We had two important milestones this weekend. The first one, Melanie put Ella on her belly and Ella pushed herself over onto her back. Granted Melanie put her arms up under her, but it was still exciting to see Ella roll herself over. We realize this is a normal time for most kids, but our experience with Claire was different, as she took about seven months before this happened.

The second milestone...Melanie received junkmail from NASCAR trying to get her to buy season tickets. It may be time to move.

I am slowly recovering from this pregnancy. It was a rough pregnancy with all the bedrest and pain of the contractions. I thought once I had Ella (which was painful :) ) it would be over. Did not realize how painful the recovery would be from a vaginal birth. I can't believe it was harder then the c-section. Ella tore me and I was also cut so that she would not rip me further. That alone was so hard to recover from. I feel much better now but still have a minimum amount of pain.

The final part of my recovery is with my body. Particularly my back. I have been in pretty bad pain since she has come out. Been going to the Chiropractor but not helping. Also been having lots of pain and pressure in the pelvis area. (long one - click read more for full story)

Today is 37 weeks gestation for Ella. Term day. Early term, but we are now past the worrysome parts of the pregnancy and are now just waiting for 'the day'. It has been a hard few weeks. Make that months. A hard few months with Melanie on varying degress of bedrest since the second week of September.

Thanks to all of you who have helped us get this far. The support has been overwhelming and appreciated.

Wed night (11/1) I went into preterm labor with Ella. Pretty much exactly the same time I went with Claire. At about 5:30PM I started getting bad contractions 2 minute apart. I took my meds but they did not work. Got to hospital before 7PM. They tried to get the contractions to stop with other meds. After a few hours they were still coming. Finally before they went more aggressive drugs just tried to double the dose of the meds I was already taking at home. Eventually that seemed to work. I think the contractions stopped by like 3AM. I am dilated to about 1cm now so they have put me on strict bedrest. I can only get up to go to bathroom. They gave me steroid shots to increase her lung development incase she comes too soon. We hope to get at least 3 more weeks. That will bring us to 35 weeks and her lungs would be mature.

We are home now and glad we only spent a little over 24 hours in the hospital. We will see what happens. This is really going to be hard but worth it in the end. Will keep you all posted.

Here I am on bedrest for the 4th week.

I guess we never blogged much about this. At my 24 week point I started having really bad contractions. We went to Labor and Delivery and was sent home to be on modified bedrest - well at least until 35 weeks which is out of the danger zoine. I am at 28 weeks tomorrow so I have at least 7 weeks to go.

This has been very hard on all of us. I have good days and bad. I always have at least some contractions in a day but the good days don't seem to bad. On the bad days I have lot of contractions close together that hurt bad and then have to take these prescribed meds to get them under control. This drug knocks me out for about 14 hours. Not fun. Especially when you have take care of a toddler.

We have had a lot of support throughout all of this. We feel very lucky. Scott comes home for lunch 3 days a week and works from home the remainder of those days. He feeds Claire and I lunch and puts her down for her nap. Gets her up from nap, diaper change, snack etc.. I then only have about 1-2 hours to play with Claire from couch before he is helping again. I have a friend that comes 2x a week and stays with me from 9-1PMish. Takes care of Claire and I and feeds us lunch and puts her to bed. She also helps with other household things. THANKS JESS!!!! I take Claire out once a week for a playgroup. The other days usually a friend will stop by in the morning. So I am pretty much covered.

We also have friends cooking us meals. This is great since it helps out Scott. He is kind of overwhelmed at this point with working full time and taking care of Claire and I.

Anyway will blog here and there to let you know how we are doing.

Hey just a reminder. The ATS Showcase Show opens this Thurs.

Here is a quick summary of the info:

*Name of Show: * ATS Showcase -The Grand Design and other plays

*Location: *The Farm -500 E. 18th Street (18th & Locust but there is no sign for Locust) Look for cow imprinted garage doors. Opposite side of street from Grinders. Between Oak and Cherry St.

*Show Times: *Thur-8PM, Fri-9:30PM, Sat-6:30PM, Sun-5PM (Be on time they don't allow entry once show starts)

Remember this is during a festival so not sure how easy it will be to find parking. Parking seems to just be on the street so get there early to park and buy your tickets. Tickets are $5 and you can buy them at the door (cash or check only) or online.

For more info on other shows at the Farm and other locations see this link
*Schedule*: http://www.kcfringe.org/schedule.html *Info on each show:* http://www.kcfringe.org/participants.html

This is going to be a great show. We have some great material. Hope you all can make one of the four shows.

Melanie

Last Monday Claire slept till 8:45AM which is a little over an hour more then normal. I put her down for a nap and she would not sleep. I knew she had to since we were going to be out late that night to say goodbye to our close friend Ai-Peng. I tried all my normal tricks. Nothing worked. I then hoped in the crib with her to see if that would help. See Picture. It was sure fun -too much fun!. She did not go to sleep.

I then proceeded to take her for a car ride. 30 min later she finally fell asleep. I pulled into a church parking lot to sit while she slept. It was 100 degrees that day so had to keep the AC running. I hand locked all the doors incase I fell asleep. After about 40 mintues (very cranky, hungry prego women) decided to head home. I figured I would pull in garage leave car running and have Scott take over. Scott came out and I decided to carefully unlock eat door by hand. I was on the last lock - the one next to her seat. As I tried to unlock the door my other arm accidently hit the horn. You know what happened after that. DOH!!!!! :) Not fun. She did OK that night with the 40 min nap.

Scott and I are happy to annouce that we are expecting a baby December 29th 2006.

I am 14 weeks pregnant now and feeling mostly OK. I had a very hard 1st trimester. Glad to be through it.

We should be finding out the sex the first week or 2 of August. We are asking for a healthy baby. The sex is not so important. Another girl would be easier since we have all the girly stuff + it would be great for Claire to have a sister. Since we don't know if we will have more getting that boy in would also be nice. So what ever it will be it will be.

We are just very excited to be adding a new member to the family.

Pics of our 10 wk sonogram will follow.

Mel/Scott

Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah to our family and friends. 2005 has been a really fun year for the three of us - watching Claire learn and grow has simply been amazing. Our biggest surprise was our decision to remain in Kansas City when presented with opportunities to move elsewhere. We've really been enjoying it here, although I'll continue to tell our friends and family back east that it does not suck as much as we thought it would. We don't want more people moving and driving up the cost of living. :)

This is an outtake from our attempt to take some holiday pictures. In photographing it there were two key challenges. First, what instrument to give Claire that she might convincingly hold. Second, what instrument to give Melanie that she might convincingly hold. Claire was easy - anything that goes in the mouth would be an instant hit. A recorder worked. Melanie was a little harder. I handed her the banjo and asked her to hold it. We went through a few tries before it was facing forward with the fretboard to her left, but we eventually worked it out. Next year we improve on her left hand position so that it appears she may even be playing a chord. In the end our picture attempt worked out pretty gosh darn well.

..I am of course wondering what sort of special gift to get for Melanie. While I won't divulge any specifics here where she can read them, I have found the store where I'll be doing my shopping.

This weekend Claire went to her fourth wedding, that of Meredith Paul (Melanie's sister) to Jimmy Giorgio. Here Claire poses with the bride and the matron of honor (also known as ma ma ma ma ma ma ma ma ma). She was a trouper, staying up until midnight and smiling the entire time. Well, most of the time. She took a 45 minute nap on her paternal grandmother's shoulder.

This past weekend we visited St. Kilda, one of many beaches within easy reach of downtown Melbourne. Here's a happy, hat-matching, mother daughter pair enjoying the gentle breeze.

We left Monday afternoon for Melbourne to visit Sarah, Damian, Dominic and Ivan. Our trip consisted of four flights, KC to Dallas, Dallas to LA, LA to Sydney, Sydney to Melbourne. We were unable to get an award (read: free) flight directly to Melbourne. Claire was simply amazing during the whole trip - nearly perfect. She was still awake by the time we were getting ready to board our 11:30pm flight from LA to Sydney, which was equivalent to 1:30am to Claire and was several hours beyond her 9pm bedtime. She just kept looking around, flirting with everbody with little smiles. We'd not had a single meltdown, although Melanie got close to having one during our five hour layover in LA.

Melanie and Claire look out the window before we take Claire out for Melanie's birthday lunch two weeks ago. For the record, it was Melanie's 34th birthday.