a gazillion boxes

well, it's done. we're officially moved in to the new place, we're officially moved out of the old place. everything went reasonably well, although we think the movers probably want to kill us. us and our gazillion bajillion boxes. so, all that's left now is the unpacking. i finished about 75% of the kitchen already, so that's going well. next up is abby's room, getting all the toys and books unpacked. we love love LOVE our new place...the layout, the light, the location, EVERYTHING. it's the awesome.

happy new year to all...tonight is the anniversary of brian and i meeting, eight long years ago. drink some champagne for me, since i can't have any. :)

see you next year!

well, saturday's the big day. however, our phone, internet, and tv are all being disconnected at some point tomorrow. phone will be hooked up at the new place on saturday, dish network installed saturday afternoon, and internet hooked up on monday. i'll tell ya, this moving during the holidays is for the birds. charter's been after us the past 2 days trying to get us to come back to them...not going to happen. stupid charter. next time they call, i might try to see what i could get them to agree to to get us to come back...free dvr? upgrade the tv package for free? increase modem speed for free? hard to tell.

so, christmas. we left here around 9:15 on monday night. why so late? well, church got done around 8:10, and despite my good intentions, i didn't get out of there till about 8:20, which got me home around 8:45. then ian needed to eat, and packing needed to be finalized, and then ian spit up everything he had eaten. so, we got on the road and it was a pretty good drive up. got there a bit after 11pm, and abby went straight to bed, of course. ian's christmas present to us was his longest stretch of sleep yet...6 whole consecutive hours! best christmas present ever. :) things we forgot to pack: the pack and play, and all of brian's clothes. christmas morning came. abby still had no voice, but was feeling significantly better. we opened presents with my parents, and around mid-morning, i started feeling very achy and had the chills. as anyone who knows me knows, i never get cold. so when i started complaining that it was freezing in the house, i realized i might actually have a fever. and sure enough, 99 degrees. which for me, whose body temp is usually in the low 97's, is a pretty good fever. so i took some tylenol, and felt much better. weird. even though it went away relatively quickly, it still put a damper on my christmas spirit. we had lunch (ham, cranberry sauce, salad, cheesy potatoes, escargots, cookies/treats), and then headed over to menasha. everyone got there around 4:30 and we ate supper (salisbury steak, mac and cheese, cottage cheese, mashed potatoes, rolls, corn) and then opened presents. abby and james and hayden ran around like crazy, so it was all pretty chaotic. after presents, we loaded up and headed back home around 7. so, it was a good christmas, despite the sickies that have invaded our family. brian went to the doctor yesterday and probably has bronchitis, so he's on antibiotics now, and abby just finished her course of antibiotics and will probably be done with the steroids tomorrow.

the packing has been proceeding relatively well, considering. wish us luck on our last day living here tomorrow, and with the big move on saturday. i'm so grateful we're not moving ourselves, but the packing is stressful enough. christmas pictures to come, once we're settled in.

the christmas from hell

so apparently we have angered the universe. karma has it in for us, big-time. having to move in the midst of the holidays and the dead of winter apparently wasn't enough.

we were supposed to go up to appleton yesterday for the christmas festivities, but the weather didn't cooperate. ice, snow, blowing snow...all conspired to make it almost impossible to travel. it ended up working out better that way, though. abby woke up yesterday morning losing her voice, but was acting fine so i didn't think much of it. we went to church and came home, and all of a sudden she started wheezing and crying and coughing like crazy. she didn't want any lunch, which is definitely not like her. so, we put her down for rest time and she FELL ASLEEP. first nap in like a year, i think. then she woke up and promptly threw up a bunch of phlegm, and was really struggling to breathe. so, i got her dressed and took her to urgent care while brian stayed home with ian. got to urgent care and the receptionist was so freaked out by her breathing that she called the nurse to come get her right away, which was awesome. so, they gave her a nebulizer treatment and some other medicine, and she wasn't getting better enough, so the doctor decided to call the AMBULANCE to take her to the ER. the good part was that she was better enough by that time to kind of enjoy the ambulance ride. :) so, we stayed in the ER for a couple of hours, they did a chest x-ray to rule out pneumonia, and finally decided that she has croup. so, she's on a steroid now for that, and an antibiotic for a possible bronchial infection the doctor saw on the x-ray. she threw up again a couple of times last night, but it was pretty much just from gagging on the 10 pounds of phlegm she has. she's acting much better today, and her breathing sounds better too. still no voice, but definite improvement. and since she's better, i think we'll go up to appleton tonight after the christmas eve service at church and be up there tomorrow.

sigh, so that's what we've been up to. and packing. and more packing. we're going to try to take some stuff over to the new place today too, so that'll be productive, i hope.

happy holidays to all!

One month!

ian is one month old today! it's hard to believe...seems like it's been a lot longer. :) he can now: bear weight on his legs, hold his head up for quite a while, smile like crazy, and even laugh a little bit. the smiling thing? WAY early. normally babies don't have a social smile until 6 weeks old, and he's been doing it since 3 weeks. wonder baby!

in other news, the move is underway. well, i should say the packing is well underway. we get the keys for the new place this coming saturday, and the big move happens the 27th or 29th. so hooray for moving in the winter, between christmas and new year's, and with a month-old baby. yay fun!

this morning was my first day back at work from maternity leave...luckily the christmas pageant was today, so it was a low-pressure day for me to come back. everyone loved ian, of course, and he behaved himself for jenny in the nursery too. so, i'm feeling good about that. abby spent the weekend with grandma and grandpa schultz so that we could get some packing done, and had a great time, of course. she got to play in the snow and decorate christmas cookies.

now begins our last full week of living here.

our daughter the shark

so sharks? they have to keep moving at all times or they'll die. also? abby. she apparently has to keep moving and also making noise at all times, or she will also die. the only exception to this rule is when sesame street is on. then she's not a shark anymore. if it were just moving and talking, i could handle that. but it's not. it's jumping, flailing around, and spouting all sorts of gibberish. it's almost like she's gotten bored with all the english words and has started just making up her own. a typical exchange:

abby: "i have an idea!"
me or brian: "what's your idea?"
abby: "flhignaogmbodn jwodngd BWAH!"
me or brian: "oh."
(repeat a zillion times)

it's exhausting. :)

dane dah-dane dane DANE!

so, hooray! we found an apartment! with less than a month to spare, even. :) my incipient heart attacks and strokes can now back the you-know-what off. we'll be moving to dane, wisconsin. where is dane, you ask? well, i can tell you, but i suggest google maps or mapquest, as i am somewhat directionally challenged and have never actually seen it on a map. my understanding is that it's approximately 5 miles north of waunakee (the only waunakee in the world, btw). the apartment is great, and has basically everything that we wanted: a 2-car attached garage, eat-in kitchen (yay for no more staining the carpet with messy children eating!), washer/dryer in the unit, huge rooms, everything. it's the last house on a dead-end street, so we are literally going to be living almost in a cornfield. ah, dane. it's a pretty "nothing" little town, but it's close enough to madison/surrounding areas that it won't be a problem. we'll be moving between christmas and new year's, which is just about the most inconvenient time possible, but we have no choice. i'm just so excited we found a place and that it fulfills almost all the criteria we had that i can't even control myself. DANE!

in other happy news, ian had his first bottle today. for those of you new to the rogers family sagas or for those who have forgotten, abby was a notorious bottle-refuser. she took exactly one bottle, ever, and that was at 3 weeks old while my parents watched her. after that, nothing. we bought every kind of bottle and nipple known to mankind, and she would just scream and cry. the girl would not eat on thursday nights when i had choir rehearsal. but ian? just sucked those 2 ounces down like he'd been doing it all his life. and it was formula, even, because i'm not pumping this time. impressive, eh? brian's pretty happy that he won't have to go through the thursday night hell again.

DANE!

woo!

on the right side of the page, you'll see a new feature on the rogers family blog. it's a slideshow! i'm still tweaking a few things, but i think it's pretty cool. go google go!

big love

after abby was born and while brian was home on paternity leave, we spent a lot of our waking hours with her sleeping on one of us and watching dvd's. to this day, james bond movies and old dr. who episodes (primarily the theme music) never fail to take me back to those days. getting up at 3 in the morning and geeking out with my husband while snuggling with our ever-so-snuggly newborn. this time around is slightly different...we can't just get up in the middle of the night and sleep in the middle of the day like the baby does. but, we have managed to have some good newborn-snuggling and dvd-watching time regardless. our choice for this time is "big love", the HBO series about polygamists. we're about 5 or 6 episodes into the first season, and we're enjoying it quite a bit. it's interesting for me since i've read "under the banner of heaven", the jon krakauer book about the polygamist offshoots of mormonism, i feel that i have a pretty good understanding of the history and culture of these groups. in other words, it makes me feel smart. :) plus, there are some pretty good lines, such as, "so, i guess you heard...your mom shot my tires out. brand new radials."

brian goes back to work this coming friday. argh.

click here to visit the snapfish album of november pictures...lots of good ones.

12 days old

ian had his first doctor's appointment today! i took him in this afternoon for a 2-week checkup to make sure everything's going well. i wanted the doctor to take a look at his belly-button...the stump fell off on saturday, and without going into too much (disgusting) detail, it's been looking a little, um, weird since then. she says that he may have a small umbilical hernia, or possibly an unclosed vein in there somewhere, so we go back in a couple of weeks to have her look at it again and make sure it's healing a little better. the big news from the appointment, though, was the weight check. i wasn't sure how much he'd gained...i knew he was back to his birth weight at least, and probably a little bit more as well. well, definitely more than a little bit. his birth weight was 8 pounds 12 ounces, his discharge weight from the hospital was 8 pounds 3 ounces. his weight now at 12 days old? 9 pounds 10.5 ounces. this is an INSANE amount of weight gain in 12 days. so, yeah. future linebacker, i think.

abby's 3rd birthday is this friday. as you can see from the picture, we had her party up in appleton this past weekend. but, we'll go out for dinner on friday and give her her presents from us. i don't know where we're going to go yet, though.

turkey time

so, yeah. we've been out of town the last couple of days, so that's why i haven't updated the blog. we're celebrating thanksgiving up in appleton at my parents'. yes, you read that right. we traveled with ian being less than a week old. so far everything's gone pretty well...it's nice to have the extra hands.

we got up here on wednesday afternoon after an uneventful trip. ian slept the whole way, and abby behaved herself reasonably well. john, mary, kim, matt, and derek all arrived around suppertime and we ordered takeout from koreana. abby once again ate her body weight in chicken katsu, and ate most of brian's salad as well. she got to bed pretty late that night, but was up at the crack of dawn the next morning, which wasn't cool. that night went pretty well with ian, but we learned some things that needed to be different for the next night.

thursday morning was spent pretty leisurely for us...my parents were busy setting everything up for having 14 people over. kim's group got over here again from the hotel mid-morning or so, and we all watched the macy's parade. abby enjoyed it, but not enough to stop her from running around like crazy too. then at 11:30 we switched to the packer game. lunch was around noon or 12:30 when everyone else got here, and everything was excellent. i ate WAY too much, of course, but it was totally worth it. turkey, mashed potatoes, dressing, cranberry relish, a vegetarian casserole, veggies and dip, fruit salad, matt's homemade bread, corn muffins, pecan pie, pumpkin pie, and birthday cake for kim's birthday. it was awesome. :) then we all just sat around pretty comatose for the rest of the afternoon. we headed over to menasha around 5, and i couldn't even fathom being able to eat any more. but, i did. we had beef tenderloin, homemade mac and cheese, hashbrown casserole, and some other stuff that i honestly can't remember. it was a very food-intensive day. abby got to play with james and hayden, and had a blast, of course. ian did pretty well too. came back to my parents' and put abby to bed over an hour later than her usual time. but, she was up at the crack of dawn AGAIN the next day.

friday was a lazy day. just hung out here and snuggled ian all day, pretty much. darlene called mid-afternoon and asked if we wanted to come over for fish for dinner...knowing how much brian loves his perch, i said sure. i had thought there was something weird about her voice, but didn't think much of it till later. we got over there at the agreed-upon time, got in the house, and i was unbuckling ian from his carseat, and i hear brian say, "what are you doing here??" i was puzzled, but engrossed in the unbuckling process...so i wondered who the heck would be there that wouldn't normally be. after i got him out, i turned around, and there was brian's grandma! she had driven all the way down from webster to see her newest great-grandchild and to surprise the living bejesus out of us. :) she also gets the bonus of getting to come to abby's birthday party. so, she got to hold ian, and we all got to eat fish. all in all, a good night.

today is abby's birthday party. we're just doing a small thing with the grandparents, great-grandma, and uncle alan. so, more on that when it's done.

hopefully you all have checked out the pictures of ian's first few hours on snapfish. if you can't access them for some reason, or don't want to register, email me and i will send you some. there are a LOT, so i can't email them all to everybody, but i'll pick some good ones. we will be back home tomorrow afternoon and i can send things then.

hope everyone had a good thanksgiving!

picture time!

snapfish album of ian's birth

ta-da!

introducing: Ian Dale Rogers!
born November 16th, 2007 at 11:43 pm
8 pounds 12 ounces
20.5 inches

sorry this post is a day late...i'm sure you all understand, though. we came home from the hospital this afternoon around 4:30 or so.

birth story:
we went in for the induction on the morning of the 16th at 11:30 am. we got admitted and all the paperwork filled out, and things got moving around 1:00 when they started the pitocin (after 5 IV attempts). i started having contractions pretty much right away, which proved my suspicion that it wouldn't take much to get things going. i decided i wanted to walk around to aid the process, but baba ghannouj wouldn't stay still so they could keep the monitor on his heartbeat. so, 45 minutes of the nurse trying to get him to stay on the monitor, and we both gave up. i decided that i'd wait a little bit to walk around and get back in the bed so they could monitor him a little better. i laid back down, the nurse got him back on the monitor, and my water promptly broke as she walked away. :) things REALLY got moving at this point (2:30pm). the contractions got much stronger, and i quickly lost my ability to deal with them. i requested the epidural at 4:30, and i'm very glad i didn't wait any longer because it took an hour for the epidural man to show up. so, got the epidural at 5:30/5:45ish, and was 5cm at that point. baba ghannouj got picky at this point and only wanted me to lay on my right side...every time i switched, his heart rate would go down. the next few hours passed relatively uneventfully, and at 9:00 i was 10cm and supposedly ready to push. well, i couldn't feel anything, but i tried anyway. after about a half-hour of "pushing" i was finally feeling enough that i started making some progress. but, around 10:30/10:45, serious frustration and discouragement was setting in. progress was very slow, and i was having a LOT of back pain (FORESHADOWING ALERT) which led me to ask my doctor to check and make sure he was faced the right way (faced down toward my back). she checked and said, "yep, faced the right way, you just need to push harder." sigh. close to 11:40, his head had been partially out for quite some time but wouldn't come the rest of the way, no matter what i did. so, she cut a little episiotomy, and with the next push, he blasted out like he was fired out of a cannon. and it ended up the doctor was WRONG. he came out "sunny-side up", facing straight up to the ceiling with his eyes wide open. this is a bad way for the baby to be faced because it means the biggest part of the head has to come through first...it's much more difficult to get a baby out this way. it would have been nice to know, but i suppose it wouldn't have made a huge difference to know it beforehand.

ian's doing really really well. he's a champion nurser and a champion pooper already. abby approves of him so far, although she initially wouldn't say his name at all, and today has called him lily several times (after auntie jenny's 7-month-old daughter), and also "baby dale rogers." so, we're working on that. we're also working on remembering to use "inside voice", but that's been an ongoing project anyway. but, she's been a big helper already with diaper changes since we've been home.

i am uploading all the pictures to snapfish and to flickr (for those of you who don't want to register with snapfish) now, and will post the links as soon as they're done. he's super-cute...enjoy the pictures!

last-minute

i know i said that the next post would be the birth announcement, but i lied. :) we're headed for the hospital in a little less than an hour, so we're taking care of some last-minute things. we both got good sleep last night, so i think we're good to go. brian will be coming home every so often in the next couple of days to feed kishi, so he will dump pictures off the camera into the computer and post the big birth announcement and pictures here. he'll also send email to those who don't check the blog. so hopefully by the end of the day tomorrow, everyone will know the big news!

wish us luck!

the light at the end of the very very long tunnel

so, i saw the doctor this morning for the last time before the baby comes. no progress since monday, but hallelujah! we've scheduled the induction! brian and i are due at the hospital at 11:30 on friday to get this show on the road. abby is safely tucked away with grandparents as of this morning, so i actually get some time to myself before friday too! woohoo! so, hopefully baba ghannouj's birthday will be either november 16th or 17th. the next post will be the birth announcement, and will include a multitude of pictures.

overdue

well, baba ghannouj is officially late to the party. brian and i keep trying to explain to him/her that there's much more room out here, there's food, all sorts of good stuff. but, no dice. we all went to the doctor together this morning for the fateful appointment. i'm up to 3cm now, which is definite progress. she seemed to think i have a good chance of going on my own in the next couple of days, so we tabled the induction discussion for now. i go back in first thing wednesday morning if the baby's not here yet, and then we'd most likely go ahead and schedule the induction. i got all excited this morning after my appointment because i was having some pretty good contractions, stronger than the ones i'd been having. but, after a long walk and a nap, they faded out. this whole thing is all very discouraging...i KNOW that i'm only one day overdue, i KNOW that i won't be pregnant forever, i KNOW that the baby's coming very soon one way or another. but, it doesn't make the waiting, the anticipation, the buildup and letdown any easier at all. i can know something intellectually, but not be able to handle it emotionally. between the pain, the hormones, and the general feeling that i've been beaten by a baseball bat, it's hard to be objective.

hopefully my next post will be a birth announcement.

eviction notice

well, the day is here. today is baba ghannouj's due date. has she/he seen fit to arrive? of course not, because that would be too easy. we go in first thing tomorrow morning to see the doctor, and then we will decide from there what we're going to do. one way or another, baba ghannouj will be here by the end of the week because i'm the mom and I SAY SO.

so, we watched the packers massacre the vikings today. abby enjoyed the game, as usual. her favorite thing to yell? "get the man with the ball!", a saying passed from grandma schultz, to me, and now to her. she hasn't quite learned yet that you should only yell it if the opposing team has the ball, though. :) after the game, we went to borders to do our pre-shopping for the extra discount weekend coming up after thanksgiving.

sigh

well, wouldn't you know. as soon as i called the on-call doctor last night to see what i should do about these contractions? they stopped. stupid uterus.

so, a pretty laid-back day today. abby and i just chilled out, and then brian finished with his jury duty around 2 or so, and then we went to the library and hung out there for a while. then a nice supper together, and that was about it. tomorrow we'll head over for our weekly playdate.

not much to say tonight.

39 weeks 3 days

so i had my weekly doctor's appointment today. no progress since last week, so still at 2 cm. i was feeling pretty discouraged and frustrated, obviously. but, the doctor and i talked about options, and decided that i would see her in the office first thing on monday morning, and depending on what (if any) progress has been made, we may schedule an induction. i've spent this entire pregnancy, in fact the entire 3 years since abby's birth, hoping to avoid another induction. so, that's another source of frustration.

the good news is, i've been having some actual regular contractions tonight! this is a very good sign, and i'm hoping it means the real deal is close at hand. think contraction thoughts for me. think non-induction thoughts for me.

lethal weapon

yes, that is actually how big my belly is. be afraid. be very afraid.

in case anyone's wondering, NO, the baby's not here yet. how does it look like i feel about that? this is now officially the longest i've ever been pregnant.

and to add insult to injury, brian has been chosen for a jury trial that started yesterday (monday) and runs through thursday. apparently they only excuse you if the imminent birth is your first child. or if you're a high school volleyball coach whose team is going to state. because you know that's high-priority stuff. not like a second child...you can pop one of those out like nothing. what? am i bitter? what would make you think something like that? just because i threatened to go down to the courthouse and do some damage with my ginormous belly? no, no, i'm fine, really. :)

in non-baby-related news, on sunday we were doing a bunch of errands, and abby was in the backseat singing a song that had something to do with eyeballs, but we couldn't understand anything else. turns out that she was singing, "moisten my eyeballs, moisten my eyeballs" over and over again. then she stopped and said, "blinking keeps your eyeballs wet and clean!" i think she's receiving alien transmissions. then her song moved on to, "eardrums, eardrums, eardrums! tastebuds, tastebuds, tastebuds!" woo!

imaginationland

so, halloween. this is the first year that we've actually done anything for halloween with abby, so we were pretty curious to see how it would go. over the past week or so, she's had some weird reactions to halloween stuff, so i was a little apprehensive, but it actually has gone really well. this morning we went to the halloween storytime at borders with costume and all, and she LOVED it. her favorite part of it was the costume parade through the store. then tonight we went trick-or-treating with auntie bunna and her family, and she loved that too. in fact, she was pretty wound up about the whole thing. at first she wouldn't say "trick or treat" or "thank you", but she got used to it pretty quickly. the only issue we had was that she would get her candy and then either reach in and try to get more, or just wait for the person to give her more. you could almost hear her, "um, there seems to be a mistake. you see, you only gave me one piece of candy, and there is obviously supposed to be more. i'll just wait here while you rectify the situation." as you can see by the picture, she went as little bo peep. pretty darn cute, eh? :)

this morning we also had my weekly doctor's appointment. progress has been made...i'm at a 2 now. still nothing major, but progress nonetheless. my doctor doesn't think anything's happening this week, and i'm pretty inclined to agree. it's just as well, though, since i'm under orders from various people to not have the baby before monday. and my hips are much better lately, so i'm not in such a hurry to get this over and done with.

random abby weirdness: after her rest time today, she sat on the potty as usual, and then brought me her panties to put them back on, and she said, "these are my parachute panties!" not sure what's up with the mc hammer reference there.

access the uncrazy part of your brain

so, we've been eating a lot of food. yesterday we met grandma and grandpa r. for the annual foresters brunch. abby actually ate more than i did, i think. she had: 2 large pancakes, a piece of french toast, salad, black olives, cottage cheese, chicken strips, carrots, jello, breadsticks, bacon, cream puff, chocolate chip cookie bar, a bite of beef tips ("i don't like meat!"), peas, some cranberry juice, and her milk. i am not even kidding a little bit. then every so often that afternoon, "my tummy hurts." well, duh. :) then for supper she had a bite of string cheese and 2 cubes of watermelon. everything seems back to normal today, though.

today we accomplished quite a bit. we went to the mall because i noticed the other day that the fake diamonds in my earrings had fallen out at some point, so i've been walking around wearing just the settings like a moron. so, we went to claire's to get me some new earrings. 9 pairs for less than $9. can't beat that with a stick. then this afternoon after rest time, we went to the library. i've been such a fan of going in the afternoons because you don't have the storytime craziness and abby can pretty much do her own thing, but that backfired in a big way today. we came down the road and saw a group of about 15 grade-schoolers walking in a line toward the library. uh oh. apparently there was some sort of major library field trip today, and these kids were the last group. so, they pretty much took over the children's part, and effectively barred abby from playing with anything. she tried, much more so than i thought she would, but was denied. so, to make up for the library fiasco, we decided to use the beautiful day and my hips not killing me for a change, and head to the zoo. it was a good choice, even though we got there too late to see the monkeys. like her daddy, abby loves the lemurs. :) after that, we came home, abby had her supper and read her new library books, and then it was time for bed. then brian and i had brown-sugar steaks, which were yummeriffic, if i do say so myself.

awesome news of the day: brian read the capital times at the library, and apparently? madison now has a ruth's chris steak house. for those of you who don't know, we discovered this restaurant in the summer of 2000 on our trip to new york city that brian won. hands-down, the best steaks EVER. it's been our anniversary haunt ever since. we've been to the one in new york, minneapolis/st. paul, downtown chicago, northbrook, and kansas city. and now? we can just stay right here. aaaaahh.

sigh

well, i am seriously BUMMED. i had my doctor's appointment this morning, and there has been no change since last week. none. exactly the same. i know it's early yet, and blah de blah blah, but i'm just so ready to be done. i'm just a little ray of sunshine, i know, spreading misery and despair everywhere i go. well, you'll just have to deal with that. :)

and what's NOT helping at all is abby's sudden decision to go off her rocker and throw tantrums whenever we go anywhere. yesterday at the library? tantrum. today at the doctor's office? tantrum. i know it's her age, and i know to some extent she's probably reacting to my rays of misery and despair, but it's just really the last thing i need.

hopefully better mood and better post tomorrow. i posted an extra-cute and happy picture to counteract the misery and despair.

ambition

abby has a new life's calling. last week she was going to be a firefighter when she "gets bigger." as of today, her new ambition is to be (and i'm totally not making this up) a "super manager dancer."

a super manager dancer.

so, if anyone sees any openings for such a position, let me know.

bob and lofty save the day!

a new feature on the rogers family blog starts today. with every post will come a picture that i've randomly chosen from the vast photo archive that is our computer. enjoy!

yesterday we headed to fitchburg for our second trip to the apple orchard this year. we, along with about 20 million other people, had a great time. we got 10 pounds of apples, which, based on how quickly we went through the 5 pounds we got last time, ought to last us about 2 weeks. big apple eaters, the rogers family. we also drove past a couple of apartment/duplex possibilities, so it was a pretty productive day.

on the way to the orchard yesterday, we were driving down the beltline in the left lane, and passed an orange (!) ford focus in the middle lane. abby was looking out the window and saw the car and said, "look! it's the same car that we have!" yes, our not-quite-3-year-old daughter can recognize the make and model of our car. is that a schultz trait or what? :)

this morning brian let me sleep in a bit since i've been sleeping so poorly; then after i got up, we took the car and truck in for oil changes and miscellaneous other car maintenance tasks. this afternoon we made a trek to the bread outlet for "bread and quesadillas" as abby says, and then headed to the mall to walk a lap in the ongoing attempt to convince baba ghannouj that it's time to come out. so far, not working so well.

37 weeks

so this past thursday i had my first weekly doctor's appointment. i've been hoping and hoping for progress, and i finally got my wish. i'm at 1 centimeter, which is of course not much, but enough to give me hope that this pregnancy is finally coming to an end. baby is super-low, which is very good too. in fact, the baby is so low that my belly actually looks about 4 weeks smaller than it did 4 days ago. so sometime wednesday night, time turned back a month or so. :) i've been trying to walk and do stairs and be active to move things along, but it's so very hard. a common pregnancy side effect that i seem to suffer from more hideously than most is loosening of hip joints to the point where it feels that your legs will pop right out. it's insanely difficult to walk for any length of time, and anytime i have to bear weight on my right leg causes incredible pain. when i get up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, i almost fall over every time.

yes, i'm complaining. you would too, so don't judge me. :)

well, hi!

thanks for finding the new one-stop-shop-blog for the rogers family! no longer will you have to visit 2 separate blogs to find out the goings-on of abby and baba ghannouj! formatting of this blog is still in progress. once i figure out how, i plan to merge those 2 blogs into this one so you can still go back and read old posts without having to go back to the blogs themselves. blog blog blog.


so, yeah. we went to the monona fire station open house this past sunday, and she LOVED it. she has her own fire helmet now that she wears around the house repeating, "i'm firefighter abby!" this is especially hilarious when she isn't wearing any pants.

she's having a hard time lately with this whole "almost 3" thing. she's developing an attitude that mommy and daddy don't care too much for, and is generally becoming more difficult. but, she's also becoming more and more hilarious with each passing day. today we went to borders to meet grandma schultz (who needed boxes), and abby wandered around the store musing, "where oh where could grandma schultz be??" with the HUGE upward questioning inflection at the end. she also learned to sing the rain rain go away song, but her version goes, "rain, rain, go away, comin' back in anuvver day." repeat ad infinitum.

baba ghannouj is done cooking now and can be born at any time. as much as i'd like to say i think it'll be soon, i think it'll be another couple of weeks at least. still no dilation or anything, so he/she's nice and comfy and not ready to go anywhere quite yet. me, on the other hand? i'm ready to be done, which you could probably guess. we'll see what tomorrow's appointment brings.