7 Quick Takes Friday - May 13, 2011

Thanks to Jen for hosting.

1. My appointment on Tuesday went very well. I saw the nurse practitioner as Tuesday is my OB's day at the hospital, and she was lovely. Friendly, personable, and a person of faith (it came up in conversation). Plus, the first thing she said as she walked in the room was, "Congratulations!" That's always pleasant to hear. :) At any rate, as I said in my previous post, baby looks GREAT. S/he is measuring right on target and has a strong heartbeat. We're very relieved. I'm also thankful there's only one -- one of the first things the NP said as she began the ultrasound was, "Hmmm, is there one or two?" and I just about had a heart attack! Turns out that the yolk sac was still visible (she thought it might be another amniotic sac at first) so it was a false alarm.

2. Funny story from the appointment -- the medical assistant asked me when my last menstrual period was. I ovulated on something like day 25 of my cycle so I did not want to tell her what my actual LMP was because it would throw off the due date by nearly two weeks. I said, "I chart my cycles so I know my exact date of ovulation. I conceived on March 25."

She looked really confused and said, "I know, but my pregnancy wheel only has LMP, not ovulation."

I suppressed a sigh and said, "According to my calculations, my due date is December 16, so put that in your wheel and put down my LMP according to that due date."

She did, and then when we had the ultrasound, the baby was measuring 8w4d and the estimated due date matched my calculations exactly. The nurse practitioner was impressed. Anyway, yay for vindication. If I'm ever a millionaire I'm going to create a line of pregnancy wheels that calculates according to LMP and ovulation and give one to every OB-GYN clinic in the country. Hello, some women are actually knowledgable about their bodies and know the date of conception!

3. Now that we've seen everything is going well so far, we're meeting our doula next week to officially hire her (e.g., sign the paperwork and everything). She was present for Violet's birth and she was FANTASTIC so we decided right away to hire her for this birth. I'm lucky I contacted her right away after I got pregnant, as she's only taking two clients in December due to the holidays.

4. This week has been MUCH better than last week. Without going into details, we gave two weeks' notice to our daycare provider on Friday due to what we felt was a breach of our trust (it's not related to her care of the kids, which is why we gave notice as opposed to pulling them out immediately). So, we spent last week and the weekend frantically searching for another daycare provider in the area who didn't charge an arm and a leg.

Well, God is SO good to us. We found a new provider (a husband and wife team, operating out of their home) willing to take all three kids (eventually :P) PLUS who will take Elanor before and after school next year! (They live about a block from her school, and they have a daughter just a year older than her that they take to/from the same school every day). That will save us some money. They have no problem with us taking eight weeks off after the baby is born, and won't require us to pay to reserve our kids' places while they're out. Oh, and they're going to really work with us to potty train William ASAP, too. :) (She said that she "loves to potty train kids" -- I think she's crazy but if she does, then she can train Violet while she's at it! :P)

They have four kids of their own (a girl and three boys, two of which are twins just a few months older than Violet) and they love all things Disney and Disneyland, just like we do, so we hit it off immediately. :)

I think their parenting style is MUCH more like my own as compared to our previous provider's (who is a very type-A helicopter parent), so we should get along well. They charge slightly more than our old provider, but the money we'll save with Elanor's care should make up for that, and it'll be more convenient to be able to drop off and pick up the kids at the same place every day. So, that situation as been resolved and it's a lot less stressful now.

5. Our new cleaning lady is coming over for the first time on Tuesday. :) Collin says she'll do laundry and organizing for us too -- I will probably take her up on that!

6. We're also getting our wills (+ advanced healthcare directives) notarized and witnessed on Tuesday; two friends from our church have agreed to witness them for us. Hopefully the documents won't be needed anytime soon, but I think they're good to have just in case.

7. Oh, before I forget, I have a new post over at the Catholic Phoenix blog. I was in full sarcasm mode when I wrote it. :)

Happy Friday (the 13th)!