Belly Pictures

So I had Michael take some pictures about a week after my last post. He took them with his camera, though, which only downloads to his computer. Unfortunately, his computer crashed before we could transfer the pictures to my computer. Then we just never got around to taking more pictures. We just today finally took some pictures.

For comparison's sake, the first picture is when I am seven weeks pregnant, and the second is today, at 28 weeks. I'm in my third trimester!

It's a girl!

I had an ultrasound on the 18th, and we found out the baby is a girl! She wasn't wanting to cooperate with the ultrasound tech, though, and didn't want to roll over to let us see anything. One time when the lady moved her thing(don't know what it's called) down to look for little girl or boy parts, baby had a hand down between her legs. As for a name, we're pretty much settled on Hadassah Ruth.


I also am starting to round out, finally, and am gaining weight. I'll get Michael to take some pictures of me soon, and I'll post them.

Baby Picture!

I went to the doctor today for a checkup. He brought in the ultrasound machine and I got to see my baby! Baby was dancing and moving all over, so the doctor couldn't pick up the sound of the heartbeat very well, but he said it was around 170. He gave me two pictures from the ultra sound to take home. The second one is sort of fuzzy, but the first one has a clear profile of baby. It was so amazing to watch baby moving around inside my womb.

Update!

Well, we should probably update people on how the adoption process is going...


At the moment, it is postponed. One reason is that I recently updated my reading list. The book I'm reading is What to Expect when You're Expecting. Yes. I'm pregnant! The adoption has to be put on hold until the baby is six months old. This baby is definitely a deployment baby, (appearing nine months after a person gets back from deployment). I found out I was pregnant on 2 Oct. At the time the Dr. estimated I was about five weeks. I'm about eight weeks now. Michael and I are very excited and are looking forward to this baby.

Rest & Relaxation

I returned to the states on 3 September, just in time for the four day Labor Day weekend. After I in-processed with the base , Michael took me down to Valdez for my R&R. Valdez is gorgeous, with mountains, glaciers, waterfalls, and wildlife. Valdez is eight hours away from North Pole, so we had a long drive down. After six months where the fastest speed limit is 60 kilo/hour, (less than 40mph) driving at 60mph was a bit scary. Michael said I made him motion sick.

The first day, we took a glacier cruise. Michael is my camera man, but all these pictures are mine. :)

One of the glaciers we approached was the Columbia glacier. It had created so many icebergs, the closest we could come to it was ten miles.
Our very able Captain piloted the boat around several enormous icebergs. Seeing them made me wonder, how big was the one that sunk the Titanic? The Captain announced there are only two other places in the entire world that have icebergs this size: Greenland and Antarctica.

Let's get a picture taken with an iceberg! :)
We did see some wildlife on the cruise as well. Very few of my pictures were in focus, though, so I'll have to get Michael to upload some of his pictures soon.
The next day, we went out looking for waterfalls and then took a hike.

The only wildlife (other than birds) we saw on our hike. This porcupine was really small; smaller than a volleyball. Doesn't it look all soft and cuddly? I was close enough, I could have reached out and petted it. (I didn't, though.)
On our return trip, we stopped at Worthington Glacier. Do you see the black oval to the bottom left of the glacier? That is an ice cave.

Of course, we had to hike out to it. The next picture is actually three pictures stitched together. I didn't take these pictures with the intent to stitch them into a panorama, and photoshop wanted to skew Michael out of shape. This still doesn't do it justice as to its size. Michael is at least twenty feet away, and that's only the top half of the opening. We didn't go inside the ice cave.

Here is the wall of the ice cave, at least, the wall where the roof had already collapsed.
There were several magpies in the parking lot at Worthington glacier. They were cleaning the bugs off the parked cars. One of them was very vocal. I have never seen one that vocal. It chattered non-stop.

All in all, it was a wonderful trip. Michael and I thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.