Catching up...

It's been awhile and I thought I would catch people up on what's been going on.

We are currently 3 1/2 weeks away from our due date!! I am hoping Norah comes early, but she probably won't. I have been having pain almost every time I stand up or walk in my lower pelvic region, which is annoying. I've been to the doctors twice since it started and there is really nothing they can do for it.

On top of that my muscle disease, Myotonia Congenita (click to read about it if you are interested), is getting worse, which we knew would happen throughout the pregnancy, but it has really cranked up several notches in the last few weeks. My doctors do not really seem to understand it though, so they really only respond to the pelvic pain. They never ask how it is. It's great! I highly recommend seeing doctors that don't understand what your disease is! :) They keep saying, "your almost done," and trust me I know!

I've had a few scary episodes with the myotonia and one involved driving, so I've pretty much decided on my own that it's not worth the risk of something happening that I would really regret, so either Josh drives or I don't go unless I can get a ride with someone else. I'm grateful for the fact that we are completely ready for Norah to come because otherwise, I would be going crazy if I knew there were things I needed to get done right now.

Students have been visiting me more throughout the day and bringing me movies to watch. Even our janitor, Jim, yells at me if he sees me in the hallway. He tells me to go put my feat up and relax! :)

Josh has been really great! He does the grocery shopping, dishes, cooks (which he does everyday anyways!!), gets me my late night bowls of cereal and my glasses of iced tea! I was teasing him the other day because I typically wash the dishes because I love it and it's my domain, but lately it's tiring to stand that long, but the way we do dishes is 100% different. My dish drainer looks like a well oiled machine that stacked the dishes in the most efficient effective way possible. His dish drainer looks like abstract art! I do not know how things do not go flying out onto the floor! It makes me laugh! They have never fallen, which I think is a miracle.

I have also learned the sounds of our apartment and dorm very well. I know exactly who is in the hallway at all times. I know how often the kid upstairs vacuums his carpet (he is OCD about it and I love it! I want to meet him and just have a conversation about the joys of vacuuming!). I hear Father O'Brien singing hymns upstairs. I hear our clock ticking, which often leads to me pulling the battery out! Our tub runs constantly and we need to use a wrench to turn it on and off, but the nut is so stripped that the water will not turn the whole way off!!! That sound drives me crazy so I keep the door shut.

I know what you are all thinking at this point. She needs a life, but I have a lot of time at home lately, so this is what my life consists of at the moment!

We had a joint service last night at our church. The three services combined into one and all of the musicians played together! It was really great! Josh played his djembe (click to see a picture), African drum. It turned out that the one song was mainly him and another guy playing drums and they had a little duet part in the middle of the song. He did so good, I was so proud of him and was tearing up! Everyone loves his drum playing and he does not think he is that good at it. I can honestly say he did not practice for one second for the service, so he had no idea that he would be playing that much. He was really nervous, but did such a great job. I told him that's how you know you are good. You don't practice and then you kick butt on a duet!! He laughs that I call it a duet, but I don't know how else to describe it.

Ok, that was a long update and kinda random, but that's kinda how I talk, all over the place!

Furby

Happy Halloween!!!

I'm a furby!!! This is my favorite halloween costume ever!!! I have been a furby for halloween for the past 7 years! This costume has a great story that I will share with you....

In October of 2000, I was a junior in college. My roommates and I lived next door to some popular senior girls who were having a halloween party and they invited us to attend. We were all very excited as we had never really been to a halloween party since we were kids.

We made a special trip to Walmart late one night to purchase our costumes. We started looking around in the adult costumes, but I was not finding anything I liked. I wondered to the children's aisle and there she was...The Furby costume! I had to have it. Little did I know that it would be the best $6.78 I had ever spent!

The night of the party, my roommates and I made a special dinner for our big night and then spent the next hour getting ready for the party. My roommate Stacy was a baby doll (she is about 5'9"), Mandy was Dr. Evil (she has very long naturally curly hair and jammed it all into a bald cap!), and Kimmy was Zorro.

After all of our preparations, we were ready to make our way to the party. I was the first one to the door and knocked excitedly! The door opened, and picture The After School Special when the nerds are invited to the cool kids party and the record player stops. The majority of the people at the party were dressed up as pimps or hoes or some version of a slut for whatever costume they were trying to pull off (ex. nurse, military, etc.).

My roommates and I decided without even communicating that we were going to stay for the whole party and not be made to feel like we are the odd ones out. Sooo, I turned sideways, as my furby ears were too wide to walk straight in and we entered the party!

It was one of the funniest nights of my life. We participated in all the games, one being that you had to line up guy, girl, guy, girl and pass an apple down the line between your neck and chin using no hands. So here I am trying to get an apple from some "pimp" and my furby ears are slapping him in the face!!! It was priceless.

We left the party and laughed for hours for the rest of the night as we talked about the situation that we had just been in. That is one of my favorite stories from college!

So, I continue to wear the furby every year as it is still a crowd pleaser and the story always seems to be a winner as well!

Expectant Mother Parking

So since I found out I was pregnant I was very much looking forward to parking in expectant mother parking spots.

Now the only time I have come across expectant mother parking spots is at Babies R Us and Dick's Sporting Goods corporate office (where my mom works). The two times that I was at either of the those two places while being pregnant, it was pretty early on in my pregnancy, so I did not feel the need to park in those spots.

Now that I am significantly bigger....

My incredibly talented husband distorted a recent photo of me so that I could make my point more clearly!

I would like to start parking in those spots, but unfortunately, there are no expectant mother parking spots. It stinks! I can't find them anywhere here in Wheeling.

I do have to say, the weather has gotten significantly cooler in the last two days, so going on outings is not as bad as it was when the weather was in the 80's and 90's.

Becoming a mom...

This has been a hard week here at WJU. We found out Monday afternoon that one of our students died. This student went on our New Orleans trip last year for spring break and he was such a sweet, hard working guy. He was pretty quite at first which made me want to get to know him all the more. I would talk to him any chance I got and I think he probably thought I was a crazy lady at first.

I remember one day we had a bunch of black soot and debris on the floor from the ceiling that had been riped down and I looked at him and said, "Come on lets race to see who can get the most cleared off the floor!" And off we both went and within seconds I slipped and fell flat on my butt!!! He laughed so hard as he helped me off the floor!

He started dating one of the other women that was on the trip, who is equally as sweet as he was. I was so excited to find out after we returned home from the trip that they were dating.

This week I cannot stop thinking about her and the grief and loss she is experiencing. I spoke with her briefly Monday night. Tomorrow is the viewing and Friday the funeral service. Every time I find myself in silence I think about him and his girlfriend. Then I start thinking about his parents and even his girlfriends parents.

I can't help but think about how devastating it must be to see your daughter grieving her boyfriend or to feel the depth of pain of loosing your adult child. Then I feel Norah kick and I think that she is safe inside of me and although I am so excited to meet her and hold her I'm scared to have her out because I know I will never be able to keep her wholly safe. I also recognize she is not wholly safe inside either because anything could go wrong.

I know that I can't continue thinking about all of this or I will feel crazy, but my grief for our student is pretty intense right now and my emotions are hard to put to the side. I also think about how this all challenges my faith. I think I am learning to put more and more faith and trust in God. I do not like cliche answers and statements that seem to fly out when a death occurs, especially when it is someone who is young. As I have worked with many Hospice patients and their families and seen the struggle of those comments that they have had to field, I now experience that frustration myself and do not have the answers even though I desire and have worked in a field of death and dying. When it hits you personally it is very difficult. However, I do feel closer with God and that I want to understand the depth of who He is and His love.

I know Norah will have pain and grief in her life and I just keep thinking about how I will respond to her as her mother and how it might be harder for me to see her that way than it is for her.

I remember the day my first niece was born. I loved her so much instantly. I can't imagine how I will feel when I am holding Norah for the first time.

I also need to say that I am loving Joshua more and more through all of this. I love seeing his excitement for Norah to come and even how he is with our students during this difficult week we are experiencing.

I know this post is all over the place, but I just had to express some of what was going on inside of me this week.

I'm getting kicked!

Norah has been quite active lately! We went to a restaurant today to watch the Brown's game and I was leaning forward over the table and she kicked so hard that I sat quickly back from the table because she kicked right at the part of my stomach that was touching the table! It was such a weird feeling.

She kicked later tonight and I had to shift positions in my chair. It's just a strange feeling, but so fun at the same time.

I will be 30 weeks on Wednesday! I can't believe how fast it all seems to be going now. We feel ready in the sense that if Norah came earlier we could sustain her in this world with what we have set up in the apartment, but it will just be a big change and I do not know how to prepare for that. I guess I can't, but I "prepare" in my own way and do anything that I can control.

We just got our diaper bag this weekend so we are going to be packing it this week! You never know! :)

We started our birthing classes last Tuesday and have four more Tuesday night sessions to go! Last week our instructor walked us through the whole process from when contractions start to when the baby is born. It was great! I'm definitely an information gatherer, so these classes are helpful for me. I'm looking forward to the hospital tour so I can see exactly where we will be and all the machines, tools and other things that might come into play during the labor.

Another interesting thing that we just learned is that our doctor likes to be standing when he delivers babies, so they crank my bed into the air at his level of standing to deliver the baby. Now, this raises a concern for me being that we Elek's are short and I fear that I will need to yell down to Josh to let him know how I am doing! We have an appointment on Friday with the doctor, so we will be looking into our options! :)

So, that's an update for now about Norah and all that's been going on!

I cooked dinner!

We also reorganized our kitchen a little to make room for baby stuff and I cooked dinner last night for some friends! I had this great dinner at my friend's bachelorette party last week and I got the recipe.

Josh typically cooks, well cooks all the time, but I can make something every once in awhile. (It's actually wonderful to have a husband who cooks!!! I'm sure I do not appreciate him enough for it.)

I woke up at 7:45am and prepped the meal so that I could get some work done during the day. I couldn't wait to eat it later because it is so good. It is Chicken and broccoli stuffed shells with an Alfredo sauce. Here is a picture of it in my favorite purple casserole dish that I got for our wedding over a year ago and am using for the first time because we have a full kitchen now!

JOY!

Last year, we did not have a kitchen in our apartment. We pretty much made up a kitchen, but the biggest challenge of that living situation was the dishes.

I was happy to take the challenge on though and after some brainstorming and shopping around we purchased a cart on wheels and made it into our "dish washing center."

Below is a picture of dishes after they were completed. We would put dirty dishes into the white plastic bins in the three basket drawers underneath and then roll the cart into the bathroom (2nd picture) and wash dishes in the bathroom sink and put them on the dish rack on top of the cart and then roll it back into the kitchen.

"Dish washing center"

It was quite the process!!!

Well, after finding out we were expecting, it became pretty apparent to us and the university that we were going to need a new living space. So, this summer we moved into the graduate apartment building just off campus and they began working on a new living space for us. We were not expecting as nice of a kitchen as we got! We were really excited about it even when it was not completed. I teared up the first time I walked into our new kitchen. It is just beautiful!!

Now the best part of the kitchen for me is the sink!!! The first night the water worked, I did a bunch of dishes and it was stress free!!! Just like the good'ole days! I love my new kitchen sink! We will be able to put the little baby tub right on the counter top to give little Norah a bath and when she is able to sit up we can give her a bath right in the sink! Like I used to do, which I only know because I saw pictures of it! I took some pictures after doing the dishes because I was so excited!!

So now, there is even more....

in my life!!!!