Baby Showers and Pirates

A huge THANK YOU to my friends and family who have thrown and attended baby showers for me recently!!! It has been so much fun to be able to see so many people that I haven't seen for a while or to spend time with those I see on a daily basis in a different setting. Plus how humbling to have people do things to make you feel special and loved. It's such a helpful tradition and helps to put my mind at ease now that we've received the things that we needed and wanted to bring baby Xavier home. Now to just be able to relay the message to him and let him know that we're ready for him to make his appearance... :)

So for those of you who I haven't told yet, Xavier is the name we've chosen for this baby. We're still working on deciding the middle name, but we've sort of slowly been telling people that Xavier is what we've decided on for the first name. And now that that information is out, I'll share my wall hanging project with you! I have yet to hang it on the wall, but that will hopefully be the easy part. We received the crib as a group gift from the ladies at work (it's not here yet, but we hope to see it delivered sometime this coming week) so once that's here we can get the room ready completely. The bedding was also gotten as a gift recently. From what I understand though, we got that in the nick of time since it seems to be going out of stock everywhere. It's hard to know when that type of thing is going to happen I guess... so thank you Linda!

Anyway, the first shower was a couple weeks ago in Goshen given to me by several of my aunts. Quite a few ladies who I've known at various stages of my life who live up that way were able to attend, so that was fun to visit with several people who I haven't seen in years. My aunts did a lovely job! I appreciate it so much! My mom was even able to 'attend' online. See the laptop in the corner in the picture below? We tried to plan it when she was going to be here, but baby's exact time of arrival is pretty unpredictable so it's hard to know if I'll be ready to travel up that way while my parents are in the USA next month. Don't want to go too far away from my doctors in the last month and not sure how quickly we'll be ready to take Xavier on his first road trip after he's born. The second shower was here at work and my coworkers slaved away and whispered secretly amongst each other for weeks. They are so wonderful as well - I am so blessed! Plus my mother-in-law traveled 4 hours here and back in the same day so she could attend as well. I think it was just an excuse to buy something else for the baby! :) It was great fun to have Scott's mom and dad here for just a bit last week. It was nice that we were able to have dinner with them before they ventured back home. They ALSO brought us some fresh veggies from their garden. Yum.

The pregnancy has been going well. My blood pressure has been staying within the normal ranges although they've taken the extra precaution of doing non-stress tests on the baby twice a week now and have also done an additional ultrasound - with one more to be done this coming week. So far the NSTs (non-stress tests) have shown that baby is doing great and I've had some contractions. I haven't really felt most of these so that's nice, and everytime they've checked me, I haven't dilated at all yet. So I guess my body is just practicing. Today in my NST Xavier's heart rate wasn't being very reactive. Which just means they look for it to fluctuate by 20 beats per minute and his was staying at about the same rate the whole time. So in order to try to get his heart rate to be reactive they use this little vibration/zapper thing on my belly that wakes him up. He jumped so much my whole belly shook - the nurse said she had never seen a baby react quite so much to it. It really freaked him out. His heart rate was pretty reactive after that - poor thing. Then today we also went to see some friends who were at 'Pirates of Paynetown' - a pirate reenactment event. They were firing cannons (using only gunpowder and no projectiles) and blasting muskets (again, no bullets). But it was pretty loud and on one particularly loud shot Xavier jumped again. He's had a very traumatic day today...

Cannons and townsfolk fighting off invading Pirates at Paynetown

Pirate gear tent

Pirates beware - this is what the townfolk'll do to you if you're caught in these parts.