baby goodness

Today was my first baby shower!!!  My good friends, Kim and Lori, threw such a great shower.  I am so blessed by my community in Korea.  Prior to this shower Tom and I had three baby items: two hats and a onesie. We also had zero baby furniture (our school is in the process of ordering us a crib and dresser) and our "nursery" was still being used as our laundry room (we don't have a dryer so part of our apartment has to be used to hang clothes to dry).  Needless to say, despite my growing size there hasn't been too many tangible reminders that a baby is on the way.

Today, all of that changed! We were so blessed to get a lot of really great gifts: cute baby boy clothes, baby books, a rocking chair, baby bathtub (much needed since we only have a shower in the apartment), and so many other much needed items for when this little boy of ours arrives in Korea.  Talk about a reality check!

Here are some pics of the shower:

The shower hostesses--Lori and Kim with me. 

Awesome cupcakes! There were two different kinds; this one was chocolate cake with peanut butter frosting. 

The shower theme was "Noah's Ark." So there were cute animal touches throughout. 

 Diaper cake!

 Food and friends.

 More friends.

 Let the gifts begin! 

 My friend Kim is next to me. Don't worry she's not being rude and playing on her phone, she was using her iTouch to keep track of who got me each gift. I love technology.  Kim also got us this gift--it's one of those cool bouncy seats.

 Bumpo chair.

 There was a room full of teachers, so you better believe we got some great books and learning games!

 Lori handmade this hoodie!  We tried it on a bear so I could get some practice in.

 More friends from school, Jin and Julia. 

The rest of the pictures are post shower processing/assembly.  Check out the bouncy seat (you'll notice a small green rabbit trying each of the items out).  

 Bathtub:

 One of Tom's favorite gifts (and of course it came from another math teacher)--stacking boxes to work on geometry and spacial reasoning skills. 

The loot in our apartment. 

Tom working on an Ikea style rocking chair.   I think this may be the first of many things Tom will assemble for our child/the nursery.   

Finished product! It's really comfortable and fits well with the style of our apartment.  

As you can see, we were really blessed today!  I feel so humbled and loved to have such a great community in Korea.  This baby is going to be well taken care of here.

To my shower peeps:
Thanks Kim and Lori for everything--the shower blew me away! And thanks to everyone else for the wonderful gifts and time of fellowship.

demo

Across the street from us there has been a lot of demolition going. There is a gas station outside our window that is being remodeled and several other building that are simply being demolished and rebuilt because they were old and crapy. The other day the gas station was ripping out one of their old utility buildings and I saw a device that I have never seen before. I will let the video speak for itself:

Here is the end result of T-Rex's efforts:

lost in translation

Right after I published my last post I got a text message from my hospital, Samsung Medical Center.  I was a little anxious when I saw it because I thought, I was just there yesterday--did they find something concerning? Why are they messaging me so quickly?

The message was in Korean, but luckily I have a translation app on my iPhone so I was able to copy and paste the text to see what it said.  The translation stated: "The Cathedral tolerance test came back normal."

I'm going to assume they meant the "glucose test" (which checks for gestational diabetes) came back normal.

Got to love translating between languages.

"Mrs. Meyer, You're getting huge!"

It's starting to become obvious that I'm pregnant, as my students remind me on a daily basis (see quote in the title).

Here I am at 26 weeks:

Lately I've been feeling good and have had energy and excitement for my job.  Things at school and at home have been progressing well!  We had a doctor's appointment yesterday and they gave me the works; a non-stress test, ultrasound, glucose test, and a chat with my doctor.  The ultrasound was a quick one just get the baby's weight (2.2 lbs!) and size.  He's still measuring above average in size across the board.  They tried to get a good picture of his face for us but he kept covering up his face with his hands, so he either likes to play peekaboo or he's shy.  

The non-stress test is where they monitor the baby's heart rate, movement, and if I have any contractions.  It's called a "non-stress" test because there is no stress for the baby.  However, I find these tests incredibly stressful for me! A baby's heart rate should be somewhere around 120-180 BPM.  Little Meyer's heart rate usually hangs out between 140-150 BPM.  The reason this test was stressful is it took the nurse a while to find his heart beat, then once she found it it would stay around 140 for a minute or so, and then drop down to like 70 something and stay there.  Now this wouldn't be a huge deal if the process was explained to me, but this process of finding the heart rate, seeing it drop, etc. happened 5+ times before the nurse was able to communicate to me that the baby was really active and moving so much that she was struggling to find the right position for the monitor to track him.   I then realized that when the baby moved the machine began to monitor my heart rate, which accounts for the low drops in the BPM.   This was a relief but because the nurse knew very little English none of this was communicated to me until after like 20 minutes of me freaking out internally.  In the end we were able to get a solid 10 minutes of tracking our little one, and his heart rate looked good.  The power of communication is truly AMAZING.  When you live in a country where there is a communication barrier you suddenly realize the power words (or the lack there of) can have over you. 

Everything else with the appointment went really well and I'll hear back about my blood work for the glucose test in a week or two.  We're getting so excited to meet our little one!!!  

We have 6 weeks of school left before we come home! Time is flying by. Happy Easter everyone!
Behold! The Lamb of God has taken away the sin of the world. Thanks be to God.

High School Retreat 2011

This past weekend Bonnie and I traveled to a camp about 3 hours drive from our home with 90 high school students for our annual high school retreat. It was a great time as it always is. Here are some photos of the highlights:

All of our kids in the auditorium gearing up for our first chapel.

Throughout our time there we got to take part in a handful of leisure activities. Our group's first activity was the ropes course/zip line. Bonnie took pics while I participated.
One of our students on the course.

Then our group went on a bike ride and Bonnie and I opted out (pregnancy and all) and decided to take in the scenery.
Our bike riders crossing the bridge.
Nature!
Though there weren't any good pictures to capture it, our Saturday night was spent enjoying an entertaining talent show and a warm and cozy bonfire. The next morning our group had some team building exercises.
Some stretches and jumping jacks to warm up.
This was a tough one. I think you can see the golf ball rolling down the chute.

It was a great time and though it was tiring I think our kids really enjoyed it. I know we did. I 'll leave you with a couple picks of our students enjoying their time.

baby things

Check out these cute little baby hats a fellow teacher made for us!  They're so cute and so little.  Tom and I have purchased ZERO baby items.  This is partially because I want to see what I get at some upcoming baby showers and partially because I'm waiting to do a lot of baby shopping in America.  It was fun to get these little hats and have a tangible reminder that this boy is on his way!

I get asked a lot how I'm feeling these days, so I wanted to give a quick update to say that I'm doing really well.  I feel like more normal self aside from three things: I get more tired at night than usual, I'm hungry more often, and my belly is growing exponentially.  We're really thankful for a smooth second trimester so far, especially since the first was so rough!

We're still searching for a name...send us your suggestions.  :-)

The end of year countdown is officially beginning: 8 weeks until summer.

the council

In college I developed some great friendships with four other women; Mary Kate, Polly, Sara, and Carly.  We led Young Life together, some of us were roommates, and we basically did life together.  We committed to intentionally share our lives together, the good and the ugly, and somewhere along the way we decided to call our crew "the Council."  Things look a little different these days since we live in five different places (Chicago, Columbia, Rochester, St. Louis, and Korea) but our relationships are still strong.  These are the women that really know me.  This weekend there's a baby shower for Polly so everyone (minus me) got together in Columbia, MO.   I'm bummed I can't be there, but I got to do the next best thing:  

As you can see, while the girls were eating dinner I got to sit at the table with them (via Skype) and spend some time with them.  It was great!  I felt like I was there.  Friends (and to a much less degree technology) are a wonderful thing.

Little Meyer update 23 weeks

Over the past week Bonnie has had several different appointments to check up on how her and our little baby boy are doing. We had a fetal EKG and a sonogram last week at 22 weeks and 2 days. Today we went in to meet with the doctor to follow up on those tests. Everything is going great and Bonnie and Little Meyer are rocking it!

There was one thing that the doctor mentioned to us that is a little bit out of the ordinary... When they do a sonogram they take measurements of all kinds of things including the baby's size. At 22 weeks, 2 days here's how our little boy was measuring:

Head: 22 weeks, 6 days

Abdomen: 23 weeks

Legs: 23 weeks, 4 days

Arms: 23 weeks, 4 days

After reading those off to us the doctor proceeded to tell us that our boy is still within the normal range but he is above average. Then he glanced at me and laughed. So it sounds like we have a big baby coming. We go back in three weeks to check up again.