More than halfway there!

So many things have happened baby wise in the last 3 weeks. I feel her kick and punch (my bladder mainly) much more often now, and just last week, Steve finally felt her kick too!

I got to go home to Ventura a couple of weeks ago and visit with the parents and one of my good friends. I was so excited to finally experience some consistent sunny weather, to only find the weather only 2 degrees warmer than Gig Harbor, WA. Seriously Southern California?!? But ultimately, since that was not my main reason for visiting, it didn’t ruin the trip. I had a great time with my family, and my mom even took me on a much needed maternity clothes shopping trip. As you can see, I am visibly pregnant now, and no longer fitting in most of my clothes!

Steve and I participated in the Gig Harbor Street Scramble last Saturday. It’s a free event that is sort of like a scavenger hunt. You are provided with a map with almost 50 locations marked on it, and a corresponding list of questions with a point value for each location. The farther the location, generally the more points you can earn. You then bike, run, walk, or as in my case, waddle, to as many of the 50 locations on the map you can, answer the corresponding question, and try to get back to the starting point in the time given. We didn’t stay for the awards ceremony since baby was hungry, but we did get a free shirt from the event which was a total bonus I’d say. Here’s some of the pictures from the event:

Start of the event

Maps given to us (notice plastic cover in case of rain, only in WA)

The stairs of the end of the “shortcut” we took. I may be smiling now, but I wasn’t after I climbed them all.

Steve finding one of the answers at one of the locations on the map.

Finish line

Steve and I (and baby girl) with our new shirts.

Finally, the 20 week ultrasound as promised...

elementary math

Val and I were at Half Priced Books today and overheard this
conversion between an employee and a mid 30's, overweight, male
customer.

Cust: How much are the Dungeons and Dragons books?
HPB: They're individually priced, but they're all 20% off.
Cust: It's $9.98 so how much is the discount?
HPB: $2 (presumably with a look of incredulity)

What you’ve all been waiting for…

(Ha ha, I thought this was published while was in Ventura, but I guess we forgot. Sorry for the late notice.)

So you may notice I’m wearing a different colored shirt this week. If you haven’t figured out why yet, let me fill you in… WE’RE HAVING A GIRL!!! Our little one with be 7th or 8th in a long line of baby girls in the Teodoro family. By 7th or 8th, I mean one of our cousins is due 3 days after me and they’re having a girl too, so depending on who goes first, our girl will be the 7th or 8th girl born in a row for the Teodoros. So we may not be breaking any trends, but we are still excited to meet her in less than 5 months!

Our 20 week ultrasound went well. Baby girl looks healthy and everything is progressing well. I’m a little nervous over the fact that after measuring the circumference of the baby’s head, we learned her head size is in the 97th percentile for her age! I’m not looking forward to discovering that first hand in 19 weeks!! Other than that scary fact, it was fun to watch her squirm around and stretch her long legs during the appointment. I’ve posted the pics from the ultrasound and we’ll post the video from the ultrasound soon. I expect you will all fall in love with her as much as Steve and I already have.

Super Pregnancy Power

What a difference a week made huh? I finally feel like I look a little more pregnant and a little less “full.” I’ve been feeling the little peanut moving around for a few weeks now and have even felt him once with my hands which was pretty exciting. Steve is still waiting for that privilege.

So what is my pregnant super power you ask. Ready? It’s a big one. I can now cut onions without crying! That’s right, Steve had been the designated onion cutter in our house since just starting to slice through one would create such tears in my eyes that I couldn’t see what I was doing and risked the loss of a finger if I continued the task. But low and behold, just this week, no one was home while I was making dinner so I was prepared to attack the onion with my usual procedure: make a cut, run out of the kitchen crying, wait for stinging to subside, blow my nose and charge back in to make another cut. But this time… nothing. Not one tear, not one sniffle, no stingy eyes, it was amazing! So pregnancy has given me the super power of cutting onions. If crying while cutting onions is a problem you have, give me a call. I’ll come over and help you out. It’s a gift, I can’t let it go to waste.

And now for a corny picture…

Ahhhhh, the baby’s my heart. How cute.

Starting to show

I don’t know why, but I show a lot more from the front than I do from the side, but I know that will change in the future, so you’ll keep getting profile pictures showing the ever growing belly. Oh, and week 15, the baby’s size was compared to the size of an orange, so we thought it’d be cute to add an orange for size reference. Of course, week 16 compared the baby to the size of an avocado and we didn’t have one on hand, hence the lack of produce in proceeding photos.

I’m getting most of my energy back now that I’m in my second trimester, and I’m able to eat most foods again. Sad to say, I still have a slight aversion to meat, which for me, is pretty upsetting. But this too shall pass.

Oh, and a quick note on the house Steve told you about that we put an offer on. Recent update sounds like we are not going to get it. Sounds like the sellers are dealing with some marital issues and aren’t filing the proper paperwork with the bank in a timely fashion. This may turn the property into a foreclosure instead of a short sale, but who knows how long that will take, so we’ll continue looking for something in the meantime.

House Hunting Status

We are officially free of the condo now which is a huge relief but haven’t found a place in Gig Harbor yet.  Living with my parents is going well, but we’re a little anxious to get our own place with the baby on the way and all.

To that end, we’re putting our hopes and prayers on this place for now but still keeping out eyes out for anything else that might come on the market.

http://www.redfin.com/WA/Gig-Harbor/5707-40th-Avenue-Ct-NW-98335/home/2807060

It’s a short sale and there’s only 2 offers on it and we’re pretty sure our offer is higher than the other one, but the bank may not take either.  Hopefully the bank will decide that taking a 10% hit on the price is better than keeping it on the market longer.  And hopefully they will decide that SOON.  It’s a waiting game now though.

For those interested if how this house fits into our local life, the answer is great!  Here’s the map.  We also just figured out this morning that the house is walking distance to church (albeit no sidewalks in places) so that’s cool.

Not much change

I’m half way through week 14 and not much has changed since my post 2 weeks ago. I can still fit into all my pants and most of my shirts. I have started taking a cocktail of Unisom/vitamin B6 that is keeping the nausea at bay. I still had a couple of bad days this week, but seem to be back on track today. All in all, it is nice to have some energy again and be able to get things done throughout the day.

Steve’s parents, Steve’s oldest brother Mark and Steve and I went up to Whistler a couple of weekends ago. Although I didn’t ski since I hadn’t discovered the wonderful Unisom/B6 cocktail’s full capability yet, I was still able to enjoy the beautiful snow fall and crisp fresh air of Whistler. Steve got two good days of powder snowboarding in and really enjoyed getting out of the house. (As you can probably guess, I’ve kept him pretty cooped up that past couple of months).

Our condo is still in escrow and the close date is set for the 30th of this month. We are both pretty excited about this and just looking forward to being rid of the condo. Don’t get me wrong, the condo was a great first place to own, it’s just hard to rent or own up here with a mortgage to pay in CA as well. We do have a realtor up here and have started looking for houses (not condos!) to buy. We found a house this last weekend that met none of our criteria but we both fell in love with all the same. The big selling point was the saloon on the side of the house and the creek running through the backyard. Although the house was small, it was located on 1.15 acres and the price gave it huge potential to make it into more of what we wanted in the future. Unfortunately, we are 5th in line to bid on the bank owned house. So if the first bid falls through, then the rest of us will get a chance to put our strongest bid forward to see who gets the chance to own such a wonderful piece of property. In the meantime, we will continue to look. More and more property comes on the market all the time, and all though sometimes I feel like we have a deadline (September 18th to be exact), I know with patience and prayer we will find the perfect house for us.

We're Pregnant!

So I had been planning on telling you all about our travels up to WA and all the new and exciting things we are experiencing up here (like wider parking spaces!). Instead, I've been laying around most days feeling pretty sick and watching all six seasons of Lost and other various shows and movies. Turns out being pregnant can take a lot out of you. That's right, I said it, pregnant, with child, knocked up! 12 weeks today to be exact with an estimated due date of September 18, 2011.

I will do my best to keep you all informed on what's going on for the next seven months of this pregnancy. Oh, and other various things happening in our lives such as our house being in escrow for the second time. Turns out banks only give loans to people with at least a 2 year VISA and our last potential buyer only had 18 months left on theirs. Very disappointing, but things are looking up now that we are in escrow again (and hopefully for the last time). We are also beginning to look at homes to buy up here in WA specifically in the Gig Harbor area.

All in all we are doing great and both very excited about becoming parents by the end of this year.


Ultrasound taken earlier this week (week 11). Labels by Steve for ease of understanding.

Tainan night market

So a couple of the guys from work offered to take me to the night market in Tainan.  Apparently it’s the 2nd biggest (behind Taipei) in Taiwan and a big deal for the locals.  It was a lot of fun and a bit of a culinary adventure as well.

William and his friend picked me up at the hotel and he let me drive his scooter!  Even more surprising, he hopped right on back.  White guy, in Taiwan, 1st time on a scooter, at night, with a passenger, trying to follow another scooter, through crazy traffic.  Yeah, it was good times.

After we made it to the market (without incident), they said I was a good driver but was slow.  By slow they mean, I stopped at red lights (even if there wasn’t cross traffic), did substantially less weaving through scooters / cars / pedestrians / road cones / bicycles / lampposts, and didn’t generally ride the snot out of all 100cc’s of 2 stroke glory.

We parked in the biggest scooter parking lot I've ever seen.  The picture below is less than half of it and only one of the lots around the night market.

Part of the market where we first ate.

That’s me, William’s friend, William, and Johnson.  Johnson’s girlfriend took the picture.

What we’re eating is oysters and egg with some noodles in lots and lots of brown gelatinous goo.  It wasn’t bad actually, but I could have done with less of the goo.

At this point they decided that it would be fun to get me to eat all the local ‘favorites’.  First up was duck blood soup with fishballs.  This is supposedly the 2nd weirdest local food according to some CNN show they had seen and liked to quote.  It was kind of like tofu and really not as bad as they had me thinking it would be.  I didn’t go for seconds though.

After that it was some nut or bean thing that looked like a jester hat.  These were pretty good and I had several.  I took a picture of the sign too so hopefully Alan can tell me what they are.

I don’t recall the details but i believe I finished it.

Then I had a gun pastry that was quite tasty.  Other options were a motorcycle, an elephant and a pig.

This pastry was filled with strawberry goo and pretty good.

Number 1 on the CNN weirdest foods list in Taiwan.  Pig’s blood flavored rice pie with a peanut and cilantro covering.  On a stick.  Fortunately I mostly tasted the cilantro.  This one had me a little worried because none of them got one and they wanted to take a picture of me eating it… 2 bites was plenty.

I’ve had Mexican food in Korea and Singapore, but this burrito was something else.

So this was tiny little snail shell things that you had to suck the snail out of. Mostly really salty and kind of a gross texture.  Plus they get stuck in your teeth.  I only had 3.

Carnie games!!!!

When we left, I figured I should have William drive so I could test my theory about which was scarier, to drive a scooter in Taiwan, or to be a passenger on a scooter in Taiwan.  The latter for sure.

The hog and the local beer.  Yes, it really is called Taiwan Beer.

They stuffed me with some more food at the bar and then we saw a several hundred year old temple and headed back to the hotel.

It was a lot of fun.  Next time you’re in Taiwan, you should check out the night market and eat some weird food.  None of it was really as bad as it looked.

taxi on empty

What's the protocol here: I can see my taxi's gas tank is on empty and it doesn't seem to bother the driver at all. It's probably moot because we're in the boondocks with no gas station in sight, but do I try and point at the gauge or pantomime filling up with gas? Or do I just go with my current plan of hoping the gauge is broken and not worrying about it?

Cute kid on a scooter.

Talk and scoot

I just saw a guy on a scooter pull out his cell phone and wedge it between his cheek and helmet and never even slow down.

This is my first day in Taiwan, but that seems about par for the course.

New Front Tire

Apparently, when you order a motorcycle tire online, they think packaging is unnecessary.

first run with five fingers

I bought a pair of Vibram Five Fingers over the weekend and this morning at the gym was my first chance to run in them.

The running motion is very similar to the really thin soled shoes I’ve been running in most of the year, but seems to be even more of a lower leg workout than usual. More toe action I guess.

My feet were a little sore right on the ball of my foot (the first contact point) so they’re going to take some getting used to and but I like them so far.