longer fit me (curse that my belly is not the only thing to grow), so we headed to the motherhood store in search of some jeans that I can wear. DJ came along because he was told that we would only be getting a pair of pants and then leaving. I think Matt was foolish to think that he can take me to a clothing store and not expect me to try on more than one thing.

The sales lady was very helpful and grabbed a selection of items for me to try on. I ended up with four shirts and two pairs of pants (I wanted a sweater too, but I was holding back). Hopefully, these clothing items will last me until the end of the pregnancy. I tried to buy a little bigger so that there was room to grow. I feel like a child when I say that because my Mom used to buy clothes that were a little big for us so that we could grow in them. Curse children and their need to constantly be changing sizes. They are the bane of Matt's wallet's existence.

Matt and DJ were forced to wait while I tried on clothes and snacked on a Subway sandwich (cuz I was very hungry). Then, the register computer went down and the sales lady had to ring us up manually and it took forever. Matt and DJ survived, but just barely. I don't think that DJ ever wants kids now.

Matt and I attempted pork ribs this weekend, but we were not entirely successful. We didn't have a recipe, we were just wingin' it and it turned out much too salty. I blame me because I was in charge of the salt. Here's hopin' that we get a recipe and do better next time.

Usually, we are fairly good cooks, most people enjoy our meals (me and the baby). But, I have been branching out since my pregnant tastes are not inclined to eat chicken. So, I search for redder meat recipes. I've picked up a few that I enjoy, but the search is still on. Now all I have to do is teach Marie how to cook from scratch. It may be a lost cause, we will have to just wait and see.

Week 20

My Baby is Skeletor!

Well, I am at 20 weeks now and that means that we went in for our official ultrasound to make sure that all the baby's parts are there and to verify the gender. I am glad to say that Norm was right, it is still a girl. Norm checked all of her major organs and they were all there, which is excellent. Unfortunately, she was being a naughty baby and did not want to stay still for the ultrasound. This made it difficult to check her organs and get good pictures of her.

She has a lot less room in there than she did last time we saw her. So, it was difficult to get a picture of all of her from head to foot. Plus, her legs and arms were all bent and stuff.

It was weird because a lot of what we saw of her was her skeleton. We could see all the bones in her arms and legs and her whole spine. It was kinda cool, but weird at the same time.

She snacked on the placenta a little while we were watching her. Which I thought was really gross, but apparently that is just what babies do. Babies are disgusting.

This pic is a shot of the back of her. She was often showing us her back. She moved around a lot the whole time and it made me a little sick because when she wiggles a lot, it makes me nausiated.

I'm feeling pretty good at this stage in the pregnancy. I find myself to be very hungry a not small amount of the time. And, if I don't eat at the scheduled time that I usually eat, I get very nausiated and then not goodness ensues. Weekends are the worst because it is different from my daily schedule and I often forget to eat and then I get all complainy and then it is hard on Matt.

I can feel the baby wiggling a lot! She really likes to wiggle and move around and it kinda drives me crazy because it makes me sick to my stomach. Jill says that this will pass though and I will start to feel some solid kicks and less wiggles. I hope so because I don't like it when she moves. It is reassuring to know that she is healthy and moving, but it is very uncomfortable.

I have some of my energy back now, which is nice. I have actually stayed up until 10pm the last few nights this week. This is a record for me. I am usually all complainy and upset if I'm not in bed and almost asleep by 9pm. Matt is loving that I am able to stay up a little later and not get upset.

Now that we know for sure that the baby is a girl, we can finally go and start buying gender appropriate baby stuff. I know that I will probably get some stuff from baby showers, but babies apparently need all sorts of stuff. Jill sent me a list of baby things that I will most likely need and the list is quite lengthy. Who knew that something so small could need so much.

Well, that is all for now. I will post another belly pic when I finally charge the batteries in my camera. I blame the french for my slacking on that one.

Our New Floor

Last week Matt began work on our new kitchen floor. We decided to go from ghetto linoleum to awesome tiles! Matt ripped out the linoleum earlier in the week and I neglected to get pics of the floor before hand because I'm the worst! Then, on Friday, Matt started laying down all the tiles. Here is a shot of the beginning of the process.


Matt's hands took a beating during the process. His right hand was all cracked and not good looking, so he is showing his displeasure at his ruined hands in this pic.


Matt got all the tile down on Friday night. Then, on Saturday morning, Sarah came over and helped Matt grout and clean the tile. I was not helpful for the whole process because I'm all pregnant and deficient. It is hard for me to get down on the ground and move around on my hands and knees (as is required for tile work). I blame the baby entirely. Luckily, my prettier and less fetus like Baby came and was a good helper.

Here is a pic of the floor after all the grout is in. It has been cleaned once, but it is still all grouty.

Then, on Sunday, Matt cleaned the floor again and moved all the large appliances back into the kitchen. Which I loved because I disliked my refrigerator in my dining room. Matt is showing off his mad dust panning skills in this pic.


And then we were done and I have a brand new tile floor. I love it! It matches the cabinets better than the green linoleum and it is less white trash. It also makes the kitchen feel bigger. Kudos to Matt for all his awesome and efficient work on the floor. I really did nothing during the process. I fetched food for my husband worker and took pictures. I take no credit for all the floor's brilliance.

Post Halloween Pics

Well, I finally uploaded some of the Halloween pics from my camera, so here are my belated Halloween pics.
We carved more pumpkins on Halloween. So, I did Trogdor and Matt did a scary skeleton thing.



Here is Lucy, she was a strawberry. And, little Carlitos, who was a dragon. But, he didn't like to wear his costume, so it was difficult getting a picture of him.

A Simpsony Halloween

Every year on Halloween, my company gives each department money to decorate their cubicles for Halloween. Then, there is a contest to see who has the best decorations. We did The Simpsons in my department. Here is a sample of what our area looked like.


This is the great Jebidiah Springfield, after which the town is named, he turned out really well.


This is what our cubicle isle looked like. It was very crowded with Simpson characters.


For those of you who cannot read the chalkboard, it says, "The capital of Montana is not Hannah."


I drew this squishee machine myself. I ended up keeping the squishee cup because it is awesome.

The Nuclear Power Plant.

Blinky the Three eyed fish.



I also drew this Duff sign from scratch. The Duff signs that I saw on the internet weren't cool enough, so I made up this design.

Anyway, we drew and painted and decorated for a month before Halloween in the hopes that we might win that blue ribbon, but alas, we did not. Marketing won... again. I kinda hate them more than a little. It is their jobs to be all creative, and half of them are artists! They did Monsters Inc. and they won. I think it is a total jip though because they have a much larger cubicle space, and they took over two conference rooms to put their decorations in. Whatever.

We still had fun decorating, it was a good time.

Pumpkin Carving!

Matt and I went to Matt's cousin Scottie's Halloween party this weekend. DJ, Anne and the kids came too. It was a lot of fun and it is probably the only party that I am attending this year, so I am glad that I was feeling well enough to go.

It was a barbeque/pumpkin carving kind of party. With food and pumpkin carving, there is no bad. There was a lot of people there, mostly people that we don't know because we don't see Scottie and Renee that much, but it was fun to meet new people. I was not the only pregnant lady at the party, there were four other pregnant women there. There was a lot of pregnancy in the room, it was weird, but nice to not be the only person with a baby belly.


I found a seat on the couch during the party and I mostly parked there with Anne's daughter Lucy. She is getting a lot more fun as she is getting older. She is three months old now and she is smiling and laughing. Prior to now, she was a fairly fussy baby unless Mom was holding her. But, I may have just seen her on her bad days. She was fun to hold at the party though. She was a big hit. Anne left her on the couch for a while and people kept coming over and picking her up and playing with her. Eventually, she fell asleep on the couch.


Carlitos was being very much a little boy at the party. There was candy on all of the tables and he kept snatching candy and eating it. Or, trying to eat it anyway. He got a tootsie roll and he did not quite get how to eat it and he ended up drooling chocolate tootsie roll everywhere. It was really gross. But, he didn't learn his lesson and he kept going back for more toosie roll.


I don't have a picture of Anne, but she was there, trying to juggle Lucy, Carlitos and pumpkin carving. Matt and I went to the Pumpkin patch a couple weeks ago and we picked out some pumpkins to carve for the party. My pumpkin was a decent size pumpkin, but I didn't realize how very huge it was until we brought it to the party and it made all the other pumpkins look like miniatures. Matt's pumpkin was big too. I guess we just like big pumpkins.


Anne and DJ shared a pumpkin and they carved an unrecognizable cat thing. No one really got it until there was a light in the pumpkin. I don't have a pic of them though cuz it was taken on Anne's camera.

Before the party, Matt and I looked up pumpkin patterns online and free handed a pattern on each of our pumpkins. Then, we went to Walmart and got some of those cheap pumpkin carving kits. We didn't realize that the little blades that come with the kits would be no match for our ginormous pumpkins. We both broke a tool while we were carving. It took forever to carve my pumpkin! It didn't take very long to gut it because it was a fairly hollow pumpkin, but because I drew the pattern so large, it took forever to carve! Especially with those crappy little plastic tools. But, I thought that the pumpkins turned out well. I carved a mummy and Matt carved a scary wolfman lookin' face. The pumpkins are now hanging out on our porch and are the only decorations that I am doing this year.


The party was a lot of fun and I'm glad that we were able to go and that the fetus was very cooperative on Saturday.

17 weeks

I'm at 17.5 weeks now. I don't think that my belly looks very different from 15 weeks, but it sure does feel different. I feel like I am getting bigger and bigger, but I know that it is actually a very slow process. I often just feel a lot heavier in front than I am used. It is that darn baby and all it's weight that it is adding on to me. It is like 7 oz now.

I'm feeling pretty good. I'm actually able to occasionally go out and about in the evenings for like an hour or two and I don't start to cry. Which is a huge accomplishment for me. I find myself being a lot happier and a lot more energetic. I still get tired really easily and go to bed WAY early, but I think that that is a small sacrifice. This stage in my pregnancy is definitely more favorite than that lamo first trimester. I don't know who invented the first trimester, but they just like to watch women suffer.

It's a Kitten!

So, my wonderful brother Norm did my 16 week ultrasound yesterday. Mom, Marie, and Sarah were present for this ultrasound. Everyone wanted to be there when the sex of the baby was determined. Mom and Marie were early, like all good people should be and Sarah was a little late, so she wasn't initially present when we discovered the gender of the baby. But, I think she was still happy that she got to see the baby.


The first thing that I noticed when we saw the baby on the screen was that it was a lot bigger than the last time we saw it. The baby didn't have nearly as much room in there as it did before. A month ago, the baby was moving and flipping around inside of me, but this time, it hardly moved at all because it was all squished in there. It was weird how much it had grown. Norm measured it and the baby is still bigger than it should be. It is a week and a half bigger than it should be. Stupid Derington/Kimball genes.


So, the baby was being all shy at first and had it's back to us, but eventually it turned around and Norm was able to get a good shot of the bum and it's a girl! Matt and I are very happy. I'm excited because now I get to buy a bunch of girl stuff. Plus, girl babies are usually a lot cuter than boy babies and I really want my baby to be cute.


This ultrasound was a lot of fun because the baby was bigger and easy to see her features. Mom immediately started talking baby talk to the ultrasound machine and we were forced to make fun of her. Marie was freakin' out the whole time with a high squeaky voice, which only got squeakerier when the baby moved. I think that Matt and I were the most calm during the whole thing. We were just happy that she is healthy and growing strong.

After we were done, Marie had a surprise for us. She gave us a baby book for a girl. It is really cute and it has places where I can write about the pregnancy and put pictures of the baby and stuff. It is really cool.

So, congrats to all the winners who guessed right. Make sure to laugh at all the losers and make them feel bad about themselves.

Boy or Girl?

Well, next week we go to get the ultrasound that will hopefully determine whether we are having a boy or a girl. I say hopefully because, if the baby is shy, we might not be able to tell. But, now is the time to get your guesses in as to whether it will be a boy or a girl.

Matt thinks it is a boy.

I think it is a girl (don't tell Matt; he wants me to think positively).

Those who are correct will get to lord it over the very wrong people.

15 Weeks

Happy Birthday Matt!

Tomorrow is Matt's Birthday and he is turning 30. A fact which he likes to keep hidden and I like to tell to everyone. So, Matt will be 30 years old when his first child is born and I will be 25, we still seem very young to me. But, compared to Norm, who has four kids at the age of thirty, we are very behind.

Matt's parent's were here this weekend, so we had a little celebration for him while they were here. Matt doesn't really like Birthdays or parties or anything like that, so we called the celebration a "Birthday Gathering." It was just all the Kimball's and Baby who were there to celebrate Matt and his growing age.


Matt told me that he wanted a lemonade Oreo ice cream cake for his gathering. When I heard about this "cake" I thought that he had made it up because it sounded really weird. But, Matt insisted that it was a real thing. So, I researched with some local ice cream places that make ice cream cakes, but it seemed that this cake still did not exist. So, I called Momma Kimball, and sure enough, she was the one who had made this cake for Matt. So, Momma Kimball helped me make him his lemonade Oreo ice cream cake. The cake wasn't really something that I would pick to eat because it was both sour and sweet, but Matt loved it.


So, we sang and ate cake and Matt opened his presents and that was about it. I got Matt a painting of Mt. Timpanogos for his Birthday. Every time we go to Towne Centre, Matt likes to look in this painting shop, so I went to that painting shop and bought him a picture for his Birthday. He keeps saying that we need more art in the house and less pictures of us, so this will start us on our way.

If Your Sleepy and You Know It

Matt and I went over to Anthon and Marie's last night for food and XBox fun. We haven't really gotten out of the house much in the first three months of my pregnancy, so now we are attempting to make plans and get out a little more. So, we decided to go to Ree's because they recently modded their XBox and it is awesome.

The trouble with going out in the evenings is that I'm tired because I work and grow a baby all day, so I'm exhausted by the time I get home and all I want to do is sleep. Additionally, we went over at like 6:30pm, which is right when I like to eat dinner and my body was mad at me when I didn't eat when it was used to. So, Marie made me some awesome Three Cheese Mac and Cheese right when we got there to tide me over until the burgers and dogs were done cooking. One point Marie.

We ate, and it was awesome because it made me feel better, then we set ourselves down in front of the XBox. We played some lame games like a snowboarding trick game, which none of us were really good at, and an ATV game, which Marie won every time. But, then we played Shrek, which turns out to be a pretty awesome game. I've gotten so caught up in the more "adult" video games like Final Fantasy and Car Racing, that I forgot how fun the themed and "kid-like" games could be.

We played Shrek for a long time and I was starting to get tired, so I asked Marie the time and she tried to lie to me and tell me that it was earlier than it was, but it was really like past 10pm. I should not stay up that late on a work night. I am just exhausted at work today. I'm almost non-functioning. But, we had a good time and I was glad that we got out of the house for a night.