WAAY too long

I can't believe it has been so long since I've posted! If you're reading this, you no doubt know that on 11-11-08, "BC" became Hannah Marie! She was 8 pounds 2 ounces, and 19.5 inches long. She's now 10 weeks old, smiling, cooing, and generally being cute...except when she's being fussy, which seems to be more frequent lately. We're working on that.

We had an ultrasound on her pyloric valve after her 1 month doctor's appointment, and found that it was fine. We had been concerned about the amount she had been spitting up, and problems with that valve run in my dad's side of our family. She's fine and really healthy, so we feel blessed!

I went back to work in the middle of December. That's sooner than I would have liked, but I figured I needed to be around for Christmas Eve. I was part time before Hannah was born, and am still, which is nice. I have been driving to Lawrence just two days a week, on Sundays for worship and Thursdays for rehearsal. Mondays are Jeff's day off and I will probably be going to Lawrence then. It will mean we lose a family day, but I think it will be good for Jeff and Hannah to have time to themselves.

Last night we took dinner to some friends who have a one-month old and almost-three-year-old, and it was amazing how much bigger Hannah was than Kaia. Granted, they can still wear the same size clothes, but it was pretty neat to see the difference.

Life is different in the Clinger house, which we are making more "ours" with some painting and other changes. We are so thankful that we're close to family. Hannah ("little h" or "hmc" to distinguish from Mom) has had lots of time with grandparents and aunts/"unlces." My sister is in the middle of a rotation in Topeka (about an hour away) and we've been able to hang out much more than we will when she goes back to St. Louis. And Jeff's sister was able to spend several days here between Christmas and New Year's.

Hannah was baptized at Church of the Resurrection on Dec. 27th, and despite funky weather, we were able to celebrate with all six of her grandparents, aunt Erin and almost-uncle Jay, aunt Rebekah and almost-uncle Mike, great-aunt Patsy and great-uncle Wayland, great-aunt Charlotte and great-uncle Charlie, Grandpa Suffron's cousin Judy, Mom's cousins John and Sue. We were sorry my grandparents couldn't make it, but it was wonderful to be surrounded by our families.

I guess that's about it. I'm going to try to update on a more regular schedule. Feel free to hold me accountable. :-)

Post-Weekend Update

We met with the doc this afternoon, and she said all the lab results came back normal.  My blood pressure was a little higher than it had been Thursday, but it was still securely in the "normal" range.  She said it was fine for me to go back to work and resume life as "normal."  We'll have weekly appointments from here on out, but were already at that point anyway.  So the good news is that there's nothing super exciting to report!

Thanks so much to everyone for food, prayers, calls, emails, and the many other ways you support us!

Baby Clinger update

Well, so much for my boring pregnancy.  Up until now there hasn't really been anything to report, but here's the latest.

Yesterday morning I had a regular appointment with my doctor, and everything was fine.  I went to Lawrence to work as planned.  I felt some tingles in my foot, so checked with a family friend who is a doctor.  She had me come in and ran some tests, and talked with my doctor's office.  They want me on bed rest for the weekend.  Tonight I'll go to the lab here in Olathe where they'll run a few more tests, and we'll get the results on Monday afternoon when I have an appointment with my doctor's practice partner.  They're checking for pre-eclampsia, which is related to blood pressure.  Mine has always been fine, but the doctor in Lawrence saw a couple other indicators that could be precursors to pre-eclampsia.

What happens next depends on the results from the lab work.  The good news in all this is that we're less than a month away from the due date, so if they decide to deliver, the baby would be early but probably not dangerously so.  Jeff's trip to Arkansas next week is up in the air, and he's cleared his schedule of pretty much everything, so we're hanging out together.  We'll get some movies and probably pull out some of our board games.  We're hoping the doctors are just being cautious, but we're also trying to get prepared for the possibility of an early delivery.  We'll update at www.theclingerfamily.com.  Your prayers and support are, of course, appreciated.

Baby's Footprint

In my blog reading today, this post from gDiapers caught my attention.  We considered using gDiapers as an alternative to disposables, but now are thinking we'll go with cloth.  In any case, it really got me to thinking about the global impact on resources that just one child has, and what my global impact has been and will be.  The references to other countries were telling as well.  If you're interested, you can calculate your carbon footprint here.  Really, there are lots of places you can do that.  The sobering thing for me was to see how many earths it would take to sustain humanity if everyone lived like me.  And it is interesting to see, but I don't think it means anything unless we do something to make our footprint smaller.  We're trying, at least.

Updates

Several updates to let you know about...

• I'm now 30 weeks pregnant.  I haven't gained too much weight, but at this point I've decided not to keep track on my own anymore.  We had an appointment with the doctor today and they took blood samples.   They'll also be checking my TSH levels.  Oh, and I drank the glucose drink this morning.  It's like flat orange pop, and made me feel like I had just had 10 ounces of pure sugar (surprise).  We've now moved to the phase of seeing the doctor every two weeks.
• We started child birth class last night.  We'll go on Wednesday nights for a total of 5 weeks.  There are 5 other couples in the class, and there wasn't a whole lot of interaction between folks last night.  Four of the other couples all have the same doctor, which seems like it could be unique.  The woman who led the class just talked the whole time other than when we introduced ourselves, and it was a little difficult to pay attention all the time.  But it was helpful.
• This Sunday will be my first Sunday leading worship at the West Campus of Lawrence FUMC.  I was freaking out a bit what with people being gone for the holiday weekend, but it looks like things will work out ok.  Thanks to lots of folks, I have a list of people to call on to fill in if needed.  It helps to have connections at COR, and that they're having a special service for the weekend so folks are available to help out!  It's been nice this week to go to the office and interact with folks there.
• We have furniture set up in the nursery now.  We just need to sort through all the clothes and equipment, and figure out where its all going to go.

We're all settled in the house (well, except for stuff for the baby).  Kayla enjoys having a backyard and "talking" with other neighborhood dogs.  She mostly lays on our bed or in front of one of the sliding glass doors in the sun.  Ah, the life of a suburban dog.  I'll try to be better about updating, but I won't make any promises.

Shalom to you.

Moved in

Friday we had a housewarming party.  We have been in the house for three weeks and had decided we needed a goal, so we threw ourselves a party and invited friends old and new in the area.  We had friends from our pre-school and elementary school days, college, and newly-made friends!  We borrowed a yard game from the Conards (German horse shoes?  Polish horse shoes?  whatever...) and had drinks and desserts for  everyone.

Included in the evening was a tour, so I've included pictures for anyone who couldn't make the party.  The house is a quad-level built in 1978.  There are some quirks to it, mostly from projects by the owners before the folks we bought it from.  It is great space for us, and we are definitely feeling home!  I hope you enjoy the "tour."

The entryway... the stained glass is from Ridge UMC's old fellowship hall.

View #1 of the front room.  The doorway to the right of the piano goes into the kitchen, as you can tell from the refrigerator.

View #2 of the front room, the front window.  It has a ledge, which we might put some pillows in some day.

Looking from the dining room into the kitchen.  Jeff's dad and my step-dad installed an above the range microwave.  The pantry door is back on, but we still have to repaint it.  (That's a fun story if you haven't heard it.)

Looking into the dining room from the kitchen, and further down into the family room.  You can also see the stairs up to the bedrooms. To the right of the dining room table is a sliding glass door that goes out onto our deck.

Dining room looking to the family room.  There's a fireplace (we need to have it inspected).  As you go down the stairs, you can turn to go down to the basement, or go out to the garage.  You can see the second sliding glass door between the dining room chair and table, that goes out onto a patio.  Kayla really likes lying in front of the door to be in the sun.

The stairs going up to the bedrooms.  There is a bathroom, then the master bedroom on the left, the guest room straight ahead, and the nursery on the right.  There are also two closets up there as well.

This is the nursery, obviously not yet moved in here yet.  :-)

Master bedroom.  Jeff and his dad hung new closet doors for me.  The old ones were also mirrored, but they weren't on the tracks right and needed replacing anyway.

Guest room.  Jeff's closet is on the right (the closets are smaller than the one we had in Indiana) which he volunteered to use.  We are still looking for a mattress and box spring, maybe a small dresser as well.

Basement office/exercise room.  The window has a "lovely" view of underneath the deck.

View #2 of the basement/office.  The box above the tv is the electrical box, and the door between the tv and the shelves goes into what could be made into a small bathroom.  It would have to be closed off from the laundry/utility area, but it has the piping and electrical stuff necessary.

So welcome to our casa!

Shalom,

Heather

Back in Kansas

This is my first blog entry living in Kansas.  We are in the process of getting things unpacked.  It was almost exactly a week ago this moment that the movers finished unloading all of our stuff...crazy.  

We had a mishap with the pantry door, and it is currently leaning up against the kitchen wall.  The short story is that it self-locked and we couldn't get it unlocked, so we tried taking it off the hinges (didn't work), breaking a couple of the slats to open it from the inside (still locked), and finally Jeff beat the heck out of the handle until it fell off and he could turn the mechanism with a pair of pliers.

Jeff started work on the first and hit the ground running.  I've been getting us unpacked and doing the "to-dos" in the meantime.  I start work tomorrow.  I will be leading the contemporary worship service at the West Campus for Lawrence 1st UMC, the church where Jeff and I met and were married.

Baby Clinger is doing well.  We're on our second doctor since leaving Indiana.  Back in April or May, I had set up an appointment with a doctor is the KC area for June 30.  When he walked in for the appointment, he told us he stopped doing OB on June 12th.  But his office was great--he recommended and had his office get us an appointment later that week with another doctor, whose office is actually closer to our house.  We were really bummed, because we had had a great experience at his office.  When we went to the next appointment, we went in thinking they had a lot to live up to, and they did!  The nurse, doctor, and office staff were great!  Yay!  

I have heard that some people would like to see "baby bump" pics.  Here's the story:  So far I have not intentionally taken any belly pics.  Really, there's no other time when anyone else wants to see the evolution of someone's belly, and we all know that my belly will keep getting bigger.  So you might get to see pictures of me that include my belly, but I'm not going to stand in the same pose month after month so you can see how big I'm getting.  Sorry.  However, here is a recent picture that shows the "bump."