Lots of activity!

I'm almost 26 weeks along and Baby Slease has been quite active lately. At 20 weeks I first felt the baby move, at 23 weeks Brad felt the baby move and last Friday (25 weeks) we started being able to see the baby move. All this has been so fun! The baby gets really active as soon as I lay down to rest so bedtime has been a very entertaining time for us. Brad talks to the baby and is ready at any moment to feel the baby move. Whenever I wake up in the night it seems the baby is at it again.

I've also started being able to tell the difference between small parts and big parts pushed up against my belly and sometimes it feels like the baby is stretching out in there. It feels like there is a bowling ball in my gut. It's a strong little one for sure!

Here's my big belly!

House projects are finished!

A week ago, this is what our house looked like. Our neighbor's realtor called our house 'gray' last week. Technically it WAS royal blue but the sun faded it to an ash color.

Now, this is what our house looks like! We changed the color to a light sage green to hopefully keep the house from fading so badly in the intense Colorado sun. We really like the color but now we think we need flowers in the front to add some color to contrast all the green!

Brad finished the yard this weekend! In the front he planted 5 bushes in front of the the white fence, tore out all the old weed barrier (and had to dig up all the rocks in the process) and put down new bark. In the back he put in new edging around the grass and put new bark down. It looks great! Pretty soon everything will start to flower and we'll post another picture.

Brody Bonds

Watching Brody's improvement these last couple of weeks has given me a whole new appreciation for the baseball steroid scandal. Here was a dog that was completely unable to stand on her own and now can run up and down the stairs in the house, run after a ball, and go for walks (the ball was thrown by a neighbor kid, which we put a stop to). So, she is doing well for the time being. She will be on the steroid for the next couple of weeks and then we'll see how she does off it. It is not a long term solution because it has negative side-effects. The mailman said the other day that his lab bit his hand when his dog was on steroids. We have not seen any Brody roid-rage yet but are keeping an eye out.
Speaking of steroids, did any general manager in baseball history more underestimate the power of steroids than Tom Grieve did in 1989? He had the all steroid team that may have gotten the Rangers to the World Series if he had left them alone; Sammy Sosa, Pete Incaviglia, Ruben Sierra, Rafeal Palmiero, Long-Juan Gonzales, Dean Palmer, Pudge Rodriguez. Seriously, that's a lot of juiced power. By 1995, this is a lineup that could have gone deep in the playoffs every year even with zero pitching, which is a staple of Ranger's teams. Here's a guy who traded Sosa for Harold Baines and Palmiero for Will Clark! That's 100 juiced HR's a year for 4-5 years.

BIG weekend!

I'm 22 weeks now and I don't want to hear another person tell me I'm not big! This is not a normal look for me. I'm feeling Baby Slease poke around in me and I'm starting to feel uncomfortable. With 4 1/2 months to go and about 40 degrees increase in temperature, that is worrisome.

It's been one week since we took Brody to the emergency vet and they told us we could put her to sleep if we wanted. She has been on a pharmacy of drugs this week and they seem to be helping. The steroid she is on has allowed her to regain use of her back legs (however stiff) and the pain meds are keeping her from shaking. She's getting her sassy attitude back and is able to go to the bathroom standing up. :) While we don't know how long these meds will remain effective, they are helping her to feel better and function more normally. Praise God!

This weekend Brad and our neighbor, Pat, tore down and rebuilt our mini retaining wall behind our house. Our yard was erroding away under the existing wall (with only 2 layers of railroad ties) so they decided they could fix it. They tore out the old ties, dug through the crazy, wet clay (it rained Friday while Brad was tearing down the old wall), and put together a fabulous, strong, massive wall. It is 5 layers of ties (one completely buried) and has a drainage system and fabric to prevent errosion.

Here is the start of the project after Brad and Pat did the digging.

Here's Brad and Pat (with Pat's dog, Marley, keeping watch) discussing the finishing touches on the wall.
Here is the finished product of the wall from the backside. We still have some finishing touches to put on the yard to put it all back together, but it looks great!

Brody

Brody has been having a hard time walking for the last month or so (even more so than usual with her very bad back legs). Saturday night it got so bad she was dragging her legs behind her with her back feet resting the weight on her knuckles. By Sunday morning, she couldn't walk at all. She couldn't stand to go to the bathroom so we had to hold her up and Brad was having to carry her from place to place.

Sunday afternoon we took her to the animal hospital who did her reconstructive knee surgery when she was 2. The vet did some poking and testing and determined that Brody probably has an inflamed disk in her spine pushing against her spinal column. The pressure on her spine is cutting off feeling to her back legs so she actually doesn't even know where her feet are. That's why she's 'knuckling' when she walks. The pressure in her spine is causing her a lot of pain - so much so that she's shaking and groaning a lot.

He basically told her that the only way to fix the problem would be to do back surgery and he said with her being 11 1/2, that's not the greatest solution. He told us that she may not last much longer. He told us that we wouldn't be wrong to put her to sleep yesterday. We are not ready for that step and he gave us another option to manage her pain and try to get the swelling to go down in her back by using a steroid. Brad is working from home this week to give nursing care to Brody and give her pain meds, muscle relaxers and a steroid starting on Wednesday.

This has been a really hard process to go through because it doesn't seem right for us to choose when Brody is going to die, but at the same time, she really is in a lot of pain and it's not going to get better. The vet said that even if the inflamation does go down in her spine, it will be a chronic problem that won't go away. Brody is such a tough chic that it's hard to know when she's in pain. But her shaking and shivering is new. . . she's at a whole new level of pain. For a dog who's hiked through snow with no knee ligaments for 9 years, that's saying a lot.

Anyway, it sounds strange but we'd appreciate your prayers for comfort for Brody. We'd also appreciate your prayers for us since this is such a sad and painful process to go through. We need wisdom to be able to do the right thing for Brody too. Brody is such a great dog. . . whew. . . Thanks for your prayers.

20 Week ultrasound

Last week we had our 20 week ultrasound and my mom came into town to experience it. Although it wasn't as exciting as the 12 week ultrasound (this technician was kind of a grouch!), we did get to see that the baby is healthy and getting big!

This is the first official picture of Baby Slease's bare baby butt! Isn't it cute? Actually, the baby's feet amazed me. I'm also starting to feel the baby moving around and these little tootsie's are the culprits for the pokes!

This picture is kind of strange but you can see the baby's eye lense in the left photo. I'm not exactly sure what the right one is. :)

For all the planners out there (and I'm usually in this group!) we did NOT find out whether the baby is a boy or girl! That was the last ultrasound we will have and the technician had us cover our eyes whenever she was about to look at 'the gender' she called it. As if we would have been able to tell what we were looking at! Anyway, she also said she got in trouble once for putting pictures on the CD that showed the baby's sex. So, we don't even have any pictures anyone can analyze to figure out if it is a boy or girl (sorry Christy!). So, it's a mystery from here on out.

Oh, we bought our first baby item today. . . a Bob stroller off Craig's list. It's used and a little faded but it was $200 cheaper than a new one! It's orage and brown. . very gender neutral. :) Orange! Well, we'll be safe on the trail from anyone hitting us!

Freak storm!

April 17th and we're getting a foot and a half of snow. . . at least on Tuesday it will be 70 degrees again! Spring in Denver! We made our first snowman together. .

This is our pregnant snowman!

Brad did shovel the snow and Brody enjoyed being buried in it.