Ann vs. Jason

By: Ann

Thank you to everyone who sent well wishes and congrats on the pregnancy. I just wanted to give everyone an update as to how we’re doing. Before the ultrasound, I was a little nervous even talking about future events for the baby because I didn’t want to jinx anything. In my irrational mind last night I was thinking of taking another pregnancy test in order to make sure I was still pregnant. Then I read a whole bunch of pregnancy forums online and saw that I wasn’t alone and that other women felt the same exact way before their first ultrasound. So, I stopped myself from performing another pregnancy test and just waited for whatever the doctor was going to tell me about the baby.

The 24 hour nausea and intermittent back pain are still present. Spicy food, bun and cheese (Jamaican treat), and ginger beer (like root beer, but ginger and very strong Jamaican drink) are about the only things that calm my stomach down. The prenatal yoga DVD really helps out a lot, too, for my back pain. My sister-in-law Julie (a chiropractor) examined my back last week and said that most of the tension is in the bones of my lower back and not the actual muscle, which is a good thing. Therefore, there’s little inflammation and just tension. So the yoga and heat compresses will actually do me very well. Thanks Julie!

Upon walking into the room for my ultrasound today, Jason and I saw oven mitts on the stirrups of the examination table. I thought this was highly entertaining for some reason. When Jason saw the oven mitts, he asked jokingly, “Shouldn’t they use sterile gloves to examine you?”

Just before Jason and I had the urge to start pressing buttons on the ultrasound machine, the doctor walked in. We had a nice conversation about the Jamaican ancestry that we just happened to share. Then I told him all of my concerns, and he alleviated my fears (temporarily). We then started the ultrasound. It was wonderful. The baby has little nubbins for legs and arms. Hearing the heartbeat solidified everything for me. I was so happy that Jason was there to experience this with me. I didn’t cry (surprisingly, with my emotions lately), but it was so moving. The heartbeat was about 175 beats per minute. We even saw the little heart pulsating from the chest. You can see a bigger version (click on picture, then click on “all sizes” above picture, then click on “large” if it’s not already showing you the large view) on Jason’s Flickr page. Starting from the right, you can see the head, then the little nubbin arms below the head, then the belly, and then the little nubbin legs. The tailbone is still sticking out in between the legs, but, according to all the development books, it’s in the process of moving back in right now. The first picture is a little more clear.

The crown-rump ratio (head to the bottom of the spine) measured 2.05 cm (0.8 inches), 2.07 cm (0.81 inches), and 2.09 cm (0.82 inches). They take the average of those three numbers to estimate the due date. The doctor told me that I’m measuring about a week bigger than estimated, so my actual due date is November 16th (sorry to steal your thunder, Rachel and Kim).

That’s all I know for now. Sorry, no twins this time…maybe next time…

By: Ann

I just wanted to announce today that I’m pregnant. I’m a little over six weeks along. We’re all doing well here, besides a little nausea and lots of back pain on my part. I got a pregnancy yoga DVD in the mail today that seemed to help out a little bit with my back pain. I think I might have my sister-in-law Julie just take a look and see if everything is in place back there, though…just to be on the safe side.

The due date is November 22 (sorry Newman-Mesners, add birthday number five to the list during November). I’m pretty excited for my first ultrasound which will be next Thursday. It will be then that my fears will be temporarily relieved. Unfortunately, being a nurse, I think I know a little too much of what can go wrong right now.

Jason has been super through everything so far with back rubs and dealing with food cravings. A few days after I told him about the pregnancy, he suggested having a picnic on top of one of the tall hills around Google. That was super fun…a little chilly and windy, but he gets romantic points. I think he’s starting to realize all the limited time we have left with just the two of us. It’s pretty cute.

I know it’s way passed April Fool’s Day for many of you eastern standard and central time people, but I was planning on writing this earlier in the day to mess with people. But my fatigue and back pain got the worst of me today. Happy birthday (not belated, yet, for CA time) to Todd and Linda. Happy future birthday to Dan. And, yes, I really am pregnant.

So, I’m very open to suggestions on what I can do. I have about five different baby books here already telling me what to do and what not to do. I love hearing about pregnancy stories right now. Please email me and let me know if you would like to share. Michelle D., you’re probably the most recent person to have a baby. Any words of wisdom? Reba? Anyone?

By: Ann

After months of pondering which video game system to get, we finally made the plunge and got a Wii (sorry Ahan). It’s made by Nintendo. I absolutely love it. For years and years I longed for another Atari. My video gaming skills never made it past the Atari. All the other video game consoles are pretty difficult for me to work. There must be some kind of disconnect in my brain, because I really have tried using all of these systems (Nintendo, Playstation, and X-box). With the Wii, you use a controller in a way that is interactive with the t.v. Swinging the controller this way and that with little button pressing is much more my style compared to “up, down, up down, A, B, A” stuff that has to be done out of pure memorization.

There are many good things about the Wii.

1. It can connect with the internet.

2. You can get current news (national and international) and weather updates.

3. The Mii channel is where you can create different characters. I have already created characters for most of Morrison-Newman-Mesner clan. I know it sounds a little silly, but seeing all the miis (characters I’ve created) on the t.v. screen doesn’t make me feel so lonely when I see my mii interact with all the other miis on the t.v. screen. Now we only have to meet people in real life to add more characters (and have an actual social life).

4. You can look at photos on the Wii with an SD card.

We’re not the type of people to sit down for hours playing video games, but this Wii was a nice gift for both of us. Jason’s working hard at his new job. I’m working hard at my job and studying for the NP boards. We both have been scurrying to get rid of excess boxes throughout the condo before Ryan and Laura come. I have created a nice outlet for us to blow some steam off throughout the week.

If you have a Wii, please feel free to email us your console number (it looks like a credit card number). I will be happy to email back to you our console number so we can exchange info via the Wii.

Sorry. No pictures of us, yet, playing the Wii. We will try and provide some pictures soon.

We are very grateful that most of the packing and moving was done for us by the moving company, but unpacking has been a ton of work with no end in sight. The byproduct of all this unpacking has been piles of cardboard boxes and paper packing material. The movers individually wrapped almost everything. They even wrapped the paper towels in paper, just to be safe.

I put a “free boxes” ad on Craigslist and got 5 responses before morning. If you’re ever looking for boxes, or looking to get rid of boxes, I highly recommend the free stuff section on Craigslist.

The lady who came by to pick up the boxes was nice enough and very thankful for the packing materials. She and her mother were both moving out of a house in Sunnyvale. We talked a bit about the area.

At one point, she said, “you’re in Mountain View, so just be careful.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well it’s not the best area.”

I was dumbfounded. I might not be a local here, but the condo next door to us (identical to ours) is selling for $525,000. That’s a 1000 sq ft, two-bedroom condo in a building from the 1970s, so no Granite countertops or walk-in closets. The median home price is $800,000. There are virtually no empty storefronts or office buildings. All the crime statistics are below the national average.

“Uh, we’re coming here from Cleveland,” I said. “How is this a bad area? Are there murders?”

“Just don’t leave your door unlocked,” she replied.

She later told me that there weren’t many places in California that she would be willing to live in. Maybe Gilroy, a city to the south with two-hour-each-way commutes. I asked where she was moving.

“Back to Montana. They say that on average, your nearest neighbor is five miles away.”

So there you have it. Mountain View, California is a rough town to be in, if you ignore the high property values, full employment, and low crime statistics. And you only compare it to rural Montana.

…

There’s nothing wrong with enjoying life out in the country, of course. But we, as a country, are starting to pay the price for our obsession with moving ever outward, from suburb to suburb to exurb. Our cars are dumping carbon into the air, and our sedentary lifestyles contribute to heart disease and diabetes.

Often what drives people away from walkable cities and small towns is fear. It’s good to be afraid, and take appropriate measures, when there is a real threat. But when people are afraid to live in places like Mountain View or Shaker Heights, I think we should worry about our collective irrationality. Neither of those towns are perfect (we had a break-in at our house in Shaker), but you are never, ever going to be 100 % safe from harm. Even if you’re five miles from the nearest neighbor.

Jason and I spent the majority of last Saturday looking at houses, apartments, townhomes, and condos on Saturday. Two properties were okay, but neither of them had all the amenities and/or great location that we wanted. We set up an appointment to look at one other condo on Sunday (in which Jason went solo because I had to work). This condo was in our original top 3 list of places that we wanted. Jason looked at the place and started the process on renting our condo after a whole bunch of texting back and forth between him and I (in between patient care).

We’re pretty excited about it. It’ s in Mountain View within biking distance of Google and walking distance to Castro Street (kind of like Coventry in Cleveland Heights, but 4 times bigger) and El Camino (major road with lots of restaurants, shopping, etc).

We have our own little patio that looks over the pool and a heavily wooded area (lots of redwood trees).

Our living room is huge. It also is one big room with the dining room. We also have an open kitchen. I haven’t had an open kitchen since I was living in Columbus. I really missed that.

There is a combination washer and dryer in one of the storage closets. I’m not too sure, yet, about how to use it because it has no button for “just washing” or “just drying” which would make more sense logically in my mind. We’ll see…

We can’t complain too much because we got all of the amenities that we wanted in a great area. I’m still having to treat Jason with dramamine in order to prevent him from vomiting every time we think of the price of rent here. It’s still within our price range (for California), though.

We plan on moving this Friday and Saturday (the 15th and 16th). Our address will be:

725 Mariposa Ave., #104
Mountain View, CA 94041

-Ann